IRS Commissioner John Koskinen faces misconduct hearings before the House Judiciary Committee, due to what lawmakers say is stonewalling of the congressional probe into the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups.
“The fact that officials at the IRS wielded their power to target certain Americans for their political views is both outrageous and contrary to our nation’s values,” committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said Friday afternoon. “Despite repeated congressional efforts to get to the bottom of this matter, Obama administration officials, including the IRS commissioner, have consistently undermined the investigation.”
President Obama promised that Koskinen would “restore the public’s trust” following former IRS official Lois Lerner’s apology for inappropriate scrutiny of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members have accused him repeatedly of withholding key information, charges that escalated after a Treasury Department inspector general reported that the agency had shredded Lerner’s hard drive and erased the backup tapes, even though Congress had ordered their preservation.
Koskinen will be under the microscope during two hearings this summer, with the first focused on the allegations and the second, in June, to feature experts who will discuss “whether further congressional action is warranted,” according to the Judiciary Committee. “This isn’t an impeachment process,” one source familiar with the review said.
But the hearings move Koskinen closer to a potential impeachment, because the hearings are a necessary consideration of the case against him. “The committee will methodically examine the serious allegations made against the IRS commissioner and whether additional congressional action is needed,” another Republican aide explained. “We are not prejudging the outcome of these hearings.”
Even so, Koskinen’s opponents celebrated the news. “IRS Commissioner Koskinen has continually stonewalled the congressional investigation into the targeting scandal by failing to testify truthfully, refusing basic compliance, and allowing 24,000 of Lois Lerner’s emails that had been subpoenaed by Congress to be destroyed,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., said in a statement on the “Koskinen impeachment hearings,” as his office put it. “Koskinen has violated the public’s trust.”
“If it comes to that, Koskinen would be the first civil servant to be impeached in 140 years,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said in April. “But we think we’re on firm ground. It is in the Constitution.”
Chaffetz and other GOP investigators have been lobbying for impeachment proceedings since early 2015, but then-House Speaker John Boehner didn’t bite. His successor, Paul Ryan, suggested last month that such a move couldn’t take place with a Democrat in the White House. “What I think we need to do is win an election, get better people in these agencies and reform the tax code so we’re not harassing the average taxpayer with a tax code that they can’t even understand,” Ryan said during an April press conference.
But Ryan is on board with Goodlatte’s move. “The speaker’s office is aware of the committee’s plan and is supportive of the regular order process,” a source familiar with the process said.
