Politics

Judicial Watch Asks Court To Order IRS To Cough Up Lerner Emails

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Mark Tapscott Executive Editor, Chief of Investigative Group
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Judicial Watch told a federal judge Tuesday that it doesn’t care if there are duplicates in Lois Lerner’s emails, the nonprofit watchdog just wants IRS officials to produce the materials it requested two years ago.

“Plaintiff’s counsel is not concerned about receiving duplicate emails in this case,” Judicial Watch told U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmett G. Sullivan. “Lois Lerner’s emails are at the heart of the plaintiff’s Freedom of Information Act requests. Plaintiff has waited more than two years to receive and the IRS should start producing them now.”

The nonprofit watchdog asked Sullivan to order the federal tax agency to start producing the emails “immediately” and to file monthly reports about its progress in doing so.

IRS officials have said they are going through the emails to eliminate duplicates before turning them over to Judicial Watch. Treasury Department investigators had previously culled the emails for that purpose.

Lerner managed the tax agency’s illegal targeting and harassment of conservative and tea party non-profit applicants during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns. She refused to answer congressional questions about her activities and claimed a computer crash destroyed all of her emails.

But the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found 1,268 backup tapes that contain at least 6,400 Lerner emails and may include many more from the recordings.

Judicial Watch also noted in its filing that the IRS did not deny in its most recent court filing Judicial Watch’s contention that TIGTA “was able to locate the Lois Lerner backup tapes within one day of its investigation or that the IRS never requested the backup tapes from its technicians before declaring that the emails were lost forever.”

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