(NRSC) This weekend, news broke that “After months of delay in responding to congressional inquiries, the IRS now claims that, for the period of January 2009 to April 2011, all e-mails between Lois Lerner — the IRS official at the center of the scandal — and anyone outside the IRS were wiped out by a ‘computer crash.'”
Ron Fournier of the National Journal suggested that a special prosecutor is necessary. He wrote, “…you couldn’t blame a person for suspecting a cover-up—the loss of an untold number of emails to and from the central figure in the IRS tea-party controversy. And because the public’s trust is a fragile gift that the White House has frittered away in a series of second-term missteps, President Obama needs to act. If the IRS can’t find the emails, maybe a special prosecutor can.”
Over a year ago, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent the IRS a Freedom of Information Act request asking for “any and all documents or records, including but not limited to electronic documents, e-mails, paper documents, photographs (electronic or hard copy), or audio files,” related to correspondence from January 1, 2009 and May 21, 2013 between thirteen different Democrat members of Congress and top IRS officials – including Iowa Congressman Bruce Braley (who had previously urged the IRS to investigate conservative 501(c)(4) groups. We’ve been repeatedly stonewalled by the IRS.
Braley has benefitted from the Democrats’ close relationship with the IRS, accepting $7,000 from the National Treasury Employees Union, which covers IRS employees.
“Bruce Braley hasn’t said a word about the missing emails and actually seemed to encourage the IRS to target citizens and non-profit groups based on their ideological beliefs,” said NRSC Press Secretary Brook Hougesen.“This is just another instance of Bruce Braley putting his own political career above the well-being of Iowans. Rep. Braley not only refuses to say whether he will return the contribution from the IRS Union, but he refuses to demand additional information from President Obama and the IRS about this deeply concerning scandal.”
BACKGROUND:
Bruce Braley Received $7,000 From The IRS Employees Union – The National Treasury Employees Union. (Center For Responsive Politics, www.opensecrets.org, Accessed 5/17/13)
IRS to Congress: We Lost Two Years of Emails Involving Lois Lerner – The Internal Revenue Service said Friday it has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea party controversy, sparking outrage from congressional investigators who have been probing the agency for more than a year. The IRS told Congress Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner’s emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year (Associated Press, 6/14/14)
Photo credit: David Boeke (CC-By-SA 2.0)
