Earlier this month, Judicial Watch discovered that the IRS never even bothered looking for Lois Lerner’s “missing” emails, which they claimed were lost as a result of a computer crash in 2011.
Not to worry, it seems that as many as 30,000 emails have now been recovered by the IRS inspector general.
The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system.“They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told theWashington Examiner.
The IRS, in a statement provided to the Examiner, said the agency and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is fully cooperating with the investigation.
"As Commissioner Koskinen has stated, the IRS welcomes TIGTA’s independent review and expert forensic analysis." The IRS statement said. "Commissioner Koskinen has said for some time he would be pleased if additional Lois Lerner emails from this time frame could be found." […]
In all, investigators from the inspector general’s office combed through 744 disaster recovery tapes. They are not finished looking.
There are 250 million emails ion the tapes that will be reviewed. Officials said it is likely they will find missing emails from other IRS officials who worked under Lerner and who said they suffered computer crashes.
House and Senate committees are seeking the emails to investigate the role the former head of tax exempt organizations played in the targeting of tea party and conservative groups leading up to the 2012 election, and whether she was working with Obama administration officials to single them out.
“Though it is unclear whether TIGTA has found all of the missing Lois Lerner e-mails, there may be significant information in this discovery,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told the Examiner. “The Oversight Committee will be looking for information about her mindset and who she was communicating with outside the IRS during a critical period of time when the IRS was targeting conservative groups.”
Issa also expressed frustration over the IRS’ cooperativeness with Congress throughout the investigation.
“The agency first failed to disclose the loss to Congress and then tried to declare Lerner’s e-mails gone and lost forever. Once again it appears the IRS hasn’t been straight with Congress and the American people,” he continued.
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