Jackie Speier: “I thank the ranking member for his leadership and for the opportunity to say a few words here on the floor. Mr. Speaker…”

“I thank the ranking member for his leadership and for the opportunity to say a few words here on the floor. Mr. Speaker, I am not here to defend Lois Lerner today, but I am here to defend the Constitution and every American's right to assert the Fifth Amendment so as not to incriminate themselves, and every single Member of this body should be as committed to doing the same thing. I am also here to defend the integrity of the committee and the rules of that committee. Lois Lerner pled the Fifth Amendment before our committee, and she has professed her innocence, pure and simple. Thirty independent legal experts have said that the proceedings were constitutionally deficient to bring a contempt proceeding. They were constitutionally deficient because the chair did not overrule Ms. Lerner's Fifth Amendment assertion and order her to answer the questions. And as long as that deficiency is there, there is no reason to move forward with that effort today. But let's move on to the bigger picture: Every single 501(c)(4) that was in the queue before the IRS could have self-certified; they didn't even need to be in that queue. So whether or not there was a list of progressive organizations and conservative organizations that they were using to somehow get to the thousands of applications that they had, they could have moved aside and self-certified. There have been 39 witnesses before this committee. There have been 530 pages of documents. There is no smoking gun.…”