Speaking publicly for the first time in over a year, former IRS director Lois Lerner recently sat down with Politico for a two hour interview, in which she discussed her involvement in the IRS scandal and how she believes that she "didn't do anything wrong."
Lerner found herself at the heart of the scandal when she was accused of delaying applications of conservative nonprofit groups and unjustly targeting their tax-exempt status. Lerner's career in the IRS ended when she invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not testify against herself at a congressional hearing regarding the matter.
Lerner insisted, "I'm proud of my career and the job I did for this country," but now, as Politico reported, Lerner says she is having trouble finding a new place of employment, and her legal bills are accumulating quickly, with thousands already spent defending herself against claims that she was complicit in the IRS scandal.
"Regardless of whatever else happens," Lerner told Politico, "I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and am not sorry for anything I did."
With Lerner at the helm, the IRS was accused in 2013 of targeting specific words like "tea party" and "patriot" for additional scrutiny - and then covering it up. And Lerner was accused of "using her position to push for audits and denial of tax-exempt status to Karl Rove's Crossroads and other GOP groups," said Politico.
Yet Lerner remains unapologetic, saying she believes that she bore the brunt of the blame because she was the first person to announced her department's wrongdoing publicly.
"I assume the other part of it is because I declined to talk, and once I declined to talk, they could say anything they wanted, and they knew I couldn't say anything back."
Critics claim Lerner's hyper-partisanship as a contributing factor in the scandal, referencing her support of stricter oversight of political donations as evidence, but Lerner maintains that she's "not a political person."
