Very interesting, thanks for the information.
I thought the IRS did have the legal responsibility to preserve their official emails (and they were only supposed to do those on their government supplied computers or phones) and also to turn correspondence over to the National Archivist at some point or at least let him know why they couldn’t do so. Not that the law matters to the folks at the IRS.
They do. The requirements are very clear, and it appears that they were ignored. The IRS's position is "oops, well, we'll do better next time." No taxpayer could ever get away with that one but they have so far.