Carney: White House, IRS strategized how to tell public

[Geee]

The Hill:

Officials in the White House discussed how and when the Internal Revenue Service would tell the public that the agency had targeted political groups, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.

Carney said that Mark Childress, the White House deputy chief of staff, twice spoke with Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw the agency's tax-exempt organization, about the strategy for revealing conservative targeting.

Childress and Lerner discussed the possibility that either Lerner would reveal that an inspector general's investigation had found misconduct in a speech or that then-acting IRS director Steve Miller could receive questions about the IG investigation in congressional testimony.

According to Carney, the pair discussed “what [Miller] would say” if asked about the issue.

 

 

The press secretary went on to characterize the discussion “as just part of trying to find out when and under what circumstances this information would be released, made public, and what those findings would be.”

But Carney insisted that the White House had no knowledge of the agency's eventual plan — to plant a question at an ABA conference for Lerner earlier this month.

[Rheo]

Placing this here, too.

 

Top IRS official will invoke Fifth Amendment

 

WASHINGTON A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agencys improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

 

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, wont answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening or why she didnt reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.

 

Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee Wednesday.

 

She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course, said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif. The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

 

Taylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm of Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided false or misleading information to the committee four times last year.

 

Since Lerner wont answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her. There was no immediate word whether the committee will grant her request.

[Chickadee]

This is too much. Taking the 5th? Wants to be excused from appearing because it might embarrass or burden her? WHAT THE HELL? // Just a bunch of wimps: They do whatever they want and then when caught, they can't take any responsibility for their actions. Children . . . just acting like children--from the president on down. It is embarrassing to have so many incompetent people trying to run this great country.