IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testifed before a subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today. During one exchange with Rep. Jim Jordan, Koskinen seemed to find nothing at all suspicious about Lois Lerner’s interest in whether IRS instant messages were “searchable” and could be turned over to Congress.
Rep. Jordan: [Lerner] says “perfect” when she learns that it is not traceable, not trackable, not stored…What I want to know is, why did it take us this long to get these emails? We’ve been after these for 6 months and you dump them on us on July 3rd. Have you ever seen this email…have you ever seen this stuff before.
Commissioner Koskinen: No, and I don’t see anything in here where Lois Lerner says “wow, I got rid of my earlier emails and now I got to check on these.”
Jordan: I’m not saying…I’m focusing on the pattern. I’m focusing on the pattern.
Koskinen: I’m sorry you said for the record that Lois Lerner had written…
Jordan: No I didn’t I said Dave Camp sent her a letter and 10 days later her computer mysteriously crashes and 7 other important people at the IRS. And then I’m saying here’s the pattern again. She learns that there’s…the Inspector General is going to issue a report that says the IRS was in fact targeting conservative groups and now 12 days after that she says we better make sure this OCS system doesn’t track anything is not traceable and Congress, and more importantly the American people, can’t get access to what we were talking about.
Koskinen went on to say that the emails had been provided to the FBI but was not specific about when that took place. Here is the full exchange:
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