[RealJustme]

The Internal Revenue Service told Congress Friday it has lost a trove of emails to and from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the agency's Tea Party controversy, sparking outrage from congressional investigators who have been probing the agency for more than a year. All emails between the White House and Lerner were lost.

The IRS said it cannot locate many of Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year, which are the years in question. Camp's office said the missing emails are all the ones to and from people outside the IRS, "such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices."

"The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS's response to congressional inquiries," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the inspector general."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he was "greatly troubled" that the agency didn't notify Congress when they first became aware of the computer problem.

“Today’s admission by the IRS that they cannot produce Lois Lerner’s emails is an outrageous impediment to our investigation," Hatch said in a statement. "Even more egregious is the fact we are learning about this a full year after our initial request to provide the Committee with any and all documents relating to our investigation."

[johnforbes]

The IRS just has to be telling lies about this.

Surely those email messages are in many places because they were, well, sent there.

Nobody believes this is anything more than a coverup. It is much, much, much too "convenient."

[RealJustme]

The fact the IRS is claiming the emails are lost because her computer crashed is so lame Susan Rice must have come up with that excuse. Anyone understanding basic IT knows that emails aren't stored on the user's computer, we have this new thing called the internet, the emails are on servers in several locations. It's way past time that people be arrested in this abuse of public offices.

Why not just ask the NSA for copies of her emails?

[johnforbes]

Surely they could, but I think the IRS intentionally destroyed Lerner's email messages.

This is an Administration so corrupt it makes Nixon's look angelic.

[RealJustme]

Government IT Expert Norman Cillo told Leigh Ann Caldwell, CNN that under no circumstances could a computer crash result in the loss of emails on government servers due to a triple redundant system to avoid the loss from occurring. Cillo explained the deletion of the emails would have had to be done manually on at least three different servers which operate Independently but even then the emails could be retrieved by IT within hours. Cillo said emails may disappear from the user's computer when deleted but they aren't gone, they can be retrieved from the user's email account."