Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversees the branch of the agency that allegedly targeted conservative groups, has been placed on administrative leave a day after she refused to answer questions in a congressional probe of the scandal.
Lerner, who invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to testify at a House hearing on Wednesday, is effectively suspended from her job as head of the exempt organizations division in Cincinnati, Ohio, according to a congressional aide who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
On Wednesday, Lerner made a statement before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee saying she’d done nothing wrong and had broken no laws, but otherwise declined to answer lawmakers’ questions.
The AP reports that the new IRS acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, sent an email to agency employees saying he’d selected a new acting head of the tax exempt division.
He said Ken Corbin would be the acting director of the division that Lerner had overseen.
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