Posted on 05/30/2013 7:33:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
No wonder Lois Lerner took the Fifth.
Lerner, the IRS official sent on paid leave last Thursday after refusing to resign, would have had a tough time testifying before Congress about the agency’s discrimination against tea-party groups without incriminating herself in the process, an examination of her conflicting representations reveals.
Republican lawmakers, hearing complaints about the lengthy, onerous, and intrusive lists of questions sent to their constituents, have for two years been working to uncover the scandal occurring at the nation’s tax-collection agency. Lerner was a major impediment to their attempted investigation.
Her misdeeds go beyond a failure to inform Congress of the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations, a lapse of which other agency officials, including acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller and former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, are also accused. According to documents accessible on the website of the House Oversight Committee, Lerner also misled that body in its investigation; sidestepped lawmakers’ inquiries; and actively defended the intrusive questions that have been widely denounced by the inspector general, the current and former IRS commissioners, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. If the Treasury Department inspector general’s report published in mid May is to be believed, Lerner’s communications with the House Oversight Committee have been willfully dishonest. And providing the United States government with false or misleading information carries criminal liability.
According to Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa, on February 24 of last year his committee asked Lerner whether the IRS’s criteria for evaluating tax-exemption applications had changed at any point. She said that they had not. The IG report and written responses that Lerner herself provided to the committee just last week, however, indicate that she ordered specialists handling tea-party applications to change objectionable criteria including the terms “tea party,” “9/12 Project,” and “patriots,” after she was briefed on those criteria in June 2011.
When the committee expressed concern that conservative organizations were the target of “heightened scrutiny” at the IRS, Lerner on April 26, 2012, gave a detailed explanation of IRS procedures that carefully avoided the issue of targeting. She described only a class of applications that required “further development” and that were then routed to “an agent with the appropriate level of experience for the issues involved,” but failed to mention that tea-party applications by definition had been selected for such “development” — that is, the essence of the committee’s inquiry.
In May 2012 Lerner furnished a 90-page defense of the questionnaires sent to dozens of tea-party groups. In that lengthy letter, she made dubious legal claims about the IRS’s right to ask meddlesome questions, even standing by the agency’s demand for the names of donors to various groups and the amounts of their donations. “There are instances where donor information may be needed for the IRS to make a proper determination of an organization’s exempt status, such as when the application presents possible issues of inurement or private benefit,” she explained. Nevertheless she assured the committee, “The IRS takes privacy very seriously.”
Though Lerner cited an IRS form that asks for an organization’s sources of financial support as “precedent” for requesting donor names, the chief of staff for the office of the IRS commissioner told the Oversight Committee that she could not identify any other time in the agency’s history when the IRS asked a group for a complete list of donors and the corresponding amounts of their donations.
An IRS employee based in the agency’s Cincinnati office and who has experience with tax-exempt organizations tells National Review Online the questions posed to tea-party groups were “way too aggressive,” but Lerner denied that they were out of the ordinary. Defending a list of questions the Oversight Committee identified as inappropriate, she cited various legal statutes, routinely interpreting them in the broadest possible manner. Explaining her division’s request for all of a group’s corporate and meeting minutes “from inception to present,” Lerner cited the agency’s obligation to determine whether tax-exempt organizations operate exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. And in defending requests for copies of materials provided at all events a group has conducted or plans to conduct in 2012 and 2013, she pointed to a routine form that asks whether a given group publishes “pamphlets, brochures, newsletters, journals, or similar printed materials” and requests copies of each. The demands of Lerner and her employees seem designed to bury targeted groups in paperwork.
In the wake of the scandal, Lerner’s superiors have responded differently than she has. Acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, in a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, apologized on behalf of the IRS “for the mistakes that we made and the poor service we provided.” Former IRS commissioner Doug Shulman said at the same hearing that he was “deeply, deeply saddened by this whole series of events.” Given what we now know about Lerner’s role in misleading a congressional committee working to bring the scandal to light, is it any wonder she chose to remain silent last week?
— Eliana Johnson is media editor of National Review Online.
Jail time?
Put that slimy liberal b*tch in jail.
NOW!
She is a showcase example of how the Federal government works.
She refuses to answer questions about what she did or knew ON THE JOB and instead of being fired from that job she gets put on paid administrative leave (extra vacation) until this blows over.
And only that because the issue is hot right now.
Why did she do such an incompetent job of taking the Fifth?
She's a stupid party aparatchik who bullies people but doesn't really get paid to think all that much.
What would you dictate for a true traitor to American Freedom whose very actions violated so many of the actual protections of the US Constitution and further undermined the heretofore pact of faith and trust between Government and “We the People.”
Indict, Try, Convict and Execute.
A Congress with backbone and an ounce of moral sense would appoint and independent council and offer her prosecutorial immunity for her cooperation in finding and indicting the real criminals all the way to the top.
It turns out Lerner’s an old hand at strangling the First Amendment to help DemonCraps, particularly including Dickie Turban. See:
Section 1. The right to not be compelled to be a witness against himself as specified in the fifth Amendment shall not be construed to apply to any inquiry by Congress of a federal officer, agent, or employee with respect to his official duties.Section 2. Any federal officer, agent, or employee shall be immediately removed from office or employment if he fails to provide information to Congress, upon Congress' request, pertaining to actions that fall under his official duties, except under conditions as Congress may specify by law.
“refused to resign” - FIRE HER ASS, period, end of story.
RE: FIRE HER ASS, period, end of story.
Who can do that but Obama?
“There are instances where donor information may be needed for the IRS to make a proper determination of an organization’s exempt status, such as when the application presents possible issues of inurement or private benefit,” she explained.
The 157 visits to me is the red flag waving in the wind. There is a huge story related to these visits. Congress should be zeroing in on this.
Yeah, the approval discrepancy between conservative and liberal groups, or even groups with con/lib “sounding” names,
should be enough of an indicator that corruption was afoot.
Trouble? That starts with `T’ and rhymes with `P’ and that spells M-O-O-N!
Arbitrary and capricious `Wesley Mouch’ power-drunk, highly paid political `entrepreneurs/hired-hands’ right out of Atlas Shrugged, clothed with federal authority & loosed from their leashes by their masters (`Sic `em girl!’), threatening the `enemy’ with federal retaliation if they dare to run for office again or express opinions contrary to the AmeriSoc party?
Yeah, I’d say we have a problem Houston. And it starts right at the top. Special prosecutor. Now!
IMHO, it is because she 'thinks' she is smarter than her lawyers.
No immunity! Come down upon her like a ton of bricks. Only when she sees the darkest dawn will she offer up those above. THEN there can be a discussion of immunity. But for the love of God, don’t lead with it!
“The 157 visits to me is the red flag waving in the wind.”
Carney the Carney would respond, “That’s preposterous, I personally know half a dozen Doug Shulmans”.
Like he did for domestic terrorist Ayers.
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