As the scandal over whether the IRS targeted conservative groups grows, an attorney for former IRS official Lois Lerner now acknowledges that she may have copies of emails that were thought to be lost.
Politico reports that lawyer William Taylor III had said Lerner did not make printouts of official correspondence because she didn't realize she was required to by law. Now he says he may have been mistaken.
"During her tenure as director of exempt organizations, she did print out some emails, although not every one of the thousands she sent and received," he said Wednesday, Politico reports.
Lerner has said that two years of emails were destroyed when her computer crashed in 2011.
In an earlier interview with Politico, Taylor said, "If somebody is supposed to keep archived copies, that's the IT department's or her staff's responsibility. If she didn't [print], it wasn't because she tried to conceal anything."
Under its own guidelines, the IRS says official emails must be printed out and filed in accordance with the Federal Records Act.
Fox News reports that Lerner warned her staff in a 2013 memo to be careful about "what we say in emails."
Lerner twice invoked her Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions from Congress.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.