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With five more Computer Crashes, a “pattern of racketeering activity” may be emerging

Late last Friday afternoon, in a blatant “late news dump” to avoid making headlines about the Internal Revenue’s witch hunt against conservative non-profits, the IRS disclosed to Congress that five more of the IRS computers containing relevant records had mysteriously crashed. Those computers belonged to colleagues of Lois Lerner, whose conduct is at the center of the investigation.

Perhaps there is some strange computer virus that selectively trashes records inconvenient to incumbents, like the “glitch” that erased part of Nixon’s tapes. How else to explain the fact that this is the fourth announcement of an ever-expanding computer calamity connected to Lois Lerner to emerge from the IRS?  First it was just Lerner’s computer that was affected, then those of her closest co-conspirators, then “no more than twenty” computers, and now an ever larger batch of burned out workstations.

Even more interesting, the IRS has apparently not yet shared this newest tidbit with Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, the distinguished and courageous jurist presiding over Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Judge Sullivan has made the most progress so far in uncovering the conspiracy among Lerner and friends to target, harass and illegally obtain information from conservative non-profit organizations to benefit Mr. Obama’s reelection campaign—for which the law firm of Ms. Lerner’s husband, Michael Miles, also hosted a voter registration event.

Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, told the Observer: “The belated admission of more supposed missing IRS evidence shows this Obama administration is absolutely contemptuous of Judge Sullivan.  Judicial Watch lawyers are preparing to ask the court this week for relief in light of the Obama administration’s continuing efforts to thwart Judge Sullivan’s orders. In the least, we plan to request discovery to get past this Nixonian obstruction.”

 

Some of the IRS emails, which miraculously survived long enough to be produced, expose that Ms. Lerner and her comrades also corruptly requested donor information from conservative charities for a “secret research project.” The IRS has also admitted illegally using and disclosing that information.

We broke the news last week that Lerner and the IRS wiped and destroyed her Blackberry and all its content even after the congressional investigation began. The IRS reluctantly disclosed that information only because Judge Emmet G. Sullivan didn’t accept the carefully crafted declarations in the agency’s first response. As we predicted—and thankfully for the American public—he pushed for more information. He required the IRS to submit additional declarations, answering even more specific questions. Had he not done so, we wouldn’t know Lerner and the IRS also destroyed her Blackberry. The IRS did not make any mention of her Blackberry in any of its many prior filings—much less in its initial sworn declarations.

We have no report yet from the Treasury Inspector General, and at the rate the IRS officials keep proving it’s own prior testimony perjurious or wrong, it’s an ever moving target. Indeed, according to the AP, “J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, said his investigation is ongoing, with facts ‘still coming to light.’”

While the agency continues to blame “computer crashes” for the now more than 20 people whose emails are “missing,” no IRS official has yet to identify when or how each computer crashed—much less why. We know Lois Lerner’s hard drive, which was “scratched” only a matter of days after receiving a letter from Congress requesting her emails. The IRS then destroyed it. The IRS followed a year later with the destruction of her unimpaired Blackberry containing emails for the same period. As we reported first, it made no effort whatsoever to obtain information from the Blackberry—despite being well into the Congressional inquiry. That is obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence—worse than the conduct for which Leslie Caldwell, now head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, destroyed Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs.

Any number of federal criminal statutes might apply to these facts, including Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1343—Wire Fraud; Section 1503—Influencing officer generally; 1505—Obstruction of  proceedings before department, agencies and committees; and Section 1519—Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations.  Sections 1343 and 1503 are also predicate offenses for the federal Racketeering Statute, Section 1961, which provides that a “pattern of racketeering activity” can be proved by committing two predicate acts.   These statutes are punishable by terms of imprisonment varying from five to twenty years.

While Lois Lerner and her husband vacationed in Nantucket, Judge Sullivan gave Magistrate Judge Facciola until September 20 to “assist the parties” in finding the emails from other sources. The IRS has admitted there is a massive back-up of all federal emails, but prefers to continue to obstruct justice rather than go to the trouble of finding the emails. I wouldn’t want to be the Department of Justice lawyer making that argument to Judge Emmet Sullivan.

When Judicial Watch asks for more discovery, Judge Sullivan could order the IRS to go to the back-up data immediately. He could also have a third party retrieve the information from the servers. The IRS has no credibility.

So yet again, the IRS simply creates more questions and at least five more reasons for Judge Sullivan to name a special prosecutor. When did each of the now more than 20 computer crashes occur—by date and time? How could that possibly happen? Why did the IRS prematurely cancel its longstanding contract for backup? Why did it take this long to find out that 5 more had “crashed?” Where is the Blackberry or other device for each of the persons whose computer crashed? What servers are implicated? Whose resignations are forthcoming? Why is Koskinen still there? Who is on Emmet Sullivan’s short list to be the special prosecutor?

Evidence is mounting by the day that Lois Lerner and her co-conspirators abused the power of the sovereign, violated the trust of the people, lied to Congress, destroyed documents and evidence of their wrongdoing, and violated multiple criminal statutes.

With the revelations of this last week, Lois Lerner and the IRS might as well be sitting on a ticking bomb . . . and it’s about to explode.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article cited an incorrect Section of Title 18 of the United States Code. The Observer regrets the error.

Sidney Powell worked in the Department of Justice for 10 years and was lead counsel in more than 500 federal appeals. She served nine U.S. Attorneys from both political parties and is the author of Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.


Read more at http://observer.com/2014/09/wi...erner/#ixzz3Cp2ZRDSm Follow us: @newyorkobserver on Twitter | newyorkobserver on Facebook

Last edited by Bestworking
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One can not expect the DoJ and Eric Holder to uphold the law in this aspect. At best, a few government lawyers may spend time in jail for contempt of court.  The instructions Congress sent DoJ should have by law required Holder to begin indictment procedures against Lerner.  Unless, there is a secret grand jury meeting, I see no such actions.

Originally Posted by direstraits:

One can not expect the DoJ and Eric Holder to uphold the law in this aspect. At best, a few government lawyers may spend time in jail for contempt of court.  The instructions Congress sent DoJ should have by law required Holder to begin indictment procedures against Lerner.  Unless, there is a secret grand jury meeting, I see no such actions.

______________________________________________________________________________

And don't expect the Inspector Generals office to hold any sway over Eric holder. After rehabilitating the Carter and Nixon eras, King George III is also now looking better. So much for transparency!

 

The Justice Department's inspector general said Tuesday that his staff is routinely blocked from getting access to documents it needs for audits and reviews of the department and its law enforcement agencies.

 

The interference causes delays in investigations and has several times required the intervention of Attorney General Eric Holder to ensure that the records are ultimately turned over, Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, told members of Congress.

 

Horowitz's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee came one month after nearly 50 inspectors general from a broad spectrum of federal agencies complained in a letter to Congress about similar obstruction from the departments they monitor.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...s/?intcmp=latestnews

 

 

The Obama administration had intimated and destroyed most internal control within the Executive Branch.  This is the most lawless administration I have ever experienced -- far worse than either Nixon or LBJ.  If the next administration doesn't clean house, re-enforce internal controls, especially the IG system, and prosecute a number of personnel, there will no stopping future administrations 

Originally Posted by Crash.Override:

republicans will constantly call for 'scandal' until they can pin their own 'watergate' on the democrats.. it's almost comical.

Crash

You do not really believe all these computers crashed "no pun" and no data was backed up do you?  This is getting into the realm of "just how stupid do they think we are" that we would believe it.

'do i believe all of it?".. no

'do i believe the irs is run by a pack of idiot politicians?'... YES!

do i believe anything will ever be done or the situation fixed.. nope.

am i completely sick of 'party politics'... yes.

until we can take the money out of politics, what say do we have? the senate passed an 'article to the constitution', today.. it was to overturn part citizen's united.. i believe that's a step in the right direction. i am more 'outraged' by the number of 'millionaires' in congress.. who weren't 'millionaires', before they got there! people, on both sides, who have made a life of politics and become extremely wealthy passing out 'pork'.

Originally Posted by Crash.Override:

'do i believe all of it?".. no

'do i believe the irs is run by a pack of idiot politicians?'... YES!

do i believe anything will ever be done or the situation fixed.. nope.

am i completely sick of 'party politics'... yes.

until we can take the money out of politics, what say do we have? the senate passed an 'article to the constitution', today.. it was to overturn part citizen's united.. i believe that's a step in the right direction. i am more 'outraged' by the number of 'millionaires' in congress.. who weren't 'millionaires', before they got there! people, on both sides, who have made a life of politics and become extremely wealthy passing out 'pork'.


Liberals at the IRS used powers granted to them by the people to suppress the 1st Amendment rights of Americans and all you can say is the problem is rich politicians?  Money did not cause Lois Lerner to abuse her power, her liberal ideology did; and true to form, liberal ideology in our government is preventing justice from being served.

Originally Posted by Crash.Override:

thanks, hoob. i can always count on you to prove my point... its come down to 'finger pointing'.. and half of america is perfectly happy with saying 'your party did that'... instead of trying to fix a broken system of representation.


The broken system is due to liberal ideology.  Last check, liberalism was not a political party.  Even so, stating a fact is not pointing fingers.  I can understand why you would feel like I'm pointing fingers, I too would feel guilty if I thought the way you did.

Last edited by Mr. Hooberbloob

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