A District of Columbia federal judge has ordered the IRS to give him a status update on the release of Lois Lerner's emails, as well as those by other IRS officials.
U.S District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in a June 18 order that he wants a status of the recovery and release of the emails recovered by the IRS watchdog agency, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), sent to the court by June 29,
Judicial Watch said in a statement. In addition, Sullivan set a hearing and a scheduling of a status conference for July 1.
"[F]ile a supplemental report, setting forth any new information regarding: (1) TIGTA’s recovery of emails from the backup tapes; (2) TIGTA’s production of emails to the IRS; (3) the IRS’s review of emails and production to the plaintiff; and (4) the status of the TIGTA investigation. This report shall be filed by no later than June 29, 2015," he wrote.
The judge issued an order on June 4 telling the IRS to give answers about Lerner's emails, which were once declared lost, by June 12, which the federal agency complied with. The order came after Judicial Watch asked the court if all emails that TIGTA had recovered had been turned over.
On June 12, the IRS said that it was in "the process of conducting further manual deduplication of the 6,400" emails. Although Judicial Watch has noted that the IRS watchdog already said previously that it had gone through the process of identifying and removing duplicate emails.
The IRS has yet to turn over any of the emails by the former IRS official that were requested by Judicial Watch in its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that it filed in October 2013.
Judicial Watch asked Sullivan in a court filing it sent on June 15 that the IRS be kept from "stonewalling" any further and turn over the documents it asked for in the FOIA request once and for all.
"Judicial Watch respectfully requests that the Court order the IRS to start producing any exempt, responsive emails contained within the 6,400 emails immediately and disclose whether they are all or a subset of the recovered emails from the 1,268 backup tapes," Judicial Watch wrote.
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