A drawn-out search is nearing the finish for missing emails of former IRS official Lois Lerner, allowing a Senate probe of the tax agency's notorious targeting scandal to finally wrap up,
The Hill reports.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen says the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration is likely to conclude the data hunt "in the next several weeks."
And once that's done, the Senate Finance Committee would be able to complete its investigation of the IRS's extra scrutiny of conservative and tea party groups.
“The only part left to be done is to figure out how many if any emails can they find and that are reproducible,” Koskinen said Thursday, The Hill reports. “At that point, with any luck at all, we’ll run everything to ground."
The Treasury inspector general
sparked a furor last month when he reported investigators had turned up data that could contain emails to and from Lerner, who is at the center of the targeting scandal.
Last summer, the IRS said it was stymied in the data search because Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, leaving them unable to find an untold number of her emails.
The agency also said it recycled tapes backing up those emails, but Koskinen said the IRS turned those over to the inspector general's office anyhow.
"They’ve been at it for five months, with experts within the government and forensic people outside the government and still haven’t been able to produce the emails," Koskinen said, The Hill reports.
He said he didn't know how many Lerner documents the inspector general would ultimately find, adding only: "They’ve got a line of sight to them."
Senate Finance Committee aides have said the panel was nearly finished with its report on the scandal when it learned of the missing emails.
GOP-led investigations of the beleaguered agency
first began in May 2013, and
have led to lawsuits against the agency, The Hill reports.
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