Remember Lois Lerner? You know, that former IRS Executive who appears to have overseen the IRS\u2019s politically-biased treatment of nonprofits – the one where conservative groups faced roadblocks while liberal ones got priority consideration?<\/p>\n
It’s been a while since TAH had an article about the IRS.\u00a0 So here’s an update.<\/p>\n
I’m not going to rehash past articles here.\u00a0 If you need or would like a refresher, use the site’s search features with the search string “Lerner IRS email” (no quotes necessary).\u00a0 There are a number of articles, so allow some time to read them; I’d recommend a 15-30 min.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 We now have a good idea of what happened to her hard drive. Yes, it indeed appears to have been destroyed<\/a><\/em> \u2013 apparently on 16 April 2012.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 The drive appears to have quit working between 5PM and 7PM in Lerner’s office on Saturday, 11 June 2011.\u00a0 Reputedly, a forensic technician examined it prior to destruction and found scoring on the top platter, likely due to an impact<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 The laptop itself showed no sign of damage.\u00a0 Data recovery was not attempted at the time.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 It turns out that the IRS also had another system available for internal communications – a system on which messages were NOT at the time archived<\/a><\/em>, and which was known to have been available for use (and used by personnel from) by the IRS division Lerner headed.\u00a0\u00a0 That system was Microsoft’s Office Communications Server, or OCS – an instant messaging (chat) system.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 We also nave this quite interesting email from Lerner about email and instant messaging use.\u00a0 From the link in item 3 above:<\/p>\n However, in an email uncovered by the Committee Lerner warns her colleagues about evading Congressional oversight:<\/p>\n \u201cI was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails \u2013 so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.\u201d<\/p>\n Lerner then asks whether OCS is automatically archived. When informed it was not, Lerner responded \u201cPerfect.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 5.\u00a0 Finally, documents from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, when the IRS looked for Lerner\u2019s 24,000 \u201cmissing\u201d emails from 2009-2011 . . . the initial search was quite obviously less than thorough and comprehensive.\u00a0 Five out of six possible locations for the missing data apparently were not initially searched<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n