House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa will question IRS commissioner John Koskinen at a Capitol Hill hearing Monday night at 7 p.m. entitled “IRS Obstruction: Lois Lerner’s Missing Emails.”
Just 72 hours after Rep. Paul Ryan scolded Koskinen and barked “I don’t believe you. … Nobody believes you,” Issa is gearing up for his own showdown with Koskinen, who refused to provide Issa’s staff this weekend with information about the loss of Lois Lerner’s emails and IRS email storage policies.
Issa’s Oversight Committee requested that the IRS make available IRS deputy chief counsel for procurement and administration Thomas Kane for a transcribed interview about the destruction of Lerner’s emails, but the IRS refused. Oversight Committee staff next requested a briefing from the IRS on its email retention programs, but the IRS did not provide it.
Koskinen testified before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday that some of Lerner’s emails from the period 2009 to 2011 were destroyed after her computer allegedly crashed and that six other IRS employees related to the conservative targeting scandal also experienced computer crashes. The Daily Caller reported that the IRS canceled its relationship with its email-archiving contractor Sonasoft just weeks after Lerner’s crash.
The current IRS commissioner’s claims to technical incompetence are undermined by the fact that he led President Clinton’s much-celebrated President’s Council on Y2K Conversion, successfully updating all of the federal government’s computer systems for the new millennium. And Issa is making known that he does not plan to let Koskinen off the hook. (VIDEO: Paul Ryan Goes Ballistic On IRS Commissioner Over Lost Emails)
Source: Daily Caller | Patrick Howley
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