Darrell Issa Using Tactic In IRS Probe Last Used In McCarthyism

According to a new report by the Congressional Research Service , the tactics used by Rep. Darrell Issa’s (r-Calif.) while probing the Internal Revenue Service is venturing into McCarthy-era territory.

Former IRS official, Lois Lerner, has invoked the Fifth Amendment twice, which is her right. Still yet, Issa wants to force her to testify.

The Huffington Post reports:

But there seems to a serious hitch in the drive to punish Lerner. According the records retrieved by the Congressional Research Service, no American has been successfully prosecuted for invoking their Fifth Amendment rights before Congress.
Congress brought contempt cases 11 times from 1951 to 1968, according the the CRS. Only two of those cases that involved documents — not personal testimony — were upheld by the courts.

Most of the cases involved the House Un-American Activities Committee and its communist witch-hunts in the 1950s. But one that is particularly instructive involves a Buffalo, N.Y., woman named Diantha Hoag, who was fired from her factory job after Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) and his Senate Committee on Government Operations accused her of being a communist and she pleaded the Fifth.
…
Hoag flatly refused to answer questions about her associates and any communist connections she may have had.

When McCarthy attempted to compel her testimony through the courts, as Issa is now threatening, a judge did not look kindly on the bid, declaring: “I reach the conclusion that the defendant did not waive her privilege under the Fifth Amendment and therefore did not violate the statute in question in refusing to answer the questions propounded to her. Therefore, I find that she is entitled to a judgment of acquittal on all counts.”

Today's House Republicans akin to McCarthy