Darrell Issa has tweeted out an email exchange involving Lois Lerner in April 2013, in which she attempts to scope out what email records get retained, and cautions that because Congress may seek emails, “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails”. The full email exchange is at the bottom of this post.
This evidences a consciousness of guilt, even if somewhat after the fact of the harassment of conservative groups.
She’s also not the brightest bulb in the theater — if you are worried about saying incriminating things in emails because Congress may discover the emails, don’t talk about it in emails.
(Added) The Wall Street Journal focuses on the portion of the exchange suggesting that Emails Point to IRS Officials Using Instant Messages:
Lawmakers investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s treatment of conservative groups released new emails Wednesday suggesting that top IRS officials communicated through an instant-messaging service that wasn’t routinely archived.The revelation adds to lawmakers’ concerns about the agency’s handling of documents related to their current inquiry into the agency’s alleged targeting of conservative tea-party groups for burdensome scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status. Republicans already have criticized the IRS for losing about two years’ worth of emails that could be important to the probe, largely because a computer hard drive belonging to a former top IRS official, Lois Lerner, crashed in mid-2011. Backup tapes also were routinely reused after six months.The latest emails suggest that IRS officials had a separate instant-messaging system that also wasn’t preserved.
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