it has to do with how they configure the archives. “Sent Items” and “Deleted Items” are typically ignored where space becomes an issue. However, this does not relieve them (government) of their obligation and mandates that private businesses are not bound to. Those (sent items) should have been archived just like all other mail. The excuses are ludicrous and everyone knows it. When people started squawking about the archive mandate, they changed up the story... nothing unexpected. We know they are going to lie about it because they know there isn’t anyone with spine enough to call them to the mat and hold them accountable. It’s nothing short of infuriating
Under normal circumstances, these emails would exist in the following places: 1) The local desktop of the sender. This is where the [supposedly] crashed hard drive lives, and where the IRS wants you to believe the emails have been lost. 2) The email server serving the recipient clients. 3) The email server serving the sending clients [these are distinct machines if the senders and receivers are in different organizations.] 4) Multiple local desktop copies of senders and recipients involved in these threads. 5) By Federal law, nearline storage of the server archives -- both source and destination and/or digital tape storage of the source and destination servers. 6) By Federal law, paper backups of correspondence involving taxpayers or litigants. 7) The NSA.
The IRS wants you to believe that destruction of a single hard drive and failure to maintain archives according to Federal law (oh, well...) accounts for all of the copies of these emails. It does not. The IRS is thumbing its nose at Congress, the American People, and the law.