A new email released [1] byRepublicans on the House Oversight Committee could very well be the “smoking gun” investigators have been searching for in the last year. This latest email shows former IRS employee Lois Lerner at least knew here agency had it coming.

The email is dated April 9, 2013- less than two weeks after the IRS inspector general unearthed the tea party targeting practices, but about one month before it became public.  In it, Lerner warned colleagues to be careful about what they included in emails. She also asked if the IRS’ internal messaging system could be searched by Congressional investigators.

Lerner’s email to fellow employee Maria Hooke, in part, reads, “I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails – so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.”

She continued: “Someone asked if OCS conversations were also searchable – I don’t. …Do you know?” When Hooke replied that the OCS messaging system does not save conversations, Lerner’s response was simple: “Perfect.”

OCS is the IRS internal messaging system, like instant messenger.

Does that not sound like someone who’s happy that she can continue to communicate electronically without fear of Congressional investigators subpoenaing those records? At the very least, this latest email shows that right up until the IRS scandal made news, Lerner was still worried about covering her tracks.

Yet this latest revelations comes on the heels of the IRS claiming thousands of Lerner’s emails were lost in a computer crash in 2011. How much more evidence do we need before the Washington elite takes this seriously? Lerner’s latest email is chilling in its implications. The longer Democrats spin a web of excuses to defend the IRS, the more complicit they become in the whole scandal. And yes, that applies to the White House too.