10 Things the Incompetent Buffoon David Camp Should Do Right Now to Handle the IRS's "MIssing Emails"

Lois Lerner, the malevolent hack who used her position at the IRS to target conservative and pro-Israel groups, was recently held in Contempt of Congress. But the IRS cover-up of her activities continues unabated.

As you may know, the IRS claimed late yesterday that all of Lois Lerner’s emails with parties outside the agency were destroyed in an unfortunate and untimely hard-drive crash.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) on Friday said it was “unacceptable” that he was just learning of this problem now, after a lengthy investigation into Lerner’s involvement in the IRS targeting scandal… “The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” he said. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”

Gee, since the DOJ was implicated in the IRS scandal, I’m sure we can count on Eric Holder to spearhead a bold, independent “forensic audit” of the disks in question. What a bunch of nincompoops.

Oh, and the brilliant investigator Darrell “Inspector” Issa was equally peeved.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) indicated that he doesn’t believe the IRS is telling the truth… “Do they really expect the American people to believe that, after having withheld these emails for a year, they’re just now realizing the most critical time period is missing?”

This kind of clownish incompetence is precisely why Johnny Boehner should have named a Select Committee on the IRS.

In lieu of that rational step, may I offer these clownish fools some instructions for dealing with this criminal behavior.

1. Terry V. Milholland served as the IRS Chief Technology Officer during the years in question and was responsible for all IT activities. Subpoena Milholland now.

2. David Stender, currently SVP and Enterprise Security Officer at M&T Bank, served as Associate CIO for Cybersecurity and Chief Information Security Officer at the IRS during the years in question. Subpoena Stender now.

3. Robert N. Crawford served as the Associate Chief Information Officer for Enterprise Services at the IRS during the years in question. Subpoena Crawford now.

4. Lauren Buschor served as the Associate Chief Information Officer for Enterprise Operations at the IRS during the years in question. Subpoena Buschor now.

5. The IRS uses Microsoft Exchange as its email platform. Subpoena the administrator of that system now.

6. Immediately subpoena all backup tapes of the email system, probably held at an Iron Mountain facility, for the years 2010 through 2013

7. Prepare a list of questions for each of the IT executives to include, at a minimum, the following:
a) Given the redundant infrastructure, disaster recovery and business continuity facilities, and other preparations designed to maintain the IRS’s technical operations, describe how the agency could state that a small fraction of the email related to Lois Lerner could be reported as “destroyed”.
b) Describe the logical architecture of backups for the Exchange system including DR sites, offline storage of backup tapes, etc.
c) Describe the interval of full and incremental backups for the Exchange system.
d) Describe a scenario in which all backups from Lerner for the years in question could be destroyed.

8. Immediately subpoena all disk drives said to have “crashed”.

9. Put each of these officials under oath immediately and begin forensic investigations of the drives and backup tapes.

How hard was that?

Apparently too hard for the establishment Republican buffoons, who probably want to see a weaponized IRS target conservatives.