IRS Claims to Have “Lost” Lois Lerner’s Emails

The IRS thinks we are all stupid. They were ordered to turn over all of the emails from Lois Lerner, the former head of the IRS, to assist in a Congressional investigation into corruption. Now the agency claims to have “lost” the emails.

From the House.gov here:

oday, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement regarding the Internal Revenue Service informing the Committee that they have lost Lois Lerner emails from a period of January 2009 – April 2011. Due to a supposed computer crash, the agency only has Lerner emails to and from other IRS employees during this time frame. The IRS claims it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.

“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to Congressional inquiries. There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.

There are laws in place that requires Federal agencies to retain all data for 5 years or longer, and that data is typically stored on backup disk arrays at the data centers. And those backup disks are backed up to tape and stored offsite. Not to mention, all data is recorded as it goes across the wire using packet capture technology, and things like emails can be easily recreated by querying that system too. So yeah, the IRS thinks we are all stupid and are actively engaging in a criminal coverup.

The Congress should start jailing everyone who lost the emails since by doing so they have broken a federal law mandating backups and data protection.