IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is facing accusations of a 'cover-up' over the Tea Party targeting scandal, after claims surfaced that ex-official Lois Lerner's hard drive was destroyed and emails from several other officials also have gone missing.
The commissioner is set to face lawmakers at a Capitol Hill hearing on Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee. GOP lawmakers are furious after learning a week ago that many Lerner emails from a two-year period supposedly have disappeared. Committee Republicans now say that the IRS may have known about this for months, and that the agency may have lost emails from another six employees.
To boot, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he's been told that Lerner's hard drive was simply destroyed.
'They just got rid of it,' he told Fox News. 'It really looks bad and I've got to say it looks like a cover-up to me.'
Hatch and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are leading a bipartisan investigation in the Senate Finance Committee into the targeting scandal, separate from the House Ways and Means probe.
House and Senate Republicans, though, have common questions for the commissioner and the rest of the agency.
Hatch fired off a letter to Koskinen on Thursday voicing concerns that he met with him on Monday, yet the commissioner and his staff did not mention that emails from six other employees might be missing.
'Clearly, someone was aware of this information when we met and chose not to disclose it to me. This is a critical omission of information,' he wrote.
Republicans have questioned how any of these emails could have been lost. They consider Lerner's communications to be critical to their investigations into the agency's heavy scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Hatch said the IRS informed the Treasury Department, which informed the White House, about the missing emails in April. 'It is outrageous that the IRS waited an additional two months to inform the Committee,' he wrote.
House Speaker John Boehner described the situation in the same terms, claiming: 'The White House has not lifted a finger to help us get to the bottom of this.'
The White House, though, has rejected accusations that this was anything other than a computer crash.
Outgoing Press Secretary Jay Carney noted Wednesday that thousands of emails to and from Lerner already have been produced.
'They are engaging in an effort to find emails in the absence of being able to restore the hard drive,' Carney said.
And the House Democratic leader faulted the agency's technology for the missing documents.
'They need to upgrade their technology -- get it right so that there is no suspicion about what agenda anyone might have,' Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday.
Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status.
The missing emails are mainly messages to and from people outside the IRS, including the White House and other major offices and departments.
The IRS was able to recover 24,000 Lerner emails from 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees.
Fox News' Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.
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