Because the IRS apparently did use Sonasoft, once:

The IRS reportedly used a private company to back up emails, a new report claims. The company is called Sonasoft, which boasts, “Email Archiving Done Right.”

“The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005, according to FedSpending.org, which lists the contract as being for ‘automatic data processing services.’ Sonasoft’s motto is ’email archiving done right,’ and the company lists the IRS as a customer,” Reason magazine reports.

There’s also a tweet from 2009 from the company that would, ahem, back this up:

If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your severs? http://www.sonasoft.com

— Sonasoft.com (@Sonasoft) October 9, 2009

Now, this is not necessarily proof that Sonasoft has the IRS archives in handy subpoena form. The company might not have that contract with the IRS; in fact, it might never have had that contract, and is just engaged in the traditional game of Let’s inflate our customer list!  But under the circumstances I think that it’s a perfectly reasonable question to bring back John Koskinen under oath and ask his smirk whether the IRS actually uses this company, whether they still do – and why it took an independent news agency to unearth information that should have been voluntarily provided at the beginning.

I believe that they call this sort of thing ‘due diligence.’ And it’s something that Koskinen legitimately should have done from the start; any kind of competent investigation would have clearly revealed this possible connection (because, after all, a competent investigation did) and the IRS should have been the first group to look into it.  If John Koskinen doesn’t even know whether his organization used a third-party backup service, what exactly is he doing over there?

Besides covering up the President’s mistakes, of course.

Moe Lane (crosspost)