Court ruling hands the IRS a victory on the lost Louis Lerner emails

  ‘True the Vote’ filed a lawsuit against the IRS, hoping to get the court to appoint an expert to try to recover the lost Lois Lerner emails, and to also stop the IRS from destroying documents during routine purging.

  Yesterday a judge in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia (the same court Barack Obama has been adding judges to since Harry Reid removed the filibuster) ruled against ‘True the Vote’ on both issues.

Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said True the Vote’s lawsuit against the IRS failed to show “irreparable harm” in its injunction relief request and that “the public interest weighs strongly against the type of injunctive relief the plaintiff seeks.”

“Despite the general distrust of the defendants expressed by the plaintiff, the Court has no factual basis to concur with that distrust … and therefore concludes that the issuance of an injunction will not further aid in the recovery of the emails, if such recovery is possible, but will rather only duplicate and potentially interfere with ongoing investigative activities,” he wrote in a court memorandum posted Wednesday afternoon.

True the Vote tried during a court hearing last month to argue that the loss of emails was “spoliation” and that it “will face irreparable injury to the fair adjudication of its claims — and consequently, its constitutional rights — if critical electronic information is not recovered and preserved.”

The judge essentially said there was no reason to suggest the IRS intentionally destroyed evidence: “Without a finding that spoliation previously occurred, there is little basis to conclude that the defendants will ‘continue’ spoliating potential evidence.”

  The court ruled that appointing an expert would only slow down the IRS’s own investigation and so it was not needed. And because ‘True the Vote’ could not prove the IRS intentionally lost Lois Lerner’s emails there was no reason to believe they would destroy any pertinent material in the future.

  I am sure this decision will be appealed, but honestly what difference, at this point, does it make? This is going to take years to make its way through the courts and the damage has already been done. Mission accomplished…