Judicial Watch, a watchdog group which has been investigating the IRS scandal, has learned that Lois Lerner's supposedly missing emails may still exist within a federal government back-up system.
After months of administration officials insisting that two years worth of Lerner's emails were irretrievable following a computer crash, a Department of Justice attorney admitted to Judicial Watch Friday that the federal government backs up all their computer records in case of catastrophe.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified just a few months ago that Lerner's emails were lost, while the IRS claimed it had gone to "unprecedented efforts" to retrieve the emails.
The news of the "lost" emails was met with wide mockery and disbelief in the press, with many suspecting that some back-up of the records must exist.
Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, told Fox News that the Department of Justice now claims it would be "too hard" to retrieve Lerner's emails from the back-up system.
Fitton was irate over the administration's deception: "Everything we've been hearing about scratched hard drives, missing e-mails of Lois Lerner, other IRS officials, other officials in the Obama administration--it's all been a pack of malarkey."
"There's no such thing as Lois Lerner's missing e-mails," said Fitton. "It's all been a big lie. They've been lying to the courts, to the American people and to Congress. It is really outrageous."