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New email shows IRS's Lerner was worried about congressional requests for email
FILE - This May 22, 2013 file photo shows Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner on Capitol Hill in Washington. The IRS says it has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy. The IRS told congressional investigators Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed that year. Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups. The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. But an untold number are gone. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

New email shows IRS's Lerner was worried about congressional requests for email

A new email released by House Republicans shows that former IRS employee Lois Lerner was growing increasingly worried that Congress would request copies of IRS emails, and warned that IRS workers should be "cautious" about the contents of their emails.

"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 in 2013, according to an email released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

New emails released Wednesday show that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner was growing worried that Congress might request her emails. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Lerner's email asked another employee whether communications on Microsoft's Office Communications Server would be save from these searches. She was told that OCS communications should be treated as communications that could be called up later, to which Lerner replied, "perfect."

The House committee said that email exchange happened just 12 days before the IRS Inspector General showed a draft copy of its report that said the IRS was targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

The committee said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said he was not familiar with the OCS messaging system.

Read Lerner's 2013 emails here:

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