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The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it cannot find emails from a former biologist who was evaluating the impact of a large gold and copper mine proposed in southwest Alaska near the headwaters of a salmon fishery. EPA administrator Gina McCarthy told a House oversight committee that the agency to date has been unable to recover some records the panel is seeking . The agency notified the National Archives and Records Administration of the missing emails on Tuesday, the same day the chief archivist told Congress that the Internal Revenue Service had violated the law by not reporting a loss of records after the computer of one of its officials, Lois Lerner, crashed in 2011. The oversight committee has sought to obtain the records or talk to now-retired EPA biologist Phil North, who retired from the agency in 2013. Republicans on the panel suggested that North was colluding to halt the project.
— Associated Press
Congressional investigators say they uncovered emails Wednesday showing that a former Internal Revenue Service official at the heart of an investigation into the handling of conservative groups’ applications for nonprofit status sought an audit involving a Republican senator in 2012.
The emails show former IRS official Lois Lerner mistakenly received an invitation to an event that was meant to go to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The event organizer apparently offered to pay for Grassley’s wife to attend the event. In an email to another IRS official, Lerner suggests referring the matter for an audit, saying the offer might be inappropriate. It was unclear whether she was suggesting that Grassley or the group be audited — or both.
The other IRS official, Matthew Giuliano, waved her off, saying an audit would be premature because Grassley had not yet accepted the invitation.
“It would be Grassley who would need to report the income” if his wife’s expenses were paid, Giuliano said.
The name of the event organizer was blacked out on copies of the emails released by the House Ways and Means Committee because they were considered confidential taxpayer information.
In a statement, Grassley’s office said the senator did not attend the event.
“This kind of thing fuels the deep concerns many people have about political targeting by the IRS and by officials at the highest levels,” Grassley said. “It’s very troubling that a simple clerical mix-up could get a taxpayer immediately referred for an IRS exam without any due diligence from agency officials.”
The IRS said in a statement that it could not comment on the specifics of the case “due to taxpayer confidentiality provisions.”
“As a general matter, the IRS has checks and balances in place to ensure the fairness and integrity of the audit process,” the IRS statement said. “Audits cannot be initiated solely by personal requests or suggestions by any one individual inside the IRS.”
The IRS says it has lost an untold numbers of Lerner’s emails because her computer crashed in 2011. Failure to deliver a portion of promised Lerner emails to House investigators looking into Lerner and the IRS has sparked outrage among Republican lawmakers, who have accused the tax agency of a cover-up.
“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States senator is shocking,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. “At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights.”
Lerner headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS has acknowledged that agents improperly scrutinized applications by tea party and other conservative groups before the 2010 and 2012 elections. Documents show some liberal groups were singled out, too.
Lerner was suspended from her job after refusing to testify before a House committee, then retired.
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