IRS under Criminal Investigation for Politically Motivated Coverup
"The IRS has a lot of explaining to do," Chaffetz told CNN.
Last Thursday Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Timothy Camus revealed during testimony to the House Oversight Committee that the IRS is under investigation for criminal misconduct, including lying under oath about disposition of missing emails and email backup tapes that appear to have been intentionally erased.
"What we're looking at is potential criminal wrongdoing. This has the looks, feel and smells of being criminal. And the IG confirmed tonight that's what they're looking into," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told CNN after the hearing.
Camus testified that less than two weeks ago, officials discovered an additional 424 backup tapes and are trying to determine what emails, if any, are on them. The tapes are in addition to about 750 backup tapes the inspector general found in July, some of which contained emails of Lois Lerner, now retired and not talking.
The IRS had told Congress that backup tapes no longer existed.
Camus explained that while investigating, his team realized the IRS had failed to turn over a relevant document. It was demanded and finally produced. It led to the discovery of an additional 424 backup tapes they had not previously been aware existed at a government data center.
When Camus and his team traveled to West Virginia where the tapes were kept, he discovered something else. According to the IT professionals at the data center, no one from the IRS had ever requested the tapes!
Instead, the IRS wrote to Senators Ron Wyden and Orrin Hatch on June 13, 2014 (a Friday) that the IRS claimed backup tapes of agency emails were only kept for six months and, after that, were over-written.
The letter stated: "For disaster recovery purposes, the IRS does a daily back-up of its email servers. The daily back-up provides a snapshot of the contents of all email boxes as of the date and time of the backup. Prior to May 2013, these backups were retained on tape for six months, and then for cost-efficiency, the backup tapes were released for re-use."
That was the pre-Election Day 2014 position and the same letter revealed for the first time (on the last page) that Lois Lerner had a hard drive crash in mid-2011, making many of the most relevant emails unavailable, presumably forever.
"The IRS has a lot of explaining to do," Chaffetz told CNN. "Because what (the inspector general) told us tonight means what the IRS told us is just factually not true."
So much for the most transparent administration in history!
The saying "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up" originated with Watergate.
It may be a lesson that the Obama Administration did not learn.
Obama Administration target and True the Voter Founder and President Catherine Engelbrecht BOLDLY issued the following statement in response to the potentially explosive yet generally unpublicized testimony: “The IRS was apparently given instruction to do whatever necessary to silence those who spoke out against the Obama Administration. It became a West Wing weapon of choice."
Engelbrecht elaborated:
“As the nation’s only pro-liberty election integrity organization, True the Vote was marked for takedown by the IRS early in 2010, along with hundreds of other organizations that spoke openly about government corruption. It took a long time, too long, for the pieces to be put together, but Americans are beginning to understand that the politics of ‘hope and change’ has an enforcement arm that operates like an organized crime syndicate."
The Obama "Justice" Department has been a key part of the problem instead of the solution.
But now the Republicans control both houses of Congress and must act, not rely on the Obama "Justice" Department.
As Engelbrecht put it, “The time for choosing is now. Our elected officials need to stop playing politics and use the powers we’ve entrusted to them to restore the rule of law in Washington. Stop handing out bonuses and start sending law-breaking bureaucrats to jail. If Congress doesn’t have conviction enough to get the job done, then just turn out the lights, get off the payroll, go home, and get out of the way. Enough is enough. The American people will not be silenced.”
Hopefully, that's true.
But, will Congress dare to do the right thing to do...or kowtow to the Obama Administration until it's through?
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
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