TESTY EXCHANGE
Among the sharpest clashes in Friday’s hearing came as Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., questioned IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
Koskinen: "I have a long career. That's the first time anybody has said they do not believe me."
IRS INVESTIGATION TIMELINE
June 13, 2011: Lois Lerner, the IRS official in charge of the division that processes organizations' applications for non-profit status, reports her computer's hard drive has crashed.
June 29, 2011: Lerner first learns that applications for tax-exempt status from groups with "Tea Party," "Patriot" or "9/12 Project" are being targeted for extra scrutiny by members of her staff, according to a report from Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
Aug. 5, 2011: Lerner is told that the data on her hard drive is unrecoverable, according to an email provided to Congress.
May 3, 2012: Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, sends letter to the IRS commissioner requesting all applications seeking tax-exempt status in 2010 and 2011, including all files, correspondence and internal IRS records.
May 10, 2013: Lerner apologizes on behalf of IRS for "inappropriate" targeting of conservatives. The White House says the matter is being investigated by an inspector general.
May 14, 2013: The inspector general releases a report finding that IRS supervisors had known since 2011 that conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status were being unfairly targeted. The Justice Department says it will conduct a criminal investigation.
Late May/early June 2013: The IRS asks certain employees to retain records.
February 2014: The IRS realizes emails are missing.
May 8, 2014: The IRS promises to turn over all of Lerner's emails to the Ways and Means Committee.
June 13, 2014: The IRS tells Congress some of Lerner's emails are missing because her computer crashed in 2011.
Friday: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen tells Congress that a total of eight employees, including Lerner, whose emails are sought in the congressional investigation experienced computer crashes, resulting in an unknown amount of lost data.
— Associated Press
The head of the IRS defiantly refused to apologize Friday for the agency losing emails that might shed light on the tax agency’s targeting of tea party and other groups before the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Instead, Commissioner John Koskinen accused the chairman of a powerful House committee of misleading the public by making false statements based on incomplete information.
The contentious back-and-forth didn’t end there. Later in the hearing, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate two years ago, told Koskinen bluntly that “nobody believes you.”
“I have a long career. That’s the first time anybody has said they do not believe me,” said Koskinen, who came out of retirement in December to take over the IRS. Previously, he served in other positions under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The hearing showed that emotions are running hotter than ever in the dispute over the IRS and political fundraising.
Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, called on Koskinen to testify a week after the IRS disclosed that it had lost an untold number of emails to and from Lois Lerner. She headed the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status during a time when, the IRS has acknowledged, agents improperly scrutinized applications from tea party and other conservative groups.
Camp was clearly expecting Koskinen to be more contrite.
“What I didn’t hear in that was an apology to this committee,” Camp said after Koskinen’s opening statement.
“I don’t think an apology is owed,” replied Koskinen.
The IRS commissioner also dismissed Camp’s call for a special prosecutor to investigate, saying it would be “a monumental waste of taxpayer funds.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest was also dismissive in comments after the hearing. “I’m not sure that there’s a whole lot more to be discovered here,” Earnest said.
The IRS says it lost Lerner’s emails when her computer crashed in June 2011, well before questions about the handling of the conservative groups’ non-profit applications surfaced. At the time, technicians went to extraordinary means to recover them, even sending Lerner’s hard drive to agency’s forensic lab, Koskinen said. But to no avail.
In that time, the IRS had a policy of backing up emails on computer tapes, but the tapes were recycled every six months, Koskinen said. He said Lerner’s hard drive was recycled and presumably destroyed.
“I am sitting here listening to this testimony. I just, I don’t believe it,” said Ryan. “That’s your problem. Nobody believes you.”
When Koskinen objected, Ryan cut him off: “I don’t believe you.”
Democrats on the committee were much more accommodating to Koskinen.
“I want to apologize to you for the way you’re being treated this morning,” said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. “I thought this was a hearing and not a trial.”
The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from 2009 to 2011 because she had copied in other IRS employees. Overall, the IRS said it is producing a total of 67,000 emails to and from Lerner, covering the period from 2009 to 2013
On Monday, IRS technicians told the congressional panel’s staff that the hard drives of six other workers involved in the probe had also crashed. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner’s boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller.
On Friday, Koskinen increased that total, saying the agency had discovered another crashed hard drive.
Committee Republicans likened the revelations to the drip, drip, drip of a scandal.
However, Koskinen rejected statements by Camp earlier his week that the crashes had destroyed records kept by Flax. Koskinen said Flax’s emails were retrieved from a second computer. He said it is still not known whether emails have been lost because of the other crashes.
Koskinen suggested that he would no longer provide incremental reports on the crashed hard drives to Camp, for fear they would be distorted in the media.
“So those press releases with regard to Nikole Flax were inaccurate and misleading, and it demonstrates why we will provide this committee a full report about the (hard drives) when it is completed,” Koskinen said. “We’re not going to dribble out the information and have it played out in the press.”
(STORY CAN END HERE)
A little more than a year ago, Lerner disclosed that IRS agents had improperly scrutinized applications by tea party and other conservative groups from 2010 to 2012.
At the time, she apologized on behalf of the agency. Since then, she has refused to answer questions at two congressional hearings and has been forced to retire under threat of being fired. Earlier this year, the House voted to hold her in contempt of Congress.
The Justice Department and three congressional committees, including Ways and Means, are investigating the IRS.
About the Author
