U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), a member of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, believes that an outside review of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) email disappearance is necessary following his questioning of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew during today’s Banking Committee hearing. The Department of the Treasury oversees the IRS.

“While Secretary Lew claims the IRS has done an ‘extraordinary’ job responding to the issue of the missing emails, it would be difficult to find anyone outside of the Treasury who would agree,” Sen. Moran said. “The American people did not accept any of the excuses surrounding the missing 18.5 minutes of the Watergate tapes, nor should they be asked to accept the excuses for the loss of tens of thousands of IRS emails.

“I remain unconvinced by the excuses offered by IRS and Treasury leadership. If the Treasury truly lacks the technical expertise to fully and accurately assess this incident, we need to bring in an outside examiner who can.”