In June, the IRS announced that a critical two-year segment of Lois Lerner’s emails were lost in a hard drive crash. Conveniently, these emails perfectly corresponded with the time when Tea Party groups were being targeted for extra scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.
Since the IRS is a government agency, many reasonable people were convinced there had to be other places to look for records. Especially since the IRS expects us to live like hoarders, meticulously keeping every receipt to avoid running afoul of their agency. Now, five months later, the IRS admits that it still hasn’t searched any of its backup systems.
Judicial Watch published last week an update of its pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agency:
IRS attorneys conceded that they had failed to search the agency’s servers for missing emails because they decided that “the servers would not result in the recovery of any information.” They admitted they had failed to search the agency’s disaster recovery tapes because they had “no reason to believe that the tapes are a potential source of recovering” the missing emails. And they conceded that they had not searched the government-wide back-up system because they had “no reason to believe such a system…even exists.”
The Obama administration attorneys were questioned about the existence of a catastrophe backup system earlier this year, and responded “that this back-up system would be too onerous to search.”
Imagine the following scenario, between a parent and a child:
“I want to see your Algebra grade.”
“I have no idea what it is.”
“Have you checked your report card?”
“A report card would not result in getting that information. Plus, it would be so much work to pull it out of my backpack. I have no reason to believe a report card even exists.”
Excuses, excuses, and more excuses.
