The IRS recently informed Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp and subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany that computer crashes resulted in additional lost e-mails, including from Nikole Flax, the chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller, who was fired in the wake of the targeting scandal.

The revelation about Lerner’s e-mails rekindled the targeting scandal and today’s news has further inflamed Republicans. Camp and Boustany are now demanding a special prosecutor to investigate “every angle” of the events that led to Lois Lerner’s revelation in May 2013 that the agency had used inappropriate criteria to review the applications for tax exemption.

The lawmakers expressed particular outrage that the agency has known since February that it would not be able to produce the e-mails requested by the committee yet did not apprise the committee of that fact, and they charged in a statement that the IRS is attempting to “cover up the fact that it convenient lost key documents in the investigation.”

freeman3 wrote:"haven't you ever heard of a computer crash"

danivon wrote:Of course, a server is itself just a computer, and they are not immune from crashing.

But it would be odd not to have a back-up of emails somwhere.

Ray Jay wrote:They have been able to reproduce e-mails sent to other IRS employees (through their e-mail accounts), but not to outside the agency. Presumably the most interesting ones are either personal or sent to politicians outside the IRS. Curiouser and curiouser.

georgeatkins wrote:Just as bad is the panel of congressmen who somehow - or in some way - accept that emails were lost and are more concerned with why they were not told this last year. Maybe the IRS has them pegged as a bunch of old farts who know next to nothing about email servers, backup systems, offsite storage, data retention policies, etc.

But it is surely the height of guile to have IRS personnel actually claim their emails were "lost", especially for those specific periods of time. The Congressional panel should subpoena the IT Director to try to explain (with a straight face) how they could "lose" emails (much less just the emails related to this investigation) in a modern, networked environment. And the panel should have their own IT expert available, as well.

Ray Jay wrote:They have been able to reproduce e-mails sent to other IRS employees (through their e-mail accounts), but not to outside the agency. Presumably the most interesting ones are either personal or sent to politicians outside the IRS. Curiouser and curiouser.

After more than a year of scrutiny, three congressional committees continue to flail away at the Internal Revenue Service's alleged targeting of conservative nonprofit groups without producing any definitive answers to the questions they've raised. This page worried at the outset that the investigations would become too politicized to get to the bottom of the scandal. The result, however, has been even worse: Not only have two House probes disintegrated into partisan sniping, but the IRS further damaged its own credibility by belatedly disclosing the disappearance of two years' worth of emails belonging to a key agency figure who has refused to talk to Congress. It's past time to turn over the inquiry to an independent investigator who can dig up the truth and, if possible crimes are revealed, refer matters to federal prosecutors.

At the heart of the scandal is how the agency handled groups seeking tax-exempt status under Sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) of the tax code. The latter have skyrocketed in recent years, and there are legitimate questions about whether such "social welfare" groups are really just political action committees trying to hide their donor lists. But rather than addressing that issue systematically, the IRS gave extra scrutiny mainly to tea party groups, often in inappropriate ways, an inspector general reported.

Now, 13 months after that report was published, there still has been no thorough recounting of why the agency took those steps and what role, if any, the White House played. Instead, House GOP investigators, who seem determined to portray the White House as the IRS' puppet master regardless of what the evidence reveals, have dribbled out selective disclosures, and the Senate has been silent. Yet it's impossible to feel any sympathy for the agency when it waited four months before telling Congress that several computer hard drives had crashed in mid-2011, wiping out emails stored by Lois Lerner and six other key employees.

Why an agency that relies on record-keeping would keep such limited records is a mystery, as is how such an important trail of evidence disappeared before the scandal hit. But neither Congress nor the administration has given much reason to be trusted to unravel them. Instead, the situation cries out for the appointment of someone with a track record of sorting through complex problems to figure out what happened and who's responsible. Although it's tempting to demand a special prosecutor, as some Republicans have done, such efforts in the past have come at great expense and with wildly mixed results. A prosecutor also may be required by ethics rules to keep some findings secret, which is the opposite of the transparency needed here. Better to call on a trusted and energetic figure who can conduct a vigorous inquiry, with no questions about his or her motives.

Ray Jay wrote:The IRS has been in a civil action vs. Z street since 2010 which requires the IRS to maintain these records for sake of the trial. There is a special duty beyond the IRS internal administrative rules to freeze these records and not lose them ... this appears to be really bad criminal activity ... you wouldn't expect this sort of behavior unless there was something really damaging that they have to hide.

We now know that some person or persons at the IRS intentionally and maliciously leaked confidential tax records of a non-profit organization so that gay rights activists could target the donors of the organization for harassment. We know this from the emails of the gay rights activist who obtained the records through, what he described, as “a conduit” from the IRS. He then sent the data to the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, which then put the records online. The records contained the names and addresses of donors to the National Organization for Marriage. The IRS is not only seemingly targeting conservative groups, but is now admitting to leaking information about a conservative group so others can target their donors.

Yes, the IRS is admitting someone at the IRS did this and is paying the legal fees of the National Organization for Marriage as a result.

The gay rights activist who received and disseminated the information, Matthew Meisel, “invoked his fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself” and he would not identify his conduit.

This all raises a question an honest media would ask: why has Eric Holder refused to investigate and prosecute this?

The American media will not ask this question because the National Organization for Marriage opposes gay marriage. The donors to the group, in the media’s mind, are bigots. To the American media they deserve no protection. They are oppressors.

But an honest media that believed in equal justice under the law would have to ask the question — why will the Justice Department not investigate and prosecute those within the IRS who leaked confidential tax records to political opponents of the group.

Must we wait until a Republican administration does this?


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An Intellectually Honest Media Would Ask This Question

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | June 25th, 2014 at 04:30 AM | 24

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Ignore, for a minute, the IRS targeting of conservative groups and the erasure of seven hard drives at the IRS. Yes, ignore all that for a moment.

While the media is doing its best to avoid that subject, with difficulty, it is absolutely and willfully ignoring another IRS scandal that, had it happened in the Bush Administration, would be the lead story of every nightly newscast and above the fold on the front page of every newspaper in America.

We now know that some person or persons at the IRS intentionally and maliciously leaked confidential tax records of a non-profit organization so that gay rights activists could target the donors of the organization for harassment. We know this from the emails of the gay rights activist who obtained the records through, what he described, as “a conduit” from the IRS. He then sent the data to the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, which then put the records online. The records contained the names and addresses of donors to the National Organization for Marriage. The IRS is not only seemingly targeting conservative groups, but is now admitting to leaking information about a conservative group so others can target their donors.

Yes, the IRS is admitting someone at the IRS did this and is paying the legal fees of the National Organization for Marriage as a result.

The gay rights activist who received and disseminated the information, Matthew Meisel, “invoked his fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself” and he would not identify his conduit.

This all raises a question an honest media would ask: why has Eric Holder refused to investigate and prosecute this?

The American media will not ask this question because the National Organization for Marriage opposes gay marriage. The donors to the group, in the media’s mind, are bigots. To the American media they deserve no protection. They are oppressors.

But an honest media that believed in equal justice under the law would have to ask the question — why will the Justice Department not investigate and prosecute those within the IRS who leaked confidential tax records to political opponents of the group.

Must we wait until a Republican administration does this?

It seems we need more than one special prosecutor to investigate the IRS and Darryl Issa should be holding hearings on this matter. The IRS is not only seemingly targeting conservative groups, but is leaking information about conservative groups so others can target their donors.