The Internal Revenue has received 6,400 more Lois Lerner emails but is delaying releasing them. The reason? It’s reviewing the emails for duplicates.
Department of Justice lawyers representing the IRS submitted a court filing in the Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service case, the Daily Caller reports. According to the filing, the IRS received the emails from the Treasury Department’s inspector general on May 8 and June 1. Yet the IRS claims it cannot release the emails to the nonprofit Judicial Watch, which is suing the IRS for the emails.
De-duplicating emails seems unnecessary, especially since the inspector general already checked for duplicates.
But because of that work, the review process could span even longer. The IRS only plans on looking at these new emails once it receives the emails it does not yet have. As a result, the government agency has no timeline for when it will release them.
Judicial Watch’s president Tom Fitton says he is not giving up on the emails. The nonprofit submitted the FOIA request over two years ago. “Our legal team will continue pursuing all necessary and available legal options to hold the IRS accountable for its flagrant abuse of power,” he told the Caller.
The worst part of the Lerner emails update was that it came only after a court order. On June 8, the U.S. District Court for D.C. granted Judicial Watch’s demand for an IRS update on the emails.
Judicial Watch requested Lerner’s emails after the 2013 revelation that the IRS favored liberal over conservative groups for tax exemptions. Last year, the IRS announced that a computer crash wiped out two years’ worth of Lerner’s emails, and the inspector general has since recovered backup tapes.
Emily Leayman is an intern at the Washington Examiner
