House Republican leaders remain opposed to a vote on impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, and were actively working Tuesday to scuttle the vote before Congress leaves town for the year this week.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the outgoing Freedom Caucus chairman, announced Tuesday that an impeachment resolution would be introduced today, setting up a vote later this week. But GOP leaders don’t like the move to force a vote, and have been working for months to prevent it from coming to the floor, including by trying to appease proponents of the move by holding hearings on the embattled IRS leader.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., may have a chance to convince Jordan’s side not to introduce the measure today. Ryan and Jordan were expected to meet, as they do once a week when the House is in session, and the impeachment resolution was likely to be part of their lunch discussion.
But for now, Rep. John Fleming, R-La., was expected to call up the resolution in the afternoon. That will force a vote either on the resolution itself, or a motion to table it.
Republicans fear if the House votes to impeach Koskinen, which requires a simple majority, the critical GOP legislative calendar for 2017 will be essentially blown apart.
Republicans had hoped to move aggressively to repeal Obamacare, confirm Trump administration appointments and begin tackling tax code reform. If the House impeaches Koskinen, they say, the Senate will have to hold a time-consuming trial and decide on whether to remove him from office.
But Freedom Caucus members argue passing an impeachment resolution in the House won’t impact the Senate schedule. Under Senate rules, they would not be required to take up an impeachment resolution. In fact, the House doesn’t have to sent it to the Senate. Passing the resolution though, would likely pressure Koskinen to resign.
So far, the Freedom Caucus has not backed down, those close to the situation told the Washington Examiner.
Jordan said today at a forum hosted by the conservative organization Judicial Watch that they believe they have a solid case against Koskinen, who oversaw the investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Koskinen angered lawmakers when he told them it was impossible to recover 24,000 missing IRS emails. An inspector general ended up recovering many of the emails later on at a storage facility in West Virginia, making it seem like Koskinen did not adequately try to recover them.
