IRS Hard Drive Ebola Spreads to EPA Texts

The same failure to preserve government records of the important transactions by high officials that has recently been typified by the loss of several computers with relevant emails by IRS officials, including most conspicuously Lois Lerner has moved on to the EPA:

Pulling 'an IRS'? EPA reportedly loses text messages now sought in request

The EPA is being accused of pulling “an IRS” for reportedly planning to inform the National Archives it has lost text messages being sought in an open-records request.

The Washington Times reported Wednesday that lawyers from the Department of Justice informed a federal court of the EPA’s plans to tell the National Archives it cannot produce the text messages because they have been deleted.

The open-records request in question came from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is seeking text messages from the devices of EPA administrator Gina McCarthy.

Christopher Horner, a senior fellow for the institute, told FoxNews.com in a statement it is clear the EPA has not learned from the IRS’ mistakes. The tax agency came under fire earlier this year after it announced it could not locate an untold number of emails sought in congressional probes into the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

Are you kidding me? Of course they learned, but what they learned is that there's really no enforcement of the open records laws when it comes to the communications between liberal bureaucrats and their NGO shadow organizations, despite Darryl Issa's best efforts. Yeah, Lois had to resign with a nice $100k + pension at the age of 62. Bummer dude.

This, of course, is far from the first brush that EPA has had with bending the open records rules. Under Carol Browner, the EPA practically had a hard drive destruction party when the Bush succeeded Clinton:

The same day news of the imminent Andersen indictment was floated, the Wall Street Journal noted that Browner's EPA had destroyed documents in the closing days of the Clinton administration despite a federal judge's order not to do so.

"EPA officials had hard drives erased and back-up e-mail tapes destroyed. Judge (Royce) Lamberth is now considering a motion to order the EPA, the U.S. Attorney's Office, former Administrator Carol Browner and her two top deputies to show why they shouldn't be held in contempt."

And who can forget former Obama EPA Director Lisa Jackson's use of the fake email account under the name "Richard Winston" that is widely believed to have been used to keep FOIA requests from revealing her conniving with the environmental NGOs.

Under such circumstances, it's really not surprising that the current head of EPA thinks she can get away with hiding these communications. It's worked so far. As Auric Goldfinger once noted to James Bond before putting him on the laser table,: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.



Found at Wombat-socho's "Live at Five: 10.09.14"