…is still withholding Lois Lerner’s emails:
Now, according to the most recent filing by Judicial Watch, the IRS asserts that the emails are not records of the IRS. Being a Texan, I’m not 100 percent sure how to pronounce it, but “chutzpah” is the only word to describe this latest assertion. To borrow from Lewis Carroll, “Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
The IRS and its Department of Justice lawyers must be imagining that these emails were not repeatedly sought by Congress and Judicial Watch while in the possession of the IRS. The IRS must be imagining that its own commissioner never lied to Congress, the court and the public about their existence and purported efforts to find them. And it must be imagining that each of its seven filings in Judge Sullivan’s court did not fail to reveal the existence of the backup tapes. It must be imagining that Judge Sullivan won’t remember the lengths to which he and the magistrate went to try to find the emails and any backups. And it is imagining that it can continue stalling and lying indefinitely, while no one in the government is held accountable for far more serious legal infractions than those for which ordinary citizens have been imprisoned.
They’re just trying to run out the clock.
Stupid Republicans how can the IRS be withholding emails that don’t even exist? How many times have you heard this administration testify before congress that they don’t exist? Have you no shame? No decency? No civility? How can you even begin to question this administration, widely acknowledged as the most pious government in human and inhuman history.
These emails don’t exist. They never did. Lerner was a Republican. Get with the game plan if you know what’s good for you.
So the emails that didn’t exist still don’t exist because they’re not the IRS emails?
They exist when they are not IRS emails but then don’t exists when they are IRS emails. Its like the observer effect.
The emails are like Schroedinger’s cat. They are in a state of existing and not existing, depending on who’s asking.
Maybe my reading comprehension is faulty after lunch, but I’m still having a hard time figuring out from which orifice Powell pulled this particular gem (which is relevant, since that’s the whole cruz of the article, and is “damning” enough that it was used as the pull quote for the blog entry here):
Now, according to the most recent filing by Judicial Watch, the IRS asserts that the emails are not records of the IRS.
I find nothing in the IRS filing that alludes to that assertion, nor anywhere in the Judicial Watch article about the IRS filing.
Let me make that a little bit more clear: Neither the IRS nor Judicial Watch are claiming that the IRS e-mails don’t belong to the IRS.
So, even though the IRS is stonewalling, the whole idea of their “chutzpah” in denying something that they never denied falls flat on its face.
Based on MY reading, the IRS has basically asserted that “we can’t turn over e-mails that TIGTA hasn’t given us yet”. Seems reasonable enough to me. They’re not disclaiming ownership, even if they’re disclaiming possession.
The fact that the IRS feels the need to “deduplicate” the e-mails that they get from TIGTA before handing them over to Judicial Watch is definitely a stonewalling tactic, and is a shame in and of itself. But that’s not the claim on which the article is hanging its boisterous click-bait hat.
“The fact that the IRS feels the need to “deduplicate” the e-mails ”
It isn’t just to stonewall but to make sure that none of the new duplicate emails reveal text that is missing from the prior ones.
Johnny B, that “whooshing” sound you heard was your assertion / argument going right over my head….
I’ll clarify:
The only person claiming that the IRS e-mails don’t belong to the IRS is the author of that article. Neither the IRS, Judicial Watch, TIGTA, nor Judge Sullivan have made such a claim.
It’s a click-bait article, and the assertion that Rand quoted (and that seems to be gaining the most traction in conservative circles) is made up whole-cloth, plucked from the ether, and/or retrieved from a dark orifice on the author’s body.
To get a glimpse at how the sausage of right-wing journalism is made, compare that article’s description the IRS’s court filing with the actual document that the IRS filed with the court.
See my long-winded (and shortened) reply above.
The author’s claim that the IRS is disavowing the ownership of the e-mails is the author’s own delusion.
“right-wing journalism.” You have to remember that “right-wing” means “pro-freedom,” in Baghdad Jim’s little world.
Yes, the Obama administration persecuted political dissidents for years, lied about it to congress, lied to the courts, lied to the public, continued with the pogrom after they claimed to have stopped, and then destroyed evidence but let’s focus on the real criminals here, the right wing.
How can you claim to be for civil rights when you have a racist ideology driving the persecution of dissidents?
TIGTA today released a very readable summary of the IRS email saga here. The conclusion:
Here’s a head start on the next IRS conspiracy theory:
It turns out that there was a second IRS email server (the plot thickens!). In May, 2011, about a month before Lerner’s hard drive failed, the IRS replaced its email server. The decommissioned server, its 760 hard drives and its 424 backup tapes — presumably a target-rich hunting ground for Lerner emails circa 2010-2011 — sat around for years. TIGTA investigators hired an outside expert to try to recover emails from the server’s 760 hard drives; he found 58 previously unknown emails. When they looked at the tapes they found that 422 — all but 2 — had been degaussed (erased) in March, 2014, just a few months before the investigators took possession. Isn’t that suspicious? Just as the investigation is heating up, the dastardly IRS goes and erases the tapes! It’s the 18 minute gap times 422! I can just imagine the way this is going to get covered in the rightist media.
TIGTA was obviously curious about this too; here’s what they report:
So if it’s a conspiracy, it’s a far-flung and disciplined one, with multiple low-level IRS employees who have no organizational link to Lerner willing to lie under oath and fabricate a trail of email to cover up their destruction of evidence under the cover of mere incompetence. You might wonder why such a well-run conspiracy would wait three years to erase the tapes, instead of doing it under the cover of server decommissioning, but that’d be like asking why Lerner broke her hard drive rather than just deleting incriminating emails, or why she then asked forensic experts to try to recover data from her broken hard drive. Questions like that just spoil a good story.
So, your story is that due to massive incompetence at the IRS (which is now in charge of our health insurance), they shouldn’t be charged with obstruction of justice? Do you think that story would fly with a corporation under investigation by the IRS?
IANAL, but doesn’t obstruction of justice require intent?
IANAL, but doesn’t obstruction of justice require intent?
No. In this wonderful utopia you and your ilk have created, it does not. You can be convicted without even knowing that you broke the law.
Are you sure? A quick search turns up this text:
And this:
It doesn’t sound like failing to read or understand a memo would qualify.
If the IRS issued you a subpoena for documents, and you destroyed them months later after stonewalling, do you imagine “I didn’t get the memo” would fly as an excuse?
If the IRS issued you a subpoena for documents, and you destroyed them months later after stonewalling, do you imagine “I didn’t get the memo” would fly as an excuse?
No, because they could prove that I’d been served the subpoena, and that therefore my decision to stonewall and destroy the documents shows my specific intent. You can’t make the same argument about these IRS technicians.
Do you think they should be brought up on charges, so they and others in similar jobs will think twice before skimming management emails and/or erasing old computer media? I can see the argument, but it seems thin, and it doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with whether anyone abused the powers of the IRS for political purposes.