The Missing Lois Lerner Emails: Shades of Richard Nixon

Lois Lerner as Director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS was the official most responsible for the unconstitutional violations of the rights of the Tea Party and other conservative organizations. The IRS intentionally sabotaged the tax exemption requests of Tea Party and other conservative organizations and leaked confidential donor information to liberal organizations. She testified before the House Oversight Committee denying any wrongdoing, and then asserted the Fifth Amendment Privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to further testify before Congress. The House requested her emails from 2009 – 2013 and other documents 13 months ago. The IRS agreed to turn them over. Yesterday afternoon, Friday afternoon, the traditional time for the White House and federal agencies to release bad news, the IRS disclosed it could not retrieve two years of Lois Lerner’s emails from 2009-2011. Lois claimed her hard drive crashed in 2011, eating her emails. What a coincidence! The IRS claims 250 IRS employees spent over 120,000 hours at a cost of $10 million over a year in attempting to retrieve the requested documents, but could not retrieve most of her email. The IRS did not use Best Buy’s Geek Squad or visit the Apple’s Genius Bar. These computer geeks work miracles with crashed drives. The IRS did not even ask the NSA for help. Even if just metadata, the NSA could provide the non-IRS email contacts of Lois Lerner. The IRS turned to itself, a singular act of ineptitude. The federal government already proved its inability to revamp the computer systems of the FBI and FAA. The VA avoided its computer system. The ObamaCare rollout is still not completely fixed. And yet the IRS thought it could retrieve the missing emails. The IRS technicians failed. Apparently the IRS technology experts failed to search the IRS servers on which the emails would be backed up daily. The agency claimed it recovered 24,000 Lois Lerner emails from the computers of 82 IRS employees who had copies on their computers. The IRS did not seek emails from the White House, Justice Department, Treasury Department, Federal elections Commission, and Democratic Senators and Representatives who requested (or demanded) the IRS take action against the Tea Party. The emails to and from the White House, not only from Lois Lerner but also from Jonathan M. Davis, the political appointee Chief of Staff to the IRS Commissioner, who visited the White House 310 times from fall 2009 to February 2013, could be most revealing. How selectively convenient! The IRS is essentially claiming that either it or Lois Lerner do not back up emails. All emails go through servers. Is the IRS admitting that the IRS servers do not automatically backup emails? Try these defenses to an IRS audit or informational letter request: 1) I don’t do backups; 2) The hard drive crashed, eating my emails and documents; 3) The dog ate my records. We know Lois Lerner sent thousands of Tea Party files to the Justice Department, presumably for possible criminal prosecutions. The media damned President Nixon for unsuccessfully attempting to sic the IRS on his political enemies. The media excoriated President Nixon for the missing 18 minutes 20 seconds of the 10,500 hours of White House tapes, including 200 hours of Watergate Tapes. President Nixon’s loyal secretary Rose Mary Woods claimed to have accidentally deleted them. These missing minutes may or may not have directly linked the President to the Watergate coverup. Two years versus 18 minutes. Watergate versus Chicago Rules. The Obama Administration knows it will not have to answer as long as the media is quiescent. The IRS Scandal continually reaches new lows.