True the Vote has an idea that is the fantasy of every taxpayer who’s ever found himself sitting opposite an imperious tax collector: Audit the IRS.
On Thursday, the IRS will have to persuade federal Judge Reggie Walton why this shouldn’t happen.
True the Vote calls itself “the nation’s largest nonpartisan, voters’ rights and election integrity organization.” It is one of the conservative outfits whose application for nonprofit status was targeted by IRS authorities. And in its motion asking for an outside specialist in data recovery to be permitted to conduct a forensic audit into the lost Lois Lerner e-mails, True the Vote makes an eminently reasonable case:
“Even if the ill-timed hard drive ‘crash’ was truly an accident, and even if the IRS genuinely believes that the e-mails are ‘unrecoverable,’ the circumstances of the spoliation at issue cry out for a second opinion,” reads the motion.
“It may well prove to be the case that a computer forensics expert could recover evidence that the IRS has been unable to retrieve. At the very least, such an expert could preserve whatever evidence has not already been wiped clean from the IRS’s computers along with whatever is stored on the Individual Defendants’ home computers, cell phones, and other PDAs.”
From testimony by the nation’s archivist, we know the IRS destroyed e-mails, contrary to federal law. From IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, we know it did so even though they were evidence in another case.
If the IRS indeed has nothing to hide, the best way to prove it is to get that independent audit True the Vote is asking for.