Lerner Emails not so Benign

Posted by Wetenkamp on with 0 Comment

There are just as many “crazies” in Sacramento as there are in Modesto, you just have to know where to find them.  And there are just as many Democrat crazies as there are Republicans.  After all, craziness knows no race, religion, or political preference.   Same with “—holes.”  In fact, that group may be more common than crazies.

Of course what I’m referring to here is the content of a couple emails that the now-famous Lois Lerner sent to a friend from her government issue Blackberry in 2012.  Her friend brought up the topic of right-wing radio shows and Lerner referred to the hosts and listeners of such shows as “crazies” and “—holes.”  The emails were released on Wednesday and Republican lawmakers see them as proof of Lerner’s disdain for conservatives and proof that she was targeting conservative groups’ tax-exempt status applications for extra scrutiny.

This new evidence clearly demonstrates why Ms. Lerner not only targeted conservatives, but denied such groups their rights to due process and equal protection under the law.

~ Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee

Just to play the devil’s advocate, because that’s what I like to do, there are a number of ways to rebut the accusation that Lerner is biased against conservatives.  For example, maybe she loves conservatives but dislikes the “whacko wing” of the GOP, as her friend put it.  Maybe she specifically dislikes the small faction of radio whackos in the whacko wing of the GOP.  Maybe it’s only the radio wackos in the whacko wing who actually call in and talk apocalyptically about our beloved ‘Merca and the need to protect her borders, hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end.  Maybe that’s who she thinks are the crazy assholes that don’t deserve tax-exempt status.  But even so, I think these emails suggest that she was most likely not being fair and impartial in the discharge of her official duties.

Lost Lerner Emails May Still Turn Up

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Over the past several weeks, top IRS officials have maintained the position that the Lois Lerner emails were destroyed and cannot be recovered.  But recent testimony to Congress suggests otherwise.  Just as everyone on earth suspected, the emails may still exist in some sort of backup storage device or system.  After all, even the IRS knows that technology fails and you have to back things up.

I don’t know if there is a backup tape with information on it or there isn’t…There is an issue as to whether or not there is a — that all of the backup recovery tapes were destroyed on the six-month retention schedule.

~ Thomas Kane, IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel

One of these “top IRS officials” is John Kos-freakin-kinen; he is the COMMISSIONER of the IRS, the highest guy on the totem pole, the captain of the ship.  Oh, and he happens to also be an ATTORNEY.  Lawyers know (every single one of them, especially cum laude Yale-educated lawyers like Koskinen) that when you’re being questioned and you don’t know the answer to the question, then your answer has to be “I don’t know.”  We lecture our clients about this before every deposition and hearing: “Don’t make up answers, and don’t guess.  If you don’t know the answer, it’s fine, just say you don’t know.” It often takes courage, and sometimes a little humility, to admit you don’t know something, especially if you’re in a position where you really should know.

Well, apparently Koskinen said the emails didn’t exist before he had confirmation of such and now his credibility is being questioned.

And isn’t this what it’s all about — the credibility of the IRS and its people?  Every single IRS scandal buries the IRS deeper in a pile of suspicion and mistrust.  How does the IRS expect taxpayers to voluntarily comply with tax laws if the agency is being run by so many incompetent leaders?  Now I know that somebody in a position like Koskinen’s often relies on the expertise and knowledge of a staff and couldn’t possibly have first-hand knowledge of everything going on within the agency.  But it seems to me that he should have at least waited for confirmation before declaring the emails unrecoverable.

IRS Claims Lerner's Emails are Unrecoverable

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The IRS scandal involving the disparate treatment by the IRS of certain tax exempt organizations (or their applications for tax exempt status) still has life.  The government committees responsible for investigating the IRS “targeting scandal,” as it has come to be known, wanted to see Lois Lerner’s emails, and last week the IRS responded that they are unable to recover her emails, apparently due to the fact that her computer crashed in 2011 and the IRS did not make a practice of preserving all emails on their servers.

Experts find it hard to believe that the IRS lost the files innocently and that they cannot be recovered.  From a legal standpoint, it is common knowledge that you don’t delete emails anytime there is a potential for litigation; in fact, you do whatever you can to preserve them.  From a tech standpoint, it is difficult to believe that the emails could have simply disappeared, even if the IRS was not conscientiously backing up data at the time.  The idea that files are never really 100% gone when you delete them has some truth to it.

From a layperson point of view, it appears that we’re witnessing some sort of cover-up.  It just doesn’t pass the “smell test.”  I feel like my 10-year-old would be able to sit down at Lerner’s computer and at least find something.  But if not, in this day and age, computer geeks are a dime a dozen.  Why can’t we just hire the world’s smartest forensic geek at the FBI or CIA and be done with this?

However, as much as the experts and the general public do not believe the emails were lost inadvertently, I have to admit that the facts as we know them do not sound too far fetched to me.  From the viewpoint of a tax attorney who deals with the IRS every day, it seems plausible that the IRS really would not save or properly back-up the emails.  There’s no way the IRS could possibly save everything.  And as for Lerner’s computer crashing, well that kind of thing happens constantly at IRS service centers all around the country.  Sometimes when I’m talking with an IRS representative on the phone, I try to imagine the computer their working on and, in my mind, it usually has a 3.5″ floppy disc drive and a behemoth monitor that is twice as deep as it is wide.