The judge found a number of problems with True the Vote’s legal demands. | John Shinkle/POLITICO IRS notches legal win on lost emails

The IRS won what might be Round One in a series of contests pitting tea party groups against the agency, with a federal judge rejecting a conservative group’s bid for a court-appointed forensics expert to hunt for ex-official Lois Lerner’s lost emails.

Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said True the Vote’s lawsuit against the IRS failed to show “irreparable harm” in its injunction relief request and that “the public interest weighs strongly against the type of injunctive relief the plaintiff seeks.”


“Despite the general distrust of the defendants expressed by the plaintiff, the Court has no factual basis to concur with that distrust … and therefore concludes that the issuance of an injunction will not further aid in the recovery of the emails, if such recovery is possible, but will rather only duplicate and potentially interfere with ongoing investigative activities,” he wrote in a court memorandum posted Wednesday afternoon.

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Following the news that the IRS lost two years’ worth of ex-IRS official Lerner’s emails, True the Vote last month asked the court to grant an injunction relief motion barring the IRS from destroying documents, and to approve the computer expert as part of an “expedited” discovery process. The group’s lawyer said Wednesday they could still try for regular, rather than “expedited” discovery, at a later point.

Several other conservative groups are suing the agency over various parts of the tea party scandal, from the treatment of the conservative groups to the lost Lerner emails.

Lerner, ex-chief of the tax-exempt unit found in a May 2013 inspector general report to be unfairly scrutinizing applications from tea party groups seeking tax breaks, has become a central figure in the melee.

True the Vote says it is one of the conservative groups that were discriminated against by the IRS in the scandal that erupted last year. The controversy again hit a boiling point this summer when the IRS said a 2011 computer crash erased Lerner emails that congressional Republicans say are vital to its investigation of the matter.

( Also on POLITICO: Lois Lerner email: Some in GOP 'crazies')

But Walton found a number of problems with True the Vote’s legal demands.

He said the group must establish that it would suffer “irreparable harm” in the absence of the injunction, along with a handful of other requirements such as whether it’s in the public interest.

True the Vote tried during a court hearing last month to argue that the loss of emails was “spoliation” and that it “will face irreparable injury to the fair adjudication of its claims — and consequently, its constitutional rights — if critical electronic information is not recovered and preserved.”

Spoliation is the purposeful destruction of evidence or failure to record information to hide something. The IRS denies that it has destroyed any evidence, blaming the lost emails on an accidental computer crash.

The judge essentially said there was no reason to suggest the IRS intentionally destroyed evidence: “Without a finding that spoliation previously occurred, there is little basis to conclude that the defendants will ‘continue’ spoliating potential evidence.”

Without such evidence, he said there was no reason to believe the group would suffer without it an immediate, expedited injunction.

The group’s tax-exempt status earlier this year was approved by the IRS, leading the government to file a motion to dismiss a request that is “ripe” for consideration, the judge said Wednesday. But the group says it is also seeking damages and the lost emails potentially harm its ability to make the case that it should be granted a financial reward for having its exemption unfairly held up for years, their lawyer argues.

The judge also rejected the group’s argument that because pro-Israeli group Z Street sued the IRS on a similar tax-exempt application matter in 2010, that the IRS was legally obligated to save all the emails as evidence because it was under investigation.

“That connective leap the Court cannot make,” he wrote.

Walton also said although it is in the public’s interest to find Lerner’s email, it’s not in the public’s interest to “allow … a third party, as requested by the plaintiff, to inspect IRS computers” because it would “necessarily result in the disclosure of tax returns and return information to that third party.”

“The searches would result in the disclosure of tax return and return information of individuals and entities that are not parties to this lawsuit in violation of” tax privacy law, he said.

He also noted that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is already investigating the matter using forensic experts — a probe that will simultaneously protect confidential taxpayer information.