Washington – Lois Lerner, an Internal Revenue Service official who revealed that the agency was giving extra scrutiny to conservative groups, will assert her constitutional right not to answer questions from a congressional committee on Wednesday, her lawyer said in a letter obtained by Reuters.
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“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor, wrote to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is holding hearings into the IRS scandal.
Lerner is the chief of the IRS tax-exempt unit, which has been accused of using partisan criteria to decide which groups applying for tax-exempt status should receive extra scrutiny. According to an inspector general’s report, the office searched for groups with “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their names.
Taylor said he had advised Lerner to assert her Fifth Amendment right in part due to allegations made by the committee chairman, Darrell Issa, that she had provided false and misleading information to Congress.
The Fifth Amendment provides individuals with protection against self-incrimination.
According to a second document obtained by Reuters, Issa has issued a subpoena to demand that Lerner attend his panel’s hearing on Wednesday, the third congressional hearing in less than a week since the scandal first erupted.
At least three congressional committees are investigating the matter.
Issa spokesman Ali Ahmad said in a statement on Tuesday: “Chairman Issa remains hopeful that she will ultimately decide to testify tomorrow about her knowledge of outrageous IRS targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.”
Lerner apologized for the targeting at a tax conference on May 10, setting off a wave of criticism, congressional probes and a Justice Department investigation.
Issa, a Republican who is an aggressive critic of President Barack Obama, in a letter to Lerner last week said “it appears that you provided false or misleading information on four separate occasions last year in response to the Committee’s oversight.”
Taylor is a Washington-based lawyer with Zuckerman Spaeder LLP. The law firm’s website cites Taylor’s experience with “high-profile civil and criminal matters, often under intense media scrutiny.”
He notably defended Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, against criminal charges related to a sexual assault accusation. The criminal charges were dismissed, and a related civil suit was settled.
U know will happen every senator that asks something too good will be put under review. So we can guess the outcome. As long as the power over who to audit and the auditor till the highest ranks don(t get split up this human rights violator org will keep on violating every basic of the constitution. We the people are naturally too afraid to get audited.
Also, if she testifies, Obama and Holder will take care of her, if you know what I mean.
why not answer,
just do what your boss does
blame it on bush, everything is his fault anyway according to king obama
What hold does our president have that everyone in office (okay almost everyone) is willing to go do for him?? I just don’t get it! Stop covering for his ineptitude and evil!
If she didn’t do anything wrong, why is she afraid to answer?
So much for transparency.
Looks more and more like the Nixon era.
Give her one shot at testifying. Then look for a way to charge her with a crime. Sounds like discrimination, maybe civil rights. Then she may testify once arrested and wearing prison greens.