Documents: Lois Lerner Was Directly Involved in Targeting Program

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Not to fear, America -- she's been placed on "administrative leave," a terribly severe form of discipline that's effectively tantamount to paid vacation.  At this week's House Oversight Committee hearing, Lerner (sort of) invoked her fifth amendment rights and refused to answer any questions.  She claimed she's done "nothing wrong," which explains why she's reportedly refusing to resign.  Question, though: Might Lerner be a relatively innocent patsy in all of this (a la the Benghazi scapegoat)?  Er, probably not, via National Review:

    A series of letters suggests that senior IRS official Lois Lerner was directly involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups as recently as April 2012, more than nine months after she first learned of the activity.  Lerner, the director of the IRS exempt organizations office in Washington, D.C., signed cover letters to 15 conservative organizations currently represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) between in March and April of 2012. The letters, such as this one sent to the Ohio Liberty Council on March 16, 2012, informed the groups applying for tax-exempt status that the IRS was “unable to make a final determination on your exempt status without additional information,” and included a list of detailed questions of the kind that a Treasury inspector general’s audit found to be inappropriate. Some of the groups to which Lerner sent letters are still awaiting approval.  Lerner has denied involvement in the targeting, which she has blamed on a few “front-line people” in the agency’s Cincinnati field office.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/05/24/documents-lois-lerner-was-directly-involved-in-targeting-program-n1605861