Top IRS officials, including former director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, used a "wholly separate" instant messaging system that automatically deleted all internal communications, according to documents released on Monday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigating the IRS targeting scandal.
The messaging system, called the "Office Communication Server," or OCS, appears to have been deliberately used to evade public scrutiny, as officials targeted conservative non-profits for additional and improper scrutiny in 2012, Americans for Tax Reform noted. While it was possible to set up the instant messaging system to automatically store messages, the IRS chose not to do so, according to one employee interviewed by the Oversight Committee.
The main department implicated in that targeting scheme, Lerner's Exempt Organizations (EO) unit, heavily relied on the messaging system, which did not archive any communications, making it impossible for investigators to determine what exactly was discussed.
An email obtained by the Oversight Committee shows that Lerner was well aware that using the messaging system would help the agency avoid congressional oversight, reminding her IRS colleagues of the importance of being "cautious about what we say in emails," as the IRS has on "several occasions" been asked by Congress to turn over emails.
"I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails - so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails," she wrote, going on to ask whether OCS is automatically archived, reports Americans for Tax Reform.
When she was informed that it was not, Lerner responded, "Perfect."
The House Committee alleges that such actions prove that Lerner "actively sought to hide information from Congress," according to Newsmax.
The information was included in a letter sent to President Obama on Monday, written by House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and signed by 20 committee members, explaining why they think IRS Commissioner John Koskinen should be fired from his post for obstructing their congressional probe into the agency's targeting of taxpayers on the basis of their political beliefs, reported Fox News.
"His obstruction takes the form of failure to comply with a congressional subpoena, failure to testify truthfully, and failure to preserve and produce up to 24,000 emails relevant to the investigation," wrote Chaffetz.
He continued: "Commissioner Koskinen failed to take seriously his duty to respond to the subpoena and assist Congress in discovering the truth. Under his leadership, the IRS failed to look in five of the six places where [Ms.] Lerner's emails could potentially be recovered. TIGTA examined Ms. Lerner's blackberries, email server, backup email server, loaner laptop, the IRS's own backup tapes, and Ms. Lerner's hard drive. The IRS only examined the hard drive, which had apparently crashed in 2011.
"The malfeasance of Commissioner Koskinen extends beyond investigative lassitude into destruction of evidence. The counselor to the Commissioner learned of gaps in the Lerner email production on February 2, 2014. Yet, a month later, on March 4, 2014, IRS employees in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on the midnight shift, magnetically erased 422 backup tapes, destroying as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails responsive to the subpoenas. No one will ever know what was contained in those emails.
"After that destruction, Commissioner Koskinen made a series of false statements to Congress while under oath," Chaffetz wrote.
Also on Monday, Reps. Ron Desantis, R-Fla., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal threatening to impeach Koskinen if Obama refused to act.
