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Missing Lois Lerner E-Mails Potentially Found

A big development has occurred in a story we’ve been following for quite some time. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that some of the missing e-mails belonging to former IRS employee Lois Lerner have been found. Lerner is the former head of IRS’s nonprofits unit and the main figure in the tax agency’s alleged targeting of conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. This discovery comes just five months after the IRS stated the emails were lost due to a crashed hard drive. Congressional investigators have been attempting to recover the thousands of emails sent and received by Lerner from 2009 to 2011, during which time the IRS gave extra scrutiny to Tea Party groups applying for 501(c)(4) status.

The IRS claimed that her e-mails could not be recovered due to a hard drive crash and backup tapes being recycled. The Senate Finance Committee, however, stated that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration “has been able to recover some forensic data which may include documents the IRS believe were missing.” Those documents, according to some reports, include as many as 30,000 of Lerner’s e-mails the IRS could not recover.

Lerner is now retired; she was placed on paid administrative leave in May 2013 until the IRS announced her retirement four months later. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who is a ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee stated last September that “just because Lois Lerner is retired from the IRS does not mean the investigation is over. Far from it. In fact, there are many serious, unanswered questions that must be addressed so we can get to the truth.”

Perhaps these recovered emails will cast some light on the role Ms. Lerner really played in all this. For more info, see the following articles:

Article from The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Article from Accounting Today

Greg McRay is the founder and CEO of The Foundation Group. He is registered with the IRS as an Enrolled Agent and specializes in 501(c)(3) and other tax exemption issues.

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