Embroiled in scandal, the IRS has replaced the official who supervised agents involved in targeting Tea Party groups.

Lois Lerner, IRS director of exempt organizations, refused to answer questions by a House committee Wednesday, saying she did nothing wrong but was nevertheless invoking her Fifth Amendment right not to testify against herself.

“I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules and regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” Lerner said.

She was replaced Thursday by Ken Corbin, a 27-year IRS veteran who had a deputy director in the wage and investment division.

In announcing the change in an e-mail to IRS employees, the agency’s new acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, did not mention Lerner. Administration and congressional sources told news organizations that she was placed on administrative leave.

The move came hours after Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., who lead the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent Werfel a letter urging him to suspend Lerner “immediately.”

Lerner was the IRS official responsible for the office in Cincinnati that created a “be on the lookout” list for tax-exempt applications from groups using the words “tea party,” “patriot” and “9/12 project” in their names. Those applications were held up for more than a year while applications from liberal groups requesting similar status were routinely approved, a USA TODAY review found.

An audit by the IRS inspector general found that Lerner tried to immediately correct that list when she learned about it in 2011 but replaced it with criteria that included groups “critical of how the country is being run.” Members of Congress from both parties want to know why she never informed Congress — even under direct questioning.

Levin and McCain wrote that they believe that Lerner “failed to disclose crucial information concerning the IRS’s inappropriate targeting of some conservative … organizations” during the committee’s investigation into how the IRS enforces the law for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups.

“Given the serious failure by Ms. Lerner to disclose to this Subcommittee key information on topics that the Subcommittee was investigating, we have lost confidence in her ability to fulfill her duties as Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS,” the senators wrote. “Ms. Lerner’s continued tenure in the office she holds, where she is responsible for overseeing 1.6 million tax-exempt organizations, would erode public trust and confidence in the IRS and its professional integrity. We believe that the immediate removal of Ms. Lerner from office would be a vital step in helping to restore public trust in the agency.”

Last week, acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller resigned at the request of President Obama.

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