House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Tuesday filed another subpoena against the IRS, which asks for Lois Lerner's hard drive and other electronic devises she used.
Issa filed his subpoena a few days after the IRS said it lost key emails involving Lerner that Republicans were seeking in their investigation of the IRS targeting scandal.
House Republicans have subpoenaed the hard drive and other electronic equipment used by former IRS official Lois Lerner, in an attempt to find her 'lost' emails. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, File)
Issa said IRS officials had met with his committee before, and made no mention of the lost emails. He said the committee only became aware of the emails earlier this month, and said the IRS appears to be making up an answer to avoid handing them over.
"After a year of beating down efforts by the Obama administration and its allies to obstruct an investigation into targeting, the IRS now says it lost perhaps the most critical evidence," Issa said. "When Commissioner Koskinen testified before the Committee in February, he made no mention of this.
"It was only earlier this month, during an interview with a Justice Department official, that the Oversight Committee learned about the existence of subpoenaed 2010 Lerner e-mails that the IRS had not produced," he added.
"While this apparently forced the IRS to cough up an admission, we still do not have answers about how and why the IRS tried to deceive Congress about these missing e-mails," he said. "This subpoena seeks those answers."
The subpoena was issued just a day after Issa filed a subpoena to require IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to testify before his committee next week about the lost emails.
Specifically, Issa's new request commands the IRS to provide all electronic devices that may have been used to back up or send emails to and from Lois Lerner from 2009 through September 2013. It asks for all electronic devices Lerner used between that time.
It also seeks all files, documents and communications involving Lerner in that time frame, and several other related documents.
