WASHINGTON — The head of the IRS said Monday that his agency has provided Congress with hundreds of thousands of documents, brushing aside accusations that the IRS has obstructed investigations into the targeting of Tea Party and other political groups before the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Commissioner John Koskinen was appearing at a rare evening hearing on Capitol Hill to answer questions about lost e-mails by a key figure in the probe.
Koskinen told the House Oversight Committee that congressional investigators were informed months ago that Lois Lerner had computer problems in 2011. Koskinen said e-mails provided to the committee last fall showed that Lerner’s computer had crashed.
The e-mails indicate that Lerner had lost some data, although they don’t explicitly say that Lerner’s e-mails were lost. They were provided to congressional investigators as part of the Tea Party investigation.
