[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
IRS: TIGTA UPDATE, PART TWO
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 25, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-33
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
95-658 PDF WASHINGTON : 2015
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JIM JORDAN, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM WALBERG, Michigan Columbia
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee JIM COOPER, Tennessee
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TED LIEU, California
MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
KEN BUCK, Colorado STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
MARK WALKER, North Carolina MARK DeSAULNIER, California
ROD BLUM, Iowa BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
JODY B. HICE, Georgia PETER WELCH, Vermont
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
WILL HURD, Texas
GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
Sean McLaughlin, Staff Director
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
Henry Kerner, Deputy Director Oversight & Investigations
Tyler Grimm, Senior Professional Staff Member
Melissa Beaumont, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on June 25, 2015.................................... 1
WITNESSES
The Hon. J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration
Oral Statement............................................... 6
Written Statement............................................ 10
Mr. Tim Camus, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations,
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
Oral Statement............................................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 10
APPENDIX
Email from Mr. Milholland, IRS on Information Retention Policy
Revision, submitted by Chairman Chaffetz....................... 56
Letter from Gladys Hernandez, TIGTA to Chairman Chaffetz,
submitted by Rep. Cartwright................................... 57
IRS: TIGTA UPDATE, PART TWO
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Thursday, June 25, 2015
House of Representatives,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in Room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jason Chaffetz
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Chaffetz, Mica, Duncan, Jordan,
Walberg, Amash, DesJarlais, Gowdy, Farenthold, Lummis, Massie,
Meadows, DeSantis, Mulvaney, Buck, Walker, Blum, Hice, Russell,
Carter, Grothman, Hurd, Palmer, Cummings, Maloney, Norton,
Lynch, Connolly, Cartwright, Duckworth, Kelly, DeSaulnier,
Welch, and Lujan Grisham.
Chairman Chaffetz. The Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform will come to order.
And, without objection, the chair is authorized to declare
a recess at any time.
Today's hearing is about the IRS and the targeting that has
happened there. We have had updates from the Inspector
General's Office, and we are here for another such update. We
appreciate Mr. George and Mr. Camus for being here with us.
And, as we start this hearing, I would like to walk through
why we are here at this particular time.
There was targeting of people who were trying to exercise
their First Amendment rights. This was done because of their
political beliefs.
Dave Camp and the Ways and Means Committee did some
exceptional work unearthing this and talking to then the IRS
Commissioner, Mr. Shulman, about this. He had assured the
committee, assured the Congress--which, when you talk to
Congress, you are talking to the American people--that none of
this targeting had ever occurred.
That is when the Inspector General's Office started to get
involved and they started to look at it. Later, they came back
and provided a report, and that report happened in, I believe,
2013.
Now, keep in mind, when we had this information going on,
there was a preservation order that was put in place asking and
requiring the IRS to preserve these documents. Chairman Issa,
then the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee, in August of 2013 issued a subpoena asking for this
information and these documents.
But then you move forward, and this is where it just sort
of starts to get unbelievable. It stretches the imagination
beyond comparison. And we are supposed to believe this wide
array of facts just happened to come together in such an odd
and peculiar way.
Again, remember the IRS Commissioner said, ``There is
absolutely no targeting.'' Now, when this first came to light,
the President was actually very good on this topic. He said
that he would work with Congress and then somehow magically
concluded, even though the Department of Justice had not
completed their investigation, the Inspector General had not
concluded their investigation, the United States Congress had
not concluded an investigation either in the House or the
Senate, but somehow, magically, the President came to the
conclusion that there was, ``not even a, smidgen of
corruption.''
Now, interesting thing about that timing, that happened to
be Super Bowl Sunday. So Super Bowl Sunday in 2014, the
President makes his comment. We have heard from an IRS official
where she said, ``That's the exact same day that I remember
looking and realizing that there were some emails missing.''
Now, this thing has gone on for years. It is just coincidental
that the President is on national television, and she says and
has told us that, ``Whoops, there's some emails missing.''
Again, remember, for 10 months there was a preservation
order in place; for 7 months there was a subpoena in place. We
have been assured multiple times by the IRS that they were
doing everything, bending over backwards, giving us all kinds
of stats and metrics about how many emails and how many people
were working hard on this. But the one thing we wanted to have,
evidence, to let the facts take us wherever they may be, that
one thing just went missing the exact same time, just within
hours of the President making that comment.
But what we are going to hear today makes it even more
stunning, because what the Inspector General has evidently
learned is that that evidence on that day that the President
said that, on the day that the Inspector General--or the day
that the IRS person said there are missing emails, they weren't
missing at that point. They weren't destroyed. What we are
going to hear from the Inspector General's Office today is that
those emails were destroyed 30 days later. February 4, Super
Bowl Sunday--or the 2nd, Super Bowl Sunday, pardon me, you
know, they are missing. But they weren't missing. They got
destroyed just about 30 days later.
Twenty-two days after that, the IRS Commissioner, on March
26--I remember because it was my birthday--IRS Commissioner
comes here and testifies and tells us essentially that they
have the emails, it's going to take years to provide them, but
they will get us those emails, in a direct question that I had
asked him. But they had destroyed them 22 days prior. They knew
that there was a problem with it back in February, supposedly.
And it wasn't until June that the IRS then confirmed or
buried in the back of a letter to the United States Senate, to
Senator Orrin Hatch's committee, Senator Wyden's committee,
that, oops, we think there's a problem with the emails.
Then the Inspector General, that catches their attention,
so what do they do? They put a team together, and they say, you
know what? Let's go see if we can find those emails. Because,
remember, at this point, the IRS has had years to do it, and
they couldn't find them. They think there's a problem.
The Inspector General's Office puts a team together, and
within about 2 weeks they go and find them. They show up at
this so-called cage and go ask and go look for these emails.
Nope, they have been sitting there the whole time. Has anything
ever happened to those? No, nobody even asked us for them. That
is the testimony we heard in a previous hearing.
And we are supposed to believe all this in the context of
an FBI investigation that is led by a max-out donor to the
Obama administration; a contempt from Lois Lerner--the House of
Representatives, in a very unprecedented--it doesn't happen
very often around here--holds Lois Lerner in contempt; a
statute that says they shall refer that to the grand jury. The
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia looks at that for 10
months and, 2 days or so, roughly, before Mr. Machen steps away
from that job, says, ``You know what? We just think it
shouldn't be referred,'' even though the statute says it shall.
And that is a potential hearing and maybe something that we
will look at later.
But part of what we are going to find today is that there
are some 24,000 emails, potential emails, that were destroyed.
It is a destruction of evidence.
We want to pursue the facts. I know there are Democrats on
the other side of the aisle that say, hey, there is nothing
here, let's move on, it is no big deal. Let the evidence speak.
But when there is a destruction of evidence, that goes to a
whole other level.
One of the things we are going to hear from the Inspector
General today is that five of the six sources where they could
find this email the IRS didn't even look. And yet we have heard
multiple, multiple testimonies from the IRS Commissioner
saying, oh, we are working so hard, we got all these people, we
are spending millions of dollars, it is taking all these
resources. They didn't even look in the most obvious places,
like her phone.
You add this all in combination, it just defies any sense
of logic. It gets to the point where it truly gets to be
unbelievable. Somebody has to be held accountable.
Imagine if this was all reversed. Right? Imagine if you
were on the receiving end of an inquiry from the IRS, and they
asked you for documents, and they issued you a subpoena and you
destroyed the evidence, and you had that evidence. What would
happen to you? You would be prosecuted to the fullest. You
would end up in jail. And you probably should.
That is what we are dealing with here. This should have
been disposed of a long time ago. But we have been misled;
there has been evidence that has been destroyed.
And so we appreciate this hearing today. These two men who
are here before us have done some exceptional work. They are
supported by a great number of people on their staff who do
very important, impartial work. And we count on their opinions.
Let me be fair in this conclusion. Part of what they are
going to say today is they have found no evidence that this was
done willfully, that this was some purposeful direction from
any one person, whether it be the White House or below.
Understood. But the bottom line is they had the evidence, there
was a preservation order in place, there was a subpoena in
place, and that evidence was destroyed.
And we are going to hear this testimony. My understanding
is next week they are going to issue a rather lengthy report.
We look forward to seeing that report. Given that next week is
the Fourth of July recess, we thought it appropriate to bring
them before us here to get their verbal comments, an
opportunity to question them. We look forward to hearing and
reading their report in its totality. And then we are going to
have to figure out a way of moving forward.
But people need to be held accountable, and we are going to
get to the truth.
With that, I am going to yield back and recognize our
ranking member, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And I am very glad that we are having this hearing. And I
am glad that at the very end of your statement you said that
there would be testimony, I take it from Mr. George, that these
documents were not destroyed willfully. And I am glad you said
that, because you had said a number of things already. And I
think that there are many IRS employees who are working very,
very hard, short of staff, giving it everything they got so
that they can do their job so that we can have the resources,
as a government, to exist.
And I want to take a moment to thank all of those employees
who are working so very hard.
This Oversight Committee is now holding our 22nd IRS
hearing--22. Some people tuning in today may not realize it,
but this investigation is still going on. They also may not
realize that they, the American taxpayers, have spent more than
$20 million on this investigation so far--$20 million. The
total does not include the millions of additional dollars spent
by the Inspector General, who is here to testify before us yet
again.
And I want to thank you, Mr. George, for your hard work and
all the work you have done in regard to this investigation.
This investigation has squandered tens of millions of
taxpayer dollars in a failed scavenger hunt for any possible
evidence to support Republican accusations against Lois Lerner,
the IRS, and the White House. More than 250 IRS employees have
now spent more than 160,000 hours producing more than a million
pages of documents to Congress--250 employees, who could be
doing audits, making sure that people are paying their rightful
share of taxes, making sure that the collection process is done
properly, answering questions of our constituents as they try
to make sure that they are doing the right thing. But 250
folks, 160,000 hours.
Yet the Inspector General will testify again today that his
conclusions remain the same.
The chairman said, let the facts--let the evidence speak. I
agree with that. There is still no evidence to support
Republican allegations that the White House was involved, that
Ms. Lerner ordered the targeting of conservative groups for
political reasons, or that she intentionally crashed her
computer to conceal her emails.
Today, the Inspector General will testify about this
investigation into the status of Ms. Lerner's emails.
Unfortunately, the Inspector General's Office has repeatedly
overstated the number of, ``new,'' emails they recovered from
backup tapes and other sources.
In February--and we need to listen to this. In February,
officials from the Inspector General's Office briefed our
committee and others, reporting that they had found 80,000--
80,000--emails from Ms. Lerner, a fact that was leaked to the
press with great fanfare, headlines--80,000.
Then, on February 26, the Deputy Inspector General for
Investigations testified before this committee that many of
those emails were actually duplicates. So we went from 80,000,
and he testified there was only 32,000. February.
Last week, on June 16, the Inspector General's chief
counsel sent a letter to this committee stating that the total
number of new emails went down again, keep in mind, from
32,000, this time explaining that only 6,400 emails, ``appear
to not have been produced to Congress.''
You guessed it. But today we have gone from the 6,400 only
9 days ago, and the Inspector General will testify that the
total has plummeted to a little more than 1,000 emails that
Congress did not already have. Boy, that is a hell of a drop,
from 80,000 to 1,000.
Inspectors general are not supposed to provide speculative,
unconfirmed, and inaccurate information to Congress. I think
Mr. George would agree with that. They are not supposed to
provide information they know is not credible. Yet that is what
happened in this case. Based on this record, I do not know why
anyone would have confidence in any of the numbers issued by
the Inspector General.
For those who want to cut to the bottom line, you need to
turn to page 6 of the Inspector General's written testimony for
today's hearing. It is buried, I got to tell you, it is buried
now, but it says, ``A review of these emails did not provide
additional information for the purposes of our investigation.''
And I hope that Mr. George will explain that.
So, after all of this work and after spending millions of
dollars, Republicans still have no new information to support
their allegations.
Some people may be wondering, if these new emails do not
advance the investigation in any way, then what are they? What
are they? Let me give you a few examples which the Inspector
General provided to us this week. I didn't do this; the
Inspector General gave them to us.
On December 25, 2012, Christmas Day, Ms. Lerner received an
email from eBay with an advertisement for holiday shopping
deals. In another newly discovered email sent a few days
earlier, on December 22, Ms. Lerner received an offer from the
Web site flowershopping.com for some very nice bouquets. Not
quite the smoking gun the Republicans alleged.
The fact is that Ms. Lerner's computer crashed--and we need
to keep this in mind--the fact is that Ms. Lerner's computer
crashed before she was informed that IRS employees in
Cincinnati were using inappropriate criteria to screen tax-
exempt applicants. This is not my finding. It is not mine. That
is the finding of Mr. George, our Inspector General, in his
original report from May 2013, more than 2 years ago.
Today, this hearing is our 22nd on this issue--22. And I
cannot imagine what possible reason there might be to have a
23rd. So I hope we will finally be able to move forward and
focus on bipartisan investigations that will help the American
families in their daily lives.
And to the IRS employees: I hope that all these efforts do
not have a chilling effect on you doing the job that the
American people have paid you to do and expect you to do and
the job that you want to do.
And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I will hold the record open for 5
legislative days for any member who would like to submit a
written statement.
Chairman Chaffetz. We will now recognize our panel of
witnesses. We are pleased to welcome the Honorable J. Russell
George, Inspector General at the Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration; and Mr. Tim Camus, Deputy Inspector General
for Investigations at the Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration.
We welcome you both. Appreciate your work.
Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses are to be sworn
before they testify. If you will please rise and raise your
right hands.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are
about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth?
Thank you. Please be seated.
And let the record reflect that the witnesses both answered
in the affirmative.
We would appreciate your verbal comments, and any
additional comments or written statements will be, obviously,
made part of the complete record.
Do you have one statement, or are you going to combine that
into----
Mr. George. I have a very brief opening statement, Mr.
Chairman, and then I'm going to defer to Mr. Camus to provide
more substance to the facts.
Chairman Chaffetz. Very good. Mr. George, we recognize you,
and then we will turn it over to Mr. Camus and go from there.
WITNESS STATEMENTS
STATEMENT OF THE HON. J. RUSSELL GEORGE
Mr. George. Thank you, Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member
Cummings, members of the committee. At your request, we are
here again to update you on the progress of our efforts to
recover former IRS Exempt Organization Unit Director Lois
Lerner's missing emails.
With me again is Tim Camus, TIGTA's Deputy Inspector
General for Investigations. Tim has led this investigation,
which was initiated on June 16, 2014. This was shortly after
the IRS reported gaps in a production of Lois Lerner's emails,
citing as the reason a crash of her computer's hard drive.
One week later, as was noted, then-Chairman Wyden and then-
Ranking Member Hatch of the Senate Finance Committee requested
that TIGTA investigate the matter, including us to, ``perform
our own analysis of whether any data can be salvaged and
produced.''
This morning's testimony will provide you with information
about the extent of our investigative efforts as well as the
evidence we have gathered to date.
At the outset, it is important to note that, even as we
believe we have reached certain conclusions and determinations
in our findings, this investigation is not yet concluded.
Should anything of note be discovered, we will review it for
its impact on the investigation, produce a supplemental report,
and provide the new information, including emails, to all
appropriate parties.
Overall, this investigation included interviewing over 118
witnesses, extensive document reviews, and the processing and
analysis of over 20 terabytes of data. As a result of these
efforts, we have determined the following:
TIGTA was successful in recovering over 1,000 emails that
the IRS did not produce to Congress, the Department of Justice,
or TIGTA's Office of Investigations. We have also determined
that, prior to our investigation and our efforts to recover Ms.
Lerner's missing emails, the IRS did not search for, review, or
examine the backup tapes, server hard drives, or sources that
ultimately produced new previously undisclosed emails.
Four hundred and twenty-two tapes that likely contained Ms.
Lerner's emails from the years 2010 and 2011 were erased and
most likely will never be recovered. These 422 tapes were
magnetically erased around March 4, 2014. As was pointed out,
this was 1 month after the IRS realized they were missing
emails from Lois Lerner and about 8 months after this committee
requested all documents and communications sent by, received
by, or copied to Lois Lerner.
As was noted, our investigation did not uncover any
evidence that the erasure of these 422 backup tapes was done to
conceal information from Congress or law enforcement.
In addition, it is important to note that it is remotely
possible that our continuing review of data from the initial
set of 735 backup tapes could result in discovery of additional
emails not previously provided to Congress by the IRS.
I will now turn to Mr. Camus, who will provide a detailed
discussion on the findings of our investigation and the search
for the missing emails.
STATEMENT OF TIM CAMUS
Mr. Camus. Thank you, Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member
Cummings, and members of the full committee. I appreciate the
opportunity to come here today to provide updated testimony on
my agency's investigation of the Internal Revenue Service's
production of the emails of the former Director of Exempt
Organizations as well as our efforts thus far in recovering
missing emails.
Throughout our investigation, we have updated the tax-
writing and oversight committees of Congress, including this
committee, concerning our progress in recovering emails. As the
Inspector General noted, we are now in position to provide
information about our investigation.
My special agents determined that there were six possible
sources of information in order to recover missing emails.
Those sources are Ms. Lerner's crashed hard drive, the backup
or disaster recovery tapes, a decommissioned IRS email server,
the backup tapes for the decommissioned email server, Ms.
Lerner's BlackBerry, and loaner computers that may have been
assigned to her while her laptop was being repaired. My
testimony will provide an overview of some of those sources,
all of which are covered in the written testimony.
With respect to Ms. Lerner's crashed computer hard drive,
we determined that, on Saturday, June 11, 2011, between 5 p.m.
And 7 p.m., Ms. Lerner's IRS laptop was more than likely in her
office and it stopped communicating with the IRS server system.
The following Monday, June 13, 2011, Ms. Lerner reported
that she found her computer inoperable, and the malfunction was
reported to the IRS information technology staff. The assigned
IT specialist determined the hard drive had crashed and,
following standard protocol, placed a new hard drive in Ms.
Lerner's laptop.
A Hewlett-Packard technician also worked on the laptop for
other repairs. When interviewed, both technicians reported they
did not note visible damage to the laptop computer itself.
Because we were unable to locate and examine the hard drive, we
do not definitively know why it crashed.
On July 19, 2011, Ms. Lerner requested IRS IT to attempt to
recover data from her crashed hard drive to retrieve,
``personal information. After receiving the hard drive from the
IRS technician, an IRS criminal investigation technician was
unsuccessful in recovering data. IRS IT management determined
additional efforts to recover data from Ms. Lerner's hard drive
were not worth the expense.
It is important to point out the IRS does not track
individual hard drives by their serial numbers. Our
investigation revealed that Ms. Lerner's hard drive was more
than likely sent for destruction with a shipment of other IRS
electronic media on April 13 of 2012. The shipment was traced
to the UNICOR Recycling Facility in Marianna, Florida. We
determined that this shipment of hard drives was destroyed
using a shredder that cut the inserted hard drives into
quarter-size pieces. According to the facility manager, those
pieces are then sold for scrap.
Understanding the limitation on the investigation without
having the hard drive, our investigation did not uncover any
evidence of sabotage of Ms. Lerner's hard drive. Our
investigation included attempts to determine if anybody entered
Ms. Lerner's office prior to the date and time of her hard
drive crash. Unfortunately, those logs were erased after 1 year
of retention.
I will now provide an overview of our investigative efforts
relating to the backup or disaster recovery tapes.
On June 30, 2014, TIGTA demanded the IRS provide all backup
tapes used for Ms. Lerner's IRS email account, specifically
during the period January 1, 2008, through December 31, 2011.
On July 1, 2014, the IRS identified 744 backup tapes, and TIGTA
took possession of all of them. Initially, it appeared as
though nine tapes may have contained valuable data, but they
turned out to be blank.
The IRS executive in charge of the IRS email backup program
and his staff identified the 13 specific backup tapes that
would contain the earliest copies of Lois Lerner's email. When
we took those tapes to the recognized industry expert for
electronic data recovery and extraction, they then provided
TIGTA with Exchange database files from these tapes.
At the conclusion of the process, TIGTA identified 79,840
Lois Lerner emails, of which nearly 60 percent were, in fact,
duplicates or copies of each other, leaving approximately
32,700 Lois Lerner emails.
As was pointed out in our February testimony, TIGTA
compared those 32,700 emails to what the IRS has already
produced to Congress in an effort to identify unique emails
that had not been produced to the Congress. Due to
technological challenges, TIGTA agents had to create a
specialized program script that initially identified as many as
6,400 emails that appeared to have not been previously provided
to Congress.
It is important to point out, at each stage when we
identified emails, we informed the recipients of that
information that it was early in the investigation and
additional technical work needed to be done.
To further refine the population, we then manually compared
the 6,400 emails that were previously produced to the emails
that were previously produced by the Congress--to the Congress
by the IRS. We removed the obvious spam emails and additional
duplicates that we found during the manual process.
At the conclusion of this review, we determined that over
1,000 emails that were recovered by TIGTA from backup tapes
were not previously provided to Congress. Using the analysis of
email transaction logs, we estimate that there may still be
23,000 to 24,000 emails missing.
Another potential source of emails that I will highlight is
the decommissioned New Carrollton email server. Based on our
review of this source, our agents identified 58 new emails not
previously produced to Congress.
The final source that I will discuss is the backup tapes
for the decommissioned email server. As the IG stated, during
our investigation, we obtained the 424 backup tapes associated
with the decommissioned New Carrollton email server, and it is
important to note that that server was in operation until
approximately May 2011.
We determined that 422 of the 424 tapes were degaussed or
magnetically erased and, therefore, had no data on them. This
was done by--the erasure was done by IRS employees in
Martinsburg, West Virginia, on or about March 4, 2014, 1 month
after the IRS realized it was missing emails.
One of the 424 tapes contained backup files created in
2011, but they did not pertain to Lois Lerner. Due to
encryption or damage to the other tape, we were unable to read
it.
Our investigation found no evidence to prove that the
erasure of the 422 tapes was done in furtherance of an effort
to purposely destroy evidence or to conceal information from
Congress and law enforcement.
Sworn testimony and reviews of the involved IRS employees'
emails indicate that the employees did not know about,
understand, or follow the Chief Technology Officer's May 2013
email directive to halt the destruction of electronic media due
to ongoing investigations.
Our investigation also revealed that the IRS did not put
forth an effort to locate and preserve the backup tapes.
Lastly, there is a remote possibility, as the IG pointed
out, that further review of the information obtained from the
initial set of 735 backup tapes could result in the recovery of
additional emails that were not previously produced. We are
also following up on a discrepancy in the count of hard drives
that we hope to have resolved prior to finalizing our report of
investigation.
Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member Cummings, and members of
the committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss this
matter, and I look forward to answering your questions.
[prepared joint statement of Mr. George and Mr. Camus
follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
Mr. Camus, the IRS had these emails. And you said they
didn't purposely destroy them, but what did they do with these
emails?
Mr. Camus. To the best that we can determine through the
investigation, they just simply didn't look for those emails.
So, for the 1,000--over 1,000 emails that we found on the
backup tapes, we found them because we looked for them.
Chairman Chaffetz. But there was a preservation order in
place, correct?
Mr. Camus. That's what we understand, yes, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. There was a subpoena in place some 7
months before, correct?
Mr. Camus. Correct.
Chairman Chaffetz. Would you consider that these emails are
evidence? It is what we are seeking.
Mr. Camus. They would be--we would consider them responsive
to the subpoena and the preservation order, yes, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. Is it fair to say that that is evidence?
Mr. Camus. When we looked through our investigation, emails
that are responsive to a subpoena may or may not be evidence.
It depends on the content of the emails. They were certainly
responsive to your subpoena and your preservation order.
Chairman Chaffetz. And what did they end up doing with
those in March of 2014?
Mr. Camus. There were 424 backup tapes, and----
Chairman Chaffetz. And what did they do with them?
Mr. Camus. They erased them.
Chairman Chaffetz. Is that destroying them?
Mr. Camus. They have an unusual terminology at the IRS.
When they magnetically erase them, making them useless, they
call that ``degaussing'' them. ``Destroying'' them means they
physical chunk them up into quarter-size chunks.
So, on March 4, 2014, they magnetically erased all the
tapes, but they had not destroyed them. Therefore, my agents
were able to obtain them, and that allowed us to conduct the
analysis of those tapes.
Chairman Chaffetz. So the new IRS term is that they
degaussed them. They degaussed them is what they did.
Mr. Camus. Correct.
Chairman Chaffetz. They had them. They were under subpoena.
They were supposed to give them to us. The IRS Commissioner
told us he was going to give us everything. But they degaussed
them so that we wouldn't be able to see this.
This just magically happened 30 days--we are supposed to
believe this happened 30 days after the President makes his
public comments that there is not even a smidgen of evidence?
What a coincidence.
Let me ask you about the potential electronic media backup
that they could have. What happened with the Lerner loaner
laptop? She had a loaner laptop. Did they search for the emails
on that?
Mr. Camus. There were actually 10 loaner laptops that were
in service during that period of time, one of which should have
been assigned to her as a backup. We took possession of all 10
of those laptops that were used for that purpose, were unable
to find one that was assigned to her.
Chairman Chaffetz. Did the IRS look and search there?
Mr. Camus. I'm not aware that they did, no, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. Did they look at her BlackBerry, her
phone?
Mr. Camus. They did not. We took possession of her
BlackBerry shortly after she left the IRS in June of 2014--'13.
Chairman Chaffetz. So the IRS Commissioner, who assured us
that there was this dragnet out there looking for all this,
they're working hard, thousands of efforts and millions of
dollars going out the door, but they didn't look at her
BlackBerry?
Mr. Camus. Actually, we had possession of her BlackBerry as
of June 13, 2013.
Chairman Chaffetz. But they didn't look for it before then.
So what about the IRS server? Did they look for it there?
Did they look for her backups there, her tapes?
Mr. Camus. They did not.
Chairman Chaffetz. So you have a server; seems like a
logical thing to do, go check that out, but they didn't look
for it there.
When you started to look for the emails, start to finish--
remember, they had years to get this done--start to finish, how
long did it take for you to find the tapes when you started in
June? I believe it was June of 2014.
Mr. Camus. Correct. We took possession of the 740--the
initial set of backup tapes on July 1, roughly 15 days after we
started our investigation.
Chairman Chaffetz. So you guys--paint the picture for me.
They are sitting around the table, ``Hey, we should probably go
see if we can find these emails.'' And it took you 15 days?
That's it?
Mr. Camus. That's it.
Chairman Chaffetz. And what happened when you went up there
to go find those tapes?
Mr. Camus. We were escorted to the machine that make the
backups, that uses the tapes and writes the emails to them. And
when they opened the machine that made the backups, they noted
that nine of those tapes were in an unusual configuration,
which led the witnesses, IRS employee witnesses, to believe
that they may contain data that had never been overwritten. So
we were initially very excited that those nine tapes would have
everything the investigation needed. Unfortunately, those tapes
were defective, and they turned out to be blank.
So then we had to go back and figure out, of the 735 tapes,
which of those were the most likely to have contained any Lois
Lerner email. Once we determined that, we identified 13 tapes.
We sent those off to the industry expert, and within a couple
months we had our first glimpse of emails.
Chairman Chaffetz. And there were emails there.
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. How many of these cages and places that
they store these tapes are there throughout the country? How
many of those are there?
Mr. Camus. Generally--at one time, they were located in
many, many locations, but the IRS was trying to consolidate
their email processing primarily to the service centers. And
Martinsburg, West Virginia, is one of the service centers.
Chairman Chaffetz. So the one place where they would put
the tapes is one place that the IRS didn't even bother to go
look and ask.
So my time has expired. I yield back and recognize the
gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Camus, the degaussing, you talked about
that. Now, did they just degauss Lerner tapes?
Mr. Camus. No, sir. We found that they degaussed tapes
before they degaussed the Lerner 424 tapes, and they degaussed
tapes afterwards. And they were degaussing tapes up until about
June of 2014.
Mr. Cummings. Now, you mentioned a little earlier that
there was some type of directive that they did not know about.
Is that what you said?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir, I did.
Mr. Cummings. And so you are saying that this was not
something to obstruct our investigation or block information
intentionally from getting to us? Is that----
Mr. Camus. The directive was issued by the IRS Chief
Technology Officer----
Mr. Cummings. Right.
Mr. Camus. --Terry Mulholland. And, in his directive, he
was advising his management team to stop destroying--in
essence, stop destroying electronic backups and evidence. He
issued that directive in May 2013.
Mr. Cummings. Uh-huh. You never answered my question,
though. The people that actually did the degaussing, you are
saying that they did not--they weren't intentionally trying to
stop information from getting to us.
Mr. Camus. As far as the--absolutely correct. The
investigation did not show they had any intent to do that.
Mr. Cummings. And you looked into that?
Mr. Camus. Yes, we did.
Mr. Cummings. And it would have been malpractice on your
part, almost, if you didn't look into it, wouldn't it?
Mr. Camus. It was a significant part of the investigation.
Mr. Cummings. Very well.
Now, Mr. George, over the past year, I believe you and your
staff have been highly irresponsible in speculating about the
number of new emails you recovered from Lois Lerner. I got to
tell you, you heard in my opening statement, it should concern
all of us because we rely very heavily on the IG's information.
You repeatedly put out numbers prematurely without
verification, and, time and time again, your numbers were just
wrong--were wrong.
In February of this year, your office briefed this
committee and other committees in the Senate, and you reported
recovering as many as 80,000 emails to and from Ms. Lerner.
Then, on February 11, the headline appeared in the press,
``Senator Ron Johnson to IRS: Why Did IG Find 80,000 `Lost'
Emails.''
Mr. George, you didn't find 80,000 new emails, did you?
Mr. George. Mr. Cummings, what we did is we attempted to
keep Members of Congress with relevant jurisdiction over this
matter informed at every stage. And I can assure you that at
every opportunity where I participated I made a request--I
admonished staff that this was preliminary information, and we
requested that they not repeat this information publicly. And,
unfortunately, that was done.
So, while we were in the process of refining, trying to
keep Congress informed--because we've been criticized in the
past for not keeping Congress informed, so we made an effort,
at my direction, to do so. And it was during the process of
keeping Congress informed. And, with every new discovery and
every time my investigative staff was able to parse out, find
duplicates, find things that were not necessarily responsive,
the numbers changed.
Mr. Cummings. So you recovered these emails, but you had no
idea how many had already been turned over to Congress. And
that's why you say it was ongoing?
Mr. George. Precisely. We made it quite clear that there
were--at the outset that there was a good chance that many of
these were duplicates, had already been turned over to
Congress, and that it would take a process not just by us but
also by the Internal Revenue Service to help determine what had
already been turned over.
Mr. Cummings. So, just a few weeks later, on February 26,
you, Mr. Camus, testified before this committee that you, found
32,774 unique emails that were--unique emails that were backed
up from Lois Lerner's email box. And you added that you were
still in the process of determining how many of these emails
had already been produced to Congress. Is that right?
Mr. Camus. That's correct. And I think I also said if any,
if there were any of those would turn out to be new. We were
trying--still trying to determine that. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. So, meanwhile, the headlines continued. They
continued. One of them reads, ``Thousands of New Emails
Found.''
Then, on June 16, about a week ago, your chief counsel sent
a letter to this committee with yet another new number. And she
wrote this, ``The recovered emails that appear to not have been
previously provided to Congress total approximately 6,400.''
But you didn't find 6,400 new emails. In your testimony
today, you talk about a thousand. Is that right?
Somebody talk to me. A thousand?
Mr. Camus. Over 1,000, that is correct, sir, from the
backup tapes.
Mr. Cummings. So now we have gone from 80,000 to 1,000; is
that right?
Mr. Camus. That would be accurate.
Mr. Cummings. And you talked a little bit earlier about
23,000 still being out there possibly; is that right?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. Cummings. Now, how do we now that number is accurate? I
mean, we went from 80,000 to 1,000. That's a pretty steep drop,
wouldn't you agree?
Mr. Camus. I would totally agree, yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. So where did that 23,000 come from? Because I
guarantee you there is going to be a headline, so we might as
well try to get the facts to match up with the headline.
Mr. Camus. The 23,000 number was derived when my staff,
shortly after opening our investigation, determined that the
Government Operations Security Center, or GSOC--Government
Security Operations Center, or GSOC, at the Department of the
Treasury logs every single email incident in or out of the
IRS.gov domain. And we felt that that was a critically
important source of information to determine the total universe
of emails.
So we obtained that log, and we compared it to what has
already been produced to Congress. And that's how we came up
with our estimate of the log activity compared to what has
already been produced. And the estimate is between 23,000 and
24,000 emails that we can't find.
Mr. Cummings. And, last but not least, Mr. George, I mean,
why--I think you already said it, but the reason why you put
these numbers out there is because you want to keep Congress
informed. But you see what it does, right?
I mean, it really--I mean, I understand what you are
saying, but that is not how it is used. I mean, I know you are
giving it with all these caveats in red and gold and, you know,
bold print, but you see how it ends up in print.
Hello?
Mr. George. No, I do.
Mr. Cummings. So why give any number?
Mr. George. You may recall, sir, because you were ranking
member when the previous chairman was here and read me----
Mr. Cummings. Oh, I remember the previous chairman.
Mr. George. --and read me the riot act because he said I
wasn't complying with the 7-day-letter rule pursuant to the IG
Act. And while we strongly disagree with his interpretation of
that provision, this was a way to try to draw some compromise
because we know of the intense interest of Congress in this
subject, both by committees with direct authorization over the
IRS as well as general oversight over the----
Mr. Cummings. In fairness to you, then, can you--is there a
caveat that goes with that 23,000 that you're talking about?
Mr. George. Most definitely.
Mr. Cummings. Talk about--tell us so we will know, so that
when the headline is written we've got all of the caveat that
goes with it. Go ahead.
Mr. Camus. Sir, the 23,000 to 24,000 estimate involves just
simply email headers. That's what the transaction logs can
record. When you take that limited amount of information--they
have the transaction log, which is the header of the email and
the subject line and maybe one or two features underneath--it
does limit your ability to compare.
But I've been assured by my staff that we went through the
process, we checked it twice, and that it is a fair estimate of
the email activity that went through the IRS.gov domain and
that has not yet been produced to Congress.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Cummings. Of course. Of course.
Chairman Chaffetz. I am sensitive to the idea that we want
to have as accurate of information as we can possibly have, but
let's remember why we are here. There was a preservation order
in place; there was a subpoena in place. They've never complied
with it.
We've had testimony from the IRS Commissioner that we would
get all this, only to find out they have been degaussing these
tapes. And they destroyed evidence. That is what they did. And
that is why we continue to have this.
We haven't even got into the content of the emails. We are
just trying to get them so we can actually read them and figure
out what was going on.
Mr. Cummings. Yeah. Would the gentleman----
Chairman Chaffetz. Sure.
Mr. Cummings. Just one--and I am so glad you said that.
One of the things that I have always done in this committee
for the, my God, 20 years since I have been on this committee
is make sure that when we are talking about employees and where
there is an issue of their credibility, whether it is a
possibility that they are being accused--and I am not saying it
has happened yet--of a crime, I try to make sure that is clear.
Because it sends a--because it has a tremendous impact on that
individual and a chilling effect on the entire agency.
And so one of the things I am concerned about is that,
while there have been the degaussing, the destruction in West
Virginia and whatever, that there was nobody who did anything
intentionally to hinder our investigation. I want to make sure
that is clear for no other purpose than what I just said.
Is that right?
Mr. Camus. That would be accurate. Our investigation found
no purposeful destruction by the employees who put the tapes
through the degaussing machine.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. And would the gentleman----
Mr. Cummings. Of course I will yield. I will yield to you.
Chairman Chaffetz. We've got thousands of IRS employees in
Utah. They work hard. They are patriotic. And most of the IRS
employees are.
But when the IRS Commissioner Shulman comes and says there
is no targeting and the Inspector General says there is
targeting, when Mr. Koskinen as the IRS Commissioner comes here
and says that we will provide you all the tapes and meanwhile
they're degaussing them, then you can understand, we are not
trying to pick on the rank and file here, but when you lie to
Congress, you mislead us, we are going to hold you accountable.
And so, yeah, our focus is on Mr. Shulman, it is on Mr.
Koskinen, and it really does mystify why, with all these orders
in place, a subpoena in place, these things get destroyed.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Chairman, my last----
Chairman Chaffetz. Is that fair?
Mr. Cummings. That's fair.
My last comment, Mr. Chairman--and I appreciate this
dialogue--is that, as you know, you and I have joined in on
many instances where we felt that we were not getting the
information that we are supposed to get, and I backed you up,
and you backed me up. As a matter of fact, just yesterday you
did it. And I appreciate that.
So I agree. I mean, I am concerned, too, as to why things
were not looked into. That really does concern me, and I am
hoping that we will get some answers to that.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Connolly. Would the ranking member yield one more time?
Chairman Chaffetz. We need to keep----
Mr. Cummings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. We need to move on. Thank you.
I now recognize the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Jordan, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to walk through the timeline here real quick.
On May 10, 2013, Lois Lerner, unprecedented, goes to a bar
association meeting here in town 3 days before you are going to
issue your report.
Mr. George. Correct.
Mr. Jordan. They wanted to get ahead of it, get their spin
on it.
So, right from the get-go, the IRS is not being
transparent, not helping the American people get to the truth,
because she goes and lies, and she says it's line agents in
Cincinnati. May 10, 2013.
Twelve days later, there is a preservation notice sent to
people in the IRS. It wasn't followed, we found out. So 12 days
later, May 22, 2013, notice that says, don't destroy any
evidence. Right? We want all the emails, we want all the
documents preserved.
Is that right, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Jordan. Okay.
August 2, 2013, there's a subpoena for the same documents
they are supposed to preserve. There's a subpoena to give them
to Congress.
Right, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Jordan. February 2, 2014, the IRS learns, not just
anybody at the IRS, the chief legal counsel learns that there's
a problem with Lois Lerner's hard drive and emails are missing.
Right, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. Jordan. One month later, despite the preservation
order, despite the subpoena, 1 month after the chief counsel
knows we're missing some emails, 422 tapes containing those
emails are destroyed.
Right, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. That's right.
Mr. Jordan. And 3 weeks after that, March 26, 2014, the
head of the IRS, Commissioner Koskinen, sits right where you
are sitting, Mr. Camus, and he tells this committee: We are
going to get you every single email Lois Lerner has sent.
Right, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. That's what I understand. Yes, sir.
Mr. Jordan. So, preservation order, subpoena, ``don't
destroy anything,'' they destroy it. Three weeks later, the guy
in charge tells us, ``We're going to get you everything,'' and
they've already been destroyed.
So here's the question: How in the world could that happen?
This is the biggest story in the stinking country at that time.
How in the world, with the preservation order and the subpoena,
do they destroy 422 tapes containing, according to your
investigation, potentially 24,000 emails?
How does that happen, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. It's an unbelievable set of circumstances that
would allow that to happen. It is going to be fully documented
in our report, and I'm not sure I could describe it to you in 5
minutes.
Mr. Jordan. The reason you can't describe it is because
there's no explanation for that other than they were trying to
not help the American people get to the truth. They were trying
to hide something. They were trying to hinder the--I don't know
any other explanation unless it's the most--I mean, it's
unbelievable, when you have a subpoena, a preservation order,
and you destroy 24,000 emails.
Who is responsible, ultimately? Might it be the guy--Mr.
Camus, might it be the guy who sat where you are sitting, the
Commissioner of the IRS, and assured this committee and, more
importantly, assured the American people that he would get us
all the evidence? Might he be the guy who is responsible?
Mr. Camus. It's possible. The management team----
Mr. Jordan. Might it be the head of the IRS, who didn't,
according to your testimony, didn't even look at all the
sources for potential Lois Lerner emails? Isn't that correct;
they didn't look at all the sources?
Mr. Camus. They did not.
Mr. Jordan. Might it be the guy who said this under oath in
this committee: ``We will get you every single Lois Lerner
email?'' Might it be that guy?
Mr. Camus. The management team is certainly someplace to
look.
Mr. Jordan. But doesn't the buck stop with the guy at the
top?
Mr. Camus. That could be said.
Mr. Jordan. I think it can certainly be said when he is the
one who assured us that it was all going to happen in spite of
this fact pattern.
What is next, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. We're going to generate our report of
investigation that will clearly delineate step by step how this
occurred, where the breakdowns were, and it will provide the
evidence that I've been describing in our--both our written and
oral testimony here today.
Mr. Jordan. Do you believe there is criminal activity here,
Mr. Camus? Because it sure looks like it to the American
people, in my judgment.
Mr. Camus. Our investigation did not uncover any at this
time.
Mr. Jordan. But do you believe you might uncover that?
Mr. Camus. There are always times at the conclusion of an
investigation, especially when an investigation gets a public
forum, that somebody hears something and they come forward with
new information. But, after a very thorough investigation, we
have not uncovered any evidence.
Mr. Jordan. But it might have helped if we had 24,000
emails to look at, mightn't it?
Mr. Camus. It would've certainly been useful to have that
material.
Mr. Jordan. Yeah, I would think so, too.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you.
I now recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr.
Cartwright, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cartwright. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. George, I want to ask you about your ever-changing
estimates of the new emails that you recovered from Mrs.
Lerner. Your numbers started at 80,000 emails in February. Then
it dropped to 32,000 emails at the end of February. Then, last
week, it fell to 6,400. And, 9 days later, now, it has sunk to
about 1,000. Your new number today is 98 percent lower than the
first number you gave us.
You know, this is a room where we like to hear the truth.
There was a great Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and he talked about the truth.
He said, ``The truth is tough. It's not like a bubble that you
can prick and it will explode. It's more like a rugged football
that you can kick around all day and it doesn't lose its shape
and it doesn't lose its form and it stays the same.'' The truth
doesn't change.
And when you are talking about a story that's true, Mr.
George, it's the same the first time you tell it, the second
time you tell it, the third time you tell it, and the fourth
time you tell it. The truth doesn't go 80,000 and then 32,000
and then 6,400 and now 1,000. In fact, in the last 9 days, you
dropped from 6,400 discovered emails to 1,000.
And I am looking at the letter dated June 16 from your
office. This is not from you; this is from Gladys Hernandez,
your chief counsel. Is she your chief counselor, Mr. George?
Mr. George. Yes, she is.
Mr. Cartwright. Okay.
Hello, Gladys. How are you? Thanks for the letter.
But, Mr. Chairman, I would ask for unanimous consent to
enter this June 16 letter from Gladys Hernandez into the
record.
Chairman Chaffetz. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Cartwright. And I was reading the letter, Mr. George,
from Attorney Hernandez that says 6,400, and there is no
caveat. There is nothing in there that says, oh, this could be
fewer, you know, could be fewer than 6,400. There is no proviso
in there. Doesn't say, there could be duplicates in here, stand
by for the next number, it could be coming next week. We didn't
hear that from you either.
Now, this is not new to you, Mr. George. You were a
Republican staffer for this committee. You understand that
headlines are generated out of this committee. You understand
how irresponsible it can be to throw out numbers with little or
no basis, because you know they will work their way into
headlines, and folks who like to make insinuations, like the
previous questioner, will throw that into headlines
intentionally.
And there was also a question about the prior chairman
pressuring your office--pressuring your office to come up with
quick, fast, turnaround information. Well, news flash: The
previous chairman is the previous chairman. He is no longer
here. You are no longer under that kind of Republican pressure
to turn over headline information to this committee.
And it certainly doesn't say anything about that in Gladys
Hernandez's June 16 letter.
The question is: Why, why, Mr. George, would you send out
letters and put out numbers that you hadn't fully checked,
knowing full well, as you do, that these numbers will work
their way into these fabulous headlines that we see every day,
the breathless reporting of all of these huge numbers of emails
that have been discovered? Why, Mr. George? Why do you do that?
Mr. George. Well, first of all, I would like to point out
that when I had the honor of serving as a staffer here--it was
with Congressman Stephen Horn, the late Congressman from Long
Beach, California, who admonished us--we never leaked
information during the course of an investigation prior to a
hearing. So I comported myself in that way. I made a request of
staffers during the course of this investigation to do
likewise. They did not do so. I can't control their behavior.
Secondly, this, it was a response to a request that we
received. In all candor, this was a transmittal letter,
Congressman. I hadn't seen this before. It was simply a
transmittal letter from our counsel to the committee. So I
would have the--I request the opportunity to review this and to
respond precisely.
But thirdly----
Mr. Cartwright. You've heard of Oliver Wendell Holmes,
haven't you?
Mr. George. I went to Harvard Law School, yes.
Mr. Cartwright. And you agree with his statement about the
truth, don't you?
Mr. George. I agree.
Mr. Cartwright. And don't you agree that when you keep
changing your story the way your office has, you lose your
credibility and people stop believing that you're telling the
truth?
Mr. George. Congressman----
Mr. Cartwright. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Gentleman yields back.
Recognize the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Walberg, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thanks for the panelists for the work that you've done.
It's been intimidated; it has been held up; it has been
frustrated all across the many, many months we've been dealing
with it.
I would also start with a quote from a famous Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court as well as one of the most famous trial
lawyers and former Members of Congress, Daniel Webster, and
Justice Marshall, who both said, ``The power to tax is the
power to destroy.'' I'm not sure they were talking about
degaussing, but they were certainly talking about the power of
a taxing entity to impact the lives of people. And that's
something we've had here.
I also want to remind our whole committee again, as we talk
about numbers and we talk about degaussing, and we talk about
tapes and we talk about hard drives, remember, the fact of the
matter is that Lois Lerner sat at that very table and pled the
Fifth. And what does the Fifth Amendment refer to? The right to
not self-incriminate. That says to me, Lois Lerner was worried
about the fact that what she had done could be construed as
illegal at the very least, and she chose not to share the truth
with us. She didn't kick the football; she walked off the
field. And so we're left with trying to deal with tapes that
have been degaussed--oh, sorry. I understand it. My people
understand it--they've been destroyed.
When Congress began its investigation on May 2013, the IRS
issued a preservation notice to ensure the documents relevant
to the investigation were not destroyed. Is that not correct?
Mr. George. That is our understanding.
Mr. Walberg. We want to rehearse this again to, cut through
the clutter to get back to what the situation is. Who sent out
this preservation notice?
Mr. Camus. That was the chief technology officer, Terry
Milholland.
Mr. Walberg. So based on your investigation, what efforts
did the IRS, Terry Milholland or anyone else, make to ensure
that the CTO's email notice to cease routine destruction of
electronic records was actually followed by low-level
employees?
Mr. Camus. There was very much confusion, and I'm not
certain that there was appropriate management oversight of that
directive.
Mr. Walberg. Well, who was responsible for the preservation
of these emails?
Mr. Camus. Every IRS manager, in my view.
Mr. Walberg. Every IRS manager. Every IRS. Plenty of them
could've followed this out.
Has anyone been reprimanded for emails being destroyed
despite the preservation notice?
Mr. Camus. Inasmuch as we're finishing our investigation,
we have not provided the IRS with the results of what we found
during our very thorough investigation in these matters.
Mr. Walberg. But they know the law relative to the
preservation notice? They should know it.
Mr. Camus. I believe they do, and they will get our full
report.
Mr. Walberg. And we don't know of any reprimand that
they've taken.
If these instructions had been followed, would more Lois
Lerner emails be available to Congress for investigation?
Mr. Camus. I believe there would be.
Mr. Walberg. That's a fact of the matter.
How many potential sources for recovering Ms. Lerner's
emails existed for the IRS?
Mr. Camus. We believe there were six.
Mr. Walberg. Namely?
Mr. Camus. The hard drive would have been a source,
BlackBerry source, backup tapes a source, server drives a
source, the backup tapes for the server drives, and then
finally, the loaner laptops.
Mr. Walberg. How many of these six did the IRS search?
Mr. Camus. We're not aware that they searched any one in
particular. They did--it appears they did look into initially
whether or not the hard drive had been destroyed, but they
didn't go much further than that.
Mr. Walberg. They found out it had been destroyed. But the
other six we don't know that they even attempted a search on
it.
Did the IRS personnel ever state a reason why they did not
attempt these alternative methods of retrieving Lerner's
missing emails?
Mr. Camus. They believed at a high level that attempting to
get emails off of the backup tapes was a futile attempt. But
they did not determine that the very backup tapes that would
have contained the emails still existed, and they would have
yielded the very emails everybody's been interested in.
Mr. Walberg. They wouldn't do this with a common citizen
taxpayer, would they? I'm not asking you to answer that one.
I'm suggesting that they would not have followed their pattern
of course with Lois Lerner's tapes and email records with any
of us in the room.
Given the IRS's failure to attempt the methods TIGTA used
to recover the missing emails, would you characterize IRS
efforts as extraordinary?
Mr. Camus. I would not.
Mr. Walberg. The power to tax is the power to destroy.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman.
Recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Connolly. Yes. And I would also remind my friend
another quote from a very distinguished Justice Supreme Court,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, ``Tax is the price we pay for
civilization.'' Taxes aren't always bad things.
Mr. Walberg. Would my friend yield back?
Mr. Connolly. Real briefly.
Mr. Walberg. Real briefly. I agree with you. We're not
talking about that. We're talking about destroying people's
lives.
Mr. Connolly. Well, I don't know that any lives have been
destroyed. We can assert it; that doesn't make it true. But
thank you.
Mr. Camus, we submitted questions to you on March 4 after
the last hearing. The committee informed you and Mr. George,
those answers were due on March 18. We were--I find it very
interesting that we're complaining about responsiveness. Let's
start with the IG's office. Because if you're not pure as
Caesar's wife, you have no credibility and no business,
frankly, testifying about somebody at IRS. So you need to be
punctilious about your responsiveness.
And I heard Mr. George say, oh, my goal is to be responsive
to Congress. Your questions, Mr. Camus, we were informed, were
ready for delivery on March 27; nine days late, but ready. Is
that correct?
Mr. Camus. I diligently worked on the questions, I prepared
them, and I submitted them for review.
Mr. Connolly. And why was there a 3-month delay between the
completion of your answers to those questions and delivery to
this committee 2 days ago?
Mr. Camus. I don't know.
Mr. Connolly. Would you call that responsive?
Mr. Camus. I don't know the circumstance for nondelivery.
Mr. George. I mean, I do, and I can give that to you.
Mr. Connolly. I'll get to you in a second, Mr. George. I
promise. Don't worry. I won't leave you out.
Okay. I just find it interesting, Mr. Camus, because I
would think that would be a pretty declarative answer one way
or another, responsive or not.
Let me ask you this: In any way, shape or form, were your
answers with that delay changed or suggestions made to be
changed in order to conform to somebody else's answers?
Mr. Camus. No, sir.
Mr. Connolly. So to your knowledge, they remain unchanged
but just delayed?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. George, why did you delay this process?
Because we only got your answers 2 days ago, and I just heard
you assure the chairman in this committee your commitment to
making sure Congress has everything it wanted, except from you.
Mr. George. Yeah. Well----
Mr. Connolly. Why did we have to wait 3 months for your
answer, and why did you delay Mr. Camus' answers?
Mr. George. Well, because the request came to both of us--
--
Mr. Connolly. Yes.
Mr. George. --in a single document, so we wanted to respond
in a single document, one; two, as pointed----
Mr. Connolly. Excuse me. Even if it is delayed by 3 months?
Mr. George. Well, the delay, sir, and I have to beg your
indulgence, and I've expressed this with Chairman Chaffetz, my
mother had a severe stroke and is in intensive care unit for
now 2-1/2 months nearing death. And so yes, I've had to put
aside some of my professional responsibilities while attending
to her, my elderly mother, who is States away, and I have that
primary responsibility, sir.
Mr. Connolly. I'm very sympathetic. I have----
Mr. George. That is the----
Mr. Connolly. I have elderly parents too who suffer health
issues.
Mr. George. That is the explanation. And my apology to the
committee for the delay.
Mr. Connolly. But could that not have been communicated to
the committee? We had nothing but silence, Mr. George.
Mr. George. Well, there are certain parts of my life that I
don't want communicated.
Mr. Connolly. Well, you could have said, because of
personal concerns, I can't do my job for 3 months, with respect
to responding to the----
Mr. George. But, there were also reviews to make sure that
Privacy Act and 6103 issues were addressed, so there were a
combination of factors. But the primary one was my personal
family situation.
Mr. Connolly. Well, again, I'm always sympathetic to
somebody's personal circumstances.
Mr. George. I appreciate that, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Connolly. But there is a concern, frankly, as you know,
and Mr. Cartwright and I filed a complaint about you with
respect to your behavior throughout this entire thing. And the
latest delineation of email numbers that Mr. Cummings provided
is very troubling in terms of credibility.
You met with Republican members of the staff without
Democrats present. You talked to the chairman and took
direction from the then-chairman without consulting with the
Democrats, even though standards of conduct for IGs
specifically say you should avoid that; that you should always
have not only the appearance but the reality of nonpartisanship
so that your credibility and integrity is, in fact, adhered to.
And from our point of view, there are real questions about
whether you actually lived up to that standard. And you've
indicated that your own answer to CIGIE, which investigated
you, or supposedly investigated you, exonerated you, but you've
refused to provide that answer to the committee. Another
evasion.
So we're having a hearing ironically about whether IRS was
transparent, whether there was any attempt to prevent the
release of relevant material requested by the committee, while
you, yourself, have, in fact, been guilty of the same thing.
You have not been transparent. You have refused to provide
information. You have been unresponsive for whatever reason.
And you held up Mr. Camus' answers in the process, which at
least could've partially satisfied the committee demand.
And I renew my request to you. You claim that it's a
violation of your rights under the Privacy Act, but if indeed
your answer exonerated you before CIGIE, why would you want to
keep it secret? Why wouldn't you share it?
Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman's time is expired.
I want the gentleman to know that Mr. George had informed
the committee, had informed me that he was dealing with a
personal situation. It's hard to communicate that with
everybody en masse, but I was aware of that.
Mr. Cummings. Would the chairman yield?
Chairman Chaffetz. Sure.
Mr. Cummings. And I just want the gentleman to know too
that he did inform me on more than one occasion that he was
going through this. And certainly, Mr. George, we all wish your
mother well. But you definitely kept this side informed also.
Thank you.
Mr. George. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. Sorry you are going through
that.
As the chairman, I'd like to inform you that there is a
vote on the floor. It is my intention to recognize Mr.
DesJarlais for 5 minutes, then we will recess. There are three
votes on the floor. Upon recess, we will not reconvene again
before 10:45, sometime after that, a few minutes after the last
vote, then we will resume. But we will have to adjourn briefly.
But for now, let's recognize the gentleman from Tennessee,
Mr. DesJarlais for 5 minutes.
Mr. DesJarlais. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the gentleman for being here again today.
Mr. George, how long has this investigation been ongoing?
Mr. George. At least since--well, it depends upon how you--
oh, the investigation of the missing emails as opposed to the
overall issue of the tax exempt organizations?
Mr. DesJarlais. Both.
Mr. George. So it was, 2 years? Yeah, so since May of 2013,
the exempt organizations and since roughly June of 2014 the
exempt missing emails.
Mr. DesJarlais. Okay. And apparently, according to the
ranking member, we've had 22 hearings now and we've spent $20
million. And sometimes it's hard to remember what the focus is
of why we're even here because it's drug on so long, and it's
drug on so long because the IRS has not been cooperating with
us.
And also, I've got to wonder as investigators like
yourself, how hard it is to conduct an investigation when the
President informed you that there's not a smidgeon of
corruption. Does it make it difficult to conduct an interview
when our Commander in Chief, the leader of this country, the
leader that was benefited by the fact that the IRS admittedly
targeted conservative groups that were going to work against
his presidency, has informed you that there's not a smidgeon of
corruption? Does that make it difficult for you?
Mr. George. Well, I won't address the President's comments,
Congressman. I will say that there's a drip, drip, drip here
because with every new uncovery of information, whether it's
from testimony or interviews to the finding of backup tapes,
this extends the course of the investigation. And so that is
why this has--it's still ongoing.
Mr. DesJarlais. Okay. And there was a comment about the
cost of the hearings and number of hearings. Watergate had 250
hours of aired testimony gavel to gavel. We have not approached
that yet. Watergate, in today's terms, cost a lot more than
this. And I think we have an incident here that's every bit or
more serious than Watergate. So it disheartens me that we have
such opposition to these hearings. Eventually, democracy
affects all of us, regardless of party, and maybe at some point
we'll get to the bottom of something that will matter to people
on the other side of the aisle.
There's been a lot of comments today about the numbers, the
numbers of emails you're throwing out. There are 10,000,
30,000, and that you're being criticized for that. As
investigators, how many emails does it take to incriminate
somebody of wrongdoing?
Mr. George. One.
Mr. DesJarlais. One. Yeah, one email. So what does it
matter how many numbers are being thrown out there? We're
trying to get to the truth. So I commend you guys for working
hard and doing that.
Who at the IRS was overseeing the destruction of the backup
tapes, or who was in charge of that?
Mr. Camus. There was a group of individuals, but the first-
line manager was a manager out of West Virginia named Charles
Stanton.
Mr. DesJarlais. What was Kate Duval's role?
Mr. Camus. Kate Duval was the chief counsel to the
Commissioner, and she was in charge of the email production to
the Congress.
Mr. DesJarlais. Okay. Did you interview Ms. Duval?
Mr. Camus. We did.
Mr. DesJarlais. And was she aware that there was a problem
with the collections of the emails?
Mr. Camus. Yes, she was.
Mr. DesJarlais. Okay. And what was her response?
Mr. Camus. Well, when they realized--because she was
running the effort at that time to gather the emails to produce
them--when they realized there was a hole in their production,
she's the one that informed the Treasury that they were having
difficulty with the emails. And she is also the one that
informed the Commissioner that they were having troubling
gathering the emails.
Mr. DesJarlais. Was she held accountable for the fact that
they're missing, that these have been destroyed?
Mr. Camus. Ms. Duval, I understand, is no longer at the
Interval Revenue Service. And at the conclusion of our
investigation, the IRS will get our report, and I believe they
will take appropriate action based on what we found in the
report concerning individuals.
Mr. DesJarlais. Okay. Do you feel that in your
investigation to this point, knowing that the IRS has
admittedly targeted conservative groups, they admitted
wrongdoing. Lois Lerner came here and sat in your chair. She
took the Fifth. She didn't want to incriminate herself. Do you
agree with the President's statement that there's not a
smidgeon of corruption going on in the IRS?
Mr. Camus. It's difficult to agree with a broad statement
at any time. Our job in the Office of Investigations is to root
out corruption at the IRS. So whether it's this matter or any
other matter, we take great pride conducting thorough
investigations, and if there is corruption, we're determined to
find it and root it out.
Mr. DesJarlais. All right. Well, I certainly appreciate the
work that you're doing, and I know the American people
appreciate the work that you're doing. This was an assault on
democracy, the Democratic process, and the way elections are
conducted, so I commend you two gentlemen.
And I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman.
There are votes on the floor. The committee will stand in
recess. We will reconvene no sooner than 10:45, but honestly,
probably going to be a little bit longer.
Mr. George. No problem, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. We stand in recess.
[Recess.]
Chairman Chaffetz. The Oversight and Government Reform
Committee will come back to order.
We were in the midst of the hearing regarding the IRS and
appreciate the inspectors general being with us here today.
There was a point of clarification, I believe, Mr. Camus
wanted to make. I'd like to recognize him to clarify a previous
statement.
Mr. Camus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
When Dr. DesJarlais asked me the name of the manager at the
IRS at the time the tapes were erased or destroyed, I shared
the name Charles Stanton. Charles Stanton wasn't actually the
manager at that time. We're working on getting that name. We'll
provide it for the record. Stanton has actually been very
cooperative.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. Appreciate the clarification.
Mr. Camus. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. We do.
We now recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr.
Gowdy, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. George, I want to start by encouraging you to take
heart when the other side makes ad hominem attacks. It's
generally because they have neither the facts nor the law nor,
frankly, logic. So I know it is difficult for you to sit there
and absorb ad hominem attacks, but the reality is that is kind
of the last vestige of folks who have nothing else left to
argue.
I'm going to ask a series of questions, and Mr. Camus, or
Mr. George, either one can answer them. And I'm a simple man,
so I'm going to start kind of simply. With respect to the IRS
investigation/targeting investigations, were there at some
point subpoenas in place?
Mr. George. There were.
Mr. Gowdy. Okay. Were there requests to preserve evidence
in place?
Mr. George. Yes.
Mr. Gowdy. Were there ongoing congressional investigations?
Mr. George. There were, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Were there ongoing IG investigations?
Mr. George. Definitely.
Mr. Gowdy. And purportedly, there was an ongoing DOJ
investigation, although we've seen scant evidence of that, at
least that's the allegation, right?
Mr. George. Yes. And I'll ask Mr. Camus to further respond
to that.
Mr. Camus. That's correct, sir. There is an ongoing DOJ
investigation.
Mr. Gowdy. Okay. So you have subpoenas in place. You have
requests to preserve evidence in place. You have ongoing
congressional investigations. You have ongoing IG
investigations. And you may very well have an ongoing DOJ
investigation, all of which leads me to ask, what does it mean,
``Do not destroy/wipe/reuse any of the existing backup tapes
for email?'' What does that mean?
Mr. Camus. That means do not destroy, rewipe or do anything
to that material, as it could be evidence or of import.
Mr. Gowdy. Oh, so it means exactly what it says?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. There's no hidden meaning?
Mr. Camus. No, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Even I can understand that sentence. Don't do
it, right? I mean, you can call--you can use fancy words like
degauss if you want to, but don't destroy, wipe, reuse any of
the existing backup tapes.
Now, was that done?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Was it done after any of the following were in
place: Subpoenas, requests to preserve, ongoing congressional
investigations, ongoing IG investigations, or purported DOJ
investigation?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir, it was done March--on or about March 4
of 2014, well after the commencement of all those activities.
Mr. Gowdy. Wow. Now, I want to ask you about an individual
in a minute, but I want to ask you this: Sometimes things can
be done accidentally. Let's go ahead and rule that out. Are we
talking about just kind of a misstroke on a keyboard? Is that
what causes these things to disappear and be wiped? You just--
you type in a word and hit the wrong key? Does that do it?
Mr. Camus. No, the destruction that we're talking about
required the employees involved to actually pick up tapes and
place them into a machine, turn the machine on that
magnetically destroyed and obliterated the data.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, sounds like it'd be hard to accidentally
do that.
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. Gowdy. All right. So we can rule out accident. That
leaves negligence or intentional, willful, wanton. Do you know
whether it was just sheer negligence, incompetence, or was it a
higher level of scienter or mens rea?
Mr. Camus. Our investigation has shown that the two
employees who physically put those tapes into that machine are
lower-graded employees at the Martinsburg, West Virginia,
computing center. They continued to erase media throughout the
period of time; as a matter of fact, they did not stop erasing
media, including these 424 tapes, until June of 2014. When
interviewed, those employees said that, ``Our job is to put
these pieces of plastic into that machine and magnetically
obliterate them. We had no idea that there was any type of
preservation from the chief technology officer.''
Mr. Gowdy. Was Mr. Koskinen in charge of the IRS at the
time?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. I want to ask you about another name. Have you
ever heard the name Kate Duval?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Who is Kate Duval? Because I think I've heard
that name before too.
Mr. Camus. Kate Duval is the chief counsel representative,
the IRS's counselor, concerning the production issues to
Congress. So she was----
Mr. Gowdy. Oh.
Mr. Camus. --the lawyer in charge of making sure that
counsel made production to Congress.
Mr. Gowdy. So she's in charge of making sure that emails
and other matters get produced?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Is she still with the IRS?
Mr. Camus. She is not. I don't recall the date that she
left, but she is no longer----
Mr. Gowdy. Do you know where she is now?
Mr. Camus. --part of the Internal Revenue Service.
I can get that information for you.
Mr. Gowdy. No, I know where she is now. She's at the
Department of State in charge of their email productions. Wow.
I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman.
We'll now recognize the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Massie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to ask about the date that Lois Lerner's hard drive
failed, because he gave us more specificity here today, and I
appreciate that. Is it--what day did her hard drive fail?
Mr. Camus. We believe it failed on June 11, which is a
Saturday, between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m.
Mr. Massie. So this hard drive failed conveniently. Do you
know where it was when it failed?
Mr. Camus. We believe, based on log activity, that the
laptop was in her office at the time that the hard drive
failed.
Mr. Massie. So on a Saturday, it was just sitting there and
it just sort of failed on its own, on a Saturday, on June 11?
Can you tell if there was any computer activity at the time
that it failed from log activity?
Mr. Camus. There was--we were unable to determine if a
program was in place that would remove another program from the
computer. It was a silent deployment, if you will. That
deployment was scheduled to occur between two dates, but we
weren't able to definitively say there was any computer
activity on that computer on July--or I'm sorry, June 11,
2013--or 2011, when it was destroyed.
Mr. Massie. So here's what I find interesting. On June 3,
the chairman of Ways and Means sent a letter to Doug Shulman,
who was a Commissioner of the IRS at the time. Are you familiar
with that letter?
Mr. Camus. I'm not.
Mr. Massie. June 3, just briefly says--it's chairman of the
Committee on Ways and Means, and this was sent by the--Mr.
Camp, the chairman at the time. He was concerned that the IRS
appears to have selectively targeted certain taxpayers who
engaged in a political speech. Not only does this threaten
political speech, it casts doubt on the IRS credibility. He
sent that on June 3, which is--I looked it up on the calendar--
a Friday. So it's likely they didn't receive it at the IRS
until Monday, which would have been June--what would that make
it?--6th.
Mr. Camus. 6th.
Mr. Massie. So here we have June 6 they probably received
this letter, and her hard drive magically fails on its own in
her office on a Saturday, 5 days later. Now, before we thought
there was a 10-day difference, but now we realize there's a 5-
day difference. This is just an amazing coincidence to me. I
think it's more than a coincidence.
I want to put up on the screen a directive that was sent
out by the chief technology officer of the IRS, if we could get
that on the screen. And this is the directive that went out to
managers--is that correct?--telling them not to erase data?
Mr. Camus. Correct.
Mr. Massie. This directive went out on May 22, 2013. When
were the tapes erased at the IRS?
Mr. Camus. On or about March 4, 2014.
Mr. Massie. So about 8 months later.
And is this--if we look at the highlighted part on here, it
says, ``Do not destroy/wipe/reuse any of the existing backup
tapes for email or archiving or other information from IRS
personal computers.''
Did that go to managers that were at the facility where the
tapes were erased?
Mr. Camus. It did. And there's a lot of discussion that we
captured in our investigation by capturing the manager's
emails, over what Milholland meant by this directive. So
there's some back and forth.
Mr. Massie. So what did they say they thought it meant when
you talked to them?
Mr. Camus. They believe that it pertained to hard drives
and personal computers. They over-interpreted the directive,
which was basically preserve all electronic media.
Mr. Massie. So they thought it just applied to hard drives
and personal computers and that's what they told you. But
doesn't it clearly say, ``Do not destroy/wipe/reuse any of the
existing backup tapes?
Mr. Camus. It does.
Mr. Massie. So if they didn't do this willingly or
knowingly or purposely, this is basically incompetence, isn't
it?
Mr. Camus. One could come to that conclusion, yes, sir.
Mr. Massie. Either that or they can't read?
Mr. Camus. One could come to that conclusion. Like I said,
there's--you'll see in our report of investigation, we captured
a lot of the email traffic back and forth between employees as
they were discussing the impact that this has on their
operations out there and destroying things.
Mr. Massie. Do these people still work for the IRS?
Mr. Camus. Yes.
Mr. Massie. Why is that, if they're this incompetent?
Mr. Camus. The Internal Revenue Service is going to get a
copy of our report of investigation when we're through, and I
imagine that they will look at it and they will take
appropriate action.
Mr. Massie. I thank you.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman.
We will now recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr.
DeSantis, for 5 minutes.
Mr. DeSantis. I thank the chairman.
I tell you, my friend from Kentucky, it may be
incompetence, or it may just be a willful disregard of the
preservation order and a willful disregard of the subpoena that
this committee issued in August of 2013. And so those are two
very, very important actions.
And yet, Mr. Camus, in early 2014, your report demonstrates
422 backup tapes were destroyed by the IRS, correct?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. DeSantis. So we have clear guidance, mandatory
guidance, and yet they destroyed the tapes. So if a taxpayer
had been asked by the IRS in an audit to produce certain
documents to justify their tax returns, and they just decided
that some of the things they didn't want to produce or claim
that they were destroyed or destroy them, something tells me
that would not fly. And so you have an agency here that's
operating under a different standard than they impose on the
American taxpayer, and that's unacceptable.
June 13, 2014, John Koskinen, in front of--his letter to
the Senate, in front of this committee, later confirmed that
the backup tapes with Lois Lerner's email no longer existed.
And yet, your report shows that by doing basic due diligence,
you found 13 backup tapes that had Lois Lerner's emails on them
after he made that statement, correct?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. DeSantis. And not only did you find the backup tapes,
you found approximately 1,000 at this point unique emails from
or to Lois Lerner that the IRS never produced to this
committee; is that accurate?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir, that's accurate.
Mr. DeSantis. And Commissioner Koskinen--I remember sitting
here. The chairman, our current chairman when he was one of the
regular members, he pressed Koskinen: ``Are you going to give
us all of Lois Lerner's emails?'' Finally, Koskinen says,
``Yes, we will give you all of Lois Lerner's emails.''
Now, the IRS claimed, Mr. Koskinen claimed that the IRS
went to, ``great lengths and made extraordinary efforts to
recover her emails.'' When Commissioner Koskinen said that the
backup tapes no longer existed that they confirmed, the IG,
what did you do to verify that? You drove out to the facility
in West Virginia and asked for the tapes, correct?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. DeSantis. Now, do you consider that to be an
extraordinary effort?
Mr. Camus. That's due diligence.
Mr. DeSantis. Basic due diligence. I'd say the bare minimum
of due diligence.
And so for Commissioner Koskinen, you go to great lengths,
above and beyond the call of duty, and you don't even look
where the backup tapes are found. That doesn't sit right. And I
think the problem is, and I think we've seen this with
Commissioner Koskinen's attitude that he really has had a
contempt for this entire investigation, he doesn't think the
IRS should be bothered with it; he's dismissive of the
misconduct that occurred by targeting Americans based on their
view points; and he's not done anything to really meet the
standards that he's laid out here by getting us everything that
we've asked for. And, of course, the proof is in the pudding,
because this has dragged on and on and on.
So I think that the American people are left with a sense
of major frustration. I think that they don't like to have a
situation where there are all these rules and regulations
they've got to follow, but then somehow when things are
subpoenaed by a government agency, government people can then
go ahead and destroy the documents, destroy the tapes, destroy
the emails. And this is not the only context the IRS,
throughout our whole government, where that happens. There's
other things that have been subpoenaed as we know that have
been destroyed.
So this is just simply unacceptable. And I think that there
needs to be accountability for it. I mean, if you're destroying
backup tapes that were under subpoena and that your own agency
said needed to be preserved, that's either a willful disregard
of what was required or a level of incompetence that is so
stunning that you clearly are not fit to serve. And so I think
either way, those individuals need to be held account.
And I don't think you can have an IRS Commissioner come in
front of the Congress, testify under oath that he has confirmed
that all the backup tapes have been destroyed, the emails are
unrecoverable, when he did not even do the basic due diligence
that the IG did by going out to the facility in West Virginia
where all the backup tapes are and getting those backup tapes
and looking.
And the thing is is, you know, there were 13 backup tapes
with Lois Lerner's emails. You also found, what, over 700 that,
at the time, you didn't know what was on them. You had to
check. And so there would be no way to know that it was only
13. And so there were even more backup tapes that were there
that were going to cover the time period and could have been
relevant before you did it.
So, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this update, and I
know this is just the beginning of our efforts to hold this
agency accountable on behalf of the American people. And I
yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman.
Will now recognize the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Palmer,
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. George, much has been made about the number of emails
that have been recovered. I would agree with some of the
members who have emphatically asserted that numbers matter. My
question to you is, how many emails that contain evidence of
wrongdoing do you need to recover in order to pursue justice?
Is it 10,000? Is it 1,000? One hundred? Would one be enough?
Mr. George. One would be enough, sir.
Mr. Palmer. So whether you find 1,000 emails or 100 emails
or 10, it's really--the only relevant point here is that you
and your office are doing your best. You're exercising due
diligence to pursue justice. And if there's one email or one
document that proves wrongdoing, it would justify the effort.
Is that--would you agree with that?
Mr. George. I agree 100 percent.
And I would beg your indulgence here, Congressman, because
the staff of the Office of Investigations is doing just
tremendous work almost around the clock, over weekends and over
holidays, in order to address this matter, and to locate that
potential one email or if there were more or if there aren't
any, to make a final conclusion as it relates to this.
Mr. Palmer. I think I can speak for the staff--for this
committee--I don't think I'm out of line in saying this--that
we are very, very grateful for the work that your office does
and the other IGs that--and how you pursue it with excellence
and professionalism on behalf of the American people.
Mr. George. Thank you.
Mr. Palmer. Mr. George. I don't remember, I think you were
one of the 47 inspectors general who signed a letter to this
committee raising concerns about Federal agencies' lack of, I'd
say, forthcoming with evidence and other documents. Is that
correct? Did you say that?
Mr. George. I was a signator to that----
Mr. Palmer. And we held a hearing on that. And one of the
points that I think we brought out here is that, how the lack
of cooperation by these Federal agencies, and in this case, I
would say at the IRS, has impeded investigations, have made it
very, very difficult to get to the truth, to get to the bottom
of these issues. Have you found that to be the case?
Mr. George. Very rarely, especially, in all candor, under
the current Commissioner. He's been extraordinarily
cooperative. But I have to point out--and, again, and in all
candor, the timing is blurred, given everything that occurred--
it wasn't until once appearing before this very committee that
the IRS turned over a training chart--and I'm not relating to
the email investigations, the overall exempt organizations
investigation. And at that time, reviewed, audit. So it was not
an investigation, so they were not compelled to provide us that
information, but they neglected to.
And so while it showed us--it showed that we may not have
considered something that we were unaware of. They were not
required to provide that information to us. And so that's a
long-winded way of saying, in that instance they didn't share
information with us that they knew existed, and so that is one
of the reasons why I agreed to put my name to that letter.
Mr. Palmer. Well, thank you for elaborating on that.
But my concern about this is, is that whether they didn't
provide it because they weren't asked, I find it inconceivable
that they would be unaware of the investigation and of the need
to turn over every document that might have some relevance to
this, and whether they intended to obstruct or impede, or
whether it was by benign neglect or incompetence is irrelevant,
because at the end of the day, the objective to get to the
truth. It is nonpartisan, in that respect. It's incumbent upon
us, in this committee and in your office, to pursue the truth.
I think that's the key point here. It doesn't matter how
many emails you've gone through, what's been reported in the
media. The media, that's irrelevant. What's relevant is whether
or not any wrongdoing has occurred, and that you be able to do
your job as inspector general and get to the truth.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield the balance of my time.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you.
We now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice, for
5 minutes.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
All right. The directive goes out to stop destroying the
tapes, or erasing the tapes in May of 2013. Yet, we know that
they are still being erased in 2014. And yet, what I'm trying
to wrap my mind around is the fact that you've said you found
no reason to believe that there was any intentional criminal or
obstructive behavior.
So why in the world were the orders from May of 2013 not
followed?
Mr. Camus. Through our interviews of the IRS employees
involved under oath and the review of their email, concurrent
email with the issue, it appears that they had a manifest
misunderstanding of the directive. There was a misunderstanding
at the management level because they--they didn't know whether
or not this pertained to just hard drives, they didn't know
whether it just contained----
Mr. Hice. All right. Let's go on from here. I get your
point.
Were there ever any orders to reinstate the destruction of
tapes?
Mr. Camus. No, sir.
Mr. Hice. All right. So there was a clear directive to stop
destroying the tapes. There was never orders to begin
destroying tapes again. How in the world can your investigation
determine that there was no criminal activity?
Mr. Camus. One of the elements of most criminal statutes is
a willfulness prong, and the challenge in any criminal
investigation is the willfulness. You need to gather the
evidence that shows that when these two lower-graded employees
introduced the 424 tapes----
Mr. Hice. All right. Let's go beyond the lower-grade
employees.
Mr. Camus. All right.
Mr. Hice. If there was no willful intent with them, that
would have to mean that they were not fully aware of what the
orders were. You stated earlier that the managers of the IRS
clearly were responsible. They were responsible to know the
orders. They were responsible to know the orders. They were
responsible to pass those orders down. So have you determined
from that that there could potentially be any criminal activity
among the managers or anyone above the lower grade?
Mr. Camus. There does not appear to be any evidence that
they willfully, improperly executed their duties.
Mr. Hice. Mr. Camus, you yourself, just a few moments ago
before the break, said that this is an unbelievable set of
circumstances that led to the destruction of these tapes. And I
have to agree with you. It's unbelievable. The truth is not
being told here. The directive could not be more clear than
what it was. And yet, tapes were still, nonetheless, destroyed.
So the truth is not being told. Why is there not some sort of
criminal investigation underway?
Mr. Camus. The investigation at hand was a criminal
investigation conducted by criminal investigators who had the
authority to place people under oath and bring criminal charges
to the Department of Justice. My agents, during the interviews
of all these folks and, again, with support of the
contemporaneous email traffic between them, came to the
conclusion that there was no willfulness by these employees or
managers----
Mr. Hice. Just based upon what they said. So that what they
said under oath was, we didn't mean to do this. But all the
circumstances, even in your own words, it's unbelievable.
Mr. Camus. It is.
Mr. Hice. What they are saying is unbelievable. It's
unbelievable to us. The truth is not being told. And in your
own words, what you have been told is unbelievable. If it's not
believable, that means it's not the truth. And at some point,
we've got to get to the bottom of this because the truth is not
being told. And we and the American people are sick and tired
of being snookered, of being taken by our government, and I
believe it's time that your investigation steps it up.
Did you interview Kate Duval?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir, we did.
Mr. Hice. Okay. When was she informed that the tapes had
potential emails of interest from Lois Lerner?
Mr. Camus. I believe she had already departed the Internal
Revenue Service when we obtained the emails off the tapes.
Mr. Hice. Did she take any action to stop the destruction
of tapes?
Mr. Camus. Not to our knowledge, she did not.
Mr. Hice. But she knew that the emails of interest were
there?
Mr. Camus. She could have known, and she certainly----
Mr. Hice. You just said she should have, that she did know.
Was she reprimanded in any way?
Mr. Camus. I'm not aware if she was reprimanded, sir.
Mr. Hice. Do you know if--you said a moment ago that she is
no longer with the IRS. Do you have any idea if she stepped
down from her position willfully, or if she was pressured in
any way or if she was potentially running from criminal charges
herself?
Mr. Camus. I don't have that information other than she
left the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. Hice. On her own?
Mr. Camus. On her own.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you.
I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr.
Walker, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate your
patience in coming from a markup.
This is a huge issue, not just because it's called on in
the press, but this issue comes down to integrity as well as
credibility. I appreciate what's been shared of what I've heard
so far today.
A couple things that I'd like to address. And just to make
sure that I'm clear, in your investigation, did we examine the
circumstances under which the IRS informed Congress about the
missing emails? Could you take a minute and address that?
Mr. Camus. Yes. We're privy to the production that IRS has
been through. We've observed the hearings, the various hearings
that have been held by this committee and others where they
testified about their efforts to produce emails. So we're well
aware of the fact that there have been promises made. There
have been obligations to provide the material. Is that
responsive?
Mr. Walker. Yeah, I think it does. Let me delve a little
deeper, if I could.
Is there concern that the Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration did not learn directly from the IRS that the
Lerner emails were supposedly lost?
Mr. Camus. That's correct. We did not learn of that until
June 13, 2014, at the same time everybody else did.
Mr. Walker. Can you expound on why. Why the delay?
Mr. Camus. They shared with us the same information they
shared with everybody else why they delayed it, when they knew
in February of 2014 there were missing emails. The explanation
was they spent the time between February and when they made
notification in June allegedly looking for emails.
Mr. Walker. All the time, though, under the guise as far as
trying to deliver what they did find. So we don't really know
the place--how much of that was posture, how much of that, hey,
we discovered it. Let's sit down and figure out the best
strategy, the best tactic. Or if it was late in the game when
they found them a week later. Is there any evidence to support
when exactly the evidence was found?
Mr. Camus. The only evidence that I'm aware of that was
found is whenever we initiated our investigation and we
recovered the first set of tapes, and then learning after
having them examined that there were emails on them.
Mr. Walker. Well, then, let's look at precedence then for a
moment. Is it customary for the Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration, TIGTA, if you will, to hear about
significant issues like the missing emails from a letter sent
by the IRS to the Senate. Is that--talk to me about protocol
with your experience.
Mr. Camus. A case this significant of this interest to all
parties, I would have expected that it would've been reported
to us when they determined that there was a loss of these
emails because it was pertinent to so many ongoing
investigations.
Mr. Walker. And, which, I guess, answers my next question.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but there would be
concern that you did not learn sooner of these problems given
that the IRS knew the Lerner emails were unrecoverable as early
as February of 2014; is that fair?
Mr. Camus. That would be fair.
Mr. Walker. Okay. Finally, have you brought any of these
concerns to the attention of Mr. Koskinen; and if not, why not?
Mr. Camus. We haven't shared the results of our findings or
our major concerns because we're not quite finished with the
report of investigation. When we are finished with that
document, he will get a copy, and he will be briefed about the
management failures and the observations that we had and our
concern about not being properly notified in a timely manner.
Mr. Walker. So we don't know whether he's aware of what
you're finding as sort of this go-long process as you're
discovering, so there's been no official release of information
back to Mr. Koskinen. Is that--yes or no?
Mr. Camus. Occasionally, we would give him an update like
we did the committees, inasmuch as we were talking to his
senior managers and his staff, and we would let him know, in
our efforts to recover emails, how we were come along. So other
than just the general, occasional status like we did with the
committees----
Mr. Walker. Right.
Mr. Camus. --we weren't providing him a blow-by-blow.
Mr. Walker. Mr. George, did you have something to add to
that?
Mr. George. I would just reiterate that he is aware of the
general findings but no conclusions yet, and that will be
forthcoming.
Mr. Walker. Well, can I get the word on it today that we
will make sure that you guys will inform Congress as soon as
you encounter difficulties in obtaining information indirectly
from the IRS? Will you let us know promptly with that?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. George. As long as 6103 permits it, we certainly will.
Mr. Walker. Fair enough. With that, I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman.
We will now recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr.
Russell, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Russell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We've established from your investigations that tapes were
not sent to the labs; laptops were not examined; BlackBerrys
were not examined. In June of 2014, the IRS in testimony in
letters stated that it left, ``no stone unturned,'' to recover
the emails. Was that true?
Mr. Camus. We went through a series of logical steps with
due diligence, and we were able to recover emails. So it would
appear that that statement----
Mr. Russell. That statement was not true.
July of 2014, IRS officials testified that it was possible
that Lois Lerner's emails were recoverable on discovered backup
data, tapes, other things that you've explained here today.
Were the tapes being erased after July of 2014?
Mr. Camus. We're not aware that----
Mr. Russell. Degaussed?
Mr. Camus. Yeah, our understanding is that the tapes in
question that would have contained the relevant material were
erased or degaussed on March of 2014. June of 2014, they
reportedly stopped erasing all media and came into compliance
with the chief technology officer's directive.
Mr. Russell. In that same month, July 2014, IRS officials
testified to the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and
Means Committee, and the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee here that it, ``confirmed the emails were
unrecoverable.'' Given then that these tapes had--the
degaussing or whatever had been stopped, given that recoverable
data still existed on the tapes, was that statement true?
Mr. Camus. It would not appear to be true.
Mr. Russell. It would not appear to be true.
February 2015, Commissioner Koskinen declared that he had,
``confirmed the emails were unrecoverable.'' And that there
were, in his words, ``no way,'' to recover them. Was that true?
Mr. Camus. That would not appear to be true.
Mr. Russell. That would not appear to be true.
We have established here today multiple incidents where the
IRS did not tell the truth. Worse, the First Amendment
protections on targeted groups were violated, even stated by
Lois Lerner in a public forum. There has been no accountability
of individuals misleading Congress and making untrue
statements, which we've established here. In hearings this
week, we're seeing a trend whereby government agencies do a
magnificent job of safeguarding data and emails from the
government, but allow our enemies to breach them with skill.
And this is a grotesque double standard on the rights of
American citizens. If they use the same untrue statements on
records provided to an IRS audit, they would likely be brought
up on charges. If an American citizen used this same standard,
making untrue statements, saying, well, I thought that was the
case but maybe it wasn't, but I don't have the records and I
can't send them to you. There would be fines and prosecutions,
more than likely.
We urge you to use a similar standard in holding the IRS
accountable for those that have lied to Congress in your
investigations to resolve and restore confidence that our
government can act with integrity, and act constitutionally on
behalf of the American people. You, in your auditing capacity
and your investigative capacity, have that responsibility that
I know you take seriously.
But we need to restore that confidence to the American
citizens of this country. And I urge you to hold these people
that have lied to Congress to account.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.
Mr. Cummings. Gentleman yield just for one question?
Mr. Russell. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Camus, I want to make sure I'm clear
because you just accused the Commissioner of a crime.
Mr. Camus. That was not my intention, sir.
Mr. Cummings. No. No. I'm not--I'm not arguing with you. I
want to make sure the record is clear. You said that--in answer
to a question, you said that he lied to Congress. Is that what
you told us?
Mr. Camus. No.
Mr. Cummings. Well, you need to clear that up one way or
another. I mean, whatever. I just want it to be clear. Because
you've now put in a very interesting situation. We're just
searching for the truth. Go ahead.
Mr. Camus. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to clarify. I was asked a series of questions that
based on our investigation, we found things that were said
earlier were not there. Anytime you make an allegation or if
you prove--to prove a false statement, there is again a
willfulness prong in that. You have to understand that somebody
willfully gave information that they knew was not to be true.
So I'm not alleging that the Commissioner willfully gave any
information that he knew at the time he gave it not to be true.
That's--if that helps clarify.
Mr. Cummings. It clarifies. And thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. But----
Mr. Camus. And I apologize.
Chairman Chaffetz. But, if the gentleman will let me yield,
but it wasn't true. Was it?
Mr. Camus. We found emails that they did not. Now----
Chairman Chaffetz. They did not what?
Mr. Camus. That they did not find them and our
investigation showed that they did not look for them. But I am
not alleging that the Commissioner made false statements at
this point. I'm not. So thank you for the opportunity.
Chairman Chaffetz. We'll have to have that debate and that
conclusion, but I think it is pretty crystal clear, and I
appreciate that.
Mr. George. I think what Tim meant, willfully, that's the
issue. We don't know whether it was a willful statement on the
part and effect that Commissioner Koskinen knew exactly what
they had or had not done. We don't know that unless you have
contrary information.
Chairman Chaffetz. And if I can continue on for a second,
Mr. Koskinen is very aggressive in making sure that he is the
only one that comes and testifies before this committee. He's
the only one that comes and testifies before Congress because
he feels like he's got the best grip on his organization and he
doesn't want anybody else to come testify. That is routinely--
we had to bring--we had to issue a subpoena to have one other
person come testify before our committee on the IRS.
So, again, we'll have that debate. You're here to present
us the facts. I think you presented those facts. I know you're
not trying to come to the conclusion. That is for us to debate.
Mr. Cummings. Just one thing.
Chairman Chaffetz. Sure.
Mr. Cummings. Was there evidence that it was willful, any
willful criminal act, lying to Congress?
Mr. Camus. We found no willfulness throughout our
investigation.
Mr. Cummings. And just one last question. At the end of
your investigation, if you did find it, would that--if you did
find that, would that be a part of your report?
Mr. Camus. Yes. It would.
Mr. Cummings. Very well. We look forward to your report.
Chairman Chaffetz. I assume, Mr. Russell yields back at
this point, and his time is well expired, but thank you.
Mr. Russell. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. All right. We now go to the gentleman
from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Grothman. Thanks much.
I guess this question's for either one of you. You know,
the Department of Justice announced they've been conducting
their own investigation. Are you still participating with the
DOJ's investigation of the targeting of conservative nonprofit
groups?
Mr. George. I'm going to ask Tim to elaborate, but their
investigation is ongoing, but----
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir. We are still participating in that
effort.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. It was implied before that the
investigation is nearing completion, I think by Justice. Is
that true as far as you know? Or can you give us any status as
to when you think this is going to wrap up?
Mr. Camus. I don't know the status for the DOJ
investigation.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. So you wouldn't know if any criminal
charges are going to be filed?
Mr. Camus. I'm not aware.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. And they made no recommendations,
Justice, as far as you know?
Mr. Camus. As far as I know, they have not.
Mr. Grothman. Are you satisfied with their investigation?
Mr. Camus. Well, our agents have shared with me it appears
to be thorough. Like everybody else, they're waiting for the
conclusion of this case and the conclusion of our attempt to
find new evidence or material relative to the investigation.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. Wouldn't it, in general, be your
responsibility to make recommendations how to clean up the IRS
as opposed to the Department of Justice?
Mr. Camus. In general it would, but in this particular case
when the whole exempt organizations application process broke,
the President and the Attorney General at the time determined
that the Department of Justice would be the lead investigative
agency for that particular matter.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. That's a little bit unusual, then.
Normally you'd be the lead agency. Right?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. Grothman. Are you satisfied that the truth is going to
come out with the Justice leading--being the leading agency
rather than yourself?
Mr. Camus. I believe that because we have been involved
that the truth will prevail. Our goal is--we are focused on the
American people and Congress to get the American people through
the Congress all the information that we can and we let the
facts fall where they may and the truth fall where it may. So
as far as that's our effort, I'm convinced if--I'm briefed by
my agents, that they're convinced that through their efforts
that that has occurred, and then I will take their answer.
Mr. George. And we have received no indication, sir, that--
anything to the contrary.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. I appreciate your professionalism. I
will say this whole IRS thing and targeting people I think is
having a chilling effect on America. I'm sure I'm not alone.
When you call people, you know, for the other thing politicians
do, this is something that gets brought up. I mean, people
really believe right now that if they take a politically
unpopular stand, and it's not just the IRS, it's other agencies
as well, EPA, what have you, that if you say something that's
politically incorrect or take a politically incorrect position,
the full force of the government is going to come down on you,
and that's not the way this country is supposed to be built.
So I appreciate your professionalism and I hope you get to
the bottom of what was really going on here so that we can do--
so the people who--the wrongdoers can be prosecuted. But thank
you for coming over here today, and I yield the remainder of my
time.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr.
Meadows, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
putting a priority on informing the American people by holding
this hearing.
Mr. George, on a personal note, the passion and compassion
that you showed about caring for a loved one is not missed in
the unbelievable difficulty of this hearing, and I just want to
say, you know, if we could all have sons who are willing to do
that kind of service to a family member, this world would be a
better place. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you for
your service.
Mr. George. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Meadows. Mr. Camus, I want to come back to you because
I want to follow up on what the chairman was talking about.
Because as we've started to look, this whole thing of willful
is a very high standard. You know, you almost have to have the
smoke coming out of the end of the gun, and yet in your
investigation, and actually, I started reviewing Mr. Koskinen's
statements before this committee, before the Senate Finance
Committee, before the Ways and Means Committee, and just to
refresh your memory, it says, ``We've confirmed the backup
tapes no longer exist.'' ``We've confirmed that Lois Lerner's
emails are unrecoverable.'' We had another statement that would
indicate that they have worked diligently to find these missing
emails. But as you have indicated, you found them in six
different sources. Is that correct?
Mr. Camus. That's correct, Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. So how could, if we have these statements, how
do you reconcile those statements with you going out and
finding them? I mean, how do you do--how do you take someone
who says there's absolutely no way that they exist, and then,
according to your testimony here today, they didn't even look.
So how could you say that that was anything other than willful?
Mr. Camus. The issue that we have here is, as I shared
earlier, is a management failure.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So--and you did. And that's where I want
to pick up. Because if we have a management failure, one thing
that hasn't been talked about yet is these backup tapes are
held in just a handful of locations. Is that correct?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir.
Mr. Meadows. So in a handful of locations a memo goes out.
How in the world would those handful of locations not have
gotten the memo that they needed to be preserved?
Mr. Camus. Our evidence shows that they did, in fact,
receive the directive from Mr. Milholland.
Mr. Meadows. So a handful of organizations, all of them got
the memo and then decided not to follow it?
Mr. Camus. The evidence shows from interviews and looking,
again, at contemporaneous email traffic between the various
parties, that when they got when--when they received the
directive from Milholland, they were confused as to what it
actually encompassed. So----
Mr. Meadows. Yeah. And I guess that's hard because if I
give this to a fifth grader, they--you know, and I know it's
harder to be smarter than a fifth grader, but if I give it to a
fifth grader to not destroy backup tapes, I don't know how much
simpler it can be. Do you, Mr. Camus? Do you see the ambiguity,
I guess, is what I'm saying?
Mr. Camus. I couldn't agree with you more, Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So if that's the case, who's going to be
held accountable? Who's going to lose their job? Who's going to
restore or start to restore the confidence in this agency by
the American people? Because we've been hearing after hearing
after hearing that we've looked, we've searched, we can't find,
and yet you found them. So who's going to be held accountable?
Who, in your opinion, should be held accountable, let me
rephrase it?
Mr. Camus. Well, it's just an opinion. There are many, many
people in this situation who should be held accountable.
Mr. Meadows. So will that be in your report or can you get
that to the committee on who should held accountable?
Mr. Camus. Our general process is----
Mr. Meadows. We need you to name names, I guess is what I'm
saying, Mr. Camus.
Mr. Camus. There will be names in that report, and there
will be documents of each of the interviews, and I'm sure that
various people have come to various conclusions.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So last question. How is it that the
inspector general can find things that the IRS can't find, that
DOJ can't find? Should we put you in charge of DOJ and
auditing?
Mr. Camus. We just work very, very hard. We're proud of our
mission, which is to restore and keep the American people's
confidence in the Internal Revenue Service. We take our job
seriously, and I have an outstanding staff of men and women who
do that work every day.
Mr. Meadows. Indeed you do. Thank you so much.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman. I thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I'll now recognize myself.
So let's go back to 2011. It's June 3, 2011. Dave Camp,
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee sends a letter to the
IRS inquiring about what's going on with the targeting. We
think that that letter arrives on June 6. We're just guessing.
And then mysteriously, Lois Lerner's computer, it crashes on
June 11. What a coincidence. Unbelievable. Right? Just
unbelievable. Days later it crashes. It's reported on June 13.
So it crashes on a Saturday at the IRS. You know precisely, as
best you can tell, precisely where that is. There--I would
guess there's presumably some sort of card reader that would
tell who was on the floor, who was in that area. Did you look
at that?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir, we did. Unfortunately, the vender who
had the security contract for that building routinely destroys
their prox card logs after a one-year period of time. So
unfortunately for this investigation, sometime in 2012, the
proxy logs were overwritten.
Chairman Chaffetz. They were degaussed? Is that what
happened? They degaussed the card readers?
Mr. Camus. The records were not available to us. We--we
looked and we were very hopeful that we would be able to get
those records.
Chairman Chaffetz. Because it's a Saturday. There aren't
going to be many people there, I'm guessing. And it just begs
the question why? Why is this the policy? The whole reason you
do the card reader is to prohibit some access, but that you
have a record. And here we have a very serious investigation,
and those records were degaussed. So it's just so frustrating
that--that way.
When will you issue this report? I know you're right on the
verge of this. Do you have a specific date as to when this will
be issued?
Mr. George. We made a commitment to the Senate Finance
Committee to have it by the end of this month.
Chairman Chaffetz. So Tuesday or so?
Mr. George. That is our commitment, and so unless there's a
change because of additional interviews--and that's part of the
problem, Mr. Chairman. There are subsequent, you know,
interviews that will have to occur and additional work, and
review of, again, emails.
So as I indicated in my opening statement today, as did Mr.
Camus, you know, we might have to issue a supplemental report,
depending upon what additional information comes out. But,
again, the results of investigation--report of investigation we
made a commitment to issue by the end of this--so, yes, next
week.
Chairman Chaffetz. Okay. Now I'd like to yield to the
gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the chairman.
Mr. Camus, I'm going to go right back to where Mr. Meadows
was. How many places, physical locations, were the tapes
erased? How many are there? You said a handful, but what does
that mean? One, two, three spots?
Mr. Camus. I believe there are four or five locations where
the emails are centralized.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. Four or five places. So let's say there's
four places, actual physical locations where they take the
tapes and erase what's on them. How many people work in those
four locations?
Mr. Camus. Dozens, you know, in each location. I have a
list here, Mr. Jordan, that--but for me to sit here and count
them, I don't want to waste your time.
Mr. Jordan. How many who work in those actually erase the
tapes, though? I mean, I got the picture in my mind, maybe it's
wrong, is you got, you know, Joe and Fred in the basement
taking the tapes, putting them in some kind of machine and
erasing them. How many people actually do that? We know it's
four locations. How many people do the actual erasing?
Mr. Camus. In this particular case, we know that there were
two employees involved in the erasure of the 424 tapes on a
midnight shift. So I imagine they're running three shifts per
location. So that would be----
Mr. Jordan. Six people times four, 24.
Mr. Camus. Yeah, 24 to 30 people, maybe.
Mr. Jordan. So we're talking 24, and if it's five
locations, we're talking 30 people. Right? So one of those--
some of those 30 people, they're the ones responsible. They got
the directive. They knew there was a subpoena. They probably
read the newspaper. They know this is an issue. Are any of
those people, back to Mr. Meadows' question, are any of them
going to be punished?
Mr. Camus. At this time I don't know. We are continuing an
investigation on an aspect of this, which is a discrepancy over
the way that some of the material was counted and----
Mr. Jordan. Because you said they got the directive. Those
30 people at five locations where they destroyed the evidence,
they got the directive that they weren't supposed to destroy
it. Correct?
Mr. Camus. The locations for sure got the directive through
the management chain. But for me to surmise whether or not each
of the locations, the people responsible for erasing tapes got
it, I couldn't testify to that.
Mr. Jordan. In your investigation, two final questions.
Okay, Mr. Chairman? In your investigation, did anyone from the
top level of the IRS, Mr. Koskinen, Kate Duval, did anyone at
the top levels of the IRS talk to those 30 people?
Mr. Camus. Specifically not to my knowledge, especially
at----
Mr. Jordan. So the 30 people responsible for erasing the
evidence were never communicated to by the head of the IRS?
Mr. Camus. Yes. That's correct.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. That's correct. They were not--they never
talked to them. Never talked to the key people who got the
directive not to destroy evidence who destroyed evidence, Mr.
Koskinen never talked to them?
Mr. Camus. That's correct.
Mr. Jordan. Finally, Mr. Chairman, and yet, Mr. Koskinen
sat where you set and gave false information to this committee.
Correct? When he said I can give you assurances that we're
going to give you all the emails.
Mr. Camus. He may have told you that under oath and made
assurances to you----
Mr. Jordan. And that was a false statement based on your
investigation. Correct, Mr. Camus?
Mr. Camus. Our investigation showed that he depended
heavily on his senior managers to carry out----
Mr. Jordan. The same people he didn't go talk to those 30
key people. All I'm saying is is what Mr. Koskinen told this
committee and the American people, was it a true statement what
he said under oath sitting in that chair right there?
Mr. Camus. I don't know what he did. I know he----
Mr. Jordan. No, no. We've portrayed what--we've told you
what he said. He said, ``I can assure you I'm going to get you
all the information.''
Mr. Camus. And I believe he went back to his senior staff
and told them to do so.
Mr. Jordan. I'm not asking why he said it. I'm asking is
what he said--was what he said truthful?
Mr. Camus. I know he didn't talk to the people who
destroyed the tapes. I do understand that he told his senior
staff to comply with the investigation.
Mr. Jordan. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thanks. Now recognize the gentleman from
Maryland, the ranking member, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
We have spent a phenomenal amount of time talking about
conservative groups, and certainly I'm concerned about them,
but I'm also concerned about all Americans.
Back on May 23, Mr. George, 2013, you appeared before the
committee and we asked about progressive groups. You said that
you were looking--going to be reviewing some 600 files, and I'm
just wondering, what have you found out about the other
American groups, the progressives?
Mr. George. Yes. We have a review underway looking at that
very issue, sir, as to how other groups, progressives and the
like, are being--were treated in the handling of their
applications for tax-exempt status. Unfortunately, a lot of the
information that would be needed to complete that review has--
is being stymied or stalled until the review of the missing
emails is done because there is a--there's a number of overlaps
in terms of individuals. And, in addition, a lot of the key
players involved in that process have since retired, or left
the IRS in the wake of the initial report and review. So we are
still committed to doing that. We have started preliminary work
on it.
Mr. Cummings. Will that be a part of your report?
Mr. George. It will be a separate report. But, you know,
we're not sure whether it will be an addendum to the original
audit or whether it would be a stand-alone report because of
some of the missing people under the Yellow Book standards. We
might or might not be able to issue an actual audit that would
be accepted by the general auditing community. So it might have
to be an evaluation or an inspection. But the bottom line is we
are going to look at that issue. We are going to determine how
the IRS treated progressive groups and the like, and I'm using
that term writ large.
Mr. Cummings. So it's been a year now, over a year, and you
say people have left, and more people will probably leave. So
it doesn't make it any better. Does it? I mean, of the 600
cases, you mean, you don't have any conclusions with any of
those with regard--you said you had 600 files you're going to
be looking over?
Mr. George. Yeah. But I'm, sir, also being reminded that if
the DOJ investigation is hindering our ability to talk to
people. So our hands are tied, unfortunately, and----
Mr. Cummings. I just want to make sure, you know, again, we
have spent a phenomenal amount of time talking about
conservative groups. And I'm concerned, like I said, but, I
mean, what about all these other groups? That's--it seems like
they're getting second rate review here. And I'm not knocking
you. I understand there are problems, but it seemed like there
would have been some conclusions about--out of the 600, some of
them.
Mr. George. Well, to keep into mind too that our initial
review was how political advocacy groups were being treated.
Mr. Cummings. Right.
Mr. George. And if--we have results from that, and the vast
majority of groups that were adverse--that were, you know, had
inappropriately--had inappropriate questions and the like
delivered to them, were found to be groups that were leaning
not to the left--you know, I'm trying to be very diplomatic as
to how I word this for fear of, you know, one, I don't want to
used the word ``targeting'' in this context----
Mr. Cummings. I understand.
Mr. George. --because it's too early to know exactly what
was done. But as we know, the vast majority of the cases in the
political advocacy area at the IRS was slowing down their
application processes, asking what we believe were
inappropriate questions and the like, were groups that were not
deemed, at least on their face, progressive. They were more--
more on the conservative----
Mr. Cummings. Now, you testified in February that Ms.
Lerner's computer had crashed on June 13, 2011, and the next
day, she sent a contemporaneous email to colleagues confirming
that fact. Do you recall that testimony?
Mr. George. I know that that's in this current testimony.
Mr. Cummings. Is that right?
Mr. George. Yeah.
Mr. Cummings. Okay. And you further testified that more
than 2 weeks later, Ms. Lerner received a briefing on June 29,
2011 informing her that IRS employees in Cincinnati were
screening applications using the term such as ``Tea Party'' and
``9/12.'' Is that right?
Mr. George. That's my understanding.
Mr. Cummings. And according to your May 20, 2013 report
when Ms. Lerner became aware of these inappropriate search
teams, she, ``immediately directed that the criteria be
changed.'' Did anything in your investigation call that
conclusion into question, Mr. George?
Mr. George. Not to my knowledge, no. But, again, keep in
mind we did conclude shortly thereafter that that practice
resumed. And so she didn't--you know, she may have requested
that it cease, but her instructions were not followed.
Mr. Cummings. And so you also confirmed that Ms. Lerner's
computer crashed before your office started any investigation.
Specifically you were asked ``At the time of Ms. Lerner's
computer crash, had TIGTA commenced its audit of the IRS
employees' handling of applications for tax-exempt status?''
Your response was, ``No. No. It hadn't begun.'' Do you recall
that, Mr. George.
Mr. George. Vaguely.
Mr. Cummings. And, Mr. Camus, you testified that the IG's
office did not begin reviewing the circumstances surrounding
Ms. Lerner's lost emails until June 16, 2014. Do you recall
that testimony?
Mr. Camus. Yes, sir. I do.
Mr. Cummings. Now that the investigation is essentially
complete, does the timeline we just discussed still hold true?
Mr. Camus. As far as our investigation goes, it would still
hold true.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Camus, did the investigation reveal any
evidence that Ms. Lerner saw 3 years into the future and knew
you would one day investigate the loss of her emails?
Mr. Camus. The investigation did not show that.
Mr. Cummings. All right. I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Gentlemen, we want to thank you for your
work, the work of the inspector general's office. Good people
working hard looking at an awful lot of paperwork, and we do
appreciate it. We look forward to seeing your final report, but
please pass the word back to them how much we do appreciate
their work. How much we rely on it as a body and as an
institution and as a committee.
And with that, this committee will stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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