President Obama told the American people last year some “boneheaded decisions” were made, but insisted there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” behind the IRS targeting of conservative groups.
But IRS Inspector General J. Russell George confirmed Thursday that a criminal investigation is now underway to determine how former IRS official Lois Lerner’s email disappeared, the Washington Times reported.
“There is potential criminal activity,” Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus told the committee.
Testifying before the House Oversight Committee Thursday, Camus confirmed that in addition to 744 backup tapes found, investigators discovered an additional 424 tapes that may contain more emails from Lerner.
They were tapes the IRS had said were irretrievably destroyed — and it only took two weeks to find the new tapes.
“To date we have found 32,744 unique emails that were backed up from Lois Lerner’s email box,” Camus said. “We are in the process of comparing these emails to what the IRS already produced to Congress to determine if we did in fact recover any new emails.”
According to Fox News, investigators said the IRS had not asked computer technicians for the tapes, even though they were directed to do so by a subpoena — a direct contradiction to earlier testimony of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
Video clips of Camus being questioned about this was posted on the oversight committee’s Twitter account:
IG finds missing tapes, learns IRS never bothered to look for them: https://t.co/cAwAvvdGyk
— GOP Oversight (@GOPoversight) February 27, 2015
But wait… There’s more! 424 new IRS tapes found by the IG: https://t.co/vFvwP71QlH
— GOP Oversight (@GOPoversight) February 27, 2015
“It looks like we’ve been lied to, or at least misled,” said U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla.
A possibility that would certainly qualify as a “smidgen of corruption.”
The committee gave us a taste of what may lie in store from the emails in a tweet that shows a screenshot of a seemingly skeptical Lerner discussing the claim of hard drives crashing: “No one will ever believe that both your hard drive and mine crashed within a week of each other.”
If you can believe it, here’s an actual email sent by Lois Lerner: pic.twitter.com/1VY09EYaCz
— GOP Oversight (@GOPoversight) February 27, 2015
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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