What do democrats do for a living? They 'get away with it'. Thank you Hyacinth.
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Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, a central figure in the IRS targeting scandal, will not face criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify about the matter before a House oversight committee last year.
Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a letter this week to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that he would not bring a criminal case against Lerner, who headed the IRS’s exempt-organizations division when the agency inappropriately selected nonprofit advocacy groups for extra scrutiny based on their names and policy positions.
The former official acknowledged the agency’s mistakes at a legal conference in May 2013, days before the release of a scathing inspector general’s report about the issue.
[Related: Investigators probing for criminal activity with Lois Lerner’s missing e-mails]
The House approved a contempt resolution against Lerner in May 2014, after she invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify during a hearing with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The panel’s then-chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), insisted that she waived the right by asserting her innocence during an opening statement.
Machen disagreed with Issa, saying Lerner made only “general claims of innocence” and that the Constitution would provide her with “an absolute defense should she be prosecuted.”
Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor III, applauded the decision in a statement Wednesday. “Anyone who takes a serious and impartial look at this issue would conclude that Ms. Lerner did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights,” he said. “It is unfortunate that the majority party in the House put politics before a citizen’s constitutional rights. Ms. Lerner is pleased to have this matter resolved and looks forward to moving on with her life.”
Boehner’s office criticized the decision and called on the White House to appoint a special counsel to review the IRS’s actions.
“Once again, the Obama administration has tried to sweep IRS targeting of taxpayers for their political beliefs under the rug,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement on Wednesday. “But unaccountable federal bureaucrats using their power to attack the First Amendment strikes at the heart of our democracy, and the American people deserve the truth.”
