It was either "absolute amateurs" or people who didn't want to uncover the truth about charges the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking nonprofit status, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Fox News.
Giuliani said that officials with the White House, the Justice Department and the IRS had apparently not been aware emails of former agency employees had been lost. He said the Justice Department didn't even know about the error "until Congress noticed they were missing."
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"This investigation is being done by absolute amateurs or people who don't want to find out. The president saying, '[There's] not a smidgen of evidence of corruption,' and all these emails have been destroyed," Giuliani told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" on Thursday. "It's in the theater of the absurd."
The IRS revealed June 13 the emails of former agency official Lois Lerner had been lost due to a computer crash. The agency later admitted the emails of six other agency employees pertinent to the investigation were also missing.
The manner in which the Justice Department had conducted the investigation amounted to a "terrible dereliction of duty," Giuliani said. He said it was "absurd" to claim the emails were missing, and suggested if the records were not retrieved, he was "pretty close to certain a conspiracy was going on."
The IRS probe was "crying out for a special prosecutor," Giuliani said, especially since "the Justice Department has mishandled this investigation." While "everybody may be innocent," he said the issue "certainly calls for a serious investigation."
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