'The slime probing the slime': House finds Lois Lerner in contempt and refers prosecution to Eric Holder – whom it found in contempt two years ago

• Lerner presided over an IRS scheme that slow-walked right wing groups asking for special tax status but streamlined liberal groups' applications
• The House found her in contempt for refusing to answer questions while under subpoena and invoking the Fifth Amendment instead
  
• The 231-187 vote included six Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans
• GOP leaders insisted that Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights when she gave a lengthy, self-serving opening statement in a 2013 House hearing
• The Lerner contempt citation now goes to the U.S. attorney in DC – whose boss, AG Eric Holder, skirted his own contempt citation two years ago
  

By David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor

Published: 20:12 EDT, 7 May 2014 | Updated: 11:41 EDT, 8 May 2014

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday evening to find Lois Lerner in Contempt of Congress.  The 231-187 vote fell largely along party lines, with six Democrats joining every Republican to give the former IRS official a formal thumbs-down.

The result will place Lerner's case in the hands of Attorney General Eric Holder, who was himself found in criminal contempt in 2012 because he resisted subpoenas for documents in teh Operation Fast and Furious firearms scandal.

'This is going to be the slime probing the slime, if any investigating actually gets done at the DOJ,' a female aide to a Texas Republican House member told MailOnline shortly after the vote.

'But if Holder ever opens the Lerner file ore than once, I'll strip naked on the National Mall and sing the president's favorite Al Green song.'

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Former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner has been found in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about the tea party targeting scandal

House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa has largely driven the IRS tea-party targeting scandal, and led the hearings in which Lerner refused to testify

The Department of Justice has already refused to bring Holder, its top chieftain, before a federal judge over his contempt charges, and seems likely to take the same posture with Lerner.

On Wednesday House Republicans did, however, pass a second resolution asking the DOJ to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS.

Many attorneys general from both parties have taken that unusual step, including during the Nixon and Clinton administrations.

Until late in 2013 Lerner sat atop the IRS's Exempt Organizations unit, charged with vetting and monitoring nonprofit groups that ask for and receive a special tax-exempt status.

Beginning in 2010, hundreds of tea-party and other conservative groups were denied that government perk on the basis of their politics or words in their names. Politically progressive groups, however, were nearly always approved quickly.

Lerner has acknowledged that the practice went on, but denied in a lengthy May 2013 statement to the House Oversight and Government Reform committee that she had done anything wrong.

The contempt charge stems from what happened next: Once she finished offering a point-by-point defense and denying any wrongdoing, Lerner cited the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions from the congressional panel.

Given a second opportunity to testify this year, Lerner again clung to her constitutional right against self-incrimination.

'This vote is a step toward a level of accountability that the Obama Administration has been unwilling to take,' House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa said in a statement shortly after the vote.

'Lois Lerner presided over an effort to deprive Americans of their rights to participate in our political process and failed to meet her legal obligations to answer questions.'

Republican lawyers and other House staffers have argued that by offering a self-serving monologue in 2013, Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right.

But in Washington, every political position has its equal and opposite detractor: Democrats and Lerner's lawyer insist that she can still plead the Fifth.

Congress has decided the matter, but Lerner may have the last laugh. With the GOP eager to establish how high on Obama's White House totem pole the targeting scheme originated, and Holder likely unwilling to place Lerner in legal jeopardy, the resulting standstill could get uglier still.

Angry tea partiers have rallied against the IRS since news broke a year ago that the agency targeted their organizations in order to cripple them in the midst of a busy political election season

On one side, the GOP is defending the First Amendment rights of conservative activists who sensed their license to engage publicly threatened in an election year.

On the other, Democrats say while they won't defend Lerner's job performance, they won't countenance snapping the Fifth Amendment in two.

'I will not walk a path that has been tread by Sen. McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee,' Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings said on the House floor.

“I am not defending Ms. Lerner,” the Maryland congressman added, 'but I cannot vote to violate an individual's Fifth Amendment rights just because I want to hear what she has to say.'

Democrat Alcee Hastings promised during a contentious House Rules Committee hearing on Wednesday that Lerner 'had every right to assert her Fifth Amendment right.'

'When it is in court... you will find it will be dismissed,' he said.

Hastings, a former federal judge, was impeached and removed from office for bribery and perjury in 1989. He took the opposite road from Lerner, facing his charges and then exacting his retribution by joining his accusers.

Lerner has already retired from the Treasury Department, with a full pension. She faces a more serious sanction, however: a possible 12 months in federal prison and as much as $100,000 in fines.

Issa insisted Wednesday that '[u]nless the President decides to assert executive privilege, there is no precedent for the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to do anything but pursue this criminal case.'

'Absent political interference by the Administration, this legally binding action ... require[s] the Justice Department to take action.”

Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar complained about an Obama administration that still hasn't explained the genesis of the IRS scandal.

'There is no question that the IRS targeted conservative groups in an attempt to stifle their political activities,' Gosar told reporters. 'The only remaining questions are who instigated the targeting, whether the White House was involved, who should be fired and who should go to jail.'