The Justice Department will not pursue charges against a senior IRS official who has refused to testify before Congress about the agency’s practice of targeting conservative groups.
Lois Lerner was found in contempt of Congress after she invoked the Fifth Amendment and clammed up at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.
Lerner was a top IRS official overseeing tax exempt organizations during a span of years when the agency was found to be targeting conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status.
Justice officials said Lerner did not lose her right to invoke the Fifth Amendment when she provided the Oversight panel with a lengthy statement during a May 22, 2013 hearing. Republican lawmakers on the committee said Lerner lost her ability to remain silent when she read the statement. She refused to testify a second time, on March 5, 2014. The House voted to find her in contempt two months later, on May 7.
“Ms. Lerner did not waive her Fifth Amendment privilege by making an opening statement,” Ronald Machen, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in a seven-page letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Machen also told Boehner he will not bring the congressional contempt charge against Lerner to a grand jury.
The Justice Department decision effectively ends the GOP’s pursuit of information directly from Lerner, who they believe may hold the key to whether the IRS targeting was orchestrated merely by the agency or in coordination with Obama administration officials.
Lerner’s emails remain as a possible source of information for congressional investigators. More than 30,000 missing emails were recently recovered from Lerner’s work hard drive and investigators are combing through them.
