Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrell Issa has instructed to committee to subpoena IRS official Lori Lerner to appear again before his committee, saying that her opening statement waived her Fif the Amendment rights against self-incrimination. If you listen to it, he appears to be entirely correct:
You're not allowed to place a self-serving statement on the record and then claim the Fifth - you have to do it from the outset.
“When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”
“The precedents are clear that this is not something you can turn on and turn off,” he told POLITICO. “She made testimony after she was sworn in, asserted her innocence in a number of areas, even answered questions asserting that a document was true … So she gave partial testimony and then tried to revoke that.”
He said he was not expecting that.
“I understand from her counsel that there was a plan to assert her Fifth Amendment rights,” he continued. “She went ahead and made a statement, so counsel let her effectively under the precedent, waive — so we now have someone who no longer has that ability.”
That's why Issa had Lerner look at a transcript of the previous fairy tales she told the committee under oath and acknowledge that these were her statements.
In other words, her tits are in the wringer, to use a quaint Southernism I've always liked.
Issa doesn't want Lerner, or at least not Lerner alone. He wants to put the fear of G-d into her so that she'll see the wisdom of cutting a deal by selling out some of the other rats above her in the pecking order on the SS Obama.
All roads on this one lead to the White House.
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