Posted on 09/22/2014 2:13:36 PM PDT by nhwingut
Employers wont hire her. Shes been berated with epithets like dirty Jew. Federal agents have guarded her house because of death threats. And shes spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself against accusations she orchestrated a coverup in a scandal that has come to represent everything Americans hate about the IRS.Lois Lerner is toxic and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal. I didnt do anything wrong, Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. Im proud of my career and the job I did for this country.
Yet Lerner is also described as apolitical and fair. Some say she was a generous boss who inspired loyalty, baking brownies and handing out lottery tickets to managers to raise morale. Shes putting her babysitters son through college and in 2005 flew to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to rescue animals.
Lerner said she is not a political person, has voted for candidates of both parties and that the only campaign contribution she ever made was $25 to a fellow law school student running for judge.
Shes a registered Democrat, but her lawyer, Bill Taylor of Zuckerman Spaeder, said people should consider whether being a registered member of one political party should disqualify people for government service, and if so, who would we get to run the government?
Friends and colleagues say Lerner didnt talk much about politics and note that while Democrats have defended the IRS and the White House, theyve steered clear of backing Lerner suggesting she and her husband dont have many heavyweight Democratic connections.
Lois ideology is against money in politics, is anti-contribution; thats her bias, said Engle, an Arent Fox partner. Her ideology inhibited fair administration of the law.
But any action Lerner brought had to be approved by the bipartisan commission.
Larry Noble, Lerners friend and former FEC boss, says she was never partisan. He nominated her for a government service award she won in 2008 by arguing she stayed above the fray.
A decade ago, Lerners name incited roaring applause at Las Vegas Caesars Palace, where a stage of celebrities including Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg honored her for rescuing animals abandoned during Hurricane Katrina. It was part of the 2006 Comic Relief fundraiser that aired on TBS and HBO.
Lerner had taken unpaid leave to fly to New Orleans after the storm, going door to door to save some of the 50,000 stranded animals. She fostered one collie that had been without food and water for a month, watching him for a year before finding his owners.
Before she took the stage with her foster pet, HBO showed a video depicting an emotional Lerner crying because we were too late to save thousands of animals who had drowned or starved while waiting for their owners to return.
Its not the only charitable act defenders eagerly recounted: Lerner and Miles are funding college tuition for their former babysitters son, and they let an unemployed friend live at their house for two years while he got back on his feet.
Lerner started her career far away from tax policy, as a dental hygienist. She quickly switched gears and went to law school, graduating cum laude. After a stint at the Justice Department, she spent 20 years at the FEC before heading to the IRS in 2001.
Eventually, Lerner won over employees with her chatty personality and smart jokes and by showing them her gratitude with little things, like doling out lottery tickets and treating them to lunch or dinner.
She loved to talk fashion, and shed ask how people were doing, not just at work, but in their personal lives.
Practitioners said she would sometimes give out her personal phone number at conferences so lawyers could call her as needed. Shed spend a few minutes each day phoning one of her 900 subordinates to ask how things were going.
Still, none of her former IRS colleagues thought Lerner was working for the White House or biased.
Rather, in general, they say she lost control of her division and that the GOP is taking advantage of it.
Lerner and Miles, a partner with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, said theyve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal bills as she has been investigated by Congress and the FBI and sued by multiple conservative groups.
The couple, who live in a $2.5 million house in Bethesda, Maryland, where BMWs sit in neighboring driveways surrounded by lush yards and security cameras, are clearly well off. But now theyre more conscious of money, postponing Miles retirement, for example.
Lerner wants to work to help pay for her defense bills, though a source working on the congressional investigation said shes receiving a $100,000 annual pension. But while even Miller, fired by Obama in the wake of the scandal, has landed on his feet at a Washington-based consulting group, Lerner is still untouchable.
Her closest friends cant help her land a job, and shes been snubbed by at least one international organization that works on elections in Third World countries and a voluntary position in a county outside Washington.
So she passes the time gardening, walking her dogs and volunteering occasionally with a local arts nonprofit where she edits grant applications. She wont specify where, exactly, because I feel like having my name attached does nothing but cause issues for people.
Instead, her husband who looks more tired than Lerner herself sifts through the scandal headlines, sometimes tearing out stories about her in the paper so she wont see them.
When POLITICO asks about coping, Miles jests: Oh, the tattoo?
But Lerner tears up describing how her legal team has become friends, willing to listen to her vent.
Of course, that also means she cant escape public humiliation when she is recognized. Shes been berated by strangers and told she is going to be put away in the deepest, darkest dungeon, and they were going to lock me up and throw away the key.
Asked what shed say if she could tell the world anything, she reiterated her innocence. Then, as she starts to get up to walk away from the interview, she added: And, oh, one more thing: Im doing just fine.
Lerner should be doing jail interviews.
I call BS on this. No way the dog lived in LA without water for a month.
20 years in a Fed lockup sounds about right. She can bake brownies there.
“All while putting her babysitter’s son through college.”
Did she pay babysitter minimum wage? Did she deduct FICA? Is babysitter legal?
Keep digging, “investigative” reporter.
She remains a loyal Obama commissar to the end. Or until she is indicted by a real prosecutor, faces prison and the prospect of sharing a cell with her new best friend Bubbette.
BTTT!
I bet she does not clean her own toilets, or cook their meals.
And what do you want to bet that, while she was taking her “staff” out for lunch all those time, we were paying for it; she just let the staff think that she was.
Is this a pity party defense?
Here’s what I know - she used the power of the IRS to target conservatives. That makes her a thug... at best.
She remains a loyal Obama commissar to the end. Or until she is indicted by a real prosecutor, faces prison and the prospect of sharing a cell with her new best friend Bubbette.
Jawohl!
Good grief. What is this rehabilitation campaign laying groundwork for? Because it’s something, unless the b*tch really can’t get a job.
Fry, b*tch.
Yeah, but how does she feel about motherhood.
If a grand jury would indict, I would like a jury to decide if she is innocent or otherwise.
If this bitch’s husband is a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan in Washington DC, they have plenty of money with or without her $100K pension.
Oh, my heart aches!! ... -NOT-
she’s ‘apolitical’??? Not according to emails released by someone who received them from her
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