IRS Failure to Search Computers for ‘Missing’ Emails Intensifies Attorney General Nomination

A House oversight committee continues to seek emails related to the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of tea party and other conservative groups, “but there’s nobody in the Justice Department willing to work with us,” a congressman on the panel said yesterday.

That impasse, along with related roadblocks in the Department of Justice’s investigation of the IRS scandal, makes confirmation of a successor to Attorney General Eric Holder an “important issue,” Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, told Fox News’ Shannon Bream.

Farenthold, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was referring to President Obama’s nomination of Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York, to replace Holder, who he criticized for acting like “the president’s personal attorney.”

He asked of Lynch: “Is she going to be someone who is going to pursue investigations against her employer as the chief law enforcement officer of the country?”

The government watchdog organization Judicial Watch last week criticized the IRS for admitting in court documents that it failed to search computer systems for former division head Lois Lerner’s “missing” emails.

“The Obama IRS couldn’t care less about the federal court’s orders to provide full information about the ‘missing’ Lois Lerner emails,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a release. “Instead, the IRS, with the help of a compromised Justice Department, has engaged in a series of tranparently evasive distractions.” 

Watch the clip for Farenthold’s full remarks.