Internal Revenue Service chief John Koskinen was sharply questioned by a House committee Friday over the loss of email records related to the agency’s treatment of politically active conservative groups. In one exchange, there was an audible gasp after Mr. Koskinen said the hard drive of former IRS official Lois Lerner was destroyed after computer experts were unable to retrieve its lost contents. Here is a video clip of the exchange between Mr. Koskinen and Rep. Dave Camp, and the transcript, provided by Federal News Service (www.fednews.com).

    (Note: the initial CSPAN embed we used wasn’t working properly; we have subbed in a longer clip; the exchange starts around the 4:25 mark.) 

    REP. CAMP: Your letter describes the Lois Lerner emails as being unrecoverable.

    MR. KOSKINEN: Correct.

    REP. CAMP: But fails to mention where the damaged hard drive is today. Do you know where the actual hard drive is that crashed in 2011?

    MR. KOSKINEN: I’m advised the actual hard drive, after it was determined that it was dysfunctional and that, with experts, no emails could be retrieved, was recycled then destroyed in the normal process.

    MR : (Inaudible)!

    REP. CAMP: So was it physically destroyed?

    MR. KOSKINEN: That’s my understanding.

    REP. CAMP: So was it melted down, do you know?

    MR. KOSKINEN: I have no idea what the recycler does with it. This was three years ago.

    REP. CAMP: Does the IRS have a system for tracking items?

    MR. KOSKINEN: Tracking what?

    REP. CAMP: Items. Does the IRS have a tracking system for items?

    MR. KOSKINEN: We track items. We don’t track every item that everybody has everywhere, but I’m sure we track some items. We track –

    REP. CAMP: Does someone there have a serial number for that hard drive?

    MR. KOSKINEN: I do not know whether they do or not. I am just advised that as a normal case, when a hard drive fails, if the email cannot be reconstructed, the hard drive is turned over to recyclers.

    REP. CAMP: Well, it seems to me that if it was recycled, the government property would have been tracked.

    MR. KOSKINEN: Pardon?

    REP. CAMP: It seems to me that if it was recycled, government property would have been tracked, or people could simply walk away with property from the IRS. So I assume there’s a tracking system for the disposal of government property.

    MR. KOSKINEN: Right, there’s a tracking system for computers. My understanding is that Lois Lerner’s computer continued to be functioning with a new hard drive. The hard drive fits with inside (sic). I’m not aware whether hard drives have computer — have identifiers.

    REP. CAMP: Can we get the serial number of this hard drive and all the other employees that — whose hard drives have been — whose emails have been lost?

    MR. KOSKINEN: If they have serial numbers, you’re welcome to them.

    REP. CAMP: All right. Because I want that hard drive, and I want the hard drive of every computer that crashed during that time frame.



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