Former IRS official Lois Lerner said she warned her colleagues to be careful about what they write in emails amid congressional inquiries, according to new emails released by House Oversight Republicans.
She also asked whether the IRS’s internal messaging system could be searched, in the same email to an IRS colleague. It was sent April 9, 2013, less than two weeks after the IRS inspector general that unearthed the tea party targeting practice shared a draft report with the agency.“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails — so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails,” she wrote to Maria Hooke, the director of business systems planning for the tax-exempt division. “Someone asked if OCS conversations were also searchable — I don’t know. … Do you know?”
The emails are the latest fodder released by Republicans in their case against Lerner, who led the IRS tax-exempt unit that singled out tea party groups for added scrutiny. The practice was blasted by the inspector general last year, leading to a major shakeup at the tax agency.
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