IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: The Silence Of The Tax Lamb.

Just what was Lerner doing on the taxpayer dime that she doesn’t want to share?

Lerner’s silence is especially unsettling given that her attorney, William Taylor III, told reporters that Lerner had given a full interview to the Department of Justice with no grant of immunity. Lerner’s lawyers, he said, have confidence that prosecutors, unlike Issa, are open-minded. Thing is, also unlike Issa, the Department of Justice is in a position to prosecute people.

“It does strike me as a little odd,” Rutgers law Professor George Thomas III told the Wall Street Journal. “One explanation is the one given by her lawyer. The other, darker explanation is that she and her lawyer think that DOJ is not interested in a serious investigation of the IRS treatment of these tax-exempt groups.”

Could it be that Lerner’s lawyers do not fear the often-terrifying Justice Department precisely because President Obama already signaled there is no cause for concern because the IRS story is a “phony scandal”?

Similarly, the president signaled his disdain for conservative nonprofits during the 2010 and 2012 election seasons. Lo and behold, the IRS started to put conservative tax-exempt organizations on the slow track and under a microscope.

Who will rid me of these turbulent Tea Party groups?