New IRS Scandal Wrinkle Has Echoes of Watergate

Peggy Noonan: How convenient that a computer crash wiped out pertinent emails
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 17, 2014 1:03 PM CDT
New IRS Scandal Wrinkle Has Echoes of Watergate
Lois Lerner is sworn in on Capitol Hill in this file photo.   (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

If you missed the latest development in Congress' investigation of the IRS, it has the potential to be a doozy, notes Politico. The tax agency informed investigators on Friday that it had lost two years' worth of emails to and from Lois Lerner, the former head of the division accused of going after conservative groups. The IRS blames a computer crash, which has Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal just a wee bit skeptical. It reminds her of the Watergate scandal and the infamous 18½-minute gap in the Nixon tapes.

That gap "had a galvanizing effect on an already galvanized national scandal," and she hopes that these missing emails serve the same purpose. "If you can’t see the relation between a strangely destroyed key piece of evidence in an ongoing scandal and what happened 41 years ago with a strangely destroyed key piece of evidence in an ongoing scandal, something is wrong not with the story but with your news judgment," writes Noonan. It's time the mainstream press demanded a special prosecutor, she adds. Click for her full column. (More IRS stories.)

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