Lois Lerner is the central figure in the scandal. GOP: IRS lost more emails

Republicans on Tuesday charged that the IRS has lost emails of a half dozen of its employees involved in the tea party targeting controversy, including a top aide to the now-fired acting IRS commissioner.

In addition to losing two years’ worth of emails sent and received by Lois Lerner, the central figure in the scandal, the IRS “cannot produce records from six other IRS employees involved in the targeting of conservative groups,” Ways and Means Republicans said in a release.


That includes Nikole Flax, who was the chief of staff for Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who was fired by President Barack Obama after an inspector general blasted the agency for the inappropriate scrutiny of tax-exempt applications.

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The IRS did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but at least one top Democrat decried a rush to judgment by Republicans.

“It is unfortunate that the IRS experienced equipment failure that resulted in several computers crashing and some email data being lost from Lois Lerner’s hard drive between 2009 and 2011,” Sander Levin, the top Democrat on Ways and Means said. “But every equipment failure is not a conspiracy.”

The revelation is the latest turn in a scandal that Democrats had hoped would have gone away months ago, but instead continues to be fueled by new accusations that Republicans, and some nonpartisan observers, say require further probe in the run up to the midterm elections.

Ways and Means does not say how the emails went missing or what time specific time periods are involved, though they say it includes the period at issue. In the case of Lerner, for example, her archived emails between 2009 and 2011 were washed away in a 2011 computer crash, the agency says.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who took over as a clean-up man for the agency rocked by the matter, will testify before at least two House panels next week on the Lerner email matter.

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The IRS says that at the time they did not keep records of or back up all emails. Rather, they relied on employees to archive them on their personal computers after they ran out of storage space in their Outlook inboxes.

“The time frame for which Ms. Flax’s communications are purportedly unrecoverable covers when the Washington, D.C., office wrote and directed the Cincinnati field office to send abusive questionnaires, including inappropriate demands for donor information, to conservative groups,” House Republicans wrote in a statement.

The panel is referring to part of the IRS scandal centered on inappropriate questions agents sent conservative groups applying for tax exemptions, including requests of donor lists, private meeting minutes, Facebook posts, group leaders’ resumes and info about whether leaders knew certain politicians or had connections with various conservative groups.

Koskinen met with leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, which is also probing the matter, for more than an hour on Monday. Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Tuesday emphasized he wants his committee’s ongoing investigation to remain bipartisan.

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“I feel very strongly — because this is, at this point, the only bipartisan inquiry — to press very hard for answers to our questions and ensure that the committee on a bipartisan basis gets all the relevant information so we can complete our inquiry.”

Asked whether he believes the missing emails still exist, Wyden said, “I have heard a variety of different viewpoints on this” while declining to say what he believes.

Flax visited the White House at least 15 times between July 2010 and April 2013, according to White House records. The vast majority of the meetings appear to be related to the health care law. The White House has held frequent interagency meetings on the law, which the IRS helps administer through tax credits.

So-called social welfare organizations in question include Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the Priorities group started by Obama allies. The groups can engage in a limited but vague amount of political activity to earn tax-exempt status. The groups at issue, though, were largely much smaller.

POLITICO has also learned the names of the other five officials who the GOP say the IRS lost emails in a computer crash. According to the committee, they also include: Michelle Eldridge, supervisory public affairs specialist; Kimberly Kitchens, an agent; Julie Chen, another agent; Tyler Chumny, an IRS supervisory agent; and Nancy Heagney, an agent.

None could be reached for comment.

Republicans also blasted the IRS for not bringing the missing emails to the attention of congressional investigators sooner.

It says the agency first knew of the emails as early as February 2014. Koskinen on Monday said he learned about the Lerner emails in the Spring.

Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) says the fact that Flax was a White House visitor “only raises more questions.”

“Who was she visiting at the White House and what were they talking about? Was she updating the White House on the targeting or was she getting orders?” the statement says. “These are answers we don’t yet have, because — surprise, surprise — a few computers crashed.”

Josh Gerstein and Brian Faler contributed to this report.