publicizing an admission<\/a> by the Department of Justice that government officials can access emails reportedly lost in a hard drive crash.<\/p>\nThe messages \u2013 correspondence to and from former IRS manager Lois Lerner \u2013 have been sought by congressional investigators seeking more information about the agency\u2019s targeting of conservative advocacy groups filing for tax-exempt status.<\/p>\n
In sworn testimony, IRS officials have told members of Congress that thousands of emails sent from Lerner\u2019s government account could not be retrieved because a back-up system had also been erased.<\/p>\n
But now attorneys at the DOJ are singing a different tune.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Justice Department lawyers informed him that the federal government keeps a back-up copy of every email and record in the event of a government-wide catastrophe,\u201d reports the Washington Examiner.<\/p>\n
That includes Lerner\u2019s IRS emails.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t expect them to be produced anytime soon. The DOJ is claiming that the newly revealed back-up system would be \u201ctoo onerous to search,\u201d but did say that Treasury Department inspectors are looking into it.<\/p>\n
While the litigators wrangle, we\u2019re left with yet more evidence that the Obama administration doesn\u2019t mind playing fast and loose with the truth \u2013 even under oath.<\/p>\n
The House of Representatives already voted back in May to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify; making her the second administration official after Attorney General Eric Holder to receive such a dishonor.<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s true that top IRS brass lied under oath to Congress about the whereabouts of Lerner\u2019s potentially damaging emails, one wonders what message House leadership would send to this latest act of executive defiance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apparently, you can lie to Congress but not to Judicial Watch. The conservative watchdog organization is publicizing an admission by the Department of Justice that government officials can access emails reportedly lost in a hard drive crash. The messages \u2013 correspondence to and from former IRS manager Lois Lerner \u2013 have been sought by congressional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[84,3494,498,185,735,686,1823,4153,28],"class_list":["post-21393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-congress","tag-doj","tag-eric-holder","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-irs","tag-judicial-watch","tag-justice","tag-lois-lerner","tag-tea-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21393"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21398,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21393\/revisions\/21398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}