Government Emails Sure Have a Way of Disappearing These Days

A senior health department official under Republican scrutiny for the flawed rollout of HealthCare.gov likely deleted some emails now sought by congressional investigators, msnbc has learned.

The Department of Health and Human Services planned on Thursday to alert Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration, which is charged with enforcing federal record keeping laws, about the problem, according to a copy of a letter being sent to Archives.

There is no evidence that Marilyn Tavenner, an Obama appointee who leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, intentionally hid information or deleted records; rather, the gaps appear to be the result of sloppy record keeping. But Republicans have attempted to turn missing emails into a political scandal before, as they did with Lois Lerner, a former IRS official at the center of a separate controversy over alleged targeting of conservative nonprofit groups.