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Gumball Gumption posted:Yeah, I expect they're being careful here but this is the same FBI with cases like the Gretchen Whitmer plot. The FBI loves a fishing expedition. Reminder that the Gretchen Whitmer plot is only a fishing expedition in the Fox News extended universe. One of the defendants has already pled out to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and been sentenced to 6 years, the rest are scheduled to go to trial in October.
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Aug 9, 2022 14:58
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Racing Stripe posted:Yeah. He views them as colleagues and respects them. He has a ton of knowledge and experience, but he assumes a minimum level of professionalism and justification in their actions that most people on this board would not. Given that Popehat has far more experience directly dealing with them and their work than anybody on this board likely does, and is generally thought to be a reasonable person, why do you think that he's wrong? Comparing his expertise to our expertise doesn't make any sense because we don't really have expertise about the FBI. Instead of making it about how we feel about the FBI, we should make it about why we think the FBI would be doing this. Automata 10 Pack posted:oh, so trump forced the raid by not handing over borrowed material? hmm Can you be a little more specific about what you're talking about here?
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Aug 9, 2022 15:07
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Shifty Pony posted:Trump developing a habit of showing off classified documents to impress people (or in an attempt to support his unhinged conspiracy bullshit) and the FBI/DOJ deciding to hurry up and put a stop to it would make a lot of sense. I don’t mean to cspam it up but I wouldn’t be surprised if the documents are just the stupidest, most random poo poo you can think of. Like someone at his club loves JFK conspiracies so he just took all the files to show off to a golf buddy.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:13
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Main Paineframe posted:Given that Popehat has far more experience directly dealing with them and their work than anybody on this board likely does, and is generally thought to be a reasonable person, why do you think that he's wrong? Having more experience directly dealing with a group can, frequently, make one more amenable to the professed ideals of said group far more than an external view of it. The old "Prosecutors and Police working together" problem as it were. Or at least that is, I suspect, the argument. I believe the implication is that this has been planned in advance, or leaked, to gin up GOP voters with something to care about to prevent the midterms being a bit less of a home run for Republicans.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:14
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Josef bugman posted:
then why would you do this now, drowning out your major legislative victory? Elections aren't for another 90(+?) days and its still the summer. This could be forgotten in a few weeks time. If this was timed for a media victory, you'd do it after labor day when campaigns start to ramp up.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:18
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Jarmak posted:Reminder that the Gretchen Whitmer plot is only a fishing expedition in the Fox News extended universe. One of the defendants has already pled out to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and been sentenced to 6 years, the rest are scheduled to go to trial in October. Thank you for saying this. I was about to ask why that poster characterized the plot against Whitmer like that.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:19
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Racing Stripe posted:Yeah. He views them as colleagues and respects them. He has a ton of knowledge and experience, but he assumes a minimum level of professionalism and justification in their actions that most people on this board would not. he's a defense attorney. he repeatedly discusses what fuckups prosecutors/investigators are, which is why he's a good follow on this sort of stuff: he's good at his job and knows both sides of a criminal case, and is very skeptical of the government line. that said, you're just basically misunderstanding his point - which is not that the FBI is always right, but that they would have had to go through a paper trail and a lot of approvals with a lot of people who would be forced to really consider if signing off on this raid was going to be good for their careers. that's the whole point of what he's saying: not that the FBI does have the goods on Trump, but that they must believe they've got a very good chance of having the goods on him. And, the document that you could look to in order to see what the FBI thinks they're investigating (note that the Trump camp is repeatedly leaking what they say that says, but aren't leaking it). basically, all of the speculating is about inferring the case that the FBI/DOJ believes it has - not the underlying strength of the case (that said - the fbi is pretty good about knowing when they have a case or not) one of the things that he perhaps assumes people know (they don't) is that magistrate judges are not real judges: they are, basically, court employees. they would like to be appointed as district court judges, so they have actual "careers" to consider as well. being the person who signs off on a dumb politically explosive warrant is bad for them too.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:28
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Jarmak posted:Reminder that the Gretchen Whitmer plot is only a fishing expedition in the Fox News extended universe. One of the defendants has already pled out to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and been sentenced to 6 years, the rest are scheduled to go to trial in October. Retrial started today for the two ring leaders after the previous case deadlocked because of poor FBI work. Here's Romeo Langhorne if you need more examples of poor FBI work and fishing exhibitions. https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/19/supposed-terrorist-gets-20-years-in-prison-for-uploading-a-bomb-making-video-an-fbi-agent-made-for-him/ There's lots of examples is the point.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:30
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Josef bugman posted:Having more experience directly dealing with a group can, frequently, make one more amenable to the professed ideals of said group far more than an external view of it. The old "Prosecutors and Police working together" problem as it were. Or at least that is, I suspect, the argument. Why do people keep bringing up ideals and principles? None of the analysis of the FBI's behavior is dependent on those things nor has anyone made a case they should be. Also Popehat is a defense attorney. edit: f,b
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Aug 9, 2022 15:32
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Mooseontheloose posted:then why would you do this now, drowning out your major legislative victory? Elections aren't for another 90(+?) days and its still the summer. This could be forgotten in a few weeks time. If this was timed for a media victory, you'd do it after labor day when campaigns start to ramp up. You would do it because of that? That's the implication of "head of the FBI I'd a Trump appointee" it's done by the GOP. Again I could be summarising wrong but that seems the implication.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:35
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Gumball Gumption posted:Retrial started today for the two ring leaders after the previous case deadlocked because of poor FBI work. You provided an example of the FBI securing a 20 year conviction, not really evidence they go on fruitless fishing expeditions. Also my bad on the October trail date, that's for the state charges. The federal case ended on a hung jury for the ring leaders in April, you'll have to provide something to backup "because of poor FBI work"
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Aug 9, 2022 15:39
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Jarmak posted:You provided an example of the FBI securing a 20 year conviction, not really evidence they go on fruitless fishing expeditions. They entrapped someone into a 20 year sentence. I'm good on continuing this.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:41
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Main Paineframe posted:Given that Popehat has far more experience directly dealing with them and their work than anybody on this board likely does, and is generally thought to be a reasonable person, why do you think that he's wrong? Sorry, this has led me too far into the weeds. I don't think he's wrong. I think a link in his logical chain, though, is weak, and this same link (the FBI is more trustworthy/professional/by the book than those other law enforcement organizations) is going to be coming up a lot in discussions of the implications of this raid. The thread was more focused on the standards that they are required to meet rather than their own behavior, but in people's minds (mine, at least) is still partly boils down to "This was the FBI, so it must be serious." Racing Stripe fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 15:45
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Racing Stripe posted:you really need to be skeptical of anyone saying that this must be big because the FBI’s ethical code and standards wouldn’t permit them to do such a thing frivolously. They are not above a fishing expedition, just like any other law enforcement agency. quote:Federal magistrate judges tend to require relatively thorough, specific, and well-documented applications, as opposed to state judges, who will generally sign a warrant that looks like something Gary Busey blew out of his nose after Fourth of July weekend. fakeedit: I see much of this was covered. Gumball Gumption posted:Retrial started today for the two ring leaders after the previous case deadlocked because of poor FBI work.  ) is a fishing expedition. Particularly in context, the agency's entrapment fetish is the opposite of a fishing expedition on a search warrant. The Whitmer investigation kicked off with a tip from one of the collaborators detailing the discussions, planning, and (as we see in the mixed judicial results) arguably overt acts. A fishing expedition into the Whitmer plot, in common usage, would be "these militia nutjobs sure are talking a lot in private and taking weird trips together, let's find out why".
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Aug 9, 2022 15:46
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Gumball Gumption posted:Retrial started today for the two ring leaders after the previous case deadlocked because of poor FBI work. it's a pretty big point that you are casually throwing around nonsense fox news claims as truth without even stopping to consider it. i mean, you were the one who chose "oh the fbi arresting the people plotting to kidnap a democratic governor and then execute her" was your preferred go-to example of unjustified fbi fishing expeditions, which is something that should really trouble you about what kind of information you are wallowing in, and what information you choose to rely on. like that was both your go-to example and the example you thought would be convincing to people, which should be very troubling for you! going back to the main point: the FBI does plenty of bad work. it goes on plenty of fishing expeditions. but the FBI does not idly go on the same fishing expeditions against a former president that they do against some random poor person. that's the core point. conducting a pointless search against someone who is poor or powerless doesn't hurt people's careers. conducting a pointless search against donald trump will certainly hurt or end careers, so the people signing off on it must believe they've got enough to avoid that damage. do they, in fact, have that? they might not - the FBI/DOJ has faceplanted before on big public corruption cases (Ted Stevens is the one I would look to) and could certainly do so here. the key thing to remember is the Ted Stevens case was a career-killer for people involved, and there's no chance the people here don't know that.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:47
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Racing Stripe posted:Sorry, this has led me too far into the weeds. I don't think he's wrong. I think a link in his logical chain, though, is weak, and this same link (the FBI is more trustworthy/professional/by the book than those other law enforcement organizations) is going to be coming up a lot in discussions of the implications of this raid. i think he was more stressing that magistrate judges are much more professional about warrant applications than state court judges and require more before stamping a warrant. not that the fbi is inherently more by-the-book than state police - they are forced by circumstances to do their paperwork better this is much the same as how when i submit papers to a court, they contain capital letters, full punctuation, and are spell-checked, despite what you might assume from my posting. it is not that i become a better writer, it is that i am forced to try harder by circumstances than i would otherwise and he's right on magistrate judges - i know some ausas and what popehat is saying matches what i have heard (that even warrants issued against randos get a lot of scrutiny from magistrate judges and you can get a warrant application kicked back for more info, though of course it varies by judge).
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Aug 9, 2022 15:51
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So trump was storing top-secret documents in a bomb shelter in Mar a Lago, that apparently received a security upgrade when staff installed a padlock on the door. https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/mar-a-lago-search-warrant-fbi-donald-trump/index.html https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/local/2017/08/10/little-known-feature-trump-s/7803682007/ This is all very funny. With this raid conducted by a COINTEL guy, who wants to bet that Trump had, like, plans to the F-35 or something he was trying to sell to the highest bidding Russian oligarch?
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Aug 9, 2022 16:05
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Re: the Whitmer trial, here's a link. https://apnews.com/article/whitmer-kidnap-plot-trial-hung-jury-e5b58234b134e32d9655288a51f107fb quote:Prosecutors said the group was steeped in anti-government extremism and furious over Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions. There was evidence of a crudely built “shoot house” to practice going in and out of her vacation home, and a night ride by Croft, Fox and covert operatives to check the property. An entrapment defense rarely works as you basically have to admit you did what you were accused of, but got forced to do it by law enforcement. It looks like the defense attorneys were able to use a defense of "our clients are big talking morons," and it was enough to get a hung jury. I wonder what happened during voir dire. The worst people in the world often end up on juries, unfortunately.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:07
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evilweasel posted:but the FBI does not idly go on the same fishing expeditions against a former president that they do against some random poor person. that's the core point. conducting a pointless search against someone who is poor or powerless doesn't hurt people's careers. conducting a pointless search against donald trump will certainly hurt or end careers, so the people signing off on it must believe they've got enough to avoid that damage. do they, in fact, have that? they might not - the FBI/DOJ has faceplanted before on big public corruption cases (Ted Stevens is the one I would look to) and could certainly do so here. the key thing to remember is the Ted Stevens case was a career-killer for people involved, and there's no chance the people here don't know that. Ya there seems to a disconnect of empathy here. Any one of us can easily, from a place of anonymity and without repercussion to our lives and livelihood, say 'ya gently caress trump, search all his poo poo and then humiliate him in front of his kids' or whatever. It's entirely different to do something like this from a public, career-oriented position where his followers can find out who you are and the decision follow you for the rest of your life. Many people had to have seen evidence supporting this action and thought it concrete enough to put the rest of their lives on the line with moving forward. I just don't think there are that many leftist, antifascist ideologues in the FBI and judicial system to execute this without overwhelming evidence. edit apparently Bruce Reinhart was the magistrate that signed off on the warrant. Appointed in 2018, has links to Jeffrey Epstein. skylined! fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 16:14
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skylined! posted:With this raid conducted by a COINTEL guy, who wants to bet that Trump had, like, plans to the F-35 or something he was trying to sell to the highest bidding Russian oligarch? Yeah, this keeps hitting against one of my core, fundamental rules of politics, which is that if a rumor or a theory is something you DESPERATELY WANT to be true, then be careful and skeptical. There are few things that would make me happier than a Federal indictment on loving espionage against Trump. I desperately want that to be true and to happen. So, I'm skeptical, and keep telling myself its probably something smaller, like its nothing more than they just finally got fed up about TFG not handing over secret documents and just took them back.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:14
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Eric Cantonese posted:It looks like the defense attorneys were able to use a defense of "our clients are big talking morons," Who among us…
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Aug 9, 2022 16:14
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The plot was so brazen and crazy that I could see how a couple of jurors had doubts that anyone who think they could get away with it.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:17
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Back on the raid specifically, I'm going to go through Marcy Wheeler (@emptywheel)'s latest blog post on the search. A brief note of context: Wheeler (a journalist and author with a deep history on the overlap between the intelligence community and the courts) has frequently made strong assertions based on tenuous connections between threads in legal proceedings and press stories on 1/6 and Russian interference. She's often right (you're better informed reading her than Maggie, for instance), but her hedging language below should be read with that context. The woulds, coulds, and mays are a departure for her, suggesting she (like everyone) is speculating without specific knowledge. As an aside: This was undoubtedly one of McCarthy's goals - by signalling the intent to crawl up the rear end of everyone with knowledge in January, he dissuaded even those inclined to leak, ensuring there'd be a vacuum for overheated speculation from the MSM and asscovering from Trumpworld.quote:From the start of the reporting on Trump’s theft of classified documents, commentators have suggested that Trump was only under investigation for violations of the Presidential Records Act or 18 USC 2071. quote:Still, it’s possible — likely even — that there are exacerbating factors that led DOJ to search Mar-a-Lago rather than just (as they did with Peter Navarro) suing to get the documents back. Cutting in after two grafs here: Most looked at "Why now?" And "Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department" and, if they connected the dots at all, leapt to "Trump selling or giving away secrets to foreign powers". By laying out the ongoing investigations and cases most likely to be linked to the warrant, she builds the foundation for a contrarian take: This isn't over the improper retention of presidential or classified documents. It's over the refusal to return ones responsive to a case. quote:With that as background, Trump would be apt to take classified documents pertaining to the following topics: Based on the mentioned cases, what do any of these disparate possibilities have in common? quote:For many if not most of these documents, if Trump were refusing to turn them over, it might amount to obstruction of known investigations or prosecutions — Barrack’s, Rudy’s, or Trump’s own, among others. Thus, refusing to turn them over, by itself, might constitute an additional crime, particularly if the stolen documents were particularly damning. Finally, she buttons with a decent whatif for "why now?" quote:One more point about timing: An early CNN report on these stolen documents describes that a Deputy White House Counsel who had represented Trump in his first impeachment was liaising with the Archives on this point. I can't stress enough though: Anyone (poster, pundit, press, pol) who writes with confidence on what the search does or doesn't mean and what will or won't come from it should be viewed as talking out of their asses. As noted above, part of the impact of McCarthy's statement was to make it extremely likely that nobody involved from the Fed side is leaking, which would mean nobody knew poo poo last night, knows poo poo now, or will know poo poo tomorrow.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:21
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skylined! posted:
If this is the case, I'm excited to hear why Republicans think selling state secrets to our enemies is actually cool and good.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:22
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Eric Cantonese posted:The plot was so brazen and crazy that I could see how a couple of jurors had doubts that anyone who think they could get away with it. it's also a highly political case, so all the defense needs to do is sneak one trumpist on the jury
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Aug 9, 2022 16:24
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Paracaidas posted:I can't stress enough though: Anyone (poster, pundit, press, pol) who writes with confidence on what the search does or doesn't mean and what will or won't come from it should be viewed as talking out of their asses. As noted above, part of the impact of McCarthy's statement was to make it extremely likely that nobody involved from the Fed side is leaking, which would mean nobody knew poo poo last night, knows poo poo now, or will know poo poo tomorrow. my impression of Wheeler was that (as you said) she made a lot of strong statements on russia stuff that did not really appear to pan out that said, I think this part of your conclusion is right. one of the most useful things on these sort of investigations I read was about how to analyze where leaks are coming from - and that they are nearly always coming from the defense side. for example: it was very obvious that the leaks about the Jan 6 grand jury came from Pence's aides who were summoned to testify - they're not under a duty of confidentiality. they can talk to the press all they want. but they generally demand to be off the record, and off the record in a way that obscures which side they're on - because frequently it is in the defense's interest to leak things with the impression it's leaking from the prosecutor side. here, most of the people calling up the press are probably from trump's side. there may be fed agents who will confirm statements like "it relates to similar stuff as us getting the 15 boxes back, yes" but that's very different from how the trump camp is spinning it. they will want to leak that it's about nothing and try to solidify that as the public narrative, while the feds can't respond (without breaking the law). maybe that is true, maybe it's not - but the fact the trump camp is telling you it's true is basically useless. it has no truth value - it tells you nothing about what's true. and that's what the maggie haberman story basically is doing, relaying trump's version of events. edit: here's a story that does not jump out at me as sourced from trump's side: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article264313166.html the source is described suspiciously but the miami herald shouldn't let a trump source speculate on what agents "suspected" and shouldn't let them comment on what constituted the probable cause (since that wouldn't be disclosed to the trump side), but perhaps they sourced this to someone listening to the agents talking evilweasel fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 16:32
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evilweasel posted:my impression of Wheeler was that (as you said) she made a lot of strong statements on russia stuff that did not really appear to pan out
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Aug 9, 2022 16:43
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Paracaidas posted:Back on the raid specifically... This was a good post, thanks for the effort.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:49
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Gumball Gumption posted:They entrapped someone into a 20 year sentence. I'm good on continuing this. Then you've completely lost the plot of the discussion because the entire point was skepticism of the analysis that they must have something on him we don't know about because the FBI wouldn't just go on a fishing expedition. Your example is someone who got a 20 year sentence, so clearly this isn't an example where the FBI whiffed, which is what you were supposed to be providing an example of... not an example of them being ruthlessly effective to the point of unethical behavior. That would be evidence for the the opposite of that arguement.
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Aug 9, 2022 17:25
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https://twitter.com/WaysMeansCmte/status/1557029202158915585?s=20&t=das_sJvLjoKtBbYwz3I58Q Hits just keep on coming it seems.
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Aug 9, 2022 17:44
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AhhYes posted:https://twitter.com/WaysMeansCmte/status/1557029202158915585?s=20&t=das_sJvLjoKtBbYwz3I58Q Lets see. This is like round 8 of the tax drama.
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Aug 9, 2022 17:45
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AhhYes posted:https://twitter.com/WaysMeansCmte/status/1557029202158915585?s=20&t=das_sJvLjoKtBbYwz3I58Q Buncha docs were also given to the NY AG yesterday over his real estate valuation fraud scams lol. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/08/trump-real-estate-appraiser-hands-over-thousands-of-documents-to-ny-ag-in-civil-probe.html
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Aug 9, 2022 17:47
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AhhYes posted:https://twitter.com/WaysMeansCmte/status/1557029202158915585?s=20&t=das_sJvLjoKtBbYwz3I58Q there are two avenues of appeal left: 1) request en banc review. appeals courts have 15 or more judges, but only three get assigned to each case. if you think your three-judge panel got it wrong (e.g. you drew two trump appointees in your three, but the full circuit is heavily democratic), you can appeal to the full court. this is unlikely to be helpful given the DC circuit has a democratic majority 2) appeal to the supreme court. this is what is probably going to happen and it is reasonably likely that the conservatives take the case find an exception that applies solely to trump - but if not, that's the end of the road.
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Aug 9, 2022 17:48
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So if charges come from him stealing classified poo poo does or does that not possibly result in being barred from holding office? I still can't find a straight answer.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:04
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cr0y posted:So if charges come from him stealing classified poo poo does or does that not possibly result in being barred from holding office? I still can't find a straight answer. no there are legal reasons that experts could go into about the meaning of the law, but there's a much simpler answer. there is a reasonably solid constitutional argument that because the constitution specifies how you bar someone from holding office in the future (impeachment, participation in rebellion), and sets forth the requirement to be president (majority of the electoral college, over 35, natural born citizen) congress may not impose new requirements. now, reasonable minds could differ on the validity of that argument. however, the minds that will matter are those of the supreme court, where there is a rock-solid five vote majority to let donald trump run again if he wants, and a reasonably solid constitutional argument is way more than they rely on for most of their stupid poo poo
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Aug 9, 2022 18:07
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Constitutional reasoning stopped mattering once we went 6-3. Any case that can reasonably be brought to SCOTUS will be decided in Republican favor.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:19
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Rolling Stone is now reporting that Trump is looking for a criminal defense attorney with experience against the U.S. government. That doesn't necessarily mean anything because any sane person would be proactive in finding one if there was even a chance of going to court. It's honestly a little surprising that he hasn't been looking for a criminal defense attorney until recently. The current leading candidate is Tim Parlatore - who is the attorney who successfully defended Eddie Gallagher from war crime charges for killing an ISIS fighter who was being held prisoner, taking a picture with the body, and sending it to his friends. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-jan-6-attorneys-eddie-gallagher-tim-parlatore-1393964/
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Aug 9, 2022 18:22
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Trump has a history of treating his lawyers (and anyone he hires) wonderfully so I’m sure things will work out great for whoever decides to represent him.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:33
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IPlayVideoGames posted:Trump has a history of treating his lawyers (and anyone he hires) wonderfully so I’m sure things will work out great for whoever decides to represent him. Yes, Trump has a long history of not paying his lawyers. And then being sued by said lawyers. Any lawyer that takes his case is doing so with the understanding it's 50/50 they will ever get paid. With a caveat that it's 100% chance they won't get paid if they lose.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:36
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WaPo also has a really interesting and informative story about what the $80 billion going to the IRS in the IRA is for. It starts out with some pretty insane details that you may have already heard about. It then spirals into even crazier territory that you most likely haven't. One of the main projects is upgrading to a computer system that allows for searching and doesn't require IRS employees to create paper copies of all tax returns and then enter them all manually by hand into the computer system. Another is to digitize records so that the IRS cafeteria in Austin can reopen because it is currently being used to store paper copies of tax return records. Seriously. https://twitter.com/b_fung/status/1557041874141155329 quote:As of July 29, the IRS had a backlog of 10.2 million unprocessed individual returns. Blame the pandemic, sure, but also the agency’s embarrassingly outdated, paper-based system, which leaves stacks and stacks of returns cluttering shelves, hallways and even the cafeteria. quote:On the Pipeline, paper tax returns aren’t scanned into computers; instead, IRS employees manually keystroke the numbers from each document into the system, digit by digit. quote:Taxpayers are trapped in this time warp because Congress has systemically underinvested in the IRS. Its funding was cut for most of the past decade, despite the agency receiving evermore responsibilities: stimulus checks, child tax credit payments, Obamacare enforcement, foreign bank account tracking and, lately, hunting down Russian yachts. Without reliable, long-term funding guarantees, the IRS has struggled to upgrade its systems. quote:I recently took a (chaperoned) tour of the Pipeline, which is usually off-limits to journalists. Imagine Willy Wonka’s secretive chocolate factory, but instead of gumdrops and lollipops it’s ... paper. Everywhere, paper. quote:The technology dates to the 1970s — though this particular machine was updated in the ’90s to make it Y2K-compliant. The company that once manufactured SCAMPS no longer exists; when the machine breaks down, an IRS employee fabricates replacement parts on-site. “Only one guy knows how to fix the thing,” says John Desselle, a mailroom department manager. quote:The newest part of the setup is this computer — it uses Windows XP, an operating system from 2001. quote:The next step is to sort different elements of each return (separating checks from 1040 forms, for example) and place each in separate batches. This poor guy has the most mind-numbing job ever. quote:Then comes “candling.” At this stage, an employee tears open three sides of every envelope and holds it up to a special lightbox to make sure nothing was accidentally left inside. Sam Cruz, a 12-year IRS employee who works in candling, said he finds something left behind maybe two or three times for every thousand envelopes. quote:If a check from a taxpayer is missing a crucial piece of information (such as a Social Security number), it can’t be deposited. quote:Also, tax forms change slightly from year to year. If a taxpayer sends a previous year’s form, an IRS employee must renumber each line with a red pen so that the entries match the current year’s tax form. Otherwise, the computer system can’t process the return correctly, since only one year’s model of each form can be stored in the system at a time. quote:Here, returns get stamped with a unique identifying number. Before this stage, the IRS has no way to track a specific return. quote:Technology to scan text into a computer has been commercially available since the 1970s and has greatly improved in the past decade. Yet at the IRS, data from paper returns is still entered manually. quote:But sometimes the system won’t accept the return … in which case it goes to error resolution. quote:The system runs on COBOL, an antiquated programming language few coders still know. quote:The IRS then sends out letters to taxpayers letting them know about issues with their returns — math errors, missing signatures, etc. quote:Fully processed returns stick around the Austin Service Center for nine to 10 months in normal times (they’ve stayed longer during covid). Then they’re sent to Federal Records Centers to be archived for six years. quote:In the meantime, it’s astonishing that the system has survived this long, since it seems to be held together with duct tape and string. When I mentioned this to Desselle, the mailroom manager, he corrected me.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:44
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