The hard drive ate my emails

I hope we can have a rational discussion about this because I am really curious how those on the left are looking at this...

Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS Tax Exempt Division, had her emails subpoenaed over a year ago. Last week it was reported that a hard drive crash erased all her emails to external recipients for the period of time the subpoena covered. It has now been reported that those emails are lost forever.

First of all, with the federal regulations on archiving and saving data, how is this possible? Emails are saved on outside servers...most of the time backed up at two different offsite servers.

Second, what about the other end...those that received the emails? Can they not be retrieved from them?

I want to know what those on the left think about this excuse. To me it does not hold water at all...Nixon went down for an 18-minute gap. Darrell Issa just pointed out that these emails could not possibly be lost because of a single hard drive crash...that the only way this data could have disappeared was if someone willfully made it disappear...and even then it could be retrieved.

This looks like a cover-up. Is any one on the left willing to try to justify it or explain it away?

 

Sorry, can't tell you, just now heading to the meeting of the left to see what we think about this. Will let you know soon, though.

 

I mean meeting of The Left.

 

Record it if you can...would love to see how the wheels turn on that spin machine. ;D

 

The feds should have learned a lesson by not moving the server used to handle emails related to torture memos and the dismissal of U.S. attorneys to the IRS.

 

As one who leans left, I'll admit it smells like bullshit. I wonder how the IRS responds to joe schmoes who use the "hard drive ate me records" excuse in audits?

 

Walte, I see what you are doing there...but you really do have a point. If you are going to do something corrupt and do not want to leave a trail, WTF are you using a federal email address for? Seems like you would be smart enough to use other means so you don't have to play the "hard drive crash" card, which is laughable.

 

Issa knows that if you want to destroy evidence, you just set it on fire.

 

That was my thought exactly -- I should try that at an audit.

Also, it isn't just Lerner's e-mails -- they're saying the same thing about five or six others whose e-mails have been requested for the investigation.

 

I could care less what those who are here that lean left think. I'm a lot more disgusted that the national media reaction appears to be "If they say it, I believe it."