Lerner retired from the agency effective Monday. Lerner still Hill's favorite piñata

Lois Lerner is the political piñata that Congress still loves to whack months after she awkwardly acknowledged that the IRS wrongly scrutinized conservative groups for years.

Her sudden retirement on Monday after 12 years at the agency won’t change that.


She’s still a central figure in three congressional investigations into the political targeting scandal that embroiled the IRS — and the Obama administration — in May. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has an outstanding subpoena to compel her testimony before his panel.

And as a 30-year veteran of the civil service, Lerner is still eligible for a pension — something that is sure to further anger critics in Congress.

( WATCH: Lois Lerner pleads the fifth)

“Her departure does not answer these questions or diminish the committee’s interest in hearing her testimony,” Issa said in a statement.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said Lerner’s retirement “does not mean the investigation is over.”

“Far from it,” he said. “In fact, there are many serious unanswered questions that must be addressed so we can get to the truth.”

Even Democrats who have slammed the GOP for politicizing congressional probes into the IRS didn’t pull their punches.

( PHOTOS: 8 key players in IRS scandal story)

“Lois Lerner is being held responsible for her gross mismanagement of the IRS tax-exempt division, which led to improper handling of applications for tax-exempt status, whether conservative [or] progressive,” said Michigan Rep. Sander Levin, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

A Democratic congressional aide said the IRS was moving toward terminating Lerner after completing an investigation into her role in the targeting controversy.

The IRS found that Lerner, who led the agency’s unit that reviewed requests for tax exemptions, mismanaged her department and was “neglectful of duty” but found no evidence of political bias, the aide said.

William Taylor, Lerner’s attorney, did not immediately return a request for comment.

( PHOTOS: IRS hearing on Capitol Hill)

Lerner sparked the IRS scandal in May when she told an American Bar Association conference that the agency wrongly targeted tea party groups applying for a tax exemption. The admission threw the White House into crisis mode, forcing Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to ask then-IRS chief Steven Miller to step down.

President Barack Obama later replaced Miller with Daniel Werfel, a former Office of Management and Budget official.

Lerner was placed on administrative leave later in May after an explosive appearance before the House Oversight Committee in which she boldly declared her innocence before invoking her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and refused to answer questions from lawmakers.

“I have not done anything wrong,” she said at the May 22 hearing. “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 committee.”

( PHOTOS: 10 slams on the IRS)

Issa and committee Republicans disagreed. They later voted to recall Lerner and said she waived her Fifth Amendment rights by declaring her innocence without allowing lawmakers to question her. Issa hasn’t indicated when he plans to call Lerner back to Capitol Hill.

Taylor, Lerner’s attorney, has told POLITICO that his client is interested in immunity in exchange for testifying before Issa’s panel again.

Lerner quickly became the public face of the IRS scandal. She initially blamed mid-level IRS employees in Cincinnati for the targeting but congressional investigators have rejected that explanation. Emails and documents released by the House Oversight Committee show that Lerner and other senior IRS leaders in Washington knew of the targeting early on.

Democrats and Republicans joined together to call for Lerner’s ouster in the early days of May, saying she misled them about the scope of the targeting and the extent to which IRS’s top brass knew the details.

More recently, congressional Republicans have labored to keep public pressure on the agency by releasing emails and documents from Lerner and other key IRS officials.

Lerner’s private and public emails discussing the IRS from her tenure are still fair game for congressional investigators and she can still be asked to testify before interested committees.

The IRS said in a statement on Monday that it has taken “decisive actions to correct failures in exempt organizations management.”

“As Werfel has made clear, the behavior cited in the May [inspector general’s] report was the result of mismanagement and poor judgment,” the statement said. “The IRS is making important progress on fixing the underlying management and organizational deficiencies in the [exempt organizations] area identified by [the inspector general]. Our goal is to restore the public’s faith and trust in the tax system.”

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