IRS Lawyer: Lerner Blackberry Deliberately Destroyed

An IRS filing in federal court shows the Internal Revenue Service destroyed former employee Lois Lerner's Blackberry after it learned her computer had crashed and after a Congressional investigation was well underway.

An IRS official said the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails on Lerner's hard drive.

A senior IRS lawyer wrote in the declaration, which is part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, the Blackberry was "removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012."

The tax agency is under fire for targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups.