those documents, roughly two years worth of investigation, former i.r.s. official lois lerner. the claims those e-mails are got forever thanks to a computer crash. chairman issa said today likely she broke laws and their investigation is focusing on her and the other, and not the white house as some critics have claimed. has any of this been directly connected to the white house? we ve never looked for the white house other than the white house is not cooperating and continues to not cooperate. peter ducey has more more from washington. he says all the e-mails went missing. lerner finds that the monitor is blue and the computer is kaput. her attorney says relevant hard drives were not deliberately
it s not an argument go ahead. as you said, it s not an argument. so what if something that is potential evidence in your case that was filed back in 2010, what obligation did they have to notify you if that evidence potentially went miss singmissi? it s hard to say when did they have to tell us they already broke the law? that s a hard one to answer. but they ve given us now at least two different steps, both the computer crash, maybe it was someone s fault, maybe it wasn t, but then to physically, manually, intentionally destroy the tapes where it had to have been stored and should have been stored, that s something they did affirmatively. the legal department at the irs had to know this, the justice department s lawyers who are assigned to this case had to know that they were under this obligation. it s a really big deal.
so where are these e-mails? the irs says it is doing all it can to find them. that their disappearance, it says, is no mystery, but a typical computer crash that it says has happened to 2,000 other employees besides lois lerner. but critics don t buy that. you know those e-mails are out there. you know they are. and bill flores said, you know what, we ought to offer a bounty. it s a brilliant idea, bill. let s do it. and so it s a million bucks for whoever comes up with the e-mails. because they re out there. now there s that bounty, like the wild west, for the writings of lois lerner. texas congressman louie gohmert saying they have to be out there somewhere. to people he suspects she was e-mailing as part of the conservative group targeting scandal. the agency has denied there is any cover-up or wrongdoing in this. the irs commissioner saying that its i.t. department did all it could to try and restore mrs.
she did everything she could to retrieve it. she reported it right away, and that s the story. that s all there is to it. but you understand why it seems suspicious, because this covers a period of time when the activity that was the original point of this investigation was going on, that is were the consebive groups being targeted by her unit at the irs? you say you think it s brazen to suggest she did this on purpose, but you do get the suspicion. well, i get it s convenient to create suspicion. actually the e-mails that are missing are way before the time in which congressman issa and his colleagues are suggesting that there was unfairness or anything like it at the irs. the truth is these e-mails pre-date most anything that s of any relevance to anybody, but you can see why it s convenient to say there s a computer crash and therefore there must be
if you help to hide evidence in what will end up being a criminal case, guess what? you are part of the crime. so take your pick. million bucks to come up with all the e-mails or go to prison as part of the crime. your choice. the congressman s legislation offers $500,000 to anybody that can provide information on who may have destroyed the e-mails. meanwhile the irs says it s working to try and comply with the committee s request for more documents on the e-mails and the 2011 computer crash which supposedly erased the e-mails. there was a letter sent yesterday to the chairman of the committee saying, quote, we will get as much information as possible to you next week. i had hoped to provide you with responses today but critical information is still being collected and verified.