U.S. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa released the latest bombshell finding from his investigation into the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.

Despite the fact that the agency claims two years’ worth of former official Lois Lerner’s emails were lost in a 2011 hard drive crash, a number of troubling correspondences have nevertheless found their way to congressional investigators. The latest seems to indicate that Lerner realized there was a distinct possibility her online communications could be used against her and sought to find a way to curtail that risk

Oddly enough, her concern over expressing too much in an email did not prevent her from expressing herself through that very medium.

In the conversation, she expressed concern over “several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails,” prompting her to suggest “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.”
Oversight.House.Gov
Oversight.House.Gov

Recent reports also reveal that Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor II, sought to clarify his earlier statement that his client did not print official IRS records. He confirmed that she did, in compliance with the Federal Records Act, print a number of emails from the period during which such communications were supposedly lost.

Along with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, Taylor previously maintained that Lerner did not know this was a requirement and failed to create such hard copies of her emails.

“During her tenure as Director of Exempt Organizations,” Taylor said in a statement Wednesday, “she did print out some emails, although not every one of the thousands she sent and received.”

According to a Wall Street Journal report, email correspondences also indicate that IRS officials routinely engaged in instant messaging, the contents of which were not maintained in any retrievable format.