Conservative Musings

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Showing posts with label Nicole Flax. Show all posts

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Missing IRS Emails From/To Lois Lerner Will End Up Leading To Presidency. It Can Go No Where Else!

IBD Editorials

Trail Of Lost IRS Emails Might Lead To White House

84 Comments

Posted 06/20/2014 06:43 PM ET

Were the offices of Rep. Elijah Cummings and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice? View Enlarged Image

Scandal: One of the seven people, including Lois Lerner who lost emails from the period of Tea Party targeting by the IRS, served as chief of staff to former IRS head Steven Miller. She also made 35 visits to the White House.

The funny thing about emails is that they are never orphans. When you send one, there's always a recipient who has his or her own copy. The "lost" Lois Lerner emails had recipients. How about subpoenas to all of them during the Tea Party targeting period? That should help find what we need to know — or maybe not.

It seems six more IRS officials have lost critical emails from that period, a seeming statistical impossibility that shouts out a conspiracy to obstruct justice, and more violations of the Federal Records Act, which requires paper copies of these emails to be printed and stored just in case of computer problems.

One of those officials who received Lerner emails and also lost them was Nikole Flax, chief of staff to former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. Miller, who was fired in the wake of the targeting scandal, visited the White House more than most Cabinet members.

Flax, as the Daily Caller reports, "made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010, and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs."

While not quite as numerous as another former IRS Commissioner, Douglas Shulman, who made some 118 visits — including one he testified was for the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn — Flax's visits dovetail nicely with key points in the IRS scandal.

The visits started just as the IRS' targeting of the Tea Party began; the last occurred two days before the scandal broke in May 2013. On the day of her last visit, according to the Daily Caller, Flax got an email from Lerner seeking advice on a plan to coordinate with the Justice Department to criminally prosecute conservative activists.

Responding to this email, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, Flax gave the green light to Lerner's plan to coordinate criminal prosecutions with DOJ, a suggestion that had been made by Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

We also know that Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings' staff was in contact with Lerner about the conservative group True the Vote.

Whitehouse and Cummings might be two of the "Democratic offices" referred to in a statement from the House Ways and Means Committee when it derided IRS' claims that "it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices."

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

If Your Boss Found Out You Were Using Unauthorized Email To Conduct Business, What Would Happen? Most Companies Would Fire You, Not The US Government

Issa: IRS Officials Used Private Email to Do Official Business

Monday, 07 Oct 2013 06:12 PM

By Cathy Burke

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Top IRS officials repeatedly used private email to do official business, including sending classified documents to non-agency email addresses, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa says.

Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote a letter to IRS Acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel outlining a "troubling pattern" involving at least four senior officials — including now-retired official Lois Lerner, who's at the center of a tea party groups' targeting scandal.

The Washington Examiner, which broke the story Monday, quoted from a copy of the letter it had obtained.

"This not only raises the prospect of violations of the Federal Records Act, but it also raises data security concerns and violates internal IRS policies," Issa wrote.

Issa wrote that he discovered the unsecure emails while investigating the agency's targeting of tea party and conservative groups during the 2012 election season.

Issa's investigation accuses Lerner of producing more than 1,600 pages of emails and documents housed in a nonofficial email account related to official business, including almost 30 pages of confidential taxpayer information, The Examiner reported.

The cache included a summary of an application for tax-exempt status the IRS instructed Lerner's legal counsel to redact because the information was prohibited from being disclosed, it reported.

Lerner retired in September amid an internal probe of the scandal.

Issa's investigation also showed former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who stepped down after the November election, also received emails related to official business on a nonofficial email account, The Examiner reported.

Other IRS officials reportedly targeted are Judith Kindell, senior technical adviser of the Exempt Organization Division, and Nikole Flax, chief of staff of the Office of the Commissioner.

"This rampant use of nonofficial email by four IRS officials to conduct official business suggests that such use is a systemic problem throughout the IRS," Issa wrote. "This is also a concern to the committee because federal taxpayer information cannot be shared on nonsecure, nonofficial systems."

Issa has asked Werfel to brief the committee about the handling of emails at the agency, but no spokesperson has commented, The Examiner said, citing the government shutdown.

The Environmental Protection Agency has also come under fire for using private email accounts for official business. The agency's inspector general last month cleared top-level employees of intentionally trying to hide information, saying the problem was a failure to train employees on properly storing records.

Meanwhile, Issa has warned there's reason for citizens to "fear" the government.

“Right now, there’s a reason to fear the IRS and other agencies, including the EPA, who are loaded with people who feel empowered to bend the rules against those they disagree with,” he said, The Daily Caller reported Sunday.

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