ms. lerner's e-mail had crashed. you wrote a letter to finance in 2013 saying there was a problem with ms. lerner's e-mails and that the backup tapes had been destroyed. and then in february you testified before the ways and means committee and said that the irs made, quote, extraordinary efforts to recover lerner's e-mails. after the irs became aware that lerner's hard drives had crashed, what specific steps did the irs take to loegt anycate any backup tapes or the disaster discovery tapes. >> the disaster discovery tapes at the irs are recorded over until they are no longer usable so there is no technique or capacity at the irs to retrieve e-mails off those tapes. what we did do was go to everybody in the custodial list at that point of about 80 different people that ms. lerner would have been communicating with, because we're looking for all e-mails. we already produced all e-mails that were relevant to the determination process. we looked at all those 82 and took every e-mail that was to or from lois lerner, comp

affidavit obtained by the daily, the first irs i t specialist to inspect lerner's hard drive was legally blind. washington beacon reporter mson is with us. i won't be pejorative about blind people on the job doing the job but can a blind person review lois lerner's e-mails? >> people are asking the story couldn't get more bizarre. when lois lerner's e-mail crashed in 2011 first person they brought in to find these e-mails was legally blind. not surprisingly nothing was found. they send it back and say oh we can't recover anything so they destroy the hard drive and had it recycles. we are finding out now lockhart drive was only scratched, it could have been recovered and there have been 32,000 e-mails sitting in an off site facility in west virginia the irs never even looked for that had these e-mails. stuart: let me go through this. is an involved and complicated process that our viewers are steamed about this. they want answers about the irs scandal. the irs is told recover those e-mails. they try using this particular employee, they fail, then they find we have got the hard drive, it is a little scratched and they got ful

ms. lerner would have been communicating with. was we were looking all e-mails -- because we were looking for all e-mails. so we looked all after of those 82 and took every e-mail that was to or from lois lerner, compared them against -- >> but that would not have been backup tapes. that was their hard drives. >> [inaudible] >> the backup tapes, you had made the judgment that they simply were not going to be recoverable, or did you actually have somebody investigate whether you could have backup tapes -- >> no -- >> or you could find some backup tapes? >> our expert said we we had no way, it's taking the ig the last six months working around the clock, and we still don't know how many there are. my position all along was if he could find more e-mails, that would be terrific. and i actually mean that seriously because it would lend even more light than the 24,000 we already produced into what were in those e-mails in that time frame. >> yeah. but why would the ig be able to find it if you guys couldn't find snit you said you went t