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Lois Lerner Could Go To Jail

Mike

Well-known member
Lois Lerner could go to jail in contempt clash
The Washington Examiner | March 27, 2014 | editorial board

This may come as a shock to Lois Lerner, but the House of Representatives has the authority to jail her unless she changes her mind about refusing to answer questions about her role in the IRS scandal. Essentially, what is required for that to happen is for a House majority to vote for a motion holding her in contempt and House Speaker John Boehner to then direct the House sergeant at arms to arrest and confine her. Under the Constitution, the House can do that under its “inherent contempt” authority, which was initially exercised in 1795 during the First Congress and on multiple occasions thereafter. Lerner could be held until January 2015 when a new Congress is seated, which could issue another subpoena and throw her in the clink again if she still balks at testifying.

According to a 2012 Congressional Research Service report, inherent contempt has the unique advantage that it doesn’t require “the cooperation or assistance of either the executive or judicial branches. The House or Senate can, on its own, conduct summary proceedings and cite the offender for contempt.” The prospect of an eight or nine month stretch in the congressional slammer might have a sobering effect on Lerner. On the other hand, neither the House nor the Senate has used this authority since 1935, according to the CRS report, because the process can be “unseemly” and time-consuming.

The prospect of an eight or nine month stretch in the congressional slammer might have a sobering effect on Lerner.

Plus, Lerner may be on solid ground in thinking Boehner and other House Republicans don't have the political spine to jail her. But just as the South's “massive resistance” in the 1950s to racial integration was doomed to fail because it could not be sustained over time, the Obama administration's comprehensive refusal since November 2010 to cooperate with legitimate congressional oversight by House committees may be sowing seeds of frustration that eventually undercut Lerner's calculation of how long she can keep silent. Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jim Jordan, who heads that panel's oversight subcommittee, are patient individuals but perhaps not that patient.

Something else is also clear: House leaders have effectively laid the legal predicate for a contempt vote. Earlier this week, the Office of General Counsel for the House delivered its opinion that Issa's committee has satisfied all legal requirements in its dealings with Lerner and her Fifth Amendment claim, so “there is no constitutional impediment to … the committee approving a resolution recommending that the full House hold Ms. Lerner in contempt of Congress …”

Contempt citations aren't common but neither are they a thing of the past. Among those cited for contempt just since 1980 are such notables as Attorney General Eric Holder, then-White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and then-White House General Counsel Harriet Miers, then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford and then-EPA Assistant Administrator Rita Lavelle.
 

Tam

Well-known member
Lerner may be on solid ground in thinking Boehner and other House Republicans don't have the political spine to jail her

You THINK :?

It would shock me is Boehner had the spine to actually do something to get the truth out of these people. I would not be shocked if Trey Gowey was in charge. I think Trey is getting pretty sick and tired of being jerked around by these liars and just wants the truth out so the files can closed and they can move on.

One has to wonder why they are stonewalling on this investigation, are they prolonging this investigation so the Oversight committee is distracted from a much larger illegal action of this CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION?
 

Mike

Well-known member
Lerner is no less complicit in overthrowing the power of the people, the real Government, than those at Gitmo.

Send her there indefinitely..........................
 

Tam

Well-known member
Soapweed said:
If Lois had to go to jail, that'd Lern 'er.

It would :wink: but how long do you think it would take Obama to pardon her. He claimed he knew nothing about Fast and Furious but when Issa charged Holder with Contempt due to his stonewalling and Boehner showed some balls and did something about it, Obama stepped in and invoke Executive Priviledge to protect his lying golden boy. Don't you think he would do the same for Lerner after he publicly proclaimed THERE IS NOT A SMIDGEN OF CORRUPTION IN THE IRS.

I seriously doubt the lying piece of crap is going to spend a day in jail no matter what she did. Obama will see to it. :x Loyalty to this Corrupt Administration runs strong and is REWARDED. :mad:
 
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