Lois Lerner, the IRS staffer who is under fire for her role in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, has been placed on administrative leave, according to congressional aides. 
 
 
 
 She will still be paid while on leave, a congressional aide said, as required under civil service rules. 
 
 Lerner, who heads an IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, first disclosed the extra scrutiny the agency gave to Tea Party groups almost two weeks ago when answering a planted question at a Washington legal conference. 
 
 Since then, lawmakers from across the political spectrum have said that they believe Lerner misled them and have called for her dismissal. 
 
 
 
 Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), a senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a Thursday statement that new acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel had asked Lerner to resign — and that Lerner was only placed on leave after she declined that request. Aides on Capitol Hill confirmed that Lerner had refused to resign. 
 
 In her first public appearance since the disclosure, Lerner on Wednesday invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination at a House Oversight hearing. 
 
 
 
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 The IRS announced in an internal memo circulated to the media that Ken Corbin will be taking over as the acting director of the tax-exempt organizations division. Corbin, a 25-year veteran at the IRS, has been deputy director in a division that processed millions of tax returns a year. 
 
 Lerner’s move to administrative leave comes after President Obama pushed out acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller over his role in the targeting. Werfel, formerly a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, took over as acting commissioner on Wednesday. 
 
 
 
 The IRS also announced after the controversy broke that Joseph Grant, Lerner’s boss at the agency, will retire in early June. 
 
 
 
 Lerner will likely have to make her way back to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks, after House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) concluded that she waved her rights against self-incrimination by defending herself in an opening statement at Wednesday's hearing. 
 
 
 
 Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday became the latest prominent lawmakers to call for Lerner to be removed, in a letter to Werfel made public shortly before news of Lerner’s administrative leave broke. 
 
 
 
 Reps. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), Joe Crowley (D-N.Y) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) have also called for Lerner to be pushed out. 
 
 "In naming Ken Corbin as acting director to replace Lois Lerner, the administration has taken a strong step to address serious mistakes made by the IRS Exempt Organization Division," Levin said in a statement. "This and further corrective action are vital in restoring the confidence of the American people." 
 
 
 
 According to a Treasury audit, Lerner found out in June 2011 that IRS staffers were giving extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status by searching for organizations with names like “Tea Party” and “patriots.” 
 
 
 
 Lerner immediately ordered that the criteria targeting conservative groups be changed, but staffers in a Cincinnati office eventually once again implemented more political screening criteria, according to the audit. 
 
 
 
 “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” Lerner told House Oversight on Wednesday. 
 
 
 
 “Because I'm asserting my right not to testify, I know that some people will assume that I've done something wrong. I have not.” 
 
 
 
 The audit, from Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, also found that some groups waited months, even years, for their tax-exempt applications to be approved. 
 
 
 
 National Review first reported that Lerner was being placed on administrative leave. 
 
 The publication also reported late Thursday that letters suggest Lerner was directly involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups more than nine months after she first learned of the activity. 
 
 — This story was updated at 7:34 p.m. ||||| House Republicans investigating the IRS tea party targeting scandal think they’ve established a motive: the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling — and, they say, top IRS officials’ attempt to limit its impact. 
 
 Former IRS official Lois Lerner and her colleagues mired in the debacle seemed concerned that the 2010 ruling striking caps on corporate political donations would influence the political activities of nonprofits, according to emails in a draft of a new Oversight and Government Reform Republican report, obtained by POLITICO. 
 
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 Republicans take it one step further, suggesting the woman who would become the face of the scandal wanted to use the IRS to limit the influence of Republican donors. 
 
 Lerner’s lawyer William Taylor III of Zuckerman Spaeder called the accusation “pure fiction.” 
 
 Taylor said Lerner’s awareness of Citizens United “shouldn’t be a big surprise to anybody.” 
 
 “She was of course over the years involved in discussions of cases like Citizens United and what its implications were for the tax-exempt organizations… That’s what she was supposed to do,” he said. 
 
 Lerner, as expected, asserted her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself at a hearing that exploded when Issa abruptly ended the hearing, and cut off the microphone of the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings. 
 
 The former IRS official took the Fifth in May when the scandal first broke. 
 
 House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa has been the most aggressive among several lawmakers probing the matter, which exploded last year when Lerner first acknowledged the IRS gave added scrutiny to tea party groups, followed by a critical inspector general report. 
 
 Issa threatened to hold Lerner in contempt as she repeatedly invoked her constitutional privilege. 
 
 Though emails in the report show Lerner and top IRS officials indeed had their eyes on potential abuse of tax-exempt status following the 2010 court ruling, nothing in the report seems to prove that Lerner had interest in protecting Democrats — just enforcing rules. 
 
 “My object is not to look for political activity — more to see whether self-declared c4s are really acting like c4s. Then we’ll move on to c5, c6, c7 — it will fill up the work plan forever!” she wrote to her colleagues in a fall 2010 email exchange. That was several months after a group of Cincinnati-based IRS employees first pulled conservative groups applying for tax exemptions for a closer look because of heightened “media attention” surrounding them 
 
 The Issa report shows top-level IRS concerns about whether social welfare organizations were following IRS rules. Such nonprofit groups, which don’t have to disclose their donors, are only allowed to use up to 49 percent of their resources for political purposes if they want tax exemptions. 
 
 It is a murky standard though and many say a reason why the IRS got itself in such hot water trying to determine political activity. 
 
 According to the report, as early as September 2010, Lerner forwarded to her colleagues an EO Tax Journal blog advising the IRS to “keep track of new c4s” and “be more pro-active” about catching groups created solely for political activities. One quote in the story specifically calls out the “educational organizations woven by the fabulously rich Koch Brothers to foster their own financial interest by political means.” 
 
 “I’m really thinking we need to do a c4 project next year,” Lerner said in the email. 
 
 Later emails showed she wasn’t just talking about ensuring 501(c)4s, called social-welfare groups, were following the rules but also unions and trade groups. 
 
 A colleague on the chain, Cheryl Chasin, replied saying the alleged abuse is “definitely happening,” naming at least one group (redacted in the report) she believed was engaging in political activity.
– The IRS official at the center of the recent scandal has been placed on administrative leave, reports the National Review. Lois Lerner had been in charge of the agency's tax-exempt unit, which singled out conservative groups for added scrutiny. Her immediate boss already has been forced into early retirement, and critics have been calling for Lerner's head to roll as well. (Her role in using a planted question to make the controversy public hasn't helped her cause.) On Capitol Hill yesterday, Lerner denied any wrongdoing but invoked the Fifth in refusing to answer questions. The chair of the House Oversight panel, Darrell Issa, says he plans to call her back to testify, arguing that she waived her right to the Fifth by making an opening statement, reports the Hill. The decision to put Lerner on leave comes days after the new acting chief of the IRS, Daniel Werfel, took over.