Posted on 05/22/2013 4:42:57 PM PDT by raptor22
Scandal: The rest of us must answer IRS questions under threat of perjury, but the agency's execs can take the Fifth. A Tea Party targeted by the IRS — and the FBI and OSHA and the ATF — thinks that's unfair. We do too.
Lois Lerner, chief of the IRS' exempt organizations division when the Tea Party and other conservative groups were targeted for their opposition to President Obama, has invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to be questioned on her earlier testimony, her opening statement or any knowledge she may have of who ordered the targeting, who created the target list, and who knew what and when.
She pleaded the Fifth after an opening statement saying she had done nothing wrong and verifying that earlier testimony was in fact hers. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that given her other remarks, she may have "effectively waived" her rights, then let her leave the room pending a recall and determination of whether she had properly invoked her rights.
Her newfound reticence is ironic. It was Lerner herself who launched her agency's scandal with a planted question-and-answer exchange during a May 10 American Bar Association conference. The planted question and her response were an effort to "inoculate" herself, the IRS and the Obama administration against charges of abuse and to plant a story that, like the Benghazi terrorist attack, the IRS targeting of the Tea Party was simply the action of two rogue agents in a single office.
But unable to invoke the Fifth Amendment or to refuse to answer questions was Catherine Engelbrecht.
Increasingly frustrated by the political process and the inefficiency and growing power of a burgeoning federal behemoth, she decided after the 2008 election to found two organizations:
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
I’ve done nothing wrong, now shut up and leave me alone.
did she say that she would not answer questions in order to protect the innocent people. I distinctly heard that and wondered how could that be a justification. Who are these innocent people? That would be my first question. You can only take the 5th when it is self-incrimination not to protect the innocent. I would have smacked her down with her own words then.
did anyone else hear that too?
in fact, did she ever use the 5th in her answer or that it might self-incriminate her? I don’t remember hearing it only some lawyer weasel words.
so if she did not take the “fifth” does that change things for the next time she comes? Can she start off with taking the fifth as if there was no hearing today?
IBD EDITORIAL PING
What she really said was “if I answer your questions, they will kill me. So I cannot answer your questions.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong, now shut up and leave me alone.”
Yes, but have you THOUGHT something wrong...
“did she say that she would not answer questions in order to protect the innocent people”
If they are innocent, then there’s nothing to protect. But of course we all know this.
The ruling elite NEVER obeys the rules it makes for normal people. Same as when there were kings and queens and the ordinary people were $h!t upon royally.
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The only part of the Constitution Obama respects is the 5th Amendment.
More blog material. Nothing new here.
IBD EDITORIAL PING
Ask her for copies of all of the emails, tweets, letters, and memos she’s ever written. Ask her for the names and addresses of all the people who worked for her during her long government career and all of her present and past bosses and upper management.
And give her one week to do it, like the IRS apparently did in its first information request to Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote.
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