Yup, looks like it:
See a tree with 20 apples hanging on it and reasonable people conclude it’s an apple tree. So is it a criminal conspiracy when 20 government employees illegally destroy important official emails?
If that seems like an extreme question, consider the steadily accumulating evidence about the Obama administration’s modus operandi with potentially incriminating documents subpoenaed by Congress: A scandal erupts. Congressional hearings are held. Documents are requested and withheld. Subpoenas are issued. Contempt charges threatened. A few documents dribble out.
Then come the admissions that, oh by the way, emails required by multiple federal laws to be preserved have either been destroyed or “lost.”
Oh, don’t be ridiculous. People lose emails under subpoena all the time. In the mob, anyway.
[Sunday-morning update]
Inspector Generals say that Obama aides obstruct investigations.
[Update a few minutes later]
Elusive federal documents: Six serious questions:
In Fast and Furious, President Obama declared executive privilege to withhold documents in a controversy that the White House claimed revealed no evidence of White House involvement. Of course, if all the evidence isn’t turned over, then how is one to be confident no evidence exists? Further, multiple federal agencies have refused to turn over many documents requested in the case under the Freedom of Information Act as far back as 2011.
In the instance of Benghazi, the Obama administration failed to turn over requested documents when asked by Congress and requested under Freedom of Information law. Only recently, nearly two years after-the-fact, under court order, did it produce some withheld material to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which sued the State Department for failing to respond to its Freedom of Information requests. The documents continue to contradict the Obama administration’s narratives surrounding the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks.
With the IRS, President Obama insisted there wasn’t a “smidgen” of corruption surrounding the tax agency’s targeting of conservatives. But a key IRS official, Lois Lerner, refused to testify to Congress. And the IRS “lost” subpoenaed documents generated by Lerner and other key officials. These may include documents that Lerner sent to outside agencies and officials. Though the IRS says it will turn over tens of thousands of other documents, it’s hard to feel confident that the most damning ones, if any existed, will have been miraculously saved.
Now, HHS–which has stonewalled subpoenas and Freedom of Information requests in the investigation of HealthCare.gov–has likewise announced that it probably destroyed some materials that have been subpoenaed in that probe.
All just coincidence, I’m sure. After all, if we just happened to “lose” documents that the IRS demanded from us, nothing would happen to us except that we would be “retrained.” Right?
You don’t say.