That information was provided to the ways and Means Committee. We have not been able to pursue whether there are 6, 12 or 15 because once the ig started, we agreed we would not pursue those issues until they completed their investigation. Now, just a last question. When the doj was here the other day, and this was you were asked about this a bit earlier. They talked about the fact that they had not gotten information about the crash back in april. So they got it in june, i think, like everybody else. Why is that . When we in april, determined that in fact there had been a hard drive crash and some emails may have been lost, our next step was to in fact investigate how many emails did we actually have and could we find, and our plan and proposal was we would pull all of that information together, including information about custodians and make a public presentation to the committees including a description of why it takes us so long in our archaic system to actually respond to requests for documents. We provided that information in the june 13 report, as i testified earlier. We did that before the complete production of lois lerner emails which is when we originally intended because the Senate Finance committee asked us for an update on both the determination process documents as well as the other investigations, other searches we were doing. We gave them that. We noted that we had had found nothing beyond what we had noted in our march letter with regard to the determination process, which was the subject of the investigations when they started. But we had not completed at that time a review of the custodians, nor had we completed until the end of june the production of tax writers of all of lois lerners emails. We were working on producing the redacted version to this committee. So our plan was when we pulled it all together, we would be able to explain what our process was, the difficulties, what we had learned about lois lerners emails, what we had learned about others and what we were able to determine. As i noted, we were able to recover 24,000 lois lerner emails. We thought all of that was Important Information for people to have rather than simply saying if theres a problem with her computer and now were investigating how many emails there were, which would have triggered a hearing six weeks earlier. But we would not have known nearly as much as we know now. We dont know everything we would like to know because we stopped asking people while the ig is doing their investigation, which we fully support. I have confidence that the ig is independent of us. He was appointed by a different administration. Hes got 15 people working on it, according to the filings they made last friday. And we have told him personally whatever he needs, other documents, whatever people he wants to find, he can have access to, and well stay out of the way. We have gone out of our way not to talk to anyone who potentially he might want to sprue about what happened three years ago when the hard drive crashed. Russell george told you he did not want this committee in congress interviewing the same witnesses he was interviewing . No, he told me that he did not want us interviewing any witnesses thats fine, thats not the same as congress. Why did you make it so difficult why did we have to subpoena mr. Kane . Because ig in our discussions said he did not want us to do anything to cause any of our employees to be interviewed before he had a chance just for the record. So the Inspector General did not tell you that it would be it would hinder his investigation if congress interviewed the same people he was . If we provided names, let alone witnesses it would interfere with their investigation. I testified two week ago saying we were trying to cooperate with the ig and chairman issa said he understood that which is why you dont release full transcripts. You have conveyed to this committee that the Inspector General department want this committee interviewing and he did not say to you. Thats all i need. The gentleman from North Carolina is recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Commissioner, i want to go back to one thing that the gentleman from maryland just asked you and make sure i heard you correctly. So if you know the testimony that you have given to congress is not correct, youre not going to correct that until we get a final report from the ig . Did i hear that correct . I thought thats what you said. What i said the testimony that i have given in the past was accurate. As of the time of what i knew. I testified as to what i knew. Right now the question is do i know any more about tapes, and i dont know anymore other than the ig is investigating whether there are backup tapes and whether they are recoverable. If you find during the course of your normal business that what you told congress is incorrect, you will come immediately to us and let us know . Im happy to correct in fact, the chairman with regard to so within 24 hours of you finding that youve given us incorrect testimony youll come and let us know . Yes, sir. If the committee has any questions, the chairman issa said when lerners lawyer talked about the records, he said heres what you said, heres what she said and correct it. I appreciated that. We appreciate the fact that youll come back to us because i thought you were saying im going to wait until the ig i wouldnt know until the ig investigation is complete what the answer is in terms of how many custodians you wont know what they found but youll are you saying youre not talking to mr. Kane or anybody . You arent talking to anybody in the irs about any of this . I am not talking to any potential witnesses or the Inspector General about what happened three years ago. So when you read the reports about mr. Kane, did you talk to hum and say, hey, this doesnt jive with what i know . No, because mr. Kane is someone i assume the ig will be talking to. Did you talk to someone who talked to him . No, i read the release this committee put out. All right. So did you read the release of the ways and means press release that talked about a scratched hard drive . I saw that this morning. It was put out last night i understand. Does that concern you that it was scratched and not crashed . It concerns me. Does it concern you . If thats accurate . If its accurate i dont know the gentleman. I dont know what he said. If its accurate, would that concern you . Let me tell you why it concerns me. And this is an hp laptop. To get to the hard drive, it is no easy task. Youve got multiple screws that have to be taken to get to it. Then once you get to that, you actually have a hard drive inside that has seven more screws that have to be taken off to get to the hard drive in order for it to be scratched. Would that concern you if it were indeed scratched that there may be some other motive . It would be a piece of information that would it concern you, yes or no . I wouldnt know whether to be concerned or not. I dont know anything about, as i understand from the press release it concerns me and im going to ask my staff to see how long it would take to get to that hard drive to make if it indeed were scratched. I assume theres a lot of ways the hard drives can get scratched. Im sure the ig will look into that and im sure hes already talked to that witness or would liked to have talked to him. I hope so. Let me go back to the numbers. Earlier you said you had 2,000 hard drive crashes this year. Yes. So let me ask you about numbers. You know im a numbers guy because i just did the numbers real quickly. If you look at your entire body of some 84,000 to 90,000 irs employees, depending on which year, but lets take that. That is a 2. 2 failure rate. In the people that truly are involved in this, in that sphere of 80 people, if, indeed, we had 16 to 18 hard drive crashes, why would the hard drive crash of that group of people be ten times greater than what you have throughout the agency . Can you explain . What would be the probability of that happening . First of all, i have no information as to whether thats the accurate information. Lets take the number that you know, seven, that you testified. That still would be four times greater than your overall average. Can you explain that . I dont know what the details were. I do know when i asked for the industry statistics, once you get beyond the warranty period, the failure rate goes to 10 to 15 . Lois lerners laptop was a new laptop. It was not an old one. And actually, the probability of her hard drive failing at that time was at the lowest, according to industry standards, was at the lowest possible time. Does that surprise you . No. But it does surprise you that her hard drive failed . No, my understanding about it is from the industry is its 2 to 5 depending on computers will regularly fail. If you have ten times that amount, would you say thats an anomaly. If you had ten times an amount, that would be an anomaly. I dont know whether well, im giving you the numbers. If you stipulate you have ten times more than the industry average, that would be an anomaly. Thank you, i yield back. Gentleman from pennsylvania. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Koskinen, the very first question you got in your testimony today was something to the effect, mr. Santos, my colleague, put the question to you whether you were aware you were under investigation by the department of justice and this is a very public hearing. This is a very, very public. We invite members of the press to come to these hearings and these hearings are televised and i think its important we dont lead the public down the wrong path on what the truth is here. Mr. Koskinen, have you ever received a target letter from the department of justice to say youre under investigation . No. Has anyone, anyone told you verbally that youre under investigation by the department of justice . No. Has anyone, anyone said to you verbally anything that would hint to you that youre under investigation by the department of justice . No. Has anyone, anyone said anything to you to hint to you that you might be the target of a Justice Department investigation some time in the future . No. Thank you for that. Another thing that youve been trying to get out and you were continually interrupted in your answers were comments about industry statistics about computer failures. I want to give you a chance now to make full sentences. In may when i was advised we had this problem and were proceeding to find how many lois lerner emails we could have, i asked, a, what are the industry standards for hard drive crashes and i was told somewhere between 2 to 3 , 5 within the warranty period. If you have Older Computers it goes as high as 10 to 15 . I then asked that we do a review to determine what, if any of them, had hard drive crashes and if they had them, whether it caused any loss of emails. We have over 2,000 crashes already this year, but all of those didnt result in loss of emails. You could lose emails without your hard drive crashing. So at the time, we were starting down that road to complete our review of exactly what were the situations with regard to the production of documents. That has stopped from coming to closure because the ig himself is looking at all of that. Thank you. And mr. Koskinen, on june 20th you testified before the ways and Means Committee that even after sdog discovering miss lerners 2011 hard drive crash you said, the irs took multiple steps over the past months to assess the situation and produce as much email as possible for which lerner was an author or recipient. During this time and into may, we were also identifying and reviewing lerner emails to and from 82 other custodians. By midmay as a result of these efforts, the irs had identified the 24,000 lerner emails between january 1 and april 2011. Commissioner koskinen, why did the irs take these steps to recover ms. Lerners emails . It was an attempt on our part to produce as many lois lerner emails from her accounts or other accounts as possible in response to the request of this committee and the ways and Means Committee to produce all of lois lerners emails. We were trying to make sure there were no emails anywhere in the system to or from lois lerner that we had not located and not provided. All right. Now, so despite the hard drive crash, the irs still produced 24,000plus additional emails, is that right . Thats correct. Witnesses have told this committee that in february of 2014, irs employees discovered that there were fewer of lois lerners emails from january 2009 to april 2011 than there were for other periods. Upon this discovery, irs officials immediately took steps to determine the reasons for this discrepancy and whether they could locate additional emails from ms. Lerner during that time period. The question is, why didnt you inform us about the discrepancy in ms. Lerners emails when you testified before this committee in march . Because in march i did not know and we didnt know whether we had lost emails or not. One of the first things that was investigated in february and into march was to review all of our production processes to see if anything in the way we had reached into the system to produce the emails, put them into our search method had caused us to misplace those email because it wasnt clear initially whether the problems with her computer resulted in any loss of emails. So the first process while we were producing the other documents regarding the determination process was to make sure we hadnt ourselves done anything in the process that caused emails in that period to be lost. We determined ultimately into april and may that nothing that we had done in the search process had caused the emails to not be producible. Thank you, i yield back. I thank the gentleman. Now recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. Meehan. Commissioner, thank you for taking the time to come up and be with us again today. I know you came here before and i know were going through a lot of detailed testimony, but the baseline is accurate that to the best of your knowledge when you testified before that the emails were not available from ms. Lerner during the period that they had been to the best of your knowledge that they had been destroyed because they were recycled on the tape. And im not questioning that testimony at this particular moment. But i think what has people interested is mr. Kane came up here not so long ago, and hes a very sophisticated guy. His job is to produce documents for investigations and litigation and other kinds of things. Therefore, he not only has a very detailed understanding of the process, but a deep appreciation of the implications to do or failure to do including exposure for failure to do things. He also has a very sophisticated understanding of how to answer questions with respect to this. Appreciating that when hes under oath, anything he says will put him in a particular position, which if it is known to be wrong, could expose him to further scrutiny. So im curious as to why he would come and testify that i dont know, and this is his words, i dont know if theres a backup tape with information on there or there isnt. That he was now unsure about whether there were some backup tapes from the period of time that may not have been erased. Im using his direct testimony. There is an issue as to whether or not there is that all of the backup recovery tapes were destroyed on the sixmonth retention schedule. I dont know whether they are or arent, but its an issue thats being looked at it. What do we know about this issue, and why would he have made that statement . What i know about that issue is i was advised by the Inspector General that they were they had taken tapes they found, and they were reviewing those tapes to see if they had been totally recycled or whether they were not recycled and usable. I was advised about that because the Inspector General, again, wanted us not to do any because he knew however they had found them, somebody knew ig had them. He didnt want us to do anything to investigate further what those tapes were, what they did with them. I said that was fine. At this point, i havent talked to mr. Kane about this, but what he has said is what he knows is because as you said hes been involved in it, is that the Inspector General is looking at some tapes i dont know which ones to see whether or not any of them turned out to be recyclable or information thats recoverable. At this time as mr. Kanes testimony states, its not clear whether they do or dont. Whether substantially theres information when he gave you that identification that there was, as you said, it was believed that they had all been produced but now maybe some of them have been found. Werent you concerned about what procedure they used to potentially come up with new tapes . When the Inspector General advised me of that, i was interested as to why they were looking at tapes that we were advised had been recycled. I agreed with him that they would do the investigation. We wouldnt do anything to interfere with that. I wouldnt and none of our people would talk to anybody about it. I cant tell you how they found them, what they are, and as mr. Kane said, whether theres anything on them or not. At this point, were supporting the Inspector General did you have any idea about what the issue is that he referred to because that was the very specific thing. There is an issue as to whether all of the backup tapes had actually been recycled. Yes, and the issue as i just said, is that he obviously is aware of what the Inspector General advised me, which is the Inspector General has taken some tapes i dont know which ones and is reviewing those to see if they have been recycled, if theres information on them that can be found or used. Thats all i know and i assume thats all he knows. Beyond that, i havent talked to anybody about this because, again, our position with the Inspector General is just one followup question. Why are these not available from a Third Party Vendor who, in the event of a cyberattack would protect us against destruction of all records which would put our government in a remarkably perilous position so we take steps to assure that essential documents are preserved to have them in Third Party Data storage situations. Why were the documents that are relevant to this particular period of time, why were they not backed up and available today . Thats an important question. As i have testified earlier, theres been no loss of any information and no action taken since this investigation started with regard to any information and production of documents. We have frozen and saved and ba