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WASHINGTON – Investigators said Thursday they have recovered 32,000 emails related to a former IRS official at the heart of the agency’s tea party scandal. However, they don’t know how many of them are new.

The emails were to and from Lois Lerner, former head of the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. Last June, the IRS told Congress it had lost an unknown number of Lerner’s emails when her computer hard drive crashed in 2011.

At the time, IRS officials said the emails could not be recovered. But, at a congressional hearing Thursday evening, investigators said they found thousands of emails on old computer tapes used to back up the agency’s email system.

“We recovered quite a number of emails but … we don’t know if they’re new emails,” Timothy Camus, a Treasury deputy inspector general for tax administration, told the House Oversight Committee.

Neither Camus nor the inspector general, J. Russell George, would describe the contents of any of the emails at Thursday’s hearing.

The IRS says it has already produced 78,000 Lerner emails, many of which have been made public.

Camus said it took investigators two weeks to locate the tapes that contained Lerner’s emails. He said it took technicians about four months to find Lerner’s emails on the tapes.

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Several Oversight Committee members questioned how hard the IRS tried to produce the emails, given how quickly independent investigators found them. “We have been patient. We have asked, we have issued subpoenas, we have held hearings,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the committee. “It’s just shocking me that you start, two weeks later you’re able to find the emails.”

The IRS issued a statement saying the agency “has been and remains committed to cooperating fully with the congressional oversight investigations. The IRS continues to work diligently with Congress, as well as support the review by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.”

The IRS estimated it has spent $20 million responding to congressional inquiries, generating more than 1 million pages of documents and providing agency officials to testify at 27 congressional hearings.