Second federal judge tells IRS to explain lost Lerner emails

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

A second federal judge has now ordered the IRS to explain under oath how the agency lost emails from former division director Lois Lerner, the woman at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal.

 

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton told Obama administration lawyers on Friday he wants to see an affidavit explaining what happened with Lerner's hard drive. The IRS claims her computer suffered a crash in 2011 that wiped her email records at the time clean.

 

But at a hearing examining a lawsuit against the IRS by conservative group True the Vote, Walton said he wants to know what happened to Lerner's hard drive, which allegedly was recycled. He asked for an affidavit from those involved in handling the crashed drive.

 

The order is another boost for those questioning the agency's claims that many Lerner emails from that time period are not recoverable.

 

A day earlier, in a separate case brought by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave the tax agency 30 days to file a declaration by an "appropriate official" to address the computer issues involving Lerner.

 

In that case, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton alleged there "has been a cover-up that has been going on."

 

After the True the Vote hearing, group counsel Cleta Mitchell accused the IRS of playing a "shell game," by arguing that the plaintiffs could not prove any emails were lost.

________

 

This judge may have to get in line...

[Valin]

More Here From Power Line

Cleta Mitchell: Judge Walton wants to hear from the IRS
Scott Johnson
July 11, 2014

Cleta Mitchell writes to report on the hearing before Judge Walton today on True The Vote’s motion for an order addressing discovery issues with the IRS on the destruction of evidence. Cleta writes:

Here is the order from today’s hearing – -Judge spent 2 hours asking questions – the judge is requiring the IRS to start testifying under oath – by persons with direct knowledge and by the end of next week. It is not a bad outcome – pretty good in my view. And he said he’s going to rule on the Motions to Dismiss in the next 30 days. Keep fingers crossed!

Here is Judge Walton’s order:

07-11-2014 Order Re Hearing

 

 

(Snip)

 

JOHN adds: I have heard about Judge Walton over the years, but didn’t know much about him. So I looked him up on Wikipedia. This anecdote suggests that he may not have a lot of patience with government corruption:

 

(Snip)

[Draggingtree]

Two Federal Judges Demand Answers on “Lost” Lerner Emails from IRS “Under Oath”

 

“I can lock people up, and I don’t have a problem doing that”

 

By: Matthew Clark (Diary) | July 11th, 2014 at 05:02 PM

The IRS has been attempting to mitigate and obstruct the truth about Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails.

The past two days in federal court have made that much more difficult for the IRS.

 

Thus far IRS Commissioner Koskinen has testified before Congress that he has been advised (because he wasn’t there when it happened) that the IRS did the best it could to recover Lerner’s emails, that her hard drive has been recycled, and that the Treasury IG is looking into all of this. In other words, nothing to see here; move along; we’ve got this covered.

 

When DOJ lawyers tried to make these same arguments in open court, two different federal judges weren’t buying it.

 

In the last two days, two different federal judges in two separate cases have ordered the IRS to provide information from the “appropriate” IRS official “under oath.” In fact, in yesterday’s hearing the judge reiterated

 

http://www.redstate.com/diary/matthewclark/2014/07/11/two-federal-judges-demand-answers-lost-lerner-emails-irs-oath/

[Draggingtree]

Editorial: ‘Caution’ at the IRS

 

Saturday, July 12, 2014

 

Guess now-departed IRS official Lois Lerner never paid any attention to that adage that “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” that comes back to haunt.

 

Lerner, you’ll recall, is the former IRS supervisor whose fingerprints are all over efforts to target Tea Party and other conservative groups — efforts that go back to 2010 and included the 2012 election cycle.

 

Congressional investigators have been continually stymied in their efforts (after Lerner “took the Fifth” rather than testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) by “lost” emails — some of which were later recovered under a court order and others IRS officials insist were destroyed in a simultaneous crash of several computer systems.

 

Well, this week we gained new insights into Lerner’s thinking from one email that was recovered by investigators.

 

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/editorials/2014/07/editorial_caution_at_the_irs

[Draggingtree]

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2014

 

RUH ROH: Federal Judge Demands Answers -- Under Oath -- From IRS As to How Emails Went "Missing"

 

By Judicial Watch

If there is a case study which perhaps best describes why Judicial Watch is so important and how we are different from any other organization, it is the record of success we have achieved in exposing the Obama Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, in which that powerful federal agency was used to target and harass conservative organizations.

 

And that success continued this week in federal court, before U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who held a hearing about the supposedly missing emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials, which were the subject of longstanding Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and a lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. IRS(No. 1:13-cv–1559)).

 

The emails Judicial Watch has sought since May 2013 cover portions of the same period for which the IRS on June 13, 2014, notified the House Committee

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2014/07/ruh-roh-federal-judge-demands-answers.html

[Valin]

 

[Draggingtree]

Two Federal Judges Lay Smackdown on IRS Over “Lost” Emails

 

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Lily Dane

Two federal judges aren’t buying “the dog ate my emails” bs story the IRS is trying to sell.

Finally, we might be getting somewhere with this ridiculous scandal. Congress has been working on this for a year without much success, but on Thursday and Friday, two U.S.District court judges ordered the IRS to start providing some answers

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/07/13/two-federal-judges-lay-smackdown-irs-lost-emails/