Lois Lerner, a Top IRS Official, to Plead Fifth-Amendment Right

The Internal Revenue Service official who ignited the political outcry over scrutiny applied to conservative groups seeking tax exemption is expected to remain silent during a Congressional hearing Wednesday at which she was expected to take questions from elected officials irate with her handling of the scandal.

Lois Lerner, director of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, had been invited to testify at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to answer questions on why she did not inform Congress earlier about the scrutiny applied to conservative groups.

“The Committee has been contacted by Ms. Lerner’s lawyer who stated that his client intended to invoke her fifth-amendment right and refuse to answer questions,” Ali Ahmad, a spokesman for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in an e-mail statement. “Ms. Lerner remains under subpoena from chairman [Darrell] Issa [Republican of California] to appear at tomorrow’s hearing—the committee has a Constitutional obligation to conduct oversight. Chairman Issa remains hopeful that she will ultimately decide to testify tomorrow about her knowledge of outrageous IRS targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.

“The committee will defer to Ms. Lerner and her attorney about releasing their correspondence,” he added.

Ms. Lerner’s lawyer, William Taylor, did not return a call seeking comment.

Question Was Planted

The furor surrounding Ms. Lerner’s involvement in the IRS scandal began when she revealed at an American Bar Association tax conference in Washington that the IRS was aware that groups with “Tea Party” and “patriots” in their names had been singled out for extra scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status.

The revelation came at a time when the Treasury Department’s inspector general was set to release an audit of the practice. It also came two days after she provided no information about the audit when asked at a Congressional hearing (listen to her testimony starting at minute 5:15 on the video) for an update on accusations that conservative groups were being singled out.

Many political and nonprofit officials were perplexed as to why Ms. Lerner would make such a bombshell admission and apology at a tax conference in response to a seemingly random audience question.

Turns out the question was not random.

In fact, it was planted by Ms. Lerner and her boss, the outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller.

The lawyer who asked it, Celia Roady, issued a statement saying that Ms. Lerner had given her the question to ask the night before the conference.

“On May 9, I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks at the ABA Tax Section’s Exempt Organizations Committee Meeting and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks,” Ms. Roady’s statement said. “I agreed to do so, and she then gave me the question that I asked at the meeting the next day. We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call. She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.”

‘Wholly Unacceptable’

Mr. Miller said on Tuesday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing that he had worked with Ms. Lerner to devise the planted question. He made a similar statement last week when he appeared at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing with Russell George, the inspector general whose recent audit found the IRS had used inappropriate criteria to single out conservative groups applying for exemption as 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(3) organizations.

Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the Ways and Means committee’s senior Democrat, called for Ms. Lerner to step down for saying nothing when she appeared before a May 8 oversight subcommittee hearing.

“She failed to disclose what she knew to this committee, choosing instead to do so at an ABA conference two days later,” he said. “This is wholly unacceptable, and one of the reasons we believe Ms. Lerner should be relieved of her duties.”

Representatives and senators last week and on Tuesday expressed similar frustration with Mr. Miller for not previously informing Congress of the findings from the impending audit.

Ms. Lerner has not commented since May 11 on the scandal. She canceled her appearance to deliver the May 18 commencement speech at Western New England University School of Law. Ms. Lerner graduated from the school in 1978.

The school’s Perspectives alumni magazine featured a smiling Ms. Lerner on its Spring 2008 cover, saying that she had attained “rock-star status” in the federal government. The headline reads: “Lois Lerner ’78 Rocks the IRS.”