Posted on by Jason Easley

Republicans Who Are Attacking Obama For Missing IRS Emails Caught In a Web of Hypocrisy

obama-laptop

Republicans who are trying to blame Obama for the missing IRS emails need to look in the mirror. Gov. Scott Walker, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have all had emails go missing, hidden, or intentionally destroyed.

Here are just a few of the Republicans who have either wiped hard drives, or lost emails:

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney – The Bush White House was the Republican founding father of private email systems. In order to avoid public accountability the Bush administration used a private email network on RNC servers. The Bush administration also lost 22 million emails. They just so happened to lose the emails from the architects of Bush’s torture policy. Within those 22 million lost emails were five million emails that were lost relating to the 2007 firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. The Bush administration denied for years that any emails were lost, but as part of settling a lawsuit, eventually admitted that twenty-two million emails had been lost. The Obama administration tried to clean up the Bush mess, but was only able to restore 61 days worth of emails.

Mitt Romney – According to The Boston Globe, “Just before Mitt Romney left the Massachusetts governor’s office and first ran for president, 11 of his top aides purchased their state-issued computer hard drives, and the Romney administration’s e-mails were all wiped from a server, according to interviews and records obtained by the Globe. Romney administration officials had the remaining computers in the governor’s office replaced just before Governor Deval Patrick’s staff showed up to take power in January 2007, according to Mark Reilly, Patrick’s chief legal counsel. As a result, Patrick’s office, which has been bombarded with inquiries for records from the Romney era, has no electronic record of any Romney administration e-mails, Reilly said.” This meant that the emails from Romney’s entire time in office (2002-2006) were deleted.

Scott Walker – Much like the Bush administration, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker used a secret email system to keep his correspondence hidden from the public when he was Milwaukee County executive, “Thousands of documents unsealed Wednesday link Gov. Scott Walker to a secret email system used in his office that would avoid public scrutiny when he was Milwaukee County executive.”

Sarah Palin – We first wrote about Palin’s missing emails four years ago, so for those who are discovering this fun fact today, welcome to the party. The Palin administration intentionally made those who requested emails wait for years, and then they redacted and didn’t include all of the emails. As Sarah Jones wrote in 2010, “So, after a year and a half, we are supposed to believe the administration just left out the emails from June 07-Dec 07 during the submission period. They’re going to “look into” why they weren’t included. No reason was given, apparently, but we were treated to a reason for the redaction of other emails. Apparently in this new “democracy”, “messaging” and “myth busting” are now protected by executive privilege. I know, you thought that was only for Dick Cheney. Palin and Dick have never seen an obstruction to transparency they didn’t embrace. Information is not for the people. The rabble.”

On the federal level emails get lost regularly because most government computer systems are ancient. For example, the system that the IRS is using is from the 1990s. As CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan put it, “The loss of Ms. Lerner’s emails is just another example of deficient government record keeping. Emails by former Justice Department official and author of the ‘torture’ memos John Yoo disappeared, SEC records regarding the Madoff investigation vanished, and millions of emails from the George W. Bush White House were lost. Where was the outrage in those cases? This issue is bigger than any single government component.”

Republicans want to get outraged over an email loss that has no connection to President Obama, but don’t want to discuss the behavior of Bush, Cheney, Romney, Palin, and Walker. The latter three were not federal officials, and can’t blame antiquated computer systems for the missing emails. Republicans can walk down this path if they want, but they aren’t going to like where it goes.

Hypocrisy is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the top Republicans in the country intentionally conspired to keep information out of public hands. The actions taken to avoid transparency by so many Republicans is a much larger scandal than some emails that couldn’t be pulled off of some twenty year old computers.

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66 Replies to “Republicans Who Are Attacking Obama For Missing IRS Emails Caught In a Web of Hypocrisy”

  1. Sitting at the center of the grand IRS investigation is Darrell Issa. King of hypocrisy. Next week he will subpoena Samuel Morse for all those missing telegraph communications!

  3. Faux is still pushing one email that was not lost. The one Learner supposedly targeted Sen. Grassley.

    For those who are interested in the email:http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/irs_grassley.pdf

    But Steve Benen from the Maddow blog breaks it down

    All of this, it turns out, wasn’t true. The reality is unambiguous: “[Grassley] wasn’t ‘targeted’ at all. Instead, Lerner asked a colleague if it made sense to examine whether an outside group had made Grassley an inappropriate offer. Her colleague dismissed the idea, and that was the end of it.”

    At least in theory, reporters, Republican officials, and conservative activists who ran with this story on Wednesday had a decision to make: they could either correct their mistake or pretend they hadn’t made the mistake.

    Of course, this is the IRS “scandal,” which naturally led conservatives to choose Door #3:
    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/repeating-falsehood-doesnt-make-it-true

  4. Great piece, Sarah Jones!
    I hope articles like this are archived here, so we can get facts for fodder when we comment on the CON sites who are so darn misinformed and tricked!

  6. The delay, redactions, and withheld Palin emails only relate to her official government email account. Don’t forget that she, Todd Palin, and several Governor’s Office staffers set up private Yahoo email accounts to use for state business.
    Emails were deleted, impeding discovery in the Troopergate investigation.

    Sarah Palin used at least two private Yahoo accounts:
    gov.palin@yahoo.com
    gov.sarah@yahoo.com

    Sorry I don’t have handy links to give a comprehensive look at the private email account issue but here’s a start:

    Sept. 16, 2008 article – Palin using private Yahoo accounts to conduct public business
    http://juneauempire.com/stories/091608/sta_333013278.shtml

    Page 53-56 of the Petumenos Troopergate Report
    https://app.box.com/shared/o2b3seixb3

  7. More importantly what about the economy? When obama took office gas was $1.84 now its over $4.00. What was the stimulus for? I thought that was to reinvigorate the economy? Im confused…..

  8. You are confused or just ignorant
    The cost of gas in June of 2008, the early stages of the heavy summer driving season and during the presidential campaign, was $4.10 per gallon. The 2008 gas crisis hit its peak one month later with prices averaging $4.11 per gallon.

    Source: Consumer Reports

    By August, the cost fell to $3.74 and continued to fall until the price averaged $2.07 just after Election Day in November, when Mr. Obama was elected president.
    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-facts-a-fact-check-on-gas-prices/

    And pray tell if oil is traded on the international market, no we are not talking about the International house of pancakes, what the f*ck does any President have to do with the cost of gas? I feel sorry for my country with the idiocy that’s among us

  9. Here we go, the price of gas issue. Look the President doesn’t have any control of gas. But the GOP congress has a lot to do about equal pay, minimum wages, student loan payments and other important things that they refuse to pass. And as far as the President invigorating the economy, your bunch of obstructionist GOP did everything to stop that. However, they had you and thousands of others fooled in the 2010 election. Their motto was to get more jobs. Where the hell is the jobs. Wake-up and smell the coffee.

  10. Continue: I must be slipping because I forgot to add city/county and state taxes on Gas

    High taxes, summer fuel rules a potent formula for elevated gasoline prices

    Illinois among 7 states to charge sales tax on gas. Taxes add an average of 69 cents to every gallon of gas in Illinois, and far more in high tax areas such as Chicago

    special blend for warmer weather adds 10 cents per gallon
    http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-19/business/ct-biz-0619-bf-gasoline-20110619_1_prices-rocket-gas-prices-crude-oil-prices

    So on average the price for gas in Chicago adds at least a dollar to the price of gas. Sometimes it pays to look before you leap

  12. The jobs went to the American Taliban lawyers litigating all the bullshit they have thrown at the President. Notice none of it sticks and they keep feeding them like the pigs they are. To hell with jobs since we know they could give a rats ass, what about this tort reform a frivolous lawsuits?

  13. We can’t help it if you get confused easily or can be led by a thin tissue of lies. Gas prices dip in winter, when the summer driving season is over, when Bush left and Obama took over, so gas prices then were less than HALF of what they were the previous summer. This summer is the first time since then that gas prices are reaching back to where they were when The Shrub was jacking the prices to line his own pockets. (Or did you forget that he and Cheney make their fortunes from oil production and exploration?) And the Stimulus? Bush did that, and it went to Wall Street and the banks who gave almost all of it to executives as “bonus” checks for how well they f*cked over everybody.

  14. Off topic but I guess a heads up is warranted. Remember Benghaziiiii?

    It’s taken then weeks to come up with this latest poutrage, that captured alleged Benghazi attack mastermind Ahmed Abu Khatallah can’t possibly be tried in criminal court because, umm, superpowers or something.

    “I have serious concerns that conducting a rushed interrogation onboard a ship and then turning Abu Khatallah over to our civilian courts risks losing critical intelligence that could lead us to other terrorists or prevent future attacks,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, said in a statement Saturday. “I’ve asked the Defense and Justice Departments for an update on his status-including whether he has been told he has the right to remain silent.”
    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/28/controversy-grows-over-prosecution-of-alleged-benghazi-attack-mastermind/

    Watch for it on the Sunday gobshites. You cant make this shit up

  15. Get over yourself Jared!Stop blaming Obama for everything.He does not control the price of gas!The GOP are to blame for the mess we are in.

  16. More importantly, why do we still rely on gas and oil? Germany gets 50% of their power from the sun. Germany doesn’t get much sun.

    Koch brothers are stealing from us.

  17. Berniein they know the truth.They are out of things to complain about.As you can see the ACA is no longer a issue.

  18. Just think where we would be if we as a country expanded President Carter’s green energy, I wouldn’t say proposals but he was right back in 1979. But being Americans we are just as ignorant now as then

  19. I wouldn’t blame the American Taliban for gas prices because they have no more control over the international markets than you or I. What I do blame them for is their ignorance in moving this country forward to get us off these polluting fuels with some Democrats whose ass smell of sulfer

  20. Our lame duck president is going to kick back and have some fun.

    Saw a pic online today where the Prez stated obvious things, then invited the tea party to start contradicting him.

    Here, he has already had a suspected ‘terrorist’ Mirandaized and turned over to civilian custody. Where, out of respect for the Constitution, he will be accorded a fair trial.

    Making Gitmo a lie. And indefensible.
    Making GOP heads explode….

  22. This isn’t President Obama’s doing but it is falling on his watch and he has to lead the way in fixing it. Actually he is one of the few leaders we have had recently with a sense of responsibility.

  23. I’ll never forget the comment in the ‘Onion’ fake news page “Black gets worse job in the United States” or similar words. It sounded funny at the time but it is now proofing kind of true. The Presidents before him left him with the worse job, clean up.

  24. I agree Barbara. There is no correlation between actions the president makes and the price of oil. A president is far too busy and does not have that kind of power. Even corporations do not (yet) have total control over oil prices – particularly over what a random terrorist can do to the price of oil!

  25. What’s even more ironic is that the hard drive that failed, did so before any of this “scandal” came to light.

    The back up drives have been set to discard any data older than six months long before Obama was even nominated for his first term.

    Facts have never been important when it comes to political mud-slinging have they?

  26. Personal emails are personal 86 employees of th e IRS( the most powerfully invasisive agency in the USA) lost their emails when their computers crashed? Then the hard drives were destroyed and at the same time the servers crashed and next we find out the company contracted to backup all computers in the IRS was dismiss and were told to dump the info? That isn’t republican hipocrisy but a democratic coverup of crimes!

  27. That isn’t republican hipocrisy but a democratic coverup of crimes!
    —————————-
    I bet you cried when you found out there was no santa claus.

    There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

    Robertson Davies

  29. Yep.

    Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee has introduced legislation for MORE GAS TAXES. Yes, here in the land of high UE, lack of jobs, lack of HC, we can expect to pay higher gasoline taxes.

    Hey Corker, you will NEVER be potus, GTFO!

  30. Congress does have power to STOP HIGH GAS PRICES:

    STOP SPECULATION on the market.

    That is what causes fluctuating gas prices, NOT supply and demand. OPEC is the problem as well.

    President does not control gas prices, ever.

  31. Happkat, were you born this stupid? The company didn’t have a contract for e-mail back ups. Another Fox lie shot down by the company executive. You could have found this out with a quick search, or simply read or watched some other news source other than ultra right wing propaganda.You guys have a severe mental disability. I am beginning to believe all the studies and surveys they did on conservatives being born stupid.

  32. I have read many comments on the loss of those emails and what really amazes me is the stupidity of those that believe that apparently, emails cannot get lost, that hard drives do not crash and that computers have no “shelf life”. According to some of my friends that are into computers, computers become obsolete after 6 months, because of changing technology. If the IRS was using 20 year old computer equipment, I would say that those that control the purse strings got their moneys’ worth, but should have known that things can and will go wrong with obsolete equipment. We don’t get to pick and choose. Technology is a wonderful thing, but, like anything else, it is only as good as the people behind it.

  33. Typical right wing retort: “That’s completely different, because (insert standard hypocritical spin here).”

    or “That’s old history, so it’s like it never really happened.”

  34. This website just proves the statement that any person over the age of thirty, who still votes democrat, is an idiot. A bunch of morons. Good luck in the next election.

  36. OK. . .so you will have us believe that there is not even a “smidgeon of corruption” after Lois Lerner admitted to planting a question at that lawyers conference to deflect the investigation, Jay Carney lied about this being a couple of “rogue agents in the Cincinnati office”, Lerner pleads the fifth TWICE so she won’t incriminate herself, the IRS promised to turn over all the emails but after stonewalling for a year suddenly says that Lerner’s computer crashed (two weeks after being informed of the investigation) and was destroyed without recovery or backup coincidentally six other key computers at the IRS also crashed without recovery or backup. Now we are expected to believe that the IRS only keeps documents for six months? the IRS? the biggest sticklers in government about you keeping your documentation for years and years only keeps six months? You think we’re stupid for not buying this? OK. . . not a smidgeon of corruption here. lemmings.

  37. Do you have a link of this lie to deflect? It is her Constitutional right to plea the fifth but you wouldn’t know whats in the Constitution if someone read it to you. The emails were lost 2 years before the witch hunt.
    Other than that you like the rest of the idiot brigade have nothing because no law was broken and if you could prove this would have been finish long ago. Now go play in the sandbox

  40. I’m not arguing her right to plead the fifth just that in order to legally plead the fifth you have to believe that what you reveal would INCRIMINATE yourself. if there is nothing to hide where does the incrimination come from?

  41. First of all the way that is written it was not just conservative groups that were targeted. Second after Citizens United you had groups trying to get the tax exemption so all the IRS did was its job. Something the people running this in the ground and wasting money have no clue of. Third why if the baggers were targeted not one had their exemption denied but liberal groups were denied. And finally that’s not facts that’s what that reporter interpreted and as later testimony and records later shown that who story was bullshit. Trying to play gotcha and in the end nothing. Have you ever thought why this is never talked about even by Issa? I forgot the key word is thought

  42. just the fact that you were completely unaware of the planted question speaks volumes. don’t ever question anything, just drink your kool aid

  45. Show me a law that says in order to legally plead the fifth you have to believe that what you reveal would INCRIMINATE yourself or STFU

  46. Using private email accounts to transact government business to avoid public scrutiny is an old GOP trick that was most recently used by Governor Christie & his staff.

  47. In case you fell asleep during Civics
    Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
    No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

    The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights and protects against unfair treatment in legal processes. Now what has been fair with this Kangaroo court led by the Car thief?

  48. nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself

    you can’t just plead the fifth whenever you feel like it, only when your answers may incriminate you. you are making my point.

  49. Wrong. Being a witness against ones self does not indicate you are guilty of something. You can plead the 5th anytime you want

  50. You can plead the 5th anytime you want

    not true – only when you fear self incrimination – if you are offered immunity you can no longer plead the fifth

  51. No, if you accept immunity you cant plead the 5th.

    Pleading the 5th is not an admission of guilt. Nor does it indicate you did anything wrong.

  53. didn’t say that, but you have to believe that your statements could possibly be incriminating to yourself, fearing incrimination is not admitting guilt but if you were 100% innocent where does the fear come from?

  55. Your whole argument is based on that
    only when you fear self incrimination – if you are offered immunity you can no longer plead the fifth
    So WTF DOES THAT MEAN

  56. HUH?
    in order to legally plead the fifth you have to believe that what you reveal would INCRIMINATE yourself. if there is nothing to hide where does the incrimination come from?

    Like I said WTF you don’t even remember your own bullshit

  57. thanks for the debate – I understand a little more about your side of the argument. I doubt you’ll even give my side a thought but thanks anyway. good luck to us all, we get what we elect.

  58. if you are offered immunity you can no longer plead the fifth
    So WTF DOES THAT MEAN

    i was responding to Shiva, not you.

  60. Yeah he sees that the government record keeping sucks across the board. Maybe you see something else and I thought you were gone

  61. Don’t kid yourself into thinking the democrats are above board either. Both parties are as dishonest as it gets.

  62. Jared, Have you been asleep since 2001? Gas prices soared under George W. Bush, with absolutely no attempt to get them under control. Here in northern Michigan, prices were flirting with $5.00 a gallon during the Bush Administration. Lately they are flirting with $4.00 a gallon. With a holiday weekend coming up and the annual Cherry Festival, gas prices may actually hit $4.00. Then, when the tourists go home, the prices will come down a bit to continue their fake flirting with the public. I really do not understand how gas companies can get away with their price fixing, because that is what it is. There must be an early morning confab every day, what shall we set prices at today? And then they all agree. But, Jared, this is a Bush legacy, like many other messes.

  64. You are sooo wrong, Jay, when you say no one can take the 5th when they want to because they can and do, and there’s nothing that prosecutors and/or judges can do. They might cite the person for contempt, but they still can’t force him/her to testify against him/herself. Lerner’s lawyer told Issa before he hauled Lerner before the cmte that she would have nothing to say, but Issa did it anyway. Why? So that he could create fake outrage in the minds of the gullible and make them think he had hard evidence she’d committed a crime. Lerner’s attorney said recently that the House hearings are political, meaning the GOPTPers are holding them to try to damage the Obama Administration in some way and not for the purpose of uncovering important information and an intent to fix the problems at the IRS, and he’s absolutely correct. All we’ve seen from GOPTPers are incidents of fake outrage. Even they know it’s all political theater meant to push a false attack against the IRS.

  65. You’re right. Most of us who post here won’t “see” things your way because you’re operating on lies, conspiracy theories, a lack of understanding of the Constitution, and propaganda while we’re looking at the facts.

  66. There is no correlation between actions the president makes and the price of oil. A president is far too busy and does not have that kind of power. Even corporations do not (yet) have total control over oil prices – particularly over what a random terrorist can do to the price of oil!

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