The IRS Scandal, Day 724

Robert W. Wood (Forbes), IRS $20 Million Response To Latest Pile of Lois Lerner Emails Is Worrisome:

Lois Lerner’s latest lost and found hoard of 6,400 newly discovered emails may end up not showing much. The IRS didn’t find them. A watchdog did. Maybe they will underscore the targeting and Ms. Lerner’s political chops honed at the Federal Election Commission. But at least the Treasury Inspector General found the 6,400 additional emails. A little more than 10% (650) are tied to 2010 and 2011. The rest date to 2012.

But the IRS statement in response to this latest revelation is, well, a little disturbing:

We welcome the Inspector General’s recovery of these Lois Lerner emails. This is an encouraging development that will help resolve remaining questions and dispel uncertainty surrounding the emails.

The IRS has been committed to cooperating fully with the investigations. We understand that, during the course of the past 10 months, the Inspector General found about 650 emails from the period affected by the hard-drive crash. It’s important to note that last summer, the IRS produced 24,000 emails from that period.

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.

It’s important to note that the IRS has produced to Congress more than 1.3 million pages of documents related to the investigation, including more than 147,000 emails. Total estimated cost of just the IRS portion is at least $20 million.

The IRS has not exactly seamlessly cooperated, and Mr. Koskinen who runs the IRS has had a prickly relationship with investigators and with Congress. He has sometimes appeared to be annoyed that he is being asked any questions at all. Of course, the IRS said in 2014 (a little late?) that Ms. Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011.

Oops, no one’s fault that we lost a few years worth of emails. We kept being reminded how hard the IRS looked and how terribly expensive it was that the IRS had to do this. Yet the inspector general found about 35,000 emails from recycled back-up tapes. It then turned out that the key IRS IT people weren’t even asked to look at back up tapes. Isn’t this a little insulting? ...

A spokesman for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said the committee hopes the new emails will bring the panel closer to releasing the findings of its IRS investigation. Wouldn’t some answers be nice?

• The IRS Scandal, Day 723 (May 2, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 722 (May 1, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 721 (Apr. 30, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 720 (Apr. 29, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 719 (Apr. 28, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 718 (Apr. 27, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 717 (Apr. 26, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 716 (Apr. 25, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 715 (Apr. 24, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 714 (Apr. 23, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 713 (Apr. 22, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 712 (Apr. 21, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 711 (Apr. 20, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 710 (Apr. 19, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 709 (Apr. 18, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 708 (Apr. 17, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 707 (Apr. 16, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 706 (Apr. 15, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 705 (Apr. 14, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 704 (Apr. 13, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 703 (Apr. 12, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 702 (Apr. 11, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Day 701 (Apr. 10, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Days 601-700 (Dec. 31, 2014 - April 9, 2015)
• The IRS Scandal, Days 501-600 (Sept. 22, 2014-Dec. 30, 2014)
• The IRS Scandal, Days 401-500 (June 14, 2014 - Sept. 21,2014)
• The IRS Scandal, Days 301-400 (Mar. 6, 2014 - June 13, 2014)
• The IRS Scandal, Days 201-300 (Nov. 26, 2013 - Mar. 5, 2014)
• The IRS Scandal, Days 101-200 (Aug. 18, 2013 - Nov. 25, 2013)
• The IRS Scandal, Days 1-100 (May 10, 2013 - Aug. 17, 2013)