Yes, this is related to the post directly underneath.

House Oversight Committee Investigation Unit – During a transcribed interview with congressional investigators on Thursday, July 17, IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane, who supervises the IRS’s targeting scandal document production to Congress, testified that new developments now make him uncertain whether e-mail back-up tapes containing lost e-mails from key IRS targeting official Lois Lerner exist or not.

The new testimony is at odds with the June 13, 2014, memo sent to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) by the IRS which reported that the IRS, “Confirmed that back-up tapes from 2011 no longer exist because they have been recycled.”  Kane had reviewed the June 13 memo but noted his current uncertainty with investigators.

Kane and a Committee investigator had the following exchange during Thursday’s transcribed interview: (more…)

WASHINGTON DC – Days after IRS officials said in a sworn statement that former top agency employee Lois G. Lerner’s computer memory had been wiped clean, the agency put out word to contractors Monday that it needs help to destroy at least another 3,200 hard drives.

The Internal Revenue Service solicitation for “media destruction” services reflects an otherwise routine job to protect sensitive taxpayer information, but it was made while the agency’s record destruction practices remain under a sharp congressional spotlight.
Congressional investigators of the IRS targeting of conservative groups have been hampered by the unexplained destruction of emails and other records of Ms. Lerner, the former head of the IRS tax-exempt division and a central figure in the scandal.
The loss of Ms. Lerner’s hard drive also raised broader questions about why the tax agency never reported the missing records to the National Archives and Records Administration, as required by the Federal Records Act. (more…)

(Kurt Schlichter) Liberals will tell you that the IRS scandal is a “phony scandal,” apparently because using the federal government as a tool of oppression against one’s political opponents is A-OK as long as the ones using it are liberals and the ones being oppressed are conservatives.
Remember, scratch a liberal and it’ll bleed fascist brown.
So why not start off your discussion with your liberal conversationalist pal by posing that basic question:  Is it okay, or is it not okay, to use federal agencies to harass and persecute your political opponents?
Now to us, because we are decent people and real Americans, the answer is “No,” but most hardcore liberals truly believe that it’s absolutely acceptable for Barack Obama to oppress his political opponents using the federal agencies under his control.  To them, the rules and rights that protect all Americans only protect all Americans that they agree with. (more…)

WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, today pressed the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on yet another hard drive crash of an employee who disparaged Republicans and campaigned for President Obama in violation of the Hatch Act, which states that federal employees should not conduct political activities during work hours.
(more…)

If you tell your neighbor your favorite color is blue, and tell your spouse your favorite color is green, it really doesn’t matter.   Either could be true at a given moment in time.
While owning a singular pet – If you tell your neighbor you own a cat, and tell your boss you own a dog, one of them is a lie – but likely doesn’t hold a consequence unless your integrity is called out by your employer in a legal action.
The only statement that legally matters is what you state when in front of a court of law.

Your favorite color, when stated to a judge, is considered the absolute truth – so too is ownership of either the cat or dog.   The fact you are under oath, in front of a judge, changes the relative consideration of your statement.
When President Obama Inc. (Pelosi / Reid) told the American people the individual mandate within the ObamaCare law was a penalty, he promised it was not a tax.
In front of the Supreme Court President Obama Inc. claimed the individual mandate was most definitely a “tax”, and not a penalty.   In the eyes of the court the truth was the statement made in front of the judiciary, the individual mandate was evaluated as a tax.
The prior statements to congress and the American people are discarded.   The “Truth” is what’s said in front of the court – in the eyes of the law, the absolute Truth. (more…)

WASHINGTON DC – A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.
Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.
Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery. (more…)