• ← Back to INVESTOR TIMES
  • Investing Articles
  • Financial Markets News
  • Tech News
  • Cryptocurrencies News
FREEDOM OUTPOST
No Result
View All Result
FREEDOM OUTPOST
No Result
View All Result
FREEDOM OUTPOST

EPA Pulls An IRS – Admits Losing Agency Text Messages

Freedom Outpost by Freedom Outpost
January 2, 2016
in News
0

It appears the Environmental Protection Agency has the same IT people as the Internal Revenue Service. Agency officials are now telling a federal court they lost text messages sent from top officials’ phones.

Justice Department lawyers said they will soon be telling a federal judge the EPA misplaced text messages sent to and from the phone belonging to agency chief Gina McCarthy and former chief Lisa Jackson.

“Defendant has decided to formally notify the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) about the potential loss of federal records relating to text messages,” DOJ lawyers admitted.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, has been pursuing EPA text messages since last year, after McCarthy was confirmed by the Senate to head up the EPA. CEI filed a case in 2013 to prevent the EPA from destroying agency text messages, a practice the think tank says it discovered through other government records requests.

“Here we see EPA agreeing to the court to ‘do an IRS,'” CEI senior fellow Chris Horner told the Washington Times. Horner’s past transparency work has revealed numerous attempts by EPA officials to avoid public scrutiny by using private email accounts and stonewalling government records requests.

The judge rules CEI could seek an injunction, which would force the EPA to notify the National Archives that it destroyed the text messages of top agency officials. The judge ruled that it’s “implausible that EPA Administrators would not have suspected the destruction of any federal records with the removal of over 5,000 Agency text messages.”

“The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the federal government, and today’s court ruling was a preliminary win in that much larger battle,” said Hans Bader, senior counsel at CEI. “This may signal a possible end to EPA officials destroying their text messages with impunity based on their self-serving claim that all text messages are personal rather than work-related.”

Obama administration lawyers say they plan on notifying the archives “within the next couple of days” and release documents detailing the records it lost.

The EPA’s lost email claim echoes claims made by the IRS. The tax agency claimed it lost emails sent between 2009 and 2011 from Lois Lerner’s email account. Lerner headed up an IRS department that was accused of targeting nonprofit conservative groups with audits. The IRS, however, didn’t inform the National Archives until this year that it had lost Lerner’s emails due to a hard drive crash.

Like the IRS, the EPA has not been very forthcoming with text messages sent by top officials. McCarthy told federal lawmakers earlier this year the agency was having trouble getting the text messages due to a hardware malfunction — just weeks after the IRS claimed to losing Lerner’s emails from a hard drive crash.

The EPA, however, claims it had no obligation to preserve text messages from agency officials because they were personal in nature and not subject to federal records law. The agency says it’s still not aware of any unlawful destruction of text messages.

“Recent litigation filed against the Agency claimed that EPA failed to report the destruction of text messages,” an EPA spokeswoman told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “However, EPA reviewed information about the Agency’s policies, practices, and procedures with respect to retention of text messages that qualify as federal records.”

“EPA is not aware of any evidence that federal records have been unlawfully destroyed,” the spokeswoman added. “EPA reviewed information available to it, including information related to the Agency’s upgrade to Microsoft Office 365 that impacted Agency-issued mobile devices.”

Source

Don’t forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook, Google Plus, & Twitter. You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here.

Tagged with 

Chris Horner epa gina mccarthy Hans Bader irs emails justice department lisa jackson lois lerner michael bastasch National Archives and Records Administration text messages
Previous Post

The State as God in Practice: How We Currently Proselytize Via Government, Law & Education

Next Post

The Foundation of a Progressive Country

Next Post

The Foundation of a Progressive Country

About Freedom Outpost

The content of this site has been restored on a non-profit basis to preserve knowledge and serve as a historical archive. All articles were originally published on freedomoutpost.com and belong to their respective authors.

Freedom Outpost was an independent journal published to cover vital public policy issues and offer a public service.

Search in the archive

No Result
View All Result

Latest posts

  • Taking Sides: The Christian's Responsibility in Civic Affairs II
  • EgyptAir MS804 Flight Attendant posted Picture on Facebook of Plane crashing a year before She Died
  • Blue Angels Marine Pilot Capt. Jeff Kuss Could Have Ejected Once He Knew His Plane Was Going To Crash…But He Didn’t
  • Man Jailed After Claiming to be ‘Transgender’ to Assault Women in Shelter
  • Trump: Democrats Against North Korea Summit Just Like They Defend MS-13 & Attack Tax Cuts

InvestorTimes.com

InvestorTimes.com is a privately funded financial publication particularly created for professional and personal investors and intellectually restless individuals.

Our raison d'être is to provide insightful information to any citizen willing to understand global economical markets and the most relevant current affairs.

Contact us: info@investortimes.com

WE ARE LOOKING FOR TALENT

INVESTOR TIMES is always open to the incorporation of talent in its team of journalists and editors. If you would like to be part of our project as a collaborator, we invite you to submit your application.

Contact us: talent@investortimes.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS

Investor Times en Français

Investor Times in Deutsch

Investor Times in Italiano

Investor Times em Português

Investor Times po Polsku

Investor Times на русском языке

El País Financiero (edición en Español)

DMCA.com Protection Status

  • ← Back to INVESTOR TIMES
  • Investing Articles
  • Financial Markets News
  • Tech News
  • Cryptocurrencies News

© INVESTOR TIMES

No Result
View All Result


About Freedom Outpost

The content of this site has been restored on a non-profit basis to preserve knowledge and serve as a historical archive. All articles were originally published on freedomoutpost.com and belong to their respective authors.

Freedom Outpost was an independent journal published to cover vital public policy issues and offer a public service.

© INVESTOR TIMES