IRS won't release 6,400 new Lois Lerner emails

Another 6,400 Lois Lerner emails have been found, but the federal government isn't releasing them for a reason that the Daily Caller called, in its headline on the issue, the "dumbest excuse yet."

According to the report, Department of Justice lawyers Geoffrey J. Klimas and Stephanie Sasarek are acting as counsel for the IRS and submitted to U.S. District Court a filing in a case brought by Judicial Watch.

The DC obtained the filing, which alleges the emails the IRS got from the Treasury Department's inspector general can't be turned over because "the IRS is busy making sure that none of the emails are duplicates – you know, so as not to waste anyone's time," Caller reporter Patrick Howley wrote.

But he noted the IG already had said that job was done.

"On April 23, 2015, TIGTA provided approximately 6,400 forensically recovered emails to the service," Klimas and Sasarak wrote. "Certain of the emails forensically recovered by TIGTA were not readable, or not entirely readable, as initially provided to the service. TIGTA subsequently provided some of these documents to the service in readable form on May 8 and June 1, 2015. To date, TIGTA has not provided any other recovered emails to the service."

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The court documents continued, "Prior to providing the service with the approximately 6,400 forensically recovered emails, TIGTA identified and removed emails which appear to be duplicates of those which the service has already produced to the congressional committees or were duplicates of other recovered emails."

The report said the looming future efforts to remove duplicates may take some time, quoting from the court filing,"The emails which TIGTA has recovered, and any additional emails that TIGTA may recover and provide to the service, could affect the service's ability to complete its review and production of Lerner communications by September 2015."

Wrote Howley, "The IRS isn't going to start de-duplicating the emails it has until AFTER it reviews 'Lerner communications which were not forensically recovered.' In other words, they're going to review Lerner emails that they DON'T HAVE before they look at the ones that they DO have."

The filing said, "At this time, the service is unable to estimate when it will finish processing and reviewing the forensically recovered emails."

The fight over the emails has been going on for a couple of years, ever since it was reported that Lerner, as head of the exempt organizations division at the IRS, had watch over a campaign to discriminate against organizations of faith, or those with tea party type names or missions.

They were subjected to intimidating delays, including demands to know the content of group members' prayers, as their applications for a tax status were reviewed.

Lerner later left the department, but is well-known in Washington for refusing several times to answer questions from Congress on the issue.

It is thought her emails will shed considerable light on her activities during that time period, which still are the subject matter of court action.

WND reported just months ago that other messages to and from Lerner had been recovered.

The emails had former IRS chief Lois Lerner's name all over them; the Hill reported the messages were either sent to her, or sent from her.

Ultimately, the IRS was forced to apologize for its targeting of tea-party and patriotic groups seeking nonprofit status, and delaying their applications. Lerner, who headed the IRS section dealing with nonprofit applications, was put on leave and later retired.

It had been reported earlier that Lerner at one point warned other IRS officials that lower-level employees "are not as sensitive as we are to the fact that anything we write can be public – or at least be seen by Congress."

The IG also has confirmed it was looking into the possibility that criminal charges could result from the controversy.

Tens of thousands of emails already have been recovered, even though the IRS at one point confirmed to Congress that Lerner's emails had been destroyed and were lost forever.

The heat on the IRS started rising after the GOP took the majority in Congress after the 2014 election.

The Washington Times reported it obtained a copy of a letter signed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and the 13 other Republicans on the panel.

Addressed to Obama, the letter asks for his communications with the IRS since 2010 for their investigation into whether the agency has been engaging in illegal distribution of private taxpayer information. Republicans have accused the Obama administration of using the IRS as a political weapon since discovering the agency obstructed the applications for tax-exempt status of conservative organizations critical of Obama's policies.

The letter said: "We have an obligation to conduct oversight of the federal government's administration of our tax laws. As part of this oversight, we are seeking to determine the degree to and manner in which the Internal Revenue Service shares taxpayer information with the executive office of the president."

IRS documents filed by the National Organization for Marriage, for example, were released to a citizen who asked for them, and they ended up in the hands of a homosexual activist who posted the confidential information online.

A judge ruled the IRS simply made a mistake, but the agency agreed to pay the group $50,000.

Texas-based True the Vote and 42 other groups have filed a lawsuit claiming the IRS targeted them based on their beliefs and politics.

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, said the "notion that the IRS can target Americans for years because of their political beliefs is reprehensible."

The IRS exacerbated the scandal by repeatedly telling disbelieving congressional investigators that it couldn't provide relevant emails because of hard-drive failures.