See also: IRS cover-up revelation #1 today

An IRS filing has revealed that Lois Lerner’s Blackberry, containing emails alleged lost in a computer crash, was destroyed by the IRS after the congressional inquiry had begun. The potential criminality is the sort of thing that federal judges frown upon, and there may be serous consequences ahead. Sidney Powell reports in the New York Observer:

The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive. (snip)

…a year after the infamous hard drive crash, the IRS destroyed Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry—and without making any effort to retain the emails from it.

Judge Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to learn anything about Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry. Now, with these latest revelations, I’m confident he’s not finished.

In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.

With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began.

The IRS did not even attempt to retrieve that data. It cavalierly recites: “There is no record of any attempt by any IRS IT employee to recover data from any Blackberry device assigned to Lois Lerner in response to the Congressional investigations or this investigation,” according to Stephen Manning, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Strategy & Modernization.

The legal implications are severe:

This most recent revelation of destruction of evidence and refusal to retain data and documents despite a Congressional inquiry is beyond outrageous. It screams of guilt and creates a presumption in the law that the evidence would prove what those who were targeted and harassed claim.
This opens the gates for the civil lawsuits, including that by Z-Street, that could bust open the IRS scandal, independent of any congressional unquiries.

Moreover, there is a strong likelihood that despite the IRS’s efforts, backup copies of the emails exist not only on government servers, but on those belonging to Blackberry:

Aside from the fact the IRS was required to keep hard copies, we now know they should exist on Blackberry servers as well as Google and perhaps others. (snip)

What are all the servers the emails went through? Blackberry is touted as the most secure, so surely the emails should be found there.

In the digital age, covering up communications turns out to be much harder than Lois Lerner, the IRS, or Valerie Jarrett ever imagined. Snd this doesn’t even take into account the NSA’s comprehensive records.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman