House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa and subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan wrote Attorney General Eric Holder that documents produced under subpoena showed Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner emailing Richard Pilger, Director of the Election Crimes Branch, on October 5, 2010. The letters quote Lerner saying the IRS was “getting you the disks we spoke about” and asking about format. They quote Pilger forwarding that email to an FBI agent: “This is incoming data re 501 c4 issues. Does FBI have a format preference?” They quote his reply to Lerner that the FBI preferred “Raw format.”
The same congressional letters say the FBI received the disks around October 6, 2010, and that Public Integrity hosted a meeting on October 8, 2010, with Lerner, other IRS officials, and an FBI agent about possible criminal enforcement after Citizens United. Oversight later said the disks contained more than a million pages and included confidential taxpayer information. That is a congressional description of records. It is not a jury verdict about any applicant group.
A June 2014 Oversight release added that, in a transcribed interview, Pilger told investigators Jack Smith asked him to arrange the early-October IRS meeting about the “evolving legal landscape,” and that the Department agenda was to engage Lerner on being “more vigilant to the opportunities from more crime in the … 501(c)(4) area.” Pilger, per the committee, also said Lerner expressed skepticism about using criminal law that way. The interview is testimony to Congress. It is not a conviction.