IRS Was Required by Law to Print Emails Lost to Hard Drive Crash
(Daily Caller / Worthy News)– According to Federal Law, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is required to keep records of all agency emails and to print out hard copies of the emails in the event of a computer crash. This further complicates the IRS claim that it “lost” emails from ex-official Lois Lerner, who was found in contempt of Congress by a vote of 231 to 187 in May.
The IRS recently claimed that it lost 24,000 of 67,000 emails that ex-official Lois Lerner sent between 2009 and 2011, due to a computer crash. The IRS, which agreed to turn over all of Lerner’s emails to the House Committee on Ways and Means, specifically lost emails Lerner sent to other Obama administration agencies and the White House. Lerner is a major figure in the targeting scandal that has hit the IRS.
“The [Federal Records Act] requires agencies to make and preserve records of agency decisions, policies, and essential transactions, and to take steps to safeguard against the loss of agency records,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, who subpoenaed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Monday.
“The Federal Records Act applies to email records just as it does to records you create using other media,” according to the IRS. “Emails are records when they are: Created or received in the transaction of agency business; Appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government’s function and activities; or Valuable because of the information they contain.” — Source