After months of debate about the exact role of Internal Revenue Service employees and management in the tax-exempt scandal that rocked the agency, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has announced that it will engage in more debate.
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) announced that the Committee will discuss a resolution to approve a contempt order for Lois Lerner, the ex-Director of Exempt Organizations for the IRS. The order alleges contempt of Congress for Lerner’s refusal to answer questions about her role in the scandal. The resolution will be considered this Thursday, April 10.
You can read the draft contempt order here (downloads as a pdf). If you don’t wish to read through the whole thing, here’s what you need to know: it took the drafters 21 pages to get to “In short, Ms. Lerner has refused to provide testimony in response to the Committee’s duly issued subpoena.” Maybe not so short, guys.
For his part, Chairman Issa simply said that Lerner had “left the Committee with no alternative but to consider a contempt finding.”
Last month, the Committee released a report entitled “Lois Lerner’s Involvement in the IRS Targeting of Tax-Exempt Organizations.” The report was cobbled together from “e-mails, documents, and other testimony about her role in targeting and efforts to mislead investigators about improper conduct” since Lerner did not actually testify. Even without her testimony, the Committee believes they have some significant information on Lerner.
You can read the 142-page report here (downloads as a pdf). Yes, 142 pages.
I get that no one is a big Lerner fan at the moment. Her behavior has contributed to a lot of head-scratching beginning with the “did she or didn’t she?” plant accusations followed by her mind-blowing “I’m not good at math” excuse. At some point, however, neither IRS nor Issa’s Committee can blame a years-long scandal on one person. They are, however, apparently trying their darnedest.
And despite the cries that IRS has been slow-walking through the investigation, consider this: a resolution (!) concerning whether Lerner had waived her Fifth Amendment privilege on May 22, 2013, was approved on June 28, 2013. That was nearly 10 months ago. And we’re just now getting to debate another resolution. Interesting sense of timing, no?
As to the specifics of Lerner’s behavior, while the Committee feels pretty confident that they’re right on this one, not everyone is so sure. For every lawyer and legal scholar who says she did waive the privilege, you’ll find one who says she didn’t. That’s significant because Fifth Amendment rights are something that we take pretty seriously in this country and hopefully, the debate around the issue will center on the Constitution and not on politics.
If you’d like to see how the Committee considers these matters up close and personal, you’re in luck. The April 10 proceeding will be open to the public.
After April 10, the process gets a little tricky. The Committee would then send the matter to the full House of Representatives for a vote. Assuming that the contempt charge gets through the House (and that’s a huge assumption), the matter would then move to a grand jury. Civil actions against Ms. Lerner are possible, but the Committee is clearly gunning for criminal charges.
If Lerner is found guilty of contempt of Congress, it would likely be considered a misdemeanor under 2 U.S.C. §192 and subject to a fine between $100 and $100,000. She could also be subject to “imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.”
In other words, this is serious stuff. It’s also great political theatre which is no doubt why it’s happening (notice how we’re not talking about tax reform anymore?). Keep watching.
