So do they or don’t they?
After maintaining for quite some time that Lois Lerner’s emails are completely, definitely gone (maybe), it turns out that there’s now a different story.
According to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:
Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe.
Fitton went on to say that those same attorneys have indicated that finding the emails would be too difficult but that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating.
TIGTA has been formally involved into an investigation of the IRS’s treatment of tax exempt organizations since the summer of 2012. Since that time, then acting Director of Exempt Organizations, Lois Lerner, admitted at an American Bar Association meeting that some organizations were targeted because of their titles or beliefs. Lerner was called before Congress in 2013 to respond to questions about how IRS treated those application; she eventually refused to testify, pleading the Fifth Amendment and voted in contempt of Congress.
No charges have been filed in the scandal but many members of Congress believe that something criminal has occurred. In early 2014, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen confirmed that there were several ongoing investigations into what happened. Those investigations have been made more difficult since not only did Lerner, now retired and disgraced, refused to talk to Congress but she didn’t turn over some of her emails – allegedly because they have gone missing.
According to Commissioner Koskinen, IRS has already turned over to Congressional committees more than a million pages of materials. As of this summer, Congressional committees had received more than 27,000 emails from Lerner’s computer account and more than 18,000 other emails to or from Lerner. By the time all is said and done (the IRS is currently retrieving and redacting further emails), the House Oversight Committee will have in its possession, according to Commissioner Koskinen, 67,000 Lerner emails.
Those, however, are likely not all of the emails. In 2011, Lerner’s computer crashed and it’s not known (allegedly) how much of the data couldn’t be retrieved following the crash. For purposes of context and timeline, the supposedly missing emails are those that predate April 2011. This is a fairly important period of time because it encompasses both the start of the targeted lists (which happened around August 2010) and the time period that Lerner was advised of the practice (thought to be between February and June 2011 since testimony has been conflicting) – see this timeline for more information about the scandal.
What’s in those emails – or isn’t – could explain exactly what’s missing from the investigation. Except that, well, the emails are what’s most notably missing.
In 2013, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit,Judicial Watch v. IRS, (downloads as a pdf) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to retrieve those missing records. That lawsuit is ongoing – which is why Judicial Watch was in contact with the government attorneys.
Judicial Watch describes itself as “a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation” which has as its mission the promotion of “transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.”
