House Holds Lois Lerner in Contempt

From Fox News.

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

The House voted 231-187 for a resolution holding Lerner in contempt. All the Republicans voted yes, along with six Democrats.

Lerner’s case will now be sent to the Justice Department, which then must decide whether to essentially prosecute Lerner in the case.

Minutes after the Lerner vote, the House passed a resolution asking the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel to probe the IRS by a vote of 250-168.

House Speaker John Boehner issued a statement following the vote saying, “It’s time for Lois Lerner to account for her actions, and if she won’t then the full force of the law should be brought to bear.”

You mean just like when you held Holder in contempt for his lies about Fast and Furious? Nothing was done in the way of real punishment. Holder and Obama have yet to be held accountable for the crime. He still thinks it’s a fucking joke.

……House GOP leaders have said Lerner’s testimony is important to fully investigate the scandal, in which IRS agents singled out Tea Party nonprofit applications for extra scrutiny.

“Thorough investigations by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee as well as the Ways and Means Committee have revealed findings that indicate that Ms. Lerner played a central role in the illegal targeting of conservative groups by the IRS,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said in a memo last month.

Last May, Lerner refused to answer questions at a hearing about IRS agents singling out Tea Party applications. She again refused to answer questions in March, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Lerner and the rest of the IRS hierarchy stonewalled and refused to come clean.

……Following Wednesday night’s vote, the matter now goes to Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Federal law says Machen has a “duty” to bring the matter before a grand jury. But a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said it was unclear whether the duty is mandatory or discretionary. Machen was appointed to his job by Barack Obama.

“We will carefully review the report from the speaker of the House and take whatever action is appropriate,” Machen’s office said in a statement.

Which means Obama’s tool in the DOJ won’t do a damned thing.

Under Obama’s direction, the IRS didn’t have any trouble defining his preference of sympathetic leftwing groups over Tea Party/GOP organizations. Any request from groups with “patriot”, Tea Party”, or “conservative” in their name was automatically placed at the bottom of the pile or discarded entirely.  IRS employees testified to that fact, and much more.

According to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials.

Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.  More emails uncover Lerner’s role in the conspiracy, including proof that she gave confidential taxpayer information to the FEC, violating federal law.  She was also caught on tape, discussing the pressure being put on the IRS to do something about the money being spent by conservatives on the election as a result of Citizens United.  Guess where the pressure came from.

IRS employees in Cincinnati were warned not to talk to the press “or risk losing our jobs.”

J. Christian Adams, the former DOJ attorney who blew the whistle on Holder’s refusal to prosecute the Black Panthers for voter intimidation, was himself targeted by the IRS for critical articles he published in Pajamas Media.

Obama met with top IRS official William Wilkins before the targeting began.  As a matter of fact, a Cincinnati IRS employee testified that it was quite clear the orders came from D.C.

The IRS engaged in the deliberate suppression, harassment, and intimidation of patriotic and conservative groups, and those who focus on the Constitution and criticize government spending.

Documents reveal that the IRS targeted specific groups by name.

Lerner also fed information about the watchdog group True the Vote to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), the top Democrat on the oversight committee.  True the Vote was one of the organizations Lerner targeted for discrimination.

The IRS thuggery is just one crime on the Obama regime’s rap sheet. The egregious suppression of the First Amendment rights of Tea Party and conservative groups  is well documented.

The trouble is, even if Boehner and the rest of the GOP in Congress have the balls to slam Lerner with every criminal charge applicable, Obama’s corrupt DOJ will never comply.   Don’t expect the same Department of ‘Justice’ that has committed its own fair share of crimes to prosecute an IRS malfeasant.