Nothing To Hear
But Chairweasel Issa is pushing ahead.
CBS reports that Top IRS official to invoke 5th Amendment at congressional testimony
Lois Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt organizations division of the IRS, will invoke the Fifth Amendment in testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, CBS News has confirmed.
Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor, wrote in a letter to House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that Lerner “has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation” but, he says, “under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course.”
When Zero reacted he told the Department of Justice to check for criminal activity in the IRS case. So Ms Lerner, a career civil servant, got lawyered up, and the first words out of any lawyer’s mouth are “Don’t say anything to anyone about this case.”
Ms Lerner has no idea whether she will be charged with anything, but she doesn’t trust the system, so she is protecting her own interests and pension.
Issa still issued the subpoena to force her to say she won’t say anything in public, so he can grand stand.
This is just for CBS – Note they weren’t targeting conservative groups, they were targeting political groups. Two-thirds of the groups pulled for extra scrutiny were not identifiably ‘conservative’. Stop repeating Republican talking points.
4 comments
She likely would be found in contempt of Congress if she gave the only appropriate answer to some of the stupid questions Issa has been asking. Rightfully so, because anybody who doesn’t have contempt for Issa’s idiotic crusade is dumber than a gerbil. So keeping her mouth shut is the right thing to do, though the statement she gave invoking her 5th Amendment rights, Issa claims actually revoked her 5th Amendment rights and thus she was in contempt of Congress for reading that statement. She rolled her eyes at that one. As did most of Issa’s Republican comrades on the committee for that matter, who may be right-wing ideologues but aren’t nearly as dumb as Issa is (Issa makes the aforementioned gerbil look like Einstein, IMHO).
I doubt she has a pension. Civil servants for the Federal Government haven’t had pensions since Ronald Reagan destroyed the civil service pension system in the mid 80’s and forced them all into Social Security, thereby enabling the revolving door (before, people wouldn’t leave government service to go to private enterprise because they’d lose their pension, today, it’s “what pension?”). On the other hand, she likely isn’t interested in the Club Fed retirement plan either…
She has been around a long time, so a pension is possible, but not the original one that kept people honest in Federal Civil Service.
She obviously isn’t political, so she doesn’t know how to answer political questioning. She has slipped up, as far as the Republicans are concerned, in previous testimony, so she doesn’t have much choice but remain silent.
There doesn’t seem to be much being said about medical equipment suppliers standing on their 5th amendment rights in the Senate Medicare fraud hearings, which only points up the hypocrisy of the GOP and the media.
Most GOP voters would frame a contempt of Congress citation and put it over their mantlepiece, and I agree with that sentiment.
And now Zero, being the brave and ballsy person that he is, has put Ms. Lerner on administrative leave for having the balls to take the 5th. Marshmallows. Just sayin’. No clangin’ from Zero’s front when he walks, just the slight shush-shush-shush of marshmallows rubbin’ against each other. Bah humbug.
He made the referral to the Department of Justice, what did he think was going to happen? The union is going to tell its members to keep quiet until they know what is going on.
Someone is going to have to tell people what law has been broken, before they know if they have possibly broken it. This is a fishing expedition, not an investigation.