In closed testimony before the House Oversight Committee, last week, Thomas Kane, the IRS’s deputy associate chief counsel, said the IRS may not have lost the backups of former agency administrator Lois Lerner’s emails after all.
In testimony released Monday, Kane told House Oversight investigators that “the agency was examining whether all the back-up tapes which held the emails have been recycled.”
The IRS told lawmakers in June that the tapes had been recycled, one of the reasons that an untold number of Lerner’s emails were missing. Since then, the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, has repeatedly stood by those statements in congressional testimony.
But Kane, the top IRS official in charge of producing documents for Congress, said on Thursday that: “I don’t know if there is a backup tape with information on it or there isn’t. I know that there’s an issue out there about it.”
“It’s an issue that’s being looked at,” Kane also said.
The reason why the IRS lawyer is hedging is because the agency is required by law to back up its emails.
Rep. Darrell Issa, the Chairman of the Oversight Committee told Greta Van Susteren, Monday evening, “they didn’t take our order to preserve documents ….they obviously didn’t gather the documents, they didn’t take care, and they’re not sure if they’ve got tapes hanging around that contain these back ups. As a matter of fact, their change – if you will – in this transcribed interview – really tells us there probably have some (documents) and they’re not sure what to tell us they have, because they’re not sure what they have yet, and that’s why this is taking so long, why the Commissioner is back and why Elijah Cummings continues to say there’s nothing there, when in fact they haven’t been able to tell us yet what really is there.”
Greta asked about the other crashed hard drives that have been reported.
“There are more crashed hard drives, Issa answered, “there’s more questions about people that regularly corresponded with Lois Lerner, who regularly were part of this targeting of conservatives for their views who now seem to have problems with their computers and as a result – again – an absence of accountability.”
At Hot Air,Allahpundit says “we’ve reached a sufficiently high level of implausibility now” in regards to the serial computer crashes.
Assuming the data isn’t recovered and no one is punished, as seems likely, this is a get-out-of-jail-free card for the next president’s administration, no? If some Democratic Senate oversight committee demands to see e-mails from President Christie’s underlings and the reply comes back that the hard drives were all corrupted, what’s the grounds for complaint?IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane said in transcribed congressional testimony that more IRS officials experienced computer crashes, bringing the total number of crash victims to “less than 20,” and also said that the agency does not know if the lost emails are still backed up somewhere.
The new round of computer crash victims includes David Fish, who routinely corresponded with Lois Lerner, as well as Lerner subordinate Andy Megosh, Lerner’s technical adviser Justin Lowe, and Cincinnati-based agent Kimberly Kitchens.
Greta closed the segment by mentioning the two “no nonsense” judges who are now on the case – prompting a huge grin from Issa.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced plans, today, to activate and deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border to increase the presence of border security.
Here is the entire presser, but the audio is pretty messed up. In case you can’t get through it, shorter but cleaner videos follow.
The National Guard should stay plenty busy dealing with problems like this:
The Border Patrol found itself under fire on Friday night from what they think were.50-caliber weapons, not exactly light arms. The fire appears to have been an attempt to suppress border security actions while smugglers brought their human cargo to the north side of the Rio Grande, according to Fox (via Katie Pavlich):
U.S. Border Patrol agents on the American side of the Rio Grande were forced to take cover Friday night when high-caliber weaponry was fired at them from the Mexican side of the river, sources told FoxNews.com.
The weapons were fired at the U.S. side of the riverbank in the area of the Rincon Peninsula across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, Mexico, at about 8:30 p.m., sources said. Bullets ricocheted into an area where Border Patrol agents were positioned, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told FoxNews.com.
Border Patrol sources confirmed Gohmert’s account, and said the shots may have been fired by .50-caliber weapons.
“We don’t have any armor that can stop a .50-caliber round, so our Border Patrol agents had to take cover when the rounds were richocheting around them,” said Gohmert, who has been in the area for the last week to get a first-hand look at the border situation.
“When the shooting stopped, about 40 to 50 people came out on the U.S. side and turned themselves in. So clearly the rounds were being fired to suppress every effort to stop anybody intervening with anyone or anything coming across,” Gohmert added. “We have no idea what or how many or whom came across with the other illegal immigrants.”
Sources said they believe the gunfire came from members of Mexican drug cartels, which include former military members trained in shooting that type of weaponry.
That would be a problem that the National Guard could address, certainly, if this incident has been verified — if the federal government won’t react to it.
I can’t help but wonder if any of these high caliber weapons will be traced back to any of the ATF’s gun-walking operations…
Jonathan Karl of ABC Newsasked the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest if he still thought it was appropriate for the president to go out for a burger and fries while in the midst of two major world events, last week – the downing of the Malaysian passenger plane over the Ukraine, and the escalating hostilities between Israel and Gaza.
“What the president is focused on is the ability to do his job,” Earnest said in response. The president has all the tools at his disposal to fulfill his responsibilities as Commander in Chief.”
He went on to say that he “would anticipate” that Obama would continue to fulfill his responsibilities as Commander in Chief on the road over the course of this week – since he’s heading to California tomorrow to do more Democrat fundraisers with the few remaining Dems still willing to be seen with him.
Mr. Obama is scheduled to leave Washington Tuesday and headline a party event in Seattle later that night. He will then attend Democratic fundraisers in California before returning to Washington on Thursday.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Monday that Mr. Obama effectively can do his job while on the road, and that he will be capable of monitoring the conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas, the investigation into the downed plane and any other foreign crises that may arise.
I really wish Karl had asked the obvious follow-up question – “If the president is focused on his job, why is he constantly on the road, fundraising and doing all these ridiculous photo-ops at burger joints? Is the president’s main job to increase his approval numbers by pretending he’s a regular guy hanging out with “ordinary Americans?”
Cahn’t wait for the next round of “bear is loose” photo-ops at California’s hottest eateries.
El Rushbo’s take on all this, today, in case you missed it:
“‘It is rarely a good idea to return to the White House just for show, when the situation can be handled responsibly from the road,’ said Jennifer Palmieri, the White House communications director. ‘Abrupt changes to his schedule can have the unintended consequence of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis.’”
Yeah, who would want to do that? So we’re gonna stick to the schedule — a cheeseburger, fries and two fundraisers after the Israelis invade the Gaza Strip and the smoke still billows from the downed wreckage of the Malaysian jet — because to go back to the White House would scare the American people. (Gasp!) To go back to the White House and deal with it would frighten the American people.
It might create “a false sense of crisis,” and there’s clearly no crisis.
Do you see a crisis? Obama is having a cheeseburger and fries! Crisis? What crisis? He doesn’t see a crisis. Two fundraisers? Crisis, what crisis? So why do we want to create the idea that there’s a crisis here? There’s nothing out of the norm. Now, if it were Bush who had the nerve to go to his ranch after Katrina, which probably remains the biggest crime of the Twenty-First Century so far, then of course the New York Times’ coverage would be different.
Palmieri sort of let the cat out of the bag when she said the White House doesn’t want to create a “false sense of crisis.” What she really means is they don’t want the public to have a completely understandable, and appropriate sense of crisis. They don’t want the public to notice that the world is falling into chaos due to the lack of American leadership. They don’t want the public to notice the fundamental transformation that is now being completed under their noses as scores of illegals are allowed to cross the border and avail themselves of our ever expanding welfare state. The White House relies on the American people’s natural “normalcy bias ” to allow him to continue his destruction of their way of life with minimal pushback.
Anyone who has been to the border, lately, knows the situation there is truly alarming. The unraveling of the Middle East and the ascendance of America’s emboldened enemies is also truly alarming. People want their president to be engaged in DC meeting with his National Security team, and working with Congress to secure the border – not out on the permanent campaign trail, eating cheeseburgers and yukking it up with “he folks”- and sending his communications director out there to play the part of Kevin Bacon in Animal House.
Via Freedom’s Lighthouse, I bring you the complete video of Dr. Ben Carson’s speech at the Western Conservative Summit, where he articulated his remedies for a very sick patient – the United States of America.
Carson’s diagnosis for America as it stands, now? It is in “critical condition at this stage,” the good doctor said, “and if we don’t do something about it in the relatively near future, it will be over.”
Carson echoed the late great Andrew Breitbart at his last CPAC in 2012 when he said, “Republicans, Conservatives, People of Faith” and other people of “common sense” must come together and support the winner in order to defeat the radical Progressive Left in 2016. “After the primaries are over, don’t take your marbles and go home if your candidate didn’t win,” Carson said.
He shared his views on a host of issues, and did a great job of sharing how we can deal with our massive National Debt, and how we can replace ObamaCare with a private, market-based approach to Health Care. Carson was optimistic throughout that the nation can be saved, and in fact, declared “We will return to power” – meaning people of common sense – because God is not finished with America.
He was followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with 13 percent and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with 12 percent.
Others who finished in the top 10 were Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Sen. Rick Santorum, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, former Florida Rep. Allen West and Wisconsin Sen. Paul Ryan.
The three-day summit included dozens of speakers affiliated with the tea party, such as Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin and former Florida Rep. Allen West.
Nice Deb 