Today, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen asking if he wants to amend his earlier testimony about Lois Lerner.
Koskinen testified on June 23 that Lerner, a former IRS official at the center of the controversy over the tax agency’s targeting of conservative groups, followed terms of the Federal Records Act in her handling of public records and materials. When asked about emails that have been reported as lost when Lerner’s hard drive crashed in 2011, Koskinen stated, “The responsibility is, if you have an email that’s a record, you print it out in hard copy . . . She had hard copy records.”
However, Issa says, recent public statements made by Lerner’s attorney seem to conflict with Koskinen’s testimony. Politico quotes Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor III, as saying, “Lerner did not print out official records she may have sent over email because she didn’t know she had to.”
“Accordingly,” Issa writes in his letter to Koskinen, “I ask that you assist the Committee in reconciling apparent discrepancies between your claims that Ms. Lerner fully maintained records and statements by her attorney that she did not and that it was not her responsibility.”
Issa’s letter also asks the IRS to name all of the employees who were responsible for making sure Lerner complied with federal records laws, as well as any employees who may have printed her email records.
On June 24th, the National Archivist testified before the Oversight Committee that the IRS “did not follow the law” when it failed to report Lerner’s hard-drive crash.
Democrats accuse Republicans of pursuing Area-51-like conspiracy theories and President Obama has said there is not a “smidgen” of corruption involved in the IRS controversy.
When asked to testify, Lerner took the Fifth. The House of Representatives voted to hold her in contempt of Congress.
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