Yesterday IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified on Capitol Hill after news surfaced Lois Lerner's hard drive was scratched and that data Koskinen said was lost, may not be lost at all. Considering how difficult it is to access an internal hard drive on a computer, scratching is very suspicious.
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee say that their investigators have learned that the hard drive belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner was "scratched" and that data was recoverable, according to a release from the committee. The release says that it's unclear if the scratch was put there deliberately or accidentally. Republicans are now accusing the IRS of not being forthcoming after they said in court filings that the data on Lerner's hard drive was unrecoverable....Whether Lois Lerner's emails and data were lost has become the most recent focus in Republicans' investigation into the targeting of conservative groups by the tax-exempt office of the IRS. Lerner pled the fifth during two appearances before the House Oversight Committee, which called her to testify about that targeting.
Since testifying in front of Congress last month, Koskinen has changed his testimony and story about "lost" IRS emails multiple times. Yesterday Rep. Trey Gowdy took him to task over inconsistent statements and slow walking the investigation into IRS targeting of conservative groups. Koskinen argued that he is not asking questions or investigating because the Inspector General has opened an investigation he doesn't want to compromise.
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"Our policy is that if the IG starts an investigation, the agency will not themselves run a competing investigation to try to get there first,” Koskinen said.
In the Obama administration, non-investigation is just the latest cover-up and delay tactic being used to avoid the truth about what really happened.
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