The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has found more of those “missing” Lerner emails.
TIGTA has reported that it has found roughly 6,400 previously undisclosed emails related to Lerner. Lois Lerner, the former Director of Exempt Organizations at Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been a central figure in the bipartisan investigation into the IRS tax exempt organization scandal. The scandal dates back to 2010 when IRS employees, responding to an uptick in tax exempt applications, were asked to scrutinize tax exempt organizations based on politically-charged keywords, the so-called BOLO (“be on the lookout”) listings.
Despite a lot of anger directed at Lerner, it’s been tough to prove any of allegations that she might have played a more direct and impactful role in the BOLO lists. In addition to Lerner’s refusal to testify before Congress, a number of Lerner’s emails from the time period in question went missing.
(For more about the missing emails, click here. For a more detailed look at the timeline, click here.)
In November of 2014, the Senate Finance Committee learned that TIGTA has been able to recover some key forensic data, including emails to and/or from Lerner which had previously not been provided. That data was to be analyzed to see whether it could easily be converted into a readable format and if so, whether any readable data includes those missing emails.
This week, TIGTA says it has found more emails, including emails that it believes have not been previously turned over to Congress. That said, those emails have not been examined to determine whether that’s actually true. Aides did acknowledge that there could be some duplicates among the emails that have already been produced by IRS.
Of the the 6,400 emails, a little more than 10% (650) are tied to 2010 and 2011: there remainder are from 2012.
The IRS called the discovery “an encouraging development that will help resolve remaining questions and dispel uncertainty surrounding the emails.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) formally requested a TIGTA inquiry into the matter in 2012. In 2013, Lerner admitted at an American Bar Association meeting that some organizations were targeted because of their titles or beliefs. Lerner would eventually be called before Congress in 2013 to talk about the specifics and would refuse to testify, pleading the Fifth Amendment: she was eventually voted in contempt of Congress.
To date, no criminal charges have been announced. In March, however, TIGTA warned, referencing the missing emails, “There is potential criminal activity.” The investigation currently remains open.
