(June 21, 2014 at 7:43 am)Tonus Wrote: If the policy was to recycle backups after six months and the emails in question are dated earlier than that, then there's no scandal. Shouldn't they have reviewed the retention policy at the start? Or are they claiming that certain people still had their emails on their desktop PCs and decided to delete them when they realized they might be investigated? Because that's a whole separate charge. Simply saying that they destroyed emails in accordance with IRS policy makes this a non-story, IMO.
There are federal record retention laws that supersede IRS policy that may have been violated. It also looks suspicious that 6 people being investigated all had the their hard drives crash and then subsequently destroyed. It also looks very bad that the IRS testified before congress making claims it knew were false.
