579 FBF: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice with Former Department of Justice Attorney, Sidney Powell

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday. Your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

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It's my pleasure to welcome Cindy Powell to the show, former Department of Justice attorney and author of Licensed to Lie Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. What could be more timely than that? Sidney, welcome. How are you?

Thank you so much. I'm fine, thank you.

It's good to have you. Just give our listeners a sense of geography.

Where are you located at the moment? I'm in Asheville, North Carolina.

Oh, beautiful place. I've been there.

Yes.

Tell us how you came to write the book. I mean, you broke some amazing news. Tell us about that, too.

Yes, I wrote the book not because I wanted to, but because. Because I felt like I had to. I call it the book I literally prayed I would not have to write. It Tells the true story of prosecutorial misconduct, deliberate prosecutors wrongdoing at the highest and worst levels in some of the most major high profile litigation of the last decade, including the Arthur Anderson case, the Merrill Lynch Enron prosecution, and the government's prosecution of United States Senator Ted Stevens, thereby unseating the longest serving Republican in the United States Senate, changing the balance of power in the Senate and enabling the enactment of Obamacare, among other things.

This is just unbelievable. I'm glad you wrote the book because people need to know. They need to know this for sure.

Yes, they do need to know. And I wrote it like a legal thriller. So it's not too full of legalese and everyone should be able to understand that. They say it reads like a John Grisham novel.

Well, I hope they make a movie out of it, or at least a documentary. But a movie would be best.

It would make a good movie.

First of all, you outlined those cases. Tell us why. I mean, I always ask what would be the Motivation for the prosecutors to engage in these dirty deeds. Why would they do it? Like in each of those cases, what do you think their motives were?

It's hard for me to understand. I can't really ascribe a particular motive to them because it's so wrong it's off my radar screen. I do know that they punched their tickets to, you know, very high powered jobs and very lucrative senior positions in major international law firms. And I'm talking about, you know, drawing seven eight figure incomes from that. One became Chief White House Counsel. One became General Counsel, Deputy Director of the FBI. One became the Acting Attorney General for the Criminal division of the Department of Justice that then micromanaged the Stevens prosecution and that wound up being so corrupted Judge Sullivan dismissed the indictment and then started a appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Department of Justice itself and the ironically named Public Integrity Section lawyers who had corrupted that prosecution under the direction of Mr. Matthew Friedrich. Another. Yeah, and another is now head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, Leslie Caldwell. She's the prosecutor who led the government's indictment of Arthur Anderson, only to be reversed by the United States Supreme Court years later. After 85,000 jobs were destroyed, the Supreme Court reversed it nine to nothing, stating it was shocking how little criminal culpability the jury instructions required. And the indictment did not allege criminal conduct.

Okay, so let's maybe go chronologically here and we'll work our way up to Lois Lerner, who is in my opinion should be sitting in jail cooling her heels for contempt or at least sanctioned at the very least. What's the oldest case? Is it the Enron one of the ones that you mentioned?

Yes. The Enron prosecutions were the oldest one the government appointed the Enron task force. The Department of Justice did. Actually, I think Michael Chertoff hand picked.

These prosecutors for someone just kind of give the high level view of that case involved Enron, Arthur Anderson.

Arthur Anderson, Merrill Lynch. There were multiple cases and everyone assumed, of course, there was justifiable public outrage over the complete destruction of Enron. And it was a complicated scenario. There was outrage across the country because so many people lost so much money that led to the creation of this Department of Justice task force that was then untethered from the department because of Bush's connection with Ken Lay, who was of Enron. So this group of hand picked terror Huff prosecutors got together and decided to make up crimes out of things that weren't. It cast a net that was far too broad. Of course there were some people at Enron who had committed crimes, but many who were indicted had not. And they went about it in such a way that they really shut down any opportunity for justice to prevail given the public outrage. You know, that kind of fuels a feeding frenzy for scalps in the first place. And then they named over 100 people as unindicted co conspirators so that anyone in that realm at all had to lawyer up, couldn't talk to anybody else.

Unindicted co conspirators. So that means. What does that mean? Explain the legal implications of that as you will. So in other words, the Department of Justice labeled what you said 100 people?

Over 100 people.

Okay, so over 100 people. Now these were people that probably worked for Marilyn Shanron and Arthur Anderson, right?

Correct.

Okay. And so they labeled them as unindicted co conspirators. So they didn't go after them.

They didn't. The people did not know whether they were coming after them or not. They knew that there was a pall cast over them and that immediately put extreme stress on them and required them to get lawyers, required them to invoke their rights against of their fifth Amendment protections if they were called to testify because the prosecutors were also threatening to indict for perjury or obstruction of justice anyone who testified at any time about any facts that were contrary to the task force view of the facts.

Wow, that's just amazing. So what effect does that have on the case? Like the fact that these people lawyer up, they take the fifth Amendment or what does that do? What is the outcome that creates it.

Made it virtually impossible to mount a defense. For example, the four Merrill lynch executives who were literally just doing their jobs, couldn't even talk to their own in house counsel about what had happened in the transaction. It took us six years to find out the truth about what she had told the grand jury, the Enron grand jury before the indictment. And it turned out that she had testified before the grand jury.

Hang on a second though. The transaction. What is the transaction?

Yeah, the transaction was the. It's called the Enron or Nigerian barge transaction, pursuant to which Merrill lynch invested $7 million.

Okay.

In a power project that Enron was conducting for the country of Nigeria at the request of our State Department.

And I got to ask you something before you dive into more detail. Appreciate the detail. It's really quite fascinating. I have noticed over the years that Merrill lynch as well as Goldman Sachs, but Merrill lynch seems to be involved in so many criminal activities. So many, actually, I don't Know if they're technically criminal per se, but I'll call them criminal for layman terms. They're just wrong. Okay. Are you saying Merrill lynch and Enron weren't guilty of anything? They didn't do anything wrong or Arthur Anderson with the paper shredders and so forth? Because that's my belief is from the public. It seemed like Arthur Anderson, the accounting firm that was in business for what, 150 years before that. My cousin used to work for Arthur Anderson. It seemed like they destroyed documents. Enron, it seems like, was pulling scams with their special purpose vehicles and such. I don't know exactly what Merrill lynch was doing in there, but they always seemed to be involved in something bad. How do you like that for throwing the baby out with a bathwater? Hey, listen, I'm not a lawyer. I don't have to live up to any big standards here. I'm not a prosecutor. So just impression anecdotally, you know, I have not studied this in detail.

That was, that was my impression too, frankly, until I got into the cases. And the book explains that the reason that's what everybody thinks is because that's all anybody heard.

Right, right, of course, yeah. That was in the media and whatever the media sells is what everybody ends up believing.

And that's all the government was sharing because they were hiding the evidence that showed people were innocent. For example, in the Merrill lynch case, they had actually yellow highlighted the from witnesses who had been direct participants in the alleged transaction that was they said was criminal. And the yellow highlighted their exculpatory statements that were favorable to the defense. And they hid them for six years while four Merrill lynch executives went to prison on an indictment that did not even state a criminal offense.

Wow, that's. Now I'm actually starting to feel some sympathy for Merrill Lynch. Did Enron do anything wrong?

I mean, just broadly there were any things done wrong at Enron. Some were bad business judgments, some were overly aggressive. I certainly think their procedures for accounting were way overly aggressive. And there were people at Enron who actually stole money fast. Val Copper and Ben Glisson made sweet plea agreements with the government. Actually Glsen pled guilty without a deal, but then got one later. They actually the young treasurer of Enron to soften him up when he pled guilty and refused to cooperate, they put him straight into solitary confinement for a few weeks.

I mean they really played hardball with these business people. One of our young Merrill lynch executives was sent to a maximum security prison with the worst of the worst. And we got him completely acquitted on appeal.

Esther, how long did he spend in prison?

Eight months.

Wow, that's amazing.

Away from his four year old and two year old in a maximum security federal transfer fac.

And since I asked you the very general question, did Enron do anything wrong, did Merrill lynch do anything wrong at all?

If it did, it was a civil issue only, not a criminal one. Merrill made. Another tactic of the task force was after they destroyed Arthur Anderson merely by indicting it, they turned their sights on Merrill Lynch. Merrill lynch agreed to a very onerous non prosecution agreement that required, among other things, that any Merrill employee who spoke about the trans.

Agree only with the government's view of the case. In other words, they couldn't say anything contrary to the task force view of the case. Or Merrill lynch could be indicted solely within the discretion of the task force. And an indictment of Merrill lynch would have destroyed Merrill Lynch.

How about Arthur Anderson?

Arthur Anderson was actually. Everybody thinks they were convicted of shredding documents. Arthur Anderson was actually charged with witness tampering, not shredding documents. It had no legal obligation to keep any documents at the time the documents were shredded. And as you know, you know, accountants, lawyers, doctors, they're not supposed to have paper flying around. There are things we are supposed to protect and shred. There was no subpoena at the time. And so after Anderson and its 85,000 jobs were destroyed, the Supreme Court reversed it completely, nine to nothing. A unanimous Supreme Court reversal based on the flawed indictment and the fact that the prosecutors and the district judge in Houston took any element of criminal intent out of the jury instructions.

Wow, that's amazing. Really a different story. You know, I got to tell you, I call Wall street the modern version of organized crime somewhat frequently and I still think that. But maybe it is time for another look at this case and some of these other cases. Because there's a really interesting documentary that reframed and I had the. I had the director of this documentary on my show before. It's called Hot Coffee and it really reframed this Stella McDonald's coffee spill case. And McDonald's just completely vilified this poor old lady. It seemed like this ridiculous jury verdict. And immediately I thought and everybody else did knee jerk reaction was oh, we need tort reform. This is absurd that these companies can be lia for this kind of stuff, blah blah, blah. But there's two sides to that story too. So maybe there's two sides to this one. I'm open to hearing it. Okay. I don't want to Spend all our time on this one, though, because there's a few others and we really got to get to Lois Lerner as well. Any other comments about Enron, Arthur Anderson, Merrill lynch, that case, if you would.

One of the things I'm encouraging people to do is to wait to form judgments until we know more of the facts. Because it is so easy to jump to a conclusion with respect to anything. I was guilty of it myself in this, and the book reveals that as it goes along. But there was so much out there that the government hid and then the prosecutors that hid it rose to extremely powerful positions and have basically been running our government for the last six years and nothing has been done to them. They've not only not been punished or called to account for their wrongdoing in any way, they were all promoted.

Of course. That's what happens in our system. You do something wrong, you get promoted, apparently. Next case, if you will. Next case on the docket.

The next one would have been Anderson was the first conviction. It was the first conviction by the task force. And then the four Merrill lynch defendants.

The Merrill lynch defendants from the barge case. The judge, as he sent them to prison, literally said, I realize you were just doing your jobs. But he refused to dismiss the indictment even though it stated something that had never been charged as a criminal offense in the history of our country. It was a completely unprecedented application of the statutes to facts like were in this case. So the four Merrill lynch executives went to prison while the prosecutors had actually yellow highlighted and hidden the evidence that showed they were innocent.

Unbelievable. This is insane. This is so terrifyingly scary that you could be. And this could happen to any of us. Okay? You may think you live this pristine life and believe me, there are so many laws, everybody's breaking laws nowadays. Even if you don't speed in your car, you're breaking a law. Trust me, the government has a law that you are breaking. Some, I'll say ambitious in a snarky way. District attorney or someone at the doj, they could just have it out for you and. Or they could be trying to win re election or they could be trying to further their career in some way and they'll just go and ruin your life. And maybe take away your freedom. And maybe take away your life.

Yes. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of the 12 out of 14 counts of the Merrill lynch convictions because the indictment was fatally flawed and the defendant's conduct was not criminal. But we couldn't even get them bail pending appeal. So they served a year in prison while their appeals were pending, only to be told by the court that there was no criminal offense charged.

So that shattered all of their lives. But the government was undeterred by the reversal. They decided they would just white out the portions of the indictment that the Fifth Circuit had specifically criticized. So they whited those out, and we're going to drag the defendants through a second trial. So these men. My client, for example, was in litigation for almost 10 years.

The entire teenage years of both his children. And going back to your comment about people you know leading pristine lives, Dan Bailey was one of the Merrill lynch executives indicted and sent to prison. And Judge Worlan, as he sentenced him, told him he'd never had such a fine person stand before him for sentencing.

And the judge had to do it, though, right? Because that's the law.

Well, no, he didn't have to do it. He should have dismissed the indictment because we made the same arguments to him that the court of appeals reversed on the indictment, did not state a crime.

But sometimes the judge is tied, right? They have to do things, even if the judge doesn't even agree with it. Right. Just because of the way the law is written.

No, no, no. He could. If he had applied the law correctly, he would have dismissed the indictment. There would never have been a trial.

Well, why would he even say that then? Why would he say, I've never had such a fine person? You know, it sounds like he didn't want to convict him or sentence him.

I mean, he didn't want to have to send him to prison. But when he refused to dismiss the indictment and allow it to go to trial, then that was the consequence.

Wow. Amazing.

But that was because, I mean, he didn't. He didn't do his job in any way, shape or form. The TR Trial was a total farce. I've never seen a trial so infected with errors as the Merrill lynch trial was from the indictment through the jury instruction.

It's amazing, though. I mean, all these bigwigs at Merrill lynch, they must have had the world's best attorneys defending them, right?

They did. It didn't matter. I mean, when you have a judge that's determined to ensure your conviction and prosecutors who hide the evidence that show you're innocent, Anybody can be sent to prison. No one in this country is safe from this kind of misconduct by the government. And the only person who can stand between the prosecutors and the jail cell is a good federal judge. And if you have one that just sits there and watches the parade go by, it's not Going to do the right thing.

So one of the things you talk about in your book is the dangerous fuel of public outrage. This is kind of where the media turns us all into lynch mobs, right?

Yes.

We just want to bring people to justice so bad that we become blinded and the courts become blinded. You know, how much pressure do these judges and prosecutors feel to just nail somebody? Maybe it's not even the right person.

The prosecutors were selected for the purpose of. Of doing that. I mean, that was their whole mission, was to see how many scalps they could rack up and see what kind of crimes they could create. Basically, on behalf of the Enron task force, they went in with the mindset that's totally contrary to the way I was raised in the Department of Justice. There's an old Supreme Court case that talks about how a prosecutor is supposed to seek justice, not convicted, and while he is at liberty to strike fair blows, he cannot strike foul ones. They violated every aspect of that mantra. Yeah.

Before we get to Lois Lerner, can we do anything about this?

Yeah, there. There is. There are a number of things that can be done. Several years ago, after the Ted Stevens conviction was thrown out, Judge Sullivan named a special prosecution, prosecutor, Henry Schulke, to investigate the Department of Justice. He came out with a mammoth report, about 500 pages long, detailing his investigation. And a lot of the evidence that he had obtained, he found systematic and pervasive intentional misconduct. Within the Department of Justice, there's a nonprofit organization called Pogo Project on government oversight.org.

And it has also, by virtue of Freedom of Information act requests, identified over 400 instances of prosecutorial misconduct in the last decade that has been intentional or reckless. Eric Holder refuses even to release the names of the prosecutors who engaged in misconduct that the department itself has verified as intentional or rash. Reckless.

Okay, tell us a little bit about the Ted Stevens story, though.

Yes.

Give us the background on that.

Senator Stevens was indicted by one of the former Enron task force prosecutors, Matthew Friedrich, at his instance and insistence when he became acting Attorney General in charge of the criminal division of the department.

They also, in that case, hid evidence that Serial seriously impeached the government's main witness, with whom they had made a very sweet deal and basically controlled anything and everything he would want to say or they would need him to say. Among the evidence they hid was the fact that he had engaged in sex trafficking with a minor and engaged in subordination of perjury, rather crucial things that should have been disclosed to the defense in that case. And they also had Made up a story to explain a note that Senator Stevens had written on which his entire defense was based.

So the Senator was convicted a few days before the election for his Senate seat. That was one of the most hotly contested races in the country at the time. He lost the election by only a few votes, despite the criminal conviction. Because Ted Stevens was beloved in Alaska. The airport was named for him. Everybody loved Ted Stevens. He was a World War II hero. He was a former U.S. attorney, just done all kinds of good things for the state of Alaska. So he only lost by a few votes. But that changed the balance of power in the United States Senate.

An unusual thing happened. A young FBI agent assigned to the case broke ranks from his fellow agents and blew the whistle on prosecutorial misconduct that he had witnessed. That happened in December, after the conviction in late October, early November, There had already been any number of instances where the defendants and the judge had caught the government in one lie after the other. Having failed to disclose this or fail to disclose that, they sent a witness back to Alaska to keep him off the witness stand. We found out. They found out later it was because he had not done well in his mock cross examination. They claimed it was because he wasn't feeling well and he was under the weather. But the defense had subpoenaed him also. They sent him back without letting the defense know. So a number of things had been discovered throughout the trial. Well, the FBI agent blowing the whistle just blew it wide open. Judge Emmett Sullivan. And the District of Columbia was absolutely livid. The defense had been filing motion after motion. So that led to a new set of prosecutors being appointed. Judge Sullivan held the original prosecutors in contempt of court. That triggered a requirement within the Justice Department that new prosecutors be assigned to the case. It didn't take those new prosecutors but a couple of weeks to find the evidence that the original team had hidden. And that led to Eric Holder rushing in as the newly appointed Attorney General. I think he'd only been in office three or four weeks at the time to dismiss the indictment in the interest of justice and announce that he was going to clean up the department. You know, this would send the message throughout the Department that Brady violations wouldn't be tolerated. Well, we were still in the Merrill lynch litigation at the time and hadn't even discovered the yellow highlighted evidence yet. But I still had a strong sense that the government was hiding things. Nothing made any sense. They'd only given us few line summaries of the testimony of these crucial witnesses. And we knew there had to be more out There in terms of. Of notes or the FBI reports of their transactions or their grand jury testimony or SEC testimony, they wouldn't give us any of that. So we kept pounding for that. Well, after the Stevens debacle and the dismissal of that indictment, the third team of prosecutors assigned to the Merrill case, as they were trying to retry the defendants, did give us a few little things.

And In March of 2010, they gave us a disc. And that disc, unbeknownst to them, they apparently didn't review it before they gave it to us, contained the yellow highlighting of the evidence that directly contradicted the government's entire case against the Mural defendants. So they produced that only by accident and didn't realize they'd even done it.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's just unbelievable. Can these prosecutors be prosecuted for destruction of jobs? Yeah. Going on these witch hunts. I mean, does that ever happen, though? It probably can happen.

It can happen. I know of one time that it happened. It is extremely rare.

One of the reasons I had to write the book is because we couldn't get the Department of Justice to do anything about this. My client still stands convicted of. Of perjury and obstruction of justice for expressing his personal understanding of a telephone call he wasn't on, even though Andrew Weissman, the prosecutor in the grand jury, had told him to share his personal understanding, whether it was accurate or not. And even though, as it turns out, his personal understanding was absolutely true and had been yellow highlighted by the government, by the actual participants on the call.

Unbelievable. Okay, so prosecution is rare, if ever. It's so rare, it's negligible. Right, but what about civil liability? If one of these prosecutors goes after you, you can't sue the dang judge. They're pretty much immune. But can you sue the prosecutor?

That is extremely difficult. Also, there is a little bit of precedent for that, but. But again, it is so rare as to be negligible and a standard so hard to meet as to be negligible.

What's the standard? Why is it so hard?

I don't remember the precise wording of it, but it requires a significant level of proof, and the courts are just not interpreting it with any sort of leniency at all. And the bar associations are doing nothing. We filed grievances. Bill Hodes, one of the leading legal ethics experts in the country, and I filed grievances against Andrew Weissman, who became general counsel to the FBI, Kathryn Rummler, who became chief White House counsel, and Matthew Friedrich, who became the person who micromanaged the Stevens prosecution. We Filed grievances against those with their respective bar associations. Because after we found the yellow highlighting, the 5th Circuit did hold that the prosecutors had plainly suppressed evidence favorable to the defense. There's an Ethical Rule 3.8, a special rule governing prosecutors that says that is a serious ethical violation.

Well, the Department of Justice defended Weissman and they said, like the Fifth Circuit did, and it's refusing to reverse the conviction until of my client on the perjury and obstruction charges that were ridiculous. And no new trial? No nothing. In fact, we couldn't even get a hearing on the motion for new trial because of the yellow highlighting.

You were talking about what we can do about it. Did you cover all those things? You mentioned an organization, pogo. I think just quickly, maybe, you know, one or two more. Yeah. And then I want to talk about Lois Lerner.

Yes. Well, there was legislation proposed for in Congress called the Fairness and Disclosure of Evidence. And there's going to be a new act introduced called the Prosecutorial Integrity act that's designed to put some teeth in the rule that requires prosecutors to disclose evidence favorable to the defense and to set some timelines for that.

The Fairness and Disclosure of Evidence act was widely supported from the ACLU through the national association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to the Chamber of Commerce. I mean, everybody supported. Died in committee because it was opposed by the now ironically named Department of Justice.

Yeah.

And so now the Prosecutorial Integrity act will be introduced. We will try again to get that legislation passed, and hopefully there will be more impetus to pass it, particularly with the book out and. And people reading it and looking, listening to radio shows like this. Also, judges can enter Brady compliance orders, district court judges at the trial and level, and the states and the federal system could do that tomorrow and require prosecutors to produce the actual evidence. Summaries should rarely ever be allowed. They shouldn't have been allowed in our case. If we had gotten the actual documents, this wouldn't have happened.

That could be a good step in the right direction.

Yeah, that's an immediate step in the right direction. I also want to encourage people not to shirk their jury duty. And everybody thinks it's such a pain, and it does take time out of your life, but it's one of the places a single juror is the last bastion of democracy, because a single juror can stop an unjust criminal conviction.

That's a great saying, by the way. A single juror, just you, one person, is the last bastion of democracy. It reminds me of the great quote by Ayn Rand when she's talking about group rights, the concept of does a group have any rights? Right. And you know, nowadays we have all these groups and they want rights, but the smallest minority on earth is the individual. There's no such thing as group rights, only individual rights.

Yep. And you know, John Galt, who is John Galt, comes out in theaters tomorrow.

Oh, the third one is already out.

Part three comes out.

That's great. I have a couple friends that were involved in the production of that movie. I'm sure it'll be awesome. Let's talk about the IRS scandal really quickly. We've definitely taken a deep dive into this stuff, but this is just disgusting. What is going on with Lois lerner and her BlackBerry? And you broke that story. Tell us more about it.

Yes. Judge Emmett Sullivan, one of the heroes in the book License to Lie, is the judge who is presiding over Judicial Watches Freedom of Information act lawsuit against the irs, pursuant to which they've requested the same emails that Congress has been trying to get.

Judge Sullivan was the one who appointed the special prosecutor in the Stevens case to investigate the Department of Justice. So he is not going to sit and watch the parade go by. He is a judge of great integrity and courage, and he is very interested and doing what's right and fair. So when the first affidavits were filed in response to his order, he had also appointed a special magistrate to assist the parties in finding emails from other sources. That magistrate judge is an expert in electronic discovery, so they are working on it. Judge Sullivan wasn't satisfied with the first affidavits that IRS provided in response to his questions about, you know, where are the emails and what happened to this, this computer? And first it was one, and then it was seven, and then it was almost 20. And just last week they came out with another five, had crashed. Basically, the answer is if Congress wants the subpoenas, that person. I mean, if Congress wants the emails, that person's computer crashed.

Unbelievable. I mean, that's just. If I did that in the case, I would get fined and sanctioned and Congress can't even get the emails. That's amazing.

It is. It is extraordinary. Extraordinary.

So how do these people get away with this crap? I mean, it's disgusting.

I don't think they're going to get away with it much longer with Judge Solid. After the first declarations were filed and he wasn't satisfied with those answers, he requested requested second declarations, and he specifically asked about a BlackBerry because they'd said nothing about it. Well, when the government filed the second set of declarations, you had to read them very carefully and put the pieces together. But they disclosed that Lois Lerner actually had two blackberries. They described one by serial number, they described the other one by date. So I sat down with the two declarations, ran a timeline, you know, kept track of the numbers and realized that they were admitting that they had destroyed Lois Lerner's BlackBerry that would have applied and had the emails on it for the time that Congress was requesting. She turned it in for destruction and got a new one on Valentine's Day 2012, which was when Congress had really focused on her. They'd already talked to her and IRS destroyed it in June of 2012. Her computer had crashed in. I think it was April of 2011.

Her computer had conveniently and allegedly crashed.

Right. Just a few days after she got the request from Congress for the emails.

Here's what's funny about this whole case. I mean, certainly you would expect that the IRS backside their computers, for God's sake. Right?

Right. They also terminated their long standing contract for document backup.

All of this coalescing to be such a convenient series of events here.

Yes. And I've got a number of articles on this topic as it developed@observer.com a lot of those have gone viral and been widely reported and used by other media as well.

Here's a snarky idea as to where to get Lois Lerner's data and her emails from. Why don't we just go to the nsa? Don't they have everything?

Right. Several people have suggested that, yeah.

Oh, I thought that was an original idea. Darn it.

Sorry. No. Several people have suggested that if you read the comments to the articles on theobserver.com, you'll see comments to that effect.

Taryn, I can't be original as hard as I try.

The government did admit to Judicial Watch a week or two ago that there is a massive government backup system. But they claim it'd be too hard and too onerous for them to go find the emails there. So that's why they said there weren't any. Yeah.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Just lie because it's difficult and obstruct justice because it's too hard to go find them.

Sure, yeah, of course. Okay, so what else do we need to know about the irs? I mean, basically this case just give the listeners the overall view. I'm sorry, we didn't do that. First, the case is about the IRS targeting or not approving tax exempt status of like Tea Party groups, right?

Yes, political. The use of IRS for political purposes. To harass conservative groups, especially before Obama's reelection in 2012. And there is the inspector general for treasury, who's the watchdog over IRS in house with the government, even confirmed in his report that improper political targeting had occurred. And, you know, Lois Lerner's activities were totally inappropriate.

We all saw the testimony of some people in these groups that couldn't get their political group approved, their political action committee or whatever it was, or their nonprofit. And it's just. This is unbelievable that the Obama administration is using the IRS as a weapon to target political opponents. I mean, that is just an outrage. An outrage is like an understatement. That is disgusting.

Yeah.

And how high up, I mean, did that come from Obama himself? I mean, it must have. He must have known about it.

It definitely, it definitely has to go into the White House or there wouldn't be such an extraordinary effort to refrain from producing the paper. And all these ridiculous, mysterious computer crashes that defy logic, reason, or reality, and basically are intellectually insulting to even 10 and 15 year olds in this country who know that computers don't crash like that.

You know, even if they do crash, the data can still be recovered most of the time.

Yes.

The only thing that really makes it so you can't recover the data from what I understand is a fire or.

Drilling a hole in the hard drive.

Yeah. A complete physical destruction of it too.

Yeah. In fact, Lois Lerner's hard drive was just scratched, according to the initial report. And supposedly one person had testified to Congress that he suggested it be sent to an outside vendor to recover the emails. IRS didn't do that. Instead, they completely physically shredded it and they did the same with the BlackBerry. They wiped it and then they physically destroyed it.

Unbelievable. This is just disgusting. These critics.

If any of us did that, we'd be under the jail. I mean, try, you know, not being able to produce your material for an audit because your computer crashed and you.

Shredded the computer and conveniently they didn't lose any audit or taxpayer files. They can still go after the taxpayers.

Yeah. It's just amazing that only the, the email traffic between the folks in the White House and around the political targeting of the conservative groups seems to have been lost. Meanwhile, There was an IRS person who made over 165 visits to the White House during the same time frame in person.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Okay, just wrap this all up for us. We've been going a little long here. Any closing comments on anything give out your website. Tell people where they can find the bar.

Yes, read Licensed to lie exposing corruption in the Department of Justice. The website is licensed to lie.com the book is definitely available on Amazon. It also should be through various bookstores. I tweet at Sydney Powell followed by the number one and like License to Lie on Facebook. Tell your friends it's on Kindle and Nook. It's available in every form.

Fantastic. And Sydney, give out that Twitter again. But spell your first name the way you spell Sidney.

Yes, S, I, D, N, E, Y, P, O, W, E, L, L. The numeral one.

I really hope that they make a movie out of your book because number one, I think it'll be fascinating. But number two, that's the only way the mainstream culture will ever know any of this stuff.

That's. That's true. It would reach a much wider audience if it goes to that form.

Very, very important topic and very interesting. Sidney Powell, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you very much. Oh, and remind people also to go to theobserver.com to read the assorted articles, including one about the White House and the emails.

Good stuff. Sidney Powell, thank you.

Thank you.

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