You almost never see an exchange like this, especially from the usually mild Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan to IRS Commissioner on “Lost” Emails: I Do Not Believe You, No One Believes You
During a contentious House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Friday, former vice presidential nominee and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, “Your problem is, no one believes you.”
Koskinen tried to assure lawmakers the IRS isn’t engaged in a cover-up and isn’t misleading Congress, despite failing to disclose massive data loss and a “hard drive crash” until asked about where emails belonging to IRS officials and officials outside of agency were located.
“This is a pattern of abuse, a pattern of behavior that is not giving us any confidence that this agency is being impartial,” Ryan said. “You ask taxpayers to hold onto seven years of their personal tax information in case they are audited and you can’t keep track of emails past six months?”
“I do not believe you. This is incredible,” Ryan stressed.
“I have a long career, that’s the first time anyone has said they don’t believe me,” Koskinen responded.
“I do not believe you,” Ryan shot back.
The exchange came shortly after Republican Rep. Kevin Brady outlined multiple instances of the IRS either lying or misleading the American people about the targeting of conservative groups, pointing out the bogus claim this was a low-level operation that took place in Cincinnati, when officials in Washington D.C. were leading the charge.
“Mr. Commissioner, why at this point, should anyone believe you?” Brady asked. “This is the most corrupt #IRS in history.”
The writing doesn’t really capture Ryan’s emotion. The video is almost 5 minutes.
As you watch this, just look at the smug face of that jackass.
He really believes he’s immune to charges because of the current political landscape in Washington. But, in a few months, that landscape can be altered, considerably. No longer will these agencies be able to operate with impunity.
Meanwhile, the White House is characterizing the IRS scandal as a “conspiracy theory”.
As an IT person, I would tell anyone who is willing to listen, it is simple not credible that we had 7 hard drive failures with unrecoverable email data. Hard drives almost never fail in such a manner. But, the IRS is claiming this happened to the people who just so happened to be under congressional investigation. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it has already been proven the IRS did conspire to attack conservative tax-exempt groups. As Ryan points out, it’s already been proven the IRS has lied during this investigation.
More goodies …
The IRS is listed as a customer of Sonasoft software – “Email Archiving Done Right” http://www.sonasoft.com/company/customers/ …
MorgenApparently, the IRS still uses Sonasoft.
suyts space 
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
…it’s impossible to lose emails………..period (learned that word from Obambi)
I wonder whether IRS will sue Sonasoft now – their Backup Service Contractor.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/21/Lost-Emails-The-IRS-Has-a-Contract-With-Email-Backup-Company
It’s all a dog and pony show. There will be no sanctions. Congress will do nothing. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do. If this administration or any administration commits a crime against Americans, there should be stiff and rapid sanctions. Am I mistaken but isn’t Holder still in contempt???
You are correct. Holder is still in contempt. The problem is the House can’t cause any punishments, alone. They need the Senate to go along with them. The Senate is led by Harry Reid, who will never do anything. Holder should be prosecuting these criminals, but, he won’t do anything, either. However, there’s a very good possibility all this will change in November.
Welcome, Deborah.
Hey Deborah! Yes, it is difficult to believe that anything substantive will be done. The rule of law has broken down at the highest levels of our government. The supposed law makers and enforcers have been infiltrated by a criminal gang (in both parties) and the gang now holds a voting majority. The system is so completely compromised that it cannot be fixed by working within the system. I cannot offer a solution, but I do know that the first step is for more people to realize just how badly things are broken.
“I cannot offer a solution, but I do know that the first step is for more people to realize just how badly things are broken.”
+10 🙂
“It’s all a dog and pony show.”
Exactly!.
Good to see you post here.
This is not going to end well……Americans already had the idea that the IRS is not only the enemy, but also scary…and crooked
There’s not one person here that doesn’t want to see the IRS fall………..
He sounds like a child. They all do. But like all children, there is nothing backing up their indignation.
A met a man who was retired from the IRS. He told me about one company that he had gone to audit. It was a big project so the company gave him a desk and an office to work in. “But it was an old desk and a really small office. Believe me — we really put the screws to HIM!” he said, much amused with himself.
I echo your professional observation, James. Seven hard drive crashes with unrecoverable data is way beyond comprehension. In the 25+ years of building distributed systems, I’ve only seen two hard drive failures. Both gave warnings well in advance and neither resulted in a loss of any data. And I’ll bet that forensic recovery of the data for the investigation was never considered. Unbelievable!
So the IRS would have us believe that their e-mail server runs on a non-RAID configuration? No company runs an e-mail server on a single hard drive! My little company runs our e-mail server on a 2 TB RAID level 1 (mirrored) hard drive array because we don’t want to lose e-mails from a hard drive crash.
Koskinen is a bold faced liar. Plain and simple.
Anyone with a smidgen of IT experience knows that the IRS is lying. No non-government company could get away with trying this email scam and not have their executives sent to prison. It is simply nonsense. We have government agencies that are now above the law. (And Zero is fiddling while Rome is burning.)
Jim