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Almost three years since the Lois Lerner Tea Party targeting scandal broke, the IRS remains unable, or unwilling to comply with investigators seeking to find the truth.

The IRS has received 6,400 new emails from Lois Lerner’s server that were recovered by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), however the agency is refusing to hand them over. Instead, the agency has taken it upon themselves to check the emails for duplicates despite TIGTA already having done so.

As the Daily Caller reported, TIGTA received a special program to check that all duplicates had been removed. Even though this has occurred, the IRS is still insisting that they perform manual deduplication, in addition to cross checking these emails with the thousands they have already given to Congressional investigators. As the Daily Caller reported:

“The Service is in the process of conducting further manual deduplication of the 6,400 forensically-recovered emails to supplement the automated deduplication conducted by TIGTA. TIGTA also is further reviewing the 6,400 emails to verify that they were not already produced to the Congressional Committees by the Service.”

But for this to happen, the IRS is insisting it complete a review of Lerner’s communications that have not yet been recovered. The agency has been unable to provide an estimate for how long this process will take.

The IRS’s insistence on moving forward at a snail’s pace demonstrates the agency’s unwillingness to be held accountable before the American people. Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to the IRS, but stretches across the entire administration. The Justice Department continues to refuse to prosecute Lois Lerner on criminal contempt charges despite ample evidence available. Congress has requested newly appointed Attorney General Loretta Lynch consider opening the case, but it appears the administration would rather sweep this scandal under the rug than figure out what happened, and who is at fault.

It is unacceptable that the IRS, and the administration as a whole continues to play dumb when “cooperating” with ongoing investigations. Nearly three years on, the American people deserve to know the truth behind the systematic targeting of conservative groups.