“Impeachment is the suitable device to revive public assurance within the IRS & to protect the institutional pursuits of Congress”.
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Eighteen Republicans on the committee joined Chaffetz in co-sponsoring the impeachment resolution. Today, the House GOP responded as 19 members introduces a measure to impeach current IRS head John Koskinen. Koskinen also inaccurately testified that the IRS turned over all of Lerner’s emails and others relevant to the congressional investigation into the targeting scandal.
The Justice Department declared its investigation of Lerner over last Friday, saying there was no evidence warranting criminal prosecutions of IRS employees.
Much of the committees impeachment charge centers around the destruction of several backup tapes that could have contained missing emails sent by Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the IRSs improper scrutiny of conservative groups. -Failed to notify Congress that key evidence was missing. This led to wide condemnation of the agency and triggered several investigations, including a criminal FBI probe ordered by then-US Attorney General Eric Holder.
Republicans were outraged that Lerner, who ran the IRS tax-exempt unit that was accused of targeting conservative groups, would not face any accountability for her involvement in the controversial practice.
The Internal Revenue Service was up before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, the committee that has jurisdiction over the IRS. “The IRS commissioner provided false testimony and he destroyed documents that were under subpoena”, Chaffetz said on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
That he made “false and misleading statements” to Congress, including claiming “nothing” had been “lost” or “destroyed”.
However, the news that the IRS chief might face impeachment after the House Republicans resolution has not unsettled the agency.
During a hearing yesterday surrounding a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, Sullivan said he “will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt” after the IRS failed to turn over ordered documentation to the Court.
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Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the oversight panel, called the impeachment effort “ridiculous”, adding that, “just as in the Benghazi and Planned Parenthood investigations, it appears that facts simply don’t matter to Republicans”.
