[VIDEO] We Now Know Where Lois Lerner's Emails and Backup Tapes Were Destroyed

There have been dozens of questions surrounding the disappearance of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS targeting scandal. Some of Lerner's emails have been recovered, after IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said under oath they were lost forever. Thousands are still missing. But perhaps the most compelling questions that have been asked since the IRS targeting scandal broke in May 2013 are 1) Exactly where were Lerner's emails and backup tapes destroyed? 2) Who destroyed them?

Now, we have an answer. According to Americans for Tax Reform, Lerner's hard drive was destroyed by the IRS "Midnight Unit" in West Virginia: 

Backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails were destroyed by an IRS entity officially known as the "Media Management Midnight Unit" located in Martinsburg, West Virginia, according to documentation released this week by the House Oversight Committee. In all, 422 backup tapes holding the emails were magnetically "degaussed" despite an agency-wide preservation order and congressional subpoena. Degaussing is a process whereby powerful magnets are used to erase data on a storage tape.

The preservation order came from IRS Chief Technology Officer Terence Millholland in response to Congressional subpoenas over Lois Lerner's emails. However, the agency completely failed to ensure the order was followed or understood. According to the House Oversight report:

-"The IRS failed to ensure compliance with the preservation order at each turn. The IRS failed to confirm compliance with the preservation order in February 2014, upon learning of the gap in emails; failed to ensure the Media Management Midnight Unit, the team that destroyed the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order; and failed to make certain that individuals who ordered the destruction of the specific media, in this instance the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order."

Keep in mind Lerner's hard drive didn't simply "crash" on its own, but instead hadphysical damage. According to one Treasury Inspector General, the hard drive likely crashed due to "an impact of some sort." The question is who damaged the hard drive and whether it was done on purpose to destroy evidence.

New documentation released by the House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner's hard drive was physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it.

The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner's hard drive contained "well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk." 

Earlier this week a federal judge threatened to "haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt," for ignoring court orders and refusing to turn over emails belonging to Lerner by deadline.

Via: Townhall

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Dems Distancing Themselves From Obama Over ObamaCare Rollout

WASHINGTON –  A month after emerging from a government shutdown at the top of their game, many Democrats in Congress newly worried about the party's re-election prospects are for the first time distancing themselves from President Barack Obama after the disastrous rollout of his health care overhaul.
 

At issue, said several Obama allies, is a loss of trust in the president after only 106,000 people — instead of an anticipated half million — were able to buy insurance coverage the first month of the new "Obamacare" web sites. In addition, some 4.2 million Americans received notices from insurers that policies Obama had promised they could keep were being canceled.

"Folks are now, I think in talking to members, more cautious with regard to dealing with the president," said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and one of the first leaders in his state to endorse Obama's presidential candidacy six year ago.

Cummings, the White House's biggest defender in a Republican-controlled committee whose agenda is waging war against the administration over Benghazi, the IRS scandal, a gun-tracking operation and now health care, said he still thinks Obama is operating with integrity. But he noted that not all his Democratic colleagues agree.

"They want to make sure that everything possible is being done to, number one, be transparent, (two) fix this website situation and, three, to restore trust," Cummings said.

Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., like Cummings, a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus who personally likes Obama, struggled to describe the state of play between congressional Democrats and the president.

"I am trying to think if you can call it a relationship at this point," he said.

Via: Fox News

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White House blocks tech chief from testifying on Obamacare

The Obama administration is refusing to make Todd Park, one of the chief technology officials repairing HealthCare.gov, available for a hearing next Wednesday with House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa.

They say he’s too busy right now fixing the Obamacare enrollment portal.

“Mr. Park is open to testifying at a hearing before your committee and to providing an appropriate pre-hearing briefing for you and your staff,” Donna M. Pignatelli, assistant director for legislative affairs, wrote in a letter to the chairman. “However, because Mr. Park is currently occupied full-time on the critically important work of improving the website for the millions of Americans seeking affordable health insurance options, his testimony needs to be scheduled at a time that is less disruptive to that work.”

(PHOTOS: 10 Sebelius quotes about Obamacare website)

Park is devoting “nearly all of his attention and expertise” to helping CMS, Pignatelli wrote. “Pulling him away from that work even for a short time at this stage would be highly disruptive and would risk slowing the progress that has been made thus far to fix identified issues with the website.”

Park could provide an interesting look inside HealthCare.gov’s problems. He was central to the development of HealthCare.gov as the chief technology officer at HHS. But he left the agency in March 2012 for the White House, where he is the chief technology officer.

(PHOTOS: House hearing on Obamacare website)

The letter from the White House to Issa was dated Nov. 6 — the day before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced the hearing.

Issa’s committee released the hearing notice earlier Thursday, saying it was to investigate the “operational challenges in the development of HealthCare.gov” and whether IT best practices were followed.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama: 'I am sorry')

The committee released a witness list that included Park, HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology Frank Baitman, CMS Deputy Chief Information Officer Henry Chao, U.S. Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel and David Powner, director of IT management at the Government Accountability Office.

The White House suggested rescheduling for the beginning of December.

Via: Politico

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Is This How IRS Cover-up Works?

Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says he is confident the story behind the IRS’s targeting of tea-party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status will eventually come out. But patience will have to be a virtue. Issa’s staff acknowledged late last month that the IRS had handed over to the committee a little more than 10 percent of the documents the IRS itself has admitted are relevant to the committee’s investigation.

Last night, Issa spoke via Skype to the New York Meeting, a gathering of influential conservatives founded by Mallory Factor. Issa said that while his investigation is incomplete, he has concluded that at least one reform at the IRS is absolutely necessary. 

“While the IRS formally has only two political appointees — its commissioner and its chief counsel — it’s clear that political people are embedded throughout the agency in  ‘career’ slots,” he said. That can create real credibility and trust issues when the IRS is handling sensitive political matters.

Issa says he is thinking about a bill that would bar anyone from work in an apolitical “career” slot at the IRS for ten years if they come from an explicitly political position.  

As an example, Issa mentioned the case of “Susanne,” a lawyer whom he said had worked for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee until 2008. His reference is to Susanne Sachsman Grooms, who NRO’s Eliana Johnson has reported joined the IRS in the year President Obama was elected. She served the IRS as an adviser to the deputy commissioner for services and enforcement and then as a senior counselor to the chief of criminal investigations.  

Via: NRO

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IRS Not Sending Refunds, Not Turning Over Docs In Probe, But Still Collecting Your Money.

The IRS is still collecting taxes during the government shutdown, but it isn’t sending refunds — and it also has stopped complying with a subpoena to turn over documents to members of Congress who are investigating the agency’s targeting of tea party groups.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee have stopped getting documents from the Internal Revenue Service.

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SEE ALSO: Marriage group to sue IRS over donor leak, says list went to political enemies

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“The IRS has indicated to the committee that their furlough decisions will affect the agency’s responsiveness to committee requests, including the outstanding subpoena,” said Ali Ahmad, a spokesman for the oversight committee.

The government shutdown, which began Tuesday morning, has kept home an estimated 800,000 federal employees, including more than 85,000 who work for the IRS, according to the agency’s contingency plan. That leaves slightly more than 9 percent of the IRS staff on the job.

That is too few to process refunds but does not let taxpayers out of their obligations.

“Individuals and businesses should keep filing their tax returns and making deposits with the IRS, as they are required to do so by law,” the agency said in its guidance for taxpayers. “The IRS will accept and process all tax returns with payments, but will be unable to issue refunds during this time.”

Via: Washington Times

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House Oversight Committee Finds “Fraud and Abuse Risks” Within Obamacare

Florida Governor Rick Scott is doing the “I-told-you-so” dance after having his concerns about the Obamacare “Navigators” program validated by the findings from an investigation conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. 

The House committee report found that “scam artists” are already trying to infiltrate the navigator program. The report also found that Health and Human Resource (HHS) officials “conceded” that there was “no way to identify authenticity of certified navigators.” 

Scott expressed his concern that these so-called “Navigators,” who will not have any insurance background, be collecting massive amounts of personal information for the federal government, such as tax information and Social Security numbers. 

Democrats like Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz have called Scott’s Obamacare concerns excuses because she believes ” he has been hell-bent on obstructing the smooth implementation of ObamaCare,” adding that he has also “done everything he can to block it and impede its implementation.”

 Here are the key points of the committee’s findings after looking into how HHS was going about implementing Obamacare. “In May 2013, top HHS officials… expressed concern about the ‘ability of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services staff to authenticate, register, and certify everyone who will be involved in the consumer assistance process.’” 

“One CMS whistleblower warned that because it may not be possible to track every computer and hard drive used by Navigators to gather applicants’ personally identifiable information (PII), the sensitive information is vulnerable. 

The CMS whistleblower also warned that the devices used to scan supporting documents may store and save the images containing sensitive PII.” “With an influx of Navigators, Assisters, and individuals employed by non-governmental organizations like Enroll America engaging in ObamaCare outreach, it will be very difficult for consumers to differentiate between a scam artist and a legitimate source of information.” 

Via: The Shark Tank

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House Oversight memo: Washington Post’s tea party coverage inspired IRS to target conservatives

The Washington Post’s anti-tea party coverage inspired IRS officials to improperly target conservative groups, according to a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee memo.

“The IRS first identified and elevated the Tea Party applications due to media attention surrounding the Tea Party…Media attention caused the IRS to treat conservative-oriented tax-exempt applications differently,” according to a September 17 House Oversight memo entitled “Interim update on the Committee’s investigation of the Internal Revenue Service’s inappropriate treatment of tax-exempt applications.”

While the memo acknowledged that President Obama’s and the White House’s anti-Citizens United, campaign finance reform-related rhetoric in early 2010 was not lost on IRS officials, the memo makes clear that the Washington Post’s heavy anti-tea party coverage directly inspired improper IRS targeting.

“When other Tea Party applications were discovered, the cases were classified as ‘sensitive’ due to media attention and two more were transferred to Washington to be processed,” according to the memo, which explains that in February 2010 a Cincinnati-based IRS screener alerted a tea party group’s tax-exempt application to his superior, who brought the concerns to the agency’s Washington office, because “Recent media attention to this type of organization indicates to me that this is a ‘high profile’ case.”

“As the application continued to be elevated, another IRS employee called the application a ‘potentially politically embarrassing case’ and also pointed out the ‘[r]ecent media attention to this type of organization.’ On this basis – ‘the potential for media attention’ – the Washington office accepted the case,” according to the memo.

Washington-based IRS officials were wary of the Washington Post, which was aggressively hammering away at the young tea party in early 2010 over “perceptions of racism” and other liberal complaints.

In the memo, congressional investigators emphasized the role that the Post’s coverage played in spawning anti-tea party sentiment.

“Washington Post columnists accused Tea Party groups of ‘smoldering with anger’ and practicing a brand of patriotism reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan,” according to the memo. “Another Post columnist opined in late March 2010 that Tea Party rhetoric ‘is calibrated not to inform but to incite.’” The memo was referring to columns by Post op-ed columnists Colbert I. King and Eugene Robinson, the latter of which discussed the subject of Christian militia groups and lumped tea party rallies in with the terrorism work of Timothy McVeigh.

Via: Daily Caller

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Issa To Issue Subpoena Over ObamaCare Docs

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa plans to press ahead with a subpoena for health department documents on a program he claims is being used to "buy" the election by hiding the effects of ObamaCare. 

The Department of Health and Human Services handed over reams of material just minutes before a 5 p.m. ET deadline Thursday in response to Issa's demand 24 hours earlier. However, Issa's office called the cache "embarrassing," insufficient and not responsive to the congressman's request. 

The subpoena is expected to go out Friday morning. 

"Basically somebody hit a button and said print out a bunch of spreadsheets in an illegible format," Issa told Fox News. "So we will be issuing the subpoena." 

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee effectively is accusing the department of stringing them along for months in their request for documents about an $8 billion program that pays bonuses to Medicare Advantage plans. 

Issa claims the bonus program is being used to mask the first round of Medicare Advantage cuts in connection with the health care overhaul -- in order to win favor with seniors. 

"It's an unbelievable abuse of power," he said Thursday. Issa said the program basically funds "what ObamaCare took away." 

The program in question is called a "demonstration" project. But Issa complains the project is far more sweeping than a run-of-the-mill test program, and conveniently lasts until 2014. 

"This is larger than every test they've ever done at HHS combined," Issa said. Issa's committee put out a video Thursday explaining its allegations. 

The congressman further says the effects of ObamaCare's $200 billion in Medicare Advantage cuts over the next decade would have been felt starting this week -- if not for the bonus payments. Thanks to them, he wrote in an August letter, the project offsets 71 percent of the cuts this year. 

But the department portrayed the program differently. 

Via: Fox News

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Issa Calls For Classified Briefing On Libya Intel

Fresh off his hearing on security deficiencies at the U.S. mission in Libya, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday called for a classified briefing on what the Obama administration knew — and when — about the causes of Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi.

“Right now, what we've agreed to, [ranking member Elijah] Cummings [(D-Md.)] and I, is formally asking for a classified briefing so that a lot of what wasn't discussed here, the committee would have knowledge of,” Issa told reporters. “And of course that's not an open hearing.”

He said it would be modeled on Tuesday's hearing for the Republican chairmen of committees of jurisdiction over intelligence and foreign affairs, and should include Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the FBI. Asked if he would invite the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, Issa said “not necessarily.”

Republicans on Issa's committee have been chomping at the bit to go after Rice, who told five Sunday shows five days after the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans that initial intelligence suggested an anti-Islam video posted to YouTube had caused the violence. The administration later said the attack was an act of terrorism.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) all told The Hill they think the committee’s next move should be to request Rice to testify before the panel.

“President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Ambassador Rice have a lot of questions to answer,” said Chaffetz, the chairman of the committee's panel on national security. Chaffetz said it was up to Issa to decide whether to request her for another hearing, but that he’d “love to hear from her sooner rather than later because she’s got a lot to explain.”

Issa himself told The Hill that “someone in Congress will cover some of these ambiguities.”

Via: The Hill

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WH Aide Involved in Fast and Furious Was 'Suddenly' Transferred to Iraq; Issa Threatens Subpoena

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

(CNSNews.com) - Kevin O’Reilly, a member of the White House National Security Staff who regularly communicated about Operation Fast and Furious with the Arizona-based ATF agent responsible for running the operation that allowed guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, was suddenly transferred out of the White House and into Iraq in July 2011.

The transfer took place shortly after the ATF agent had testified in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the White House had provided the committee with a series of emails that O’Reilly and the agent had exchanged while Fast and Furious was underway.

Since then, the White House has declined to allow O’Reilly to be interviewed either by the committee or by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who conducted the administration’s internal investigation of Fast and Furious. The White House also refused to give the inspector general access to internal White House communications relating to Fast and Furious.

Under Fast and Furious, the ATF and the Justice Department deliberately allowed known straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels to buy about 2,000 guns at U.S. gun stores. In December 2010, two of these guns were found at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Many more of the guns were found at crime scenes in Mexico.

In Sept. 20 testimony before the Oversight Committee, Horowitz said that the White House’s refusal to let O’Reilly speak and to provide the IG’s office with access to relevant internal White House communications “made it impossible” to “pursue that aspect of the case.”

Via: CNS News

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Issa Threatens To Subpoena HHS Over Medicare Bonuses

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Thursday that he's willing to subpoena documents from the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), alleging a conspiracy to hide the impact of President Obama's healthcare law.

Issa, as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is investigating an $8 billion demonstration project in which Medicare pays bonuses to certain private Medicare Advantage plans based on quality.

The congressman has suggested that HHS is using the bonus payments to mask the healthcare law's cuts to Medicare Advantage plans ahead of the election.

Issa and Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) requested documents about the bonus payments in August. They said Thursday that they haven't gotten a response and said they "will consider the use of compulsory process" if HHS doesn't turn over the documents by Oct. 5.

A committee spokeswoman confirmed that a "compulsory process" includes subpoenas.

Obama's healthcare law made several cuts in government payments to privately run Medicare Advantage plans, including a new system for giving bonus payments to high-quality plans. 

But in November 2010, HHS announced that it would not immediately implement the health law's changes, and would instead test a different system — the demonstration program Issa is investigating. The demonstration program will mean bigger payments, delivered earlier, to more plans, according to the Government Accountability Office.

GAO recommended that HHS cancel the demonstration, which it estimates will cost $8.3 billion over 10 years. Issa has repeatedly emphasized GAO's recommendation, saying it's the first time the auditing and investigative office has taken such a step.

Issa has suggested that HHS is using the added payments under the demonstration program to ensure that seniors won't see fewer Medicare Advantage options before the election

Via: The Hill

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Fast and Furious Question: Can/Will Romney-Ryan DOJ Pursue Chicago-Bound Eric Holder?

Congressman Darrell Issa and the House Oversight Committee filed the civil lawsuit yesterday against Attorney General Eric Holder in the Fast and Furious case. To be clear, there are no charges that Holder had anything to do with Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's death, or the walking of guns across the U.S. border into Mexico. The charges are simply that Holder has ignored subpoenas and withheld Fast and Furious documents from Congress, and thus, is in Contempt of Congress. The documents are the starting point to actual prosecutions of criminal and civil liability in one of the worst acts of Government against The People's Second Amendment rights in our Nation's history. It is reasonable to assume the civil litigation will not be resolved before the election, and perhaps not by the time Obama and Company exit Washington, D.C. It begs the question, what can a Romney-Ryan White House do about it?

The House voted for both criminal and civil Contempt of Congress. Obama's spokeskid, Jay Carney, announced in June that the White House will NOT act to direct the DOJ to prosecute Holder criminally on the Contempt of Congress charges - with Obama claiming Executive Privilege. So the only avenue is civil "justice" for The People to force the administration to produce documents that many of us believe will show Fast and Furious was devised to weaken Second Amendment rights, and along the way managed to kill a Border Patrol agent.

The question: when we have an Romney-Ryan DOJ, which will undoubtedly be a strong Second Amendment protector, can and/or will the new DOJ be directed to take up the criminal charges against Holder for ignoring subpoenaed documents, which will be the only way to eventually receive justice for Agent Brian Terry, and hold Eric Holder accountable?

Via: Free Republic

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Darrell Issa to Sue Eric Holder Monday

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa plans to sue Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday for refusing to provide documents related to the "Fast and Furious" gun-smuggling operation.

"The committee expects to file the civil contempt suit against the attorney general Monday," a Republican source said. The suit will be filed in the federal district court for the District of Columbia.

The action is the latest escalation in the dispute between House Republicans and the Justice Department over the documents, which relate to a botched gun-smuggling operation.

On June 28, the House voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress and authorized the Oversight panel to bring suit to enforce its rights.

In Fast and Furious, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed assault guns to "walk," which meant ending surveillance on weapons suspected to be en route to Mexican drug cartels.

The tactic, which was intended to allow agents to track criminal networks by finding the guns at crime scenes, was condemned after two guns that were part of the operation were found at Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's murder scene.

In the most recent conflict between Congress and the president over a Congressional subpoena, Democrats' and Republicans' roles were reversed.

Via: Roll Call

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