RUSH: Lois Lerner has unwittingly revealed that the IRS had an internal instant messaging system above and beyond their e-mail system. So when she says that the dog ate her e-mails and that the computer crashed and it had seven months of e-mails or seven, whatever, however many disappeared, I don’t remember ’cause it was bogus, it doesn’t matter.
It turns out that the IRS has this internal messaging system sort of like the old prof notes in the old, old days of the Iran-Contra crisis. Old Microsoft stuff. I don’t know what it is, but it was above and beyond e-mail and Lois Lerner was caught warning other IRS workers to be careful what they put in their e-mails because they might end up being seen. They might end up being subpoenaed so be careful what you put in your e-mails. And nobody, up until that moment, knew the IRS had its own private IM system.
Now, this is pretty amazing for several reasons. First, it shows that Lois Lerner was very concerned about what Congress might find in her e-mails and in her colleagues’ e-mails and in her instant messages. This idea that, “There’s nothing to hide, the server just crashed. I heard a guy on the radio, Limbaugh says it happens, and it happened to me.” Yeah, well, it doesn’t happen to this degree to anybody. Not this many servers, not this many different e-mails crash at the same time. Anyway, she was very concerned about what Congress might find. Therefore she was making efforts to hide what was in those e-mails, and she was warning her colleagues to be very careful about what they put in the e-mails.
So they’re trying to hide things, there’s no question. And she was concerned immediately after the inspector general at the IRS unearthed that they were targeting Tea Party people. Ms. Lerner was clearly concerned Congress would be able to search her e-mails and her instant messages, and when she was told that the instant messages were not automatically saved, she was relieved. Secondly, there’s a story in Politico about this, and they mention in passing Congress didn’t even know about the instant message system. Nobody did. She inadvertently revealed it.
So the bottom line to this is that all this talk about how the IRS has been thoroughly investigated, it’s complete hogwash. It has not been thoroughly investigated because she just inadvertently admitted there’s an entirely separate communication system internal in the IRS. Also note that we were not told whether any of the IMs have been preserved or not. And lastly, this smug commissioner, this John Koskinen fellow, he told Congress yesterday that he didn’t know a thing about the IRS instant messaging system.
He said (paraphrasing), “Hell, I just got here. I haven’t been here all that long. This stuff all happened before I got here.” This Regime is filled with a bunch of selfish children. They’re all Bart Simpson. “I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me. You can’t prove anything.” It all happened before they got there. Nobody, nobody, from Obama on down, wants to take any accountability for anything that happened.
Now, I understand this because they’re trying to hide things that they’re doing, they don’t want people to know about. And they are utterly, apparently, very willing to portray themselves as incompetent fools in order to continue getting away with covering up what they’re really doing, which ought to make everybody suspicious.
Most people are not willing to make themselves look like abject idiots. But the people in this administration don’t care. If that will get them out of a tight spot, they’re happy to be thought of as lamebrains, or inexperienced, or hapless, or, “Gee, we didn’t know. We didn’t know we had an instant messaging system in here.” In normal circumstances this wouldn’t even be close to being over. We will just have to see.
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