Last time we saw Lois Lerner, she was breathing a sigh of relief upon hearing the news that the DOJ had declined to pursue contempt charges after her refusal to testify before a House committee.
At the time, this may have seemed like a huge win, but in context, a contempt charge was and probably remains the least of Lerner’s problems. Just months before learning she was in the clear, Lerner got buried beneath a damning pile of recovered e-mails showing a very, very paranoid Lois Lerner. The evidence gained from those e-mails suggests a group of officials bent on suppressing the free speech of their political enemies, and screams “cover up.”
Just think—what if there were even more e-mails out there containing even more damning evidence?!
Ask, and you shall receive. An inspector general investigating IRS misconduct has unearthed additional e-mails, and turned them over to Congress.
Via Fox News [emphasis mine]:
“This underscores that our investigation into IRS abuse is far from over,” a House Ways and Means Committee spokesman said Wednesday. “The committee will thoroughly review these new emails as part of our ongoing efforts to find out exactly what happened and provide accountability.”The Treasury’s Inspector General for Tax Administration announced overnight that it had recovered roughly 6,400 Lerner emails that Congress has yet to see and that it will examine them as part of Congress’ bipartisan investigation that also includes the Senate Finance Committee.Roughly 650 of the recovered emails are from 2010 and 2011, while most of them are from 2012.During those three years, Lerner led the IRS division that targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.The inspector general has found about 35,000 emails in all as it sought to recover emails from backup tapes.“We welcome the Inspector General’s recovery of these Lois Lerner emails,” the IRS said in response to the IG announcement. “This is an encouraging development that will help resolve remaining questions and dispel uncertainty surrounding the emails.
Thousands of e-mails, all from the time period in question? It’s Christmas!
The IRS went on defense after the announcement, trying to make it look like they’ll be using this investigation as a tool to better their tech training:
The agency also noted that it took the inspector general around 10 months to come up with the 650 emails sent or received during the period affected by Lerner’s hard-drive crash, and that the IRS itself handed over 24,000 emails from that period last year.“The IRS will continue to cooperate with the Inspector General and the congressional committees to complete work in this area, and we look forward to the results to determine what additional steps the IRS can take to ensure that we continue to improve our processes,” the agency said.
We’ll keep you updated on what these e-mails mean for the Congressional investigation.
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