Eye-popping twist in
hunt for 'missing' IRS emails
Lois Lerner
Copies of messages could be stored on 760 computer servers
Garth Kant
WASHINGTON – New information from a crusading congressman
and the Treasury
Department has punched another
hole in the story told by the IRS commissioner
about Lois Lerner’s missing emails.
It turns out, there may be copies of her missing emails on
760 servers.
IRS chief John Koskinen testified
before Congress in June there were no copies of two years’ worth of Lerner’s
missing emails because the agency’s backup system consisted of storing all
department emails on tapes that were recycled every six months.
Many members of Congress and IT experts were flabbergasted
by that, as virtually all businesses store all their archives permanently on
servers.
Their suspicions may have been on the mark, according to new
information provided by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Jordan, who has been spearheading a House Oversight subcommittee investigation of the IRS, announced on Friday the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, or TIGTA, has identified 760 exchange servers that could contain Lerner’s missing emails from the critical two-year period in question.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio
Jordan’s office released a statement pointing out this new
information “contradicts Commissioner Koskinen’s sworn testimony before
Congress about Ms. Lerner’s missing e-mails.”
In a letter the congressman sent to Koskinen on Friday,
Jordan wrote, “According to TIGTA, the IRS did not search these sources for Ms.
Lerner’s e-mails during its process of producing documents to Congress because
the IRS was not aware that the exchange servers even existed. According to
TIGTA, the IRS was under the mistaken belief that the exchange servers had been
destroyed in 2012 until TIGTA’s review of IRS records indicated that the
servers had not been destroyed due to budgetary constraints. These 760 exchange
server tapes could be a potential source for the destroyed e-mails sent or
received by Ms. Lerner.”
Jordan called upon Koskinen to testify on Sept. 17 about IRS
efforts to recover Lerner’s emails.
The IRS made the stunning admission in June of this year, on
Friday the 13th, that tens of thousands of Lerner’s emails were missing,
including those during the crucial period from 2009 to 2011, when she headed
the tax-exempt division that she later admitted was inappropriately targeting
conservative groups.
Some congressional investigators were immediately
suspicious, because the date she told her superiors her laptop had crashed,
June 13, 2011, was just 10 days after Congress first began inquiring about the
IRS’ targeting of conservatives, when Ways and Means Committee Chairman
Dave Camp, R-Mich., sent a letter to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.
Jordan and other Oversight Committee members were also
incensed with Koskinen because he took two months to tell investigators about
the missing emails.
Senior IRS leadership learned in February of this year that
Lerner’s hard drive supposedly crashed in 2011.
Koskinen said he became aware of it in April, when someone
also informed the White House.
But it wasn’t until June, two months later, that Koskinen
informed Congress.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
As WND reported in July,
that revelation caused a furious Jordan to doubt that Koskinen had planned to
tell Congress about the missing emails at all.
“My theory is this, Mr. Koskinen, you guys weren’t ever
gonna tell us until we caught you,” House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Jim
Jordan, R-Ohio, pointedly told Koskinen.
And we caught you because Judicial Watch did a FOIA
request,” he added.
The line of questioning began with Jordan asking, “Why
didn’t you tell us in April? Why’d you wait two months?”
The IRS chief said his motive was to first produce all of
Lerner’s emails that the agency possessed.
So, Jordan wondered, why did the IRS reveal Lerner’s hard
drive had supposedly crashed, causing the loss of two years of emails, to the
Senate Finance Committee on June 13? Why not some other date?
After Koskinen said something to the effect that the
occasion seemed right, Jordan countered sharply: “I think it is something
different. I think you were never going to tell us.”
Jordan said he believed the IRS was forced to make the
revelation after learning the Oversight Committee had obtained a 2010 email
between Lerner and Justice Department attorney Tony Pilger in which they
discussed the possibility of criminally prosecuting conservative groups.
Jordan said the IRS learned June 9 that congressional
investigators had obtained that email.
“Then, suddenly, four days later, on June 13, you tell the
Finance Committee” about Lerner’s missing emails, Jordan said.
That’s when the Ohio congressman suggested the IRS chief was “never going to tell us until you got caught.”
Jordan said he believed the only reason the IRS revealed the
missing emails was because it had to confess it had lost its version of the
crucial email between Pilger and Lerner.
Logical people would conclude, the subcommittee chairman
said, that is what made Koskinen decide “we’d better come clean.”
Koskinen bristled at the explosive charge that he had
participated in a cover-up.
His voice rising, the commissioner retorted, “When you find
evidence to support that, I’d like to see it.”
a bit to regain his composure, he maintained, “If you think
we could produce a report in four days, you don’t know how a large organization
functions.”
Jordan calmly replied that he didn’t think the IRS put
together the report in four days.
“I think you just stuck it into the report,” he said,
suggesting the IRS thinking was, “They got us, we’d better come clean.”
Koskinen shot back: “Can I respond to that? That’s a serious
charge. If you find any such evidence, I’ll be astounded. Before you make that
kind of charge and claim, you ought to have better evidence than a single email
dated June 9.”
Jordan said he was just pointing out the “timing is pretty
suspect,” because the IRS had just discovered investigators were getting emails
from the Justice Department they weren’t getting from the tax agency.
“In light of everything we’ve heard from the IRS, when you
start looking at the timeline, it looks pretty suspect,” explained Jordan.
“And all I’m saying is, I’m not sure they were gonna tell
us.”
Later in that July hearing, Jordan further hammered the point home.
He said IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane told
the committee that senior IRS leadership first became concerned about the
possibility of missing emails from Lerner on Feb. 2 and confirmed a hard-drive
crash only two days later.
Yet, Jordan pointed out, “you come to Congress” three times
after that without informing investigators about the missing emails, “and we’re
supposed to buy that? C’mon.”
Even before those exchanges, GOP lawmakers had said it was a
mathematical near-certainty that the IRS has been engaged in a cover-up.
At the opening of the hearing, Jordan expressed
exasperation that the IRS story has gone from reporting the crash of just
Lerner’s hard drive to seven or eight hard-drive crashes to as many as 20
crashes of hard drives belonging to IRS personnel under investigation.
Calling it “unbelievable,” Jordan noted the committee has
now learned that almost one-fourth of the IRS people under investigation may
have had hard-drive crashes.
Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif, said it was now
clear there was a “convenient loss of data by far more people than is explained
by the relevant math formulas.”
That number may have grown even larger.
In Friday’s letter,
Jordan noted, “According to TIGTA, 31 custodians – out of 118 total –
experienced computer issues, and at least eight custodians may have lost
e-mails during the period under investigation. In addition, according to a
declaration filed in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the IRS admitted that it ‘wiped
clean’ Ms. Lerner’s blackberry in June 2012 – months after Committee staff
questioned Ms. Lerner about allegations that the IRS was targeting conservative
groups and after Chairman Issa and I wrote to her about these allegations.
TIGTA has stated that a second blackberry belonging to Ms. Lerner was destroyed
in November 2010.”
Jordan is sure to have pointed questions for Koskinen as to
why Lerner’s blackberry, containing all of her emails, was wiped clean even
after she, and the IRS, came under suspicion for abusing their power and
targeting the president’s critics.
John Koskinen
John A. Koskinen
is the commissioner for the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS), and a director at the AES Corporation.
Note: Charles O. Rossotti was the commissioner for the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS), is the chairman for the AES Corporation, and
a director at the Atlantic Council of the United States (think tank).
Philip Lader is a
director at the AES Corporation, and a director at the Atlantic
Council of the United States (think tank).
Philip A. Odeen was the chairman for the AES Corporation,
and is a director at the Atlantic Council of the United States (think tank).
Open Society Foundations was a funder for the Atlantic Council of
the United States (think tank), and the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank).
George Soros is the
founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, a board member
for the International Crisis Group, and the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.
Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute
(think tank), and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank).
Henry A. Kissinger is a director at the Atlantic
Council of the United States (think tank), a member of the Bohemian
Club, a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think tank),
was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg
conference participant (think tank
Belizean_Grove is the equivalent to the male-only social
group, the Bohemian Club.
Henrietta Holsman Fore is a trustee at the Aspen Institute
(think tank), and a member of the Belizean Grove.
Deborah
L. Wince-Smith is a member of the Belizean Grove, and was a member
of the IRS Oversight Board.
IRS
Oversight Board is a citizen’s board for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
John A.
Koskinen is the commissioner for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),
and a director at the AES Corporation.
Moises Naim
is a director at the AES Corporation, and a senior associate,
International Economics Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (think tank), and was a board member for the International Crisis
Group.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is the president of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank), a director at the American
Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), was a board member for the International Crisis Group, and
a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace uncovered the plans for population control by involving the United States
in war)
Jamie S. Gorelick
was a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank), and is a partner at Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale and Dorr.
William J.
Wilkins was a partner at Wilmer
Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and is the chief counsel at the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) for the Barack Obama administration.
Andrew Carnegie
was the founder of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank), and the founder of the Carnegie Institution for Science.
Samuel W. Bodman III is a trustee emeritus at the Carnegie
Institution for Science, was a director at the AES Corporation, and
the deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) is a division of the U.S. Department of the
Treasury.
John A.
Koskinen is the commissioner for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),
and a director at the AES Corporation.
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