DOJ lawyer says gov’t emails are backed up nightly; calls IRS claim they were deleted ‘laughable’

Not that there was any doubt, but a Department of Justice lawyer has anonymously contacted Powerline Blog to say why the IRS claim about losing emails because of a computer crash is “laughable”:

I’m a DOJ lawyer, so you obviously cannot use my name or any identifying information. But the idea that a “hard drive crash” somehow destroyed all of Ms. Lerner’s intra-government email correspondence during the period in question [2009-2011] is laughable. Government email servers are backed up every night. So if she actually had a hard drive fail, her emails would be recoverable from the backup. If the backup was somehow also compromised, then we are talking about a conspiracy.

Keep up the good work.

He reiterates in a postscript:

I’m serious about your keeping any identifying information out of the media. Things are very, very bad.

When the story broke on Friday, I really believed this administration was insane to think the story wouldn’t hit the headlines. But if you look at the Sunday morning news shows, not one featured the outrageous stonewalling by the IRS. Let’s hope our political leaders have the courage to pursue this outrageous abuse of power.


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