In a letter, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) accused Mr. Koskinen of “obstruction” of congressional investigations. “At best, Commissioner Koskinen was derelict in his duties to preserve agency records”.
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“The agency will continue to cooperate with the committees, support the important oversight role of Congress as well as make additional improvements in our operations and processes”, the IRS statement said. “It is imperative that this committee pursue all constitutional remedies”.
Chaffetz also raised the possibility of impeaching Koskinen or voting to hold him in contempt of Congress. But when pressed, Chaffetz was noncommittal, saying those were tools available to Congress if the White House does not act.
In a 29-page letter to Obama that included transcripts of Koskinen and other IRS officials’ hearings with his committee, Chaffetz wrote that Koskinen has “obstructed” Congressional investigations into the IRS.
However, Chaffetz argued that Koskinen, during his roughly two-and-a-half-year tenure, has obstructed such efforts by failing to testify truthfully, comply with subpoenas and preserve as many as 24,000 emails related to congressional investigations.
The Senate confirmed Koskinen as head of the IRS in December 2013, months after the agency acknowledged that agents had mistreated conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status.
The loss of those emails preceded Koskinen’s testimony under oath that “every email has been preserved” and that “nothing has been lost” or “destroyed”.
The letter to Obama, which lays out the case against Koskinen, comes on the heels of a report from the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration that found the IRS’s handling of Lois Lerner emails tied to the agency’s tea party targeting scandal was less than honest.
Ranking panel member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., issued a statement saying, “This is a strange, oddly-timed rehashing of conspiracy theories that were debunked by the Inspector General himself-who concluded in a report to the Oversight Committee just last month that there is no evidence to substantiate these claims”.
Koskinen dodged questions about the ideological motives of IRS targeting during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing last week.
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Cummings added, “Calls for Commissioner Koskinen to step down are nothing more than a manufactured Republican political crisis based on allegations that have already been debunked”.
