Lois Lerner

Lois Gail Lerner (born October 12, 1950) is an American attorney and former United States federal civil service employee.

Lerner then joined the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) general counsel's office as an assistant general counsel in 1981.

She spent twenty years at the FEC, being appointed Associate General Counsel for Enforcement (the head of the FEC's Enforcement Division) in 1986.

One subpoena directed FEC chairman Lee E. Goodman to turn over all emails sent to or from Lerner, or copied to Lerner, from the past 28 years, stretching back to January 1, 1986, a time before commercialized email existed.

The House Oversight Committee also subpoenaed the IRS for all e-mails to and from Lerner and various other employees, such as Lerner subordinate Holly Paz, General Counsel William Wilkins and chief of staff Jonathan Davis.

Lerner was acting general counsel for the FEC for the first six months of 2001.

Lerner joined the Internal Revenue Service in 2001, as Director of Rulings and Agreements in the Exempt Organizations function of TEGE.

Lerner became director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2005, and subsequently became the central figure in the 2013 IRS targeting controversy in the targeting of politically aligned groups, either denying them tax-exempt status outright or delaying that status until they could no longer take effective part in the 2012 election.

In January 2006, she was appointed Director Exempt Organizations.

In that capacity, Lerner led an organization of 900 IRS tax law enforcement officials responsible for a broad range of compliance activities, including examining the operational and financial activities of exempt organizations, processing applications for tax exemption, providing direction through private letter rulings and technical guidance, and providing customer education and outreach to the exempt community.

Lerner told those on the conference call that, in an attempt to manage the large number of tax-exemption applications between 2010 and 2012, the agency had identified some applicants using "shortcuts" such as targeting those applications containing terms like "Tea Party" or "patriots" in their titles.

Lerner said, however, that such actions were not driven by any political agenda, but added, "We made some mistakes. Some people didn't use good judgment.... For that we're apologetic."

Lerner also said that only about 25 percent of the flagged applications were Tea Party related, but admitted that any singling out of the groups was "absolutely inappropriate and not the way we should do things."

On May 10, 2013, in a conference call with reporters, Lerner apologized that Tea Party groups and other groups had been targeted for audits of their applications for tax-exemption.

Both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized.

Only three groups—all branches of the Democratic group Emerge America—had tax exemptions revoked.

Lerner resigned over the controversy.

On May 10, 2013, in advance of a public release of the audit findings, Lerner answered a planted question at a meeting of the American Bar Association (ABA) by stating that the IRS was "apologetic" for what she termed "absolutely inappropriate" actions.

Lerner said that the extra scrutiny had not been centrally planned and had been done by low-level "front-line people" in the Cincinnati office.

The Washington Post subsequently reported that documents showed that "IRS officials at the agency's Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups."

Lerner's superior, then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, later testified to Congress that he had discussed with Lerner how she was to make the revelation and apology using a planted question at the ABA meeting, rather than at her appearance two days earlier before the House Ways and Means Committee.

On May 10, 2013, in a conference call with reporters, Lerner apologized that Tea Party groups and other groups had been targeted for audits of their applications for tax-exemption.

On May 23, 2013, the IRS placed Lerner on paid administrative leave.

As her interim replacement, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel named Ken Corbin, previously Deputy Director of the Submission Processing, Wage, and Investment Division, as acting director of the Exempt Organizations Division.

Later, while still on administrative leave, Lerner formally resigned, and retired from the IRS, effective September 23, 2013.

Machen disagreed with Issa's assertion that Lerner had waived her constitutional right against self-incrimination by making an opening statement at a May 2013 hearing in which she made a brief opening remark proclaiming her innocence, before invoking her Fifth Amendment privilege.

In a statement, the U.S. Attorney's Office wrote: "Ms. Lerner did not waive her Fifth Amendment privilege by making general claims of innocence. The Constitution would provide Ms. Lerner with an absolute defense if she were prosecuted for contempt."

In May 2014, Lerner was declared in contempt of Congress in connection with her invocation of her Fifth Amendment not to testify on the matter before a congressional committee.

The contempt resolution, H.Res. 574, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on May 7, 2014 by Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California.

On May 7, 2014, the resolution passed on a 231–187 vote, with all Republicans and six Democrats voting in favor, and every other Democrat opposed.

Representative Steve Stockman introduced a measure (never taken up by the House) that, had it been adopted, would have directed Speaker John Boehner to instruct the House sergeant at arms to arrest Lerner for contempt of Congress.

In 2014, the House Oversight Committee under Issa issued subpoenas for all of Lerner's email messages.

At a hearing in March 2014, IRS commissioner John Koskinen said that the IRS had by that time provided 690,000 pages of documents to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee and 420,000 of redacted documents to the House and Senate oversight committees.

Koskinen said that the IRS had spent 10 months and $15 million complying with various investigations to date, and that it could take months or years to comply with broader subpoenas.

In 2014, in further pursuit of the House of Representatives Congressional inquiry, the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), issued a subpoena for all of Lerner's email messages during the time in question.

An investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, completed in 2015, found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia" but "found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution".

Lerner graduated from Northeastern University.

She earned her J.D. from the Western New England College of Law.

After graduating from law school, Lerner became a staff attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division.

In a seven-page letter to Speaker Boehner dated March 31, 2015, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen said that the Justice Department would not pursue criminal contempt charges against Lerner.