On the recordMay 7, 2014
I regret that we have to be here today. If it is within my power, if at any time Lois Lerner comes forward to answer our questions, I am fully prepared to hear what she has to say, and at that point I would certainly ask that the criminal prosecution be dropped. It may not be within my power after today. For more than a year, our committee has sought to get her testimony. For nearly a year we have sought to get her to testify honestly. It was shocking to us on the committee, on the top of the dais, that a lawyer represented by a distinguished lawyer would play fast and loose with the Fifth Amendment assertion. It is a pretty straightforward process to assert your rights. In fact, her attorney may have planned all along to have a controversy. I will never know. What I do know is we asserted that she had waived because we were advised by House counsel, an independent organization, that she had. We continue to investigate, and only today, nearly a year after a subpoena was issued, the Treasury, the IRS, actually gave us another 12,000 emails. Like earlier emails, they indicate a deeply political individual, partisan in her views, who apparently was at the center of deciding that when the President, in this well, objected to Citizens United, that it meant they wanted us to fix it, and she was prepared to do it. That is for a different court to decide.…
