Lois Lerner, the senior Internal Revenue Service figure at the center of the firestorm over the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, insisted in an interview published Monday that she “didn’t do anything wrong.”
Lerner, who conservatives contend orchestrated the IRS’ extra scrutiny of Tea Party-aligned organizations, broke a year and a half of media silence to defend her reputation.
“Regardless of whatever else happens, I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and am not sorry for anything I did,” Lerner told Politico.
The former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations came under fire when she pleaded the fifth during congressional hearings looking into the agency’s troubles. Republicans have pointed to a trail of emails, which they say prove that Lerner repeatedly targeted conservative groups.
In the months since those combative hearings on Capitol Hill, Lerner has stayed quiet, hoping to ride out the storm and resurrect her battered public image.
She accused her conservative critics of leveling false attacks against her to score political points.
“I declined to talk, and once I declined to talk, they could say anything they wanted, and they knew I couldn’t say anything back,” Lerner insisted.
The IRS official claimed that her political beliefs did not influence her actions and scoffed at charges that she participated in a cover-up to hide the agency’s actions — two years’ worth of her emails disappeared after an apparent computer crash.
“How would I know two years ahead of time that it would be important for me to destroy emails, and if I did know that, why wouldn’t I have destroyed the other ones they keep releasing?” she asked.
Lerner’s interview, however, will likely only intensify calls by Republicans for her to publicly detail her work at the agency.
