“Tapes” are a very generic term used for any offsite media backup. With the modern cloud, it’s feasible that one could remove all of the vaults used to store data, but so much more would be lost than just these data sets unless they created vaults specifically for Tea Party emails.
If, however, they used magnetic media like tapes, yeah, that data’s not lost, and IIRC, groups like Iron Mountain are required to have additional media backups of critical data sets, depending on the contract. I’ve worked for hospitals, and I can tell you they have triplicate backups. The government is lying, plain and simple.
Or, misdirecting