50 Replies to ““When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal””

  1. The overweaning arrogance of Koskinen is what’s going to sink the IRS, IMHO. I have to assume he knows he’s covered up to the highest levels of the WH, because *cracking jokes* while being grilled by Congress is not a sign of a man who’s taking the proceedings at all seriously.

  2. I’d appreciate if you would hold off on demanding his death. Leave those kind of antics for the left. I am looking forward to seeing him in prison orange though.
    He’s spinning his wheels and frantically trying to dodge a prosecutor who is utterly relentless. It’s like something out of a courtroom drama.

  3. Some of this reminds me of chretien on the stand in front of Gomery. Chretien was incensed that he would be called to testify and his arrogance came through in spades.

  4. The slime trail from the IRS just keeps getting bigger id not longer in its denial.
    No one, even the left believes hard drives being destroyed conveniently by six members can possibly be accounted for as real.
    While all other employees accounts are there. Only the accused malefactors seem to have hit the legal lottery of no evidence left.
    The Obama administrations face is in this man’s countenance.
    Proud arrogant with nothing but excuses . People that care nothing for the law.

  5. Yeah well, that was gratifying…..
    That little thing earlier with Ryan was just a warmup…..
    I read fear in Koskinen’s demeanor…..Gowdy is a terminator…a professional prosecutor…viva la difference….
    Ryan had spirit….Gowdy was stone cold….

  6. Ryan had spirit….Gowdy was stone cold….
    Thank you for putting that in words…

  8. Been watching clips of Gowdy on the oversight and something committee on youtube.
    The guy is fearless and knows what he is doing.
    Knows his business, is sharp as a finely honed sword, cuts through the bullshit as though through butter. Takes no prisoners.
    You may remember another one like him, a journalist this time, died of heart attack on his way home from having a beer…..so they say.
    It is hoped that Gowdy won’t meet the same end. Talk to the big G to keep him safe.
    Toward the end the IRS low life seem to suddenly blink. Perhaps his seat got wet. He wanted to keep the tough stand. Gowdy demolished the façade. Laid him bare.
    It is just too bad the number of congressmen standing up to power like that you can count on the fingers of one hand, maybe on and 3 fifths to be generous.
    The hangers on around the commissioner clearly enjoyed Gowdy’s tour de force.

  9. I view this quite differently than others. First off, the IRS is using Microsoft Exchange for their email. This is one of the most inefficient god awful email systems in existence, and very expensive to run. It does not surprise me one bit that they were having difficulty keeping emails backed up.
    Koskinen claimed in his exchanged with Issa that the IRS could not afford to keep more emails, and if they are using MS Exchange I am quite certain he is being honest about that claim.
    What this entire exercise says to me is that the government is hugely incompetent. That’s not a smoking gun, just a well-known fact.
    If Americans hate the IRS – and I can certainly see why they would – raking a career bureaucrat over the coals will accomplish nothing. They need to vote in politicians who will change the law.

  10. Rep. Gowdy’s time was used quite differently from the others that were asking Koskinen about what could have happened, why did this happen, how unfortunate that this happened…
    He didn’t appear at all interested in hearing any excuses, nor how or why this happened. All business all the time, and with the manner of a man that knows when people are lying to him full time. Good stuff, and contrasting greatly with even the other Republicans except for perhaps Rep. Jordan, who wasn’t at all pleased with the stonewalling either.
    The Democrats sitting on that committee ALL made the excuses that this wouldn’t have happened without the budget cuts and added expenses of having to tax an additional 7 million people over the past decade, and having to police Obamacare as the Democrats merely passed that law without actually funding it.
    I’m certain Rep. Elijah Cumming’s voice cracked, he was on the edge of crying, a moment of beauty, and theatre.
    I caught most of it, left it on for the duration here … http://therightscoop.com/
    There’ll be more tomorrow, it seems Rep. Issa is going to chat with the government archivist, see if his testimony matches earlier sworn testimony from Mr. Koskinen.
    We’ll see. … 🙂

  11. Spare the sympathy, BC. Koskinen is no ‘career bureaucrat. He’s a wealth Obama appointee who only came to ‘government service’ in 2008. Said to be worth some $27 million, one can only wonder what kind of back scratching is going on.

  14. BC; if only! if only; you would recognize the possibility a Progressive politician raised in “Baby Boomer” entitled North America would look beyond self interest on both sides of The U.S.A. Northern border then I would agree with your premise.
    Unfortunately a corrupt journalism cluster fecund will maintain their running with tails between their legs in search of employment, when the www. and the next generation of voters eliminate their existence. In the meantime having a top notch individual ask the questions will send the gutless politicians providing cover for the feckless lot into hiding.
    BC please keep your equivocation to a minimum. Truly capable of understanding individuals who visit here only have time for reality. Less than cheers;

  15. Come on BC, seriously? You are buying that lie about the key pieces of evidence just happenend to go missing. That is a bald faced lie and even the people in Washington who have to say they believe it, don’t believe it. So try to step back from your personal feelings or expience with MS Exchange mail servers and look at the big picture.

  16. Washington Free Beacon reports “It is important to remember that Koskinen has shelled out nearly $100,000 to Democratic candidates and groups.”
    Nothing to see here.

  17. I read an article somewhere and the writer explained how the US doesn’t necessarily have to have another Civil War, but only needs to kill the right one hundred people. I suspect that number is likely higher but the idea of it is interesting. Kill the right people and the rest will scurry away like the rat scum they are. Just my thoughts on an upside down world.

  18. BC, hard drives rarely crash and the data can be recovered by skilled IT geeks, even if the disk has to be physically removed and placed into another drive. To claim that the Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed, and that the data was not recoverable and that her emails existed only on her hard drive is a series of lies, each more blatant than the last.
    Trey Gowdy seems to be the most competent Republican on Capitol Hill.

  19. The IRS and CCRA operate like the enforcement wing of an organized crime syndicate. Virtual immunity from criminal liability with methods that would disgust Capone. Income tax collection in north America has been distinctly criminal in its methods since the post war era – this doesn’t mean you must except this institutionalized lawlessness/incivility – but zombies are hard to organize into an effective resistance to criminal oppression as recently demonstrated in Morontario.

  20. eeeww! My skin crawling? Now that Koskinen creature is the very definition of a snivelshit. And that piece of lying crap is responsible to collect taxes…. you Americans are doomed.

  21. So they tried desperately to recover the emails, they did everything except go to the backup servers, where the emails existed at the time of her email crash.
    Chaffetz: Thank you Chairman, my understanding is that the backup of emails only lasted for six months, that’s correct?
    Koskinen: Yes, it’s actually a disaster recovery system and it backs up for six months in case the entire system goes down.
    C: And that was in place in 2011?
    K: That was the rule in 2011. Policy.
    C: So when Lois Lerner figured out on June 13th that her computer crashed, and there have been emails showing that she was going to great lengths to try to get that recovered, why didn’t they just go to that six month tape?
    K: Because that six month tape is a disaster recovery tape that has all of the emails on it and is a very complicated tape to actually extract emails for, but I have not seen any emails to explain why they didn’t do it, so it would be difficult, but I don’t know why.
    C: But you said the IRS was going to extraordinary lengths to give it to the recovery team, correct?
    K: That’s correct.
    C: But it’s backed up on tape.
    K: For six months, yes.
    C: And that was within the six month window, so why didn’t you get them off the backup?
    K: All I know about that is that the backup tapes are disaster recovery tapes that put everything in one lump and extracting individual emails out of that is very costly and difficult. And that was not the policy at the time.
    C: Did anybody try?
    K: I have no idea or indication that they did.
    C: So you have multiple emails showing she was trying to recover this, it’s the testimony of the IRS that they were trying desperately, in fact you got a forensic team to try to extract this, you went to great lengths, you made a big point over the last week about all the efforts you’re going through, but they were backed up on tape, and you didn’t do it?
    K: As far as I know they did not, but they did have, as I noted, the emails, she had three months worth of emails at that time.
    http://oversight.house.gov/release/commissioner-admits-evidence-irs-made-effort-recover-lerner-emails-6-month-backup-tapes/

  22. Seriously, BC, “raking a career bureaucrat over the coals will accomplish nothing. They need to vote in politicians who will change the law.” That is the whole problem with the LIV’s in this country and America, they think that the “elected” government runs the state when in reality it is second and third rate career bureaucrats that are in charge. Andrew Jackson had the right idea when he became president, unfortunately it has fallen by the wayside! An elected government has only three functions, protect the society that elected it, preserve the society that elected it and propagate the society that elected it. We have allowed petty bureaucrats over the last hundred or so years to hi-jack our society and then we blame the politicians. Bureaucrats are like ticks they imbed themselves under the skin and we don’t realize they are there. They then cause a lot of discomfort but we fail to recognize the source.

  23. Tim! I just read your link; thanks. This motivated me to listen to the Gowdy video, Kate provided, again and it brought me back to all the brain dead Ontario voters I talked to prior to the last Ontario election.
    The only response the Dippers and the Libranos could provide when the impossible to hide corruption is discussed is “they all do it”.Meaning corruption I guess.
    This will become the standard response from Demoranos as Representative Gowdy digs in. The big lie will be “W.” did it and every Republican President before him.We may even see this list include retired ex-Pothus Carter and long deceased ex-Potus Wilson. Possibly, but unlikely ex-Potus F.D.R.,but certainly not ex-Potus J.F.K. or that other philanderer ex-Potus “Slick Willie”.Cheers;

  24. Regardless, as clearly stated – what would the IRS/ CRA do to a taxpayer under an audit whose personal records “disappeared”?
    Accidentally or not.
    This is a joke, a banana republic government giving the little people a show trail.

  25. Thanks, tim. This exchange with Chaffetz is key to showing that the claim that the IRS tried to recover all the subpoenaed emails is a lie; that their so-called “effort” to do so was a charade meant to obscure the fact that they were intentionally not looking where they knew they would find the “missing” emails; and that their knowledge that the backup tapes would be erased in 6 months qualifies as spoliation of evidence, contrary to Koskinen’s claim that there is no wrongdoing.

  26. Nonsense! I’ve been administering Exchange for 15 years, and while it is finicky, it is not an overly difficult task to create a robust system without incurring a great deal of expense, especially given the budget that the IRS had to work with.

  27. The more information you guys dig up on exactly how the IRS email system worked, the worse it gets for the “they’re all lying about everything” theory. Everything that’s been revealed so far is entirely consistent with a government office with no IT budget and typical government-quality IT staff.
    Everything Koskinen says in tim in vermont’s quote is not just plausible, but common business practice. The question that’s not getting asked is whether there were any long-term archival copies of data made, and if not, why not.
    Make no mistake, I believe there’s malfeasance here – the reason why it’s common business practice to only keep a few months of emails is precisely so they can’t be easily subpoenaed. Right now the IRS is successfully redirecting this whole investigation away from criminal malfeasance to negligent record-keeping. And you all are falling for it.
    (And please, please stop repeating those canards about how “easy” it is to recover information from a crashed drive or how magically reliable RAID is, etc., etc. unless you’ve actually done a few recoveries of dead storage media.)

  29. Just to be clear I’m not defending that creep from the IRS. I hope he goes down in flames. All I’m saying is that the Republicans are marching down a dead end yet again.
    When Gowdy says to him “You make Americans keep 7 years of tax paperwork”, that’s absolute nonsense. It is laughable. It is the *law* that says 7 years, and it is Congress that makes the laws.
    If Gowdy wants to be accurate he should say “We, the elected representatives, force the citizens of this country to keep 7 years of tax paperwork”. Shouting at that creep from the IRS as if it were his own personal decision to make citizens keep 7 years of tax paperwork may make for good political entertainment, but it has no substance behind it.
    Also, if the Republicans want to be honest they should be shouting “And you use Microsoft Exchange, what on earth are you thinking??!!”.
    These hearings are very expensive for the taxpayer, and I will make a bet that nothing will come out of them at all. Issa should be sacked. He is useless. He is like the boy that cried wolf one too many times.

  32. “..It does not surprise me one bit that they were having difficulty keeping emails backed up.”
    “…I am quite certain he (Koskinen) is being honest about that claim.”
    “What this entire exercise says to me is that the government is hugely incompetent. That’s not a smoking gun, just a well-known fact.”
    “…raking a career bureaucrat over the coals will accomplish nothing. They need to vote in politicians who will change the law.”
    A question for you, BC:
    Where were you when Hermann, Ernst und Die Jungen needed you at Nuremburg?

  33. “The question that’s not getting asked is whether there were any long-term archival copies of data made, and if not, why not.”
    Bingo! The 6 month on-line backup is System specific and not part of a near-line archive, as required by law.
    BTW: Raid is a TOOL-KIT of public & Proprietary schemes, you get what you ask for. Trade secrets are hidden in both hardware & software.
    The question by Cummings of the IRS Lawyer was interesting. He asked what were the instructions she was given, or relied upon, in redacting (obscuring names.. etc.) the e-mails. She totally avoided the question in her answer… A Smoking GUN

  34. Trey Gowdy put the IRS Commissioner exactly where he needed to be; spluttering excuses that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
    It is complete and utter vacuity, not to mention credulity, to assert as the IRS has, that the six to seven individuals under Congressional investigation, all lost their emails for the same time period in question.
    NO ONE in their right mind would give a scintilla of weight to such a preposterous heap of falsehoods.
    The IRS is proposing the ‘Citadel of Falsehoods on the Potomac’ and attempting to see if they can just brazen their way through a web of criminality.
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  35. When the G-men got Al Capone, it wasn’t for murder or rum running. It was for tax evasion. They knew he was a murderer and violating Prohibition, but they couldn’t make that stick. Witnesses might be intimidated into lying on the stand, or they might just disappear. But the records showed that Capone wasn’t paying his taxes, and the records couldn’t lie.
    By his answers and the look on his face over the course of his time in front of Congress, Koskinen has the air of a man who thinks he is Untouchable. That is, he did until Trey Gowdy started grilling him.

  36. Hey BC, even if Lerner was using Microsoft Exchange for her email there are still two parameters to fill out before it’s setup, ‘Incoming and Outgoing’ mail server addresses as in ‘mail.irs.gov’ and ‘smtp.irs.gov’. Hence; claiming the emails are lost due to a personal PC harddrive crash is still BS.

  38. Every Republican member of that committee should cede their time to Gowdy. Full stop. If we want answers and some SERIOUSLY SUSTAINED HEAT on these crooks, just leave ’em all in the hot seat and let the Good Prosecutor rip ’em a new one.

  39. Too true the comment about killing the right number of people. True of every war that has ever been fought. I’ll wager this bullshit in the US will end civil conflict and insurgency at some point. Too bad the real PoS’s will get away free, and lots of innocents will die on their behalf.

  41. danny
    “And please, please stop repeating those canards about how “easy” it is to recover information from a crashed drive or how magically reliable RAID is, etc., etc. unless you’ve actually done a few recoveries of dead storage media.”
    time to call bullshit on your bullshit. Not easy by normal standards, but there are out fits, and Canada happens to have one of the best, that can “recover” discs and tapes. And as one person pointed out, IRS gave 89 million dollars in bonuses (some to ppl who owed back taxes) but didn’t have the financial resources to do proper back ups. And yes, ppl who do airline crash investigations are very knowledgeable in “recovery”, as my friend stated many years ago

  42. What would be interesting to contrast and compare is how the IRS has handled employees they went after. Were the able to recover emails from them? There should be records of requests to the backup administrators detailing how often, and what kind of requests they handled. Did they ever recover emails?
    I work in IT. It is a mess when you actually have to go into the backups and try to recover something. If you have lots of money and time sure ….
    The IRS should have an official whose job it is to respond to FOIA requests and presumably subpoenas. We call ours the Records Management Officer. In a big enough organization it would be a full time job. It might be interesting to scope out how they the records management office does its job and why they failed so miserably in communicating to employees the record retention policy.
    I’ve had that kind of training and its mind numbing. Hearing what the requirements are to print emails and build paper folders on different subjects would have me looking for another job. We tried to do it at a State Health Department and directed employees to keep certain named folders in their email so that we could more easily answer FOIA requests. That’s the kind of thing you have to hold a gun on people to get them to do it.

  43. Jamie,
    Don’t be to hard on BC, he may have some connection to the Ontario OPP investigation of DELETED emails…The OPP must be looking for reasonable answers as to why they failed to find what “may” be in plain sight.
    Can’t wait for Hillary & Trey to go for real! If she tries her “What does it Matter” she risks been cited for contempt…

  44. Exactly my point, Belasarius. I haven’t looked into it in detail, but I suspect that there are either no or very weak penalties for the kind of negligent record-keeping the IRS is copping to. I had assumed that the IRS would be subject to records retention laws at least as strict as SOX, but I’m not seeing any coverage of this. Gowdy can talk about spoliation all he likes, but right now the IRS has a pretty good “oops, we’re just kind of incompetent at the whole compyoo-ter thang” excuse going, and I can’t see them going that route unless they know it’s likely to work.

  45. Great video….I’ve never heard of this guy, the prosecutor writ large here.
    But I like him..!! Smart, no bullshit kind of guy.
    Lord knows we could use a few hundred like him to flush out that 100 that should expire….
    go get em Mr Gowdy..!!

  46. “A question for you, BC:
    Where were you when Hermann, Ernst und Die Jungen needed you at Nuremburg?”
    Not a very good analogy. In any case, time will tell. I remained convinced that the hearings are a nothing but a giant waste of time.
    I won’t be at all disappointed if I’m wrong, but I think most of you are overly optimistic. All I see is arrogant, incompetent government bureaucrats doing what they do best. It’s old news.

  47. Gee, here we were, thinking all along that you were running cover for corrupt bureaucrats. How could we have been so wrong? Could it have been something you said?

  48. Nothing I said. The problem is you wet your pants with excitement whenever you see a Republican shouting at a bureaucrat and then you cannot think straight.
    The shouting would be all well and good except that it is largely feigned anger and so far it has no substance to back it up.
    If the Republicans are going to scream bloody murder at such high volume they better back it up with something.

  49. BC,
    Trey Gowdy was questioning an IRS bureaucrat, but he was targeting Eric Holder for not pursuing criminal charges of Lois Lerner. NO one in Congress is stupid!
    They have lost CNN ..They had the Best forensic Disk recovery expert commenting on the IRS fictional nonsense
    Just watch the polls.. as long as Obama keeps going down Republicans will hammer the IRS..How do you think Democrats will stop the bleeding.. 70/30 prediction in NOV

  50. Wet Pants? Now that’s funny, especially when it comes from someone who doesn’t have the guts to use their real name.

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