Articles of Impeachment Issued Against IRS Commissioner
In its attempt to get to the bottom of the Tea Party targeting scandal, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee introduced articles of impeachment on Tuesday against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (shown) for lying, stalling, and deceiving Congress.Koskinen was sold to the Senate as the one to break open and expose the scandal, promising to restore the IRS’s heavily damaged credibility. The Senate confirmed him as head of the IRS in December 2013, 59-36, and he took over as acting director in May 2013.Almost from the beginning Koskinen has been, to put it charitably, less than forthright in his disclosures to Congress. Testifying ten times before Congress in 2014 over the targeting scandal, Koskinen has dithered, delayed, obfuscated, and ignored requests for more information. When pressed, he has lied. When he has been truthful, even those disclosures were hidden from view.There are four charges made by Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). The first is Koskinen’s failure to comply with his committee’s subpoenas. In February 2014 Koskinen was directed to supply all e-mails related to Lois Lerner’s activities as head of the agency’s Exempt Organizations unit. When it was learned that somehow Lerner’s hard drive had crashed, the IRS then destroyed some 422 backup tapes containing an estimated 24,000 of Lerner’s e-mails.The second charge was Koskinen’s “pattern of deception” he indulged in by making “materially false” statements to Congress under oath, including his assurances that none of Lerner’s e-mails had been lost when in fact, under his administration, the backup tapes containing them had been destroyed.
Source: Articles of Impeachment Issued Against IRS Commissioner
