WASHINGTON — She wouldn’t sing and now she’s flying the coop.
Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service official at the heart of the scandal over the tax agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups, is calling it quits.
Her pending retirement was confirmed Monday by the IRS.
Lerner, who infamously pleaded the Fifth and refused to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, headed the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status and that imposed extra scrutiny on Tea Party groups during the 2010 and 2012 election years.
She has been on paid administrative leave since the scandal broke in May.
Lerner first disclosed the shocking conduct by IRS agents in response to a planted question at a law conference in May.
The revelation came just days before the release of a report by the IRS inspector general that detailed the targeting of Tea Party groups by agents in Lerner’s division.
The IRS at first attempted to downplay the extent of the targeting, blaming it on a couple of “rogue agents” in an Ohio office.
But the agency eventually acknowledged that Lerner, who was based in Washington, was in charge of the offending agents.
The IRS said in a statement Monday that it had taken “decisive actions” to fix problems in Lerner’s old division. It cited new IRS Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel’s creation of a Accountability Review Board to “ensure proper oversight in handling personnel issues.”
“The IRS is making important progress on fixing the underlying management and organizational deficiencies,” it said.
“Our goal is to restore the public’s faith and trust in the tax system . . . We look forward to continuing to cooperate with Congress and other investigations.”
Capitol Hill Republicans had been calling for Lerner to be fired. And Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 41 conservative groups in a federal lawsuit against the IRS, complained that Lerner got a taxpayer-financed retirement package.
“Since May, she has been on paid leave . . . Now, in retirement, she will continue to receive compensation and benefits — again, courtesy of the taxpayers,” he said. “Her retirement. . . is deeply disturbing and sends the wrong message about accountability.”