Thread: IRS's Lerner pleads Fifth, insists she's done nothing wrong

IRS's Lerner pleads Fifth, insists she's done nothing wrong

By Bernie Becker - 05/22/13 10:13 AM ET


IRS official Lois Lerner said had not done anything wrong at a tense House hearing Wednesday but still invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
"I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations," Lerner, the head of an IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups that targeted conservative groups, said before the House Oversight Committee.

Lerner then said she was following her counsel's advice not to testify. "
"I know that some people will assume that I have done something wrong," she said. "I have not."
Through her lawyer, Lerner had given the committee a head’s up that she planned to take the Fifth.
House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)asked that she reconsider, but she declined.
Issa then tried to dismiss Lerner, but Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), himself a former prosecutor, said that Lerner had waived her Fifth Amendment rights via her opening statement. Issa eventually did dismiss the IRS official, but said she could be recalled.






Issa and other top panel members had said that Lerner,the official at the middle of the uproar over the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, had misled them on four separate occasions in 2012 about the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status – months before a Treasury audit detailed that extra scrutiny.William Taylor, Lerner’s lawyer, stressed in that letter that Lerner had committed no crime, but that the Fifth Amendment was also in place to protect innocent individuals.
Lerner’s invoking of the Fifth sparked some early fireworks in what is now the third congressional hearing to look into the IRS’s treatment of conservative groups. Neal Wolin, the deputy Treasury secretary, is also appearing before the panel, marking the first time a senior department official has been called to testify on the matter.
In his testimony, Wolin stressed – as has his boss, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew – that the findings in the inspector general’s report were “absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable.”
But Wolin also said there was “no indication” that Treasury had any role in the targeting, and that the inspector general, Russell George, informed the department in June 2012 – after George’s report said the targeting ended.
“It is important in this context to make clear that Treasury’s longstanding practice – spanning Republican and Democratic administrations – is not to involve itself in the details of the IRS’s administration and enforcement of the nation’s tax laws,” Wolin said.
Treasury and White House officials have stressed that they were involved in discussions about how the IRS would disclose the targeting, but only found out about the details well after the fact.
But Issa and other Republicans remain far from sure at Wednesday’s hearing, with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) linking the administration’s handling of the IRS controversy to the aftermath of last year’s terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
Issa, meanwhile, noted that his panel had asked for the inspector general to look into the matter in 2012, saying “we knew then that there was smoke.”
The California Republican also noted that an IRS internal investigation had found similar targeting in the election year of 2012, well before the inspector general’s report, but also said that extra scrutiny was bigger than any one election.
He also criticized George, who is also testifying Wednesday, for waiting to inform lawmakers about his findings.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy,” Issa said. “It wouldn’t matter one bit if a different group was targeted.”
On the Democratic side, the panel’s ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), said he hoped the hearing wouldn’t descend into a partisan sideshow, and said he respected Lerner’s decision to take the Fifth – even as he said he thought she could shed some light on what happened at the agency.
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) sounded an angrier note, suggesting that IRS officials had not been forthcoming enough and raising the specter of a special counsel if more answers weren’t on the way.
“There will be hell to pay if that’s the route we choose to go down,” Lynch said.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-mone...#ixzz2U2Fdxww1
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Amazing then she turned around and walked out....she works for us !!!!!! NOW TELL ME ARE THEY OUT OF CONTROL OR WHAT!!!!! Wake up America!! FIRE THEM ALL THEY REFUSE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS FIRE THEM!!!

I believe Chairman Issa failed on this one he should have had Lerner remain and state clearly she refused to testify under the 5th. she never really voiced that, Issa IMO seemed anxious to have her exit, total failure.

Letters Show Lois Lerner Directly Involved In IRS Targeting…

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Cowboy Byte

A series of letters suggests that senior IRS official Lois Lerner was directly involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups as recently as April 2012, more than nine months after she first learned of the activity.

Lerner, the director of the IRS exempt organizations office in Washington, D.C., signed cover letters to 15 conservative organizations currently represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) between in March and April of 2012. The letters, such as this one sent to the Ohio Liberty Council on March 16, 2012, informed the groups applying for tax-exempt status that the IRS was “unable to make a final determination on your exempt status without additional information,” and included a list of detailed questions of the kind that a Treasury inspector general’s audit found to be inappropriate. Some of the groups to which Lerner sent letters are still awaiting approval. [...]


Read more: http://cowboybyte.com/21762/letters-...#ixzz2UD0q1NwT

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The Pressing Need for a Special Prosecutor

Hugh Hewitt | May 23, 2013












Wednesday's appearance by the Internal Revenue Service's Lois Lerner coupled with the burgeoning scandal's reach into the White House --see this post by Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau--underscores the pressing need for the appointment by the Attorney General of a special prosecutor with wide ranging and independent authority to investigate the wrongdoing connected with the targeting of Tea Party and religiously-motivated tax-exempt groups by the IRS.
More on "targetgate" will appear soon at National Review Online by Eliana Johnson and other members of the NRO team that will confirm what a string of center-left and MSM commentators --Bloomberg's Jonathan Alter and Al Hunt and the New York Times' Michael Shear-- have said on my radio show the past three days: The scandals are outrageous and the need for a special prosecutor is urgent.
Some of the journalists on the left have as their concern the salvaging of the Obama presidency before it enters into what would quickly become the longest second term in history, a prolonged drip, drip, drip of revelations and paralysis. They wish to spare the president the relentless grinding down of his office and thus of the country's ability to respond to crisis at home and abroad.
Some of us wouldn't mind paralysis of this presidency, at least with regard to the president's ambitions for domestic lawmaking, but a second and to my mind far more compelling reason for a special prosecutor than the protection of the president's political standing is the protection of the innocent within and outside the government.
From 1986 to 1989 I was the General Counsel and then Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. I was a young GC --only 30-- but was lucky to supervise a staff of 30 superb lawyers, all career professionals, who knew and did their often complex jobs with great skill and diligence. In the latter job I was the COO of an agency of 6,000 federal employees whose duties including the hiring, firing, retirement and health care of the nation's 2 million plus federal civilian workers. The vast, vast majority of these civil servants were hard-working and very competent professionals. In my previous lawyer staff jobs as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General and in the White House Counsel's Office I had worked primarily with political appointees, but the career staffs in both place --smaller in the Executive Office of the President, very large at Justice-- were of the same character and competence as those at OPM.
I bring up this experience so the reader knows I really do have a basis for believing the vast majority of IRS employees are honest, hard-working and very, very fair, and I base that assessment on having spent years inside the federal government.
Since leaving the feds I have spent a quarter century, from 1989 to right through this morning, helping private sector law clients negotiate the complicated laws administered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, as well as dozens of state and local agencies. As with almost every other administrative lawyer I know, my experience has been that the vast, vast majority of government regulators and their government lawyers are competent, ethical men and women of character. We often disagree on how a statute or regulation should be applied or how a permit or proceeding should progress, but 95%+ of these government employees do their jobs with pure professionalism and without any animus towards, and often with the desire to assist, the regulated community. They don't pass the awful laws that pour out of the dysfunctional Congress or press the expansive regulatory agendas pursued by their political appointee leadership, but they are obliged by the Constitution and their oaths to execute those laws and agendas as best they can, and almost always they try to do so in good faith.
Political appointees often capture and pervert their efforts, or issue edicts that are beyond what Congress intended, and occasionally an ideologue within the career ranks will take an agency off the lawful path, but the career folks are nearly always straight shooters.
A special prosecutor is necessary not only to do justice to the injured --and there are hundreds of injured groups with tens of thousands of members-- but also because the rapidly widening scandal at the IRS (and associated scandals involving the DOJ's snooping of journalists and the cover-up of the terrible events in Benghazi) is going to tarnish, damage and quite possibly ruin the lives and careers of many innocent, dedicated federal employees if it isn't quickly and thoroughly investigated and, where appropriate, prosecuted. The pall over the various agencies is already large and rapidly spreading. It has to be ended and the only way to end it is to appoint a special prosecutor and let him or her have at the sandals, having been charged to do so with thoroughness and urgency.
This was Al Hunt's position in an interview I conducted yesterday and it ought to be the position of anyone with a friend, family member or even a professional acquaintance within the impacted agencies, and it ought also to be the demand of every taxpayer who does not want the government they pay for to grind to a halt across large swaths of the bureaucracy doing the daily work of those agencies. Foley & Lardner's Cleta Mitchell --among the Beltway's best tax exempt organizations lawyers-- said on my program yesterday that many of her clients are still waiting for their IRS rulings, applied for years ago. These are citizen-customers who deserve prompt, right responses from the IRS, and there are legions of similarly situated citizen-customers whose work is piling up undone as scandal mode sweeps through the federal alphabet agencies and the innocent dive for cover.
The Independent Counsel statute was a lousy law and no serious analyst --none-- is calling for its revival.
But special prosecutors can accomplish their ends though the abuse of their charges is also possible. The answer to the potential for abuse isn't in carefully crafted charters but rather in the selection of an experienced prosecutor of great integrity and who enjoys bipartisan respect. There are such men and women in great numbers. Selecting a respected former United States Attorney from the Bush era in informal consultation with senior congressional leaders would work, would not be difficult to effect, and that individual's work could begin expeditiously.
No one --not the serious pundits on the left, not the Congressional committees, and most importantly not the public-- trusts Attorney General Eric Holder or his political appointees at Justice to do this job. (Al Hunt is among the growing number of liberal commentators who want Holder gone completely, and Congressional Democrats in both the House and Senate facing tough re-elections are joining their number, fully aware what 18 months of investigations will do to their campaigns.)
The job of investigation and possibly prosecution of the IRS and Treasury officials responsible for this miscarriage simply has to be done, and it has to be done soon. By a man or woman in whom the public can repose trust.

http://townhall.com/columnists/hughh...4472/page/full

Wait Until You See the Questions on Prayer Asked of Lt. Col. Oliver North When Lois Lerner Was at the FEC in the 90s

May. 23, 2013 8:50am Jonathon M. Seidl

Story highlights:

• Lois Lerner, the embattled director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS, served as head of the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) enforcement division from 1986 until 2001.
• While there, the FEC sued the Christian Coalition for allegedly conspiring with political candidates.
• During the case, representatives for the FEC asked intrusive questions on religion of several people involved, including Lt. Col. Oliver North.
• At one point, a representative demanded to know details regarding Pat Roberstson praying for North after reading a letter from North to Robertson indicating as much.
• The group’s attorney also noted that during the investigation third parties were required to comply with “burdensome FEC document requests,” reminiscent of the IRS/Tea Party requests.
• The Christian Coalition’s attorneys adamantly objected, and the group eventually rebuffed the charges.

–
Internal Revenue Service Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner listens during testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee May 22, 2013 in Washington, DC. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

New questions are being raised today about Lois Lerner and the attitude she’s taken in the past regarding conservative and Christian groups. The Weekly Standard is pointing to the questioning of people related to the Christian Coalition in the 1990s when Lerner was the head of the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In short: the FEC was investigating if the Christian Coalition was “coordinating issue advocacy expenditures with a number of candidates for office,” the Weekly Standard explains, and the questions they were asking became ridiculously intrusive — especially about faith and prayer.
The Christian Coalition successfully fought off the allegations, but not before investigators took nearly 100 depositions.
“We felt we were being singled out, because when you handle a case with 81 depositions you have a pretty good argument you’re getting special treatment,” the Christian Coalition’s attorney at the time, James Bopp, Jr., told the Weekly Standard. “Eighty-one depositions! Eighty-one! From Ralph Reed’s former part-time secretary to George H.W. Bush. It was mind blowing.”

And “mind blowing” may be the only way to describe what he detailed in a 2003 testimony before the United States Committee on House Administration [emphasis added]:

FEC attorneys continued their intrusion into religious activities by prying into what occurs at Coalition staff prayer meetings, and even who attends the prayer meetings held at the Coalition. This line of questioning was pursued several times. Deponents were also asked to explain what the positions of “intercessory prayer” and “prayer warrior” entailed, what churches specific people belonged, and the church and its location at which a deponent met Dr. Reed.
One of the most shocking and startling examples of this irrelevant and intrusive questioning by FEC attorneys into private political associations of citizens occurred during the administrative depositions of three pastors from South Carolina. Each pastor, only one of whom had only the slightest connection with the Coalition, was asked not only about their federal, state and local political activities, including party affiliations, but about political activities that, as one FEC attorney described as “personal,” and outside of the jurisdiction of the FECA [Federal Election Campaign Act]. They were also continually asked about the associations and activities of the members of their congregations, and even other pastors.

But it doesn’t end there. Bopp’s testimony includes a transcript of questioning between the FEC and Lt. Col. Oliver North to illustrate Bopp’s point. In that transcript, the FEC representative started prying into why the Lt. Col. thanked Pat Robertson for prayers in a letter. See it below (Q stands for the FEC rep, A denotes North’s response, and O is the objection raised by Christian Coalition attorneys), and note the questioner’s befuddlement at the objections raised to the line of questioning [emphasis added]:

Q: (reading from a letter from Oliver North to Pat Robertson) “‘Betsy and I thank you for your kind regards and prayers.’ The next paragraph is, ‘Please give our love to Dede and I hope to see you in the near future.’ Who is Dede?”
A: “That is Mrs. Robertson.”
Q: “What did you mean in paragraph 2, about thanking -you and your wife thanking Pat Robertson for kind regards?”
A: “Last time I checked in America, prayers were still legal. I am sure that Pat had said he was praying for my family and me in some correspondence or phone call.”
Q: “Would that be something that Pat Robertson was doing for you?”
A: “I hope a lot of people were praying for me, Holly.”
Q: “But you knew that Pat Robertson was?”
A: “Well, apparently at that time I was reflecting something that Pat had either, as I said, had told me or conveyed to me in some fashion, and it is my habit to thank people for things like that.”
Q: “During the time that you knew Pat Robertson, was it your impression that he had – he was praying for you?”
O: “I object. There is no allegation that praying creates a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act and there is no such allegation in the complaint. This is completely irrelevant and intrusive on the religious beliefs of this witness.”
O: “It is a very strange line of questioning. You have got to be kidding, really. What are you thinking of, to ask questions like that? I mean, really. I have been to some strange depositions, but I don’t think I have ever had anybody inquire into somebody’s prayers. I think that is really just outrageous. And if you want to ask some questions regarding political activities, please do and then we can get over this very quickly. But if you want to ask about somebody’s religious activities, that is outrageous.”
Q: “I am allowed to make-’’
O: “We are allowed not to answer and if you think the Commission is going to permit you to go forward with a question about somebody’s prayers, I just don’t believe that. I just don’t for a moment believe that. I find that the most outrageous line of questioning. I am going to instruct my witness not to answer.”
Q: “On what grounds?”
O: “We are not going to let you inquire about people’s religious beliefs or activities, period. If you want to ask about someone’s prayers-Jeez, I don’t know what we are thinking of. But the answer is, no, people are not going to respond to questions about people’s prayers, no.”
Q: “Will you take that, at the first break, take it up- we will do whatever we have to do.”
O: “You do whatever you think you have to do to get them to answer questions about what people are praying about.”
Q: “I did not ask Mr. North what people were praying about I am allowed to inquire about the relationship between-’’
O: “Absolutely, but you have asked the question repeatedly. If you move on to a question other than about prayer, be my guest.”
Q: “I have been asking you a series of questions about your relationship with Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition. . . . It is relevant to this inquiry what relationship you had with Pat Robertson and I have asked you whether Pat Robertson had indicated to you that he was praying for you.”
O: “If that is a question, I will further object. It is an intrusion upon the religious beliefs and activities of Dr. Robertson. And how that could – how the Federal Government can be asking about an individual’s personal religious practices in the context of an alleged investigation under the Federal Election Campaign Act, I am just at a complete loss to see the
relevance or potential relevance, and I consider that to be also intrusive.”
Q: “Was Pat Robertson praying for you in 1991?”
O: “Same objection.”
A: “I hope so. I hope he still is.”

You can read the entire testimony below. The transcript starts on page 18:
Attorney James Bopp Jr. testimony on the FEC

But Bopp told the Weekly Standard it was even worse than the transcript shows — because he had raised more objections. Additionally, Bopp pointed out in his 2003 testimony that third parties also faced “burdensome” and “irrelevant” document requests — an eerie similarity to the targeting undertaken by the IRS against conservative groups:
(Source: Testimony document)

So when Lerner was promoted to her IRS position, he grew concerned.
“She was in effect being promoted for what she had done at the Federal Election Commission and now was going to be expected … to replicate that at the IRS and now we know that’s exactly what happened,” he said.
And considering the events that transpired in recent years at the IRS, that concern doesn’t seem unfounded.
This story has been updated.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/23/wait-until-you-see-the-questions-on-prayer-asked-of-lt-col-oliver-north-when-lois-lerner-was-at-the-fec-in-the-90s/

–

IRS’s Lerner Placed On Paid Vacation and Refuses to Resign!

Posted on May 24, 2013


Can’t wait to see her sitting in a jail cell.
Check it out:
First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator.
Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on administrative leave, with pay.
But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down.
He said the commissioner was in his right to demand her resignation, and said taxpayers should not continue to pay her salary indefinitely.
“My understanding is the new acting IRS commissioner asked for Ms. Lerner’s resignation, and she refused to resign. She was then put on administrative leave instead,” Grassley said in a statement. “The IRS owes it to taxpayers to resolve her situation quickly. The agency needs to move on to fix the conditions that led to the targeting debacle.”

video at link below


Continue Reading on www.foxnews.com ...


Read more: http://conservativebyte.com/2013/05/...#ixzz2UEkkHxPj


Are they awake yet?? What part of fire her butt don't they understand? Fire them all for the lying pieces of trash they all are?

IRS Official Lois Lerner Refuses To Resign – Gets Paid Leave Of $3,557.69 A Week

May 28, 2013

in Front Page, Government

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By binaryloop | I've lived all over the US and found that most Americans love liberty but, get fooled into partisan politics. My goal is to wake people up and help them see it's not about left or right -- it's about freedom!

---

Opinions from Liberty Crier contributors and members are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Liberty Crier.


On Wednesday Lois Lerner plead the 5th and refused to testify before congress. In her opening statement she said, “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”
Tim Brown reported on Wednesday:
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) expressed his regret that she decided to plead the Fifth. He then asked if she would at least verify that previous on-the-record statement were indeed hers. She did so.
She was then asked by Chairman Issa to reconsider answering the committee’s questions, which her counsel advised her not to do.


As Issa sought to dismiss Lerner, Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC) protested, pointing out the obvious:
“She just testified or waived her Fifth Amendment right to privilege. You don’t get to tell your side of the story and not be subjected to cross-examination. That’s not the way it works. She waived her right by issuing an opening state and ought to stand here and answer our questions.”
Gowdy’s statement brought applause from some. However, Issa went on to dismiss Lerner.
Thursday brought a whole new round of surprises. As reported by Fox News:

First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator.
Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on administrative leave, with pay.
But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down.

Once again Americans are left with no justice and another hefty tab. Though it is Lois Lerner’s right to seek protection of the 5th amendment, she represents an agency that was admittedly not concerned with the rights of their targets. So why should we be concerned with her rights? Don’t answer that. It’s simply a case of doing what is right and following The Constitution. But it tends to make one angry when these people shred The Constitution and then hide behind it.
And as things go in Washington… Now she not only gets to keep her job, at least for now, she also gets a paid vacation.
According to The National Review Lois Lerner averaged $185,000 in salary from 2009 through 2012. If my calculator can be trusted (it’s not IRS approved) she should enjoy a fairly nice vacation on approximately $3557.69 a week.
In stark contrast, the maximum weekly unemployment benefit in Washington D.C. is $405 for 2013. If they are going to pay her at all, that is the rate she should be paid in my opinion. She is unemployed temporarily so why not?
That would make too much sense. Common sense can not be trusted in Washington D.C. We have to rely on IRS officials like Lois Lerner who admits, “I am not good at math.”
Does anyone else see a problem here?

http://libertycrier.com/government/i...1742-284711521


That's $3,557.69 a week!!!! Anyone awake yet????