Lois Lerner’s Lawyer: ‘A Little Brazen’ to Say She Purposely Destroyed Hard DriveLois Lerner’s Lawyer: ‘A Little Brazen’ to Say She Purposely Destroyed Hard Drive
by Josh Feldman | 8:29 pm, June 27th, 2014
Lois Lerner is back in the news cycle after the IRS told a House committee recently a chunk of her emails are missing because of a failed hard drive, with House Republicans holding multiple hearings on the matter in the past week. And in an interview with POLITICO, Lerner’s lawyer says it’s “a little brazen to think she did this on purpose.”
William Taylor III says all the Republican hand-wringing about Lerner doing something sinister is just “silly” because, he said, she honestly doesn’t know what happened to the emails. He charges that Republican “critics of Ms. Lerner and the IRS seize indiscriminately on small pieces of fact to claim they prove scandal.”
Taylor also claims that Lerner “requested that IT use every possible resource” to fix the hard drive in 2011 after she discovered it crashed.
He explains why Lerner was particularly scrutinizing conservative groups in 2010.
Taylor says it was natural for her division to look at conservative groups in 2010 because their numbers were on the rise.
“After Citizens United, groups identifying themselves with the tea party and other, more conservative causes dramatically increased the number of applications for (c)(4) status,” he said, referring to the landmark Supreme Court ruling that significantly loosened restrictions on political spending.
He adds that “to say the IRS is looking at political activity is like [Captain Renault] saying he’s shocked there’s gambling going on in ‘Casablanca.’”