House Panel finds IRS Official waived Ffth Amendment Right..

[George Gervin's Afro]

House panel finds IRS official waived Fifth Amendment right, can be forced to testify in targeting probe

FoxNews.com

May 22, 2013: Long-time IRS official Lois Lerner speaks at the House Oversight Committee hearing investigating the extra scrutiny the IRS gave to conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status. Lerner told the committee she did nothing wrong and then invoked her constitutional right to not answer questions from lawmakers. (AP)

A House Republican-led committee approved a resolution Friday declaring that high-ranking IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by delivering a statement before the committee in May.

Lerner used to oversee the IRS division that targeted groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. At a May 22 hearing, she invoked her right not to answer lawmakers' questions after declaring in an opening statement that she had done nothing wrong.

Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines Friday morning, with 22 Republicans saying she waived the Fifth and 17 Democrats arguing she did not. Lerner remains under subpoena, and the committee believes it could bring the long-time IRS official back and compel her to testify.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the committee, said at the opening of Friday's meeting that "I believe Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment privileges."

"She did so when she delivered an opening statement," Issa said.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., reiterated Issa's argument, delivering a fiery speech about Lerner's attempt to protect herself under the Fifth.

Gowdy said Lerner made nine separate assertions, with the advice of counsel, and then authenticated a document.

"That's not how the Fifth Amendment works," Gowdy said. "You're not allowed to just say your side of the story ... She could have sat there and said nothing."

Democrats, meanwhile, like Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., challenged Gowdy's argument, calling attempts to block Lerner's invoking of the Fifth Amendment "an egregious abuse of power that tramples the Constitution and serves no valid legislative purpose."

Connolly said that "the majority has brought us to a point where we risk allowing this committee to be transformed into a Star Chamber proceeding that establishes future Legislative Branch precedent where any chairman -- whether a Democrat or a Republican -- is free to compel an American invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination to physically appear before the Committee for no other reason than to be pilloried, delayed, embarrassed, and burdened into unknowingly, unintentionally, and ironically, forfeiting the very sacred constitutional right that is intended to protect every American against forced self-incrimination by the government."

"You may make a small-term political gain," Connolly warned Republicans, but "at a long-term political cost."

The committee is scheduled to vote Friday on whether Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions by making an opening statement.

Legal scholars have differed in their views on the committee's case against Lerner, who the IRS has placed on administrative leave.

Lerner's lawyer, William Taylor, said he disagreed with the committee's claim.

"There was nothing voluntary about her statement," he said in a statement. "She had informed (the) committee that she would invoke and requested to be excused and (the) committee ordered her to appear and invoke her rights in public.

"It went so far as to serve a subpoena on her to assure that she would be compelled to attend, unlike other witnesses who appeared voluntarily. In any event, protesting your innocence and invoking the right not to answer questions, which is what she did, is not a waiver."



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/28/republican-led-house-panel-challenges-irs-worker-who-took-fifth-amendment/#ixzz2XWuuFvJC

Well if Issa says so..lol

[boutons_deux]

"extra scrutiny the IRS gave to conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status"

You Lie

IRS also gave "extra scrutiny" to non-tea-bagger applicants which didn't make up even 50% of all applicants.

[boutons_deux]

IRS Scandal Becomes Republican Party's ZombieLike a “zeke” in “World War Z” that just won’t die, the IRS scandal lives another day (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/irs-scandal-letter-sandy-levin/66651/). We declared it dead (http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/darrell_issas_credibility_is_over/) on Monday — based on the information we had at the time — after we learned that the IRS had targeted progressive and Occupy groups in addition to Tea Party ones.

But today, Treasury Department Inspector General Russell George explained in a letter (http://www.scribd.com/embeds/150374099/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&show_recommendations=true) to lawmakers that while some liberal groups got extra scrutiny, they weren’t systematically targeted like conservative ones were. “We found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘Progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention,” the IG wrote. While 100 percent of applications for groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot” or “9/12″ in their name were processed as “potential political cases,” just 30 percent of progressive ones were.


So were Republicans right all along? Conservatives blogs certainly think so, writing that the report “obliterat[es] (http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/06/27/irs-inspector-general-liberal-groups-werent-targeted-like-conservatives-n1629048) the Left’s shiny, new, and perfidious talking point.” A spokeswoman for the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS, said: “The evidence shows us that conservative groups were not only flagged, but targeted and abused (http://washingtonexaminer.com/treasury-irs-targeted-292-tea-party-groups-just-6-progressive-groups/article/2532456) by the IRS.”

Maybe, but this ignores the reality that progressive groups still were targeted along with conservative ones (the only group actually denied tax-exempt status was a progressive one (http://www.salon.com/2013/05/15/meet_the_group_the_irs_actually_revoked_democrats/)), that some Tea Party groups deserved the extra scrutiny, and that the focus on conservative groups makes some sense in a historical context.

Indeed, new data from today’s letter gets at a point that liberals have been making from the very beginning of this controversy. The IRS’s job is to ensure that people don’t exploit tax-exempt status to do political work, but it’s never had a formal process of how to do that, so bureaucrats came up with the kludgey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge) (and improper) workaround of targeting groups by their names.

During the time in question, May 2010 through May 2012, the IRS was flooded with applications for new conservative groups, thanks to the explosion of the Tea Party movement and the Citizens United decision. So it made some sense for the IRS screeners looking for political groups to start with them. If Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money was, then IRS screeners went after Tea Party groups because that’s where the new applications were.

And thank to the IG’s letter today, we now have hard numbers to show just how big that flood was. Six groups with “progressive” in their name were added to a list of applications to be given extra scrutiny, while another 14 “progressive” tax-exempt applications filed during the time period in question were not added to the list. That makes for a grand total of 20 “progressive” groups. Meanwhile, there were 96 groups with “Tea Party,” “9/12″ or “Patriots” in their name.

And the IG’s letter says that “progressive” was placed on a “historical” list of terms to “be on the lookout” for — perhaps from a time when progressives were the ones flooding IRS offices with new applications.

Calling the targeting abusive is also fallacious, since, as Joan Walsh wrote, many of these groups were pretty blatantly political (http://www.salon.com/2013/05/28/what_the_irs_did_right/). And we still don’t have information on “Occupy” groups, which were also on the list and are perhaps a more accurate analog to “Tea Party” than “progressive.”


All that said, Republicans still managed to achieve their prime goal today: revive the scandal for another day, even if its life force appears to be waning.


http://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/irs_scandal_is_republicans_zombie/

Like Benghazi, Repugs pimping and pushing nothing but lies.

[scott]

Can any Constitutional Scholars, amateur or otherwise, chime in as to whether a person can EVER waive their 5th Amendment right?


"That's not how the Fifth Amendment works," Gowdy said. "You're not allowed to just say your side of the story ...

I find this especially troubling, since the 5th Amendment doesn't state "you have the right to not incriminate yourself, but only if you shut the hell up."

Furthermore, I'm not sure how the 5th applies to this at all, since it has to do with criminal cases, not congressional hearings.

[boutons_deux]

Can any Constitutional Scholars, amateur or otherwise, chime in as to whether a person can EVER waive their 5th Amendment right?



I find this especially troubling, since the 5th Amendment doesn't state "you have the right to not incriminate yourself, but only if you shut the hell up."

so why have mafia, etc, pleaded 5th in Congressional hearings?


Furthermore, I'm not sure how the 5th applies to this at all, since it has to do with criminal cases, not congressional hearings.

Haven't we heard plenty of mafia, etc plead the 5th in Congressional HEARINGS?

[RandomGuy]

Can any Constitutional Scholars, amateur or otherwise, chime in as to whether a person can EVER waive their 5th Amendment right?



I find this especially troubling, since the 5th Amendment doesn't state "you have the right to not incriminate yourself, but only if you shut the hell up."

Furthermore, I'm not sure how the 5th applies to this at all, since it has to do with criminal cases, not congressional hearings.

We actually did debate this at one point.

If memory serves: turns out, yes that *can* be the case, but it is unclear whether that might apply to her congressional testimony.