A year later, the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform voted to proceed with contempt charges against Lerner, resulting in the House vote.
If she had been charged and convicted, Lerner could have face jail time and a fine of up to $100,000.
Attorney’s Office hasn’t pursued criminal contempt charges since 1983 when the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Anne Gorsuch Buford, refused to turn over documents which had been requested by Congress.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, cried foul, asserting that Lerner’s statement was the equivalent of a waiver of her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Lerner was called back and again refused to testify .
That streak continued when U.S. Attorney Donald C. Machen , Jr., citing the Constitution, advised the Speaker of the House:
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
She was charged with lying to Congressional investigators about her involvement in the IRS targeting of Conservative tax-exempt groups. This isn’t just a meaningless accusation… Lois Lerner’s actions had consequences and because of her, Conservative groups were not allowed to participate in the 2012 election! And yet even with all this evidence, the House of Representatives let her walk away.
The reason it is so important to safeguard evidence and data during an investigation is because if that data is destroyed or goes missing, guilt becomes inferred. Regardless of whether Lois Lerner was responsible for targeting these Conservative groups (she definitely was), the fact that the IRS mysteriously lost the emails and then destroyed the physical evidence provides for inferred guilt!
Lerner was actively collaborating with Holder’s DOJ to target Conservative groups in the first place! If you want to know why all of these scandals get dragged on for years without any justice, it is because the House of Representatives is too cowardly to act on its own and chooses to turn cases over to the most corrupt and partisan Attorney General in our nation’s history!
In fact, ten days after the IRS was officially put on notice that it was under investigation, Lois Lerner’s computer mysteriously “crashed.” Next, the computers of six other targeting officials also “crashed.” These “crashes” allegedly wiped out Ms. Lerner’s email archive, something that was extremely convenient for an agency just notified it was under investigation.
The IRS had 10 days to back up Ms. Lerner’s files after being notified the agency was under investigation. The law requires that the files be stored on a separate hard drive and for relevant emails to be printed out in hard copies.
In legal terms, this is known as the “spoliation of evidence,” which describes an intentional or negligent withholding, hiding, alteration or destruction of evidence that is relevant to a legal proceeding. Regardless of the cause of the computer crash, the fact that the IRS did not make a good faith effort to follow protocol and secure the data means that it is reasonable to infer “consciousness of guilt.”
Congress has EVERYTHING it needs to throw Lois Lerner in prison! Yet, John Boehner and the other RINOs are clinging to the foolish notion that the Obama administration will actually prosecute one of its own! Eric Holder will never prosecute Lois Lerner because he knows that she will bring the entire administration down with her… The only path to justice is for Congress to arrest Lois Lerner on its own!
Darrell Issa , R-California and the former House Oversight Committee chairman, said this decision to not prosecute Lerner or others gives the impression that “government officials are above the law,” CNN reported. He said it was wrong to give Lerner a free pass. Rep. Paul Ryan has said his committee will continue to investigate. Other Republicans want a special counsel to be assigned to the case, Fox News reported. Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party, said the decision is a miscarriage of justice. Here is just one reaction from the many conservatives upset by the decision:
At an American Bar Association meeting in May 2013, Lerner answered a planted question, apologizing for the IRS taking “absolutely inappropriate” actions in scrutinizing Tea Party members extra closely, ABC News reported. She said the scrutiny wasn’t centrally planned, but only came from the Cincinnati office.
Her hard drive crashed, causing some of her emails to be lost, the IRS responded. Later, the IRS Inspector General said that backup tapes might have the missing emails. In June 2015, it was revealed that 424 backup tapes of her emails had been erased back in March 2014, after they had been subpoenaed, The Washington Post reported. IRS Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus said that he couldn’t find any evidence that the erasures were done to conceal information or destroy evidence. The IRS later said the emails were erased because of a “breakdown of communication ,” ABC News reported.
Lois Lerner has had trouble finding work since she resigned from the IRS . (Getty)
After two years of investigations, contempt of Congress filings and questions regarding deleted evidence, the Justice Department decided it won’t file any charges against Lois Lerner or any other officials, CNN reported. “Substantial evidence of mismanagement” was found, the department stated, but this was not politically motivated and mismanagement is not a crime. Even though the mismanagement disproportionately affected conservative groups, no evidence of criminal activity was found.
The agency said it found “substantial evidence of mismanagement,” but mismanagement is not a crime. Just a few days later, House Republicans announced that they were starting impeachment proceedings against John Koskinen, Commissioner of the IRS, over the same scandal. 1.
He said it was wrong to give Lerner a free pass. Rep. Paul Ryan has said his committee will continue to investigate. Other Republicans want a special counsel to be assigned to the case, Fox News reported. Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party, said the decision is a miscarriage of justice.
Kadzik claims that no IRS employee, including some witnesses who self-identified as supposedly “politically conservative,” reported any allegation that the mishandling of these conservative organizations was “motivated by political bias, discriminatory intent , or corruption.” The explanation Kadzik provides for organizations being targeted that were clearly conservative in their political outlook was a desire by IRS employees “to treat similar applications consistently and avoid making incorrect decisions.” If that is so, then why weren’t applications from liberal advocacy organizations, whose only difference was their political outlook, not their basic tax or organizational structure, also targeted to be “consistent?”
Indeed, the letter admits that the IRS “mishandled the processing of tax-exempt applications in a manner that disproportionately impacted applicants affiliated with the Tea Party and similar groups, leaving the appearance the IRS’s conduct was motivated by political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motive.” However, according to Kadzik, “ineffective” or “poor management is not a crime.”
Kadzik may be correct in his analysis of the applicable law. But in his recitation of the many witnesses investigators interviewed and all of the IRS documents they reviewed, Kadzik never really gives a credible explanation of why the IRS developed the criteria it used to identify the organizations targeted for increased scrutiny. As originally reported by the Treasury Department’s inspector general, and as Kadzik admits in his letter, those criteria were clearly based on the specific politics of conservative groups, particularly Tea Party organizations, who used words like “Patriots” in their applications.
Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that decided whether to grant tax-exempt status to groups, listens at the start of a House Oversight Committee hearing to investigate the extra scrutiny the IRS gave to Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status . Lerner later invoked her constitutional right to not answer questions and was dismissed by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. (AP Photo)
Kadzik says they found no evidence that Lerner’s personal political views, which he describes in the personal emails the FBI examined, influenced her behavior. In fact, he compliments her, saying she tried to stop what was happening as soon as she “became fully aware of” it.
Moreover, the Justice Department refused to enforce the contempt citation issued against Lois Lerner by the House for refusing to answer those questions. As previously explained, Lerner waived her ability to assert her Fifth Amendment right when she gave an extensive statement to the Justice Department. In this letter, Kadzik admits that Lerner voluntarily submitted to a 12-hour interview without any immunity agreement or promise of non-prosecution. Therefore, the decision by the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia this past March, when he refused to present the contempt citation to a federal grand jury was legally and factually wrong. But there is no mention of this in Kadzik’s letter.
Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform— as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative.
On May 10, 2013, in advance of a public release of the audit findings, Lerner answered a planted question at a meeting of the American Bar Association (ABA) by stating that the IRS was "apologetic" for what she termed "absolutely inappropriate" actions. Lerner said that the extra scrutiny had not been centrally planned and had been done by low-level "front-line people" in the Cincinnati office. The Washington Post subsequently reported that documents showed that "IR…
Lerner graduated from Northeastern University. She earned her J.D. from the Western New England College of Law.
After graduating from law school, Lerner became a staff attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division.
Lerner then joined the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) general counsel's office as an assistant general counsel in 1981. She spent twenty years at the FEC, being appointed Associate General Counsel for Enforcement (the head of the FEC's Enforcement Division) in 1986. Lerner w…
Lerner joined the Internal Revenue Service in 2001, as Director of Rulings and Agreements in the Exempt Organizations function of TEGE.
In January 2006, she was appointed Director Exempt Organizations. In that capacity, Lerner led an organization of 900 IRS tax law enforcement officials responsible for a broad range of compliance activities, including examining the operational and financial activities of exempt organizations, p…
Lerner is a past president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL).
Lerner has stated she is "not a political person" but is a registered Democrat and has voted for candidates from both parties.
• Finding Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress (H.Res. 574; 113th Congress)