Lois Lerner Caught Hiding the Pickle

As referred to me by Wombat-socho's "Live at  Five 07.10.14" - Lerner warned IRS employees to hide information from Congress

On April 9, 2013, Lerner, the director of Exempt Organization at the IRS, sent an email to IT employee Maria Hooke, asking about the OCS and whether Congress could access those messages.

"I 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 -- so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails," Lerner wrote.

She forwarded a question about whether the chat system conversations were also searchable.

Hooke responded that the messages "are not set to automatically save" but anyone could "copy and save the contents" to an email or file.

She recommended that the agency treat these conversations "as if it could/is being saved [somewhere], as it is possible for either party of the conversation to retain the information and have it turn up as part of the electronic search."

Lerner replied: "Perfect."

I had previously been willing to give Lerner the benefit of the doubt on her crashed hard drive, and the apparent disinterest in recovering her past emails (she seemed more concerned with "personal" files on the drive, based on my own experience with federal email system.  The fact that six more officials suffered similar losses around the same time seemed to stretch probability beyond reasonable limits.

Now, however, we have an actual email from Lerner in the same period cautioning fellow IRS employees about putting certain matters into emails because they were potentially available to Congress, and inquiring if the the IRS instant messaging system routinely stored messages, and having found the answer negative, expressed her glee in the ability to communicate without leaving a paper trail.

Nope, nothing to see here, you right-wing Faux News watching, race baiting wing nuts.



Maetenloch, at Ace's finds another interesting link in the IRS scandal:

Kevin Bacon Please Meet the Mistress of Disaster

Because when it comes to major government scandals Jamie Gorelick seems to be only zero or one degree of separation from nearly every single one. So I make it a practice to periodically check in on what she's up to so I can see where the next federal fuckup is going to appear.

And would you be surprised to find out that she was involved with the IRS targeting of conservative groups scandal? Well this is my unsurprised face.

Disturbing enough was WND's breakthrough discovery that the liberal, Soros-funded Urban Institute has an officially sanctioned role in the vetting of nonprofits that seek tax-exempt status through the IRS.Almost equally disturbing is the revelation that the vice chairwoman of the Urban Institute Board of Trustees is none other than Jamie Gorelick. How does this lady manage it?

Okay it's from WND and I've spent all of 52 seconds skimming the article but still what are the odds of a direct Jamie Gorelick connection to even this scandal? It's like she's like the goddamn Typhoid Mary of government malfeasance.

Peas in a Pod?

The Obama administration subcontracted part of the role of evaluating nonprofits to a hyperpolitical nonprofit funded by a French felon?  Knock me over with a feather.

The gun may not be smoking, but it's still hot to the touch.