Top IRS Official Lois Lerner will Invoke 5th Amendment and Not Answer House Committee Questions on IRS Scandal

Oh this will go over well with “We the People” … Let’s see Obama’s faux outrage now.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Lois Lerner, the top IRS official and head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS responsible for reviewing non-profit organizations and the department at the heart of the IRS scandal, will plead the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer House committee questions on the grounds of self incrimination. Lerner was scheduled to answer questions from the House Oversight committee this Wednesday. Her attorney, William W. Taylor III, wrote that Ms. Lerner had committed no crime or made any misrepresentations, but because the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, “under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course.”

So what does she have to hide? This scandal just got even more real.  The House committee was to ask Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year? Taylor, a criminal defense attorney for Learner asked that since Lerner is not going to answer questions, can she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” WHO CARES WHAT IT DOES TO HER! With the crap that the IRS did to law-abiding Americans whose only crime was being conservative under her watch, I agree with the Jawa Report, “Boo frickin hoo, make her plead the Fifth for all to see”. Honesty, who really thinks that Holder and the DOJ is going to take this investigation seriously? About as serious as they did the New Black Panther Party and voter intimidation. Congress and Daryl Issa best make her march her happy butt into the hearing room and have all the world to see the head of the very department responsible for the IRS scandal of targeting conservative and Tea Party groups plead the 5th.

A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening — or why she didn’t disclose it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III. Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista). The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

UPDATE I: From Weasel Zippers, Daryl Issa does not disappoint … Issa Issues Subpoena Anyway to force her to plead the 5th in public for all of America to see. More great PR for Barack Obama, Democrats and the IRS.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who headed the tax-exempt division when the targeting of tea-party groups took place, plans to invoke her Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions before Congress on Wednesday.

But Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House oversight committee where Lerner was to appear, has issued a subpoena to Lerner anyway.

The subpoena was delivered after the committee received the letter from Lerner’s attorney, a committee aide said.