re: The IRS has "lost" all Lois Lerner emails to and from the White House, DOJ...

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My point is that's it's more plausible that her personal computer crashed. And that's what they're saying.

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well wouldn't whomever she sent the emails to still have them?

Yes. I said that citing the Politico article

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The IRS, however, has been able to recover about 24,000 pieces of Lerner-related correspondence between January 2009 and April 2011 by searching the emails of other IRS employees where Lerner was on the email chains, according to the letter. “In all the IRS has produced or will produce or make available approximately 67,000 emails in which Ms. Lerner was an author or a recipient,” wrote Leonard Oursler, who heads up congressional affairs for the IRS, in the letter. Read more: LINK

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You know, you have your tainted take of what happened as you do for everything Obama and if anyone dares differ, even if their take is backed up by evidence, it's a "talking point".

I said it would seem this would be recoverable, I said there are tens of thousands of emails re Lerner available from the recipients, I said the boards take was that the IRS said the IRS computers crashed is false. None of this is a "talking point". However what you're saying is. And it's not backed up by what actually happened.

Unless someone doesn't believes Obama is a Manchurian candidate involved in every iaction in the federal govtt and that the govt, although wholly incompetent, conspires at unbelievable levels, he is repeating talking points.

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I'm far from an IT person but when I worked for a large firm I was told to delete bc of space and was called in for not doing so. This has to be the policy bc if not then you have 80,000 employees who have to tell this lie

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I've been doing IT for 15-ish years now, with the last 5&1/2 years being tied directly to MS Exchange.

From what I have been able to find out it appears they host the emails on their Exchange server (thus the message she would get about exceeding her 500MB limit). More than likely they are archiving the emails on the local machine (ie: her computer) in what is known as a PST file.

If this is the case (and I strongly believe it is), then yes her copy of the emails may have been completely lost depending on the severity of the hdd crash.

Data recovery in these kinds of situation can be done, but it is tricky and can get expensive rather quickly. For the layman, hdd's (Hard Disk Drives) are basically stacks of DVD's that are written to/from. Data recovery specialists remove these from the hard drive's encasement and scour them individually. It's time consuming so if the IRS goes that route it will be at least 2 weeks before we hear anything on it. That's *IF* they still have the crapped-out hdd. More than likely, once they determined it was shot they destroyed it (common IT practice).

BUT... as the emails are stored on the server (until space issues demand them be moved) and mail servers are backed up on a daily basis for organizations of that size and with that level of importance and funding, there should be copies of her mailbox out there. The only caveat would be if the IRS doesn't have clear timelines on how long they should be kept or that time expired.

Even in the worst of worst-case scenarios there are logs at every agency that can be reviewed to see who received what and when. If the suspicion is that she had back-and-forth conversations with the WH and/or DoJ, then those agencies need to be checked for their copies of any correspondence with her. I would also check all correspondence between those two agencies and William Wilkins because as one of only two Obama appointees to the IRS and one already implicated by Carter Hull's testimony last year.

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You know, you have your tainted take of what happened as you do for everything Obama and if anyone dares differ, even if their take is backed up by evidence, it's a "talking point".

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I understand that it hurts when the people you support fail so badly. Recall that I am a Republican.

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I said it would seem this would be recoverable

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And this shows some intellectual honestly on your part. However, why do I get the feeling you will go ahead and buy their explanation when they are neither recovered nor produced?

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And it's not backed up by what actually happened.

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Where are the emails? Has the story about what happened to the emails already changed and will change again in the future?

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Unless someone doesn't believes Obama is a Manchurian candidate involved in every iaction in the federal govtt and that the govt, although wholly incompetent, conspires at unbelievable levels, he is repeating talking points.

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Nah. But ~90% of this adminstration has been indefensible tyranny, corruption, incompentence or some combination - yet here you are - defending the indefensible. Again, I respect consistency and loyalty - to a degree.

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Your Messiah is a complete f*cking sleezeball. Just f*cking admit it already and stop trying to defend the indefensible. Everyone on here knows that all you do is regurgitate the talking points (i.e., LIES) that you copy-and-paste from the DailyKook.

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You made an assertion. Let's make a ban bet. Link one instance where I've ever copy and pasted something from Dkos and I'll self-ban for one month. If you can't, then you self-ban. I'll give you 24 hours to do it.

Lot of things can be cleared up here. Subpoena her computer and see if it really did crash. Subpoena the IRS policy documents requiring employees to archive their email. Subpoena their policy regarding backing up the servers. Everything that has been alleged can easily be checked.

Is it possible that this was all intentional? Yes. However, if there is email between Lerner and the WH that they want to hide, wouldn't it be easier just to delete the emails rather than claim her computer crashed and tens of thousands of emails are gone? If you're going to obstruct justice, isn't it much easier and safer to hide a little rather then hide everything?

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isn't it much easier and safer to hide a little rather then hide everything?

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No.
No way to claim that could be accidental.

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Subpoena the IRS policy documents requiring employees to archive their email.

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I can do you one better ;) 1.10.3.2.3 (07-08-2011)
Emails as Possible Federal Records

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All federal employees and federal contractors are required by law to preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency. Records must be properly stored and preserved, available for retrieval and subject to appropriate approved disposition schedules.

The Federal Records Act applies to email records just as it does to records you create using other media. Emails are records when they are:

Created or received in the transaction of agency business

Appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government’s function and activities, or

Valuable because of the information they contain

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy. More information on IRS records management requirements is available at LINK or see the Records Management Handbook, IRM 1.15.1 LINK

An email determined to be a federal record may eventually be considered as having historical value by the National Archivist prior to disposal. Therefore, ensure that all your communications are professional in tone.

Please note that maintaining a copy of an email or its attachments within the IRS email MS Outlook application does not meet the requirements of maintaining an official record. Therefore, print and file email and its attachments if they are either permanent records or if they relate to a specific case.

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However, if there is email between Lerner and the WH that they want to hide, wouldn't it be easier just to delete the emails rather than claim her computer crashed and tens of thousands of emails are gone? If you're going to obstruct justice, isn't it much easier and safer to hide a little rather then hide everything?

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That's actually a great question and I am glad you asked it. The problem with this is that there are logs and backups. If an email is sent or received, the server has logs on it. Depending on the system, the log wouldn't contain any of the text from the body but it would contain whom it came from, whom it went to, when, size and the text from the Subject line. If that email is no longer in the person's Inbox (and they haven't been told to archive it), then that's a HUGE red flag and generates its own investigation for destroying federal records.

With the logging issue, these logs would appear on both the sender's server logs and the receiver(s)'. So deleting entries from the log would require buy-in from key IT personnel in every agency that a given email went to and from. If someone at the IRS did this and they were found out due to log comparisons from other agencies, the resulting shitstorm would be Biblical.

My guess is that, if the crash is bullshite, they are counting on the American public to be so ignorant as to not only know enough to understand how high the odds are of this going down the way they say it did, but to also not know anyone with enough Exchange experience to explain that to them. It wouldn't be the first time a politician and his/her staff were brought down because they thought they were too smart to be caught in a lie.

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If you're going to obstruct justice, isn't it much easier and safer to hide a little rather then hide everything?

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Why get caught in a tangled web of multiple cover-ups that implicate more people rather than just have one gigantic cover up that only implicates Lerner, and some IT staff?

We already have Schumer and Cummings involved as part of this mess. I would argue that it is far too difficult and far to easy to F up by combing through each individual email and selectively deleting. If they miss one, they are toast. Don't forget you can audit the recipient's PC as well. Much easier to blow everything away.

I don't think you get the point though: Most people are more upset about the IRS targeting and silencing political opposition, regardless if there is a WH link or not. We know there is a link to the legislative branch. Everybody involved in this needs to spend time at Club Fed for life. It's treasonous to tamper with free speech with the implication that you can sway votes one way or another by preventing information from getting out there.