House Committee: IRS Used Record-less Instant Message System

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is reporting that the IRS had an instant messaging system that was "wholly separate" from its email system that did not archive communications.

In a letter written to President Barack Obama on Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, along with 20 committee members, made a case for the president as to why they think IRS Commissioner John Koskinen should be removed from his post.

As part of that letter, the committee reveals several findings from its investigation into the scandal, in which the IRS allegedly put conservative groups through additional scrutiny when they applied for non-profit status leading up to the 2012 presidential election, which resulted in significant delays for their approval.

In the course of its investigation, the House committee discovered that apart from regular communications through email, "the IRS maintained a wholly separate instant-messaging communication system it did not regularly archive."

One IRS employee explained in an email to former IRS official Lois Lerner, who is at the center of the targeting scandal, that the Office Communication Server (OCS) was "not set to automatically save as the standard; however, that functionality exists in the software."

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