Overwhelming Majority Of Americans Say IRS deliberately Destroyed Lerner’s Emails

A brand new Fox News poll shows that a majority of Americans believe the IRS deliberately destroyed emails belonging to Lois Lerner, the disgraced former IRS official at the center of the agency’s targeting of conservative and tea party groups.

When asked, a devastating 76 percent said the IRS willingly orchestrated the destruction of two years’ worth of Lerner’s emails.

Earlier this year IRS officials revealed that Lerner’s computer crashed, destroying thousands of subpoenaed emails written and sent by Lerner between January 2009 and April 2011. Since then, the House Oversight Committee has been holding hearing after hearing in an attempt to get to the bottom of the situation. The House Oversight Committee recently grilled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and former IRS lawyer Jennifer O’Connor, largely to no avail. 

When asked if Congress should continue to investigate the IRS scandal, an impressive 74 percent of respondents said Congress should continue the investigation until “someone is held responsible.

That 74 percent was at 67 percent in April. The seven point increase is likely due to media reports that the IRS waited until after Congress had already requested Lerner’s emails to reveal that it had “recycled” her hard drive, destroying any hope of recovering the data along with it.

The Fox poll also shows a breakdown by party identification. A whopping 90 percent of self-identified Republicans said the IRS destroyed the emails. Another 74 percent of independents and a shockingly high 63 percent of Democrats agreed that the IRS destroyed Lerner’s emails.

 

This new Fox poll lends enormous credence to columnist Charles Krauthammer’s comments last night on “Special Report.” Krauthammer said, “either it’s incompetence, which undermines the whole idea of big government. Or it is corruption.”

“Either way,” Krauthammer added, “this really is a serious issue.”