Report: Missing Lois Lerner emails may have been recovered

Some 30,000 of former Internal Revenue Service director Lois Lerner’s missing emails have been recovered, according to senators leading the investigation into the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.

Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the committee’s top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) told reporters Friday that the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration is working to see if it can give the recovered forensic data that might include Lerner’s emails to the committee in a readable form.

A GOP congressional aide who has also been briefed said that the watchdog had found up to 30,000 emails either to or from Lerner between 2009 and 2011. The emails were found on back-up tapes that IRS officials had said were recycled, the staffer said. It will likely take several weeks to decode them.

Lerner is at the center of the IRS controversy. Congressional investigators have been seeking her missing emails for more than five months.

The IRS has consistently claimed that they have been unable to retrieve them and that there are no backups. This proves that might not be true.

But congressional investigators aren’t celebrating just yet. These 30,000 emails could contain duplicates of the emails they have already seen.

John Koskinen, the IRS commissioner, has said the agency already found 24,000 of Lerner’s emails by searching the accounts of other IRS employees, The Hill reported. These newly found emails might include those as well.

“From the onset of our bipartisan investigation, we’ve remained committed to getting to the truth and ensuring that the IRS treats all tax-exempt applicants fairly,” Wyden and Hatch said in a Friday statement.

“Since the launch of our investigation in May 2013, our investigators have interviewed more than 30 current and former IRS and Treasury employees and have reviewed nearly one million pages of documents. Though we are in the final stages of finishing our bipartisan report, TIGTA has yet to release its findings regarding the lost Lois Lerner e-mails at the IRS.”

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released his own statement and hit the IRS for their lack of cooperation and lies to Congress.

“The Oversight Committee will be looking for information about her mindset and who she was communicating with outside the IRS during a critical period of time when the IRS was targeting conservative groups,” Issa said of Lerner.

The IRS, Issa wen ton, “first failed to disclose the loss to Congress and then tried to declare Lerner’s e-mails gone and lost forever. Once again it appears the IRS hasn’t been straight with Congress and the American people.”