It looks like Lois Lerner \u2013 the former IRS manager at the center of the scandal targeting conservative groups \u2013 isn\u2019t the only Obama administration official who lost emails subpoenaed by Congress.<\/p>\n
Marilyn Tavenner, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is now believed to have deleted emails sought by congressional investigators<\/a> trying to understand why Healthcare.gov had such a horrendous rollout.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to stay below the agency\u2019s Microsoft Outlook email size limit, Tavenner would regularly delete emails after copying or forwarding them to her staff for retention,\u201d says the MSNBC report that broke the story. \u201cHowever, Tavenner didn\u2019t follow that procedure every time, meaning some emails never made it to her staff for safekeeping before being deleted.\u201d<\/p>\n That could turn out to be a costly oversight for Tavenner.<\/p>\n As Jillian Kay Melchior points out, \u201cFederal law tasks heads of all federal agencies with \u2018mak[ing] and preserv[ing] records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency\u2019s activities.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Lerner who claims her IRS computer crashed taking with it unrecoverable emails \u2013 a claim disputed by IT experts inside and outside the tax-gathering agency<\/a> \u2013 Tavenner, at best, is pleading that she’s too busy to follow the law. At worst, she\u2019s the latest Obama administration official caught skirting her legal obligations<\/a> to hide inconvenient truths.<\/p>\n To my knowledge, Tavenner isn’t considered an overt Obama loyalist, so it’s possible that the missing emails are a genuine oversight by a busy administrator. The trouble is, Tavenner works in an administration seemingly filled with people who are unwilling to comply with the kind of document sharing necessary for the people – through Congress – to understand and judge what unelected bureaucrats are doing. One of the tragedies of bad behavior by some is the suspicion it casts on everyone else on the team.<\/p>\n So be it.<\/p>\n