“There is potential criminal activity.”
That’s the latest word from Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) regarding the ongoing investigation into the missing emails at Internal Revenue Service. You know the ones.
But in case you need a refresher, at the center of the firestorm that is the tax exempt organization scandal, is the former Director of the Exempt Organizations Division at IRS, Lois Lerner. Lerner might have information that would be useful to fill in the gaps about what actually happened when a number of tax exempt organization applications were inappropriately flagged for review, some as a result of BOLO (be on the lookout) lists. She might be able to answer questions that taxpayers – and Congress – have about what happened, such as:
Was it political? Was it just lazy? Was it targeted? How high up the chain did the review process and the BOLO lists go? Whose idea was it? How widespread was it?
Lerner clearly has the key to at least some of these answers since it was her division. However, she refused to offer testimony about what happened. Instead, she pleaded the Fifth.
Lerner was called back and again refused to testify.
At IRS, Lerner was initially placed on administrative leave and then she resigned altogether, taking her secrets with her.
With Lerner not cooperating, TIGTA turned to other records – like emails linked to Lerner. Curiously, the IRS initially couldn’t find the emails. And then they might have found about 30,000 or so. And last month, more backup tapes were discovered though, to be clear, it’s not certain whether there are related emails on those tapes (despite reports suggesting different).
Despite the flashy headlines, so far, the recovered emails haven’t yielded any particularly earth-shattering news.
But what has attracted attention from those on the Hill isn’t so much what’s in the emails as what happened to the emails. That’s still never been determined. And now, according to Treasury Deputy Inspector General Timothy Camus, TIGTA is investigating whether the disappearance could be linked to criminal activity.
Camus didn’t say what might have happened. And he didn’t say who might have done whatever happened (that’s a mouthful). And he did warn against drawing conclusions until the investigation is completed, saying:
Until the investigation is completed, the facts and circumstances of the case as we understand them can and have changed on a daily basis. To avoid speculating and reaching conclusions that later turn out to be false, as investigators we must avoid drawing any conclusions until all the facts are in.
I’m firmly in the latter camp. I don’t think that jumping to conclusions is helpful to anyone other than folks who want attention – and that includes a number of folks in Congress.
But I do think it’s noteworthy that TIGTA would suggest publicly that there is the potential for criminal wrongdoing. It’s a huge switch from the statement just last year expected that there would be no criminal charges at the federal level.
No representatives from IRS were at the House Oversight Committee TIGTA hearing on last Thursday when Camus made those statements. Camus’ appearance was one of a number of periodic updates provided to the Committee since the investigation began in 2013. IRS did offer a response to the hearing, saying “The IRS has been supportive of TIGTA’s on-going review of these issues, as it has been with all of the on-going investigations since May 2013.”
The investigation into the tax exempt scandal and IRS’ role in the scandal (including the missing emails) has been lengthy. In a statement, IRS noted that it had “provided about 147,000 unique e-mails to the congressional committees after eliminating duplicates.” Of those emails, “[t]his includes 78,000 emails relating to Lois Lerner, including the more than 24,000 emails during the period affected by the Lerner hard-drive crash.” Many of the Lerner-related emails, those 24,000, were produced by IRS from other IRS employees during the period of time affected by the hard-drive crash.
IRS also noted that they have provided the tax-writing committees (Senate Finance Committee, House Ways and Means Committee) with approximately 1.3 million unredacted pages of material; approximately 1.1 million pages of redacted material has been provided to other congressional committees (including House Oversight and Government Reform).
The agency emphasized that since late June of 2014, “IRS turned the entire process over to TIGTA, including any review of the disaster recovery tapes, so that there would be no interference from the IRS with the important work being done by TIGTA.” Without directly referencing the potential charges, IRS confirmed that “[w]e have periodically checked in with TIGTA, to ensure that the IRS was doing everything it could to assist in this investigation, and on each instance TIGTA has confirmed that IRS personnel have been cooperating fully.” With respect to personnel, IRS has confirmed that more than 50 current or former IRS employees have been interviewed by Congressional committees over the course of more than 27 hearings.
(Pay attention to these details, folks. I think you’ll find that the phrasing, including tenses, aren’t simply casual. But again, echoing Camus, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, so just making a thoughtful observation.)
The investigation is ongoing. We don’t know how much manpower Congress and TIGTA have together invested so far but IRS noted that 229 employees have contributed time to the investigation since its inception representing over 160,000 hours of work. Cost estimates from IRS are as high as $20 million, including over $13.3 million in labor costs and more than $6 million in IT costs.
That said, there’s been no “smoking gun” found to date. The House Oversight Committee continues to be hopeful that might change.
For a timeline of the scandal, check out this post.
