The real question to me is why she moved the email to her local disk in the first place. I don’t buy that the server placed a hard limit on her that she reached. If she had, she could have gotten rid of junk first. Cat pictures, for example.
Microsoft Exchange Server immediately deletes email that is moved to a PST file, whether that file is on a local computer disk, or on a network store. It does not leave a copy in the “Deleted Items Folder”.
It’s not common for agencies to backup each user’s local drives. They should be using network storage, which is backed up. But IT offices are lazy and don’t set up a user’s Windows environment to do that automatically through caching.
The IT department should be constantly backing up the Microsoft Exchange data store. I’m sure they did. They also claim to reuse tapes every 60 days. I have a hard time believing that.
Bottom line to me is that Lois Lerner wanted those emails off of the server and copied them to her local disk. She did not want them accessible by IT administrators. She may have indeed lost that local disk. My gut says she has a copy of those PST files elsewhere.
Koskinen admits ALL of Lois Lerner's e-mails were available on a back-up tape but were not extracted and saved because it was too much trouble.
The IRS had the emails and knew the Committee wanted them at the time. They even stated they would go to "extraordinary" lengths to get them.