[O'Reilly Factor] IRS getting grilled on Capitol Hill

[Ubiquitous]

BOLLING: Hi. I'm Eric Bolling, in for Bill O'Reilly.


Our top story tonight: the IRS getting grilled on Capitol Hill. Today,
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen faced a grueling hearing in front of the
House Ways and Means Committee. The tax agency has been slammed after
admitting it lost two years worth of emails from IRS official Lois
Lerner, the central figure in the targeting of conservative groups. But
apparently, the IRS doesn't think he did anything wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMP: What I didn't hear in that was an apology to this committee.

KOSKINEN: I don't think an apology is owed. There is not single email
has been lost since the start of this investigation. Every email has
been preserved that we have. We have produced or will produce by the end
--

CAMP: You don't think the time period between January 2009 and April
2011 is relevant to this investigation?

KOSKINEN: It's very relevant timeframe.

CAMP: All right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLLING: While, meanwhile Democrats on the committee wasted no time
today trying to discredit the entire investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you ever been in Benghazi?

KOSKINEN: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How about Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico, where space
aliens allegedly came. Have you ever responsibility for that?

KOSKINEN: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you ever had custody of the president's birth
certificate?

KOSKINEN: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, Commissioner, I believe one of the mistakes
that you have made in dealing with the committee today is that you did
assume professionally that this was a serious inquiry. I believe it is
an endless conspiracy theory that's involved here that is being
exploited solely for political purposes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLLING: Well, despite Democrats' best efforts to sweep the whole
scandal under the rug, can we really still believe that there is not a
smidgen of corruption involved here as President Obama put it to Bill
O'Reilly back in February?

Joining us now is Steve Leser, Democrat strategist and aide for
President Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

Steve, that hearing, that hearing, I just -- I was -- my jaw dropped
when the Democrats started playing that game, Area 51, birth
certificate. What did you -- they were making a mockery out of it. A
very serious topic, don't you think?

STEVE LESER, AIDE FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA'S 2008 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN:
Well, thanks for having me on, Eric.

I have to admit I agree with him. I totally agree that this is a trumped
up scandal. We can talk about the particulars here. The emails if you
want to.

BOLLING: What's trumped up about a scandal? He would trying to find out
if Lois Lerner the charge of the special exempt groups, she can't find
two years of emails. We are trying to find out what happened there.

LESER: Well, at the very base of this scandal you have whether
conservative groups were unfairly targeted, they weren't. We have a
number of analyses that show that liberal and progressive groups were
denied tax exempt status at the same rate.

BOLLING: Stay on these emails. Stay on these emails. Where are they?

LESER: Well, OK, regarding the emails -- I spent nearly 20 years in
I.T., including two to three years consulting on disaster recovery and
business continuity. You'd be surprised how many instances you see like
this in the private and public sector.

BOLLING: How many?

LESER: How many, what?

BOLLING: Instances have you seen where it was two years worth of emails.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLLING: Oh, by the way, once the emails were lost, there were a lot of
people who said, you know what, don't worry, they are on the hard
drives. Guess what happened yesterday?

LESER: They said they couldn't find the hard drives.

BOLLING: They lost the hard drives, too.

LESER: That's actually -- you know, so when you have a position where
you have public data on hard drives, and those people get new computers,
you have to destroy the hard drives. Otherwise, now you have people's
personal data out there, particularly in the case of the IRS. Their
income, their addresses, phone numbers and things like that out there in
on hard drives, then you would say that you are not doing the right
thing to protect people's data.

BOLLING: Steve, there was a hearing where -- and I can't remember who it
was who was testifying, said, yes, don't worry, we are going to turn
over all the emails and that was in February. Now, all of a sudden in
May, they can't find the emails or the hard drives. Now, this gentleman,
John Koskinen, says, don't worry we have them all. We are still looking
for them.

LESER: But the root of this problem is the fact that prior to 2013, the
IRS had an antiquated back up -- tape backup system to protect its email
data and every time -- every six months, old data was essentially
deleted.

So, if you lost or had data destroyed, the clock started clicking. Six
months later, if you didn't have that data recovered, it was gone.
That's the problem here. And they went.

BOLLING: Or the root of the problem is that they just think the American
people are fools and we are going to believe anything they are shoveling
our way, including we can't find the emails.


LESER: You know what? If they had somehow circumvented the policy that
was in place for email recovery and retention, I would say that there is
something there to worry about, that's what you typically see when
companies or organizations are trying to hide something. And they have
actually circumvented corporate policy regarding emails or whatever else
it is.

But they actually, this is exactly what you would expect in this kind of
situation where data was lost. And more than six months transpired.

BOLLING: If I were to use that excuse to the IRS, that I just couldn't
-- you know what, I lost those receipts. They were on my hard drive and
guess what? I recycled my hard drive. I go to jail. So would you.

LESER: Different types of data have different requirements in terms it
of safeguarding them and making sure the information is back up, sure.
The IRS has critical systems where you submit, you know, your income and
the taxes paid to them. They have a different requirement. The IRS's
emails they are not as mission critical to what the U.S. has.

BOLLING: Someone said, well, what about all the recipients of some of
the emails that Lois Lerner was sending? Guess what happened? They
couldn't find those either.

LESER: They actually recovered 86,000 of those.

BOLLING: I know. But not the ones they were looking for. They were
looking for period of time where Lois Lerner was emailing. We -- the
committee wants to know who she was emailing. What she was saying.

I will be conspiratorial. I will throw it out there. What if she is
emailing the White House? What if the White House says, yes, go after
the Tea Party groups, go after conservative groups because we don't want
to deal with them in 2012?

LESER: Well, here's the problem. As I said at the very beginning,
conservative groups were targeted at the same rate liberal and
progressive groups were, because of the requirements of these 501c
organizations. These organizations are not supposed to be doing the
types of things they are doing on both sides of the aisle. That's the
root of the problem.

Paul Ryan wants to yell at somebody and take some action. He should
create a new 501c4 organization.

BOLLING: Also part of the problem taking the Fifth. She's taking the
Fifth. We can't get the emails. The servers are gone. The people she
sent emails to, those hard drives are gone. Everything is gone.

Where is the transparency here, Steve? The American people aren't dumb.
They watch this stuff on TV and they go, there's no way. There's no way.
This just does not add up.

When it doesn't add up, it usually doesn't add up.

LESER: Well, I will agree with you there. When Lois Lerner took the
Fifth, I was a little bit perturbed. I was a little bit upset.

Here is the thing though -- with all of these scandals that you see that
Republicans are trying to monger here on the American people. They stop
short of actually trying to find out what the truth is. They want the
allegation to be out there. They don't actually go all the way to find
out and get to the bottom of it, because they know at the bottom of it
there is no scandal.

BOLLING: Either that or the truth is hidden in those emails. We will
never know. At least we won't know.

Steve, we're going to have to leave it right there. Thank you very much.

LESER: Thanks, Eric.


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"So this is another big mess, for which Mr. Obama is directly
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