WHY INDEED? WSJ: Taking the IRS Fifth: If everything was kosher, why won’t Lois Lerner talk to Congress?

Liberals are celebrating President Obama’s claim that “not even a smidgen of corruption” occurred when the IRS targeted conservative groups for additional scrutiny in an election season. Less enthused must be Lois Lerner, the former director of tax-exempt organizations who invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify before a House committee last May.

Asked by Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly whether there was any corruption in the IRS handling of groups applying for tax-exempt status, Mr. Obama said “absolutely not,” adding that the policy that delayed hundreds of applications by conservative groups was a case of “some bone-headed decisions out of a local office.” By local he means Cincinnati.

he President’s clairvoyance is extraordinary, since neither the Justice Department nor Congress has finished investigations. The congressional probes have conducted interviews with dozens of employees from the IRS and Treasury Department and reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. They have already revealed that the tea-party cases, including intrusive questionnaires, were systematically reviewed by lawyers in the IRS Washington office.

But hey, if the President says it’s all kosher and the FBI doesn’t intend to pursue criminal charges in its probe of the selective IRS screening procedures, why should Ms. Lerner take the Fifth? Perhaps we’ll get to hear what Ms. Lerner meant when she wrote in February 2011 emails that the tea party matter was “very dangerous” and that “Cincy should probably NOT have these cases.”

Omerta, indeed.