I think they are asserting that an email is not a document.
According to federal law, emails are treated as official correspondence. They are documents for archiving purposes.
I spent 36 years in the federal government. E-mails ARE official correspondence and must be saved and archived to an- offsite location. In the State Department, back-ups were done daily. If Lerner’s computer was on a network, then there should have been back-ups and archived off-site.