13 Lerner Emails May Not Have Been Provided to Congress

The Service has now released to Judicial Watch over 32,600 pages of documents responsive to the FOIA requests at issue in this case. Those pages have been redacted for exemptions in accordance with 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) as appropriate.

IRS Chief Counsel attorneys have represented to the undersigned attorneys that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ("TIGTA") has not provided any forensically-recovered emails to the Service since the Service submitted its Status Report on January 22, 2016. On January 29, 2016, TIGTA turned over to Chief Counsel 13 Lois Lerner emails (without any associated attachments) and one handwritten note. TIGTA has communicated to Chief Counsel that it believes that these documents have not been previously produced to Congress in prior document productions. These 14 documents were found in papers that TIGTA retrieved from Lois Lerner's office in August of 2013. The 14 documents are being loaded in Clearwell, Chief Counsel's document review platform, and will be searched to determine if any of the documents are responsive to the FOIA requests at issue in this case. The Service has agreed to prioritize its review of the 14 documents and the Service will provide a date by which it will expect to turnover any non-exempt, responsive documents in its weekly status report due February 8, 2016.

Dated: February 1, 2016