Grassley, Johnson press DOJ on apparent 'significant factual omission' in special counsel report

In March of 2023, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirmed that it had retrieved nine boxes from the office of Biden attorney Patrick Moore that had been taken from the Penn Biden Center in Washington.

Published: February 12, 2024

Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson on Monday asked that Attorney General Merrick Garland account for special counsel RobertHur's report on President Joe Biden's handling of classified materials making no mention of a batch of materials the National Archives recovered from the president's attorney's office in Boston.

Hur's report became public last week and stated that "[o]ur investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen." It further declined to bring charges against the president, in part, on the basis of his poor memory.

Writing to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Hur, the GOP lawmakersasserted that "[t]here appears to be a significant factual omissionin Special Counsel Hur’s report on his office’s investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents."

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Grassley, Johnson letter on special counsel report

In March of 2023, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirmed that it had retrieved nine boxes from the office of Biden attorney Patrick Moore that had been taken from the Penn Biden Center in Washington. Those materials were then transferred to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. At the time, NARA had not reviewed the materials.

"Oddly, Special Counsel Hur’s report did not mention NARA's retrievalof the nine boxes from Mr. Moore's office," the pair wrote. "This apparent omission is significant given that, according to NARA, the Department of Justice requested that NARA recover the boxes. In fact, in March 2023, NARA informed our offices that 'whileNARA has not yet reviewed the contents of the nine boxes, the FBI has.'"

"If the FBI did review the contents of the boxes, it is unclear what was found, to include any classified information, and whether the FBI informed Special Counsel Hur’s office of its findings," they went on. "Further, it is unclear if Special Counsel Hur had any awareness of or reviewed the information contained in these nine boxes.It would be extremely troubling if Special Counsel Hur failed to investigate the contents of these nine boxesparticularly given that we first publicly revealed the existence of these specific boxes on March 27, 2023—nearly one year ago."

The Republicans set a deadline of Feb. 23 for the DOJ to answer whether Hur reviewed the nine boxes in question and to document their contents.

https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/grassley-johnson-press-doj-significant-factual-omission-special-counsel

What about the 3300 boxes UPENN refuse to return?

Northern states see record surge in illegal border crossings, Border Patrol saysOfficials are urging the public to make a report when they see something suspicious.

February 12, 2024

Northern states are battling a record-breaking surge of illegal immigrants entering the United States from Canada, Border Patrol officials said.

Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia, whose territory includes portions of Vermont, New Hampshire and New York, wrote last week on X, formerly Twitter: "The record-breaking surge of illegal entries from Canada continues in Swanton Sector."

He is urging the public to make a report if they see something suspicious. Garcia said that a private citizen's report in Champlain, N.Y., led to the arrest of10 citizens from Bangladeshwho attempted to enter the U.S. from Canada.

Garcia said earlier this month on X: "Since October 1, 2023, Swanton Sector Border Patrol Agents have apprehended more than 3,100 subjects from 55 countries(more than Fiscal Years 2022, 21, 20 & 19 combined)."

While data has not been released for January 2024, every month since the start of Fiscal Year 2022, which began in October 2021, the Swanton sector has seen more encounters than that same month the year before, data shows. For example, December 2024 saw more encounters than any other December on record, as did December 2023 and December 2022 by that point.

https://justthenews.com/government/security/northern-states-see-record-surge-illegal-border-crossings-border-patrol-says

IRS blistered anew by internal watchdog for lax protections of taxpayer data after criminal leak

Agency failed to revoke access to sensitive tax systems from contractors who failed background checks and doesn’t have protections for some systems to prevent leaks, TIGTA said.

Published: February 11, 2024 11:31pm

TheIRS failed to revoke access to sensitive tax systems from contractors who failed background checksand doesn’t have protections for some of those systems to prevent unauthorized removal of taxpayer data, the agency’s chief watchdog warns in a stinging rebuke that comes on the heels of a devastating criminal leak of tax records.

“The fact remains that for some sensitive systems, theIRS does not have adequate controls to detect or prevent the unauthorized removal of data by users,” the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) concluded in a report this month.

That report was issued at the same time ex-IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking tax information to news organizations about former President Donald Trump and countless other wealthy Americans.

It also is a fresh reminder that theIRS has struggled for decades to fix lax security. TIGTA first began warning the IRS was doing a poor job protecting taxpayer information back in 2007 when George W. Bush was still president. Three presidents later, those concerns linger. (They never struggled, because they never tried.)

In its new report, TIGTA cited the IRS for multiple vulnerabilities, among them several contractors who failed background checks as recently as last summer still had access to sensitive systems.

“Specifically,19 contractors’ most recent background investigations were not favorable as of July 13, 2023,” the report stated. “However,these contractors still retained their accessto one or more sensitive systems because the IRS did not take action to suspend or disable the contractors from the IRS’s systems, as required.”

You can read the full report here.

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IRSSensitiveSystemsIGReport02-2024.pdf (33 PAGES)

TIGTA said it also found that 279 contractors and employees no longer with the agency still had access to at least one sensitive computer system. “Actions were not always taken to timely remove users once they separated from the IRS,” the report warned.

The report also raised serious concerns about the IRS’ ability to stop another illegal leak of taxpayer information like the one that Littlejohn pled guilty to. “For some sensitive systems, the IRS does not have adequate controls to detect or prevent the unauthorized removal of data by users,” the watchdog reported.

“TIGTA has reported that a key deficiency in the IRS’s detection and deterrence processes did not ensure that all sensitive systems provide complete, accurate, and usable audit trail logs for monitoring and identifying unauthorized access and for other investigative purposes,” the report added.

Adding to the watchdog’s concerns was the fact that theIRS struggled to come up with a complete list of sensitive computer systems, eventually identifying 319. (Stop with the “struggling language”, as if they are trying, they do not care!)

“To perform this evaluation, we requested information from the IRS that identifies all sensitive systems,” the report noted. “However, our ability to obtain a complete and reliable inventory of its sensitive systems was an ongoing challenge throughout this evaluation.”…

https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/monirs-blistered-anew-internal-watchdog-lax-protections-taxpayer-data

>>20403341

FROM THE PDF REPORT, PG 2

What TIGTA Found (look at thenumber of users and contractorsbelow)

TIGTA identified that users are granted access to sensitive systems via the Business Entitlement Access Request System (BEARS) application and that the process is the same for employees and contractors. As of July 13, 2023, our evaluationidentified a total of 91,661 users, of which 5,068 were contractors, who were authorized to access one or more of the 276 sensitive systems specific to our evaluation. Procedures to systemically remove users who no longer require access to sensitive systems were not always working as intended. For example, TIGTA identified 279 users who were listed in BEARS as separated who, as of July 13, 2023, continued to have access to at least one IRS sensitive system. However, for each of these individuals IRS network access was removed, which according to the IRS,reduces, but does not eliminate, the risk that a user can access a sensitive system.

Impact on Tax Administration (SEE THE LANGUAGE CONGRESS COMMITTEE USES)

Unauthorized access and disclosure of taxpayer informationcould underminethe taxpaying public's trust in the Federal tax system to safeguard confidential tax information. (What do they mean“could undermine”, it does undermine our trust,and the IRS is not struggling, so stop saying that, they don’t care.)

>>20403341

Honestly, this entire report is unbelievable, and how the IRS denies, and covers for any inability or desire to implement true security.

They have close to 2,500,000 users, not what was disclosed in the report and the IRS doesn't purge the users in their systems in a timely fashion, as a matter of fact they have no specific idea of how many sensitive systems they have.. page 7

"Incomplete list of sensitive systems limited our assessment

The focus of this evaluation includes assessing the IRS’s processes and procedures to permit employee and contractor access to sensitive systems and once permitted access, how well the IRS safeguards information on these sensitive systems.To perform this evaluation, we requested information from theIRS that identifies all sensitive systems. However, our ability to obtain a complete andreliable inventory of its sensitive systems was an ongoing challengethroughout this evaluation. Our inability to readily obtain this information resulted in continued delays in our ability to complete this evaluation and report to the Chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

At the start of our evaluation, the IRS provided its Office of Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Architecture and Implementation function as our primary point of contact to obtain the sensitive system information we needed to perform our assessment. Management officials indicated that they did not have complete and reliable information that identifies all sensitive systems. Management officials noted that, in Fiscal Year 2022, they began an initiative to identify all IRS systems that include FTI with the goal of having the systems identified by the end of Fiscal Year 2023.Additionally, our repeated contacts with management officials requesting interim results of their identification of sensitive systems went unaddressed.

As such, we had to identify an alternate source of information we could use for our evaluation, and we elected to use information the IRS previously provided for a separate TIGTA evaluation.

Specifically, we used sensitive system information compiled by the IRS’s Enterprise Security Audit Trail (ESAT) office. This information primarily identified systems that process PII, which includes FTI. The ESAT office manages the enterprise audit initiative, oversees the deployment of information technology solutions to resolve systemic audit trail issues, and monitors compliance with the requirement to ensure that complete and accurate audit trail logs are created for all sensitive systems. As of June 1, 2023, the IRS’s ESAT office reported that it had identified 364 sensitive systems. In October 2023, the IRS informed us that based on its continued analysis and assessment, it reduced the number of sensitive systems to 319.

Inconsistent sensitive system naming conventions presented further challenges in performing our assessment

Once we obtained the previously mentioned information from the ESAT office, we attempted to identify the 364 sensitive systems in BEARS, which is the dataset that would enable us to identify specific users permitted access to one or more of these 364 systems. However, due to differences in the sensitive system naming conventions used by the ESAT office and what was listed in BEARS, we were unable to match 88 of the 364 sensitive systems identified by the ESAT office to systems in BEARS.

On August 1, 2023, we alerted management of our inability to identify these 88 systems in BEARS. We provided management with the list of these 88 systems and requested that they review the list and determine why BEARS data were not available for these sensitive systems. The IRS subsequently provided TIGTA with information to identify and crossmatch the 88 systems that we could not previously identify. However, this information was provided after our analysis was completed. As such, to prevent delays in our evaluation, we limited our assessment to the 276 sensitive systems identified by the ESAT office that we could match to BEARS.

The IRS’s lack of a complete list of sensitive systems and not employing an enterprise-wide consistent and universal naming convention for these systems has been reported on by TIGTA. For example, in July 2022, TIGTA’s Office of Audit (OA) reported that the IRS could improve on maintaining a comprehensive and accurate inventory of its information systems.5