June 20, 2014 11:07AM

Kim Strassel and the WSJ on the Lost IRS Emails

By Walter Olson

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Earlier this week Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel won a much deserved Bradley Award for her work in investigative journalism. It’s at times like this, in which revelations about evidence destruction at the Internal Revenue Service almost defy belief, that everyone interested in American governance should follow her column and the Journal editorial page.
Some highlights since the email story broke last Friday:

* According to Strassel’s column today, the contents of Lois Lerner’s hard drive were wiped out by forces unknown “about 10 days after the Camp letter arrived,” that is to say, a letter from House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp inquiring into targeting of conservative groups. (Lerner then replied to Camp denying targeting and subsequently pleaded the Fifth before Congress.)

* A WSJ editorial this morning points out the remarkable timing of the IRS’s begrudging disclosure last Friday that evidence central to the case has been destroyed: more than a year after the investigation began and only when a deadline was impending in which the IRS commissioner would have to certify personally that the agency had produced to Congress all relevant communications. Were responsible agency officials determined to treat this as a high-priority investigation, to be carried on in good faith and with all deliberate speed? (There was no doubt about the seriousness of the scandal, as President Obama himself admitted—or seemed to be admitting—at the time.) Or did they instead stall and deflect until the very last moment? So un-forthcoming was the agency that, according to today’s Journal editorial, IRS staffers met with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) Monday and did not tell him that the external emails of six other IRS employees had gone missing too—he found that out only later in the week when he read a press release from the House side.

* While some IRS critics focus almost to the exclusion of all else on the possible role of the Obama White House in directing the IRS, Strassel and the WSJ correctly will not let us forget that much of the pressure on the agency was coming from Congress itself. In particular, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), along with Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Elijah Cummings (both D-Md.), were among many Democrats seeking to enlist the IRS in a crackdown on politically antagonistic nonprofits.

Thank heavens for Kim Strassel and her colleagues at the WSJ, because otherwise it would seem as if few in the press were willing to focus serious investigative attention on this extraordinary scandal. (Many other press outlets have treated it as a dull page-A-18 story,
run wire service coverage only, or–as with the New York Times–waited three days even to notice it.)

People used to ask how Watergate might have turned out if the press had sided with Nixon instead of against him. Thanks to the work of Strassel and her WSJ colleagues, let’s hope we never find out.