Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to hold Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress in a 231-187 vote for refusing to answer questions about the IRS targeting of conservative groups.
Shortly after the news broke, Lerner’s attorney, William W. Taylor, III, made an inexplicable statement:
“Today’s vote has nothing to do with the facts or the law. Its only purpose is to keep the baseless IRS ‘conspiracy’ alive through the mid-term elections.
He continued,
Ms. Lerner has not committed contempt of Congress. She did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights by proclaiming her innocence. We provided our legal analysis to the Committee and the House, and we received no response. It is unfortunate that the majority party in the House has put politics before a citizen’s constitutional rights.”
Lois Lerner has been at the center of the ongoing IRS scandal ever since she made her staged apology almost a year ago.
About two weeks later, Taylor wrote a letter to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, saying that Lerner should not be forced to testify at all, as a hearing will “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” Informing Issa that Lerner would be pleading the Fifth, Taylor wrote,
“She [Lerner] has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course.”
In mid-April, A Washington Times poll revealed that a whopping 94 percent of readers believe that the Department of Justice should “pursue criminal charges” against the former head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS.
