Katie Pavlich of Townhall was shocked today to learn that Darrell Issa got it wrong again. On Sunday, Darrell Issa got the conservative juice flowing by promising that Lois Lerner would be testifying on Wednesday, when her attorney had already said she would not. He reiterated that stance for the dim witted, to no avail.
Fox News published her outrage over Lois Lerner pleading the Fifth today in Issa’s ongoing IRS Fictional Drama:
Appearing in front of the House Oversight Committee Wednesday morning Lois Lerner, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS, refused to answer questions asked by lawmakers by pleading the Fifth Amendment. Earlier this week, Lerner’s attorney William Taylor confirmed to Committee members in an email that she would testify. Lerner was issued a subpoena last summer after admitting the IRS singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
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And another Fox News article has been trending on the Internet, bemoaning the “fact” that Lois Lerner wouldn’t testify after her agency improperly targeted conservatives (the truth is that the agency “targeted” both conservatives and liberals, and the only group denied status was a liberal one):
Lerner headed the IRS division that improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups. After publicly disclosing the targeting, Lerner refused to answer questions about it at a congressional hearing last year. Lerner then resigned from her post as the agency’s director of tax-exempt organizations.
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Issa warned that the committee may consider whether to hold her in contempt if she continues to stay silent. House Speaker John Boehner later made the same threat.
Last week, Lerner lawyer William Taylor made public a letter in which he told the committee that Lerner would testify on Capitol Hill only if compelled by a federal court or if given immunity for the testimony.
Fox News should not have been surprised, after all, no one but Darrell Issa ever suggested that Lois Lerner would do anything but plead the Fifth. Her own attorney said he had no idea where Issa got this idea that she would testify:
Lerner’s attorney, William W. Taylor, told Politico, “As of now, she intends to continue to assert her Fifth Amendment rights. I do not know why Issa said what he said.”
Jason Easley pointed out on Sunday, “Fox News plastered the story everywhere. This was the Republicans big break. They were going to revive the widely debunked IRS scandal. Lerner’s testimony was going to give the Republicans the smoking gun that they thought they could use to impeach President Obama. Fox News is scrambling to adjust the content of their story, but in typical Fox fashion, they haven’t changed the headline.”
So it looks like Darrell Issa misled the public again, and Fox News helped him do it. Now they are assisting in creating the narrative that she suddenly ducked out of testifying, when in fact, Issa knew all along that she wouldn’t be testifying.
So, someone here lied knowingly to the public. Any guesses? The potential culprits are: Darrell Issa, who has already been busted many times lying to the public in order to service his agenda of turning the IRS doing their job into a scandal. Fox News, who sued for the right to lie and call it news, so yeah. Anything goes over there. And Lois Lerner’s attorney, who does not have a record of being a serial liar with an agenda.
That said, I’d very much like to hear Lois Lerner testify, because I have my money on her conspiring with or being set up by Republicans to “admit” that the IRS was targeting conservatives at a public event. Since it turned out that there is no evidence whatsoever that this ever happened, I’d like to know why Lois Lerner thought she should blow the whistle on a non-reality at a public event, thereby opening the curtain on this non-scandal and setting the stage for a year plus of wasted taxpayer resources based on a big lie.
The Darrell Issa IRS witch hunt has cost taxpayers $14 million dollars and counting thus far.
Let this be a lesson to Lois Lerners everywhere. If you’re still confused, see the wheels of the Chris Christie bus. These people do not care about you, and you will be thrown under their bus in order to service a lie. So now Republicans are busy acting shocked that Lois Lerner won’t testify because she doesn’t want to incriminate herself.
In what way could she incriminate herself or someone/something else? Darrell Issa says he wants the truth, but then he refuses to allow any testimony that doesn’t fit his narrative, he redacted information from the beginning that would have proven Lois Lerner’s claim to be false, and he only allows the testimony that fits the Republican agenda to be televised.
Assisting Issa in this pathological farce is the Republican Party’s PR firm, Fox News.
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