Rep. Jim Jordan announced Tuesday he will introduced a resolution today to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, setting up a vote this week in the House on impeachment.
“John Koskinen needs to be held accountable,” the Ohio Republican said at a forum hosted by Judicial Watch. “Later today on the House floor, we will make the motion to impeach Mr. Koskinen.”
Jordan’s plan is to call up an impeachment resolution, which will require some form of action by the House within two days, setting up a vote before lawmakers leave for the rest of the year. If lawmakers challenged it — for example, by making a motion to table it — a vote would be held on that motion, and that vote would essentially become a proxy vote for impeachment.
It’s not clear what will become of the resolution. It takes a simple majority for the House to impeach someone, but Democrats are unlikely to support impeachment, and many House GOP lawmakers are also wary of impeaching Koskinen, arguing his actions don’t meet the threshold needed for Congress to oust an administration official.
If the House passes articles of impeachment, the Senate would then be compelled to conduct a trial to convict and perhaps remove Koskinen from office.
The House Judiciary Committee has conducted two hearings on the matter but has not voted on whether to impeach Koskinen. That hasn’t satisfied conservatives.
“We need to clean house, especially at the IRS,” outgoing Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., recently told the Examiner.
Huelskamp said Koskinen could pre-empt a vote by announcing he will retire when Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. But Koskinen has made no move to leave his post, and his term expires Nov. 2017.
Republican leaders have tried to steer conservatives from forcing a Koskinen impeachment vote.
But conservatives are demanding the vote, and say Koskinen has not been forthcoming with Congress about missing IRS emails associated with past targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. He has also been accused of mismanaging IRS customer service and taxpayer privacy.
This year, GOP leaders held off an impeachment vote by agreeing to hold an impeachment hearing in the House Judiciary Committee which featured Koskinen’s testimony under oath. But conservatives said Koskinen only reinforced their belief that he should be ousted from the IRS.
