WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Lois Lerner, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service official at the centre of a scandal about the targeting of conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny, plans to assert her constitutional right not to answer questions from a congressional committee today.
“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor, wrote on Monday to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that is holding hearings into the IRS scandal.
Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, has accused Lerner of providing “false or misleading” information to Congress last year about the IRS’ treatment of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Since the targeting came to light on May 10, three congressional committees and the Department of Justice have started investigations into the matter.
Lerner’s refusal to testify may only heighten interest over exactly which IRS workers in a Cincinnati, Ohio, office created partisan criteria, including search terms like “Tea Party” and “Patriots,” to select certain groups’ applications for special scrutiny.
Congressional investigators have said Lerner, the chief of the IRS tax-exempt unit, was the Washington-based official who learned in June 2011 that workers in a Cincinnati, Ohio, office were using such criteria and directed them changed.
Top IRS officials, however, have said they did not learn of the practice until nearly a year later.
In a May 14 letter to Lerner, Issa lists a briefing Lerner gave committee staff, a phone call between Lerner and staff, and two letters from Lerner to the committee. He said that Lerner told staff in early 2012 that criteria for tax-exempt applications had not been changed, and that the IRS’s follow-up with conservative organizations was not unusual.
