Posted on 03/06/2014 7:15:56 PM PST by smoothsailing
March 6, 2014
Patrick Howley
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is moving in the direction of holding ex-IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress sooner rather than later, committee member Rep. Jim Jordan told The Daily Caller.
“I think that’s where we’re moving,” Jordan said. “I think that’s where this is headed.”
Jordan added that he feels holding Lerner in contempt is “the right thing to do.”
An Oversight Committee staffer confirmed that a contempt charge is being considered.
Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment on each question Issa asked about the agency’s targeting of conservative groups at an Oversight hearing Wednesday morning. The hearing lasted approximately fifteen minutes before Issa released Lerner.
Issa began the hearing by explaining that Lerner previously waived her Fifth Amendment rights in a May 2013 hearing and that “the committee may proceed to consider whether she be held in contempt.”
Lerner sat for a “Q&A” with the Department of Justice but was not under oath, Lerner’s attorney Bill Taylor told TheDC Wednesday.
“She sat for a long, unconditional Q&A with prosecutors and members of the inspector general’s staff,” Taylor said, but her interview will not be made public.
“It was not under oath,” Taylor admitted, maintaining that it would have been illegal for Lerner to have made false statements at the meeting: “You can’t lie to a federal investigator.”
“We haven’t heard anything back” from DOJ regarding the meeting, Taylor said. “I don’t expect we will.”
Obama political donor Barbara Bosserman is leading DOJ’s investigation, which has been roundly criticized by people close to the case.
Taylor claimed that Lerner was fully willing to testify in one week but not at Wednesday’s Oversight hearing. The purpose of the “one-week delay” Taylor proposed to Oversight was to give Lerner, who has been under subpoena since May 2013, “a breather.”
This is like a time warp...
The DOJ “Q&A” sounds more like a debriefing.
Referring this to the US Attorney is an abdication by the House of their power. There’s no reason for the House to punt.
Nixon had hush money to pay the plumbers. Obama will cover her legal fees, and more
Can she get jail time?
Talk, talk, talk..........where the hell is the walk, walk, walk?
I don’t think the House “referred” her to it. Earlier I read that several Reps were very upset and asked why she was willing to chat so freely with the DOJ people and yet refused to say anything and took the Fifth at the House session.
Go look at the bold faced last paragraph, that’s what I was talking about.
Oh, sorry, I thought you meant her - well, I guess it’s not “testimony” - at a meeting with DOJ people she had after the hearing.
‘Rat lite. Not one dimes worth of difference.
No worries! I just hope they don’t wash their hands and go with the US Atny. That would be the last straw, I could never vote for a Rep after that. I would not vote rather than support such incompetence and/or complicity.
This is just IRS. What about F&F, NSA, Benghazi, Extortion17?????
How long will it be before America realizes we have two governments? One is a hollow shell serving as a facade for the other, Fascist one.
Exactly, the House does not need the cooperation of DOJ or the DC DA. They have it within their power to act unilaterally under the inherent contempt process. They can hold Lerner in jail, convene themselves as a jury, hear charges, pass judgement, and pronounce punishment if they so choose. It’s all been done before and it’s been upheld by the Supreme Court. They have the power. At least that’s the way I read it.
Google produces some articles about this from previous cases, including when Holder thumbed his nose at Congress.
As I said before and will say again - nothing was done then and there will be nothing of substance done now. In a fair world, men of integrity would charge her with contempt (or a Jack Ryan type would covertly waterboard her!) but these days political expediency trumps integrity every single time.
Thanks for posting this.
That's exactly what the House should do under this little used "inherent contempt" process. When I read earlier that she talked with executive branch investigators but took the 5th with oversight I about gagged. It may be technically legal but it sure as heck is morally right and this is what is wrong with government.
is = isn’t morally right
If Lois Lerner had carried out the IRS’s vendetta against Conservative groups on her own, she would have been fired. The president would have had no compunction about throwing her under the bus, as he’s done with so many others, for tainting his presidency with a major political scandal.
But of course, Lois Lerner didn’t act alone. Why else would she take the Fifth Amendment except to protect her higher-ups, almost certainly including the president, who directed her to use the IRS against Conservative groups to help Obama win the 2012 election?
If Lois Lerner does NOT tell the truth to Congress, she will go to jail for perjury when the truth of the White House’s involvement inevitably comes out. On the other hand, if she DOES tell the truth, she will implicate the president in an impeachable offense — which Obama’s Chicago-mafia friends must be threatening her against doing in very dire terms. Taking the Fifth is exactly how lower mob functionaries like Lois Lerner solve this dilemma.
It’s not about Lois Lerner — it’s about the President. And it’s the duty of Congress, in our system of checks and balances, to get to the bottom of this executive-branch crime. If the Republicans in Congress fail to do this, it will be they who deserve contempt, more so than a relatively low-level apparatchick in the IRS who carried out orders and is being threatened if she divulges the truth.
Video of the Kelly file with Cleta Mitchell who learned that Lerner has been talking to the DOJ for the past 6 months.
HUH? Lois Lerner pleads the 5th to Congress, but she has been talking to DOJ investigators
GOP rips Lerner for talking to feds
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3130480/posts
Throw her in jail until she starts talking.
The House is too busy holding America in contempt...
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