Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton has accused the IRS of stonewalling after the agency admitted it has failed to search for Lois Lerner’s missing emails related to the targeting of President Barack Obama’s "enemies list."
The IRS revealed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., last week that it had not searched in its standard computer systems for the emails linked to IRS scrutinizing of tea party groups seeking tax exempt status, according to
Judicial Watch.
The admission came in an IRS legal brief opposing Judicial Watch’s request under the Freedom of Information Act that a federal court judge allow discovery into how "lost and/or destroyed" departmental records could be retrieved, the watchdog group reported.
"The Obama IRS couldn’t care less about the federal court’s orders to provide full information about the 'missing' Lois Lerner emails," said Fitton. "Instead, the IRS, with the help of a compromised Justice Department, has engaged in a series of transparently evasive distractions.
"The IRS would have Judicial Watch wait for years before we can ask questions about the cover-up that is going on now. The IRS thinks it can game a federal court, Congress, and the American people.
"Having delayed accountability for over two years, the Obama administration is prepared to stonewall on the IRS targeting of Obama’s 'enemies list' until after the 2016 presidential election. Judicial Watch’s lawsuit can continue to break through this obstruction of justice, especially if the court approves our effort to put select Obama officials under oath."
The organization said that Department of Justice attorneys for the IRS had previously told Judicial Watch that Lerner's emails, as with all federal government computer records, are backed up in case of a government-wide catastrophe.
In a motion filed in September, Judicial Watch said the IRS had contravened two court orders to provide information detailing how "the missing emails could be retrieved from other sources."
Last month, IRS attorneys asked the court to deny the request, even though it admitted that they "could result in additional documents being located," Judicial Watch stated.
Lerner was a former supervisor at the agency, and her department examined applications for tax-exempt status from nonprofit groups.
In June, her lawyer, William Taylor III, said that she has no records of the two years of missing IRS emails surrounding the time of the tea party targeting. The emails were lost when
her computer crashed in 2011.
Taylor said at the time, "She didn't have anything to do with the destruction of her computer. She doesn't know what happened. It's a little brazen to think she did this on purpose."
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