Thread: Is Lois Lerner Striking An IRS Testimony Deal With Congressional Investigators?

Is Lois Lerner Striking An IRS Testimony Deal With Congressional Investigators?

September 26, 2013 by Ben Bullard

UPI FILE

Nothing had been set in stone as of late Wednesday, but it looks as though Lois Lerner, the Washington, D.C.-based Internal Revenue Service official who retired this week in disgrace over the Tea Party discrimination scandal, is attempting through her lawyers to negotiate an immunity deal with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as it pursues its investigation into the scandal’s origins.
Even though Lerner retired Monday after learning an internal review board was poised to recommend she be fired for negligence, she remains under subpoena from the Oversight Committee. Lerner, the former head of the Exempt Organizations division of the IRS, had earlier attempted to invoke her Constitutional right not to incriminate herself before a committee hearing, even as she maintained she had nothing to hide.
A bevy of internal emails, released earlier this month by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), reveal some of Lerner’s 2011 communications with other officials over what to do about Tea Party groups seeking tax exemptions.
You may not have seen or heard about the emails; it’s been 62 days since any of the Big Three TV news networks ran an IRS scandal story. But the fresh batch of Lerner communications completely contradicts her ardent assertions, shortly after the scandal broke, that rogue IRS employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office had taken it upon themselves to bog down the nonprofit exemptions process for the conservative groups.
From a Sept. 12 story in The Daily Caller:

“Tea Party Matter very dangerous… Counsel and Judy Kindell [Lerner’s technical adviser] need to be in on this one… Cincy should probably NOT have these cases,” Lerner said in a February 2011 email, despite the fact that IRS officials initially claimed that the agency’s Cincinnati office was solely responsible for the improper targeting of tea party and conservative groups.
“Perhaps the FEC will save the day,” Lerner said in an email, responding to a complaint the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee registered with the Federal Elections Commission. The IRS and FEC reportedly collaborated on conservative targeting.
“There is increasing and overwhelming evidence that Lois Lerner and high-level IRS employees in Washington were abusing their power to prevent conservative groups from organizing and carrying out their missions. There are still mountains of documents to go through, but it is clear the IRS is out of control and there will be consequences,” Camp said.

Representative Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member on the Ways and Means Committee, has interpreted Lerner’s involvement as bungling but benign. Levin told Tax Analysts Lerner appeared to have been “incompetent in her management of the IRS tax-exempt division and unprofessional in her conduct” and that Republicans’ efforts to selectively leak only a few incriminating emails out of tens of thousands of documents represent a partisan witch hunt.
Why, then, would Lerner (or her wealthy Barack Obama-supporting husband) be paying very good money to top-flight attorneys to strike an immunity deal? Immunity has been on Lerner’s mind from the beginning; she made it clear at the time of her May testimony that Congress could easily hear everything she had to say by simply granting her request to go free, come what may.
No one with a conduit to the public has come forward to divulge Lerner’s present motives for seeking the deal. But it appears Lerner is either:
A) Possessed of a grimly wicked sense of humor; a disgraced and fed-up bureaucrat about to punk the indefatigably dedicated Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the Oversight
committee, with a whole bunch of garbage testimony that will make a farce of the entire investigation and leave Issa embarrassed and bewildered.Or…B) One very frightened ex-loyalist who realizes she’s become a fall guy; a jilted liberal who’d love to salvage her reputation and deliver Congressional Republicans the magic smoking gun they’ve been seeking that would tie the scandal directly to the Obama Administration.


If Issa strikes a deal, you can bet he’s got his money on the latter.

Here are nine reasons why he’s probably right.

Filed Under: Conservative Politics, Liberty News, Staff Reports

http://personalliberty.com/2013/09/2...investigators/

Lerner’s Retreat: IRS Chief Who Pleaded The 5th Retires As Tea Party Scandal Closes In

September 25, 2013 by Ben Bullard

UPI FILE

The former Internal Revenue Service official who attempted to testify on her own behalf before invoking her 5^th Amendment protection against self-incrimination resigned from her position Monday, even as a review board prepared to recommend that she be fired for her alleged role in wielding the tax agency’s power to illegally discriminate against conservative nonprofit groups.
Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division, had been on administrative leave since admitting in May that the IRS had bogged down conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 Presidential election. She is expected to receive a full pension after retiring from her $177,000-per-year post.
Multiple news outlets reported that an IRS review board was posed to recommend that Lerner be fired for neglect of duty. Lerner, who allegedly had been made aware of the imminent embarrassment, avoided all that simply by quitting.
Congressional Republicans serving on various investigative panels said the resignation doesn’t affect Lerner’s susceptibility to a current subpoena by the House Oversight Committee, which doesn’t expire until the 113^th Congress adjourns.
“We still don’t know why Lois Lerner, as a senior IRS official, had such a personal interest in directing scrutiny and why she denied improper conduct to Congress,” said Congressman Darrell E. Issa (R-Calif.) who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “Her departure does not answer these questions or diminish the committee’s interest in hearing her testimony.”
The only testimony the committee has heard from Lerner thus far came shortly after the Tea Party scandal broke in late May, when Lerner infamously attempted to sway Congressional investigators with a brief self-acquittal before clamming up.
“I have done nothing wrong,” she had said at a committee hearing on May 22. “I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other committee.” Lerner then said she wished to invoke the 5^th Amendment, a recourse that had outraged Republican committee members who said she waived her claim against self-incrimination by offering testimony, however brief.
The IRS review panel that planned to recommend Lerner’s firing did not find her controversial actions to be politically motivated, a claim that conservatives who’ve followed the case have disputed. Internal emails released by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month reveal Lerner’s public claim that “rogue” IRS employees had perpetrated the Tea Party scandal doesn’t gibe with Lerner’s in-house communication, in which she described Tea Party groups as “dangerous.” Lerner’s own words, the story states, “raise doubts about IRS claims that the targeting wasn’t politically motivated.”

Filed Under: Conservative Politics, Liberty News, Staff Reports

http://personalliberty.com/2013/09/2...dal-closes-in/