IRS Discloses 2nd Private Lois Lerner Email Address in Probe to See if the IRS Targeted Conservative Non-Profits
The IRS has revealed the existence of yet another personal email address used by former IRS Director Lois Lerner.
The second email, registered to the name “Toby Miles,” was revealed in a court filing made late Monday by the IRS as part of an ongoing lawsuit against it by the open-records group Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch is suing to get access to emails that Lerner sent during a period where the IRS improperly targeted conservative organizations for increased scrutiny.
Lerner, who headed the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Unit at the time of the targeting, was already known to have another personal email she used for work business, in addition to her official government email. The “Toby Miles” address was also known to exist, but it was initially believed to be connected to Lerner’s husband Michael Miles. IRS attorney Geoffrey Klimas told Judge Emmet Sullivan in his filing that the address’s personal use by Lerner was discovered while the IRS prepared a new set of documents to turn over to Judicial Watch.
It’s not currently clear whom “Toby Miles” is or whether the name was simply a pseudonym adopted by Lerner, and it’s also unknown just how many emails may have gone to or from that address.
The use of personal emails for official business by Lerner raises questions about whether she may have used the emails to conceal illegal or unethical behavior. The Obama administration has consistently argued that no criminal activity or intentional targeting occurred, and that controversy is simply the result of an underfunded IRS misinterpreting the law.
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch’s president, seized on the chance to accuse the IRS of covering for Lerner.
“It is simply astonishing that years after this scandal erupted we are learning about an account Lois Lerner used that evidently hadn’t been searched,” he said in a statement given to The Washington Times. Fitton argued that the IRS and Department of Justice have actually known about the email account for some time but have avoided disclosing key facts about it.
This isn’t the first belated revelation to be made regarding Lerner’s emails. Previously, the IRS has attempted to claim that thousands of Lerner’s work emails had been irretrievably lost because her hard drive broke and no back-ups of the emails existed. But the Department of Treasury Inspector General was able to find back-ups and recovered over 6,000 Lerner emails in the process.
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