The EPA admits it “lost” text messages from top officials
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has been trying to gain access to the text messages of top officials within the EPA but to date they have been unsuccessful. Now the EPA (stop me if you have heard this one before) is admitting these text messages were lost, here is more:
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.
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 EPA is of course stating that this was unintentional:
“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.”
Yeah…right! The CEI was having none of it:
“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.”
And a Federal judge agreed:
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.”
Stay tuned…
America's Watchtower 
I bet they don’t lose or misplace your emails or mine.
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Probably not…
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Reminds me of Sandy Berger stealing the docs from the National Archives! Today, instead of stuffing paper in the socks and pants they just click ‘delete’. Evidence gone! It’s still stored somewhere though – link Snowden revealed – can’t burn or shed digital material as easy.
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Yeah, I guess they learned from the Berger incident! That was another story that sadly the people didn’t seem to care about.
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Yes, just like cattle off to the slaughtering yards, prodded along and not allowed to pause and ‘think’! The ‘thinking’ behind what Berger took was significant. Here’s something that makes sense – scroll-down to the ‘awarded’ comment http://www.webanswers.com/politics/political-events/what-documents-did-sandy-berger-take-from-the-national-archives-8dab80
Some want to ‘pooh-pooh’ it as insignificant, just like all these ‘missing’ emails/text messages.
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As I recall it Bill Clinton defended him by saying he accidentally stuck the documents in his socks. How is that even possible yet nobody cared. Also, didn’t he try to hide some of them under a trailer? These were not the actions of somebody who took some trivial documents and yet nobody seemed to care.
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The EPA is not in business to preserve documents but rather, exists to analyze the mud puddles in our back yards for lilliputian droppings after a hard rain.
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Priorities, priorities, priorities…
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There use to be something called servers. Just a hint.
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And even the Republicans are not investigating that angle, so frustrating!
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