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(CNN) -- Acting on a conservative battle cry and potentially triggering a court battle with the Obama administration, the Republican-led House voted Wednesday to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about her agency's targeting of conservative and other groups.

The 231-187 vote fell almost entirely along party lines, a decision that cut across three sharp divides: balance of power issues between the branches of government, political questions over the IRS scandal, and a Constitutional debate over Lerner's individual Fifth Amendment rights.

Lerner is in the middle of that trio. Until she retired last year, she ran the IRS division in charge of tax exempt status. An inspector general's report concluded her staff had inappropriately targeted Tea Party and other groups for extra scrutiny.

The term "progressive" was also flagged but the inspector general report indicated that conservative terms drew more attention from the IRS.

The Fifth Amendment question

For nearly a year, Lerner has refused House requests to testify on the matter, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Republicans insist that doesn't apply here, that she waived the right by first asserting her innocence when she appeared before the House Oversight Committee last May.

"Mrs. Lerner made 17 separate factual assertions before invoking her right to remain silent," proclaimed Rep. Richard Nugent, Republican of Florida, as he opened up Wednesday's debate. "You can't make selective assertions and still invoke your Fifth Amendment right."

Lerner's attorney, William Taylor, has dismissed that argument repeatedly and sent a statement rejecting it again Wednesday.

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GOP-led House votes to hold former IRS official in contempt

BANGOR, Maine A prison inmate who described himself as a friend of one of the two men on trial for the murder of three people refused to testify Monday at the Penobscot Judicial Center. He said he was afraid of retribution if he told the court what he knew.

Nicholas Sexton, 33, of Warwick, Rhode Island, and Randall Ricky Daluz, 36, of Brockton, Massachusetts, are both charged with three counts of murder and one count of arson in the August 2012 crime. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Alfred Lanpher, 44, said Sexton was his friend and gave him a nod when he entered the courtroom. When Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese, who is prosecuting the case with Assistant Attorney General Deb Cashman, asked him questions about the murder case, Lanpher declined to answer.

I already advised this lawyer here that Im not going to testify, Lanpher said, indicating attorney William Bart, who was sitting beside him in the courtroom.

Bart did not address the court.

I dont want to testify here because I am going to spend the next three years in jail, Lanpher later said on the stand.

Lanpher of Mount Desert Island is serving a 4-year sentence at the Maine State Prison in Warren for assaulting a Southwest Harbor police officer in 2012.

Marchese asked if he was afraid of retribution for being a rat. Lanpher replied, yeah.

Lanpher did say on the stand that he was using illegal drugs around the time of the three murders and when he testified in front of the Penobscot County grand jury shortly afterward.

Marchese asked the judge to force Lanpher to testify or to allow the prosecution to use the testimony he gave the grand jury shortly after police found the bullet-riddled and charred bodies of Nicolle A. Lugdon, 24, of Eddington, Daniel T. Borders, 26, of Hermon and Lucas A. Tuscano, 28, of Bradford inside a rental car that was discovered on fire in the early morning hours of Aug. 13, 2012.

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Im not going to testify: Witness pleads Fifth Amendment during Bangor triple murder trial

Lois Lerner, former director of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division at the Internal Revenue Service, exercises her Fifth Amendment Right against self incrimination during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill on March 5. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Embattled former IRS official Lois Lerner can breathe a small sigh of relief: as of now, the House has no plans to arrest her in an effort to compel her to testify about the agency's undue scrutiny of certain tax-exempt groups.

The House voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress last week for her repeated refusal to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The charge against her stems from an opening statement she made in a hearing last year declaring her innocence before invoking her Fifth Amendment right. Republicans say that by delivering her opening statement, she waived her rights against self-incrimination.

Despite the contempt charge, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, says it's up to Attorney General Eric Holder - not the House - to take the next steps.

"The contempt charge has gone to the attorney general and its up to the attorney general, Eric Holder, to prosecute this and to assign someone to prosecute the case. Now will he do it? We don't know. But the ball is in his court," Boehner said over the weekend in an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."

Boehner said a provision allowing the House to make its own arrest has "never been used and I'm not sure it's an appropriate way to go about this. It's up to Eric holder to do his job."

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel clarified that the speaker was referring to the modern era, because the House did at one time enforce its own contempt findings.

The Supreme Court has twice upheld the House's authority to arrest and even imprison people through a process called "inherent contempt." A 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found several instances in which Congress would dispatch the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the person being held in contempt. They would stand trial before the House, be given counsel, found guilty, and then penalized with arrest or a fine.

"Inherent contempt has the distinction of not requiring the cooperation or assistance of either the executive or judicial branches. The House or Senate can, on its own, conduct summary proceedings and cite the offender for contempt," the report found.

But the practice hasn't been used since 1935, in part because imprisonment for refusing to comply with a subpoena cannot extend past the current session of Congress, and also because the process has been described as "unseemly," cumbersome, time-consuming and ineffective in the modern era.

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No plans to arrest Lois Lerner, John Boehner says

Former PA Chairman Samson Pleads Fifth
David Samson says he will not answer questions of the special committee investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures, asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. For more New Jersey news,...

By: NJTV News

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Former PA Chairman Samson Pleads Fifth - Video

NATIONAL

November 7, 2003 | John J. Goldman, Times Staff Writer

The captain of the Staten Island ferry that crashed into a pier last month, killing 10 people, finally met with investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, but would give only his name and age. NTSB head Ellen G. Engleman said that Michael Gansas exercised his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions about the Oct. 15 accident. "We hope we will be able to talk to Capt. Gansas in the future," Engleman said in a statement.

BUSINESS

March 23, 2002 | DAVID STREITFELD, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Nancy Temple, a lawyer for accounting firm Andersen being quizzed about her role in the shredding of Enron Corp. documents, cited her 5th Amendment right to keep silent 138 times Friday. Temple was deposed by lawyers who had filed a class-action suit against Andersen, which approved Enron's financial statements. In an unusual move, a federal judge in Houston permitted Temple and eight other Andersen employees to be questioned much earlier than such a case would normally allow.

NEWS

February 26, 2002

People who play the market are now at each other's throats. The Bulls & Tigers of Forest Hills, a ladies investment club of 10, meets every month to play the stock market. This month the meeting was held at Jane Peters' house. The club had made $20,000 in the year 2000, and while things went down in 2001, they could still barely hold their heads above water. When the going was good, they called themselves the Sunshine Ladies because they couldn't lose as far as their investments were concerned.

BUSINESS

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Articles about Fifth Amendment - Los Angeles Times