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Congressional investigators today revealed that IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner sent official documents from her government email account to a personal address - raising fears she used the account in secret to conduct part of the IRS's operation that targeted tea party organizations.

Lerner, who has been on paid leave since she refused to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in May, has reportedly requested immunity from prosecution as a condition of her return to tell members of Congress what she knows.

While most government employees use separate email accounts for non-official communication, a congressional staffer to an Oversight committee Republican told MailOnline that career civil servants are regularly instructed to erect 'a serious firewall' between their personal online life and government business.

Lerner's actions have become the center of gravity for House GOP lawyers investigating the tea party controversy, which President Barack Obama has repeatedly included in a group of what he has called 'phony scandals.'

In a letter Monday, Oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa and Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending chairman Jim Jordan demanded that Lerner turn over all emails in her personal account that concerned her official duties.

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Fox Cincinnati affiliate WXIX-TV has identified six IRS employees who sent probing letters to tea party groups, all of whose chains of command point to Lerner as the conservative targeting operation's chief administrator

House oversight committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa (L) and subcommittee chair Jim Jordan (R) demanded in writing that Lerner turn over any work emails in her personal account



'Through the course of the investigation, we have learned that you sent documents related to your official duties from your official IRS e-mail account to an msn.com e-mail account labeled "Lois Home,"' the letter reads .

'This raises some serious questions concerning your use of a non-official e-mail account to conduct official business.'

An online search yielded three msn.com accounts with names related to 'Lois Lerner.' Messages send to those addresses were not rejected by the email server, but there was no response.

If Lerner used her private email account to organize, execute or cover up the IRS's more than three-year-long program that subjected right-wing groups to an unusual level of scrutiny after they applied for fax-exempt status, those emails would not be archived by the federal government.

Tea party protesters have held dozens of rallies asking government officials to discipline IRS officials who targeted them for special scrutiny on the basis of political keywords in their groups' names

During a May 22 hearing, Lerner insisted that 'I have not done anything wrong,' but refused to answer questions after giving her opening statement. Committee lawyers later determined that she had waived her Fifth Amendment privilege by defending herself and then leaving the hearing room

'The use of non-official e-mail accounts ... also creates difficulties in fulfilling the IRS’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act and other litigation requests,' the congressmen wrote. 'Your use of non-official e-mail account also frustrates congressional oversight obligations.'

Issa, a California Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio Republican, gave Lerner two weeks to produce all the personal emails that involve her job at the IRS.

A press spokesperson for the oversight committee's Democratic minority did not respond to a request for comment.



Judicial Watch, an aggressive watchdog organization best known for suing government agencies to enforce Freedom of Information Act requests, told MailOnline that it would soon file such a demand related to Lerner's emails.

Asked Monday if the group had a FOIA request in process, a Judicial Watch spokesperson replied, 'We do now.'

Tom Fitton, the group's president, followed up, telling MailOnline that 'getting documents from this administration is too often a cat-and-mouse game.'

'It seems the misuse of personal email for the public's business in order to avoid disclosure is the new "in thing" for members of the Obama administration.'

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton (L) told MailOnline that Lerner's secondary email address is party of the 'cat and mouse game' the administration plays with watchdogs. Tea Party Patriots CEO Jenny Beth Martin (R) has said her group was subjected to an inordinate level of IRS scrutiny when it applied for tax-exempt status



A member of the White House's task force that conducted the 2009 auto industry bailout used three different email addresses for official business, including two personal accounts, according to reporting from The Daily Caller .

In a separate episode, Lisa Jackson, then the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, came under fire when she used a secondary government email account with the pseudonym 'Richard Windsor,' to carry on official conversations with other EPA staffers.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, has asked the EPA's inspector general to investigate.

Jackson's 'practice of using fictitious email accounts to conduct official EPA business, shielding the contents from public view, conflicts directly with her responsibility to follow federal records law,' the group's executive director, Melanie Sloan, said in a November 2012 statement.

