BREAKING: Resolution Filed for Arrest of Lois
Lerner!
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On Thursday, Tea Party Congressman Steve Stockman announced that he and several other lawmakers had “filed a resolution directing the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Lois Lerner for contempt.”
Lerner
has been at the center of the IRS scandal as she was the head of the nonprofit
department that oversaw tax exempt status designations. She and the IRS waged a
years-long campaign of harassment against Tea Party groups in an apparent
effort to stymie political efficacy.
On Wednesday,
Congress discovered emails that show an attempt by Lerner to cover her tracks
as investigators investigated her department’s actions.
On
Thursday, Rep. Stockman announced the resolution calling for the arrest of
Lerner.
“Asking
the Justice Department to prosecute Lois Lerner for admittedly illegal activity
is a joke. The Obama administration will not prosecute the Obama
administration. How much longer will the House allow itself to be
mocked? It is up to this House to uphold the rule of law and hold
accountable those who illegally targeted American citizens for simply having
different ideas than the President,” said Stockman.
“Democrats
have openly stated the House has the powers to arrest those in contempt of
Congress and imprison them in the Capitol. I don’t want to go as far as
Democrats in exercising the House’s powers to arrest. Ms. Lerner will be
held in the D.C. jail,” Stockman said.
Arresting
Lerner would place her in custody where she would retain all legal rights and
be offered an attorney.
“It’s
time to for House to stop tacitly endorsing this administration’s illegal
activity by refusing to hold him accountable. I expect Democrats to
defend and even praise criminal activity. The question is whether
Republican leadership will join them in mocking the House and breaking the
law,” Stockman continued.
Undoubtedly,
Democrats will take issue with the resolution. However, a statement from
Stockman’s office clarified that the power exists within Congress. Quoting a
New York Times article, Stockman’s office wrote,
“From
the Republic’s earliest days, Congress has had the right to hold recalcitrant
witnesses in contempt — and even imprison them — all by itself. In 1795,
shortly after the Constitution was ratified, the House ordered its sergeant at
arms to arrest and detain two men accused of trying to bribe members of
Congress. The House held a trial and convicted one of them,” the Times wrote in
a Dec. 4, 2007 editorial.
“In
1821, the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s right to hold people in contempt and
imprison them. Without this power, the court ruled, Congress would “be exposed
to every indignity and interruption, that rudeness, caprice, or even
conspiracy, may mediate against it.” Later, in a 1927 case arising from the
Teapot Dome scandal, the court upheld the Senate’s arrest of the brother of a
former attorney general — carried out in Ohio by the deputy sergeant at arms —
for ignoring a subpoena to testify,” the Times wrote.
Former
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has even mentioned how she reserved the right
to arrest Karl Rove and hold him in the Capitol.
TheTeaParty.net’s Executive Director, Niger Innis, was delighted with the news, saying,
TheTeaParty.net’s Executive Director, Niger Innis, was delighted with the news, saying,
“Unlike
Watergate, which was an inconsequential, incompetent robbery job, Lerner’s
crimes are not just her obstruction and cover-up, but it’s the very act itself
of using the police powers of the Executive Branch of our government as a
partisan, political weapon against Tea Party and other conservative groups,
harassing and denying them the opportunity to exercise their First Amendment
rights.”
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