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The
Daily Signal
IRS
Destroyed Hard Drive Lois Lerner Used at Time of Tea Party Targeting
Rob
Bluey
June
19, 2014
Lois
Lerner’s missing emails are likely gone forever because the
Internal Revenue Service destroyed the hard drive she used at the
time tea party groups were targeted, according to sources on Capitol
Hill.
“We’ve
been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin
Hatch, R-Utah, told Politico. Two other sources confirmed Hatch’s
account.
The
news brought a swift response from Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman
of the House Committee On Oversight and Government Reform. In a
statement late last night, Issa said:
If
the IRS truly got rid of evidence in a way that violated the Federal
Records Act and ensured the FBI never got a crack at recovering files
from an official claiming a Fifth amendment protection against
self-incrimination, this is proof their whole line about ‘losing’
emails in the targeting scandal was just one more attempted
deception. Old and useless binders of information are still stored
and maintained on federal agency shelves; official records, like the
e-mails of a prominent official, don’t just disappear without a
trace unless that was the intention.
The
latest revelation sets the stage for what is expected to be a
contentious hearing Friday when IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is
scheduled to appear before the committee. In March, the commissioner
assured the Oversight and Government Reform Committee the IRS would
comply with the request to turn over the emails as congressional
investigators probed Lerner’s involvement in the scandal.
As
part of Issa’s latest subpoena, he asked the IRS to turn over “all
hard drives, external drives, thumb drives and computers” and “all
electronic communication devices the IRS issued to Lois G. Lerner.”
Lerner,
who was held in contempt of Congress for her refusal to cooperate,
was director of the IRS’ tax-exempt office at the time tea party
groups faced delays and additional scrutiny in their applications to
the IRS. Last week, the IRS revealed it had “lost” an email
messages from a period between January 2009 through April 2011
because of a computer crash.
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