Ask Me Help Desk - The IRS scandal

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No its, not the only way, it is the most likely way. Important difference.

One would need to show in legal terms that it was the only possible explanation. As far as I am aware this hasn't been done yet.

With multiple offsite archives if ONE was damaged... MOST could still be recovered using at least two other backups...

But the issue here is ONLY the needed emails are missing... backups and archives on emails aren't individual specific... they cover the entire server and everyone on it. If only one or two peoples are missing... there was intentional actions made to scrub them.

Besides the argument they are using... is how things were done quite a few years before the last two years that are in question. Now your emails and my home emails might be done... EG: POP3... but legal requirements for government and Corporate emails were required to be EG: IMAP where they reside on the server primarily. WHere a single backup can be made enterprise wide, or at least for each server.

This change occurred here something over 7 years ago (rough guess, it was actually more than that)... well before the last two years when all of this occurred that is in question. No grey area during a transition period.

This is what I just said. Give the information you have provided it seems the most likely explanation. This is as far as anyone can go at the moment.

Clete... nobody said buying a pizza was a crime... I was just pointing some stuff out. I actually quite liked your fellow countrymen at your embassy. They gave me several cases of brews brought in via diplomatic pouch to share with my co-workers for a lot of years.

One of maybe 5 embassies that did that from the over 75 I worked with over the years.

Congress doesn't seem to have the balls to either charge her, or grant immunity, and chance whatever she may have.

smoothy I get the idea your friendship can be bought for a few beers, we have a lot of people like that here too

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Smoothy it isn't that simple. There is a difference between something that is claimed to "no longer to exist" through incompetence and something that doesn't exist because of a willful attempt to pervert a particular Act.

These are areas of degree that can only be determined by the actual or circumstantial evidence presented. In other words, to gain a conviction for a intentional criminal act of the type you are talking about, one would need evidence to show this was not a result of a particular class of circumstances.

The generous explanation is that they are a bunch of incompetents. You could make that case knowing how badly they blew the Obamacare web site.

But I don't buy it . They have stonewalled any attempt to find the truth ;including an non-investigation investigation by the Holder Justice Dept.
Look ;EVERYONE here knows that e-mails don't disappear. So it's logical to assume that IF the e-mails exonerated Lerner and the chain of command ,they would've produced them. But it is just too convenient and fortuitous for them to lose the e-mails that are specific to the dates when the abuses occurred .

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4 U.S.C. Chapter 33, requires that agencies must notify the Archivist of any records that are destroyed and the reasons for destroying them. In addition, federal regulations establish strict recoverability and redundancy requirements. Disposal of records outside these standards requires permission in writing. The IRS satisfies these requirements through Microsoft Outlook/Exchange systems, which are backed up using Symantec NetBackup. According to the IT specialist, IRS had some of the best people in the federal government charged with making sure these systems work as intended.
The IT specialist makes short work of IRS’s claim that backup tapes were reused after some short period. He says “the IRS had thousands and thousands of tapes and ‘Virtual Tape Libraries’ (VTL or non-tape backups based on hard drive storage technologies).” Thus, “there was never a reason to reuse tapes.” In any case, the U.S. government has been getting out of the tape backup regime for years.
The former IRS IT specialist concludes:

Those folks would not have had such a short retention period for email unless they had it in writing from the highest levels. It would have made the local IT water cooler gossip if the IRS had screwed up and lost tons of email by accident.

Lois Lerner's emails — a former IRS IT specialist's take | Power Line
The PJ Tatler Â» Exclusive: Former IRS Information Tech Worker Doubts Agency's Claim to have 'Lost' Lerner's Emails

Apparently there were at least 6 others in the conspiracy who's emails went a missin. Did all their computers "crash" too ?
One of them was Nikole Flax, chief of staff to former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. Flax made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010, and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs. As far as I know ,none of them was for an Easter egg roll on the WH lawn like Miller claimed in testimony.
Her visits began when the IRS started targeting conservative TP and religious groups ;and ended on the VERY DAY that she received an email from Lerner asking her help in coordinating with the Justice Dept to criminally prosecute conservative activists .(that was the email obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act.... evidently that one wasn't destroyed when Lerner's computer "crashed " . ) We also know that Dem Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse asked Lerner to do this coordination .We also know that Dem Rep. Elijah Cummings' staff was in contact with Lerner about the conservative group True the Vote.

So we have direct contact with the WH and high ranking Congressional Democrats coordinating this IRS attack on their political opposition . And all these emails have conveniently been destroyed .

Rep Steve Stockman of Texas has prepared a bill in response, the "Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Resolution"

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The resolution may be cited as the “Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Resolution.”Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must allow taxpayers the same lame excuses for missing documentation that the IRS itself is currently proffering

Whereas, the IRS claims that convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction is sufficient justification not to produce specific, critical documentation; and,

Whereas, fairness and Due Process demand that the American taxpayer be granted no less latitude than we afford the bureaucrats employed presently at the IRS;

Now, therefore, be it resolved that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that unless and until the Internal Revenue Service produces all documentation demanded by subpoena or otherwise by the House of Representatives, or produces an excuse that passes the red face test,

All taxpayers shall be given the benefit of the doubt when not producing critical documentation, so long as the taxpayer’s excuse therefore falls into one of the following categories:

1. The dog ate my tax receipts

2. Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction

3. Traded documents for five terrorists

4. Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon

5. Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room

6. Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car

7. Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords

8. Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar

9. Was short on toilet paper while camping

10. At this point, what difference does it make?

In any case, IRS can see the NSA for a good, high quality copy.

all wonderful excuses

the truth is that when Bush made a mistake in nominating Harriet Meyers for SCOTUS ,it was the Republicans that lead the revolt. I get the sense that no matter how outrageously this emperor's adm behaves ,his defenders here will be stalwart in their wagon circling . I've yet to hear them criticize anything he's done .We are expected to believe that they conveniently destroyed all the hard drives and all the backups for ONLY the 2 years pertinent to this discussion. And when it's brought up they juvenilely reply' nanananananana prove it '.

I can't believe we are still talking about backups, is this a nerd convention

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To understand the latest outrage in the IRS scandal, mull over what might happen if regulators found significant evidence to implicate Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in an insider trading scheme.
Let’s say Blankfein asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to answer any questions. Say Goldman was subpoenaed to provide all of Blankfein’s e-mails. Goldman replied that, instead of complying with the subpoena, it was itself reviewing the e-mails in question and was considering which ones to release.
Now imagine that, nearly a year later, Goldman admitted that it had not, in fact, reviewed the e-mails in question, because they had been lost in a computer crash two months before it claimed to be reviewing them. Imagine Goldman also said copies of the e-mails were lost, because while under subpoena it had destroyed the “backup tapes” (whatever those are) that held them and that it had also thrown away Blankfein’s actual hard drive.

How are Obama and the IRS getting away with a blatant coverup? | New York Post

Well Tom maybe given the facts that the right is always hollering about everything maybe many have chosen to be more pragmatic and cautious in proceeding toward a conclusion.

I mean do you have to run around with a pitchfork when you holler?

if you can't get you way hold a witchhunt, it's an old american tradition

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Well Tom maybe given the facts that the right is always hollering about everything maybe many have chosen to be more pragmatic and cautious in proceeding toward a conclusion.

stonewalling ,obstruction of justice and criminal coverup . But like the sheeple you are ,you make excuses for the inexcusable.

So do you, so what?

IRS Emails Backed Up by Outside Email Archiving Company : Freedom Outpost

IRS Emails Backed Up by Outside Email Archiving Company

Tim Brown June 21, 2014

On Friday, Mac Slavo reported on Congressman Darrell Issa's (R-CA) statement in which he called the Internal Revenue Service's claim that Lois Lerner's hard drive crash resulted in a loss of emails "ridiculous." Most of us know that information from crashed hard drives can be recovered, though it costs a lot of money. However, as Mac pointed out, we could simply obtain a copy from the National Security Agency since they are collecting this kind of information. But something more telling has come to light: The IRS uses as an email archiving company to back up its emails.
That's right, Sonasoft, whose slogan is "email archiving done right" touts the IRS as a customer.
According to the website:
The world's leading companies rely on Sonasoft products to secure their operational data. Sonasoft's award winning disaster recovery software for Microsoft Servers: SonaVault, SonaExchange, and SonaSQL is known for ease of use and reliability for email archiving, backup, recovery, replication and migration needs.

In fact, according to Sonasoft, "When used in conjunction with Sonasoft's email archiving software, continuous email archiving can be achieved without the loss of emails even after the Primary Exchange Server switches over to the Standby Exchange Server."
The site goes on to pledge, "secure and guaranteed email archiving."
The website elaborates:
"The SonaVault Email Archiving software solution employs reliable safeguards including encryption to ensure that the email is tamper-proof without the possibility of being altered. Our secure archiving solution is achieved through encryption and hash calculations to determine the tampering of emails. SonaVault uses Microsoft's Journaling mechanism to extract and archive messages. This ensures that every message which goes out and enters an Microsoft Exchange Archiving Server is archived even if the message is deleted by the user from his or her mailbox."

While Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, "I don't believe it. That's your problem, nobody believes you," perhaps he should be looking to have Sonasoft subpoenaed for the backup of the emails they are asking for.

Personally, I don't trust Paul Ryan (and for obvious reasons), but I'm more aggravated that he demonstrates frustration, but will not do the very thing that most of us Americans would do if we were in his shoes.

I use LiveDrive to backup my data, which is a super service based in England that has minimal cost to backup multiple computers for a flat fee per year. I have no trouble restoring crashed drives or virus-ridden drives from that service. How much more should a company be able to restore those emails that were allegedly erased due to a crash on federal computers?

Personally, I'm not buying that the hard drive crashed. It's simply too convenient.

In addition to Sonasoft, there are also recipients of Lois Lerner's emails, right? Has their hard drive's crashed? I doubt it. As Ben Barrack pointed out, the emails that are missing are probably the most damning as they may be linked to Malik Obama, Barack Hussein Obama's brother who is a financier of the Muslim Brotherhood.

So my question to Paul Ryan and other congressmen who claim to be after the truth is, why are you not subpoenaing these emails from the archives of SonaVault? If you aren't doing that, then you should not be trusted as a person who is after the truth, but is merely a political version of a WWF wrestler who plays the part when before the cameras, but when you're off camera you're having drinks with the enemies of America.

Smoothy that was so obvious, and too logical to argue with. I have to agree that the way to go is with the techs companies who contract to back up government files.

What I find appalling... is that so many people are completely oblivious to this... including elected officials who apparently have not asked a single individual who is. And not just the media. How many mentions of this have you saw on the news, the radio or read in a paper so far?

Actually most IT work in the Government, and such is subcontracted out. They have a few people that are supposed to oversea the subcontractors but most of the work is done by NON-GS employees. A lot of corporations do this as well.

I guess because they have either 3 or 5 year contracts to an outside company... if they don't meet expectations... someone else gets the contract... and they have no further obligations for any benefits, and anything else that goes with an actual employee.

Without being specific... they store these backups long term in vast climate controlled "caves" which were originally built to be cold war blast shelters, (to be intentionally vague) In the general region of Camp David.

here is the untold story here. The Repubic leadership is happy that the TP was targeted .That is why speaker Bonehead won't set up a select committee staffed with prosecutors ;and why he won't apply pressure to the WH to appoint an independent prosecutor .

OH, there is OBVIOUSLY a lot going on here... because I can't believe there are so many clueless people in power and in charge... self serving, biased, opinionated, idealistic yes... but clueless... no.

Makes you wonder what all of them are getting out of it if they are dancing around the issue without really adressing it head on.

smoothy din't be niaive they are politicians, they have their hand in the cookie jar

That's what I was implying.

Its obvious what stake the Democrats have in this, the question is...why aren't the Republicans taking full advantage of this? What stake do THEY have in this?

I know so say it

I can't say what stake the Republicans might have in this because I can't think of what it would be...

Its obvious the Democrats will stop at nothing legal or not to threaten and blackmail opponents... Hillary was caught red handed doing it with FileGate years ago. And that's over and above protecting their Messiah at all costs... for most of them anyway.

I'd like to know why the Republicans are dancing around the issue without getting too close. White house email backups will show Obamas part in this or are some other fictitious hard drives goig to "fail". And we know how lame an excuse that was.

Just like a kid caught standing on a chair in front of the cookie jar with a mouthfull of cookie with another half a one in their hand saying they didn't touch the cookies it was their brother or sister. Really weak excuse there too.

I told you why ..They saw their power threatened (think Cantor's defeat) by the TP . I could not say with confidence that the Repubic leadership wasn't complicit in the plot .

Based on how they have treated the tea party... that's a credible reason.

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"I can't say what stake the Republicans might have in this because I can't think of what that would be".

That's an any easy one to answer because it has been canvassed over and over again. The clue is that it has something to do with ruling elites.

Possibly... its also extremely short sighted on their part if it proves to be true. Which it very will might.

TP does that still exist? Radical didn't do it for you the last time

The Compared to the DNC, the Tea Party are a bunch of Franciscan Monks.

so the DNC is the Inquisition to the TP Franciscan Monks, no, I would say the TP is somewhat more radical, something akin to the Cathars

The TP are just the latest reincarnation of the ultra right wing conservatives that existed even before Goldwater. Of course most of you are forgetting McCarthy and his witch hunts. Different name, same animal.

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TP does that still exist?

ask Eric Cantor if it exists. Thad Cochran in Mississippi is also facing a challenge from a TP candidate who will probably win today's primary . On a related note ;hopefully Charlie Rangel loses his primary today in NYC.

Do you REALLY believe that Tal? When you have a Democrat Party run by the Likes of Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Reid... and the rest that make Lenin look like a conservative.

Hyperbole smoothy, beware of hyperbole do you honestly want a party run by a Bush or a Mccane or a Palin, by a Chaney

How old were you during Goldwater?

Barry Goldwater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sounds like an earlier version of the Tea Party to me.

Johnson won by running possibly the sleeziest ad in American history .

"Daisy Girl" Rare 1964 Lyndon Johnson Political Ad -aired only once- 9/7/64 - YouTube

Clete, Nobody is as far right as those I mentioned are far left. JFK is spinning in his grave... and would be considered an extreme conservative by today's Democrat leadership.