House Oversight Republicans Call for Koskinen's Removal

On May 15, 2013, in reaction to the IRS's targeting of taxpayers on the basis of their political beliefs, you said it was, "inexcusable and Americans have the right to be angry about it." Additionally, you said, "[O]ur Administration has to make sure that we are working hand in hand with Congress to get this thing fixed." This acknowledgement came five days after Lois Lerner, the Director of the Exempt Organizations Division, stated about the targeting, "that was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive and inappropriate." For the past two years Congress has been investigating the IRS's targeting of conservative groups.

Throughout his tenure, Commissioner Koskinen obstructed these Congressional investigations. His obstruction takes the form of failure to comply with a congressional subpoena, failure to testify truthfully, and failure to preserve and produce up to 24,000 emails relevant to the investigation. We ask that you exercise your authority under 26 U.S.C. Section 7803(a)(1)(D) to remove John Koskinen as Commissioner of the IRS.

As detailed below, Commissioner Koskinen bears responsibility for a number of actions that may have permanently deprived the American people of a complete understanding of the IRS targeting scandal. In the course of doing so, he misled Congress and acted with complete disregard for Congress's efforts to find out the truth.

Commissioner Koskinen was on notice from his earliest days in office regarding the need to preserve documents relevant to the IRS targeting scandal. The Committee had issued a subpoena on August 2, 2013, for "[a]ll communications sent or received by Lois Lerner, from January 1, 2009, to August 2, 2013."¹ The Committee reissued that subpoena on February 14, 2014, following Commissioner Koskinen's confirmation as head of the IRS.²

Commissioner Koskinen failed to take seriously his duty to respond to the subpoena and assist Congress in discovering the truth. Under his leadership, the IRS failed to look in five of the six places where Mr. Lerner's emails could potentially be recovered. TIGTA examined Ms. Lerner's blackberries, email server, backup email server, loaner laptop, the IRS's own backup tapes, and Ms. Lerner's hard drive. The IRS only examined the hard drive, which had apparently crashed in 2011.

The malfeasance of Commissioner Koskinen extends beyond investigative lassitude into destruction of evidence. The counselor to the Commissioner learned of gaps in the Lerner email production on February 2, 2014. Yet, a month later, on March 4, 2014, IRS employees in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on the midnight shift, magnetically erased 422 back-up tapes, destroying as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails responsive to the subpoenas. No one will ever know what was contained in those emails.

After that destruction, Commissioner Koskinen made a series of false statements to Congress while under oath. On June 20, 2014, Commissioner Koskinen testified: "since the start of this investigation, every email has been preserved. Nothing has been lost. Nothing has been destroyed."³ Not only was Commissioner Koskinen's statement false, he later testified that the backup tapes had never even been sent to a lab for professional forensic analysis. Despite the failure to examine all sources of emails or send the backup tapes for professional analysis, he testified that IRS had made a genuine effort to discover the emails.

Further support for the removal of Commissioner Koskinen is detailed below.

Late on a Friday afternoon on June 13, 2014, buried on page seven of the third attachment to a letter to the Senate Finance Committee, the IRS informed Congress for the first time that it had destroyed emails sent and received by Lois Lerner between January 2009 and April 2011.⁵ The IRS's acknowledgement stood in stark contrast to promises made by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen under oath in March 2014 that he would produce all of Lerner's emails to the Committee. Commissioner Koskinen made these promises without qualification or limitation. The IRS subsequently claimed to have lost Lerner's emails from this pivotal period in the targeting timeline. Then, in November 2014, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ("TIGTA" or the "IG") told the Committee it found a significant number of the emails the IRS claimed were permanently missing. This chain of events undercut public confidence in Commissioner Koskinen and delayed the Committee's effort to fully analyze all facets of the IRS targeting program. Lerner's missing emails also spotlights a serious problem within the IRS about record retention and willful efforts to shield communications to avoid congressional scrutiny.

In the 114th Congress, new information came to light about how management failures and incompetence at the IRS directly led to the destruction of emails relevant to the congressional investigation. When the IRS told Congress that Lois Lerner's emails from the most relevant time period were unrecoverable, TIGTA found that the agency simply had not looked. When the IRS realized that gaps existed in Lerner's emails, agency leadership failed to take action. Throughout, Commissioner Koskinen failed to present full and complete information to Congress about the missing emails.

The IRS's false claim that key evidence was lost or destroyed prolonged the investigation

On September 4, 2014, TIGTA advised the Committee the IRS destroyed emails sent and received by Lois Lerner and at least five other key figures in the IRS's targeting matter during the period under investigation.⁶ Moreover, in a June 30, 2015, report, TIGTA found that up to 24,000 Lerner emails destroyed on March 4, 2014, are now unrecoverable.⁷

According to the IRS, Lerner's laptop computer crashed in June 2011, causing the data on her hard drive to be deemed "unrecoverable" by computer professionals.⁸ The investigation by TIGTA concluded Lerner's hard drive most likely crashed on June 11, 2011, a Saturday. Efforts to determine who had access to Lerner's office at the time were unsuccessful as the security badge entry and exit logs from that timeframe were also destroyed.⁹ Aaron Signor, an IRS IT specialist, initially examined Lerner's hard drive.¹⁰ Signor provided computer-related assistance to the Exempt Organizations Division. Signor removed the computer from Lerner's office and conducted tests that determined a problem existed with the computer's hard drive.¹¹ Signor attempted unsuccessfully to retrieve data from the hard drive before discarding the hard drive in a cardboard box containing roughly 30 other crashed drives.¹² Signor closed the fix-it ticket on June 21, 2011.¹³

In July or August 2011, Signor received a phone call from Lillie Wilburn, an IT manager, asking whether he still had Lerner's hard drive.¹⁴ She asked Signor to ship the hard drive to another technician for additional examination.¹⁵ John Minsek, a senior investigative analyst in the IRS's Criminal Investigations (CI) unit, eventually received Lerner's hard drive.¹⁶ Minsek understood the hard drive was from "a computer of importance" and there was a "sense of urgency" to recover data.¹⁷ Using the CI unit's digital forensic facilities, Minsek opened the hard drive and conducted additional tests.¹⁸ Once he opened the hard drive, Minsek noticed "well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk."¹⁹ According to Minsek, the scoring covered less than one percent of the surface of the disk.²⁰

Following Minsek's examination, he returned the hard drive to the IRS's IT team after determining he was unable to recover data.²¹ In a subsequent conversation with IRS IT personnel, Minsek also raised the possibility the IRS could send Lerner's hard drive to a data recovery service, believing it was "possible that they had techniques, methods, perhaps proprietary tools that I did not have."²² Instead, Lerner's hard drive was sent to an IRS facility and recycled by an outside contractor.²³

The destruction of Lerner's hard drive in June 2011 occurred during a pivotal time in the IRS's targeting of conservatives. Just four months earlier, in February 2011, Lerner called the Tea Party applications "very dangerous" and ordered the cases undergo an unprecedented "multi-tier" review.²⁴ In early June 2011, Lerner requested a copy of the tax-exempt application filed by the prominent conservative group, Crossroads GPS, for review by her senior technical advisor.²⁵

Testimony indicated Lerner maintained a significant amount of information on her computer's hard drive. According to Signor, the IT technician who regularly serviced Lerner's computer, Lerner maintained a large volume of data on the hard drive of her computer.²⁶ Signor recommended Lerner back up her data on a network server, but he was told Lerner did not have the time or responsibility to save her data. Signor testified:

In June 2011, after her emails were destroyed, Lerner wrote to David Fish, who also experienced a hard drive failure. "No one will ever believe," she wrote, "that both your hard drive and mine crashed within a week of each other!"³¹ The hard drive failures and email losses have prevented the Committee from fully understanding how and why the IRS targeted conservative applicants for tax-exempt status.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's continually evolving and misleading statements about the matter compounded the difficulties associated with Lois Lerner's destroyed emails. For several months, Commissioner Koskinen's unwillingness to present accurate and straightforward information about the missing emails unnecessarily delayed and hindered the Committee's fact-finding efforts.

Following Lois Lerner's staged apology at the ABA conference on May 10, 2013, the Committee requested relevant material necessary to begin investigating the IRS's targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.³² These requests included the production of "all documents and communications sent by, received by, or copied to Lois Lerner" since January 1, 2009.³³ The IRS did not provide these materials voluntarily.³⁴ On August 2, 2013, the Committee issued a subpoena to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, as the custodian of IRS documents, for eight categories of IRS material -- including "[a]ll communications sent or received by Lois Lerner, from January 1, 2009, to August 2, 2013."³⁵ After the Senate confirmed John Koskinen as the permanent IRS Commissioner, the Committee reissued the subpoena to him on February 14, 2014.³⁶

On March 26, 2014, Commissioner Koskinen appeared before the Committee to testify about the IRS's compliance with congressional subpoenas and document requests.³⁷ During the hearing, Commissioner Koskinen was repeatedly asked whether he would commit to producing all of Lerner's emails. Commissioner Koskinen testified repeatedly that he would. In an exchange with Representative Jason Chaffetz, Commissioner Koskinen testified:

After becoming aware of the discrepancy in the number of emails, Kane asked a subordinate, Paul Butler, to look into the cause of the discrepancy.⁴³ Two days later, on February 4, senior IRS leadership learned that Lerner's hard drive had crashed in 2011 from her former administrative assistant, Dawn Marx.⁴⁴ Kane testified:

Even when the IRS finally acknowledged the missing emails on June 13, 2014, it failed to provide full and complete information to the Committee. First, the IRS stated it "confirmed" that back-up tapes from the relevant period had been destroyed.⁵² Commissioner Koskinen repeated this information during his sworn testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee on June 20, 2014. He testified:

Koskinen also testified the IRS went to "great lengths" to recover Lerner's emails:

This statement by Commissioner Koskinen was false. On November 21, 2014, TIGTA notified congressional investigators that it located a significant portion of Lerner's "missing" emails.⁶¹ The IG found the emails among hundreds of "disaster recovery tapes" that were used to back up the IRS email system.⁶²

Commissioner Koskinen's posture with respect to the Committee's efforts to obtain Lerner's emails delayed the Committee's investigation. Commissioner Koskinen's credibility was further damaged when TIGTA found approximately 1,000 missing Lerner emails that Koskinen previously claimed were permanently lost. Moreover, TIGTA uncovered evidence that up to 24,000 additional emails would have been recoverable before March 4, 2014, when they were improperly destroyed in contravention of a specific preservation notice sent out by the IRS on May 22, 2013.

In fact, TIGTA located a number of back-up tapes that yielded some emails within 15 days. Timothy Camus, the TIGTA Deputy Inspector General for Investigations testified:

Poor IRS leadership resulted in the failure to preserve key documents

The IRS information technology department records backups incrementally on a daily basis, with a full backup performed weekly.⁶⁴ Before May 2013, the IRS reused and recycled backup tapes every six months as a cost saving measure.⁶⁵

On May 22, 2013, the IRS Chief Technology Officer Terence Milholland sent an email directive to senior staff ordering the preservation of electronic email media indefinitely.⁶⁶ That email, titled "Information Retention Policy Revision," changed the previous policy of keeping backup tapes only for six months.⁶⁷ Milholland issued the following order:

Despite the need to preserve documents for the ongoing investigations by Congress, Department of Justice, and TIGTA, IRS senior leadership made no effort to ensure the IRS IT department and lower level personnel understood the impact of, or complied with, the preservation order. Commissioner Koskinen was made aware of the existence of the preservation order in December 2013 or January 2014, shortly after his appointment as IRS Commissioner.⁷⁰ Yet, he did nothing to ensure its compliance. He neither reissued it nor sent out an email reminding IRS personnel of its importance. He also failed to inquire into compliance with the order. When asked by TIGTA if the email directive was sufficient, Koskinen acknowledged the matter "probably could have been handled differently."⁷¹

The IRS failed to ensure compliance with the preservation order at each turn. The IRS failed to confirm compliance with the preservation order in February 2014, upon learning of the gap in emails; failed to ensure the Media Management Midnight Unit, the team that destroyed the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order; and failed to make certain that individuals who ordered the destruction of the specific media, in this instance the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order.⁷² Camus testified:

In February 2014, upon learning of the gap in the emails, the IRS should have undertaken an investigation to determine not only whether backup tapes existed, but whether the instruction not to destroy documents was properly executed. Counselor to the Commissioner, Kate Duval, testified her first reaction upon discovering the gap in the Lerner production on February 2, 2014, was to revisit the preservation order. During a transcribed interview, Ms. Duval explained:⁷⁴

At any point between May 2013 and March 4, 2014, IRS leadership could have confirmed the preservation order was properly distributed to those whose job it is to destroy backup tapes, hard drives, and other media. The Media Management Midnight Unit, the team that destroyed the backup tapes, failed to understand the scope of the preservation order. IRS leadership should have ensured these individuals in particular knew that backup tapes were not to be destroyed.

Robert Lyewsang, an IT specialist at the IRS, told TIGTA he never received a copy of the preservation order, nor did anyone in his chain of command explain the need to preserve the backup tapes. Because of this, he sent the Form 3210 to the Media Management Midnight Team authorizing the destruction of the backup tapes.⁷⁵

Lyewsang authorized the destruction of the tapes because Steve Warren, the manager of IT backup equipment nationwide, told him the tapes were not needed and the room where they were located needed to be cleaned out. Warren told Lyewsang the agency no longer needed the backup tapes sometime in the fall of 2013.⁷⁶ Lyewsang told TIGTA that the IRS wanted to remodel the space to house a new network operations center, and he was being pressured to move the backup tapes.⁷⁷ Lyewsang's intern testified under oath about the disorganized cleaning process, specifically that the room in question had been a year overdue for clearing out to reduce computer space.⁷⁸

As Koskinen acknowledged, verifying that IRS employees understood the directive to preserve all backup tapes could, and should, have been done differently. Upon becoming commissioner, Koskinen should have taken steps to ensure that IRS employees knew of and were properly following the preservation order. At a minimum, after learning about the missing emails, Koskinen should have directed his subordinates to make sure the people on the ground -- the people who most needed to know about the preservation directive -- were aware of the need to preserve backup tapes. Instead, IRS employees did not understand the preservation order and failed to preserve relevant backup tapes.

IRS failed to comply with a congressional subpoena and recover Lois Lerner's emails from the backup tapes

In June 2014, after the IRS acknowledged the missing Lois Lerner emails, the agency stated that it "confirmed that back-up tapes from 2011 no longer exist because they have been recycled" but failed to disclose when this occurred.⁷⁹ Commissioner Koskinen repeated this information during his sworn testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee on June 20, 2014, and testified the IRS went to "great lengths" to recover Lerner's emails. The Committee has since learned these statements were false. Not only did the IRS fail to "confirm" the tapes had been destroyed, the back-up tapes were swiftly recovered by TIGTA when it became aware of the issue in June 2014. Further, had the IRS either abided by its preservation notice of May 22, 2013 or looked for backup tapes upon learning of the problems in the email production in February 2014, up to 24,000 additional Lerner emails may have been recovered. The IRS, however, failed on both accounts.

The Current IRS Email System Backup Tapes

In May 2011, the IRS migrated its email backup system from New Carrollton, Maryland, to Martinsburg, West Virginia.⁸⁰ At that time, and until May 22, 2013, IRS policy was to recycle the backup tapes every six months.⁸¹ On May 22, 2013, IRS Chief Technology Officer Terrance Milholland issued a policy directive via email titled "Information Retention Policy Revision," changing the backup tape recycle policy to an indefinite retention period.⁸²

The IG learned about Lois Lerner's hard drive crash and resulting gaps in the IRS's production on June 13, 2014, the same day Congress and the American public learned of the problem, but months after the IRS discovered the missing emails.⁸³ The IG promptly opened an investigation to determine whether the emails the IRS reported as lost could be recovered.

Two weeks later, on June 30, 2014, TIGTA requested the IRS provide any backup tapes that could contain Lerner's emails from January 1, 2008, through December 31, 2011.⁸⁴ In response to this request, the IRS provided 744 tapes that may have been used to back up Lerner's email account.⁸⁵ From these tapes, TIGTA found five sets of weekly backups of Lerner's email beginning on November 20, 2012, approximately six months before Milholland's backup tape retention policy directive took effect.⁸⁶ According to TIGTA, these tapes are the oldest known Lerner email account backups available.⁸⁷

The IG compared the Lerner emails it recovered from these backup tapes to the IRS's production to Congress and found over 1,000 new emails the IRS never produced.⁸⁸

Timothy Camus explained to the Committee how TIGTA found the backup tapes for the current IRS email system: "To the best we can determine through the investigation, they just -- they simply didn't look for those emails. So for the 1,000 -- over 1,000 emails that we found on the backup tapes -- we found them because we looked for them."⁸⁹ In fact, the IG determined the agency failed to look in five of the six possible sources of "electronic media, all of which the IRS had in their possession."

The Decommissioned Email Server Backup Tapes

When the IRS moved the email server from New Carrollton, Maryland to Martinsburg, West Virginia, it turned off the old email server but left it in place.⁹⁰ In December 2011, IRS IT employees disassembled the server and treated the server hard drives and backup tapes as junk.⁹¹ In April 2012, most, but not all, of these parts were destroyed by an IRS contractor. In December 2013, months after the preservation order was issued, the remaining servers and backup tapes were shipped to Martinsburg for destruction.⁹² These servers and tapes remained in Martinsburg until March 2014 until Lyewsang sent the proper paperwork to destroy the hard drives and backup tapes.⁹³

On or about March 4, 2014, one month after the IRS realized it did not have all of Lerner's emails, IRS employees on the Media Management Midnight Unit in Martinsburg, West Virginia, magnetically erased, or degaussed, 422 backup tapes that likely contained full, weekly backups of Lerner's email account dating back to late November or December 2010.⁹⁴ During its investigation, TIGTA found and examined these tapes, but they contained no recoverable data.⁹⁵ As discussed above, the employees did not destroy the server hard drives shipped with the backup tapes because they incorrectly believed the preservation order only applied to hard drives.⁹⁶

Notwithstanding Milholland's May 2013 directive not to destroy any of the backup tapes for email, the IRS continued to degauss backup tapes until approximately June 2014.⁹⁷ The IG estimates the IRS's failure to comply with the May 2013 preservation order and congressional subpoenas resulted in the loss of up to 24,000 Lerner emails.⁹⁸ Camus testified before the Committee about the destruction of these tapes:

Though Koskinen testified the IRS made "extraordinary efforts" to recover Lerner's emails, TIGTA's investigation shows this is not the case. Camus testified:

In the course of the Committee's investigation, it became apparent the IRS tacitly condoned an environment in which IRS employees sought to evade congressional oversight of their official business. Not only did senior IRS employees regularly utilize their private, non-official email accounts to conduct official IRS business, but Lois Lerner even warned her colleagues to "be cautious about what we say in emails."¹⁰⁶ These actions not only potentially violate federal law, but they frustrate congressional oversight of the executive branch. Moreover, the Committee found IRS employees sent confidential taxpayer information using non-official email accounts, which potentially compromised the security of this information. Although the IRS provides senior employees with portable official laptops,¹⁰⁷ the use of non-official email accounts to conduct official business within the IRS is prevalent and reoccurring.

The Federal Records Act requires the preservation of all communications connected to official government business, including the use of official email accounts.¹⁰⁸ The IRS maintains a records-retention policy that specifically prohibits the use of a non-official email account to conduct official IRS business.¹⁰⁹ The IRS considers emails to be official records when "they are created or received in the transaction of agency business, appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government's function and activities, or valuable because of the information they contain."¹¹⁰

The Committee's investigation found several IRS employees -- including former Commissioner Doug Shulman and former Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner -- sent or received material relating to official IRS business on their non-official email accounts. For example, material produced to the Committee included draft IRS documents that Lerner sent to a non-official msn.com email account from her official IRS account.¹¹¹ Lerner's use of her non-official email account was saved in her IRS email with the shorthand label, "Lois Home."¹¹²

Judith Kindell, Lerner's former senior technical advisor, also used her non-official email account to conduct official IRS business.¹¹³ Documents produced to the Committee show Kindell transmitted confidential taxpayer information, redacted by the IRS for 26 U.S.C. Section 6103 purposes, from her official email account to her non-official Verizon.net email account and to Lerner's non-official msn.com email account.¹¹⁴ The transmission of this material over non-governmental email channels threatened the security of the information and may have compromised sensitive taxpayer information.

In August 2013, Chairman Issa wrote to Treasury Secretary Lew to remind him of his obligation to ensure all emails related to official business are preserved for congressional oversight.¹¹⁵ Then-acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel responded, assuring the Committee the IRS had taken all "necessary steps to preserve emails" and evaluated any personnel actions for the use of non-official email accounts.¹¹⁶ The Committee, however, is not aware of any IRS disciplinary action on the violations of federal law and IRS policy uncovered by the Committee.

The Committee also learned in the course of its investigation the IRS maintained a wholly separate instant-messaging communication system it did not regularly archive.¹¹⁷ According to one IRS employees, the system -- known as "Office Communication Server," or OCS -- is "not set to automatically save as the standard; however, that functionality exists within the software."¹¹⁸ The fact the IRS did not automatically archive these messages as a matter of course raises questions regarding the agency's commitment to preserving communications and records for congressional oversight or other needs.

Documents obtained by the Committee suggest that Lois Lerner actively sought to hide information from Congress. In one email, Lerner spoke of counseling her colleagues "to be cautious about" what they write in email due to congressional oversight interests in the subject matter. She wrote:

The IRS failed to meet its requirements regarding record retention. The Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, testified to the Committee that the IRS did not follow the law in retaining Lois Lerner's destroyed emails.¹²¹ The IRS fostered an atmosphere that allowed senior employees, such as Lerner, to encourage colleagues to avoid written records for fear of public scrutiny. This work environment allowed employees to use personal email accounts for official business, including the transmittal of confidential taxpayer information. The failure of the IRS to properly preserve email and other records, coupled with its apparent institutional disregard for federal records laws, frustrates congressional oversight and prevents the American people from learning the full truth about the IRS's targeting.

IRS Created a Special Project Team to Handle Requests for Information about Lerner and 501(c)(4) matters

On June 3, 2015, Mary Howard, Director of the Privacy, Governmental Liaison and Disclosure section at the IRS, testified to the Committee that the agency created a "special project team" specifically for responding to congressional subpoenas and requests for information relating to Lois Lerner and other 501(c)(4) matters. Howard testified:

The IRS's destruction of up to 24,000 relevant emails in the face of a congressional subpoena and preservation order is inexcusable. Had the IRS taken the necessary steps to educate employees on the preservation notice, or undertaken any sort of investigation once the agency learned of the missing emails, it could have stopped the destruction of these important documents. In the absence of Lois Lerner's testimony, these documents are critical to the Committee's attempt to determine what went wrong at the IRS. Commissioner John Koskinen's misleading statements to Congress about the destruction of these emails has compounded the problem. His unwillingness to present accurate information about the missing emails has delayed and hindered the Committee's efforts, perhaps permanently so.

The IRS is one of the most powerful Federal agencies and must be trustworthy. It is not possible to move past the agency's willful targeting of conservative tax-exempt applications as long as the agency refuses to take responsibility for its actions. As leader of the IRS, Commissioner John Koskinen has repeatedly failed to take responsibility for the destruction of evidence by the agency and the numerous misstatements he made to Congress about this matter. Because of his actions, and the actions of others at the agency he leads, the American people may never know the truth about the IRS' targeting of conservative tax-exempt applications.

For these reasons, we request you immediately remove Commissioner Koskinen as head of the IRS.

² H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, Subpoena to John Koskinen, Comm'r, Internal Revenue Serv. (Feb. 14, 2014).

³Recent Developments in the Committee's Investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's Use of Inappropriate Criteria to Process Applications of Tax-Exempt Organizations: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Ways & Means, 113th Cong. (2014).

⁴ H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, Staff Report: The Internal Revenue Services' Targeting of Conservative Tax-Exempt Applicants: Report of Findings for the 113th Congress, 113th Cong. (Dec. 23, 2014).

⁵ Letter from Leonard Oursler, Internal Revenue Serv., to Hon. Ron Wyden & Hon. Orrin Hatch. S. Comm. on Finance (June 13, 2014).

⁶ Conference call between Treasury Inspector Gen. for Tax Admin. and Cong. Staff (Sept. 4, 2014).

⁷ Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Report of Investigation: Exempt Organizations Data Loss 2, (June 30, 2015) (hereinafter "TIGTA report"); IRS: TIGTA Update Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 114th Cong. 8 (2015) (written testimony of Hon. J. Russell George and Timothy P. Camus, TIGTA) (hereinafter "June 25 TIGTA testimony").

⁸ Letter from Leonard Oursler, Internal Revenue Serv., to Hon. Ron Wyden & Hon. Orrin Hatch, S. Comm. on Finance (June 13, 2014).

⁹ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 9.

¹⁰ Transcribed interview of Aaron Signor, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (Aug. 1, 2014).

¹¹Id.

¹²Id.

¹³Id.

¹⁴Id

¹⁵Id.

¹⁶ Transcribed interview of John Minsek, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (July 24, 2014).

¹⁷Id

¹⁸Id.

¹⁹Id.

²⁰Id.

²¹Id.

²² Transcribed interview of John Minsek, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (July 24, 2014).

²³ Transcribed interview of Thomas Kane, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (July 17, 2014).

²⁴ Email from Lois Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv., to Michael Seto, Internal Revenue Serv. (Feb. 1, 2011) [IRSR 161810].

²⁵ Email from Holly Paz, Internal Revenue Serv., to Cindy Thomas, Internal Revenue Serv. (June 1, 2011) [IRSR 69914-15].

²⁶ Transcribed interview of Aaron Signor, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (Aug. 1, 2014).

²⁷Id.

²⁸ Letter from Leonard Oursler, Internal Revenue Serv., to Dave Camp, H. Comm. on Ways & Means (Sept. 5, 2014) (carbon copy to Darrell Issa, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform).

²⁹Id.

³⁰Id.

³¹ Email from Lois Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv., to David Fish & Nikole Flax, Internal Revenue Serv. (June 29, 2011) [IRSR 903314].

³² Letter from Darrell Issa & Jim Jordan, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Lois Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv. (May 14, 2013); Letter from Darrell Issa & Jim Jordan, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Daniel Werfel, Internal Revenue Serv. (June 4, 2013).

³³ Letter from Darrell Issa & Jim Jordan, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Daniel Werfel, Internal Revenue Serv. (June 4, 2013).

³⁴See Letter from Darrell Issa, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Daniel Werfel, Internal Revenue Serv. (July 30, 2013).

³⁵ H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, Subpoena to Jacob Lew, Sec'y, Dep't of the Treasury (Aug. 2, 2013).

³⁶ H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, Subpoena to John Koskinen, Comm'r, Internal Revenue Serv. (Feb. 14, 2014).

³⁷Examining the IRS Response to the Targeting Scandal: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 113th Cong. (2014).

³⁸Id. (question and answer with Rep. Jason Chaffetz).

³⁹Id. (question and answer with Ranking Member Elijah E. Cummings).

⁴⁰ Transcribed interview of Thomas Kane, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (July 17, 2014).

⁴¹Id.

⁴²Id; Letter from Leonard Oursler, Internal Revenue Serv., to Ron Wyden & Orrin Hatch, S. Comm. on Finance encl. 3 at 6 (June 13, 2014).

⁴³ Transcribed interview of Thomas Kane, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (July 17, 2014).

⁴⁴Id.

⁴⁵Id.

⁴⁶Id.

⁴⁷Id.

⁴⁸Id.

⁴⁹An Update on the IRS Response to Its Targeting Scandal: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Econ. Growth, Job Creation & Reg. Affairs of the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 113th Cong. (2014) (emphasis added).

⁵⁰Id.

⁵¹ Meeting between Committee staff and Catherine Duval & Leonard Oursler, Internal Revenue Serv. (Apr. 4, 2014).

⁵² Letter from Leonard Oursler, Internal Revenue Serv., to Ron Wyden & Orrin Hatch, S. Comm. on Finance encl. 3 (June 13, 2014).

⁵³Recent Developments in the Committee's Investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's Use of Inappropriate Criteria to Process Applications of Tax-Exempt Organizations: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Ways & Means, 113th Cong. (2014) (statement of John Koskinen, IRS Commissioner) (emphasis added).

⁵⁴An Update on the IRS Response to Its Targeting Scandal: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Econ. Growth, Job Creation & Reg. Affairs of the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 113th Cong. (2014) (emphasis added).

⁵⁵ Email from Terrance Milholland, Internal Revenue Serv. to Lauren Buschor, Karen Freeman, Daniel Chaddock, David Stender, and Anne Shepherd, carbon copy to Stephen Manning, Gina Garza, Tracey Babcock, and Kathleen Walters, Internal Revenue Serv. (May 22, 2013).

⁵⁶IRS Commissioner John Koskinen: Hearing Before the H. Comm on Ways and Means, 113th Cong. (2014).

⁵⁷ Conference call between Treasury Inspector Gen. for Tax Admin. and Cong. Staff (July 29, 2014).

⁵⁸Id.

⁵⁹ Transcribed interview of Steven Manning, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (April 6, 2015).

⁶⁰ Letter from John Koskinen, Internal Revenue Serv., to Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman, Subcomm. on Economic Growth, Job Creation, and Regulatory Affairs (Sep. 12, 2014).

⁶¹ Rachel Bade, Thousands of lost Lois Lerner IRS emails found by IG, POLITICO, Nov. 23, 2014.

⁶² Susan Ferrechio, 30,000 missing emails from IRS' Lerner recovered, WASH. EXAMINER, Nov. 22, 2014.

⁶³IRS: TIGTA Update Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm on Oversight and Gov. Reform, 114th Cong. (2015).

⁶⁴ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 12.

⁶⁵Id. at 12.

⁶⁶ Email from Terrance Milholland, Internal Revenue Serv., to Lauren Buschor, Karen Freeman, Daniel Chaddock, David Stender, and Anne Shepherd, carbon copy to Stephen Manning, Gina Garza, Tracey Babcock, and Kathleen Walters, Internal Revenue Serv. (May 22, 2013).

⁶⁷ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 4.

⁶⁸Id.

⁶⁹Id.

⁷⁰Id. at 1272.

⁷¹Id.

⁷²Id. at 16.

⁷³IRS: TIGTA Update Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm on Oversight and Gov. Reform, 114th Cong. (2015).

⁷⁴ Transcribed interview of Catherine Duval, Internal Revenue Service, in Wash., D.C. (July 31, 2014).

⁷⁵Id. at 964, 967.

⁷⁶Id. at 963.

⁷⁷Id

⁷⁸Id. at 1202.

⁷⁹ Letter from Leonard Oursler, Internal Revenue Serv., to Ron Wyden & Orrin Hatch, S. Comm. on Finance, encl. 3 (June 13, 2014).

⁸⁰IRS: TIGTA Update Part II, Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 114th Cong. 4 (2015) (written testimony of Hon. J. Russell George and Timothy P. Camus, TIGTA) (hereinafter "June 25 TIGTA testimony").

⁸¹ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 4.

⁸² Email from Terrance Milholland, Internal Revenue Serv. to Lauren Buschor, Karen Freeman, Daniel Chaddock, David Stender, and Anne Shepherd, carbon copy to Stephen Manning, Gina Garza, Tracey Babcock, and Kathleen Walters, Internal Revenue Serv. (May 22, 2013).

⁸³ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 1.

⁸⁴Id. at 13.

⁸⁵Id.

⁸⁶Id. at 14.

⁸⁷Id. at 14.

⁸⁸Id. at 15.

⁸⁹IRS: TIGTA Update Part II, Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 114th Cong. (2015) (emphasis added).

⁹⁰ June 25 TIGTA testimony, supra note 79, at 4.

⁹¹ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 3.

⁹²Id

⁹³Id.

⁹⁴Id. at 17.

⁹⁵ June 25 TIGTA testimony, supra note 79, at 7.

⁹⁶ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 17.

⁹⁷Id. at 17.

⁹⁸ June 25 TIGTA testimony, supra note 79, at 8.

⁹⁹IRS: TIGTA Update Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 114th Cong. (2015) (emphasis added).

¹⁰⁰ TIGTA report, supra note 7, at 18.

¹⁰¹Id.

¹⁰²IRS: TIGTA Update Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 114th Cong. (2015).

¹⁰³IRS: TIGTA Update Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm on Oversight and Gov. Reform, 114th Cong. (2015).

¹⁰⁴IRS Commissioner John Koskinen: Hearing Before the H. Comm on Ways and Means, 113th Cong. (2014).

¹⁰⁵IRS: TIGTA Update Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm on Oversight and Gov. Reform, 114th Cong. (2015).

¹⁰⁶ Email from Lois Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv., to Maria Hooke, Internal Revenue Serv. (Ap. 9, 2013) [IRSR 726247].

¹⁰⁷See Transcribed interview of Sarah Hall Ingram, Internal Revenue Serv., in Wash., D.C. (Sept. 23, 2013).

¹⁰⁸ 44 U.S.C. ch. 31.

¹⁰⁹See I.R.M. § 10.8.1.4.6.3.1; see also Letter from Daniel Werfel, Internal Revenue Serv., to Darrell Issa, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform (Sept. 16, 2013).

¹¹⁰ I.R.M. § 1.10.3.2.3.

¹¹¹See Letter from Darrell Issa & Jim Jordan, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Lois G. Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv. (Aug. 13, 2013).

¹¹²Id.

¹¹³See Letter from Darrell Issa & Jim Jordan, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Judith Kindell, Internal Revenue Serv. (Sept. 30, 2013).

¹¹⁴See, e.g., Email from Judith Kindell to Lois Lerner (Aug. 23, 2011) [LERNER-OGR205 -- 224].

¹¹⁵ Letter from Darrell Issa, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Jacob Lew, U.S. Dep't of the Treasury (Aug. 15,2013).

¹¹⁶ Letter from Daniel Werfel, Internal Revenue Serv., to Darrell Issa, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform (Sept. 16, 2013).

¹¹⁷ Email from Maria Hooke, Internal Revenue Serv., to Lois Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv. (Apr. 9, 2013) [IRSR 726247].

¹¹⁸Id.

¹¹⁹ Email from Lois Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv., to Maria Hooke, Internal Revenue Serv. (Ap. 9, 2013) [IRSR 726247].

¹²⁰ Email from Lois Lerner, Internal Revenue Serv., to Maria Hooke, Internal Revenue Serv. (Ap. 9, 2013). [IRSR 726247].

¹²¹See IRS Obstruction: Lois Lerner's Missing Emails, Part II: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 113th Cong. (2014).

¹²²Ensuring Agency Compliance with the Freedom of Information Act: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, 114th Cong. at 50 (2015).

¹²³Id. at 48-50 (emphasis added).

¹²⁴Id. at 51-52.