IRS Official Lois Lerner Will Plead The 5th Amendment

[kentuck]

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/irs-official-lois-lerner-will-plead-5th-amendment

<snip>
The official in charge of the exempt organizations division at center of the targeting scandal plaguing the Internal Revenue Service plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify before a House oversight hearing this week.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” an attorney for Lois Lerner told committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) in a letter obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Since she intends not to answer questions, the letter requests Lerner be exempt from the Wednesday hearing because her appearance would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.”

Lerner initially revealed during a Q&A session in Washington that Internal Revenue Service agents employed at the Cincinnati branch office improperly scrutinized conservative non-profit groups for additional reviews from 2010 to 2012. Lerner only recently disclosed that the question was planted, however.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

1. if she has committed no crime then she cannot self-incriminate

she obviously knows she did something that will result in prosecution...

sP

[kentuck]

2. She was probably the mid-level bureaucrat that ordered the targeting ?

But, personally, I doubt that it was done for political reasons. Tea Partiers are just naturally paranoid - much like their 2nd Amendment brethren.

[ananda]

3. She was targeted by IRS officials who..

.. planted a question for her in the audience.

Now then. How much does this whole set up and blame game stink?

Let me count the ways.

[kentuck]

4. Did she know about the planted question?

Ahead of time?

[marshall]

5. I thought she planted the question

I don't know what outcome she expected, but this surely isn't it. Somebody must have been putting the squeeze on her and she flailed out in haste. It'll all come out in the was, and probably make a terrific movie.

[onpatrol98]

6. She called someone and asked them to ask a particular question.

She called someone and asked them to ask a particular question. Innocent bystander, she isn't. But, since she wasn't the one that came up with the questions sent out to groups, it does make you wonder what question is she not wanting to answer.

[kentuck]

7. And this:

"Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who was asked to step down following the controversy, said it was his idea to disclose the information in such a manner.

"I will take responsibility for that," Miller told a congressional hearing on Tuesday. "The entire thing was an incredibly bad idea."

==========

Think money and politics. Think Karl Rove and American Crossroads. Think of abuse of the 501(c)4 regulation. Think of ways to level the playing field for the next election?

[pintobean]

9. She was the IRS official who planted the question.

Celia Roady, a prominent tax lawyer in the firm of Morgan Lewis, said she was called personally by Lois Lerner, the IRS head of the tax exempt division, on May 9.

"I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks at the [American Bar Association] Tax Section's Exempt Organizations Committee Meeting, and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks," Roady said in a statement to U.S. News and World Report. "I agreed to do so, and she then gave me the question that I asked at the meeting the next day. We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call. She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/17/exclusive-woman-who-asked-irss-lois-lerner-scandal-breaking-question-details-plant

[Bolo Boffin]

8. This is about things she told Congress before the IG report was released.

She might be up for perjury charges. I've seen no indication that she's hiding involvement from the White House. Her superiors are talking freely, after all. We're supposed to believe Obama was talking to Ms. Lerner and not Schulman or Miller? Please.