IRS Says It Lost Lois Lerner Emails in Tea Party Probe

[Dave]

I heard about this last night when I was listening to the radio on the way home and have to say its one of the biggest loads of crap I've heard in awhile. Just a month ago the IRS was saying that they would have all the emails available soon, they couldn't possibly have not known that the missing emails were not there a month ago. To say this smells fishy is like saying Aquaman doesn't know how to fish.

By Frank Thorp V and M. Alex Johnson

Republican lawmakers called for a new probe of the Internal Revenue Service on Friday after it told congressional investigators that it had lost more than two years of emails from the central figure in a yearlong inquiry into improper IRS reviews of Tea Party tax documents.

House Republicans have already voted to hold Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the special targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Lerner was placed on administrative leave from her position as head of the agency's section on tax-exempt organizations in May 2013, after she admitted that the IRS gave special attention to applications for tax-exempt status that included words like "Tea Party" and "patriot." She retired in September.

The IRS told investigators in a letter Friday that it was unable to produce many of Lerner's emails from January 2009 to April 2011 because her computer "crashed" in mid-2011. It said it was able to recover thousands of other messages from the computers of other IRS workers who'd been copied on those emails.

Outraged House Republicans demanded that the Justice Department investigate the emails' disappearance.

Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sarcastically asked: "Isn't it convenient for the Obama administration that the IRS now says it has suddenly realized it lost Lois Lerner's emails requested by Congress and promised by [IRS] Commissioner John Koskinen?

"Do they really expect the American people to believe that, after having withheld these emails for a year, they're just now realizing the most critical time period is missing?"

Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, called the IRS' pledge of cooperation "an empty promise."

"Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies," Camp said. "Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone."

JONATHAN ERNST / Reuters

Director of Exempt Organizations for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Lois Lerner prepares to deliver an opening statement to a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on alleged targeting of political groups seeking tax-exempt status from by the IRS, on Capitol Hill in Washington, in this May 22, 2013, file photo.

Lerner last year blamed the practice on a single IRS office in Cincinnati, insisting that it was "absolutely not" influenced by the Obama administration.

But at a congressional hearing last July, witnesses from that field office testified that they were hamstrung by a lack of guidance from above — specifically from Lerner and from the agency's chief counsel.

One of the witnesses, who was transferred off of reviewing Tea Party groups in 2010, testified that she was "deeply offended" by suggestions that the scandal was due to bureaucratic incompetence isolated to Cincinnati. But like other witnesses, she offered no evidence that the tax reviews were part of any larger administration policy.

First published June 14th 2014, 12:09 am

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/irs-says-it-lost-lois-lerner-em...

[AQUAMAN]

Thanks for the side credit there Dave. I've said since day 1 this woman needs to be fired, held in contempt, and jailed asap. Aint gonna happen scenario again I'm afraid. And as we can all plainly see, it's a snafu of the ordinary, dog ate my homework type excuse, as per the usual. Only problem is if we as citizens were to try this type of behavior, it would have got us jailed long ago...lol. Even if she's held in contempt, or found guilty of some other misconduct into the future, does anyone believe she will suffer with incarceration of any type, or high fines, public humiliation, or any other punishment? Good thread and update Dave.  

[XLFD]

What really needs to be done is to have the FOIA strengthened so as to have it be a crime for withholding information that should be made available to the people and enforce that from an independent agency.  John Shay has withheld pertinent documents several times from me through FOIA back when he was the City of Ludington FOIA Coordinator, and all has been forgiven twice when he told the court, "Oops, me bad.  I neglected to give him these documents."

It's understandable when you are looking for older documents or more flexible FOIA requests having to be searched, but when they either should be existing in a compiled list of traffic control orders as by law, or are ones that he signed just recently and obviously knew about, there is a sense that he just didn't take his job to the public seriously.  And he doesn't; he still hasn't taken his oath of office after twelve years, a requirement by state law for all state and local public officials.

[Willy]

What is going on in Government and Obama's Administration far exceeds the Watergate years. So where is the press that so doggedly pursued Nixon and his boys? America is falling apart and we're stuck with an impotent press that sits around and licks itself like an old hound dog.

[Dave]

Of course you know why a dog licks its self don't you?

Cause it can