During an appearance on the Fox News Channel today, Rep. Trey Gowdy insisted that former Director of IRS Tax Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner will be in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this Wednesday. He also seemed convinced that the evidence implicating Lerner in the form of emails is massive. Toward the end of an interview with Fox’s Bill Hemmer, Gowdy said that Lerner will have a difficult choice to make, saying that she needs to ‘either save herself or go down in flames’. The interesting implication here – if you believe Gowdy – is that Lerner can save herself by giving up something.
Confusion about whether Lerner will testify on March 5th has not been in short supply since Issa sent a letter to her attorney last week, informing him that the Committee expects Lerner to be in front of the Committee on the 5th. This was followed by Lerner’s attorney demanding immunity prior to Lerner granting testimony. This was met by charges that Lerner may face contempt of Congress for non-compliance. On Fox news Sunday, Chairman Issa told viewers that Lerner’s attorneys have said she will testify. Of course, this was met with denials from Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor, that Issa was correct.
In his exchange with Hemmer, Gowdy is frustrated with what he clearly sees as word-parsing and legalese by Taylor. According to Gowdy, Taylor wants to delay the hearing by one week. While Gowdy doesn’t seem to object to this, he also insists that Lerner will be in front of the Committee this Wednesday and doesn’t seem too interested in whether or not she wants to invoke the fifth amendment on the 5th and come back on the 12th or just appear before the committee once. If those are the two options, Lerner is best served by testifying now instead of later. While she may only have to answer one round of questions, the Committee will have the opportunity to ask two rounds and she will have to be on public display twice as well.
Gowdy seems to be quite confident that his Committee has the goods on Lerner but doesn’t say what those goods are.
Oh, how the mind likes to wonder…