The only way that this story works is if none of those emails can be found. Anywhere. Ever.
This would have been an incredible undertaking. The political apparatus in DC could not have managed this technical of an undertaking.
Just deleting all copies of emails would not be enough. Log files would have to be edited or deleted. Of course, just about every app on a server writes to a logfile of some sort. To have cleaned everything up would have been monstrous.
I am betting that something was missed.
And the fact Lerner would have archived “Cover her A$$” mails if everything fell apart and she faced Jail time, or worse.
Find Lerner’s CYA insurance e-mails
Just deleting all copies of emails would not be enough. Log files would have to be edited or deleted. Of course, just about every app on a server writes to a logfile of some sort. To have cleaned everything up would have been monstrous.
I am betting that something was missed.
It's been mentioned upthread, but there's no way in hell you could suborn a real IT professional to do something along the lines of what you're theorizing.
If some management type proposed that to me, the immediate answer would be "No Fracking Way".
All it takes is "An Inconvenient Backup Tape", to paraphrase Al "ManBearPig" Gore, and we all know it...
The IRS is claiming that their exchange server had such a small mailbox quota that she was forced to download her emails to a .PST file which is stored on her local drive and removed from the server.