Eugene Delgaudio:Congress Has No Choice, IRS Official Lois Lerner Should be Impeached And Removed For Contempt of Congress

June 7, 2013

Eugene Delgaudio, president of Public Advocate says, "Congress must impeach Lois Lerner who has pleaded the fifth amendment immediately for showing contempt of Congress. This would solve many problems and send a strong signal. A majority vote in Congress can come at any time and would refer it to the Senate. The Senate must have a two thirds vote but ultimately the penalty is simply "removal from office".

IMMEDIATE REMOVAL IS REQUIRED

Delgaudio said "Clearly, Lerner had no other viable choice to make if she wanted to mitigate the political damage done to herself and those around her. Saying almost anything else would either have been lying to Congress, or directly incriminating both herself and her cohorts. That can take time, but her immediate removal is required."

Eliana Johnson of National Review explains in "No wonder Lois Lerner took the Fifth" that Lerner has catergorically obstructed Congress for years in the public record.

Lerner, the IRS official sent on paid leave last Thursday after refusing to resign, would have had a tough time testifying before Congress about the agency's discrimination against tea-party groups without incriminating herself in the process, an examination of her conflicting representations reveals.

Republican lawmakers, hearing complaints about the lengthy, onerous, and intrusive lists of questions sent to their constituents, have for two years been working to uncover the scandal occurring at the nation's tax-collection agency. Lerner was a major impediment to their attempted investigation.

Her misdeeds go beyond a failure to inform Congress of the IRS's targeting of conservative organizations, a lapse of which other agency officials, including acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller and former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, are also accused. According to documents accessible on the website of the House Oversight Committee, Lerner also misled that body in its investigation; sidestepped lawmakers' inquiries; and actively defended the intrusive questions that have been widely denounced by the inspector general, the current and former IRS commissioners, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

If the Treasury Department inspector general's report published in mid May is to be believed, Lerner's communications with the House Oversight Committee have been willfully dishonest. And providing the United States government with false or misleading information carries criminal liability.