IRS can't locate emails in Tea Party controversy

The Internal Revenue Service told Congress Friday that it has lost emails to and from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the agency's Tea Party controversy.

The Internal Revenue Service told Congress Friday that it has lost emails to and from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the agency’s Tea Party controversy. The IRS said it cannot locate many of Lerner’s emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year.

This news has sparked outrage from congressional investigators who have been investigating the agency for more than a year.

Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS admitted last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party and other conservative groups.

Republican congressional leaders reacted sharply to the news.

“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,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the inspector general.”

The Ways and Means Committee is one of three congressional committees investigating the IRS over its handling of Tea Party applications from 2010 to 2012.

The Justice Department and the IRS inspector general are also investigating.

The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from the 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. The agency said it pieced together the emails from the computers of 83 other IRS employees.

But an untold number are now lost. Camp’s office said the missing emails are mainly ones to and from people outside the IRS, “such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.”

In May 2013, Lerner was the first IRS official to publicly acknowledge that agents had improperly scrutinized applications.

About two weeks later, Lerner was subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing. But after making a brief statement in which she said she had done nothing wrong, Lerner refused to answer questions, invoking her constitutional right against self-incrimination.