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Lois Lerner’s Blackberry destroyed by IRS

Cover-up: The IRS destroyed Lois Lerner’s Blackberry after her computer crashed and after the Congressional investigation into the harassment of conservatives had begun.

In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.

With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began.

The IRS did not even attempt to retrieve that data. It cavalierly recites: “There is no record of any attempt by any IRS IT employee to recover data from any Blackberry device assigned to Lois Lerner in response to the Congressional investigations or this investigation,” according to Stephen Manning, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Strategy & Modernization.

I am once again reminded of the Watergate coverup, where Nixon’s effort to block the investigation did nothing but slow the release of evidence, turning it into a steady trickle that kept coming, again and again and again, with each revelation acting like another nail in the coffin. We are seeing this same process unfold again here.

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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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8 comments

  • Joe

    Where’s Wooward and Bernstien!

  • mpthompson

    Are emails even stored on a Blackberry? Cached perhaps, but stored? It should all be stored on a server with emails pulled down as needed. That server is certainly backed up. Emails are not stored on portable devices because of limited memory and because they are far too easy to lose, get dropped in a toilet, or whatever. If Louise Lerner could access all emails from her Blackberry, those had to come from a server and exposes the lie that they were ever really just stored on her laptop hard drive.

  • DK Williams

    Two key differences between Watergate and Lernergate. In the former, Nixon appointed a special prosecutor and then a second after foolishly firing the first. Obama, learning from Nixon’s experience, simply refused to go that route, and arranged for partisan hacks to whitewash an “internal investigation.” Unlike Republicans in Congress who turned on Nixon, Obama need not fear Reid and Pelosi throwing him overboard. The other major difference is that Obama doesn’t have every major news outlet investigating the story and attacking him daily. Other than Fox, One America News and Internet sites, the story has largely been ignored.

  • Two additional differences however suggest that your differences will be cancelled. First, the alternative press today is quite effective in getting these stories out, especially to the likely voters in this coming mid-term election. Second, the timing of today’s IRS scandal is different than Watergate, as it is unfolding as we approach the mid-term elections. Watergate didn’t pick up steam until just after the 1972 election, and was finished before the 1974 election (in which the Republicans got creamed).

  • Matt Ponas

    EVERYTHING in Washington is ‘backed-up’… EVERYTHING… If it was a Republican, you’d see the diffrence… THIS is just the libratard media trying to AGAIN bury this like catsh*t…

  • geoffc

    Blackberrys will download the email messages locally, so even unconnected, off the network you can read them. At least the first 2K or so. If the message is much longer than that, then it will get it live the first time you ask to read the post-2K part.

    You can backup/restore that message database from one device to another.

    So ya, this too seems like destruction of evidence, that at least from earlier cases was pending in legal holds.

    I work with companies that have email under legal hold. One company ( a bank) is being forced to pay licensing for their old mail system, because they are not allowed to move the held mail to the new different email system. They have to leave it intact on the old system due to the pending cases.

    But those laws only apply to the little people, it would seem. In a tyranny, it is fun to be king. Sucks to be the peons though.

  • Chris Kirkendall

    This is beyond the pale. It is SO FAR beyond anything that ever happened in Watergate that the comparisons barely even apply now. I sent the story to several friends, with this comment:

    I’m not even going to comment on this – as I’ve said before, you just run out of epithets & superlatives (incredible, unbelievable, atrocious, etc.) when trying to describe the outrageous lawlessness of this Evil Regime…

  • Chris Kirkendall

    LOL ! ! Good question ! !

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