Top IRS Official to Testify on Lost Emails in Probe of Nonprofits

The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen, will appear before two House committees next week to address the agency’s loss of thousands of emails to and from Lois Lerner, former head of the agency’s nonprofits division, reports The New York Times.

The IRS disclosed last week that two year’s worth of messages were destroyed in a 2011 computer crash, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Koskinen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform and Ways and Means committees, which are investigating alleged IRS targeting of conservative groups and the role played by Ms. Lerner.

The Republican-led House voted last month to hold Ms. Lerner in contempt for refusing to answer congressional questions in the probe. GOP leaders contend that the email disclosure represents continued IRS obstruction of the investigation. The IRS said it has provided some 67,000 emails to investigators, including 24,000 lost in the computer crash but recovered from the accounts of Ms. Lerner’s correspondents.