Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, will reportedly be invoking the 5th Amendment to avoid answering to Congress in the House committee investigating the agency’s targeting of conservatives.
Lerner set off public awareness of the IRS targeting of conservatives with her apology over said targeting when speaking at a conference held by the American Bar Association and responded to a question about the allegations by conservative groups.
It was later confirmed that Lerner had the question planted as to control the release of the information:
On May 9, I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks at the ABA Tax Section’s Exempt Organizations Committee Meeting, and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks," Roady said in the statement, obtained by TPM. "I agreed to do so, and she then gave me the question that I asked at the meeting the next day. We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call. She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.”
Lerner has also been caught up in other lies, one of which that the targeting was the result in a "surge" of tax exemption applications after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which was shown to be untrue with applications actually decreasing in 2010, when the IRS targeting first began.
Lerner's invoking the 5th Amendment is bound to create more controversy for the Obama administration that is already embroiled with multiple scandals.
In the words of Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor- Obama's "chickens are coming home to roost."
[Update] 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.
Full Wake up America coverage on the IRS scandal can be found here.