IRS cut ties with Sonasoft almost immediately after Lois Lerner scandal broke.

I’m sorry* to revisit this topic, but this Sonasoft thing is starting to blow up: “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.” Basically, the Daily Caller – doing the legwork that our legacy media apparently cannot – determined that Sonasoft offered email backup services from 2005 to 2011 (Sonasoft certainly claimed that).  A couple of weeks after Congress started requesting Lois Lerner’s email records from the IRS, Lerner’s computer crash – and, shortly after that, the IRS let their contract with Sonasoft lapse.  Left unstated is why the IRS would decide to terminate services with the company that was providing them with backups, although I’m sure that we could all hazard a guess or two.

But enough about the evil that might lurk in bureaucrats’ hearts: there’s another, more pressing issue.  Now that we know that the IRS had backups, why have those backups not been provided to Congress with all due speed? …Oh, wait, we can probably hazard a guess or two on that, too.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: As even Slate is forced to concede: the IRS is in no position at all to demand that they be given any kind of leeway or preferential treatment. Congress said ‘frog,’ and the IRS must jump.  And if they don’t like it, well, that’s karma for you.

*Full disclosure: I am not sorry. I am not sorry at all.

14 thoughts on “IRS cut ties with Sonasoft almost immediately after Lois Lerner scandal broke.”

  1. Every time I feel my sense of outrage cannot get any hotter, this administration proves it can indeed get hotter.
    .
    I am actually shocked by the fact that there isn’t a angry mob heading to DC right now. It is a testament to the willful ignorance or the infinite patience of the American people. I’ll let you decide.

  2. There’s one more relevant piece of the puzzle, which recently was noted at PowerLine: The IRS has released e-mails from Lois Lerner — in particular the correspondence between her and the IT/data recovery people after her hard drive crashed. It does appear as though her drive (if not the six or more others) did indeed die the True Death of natural causes at the time the IRS claims it did. But what was on that drive?

    It is remarkable that Lerner does not say: “Oh no! My hard drive crashed, and the IRS’s only copy of two years’ worth of my highly important work has been lost!” No: she is concerned about “my lost personal files,” because “there were some documents in the files that are irreplaceable.” That is a clearly stated and entirely reasonable concern, but it has nothing to do with losing the agency’s only record of two years of work.

     
    So: She does NOT mention any lost e-mails … and considering that Sonasoft was under contract to the IRS at the time, she should have had no reason to do so. Lerner’s drive crash was an actual accidental event, but it was irrelevant to the missing e-mails “mystery.” It was seized upon as a convenient excuse, and it will be cited time after time after time by the Obama administration’s defenders, but that isn’t why her e-mails aren’t available.

    1. One wonders just how .. efficient .. Sonasoft execs would be at deleting data.
      .
      Mew

      1. One wonders whether Sonasoft’s contract with the IRS required them to either turn over their backups to a successor contractor (or to the IRS itself) or to delete the backups in the name of client security. I mean, what’s the point of making a backup if you don’t keep it? … As the IRS is required by law to do.

        1. One also wonders, Herp, if any Sonasoft executives or techies, on hearing that the contract was terminated, may have *hypothetically* not deleted everything…
          .
          After all, if the contract ended abruptly, then there’s something damning in there which may be worth money to the right parties, right?
          .
          Mew

          1. Sadly, that’s probably wishful thinking.
            IRS probably gave Sonasoft either an innocuous reason for the termination, or no reason at all.
            Back in 2011, there was little reason to think something was “going on,” so why would anyone at Sonasoft save the data?

          2. Possibly, Matt_SE.
            .
            That said, D.C. is a smaller pond than the internet, and I’m sure Sonasoft got the contract for reasons having very little to do with their abilities.
            .
            Mew

  3. I’m more interested in hearing what the IRS IT department knows about this.
    If federal law requires backups to be held for a certain period, and I think it does, then what was the IT department’s reaction to news that their backup provider was being terminated?

    Did the techs suddenly just decide to stop taking their jobs seriously? Did they think it was OK to have a gap in their backup coverage?

    Congress needs to get to the techs in charge. They need to corroborate their story with mid- and lower-level IT employees to make sure somebody hasn’t gotten the heads of IT to sing to some bullsh*t cover-up story.

    1. Did the IT department agree that 6 months of back-up was sufficient?
      If not, who overruled them?

      Did they not inform the suits that in today’s world, back-up storage is CHEAP?!?
      Who signed off on the 6 month thing, including the periodic destruction of tapes?

      1. The techs should be made aware that someone will go down for this.
        Then, give them a choice: the techs, or the suits.

        1. Yes, but these are IRS techs. They know how the suits operate and what the suits are capable of doing to people they don’t like. And somehow I don’t think that Eric Holder’s Justice Department will give whistleblowers very much protection.

          2. And acat, Holder’s expiration date is before the statute of limitations expiration date.

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