The House Judiciary Committee will hold a third hearing today to examine “the allegations of misconduct and articles of impeachment” filed against Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen. Koskinen will be the sole witness to testify before the Committee.
As is customary, Koskinen has submitted introductory remarks in advance of the hearing. He is expected to say, in part:
I also understand that there are significant remaining questions on the minds of some Members about the IRS response to Congressional inquiries on my watch. I stand ready to answer those questions today. I responded honestly and in good faith as events unfolded, particularly in response to the discovery that Lois Lerner’s hard drive had crashed in 2011. From the start, I directed IRS staff to cooperate fully with Congress and to recover lost information where possible, and I testified to the best of my knowledge. But the truth is that we did not succeed in preserving all of the information requested and some of my testimony later proved mistaken. I regret both of those failings. I can also tell you that, with the benefit of hindsight, even closer communication with Congress would have been advisable. But my commitment is, and always has been, to tell you the truth and to address issues head on.
You can read the remainder of Koskinen’s expected introductory remarks here (downloads as a pdf).
The hearing comes one week after the House failed to vote on a measure to impeach Koskinen pressed by the House Freedom Caucus. The caucus, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), has repeatedly called for Koskinen’s dismissal, claiming that the agency head has obstructed Congress’ efforts to investigate how conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status were singled out beginning as early as 2010. Koskinen, who was sworn into office in December of 2013, has consistently disagreed with the House Freedom Caucus’ characterization of his actions.
In June, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to censure Koskinen over obstruction claims. The vote was 23-15, and no further measure advanced at the time.
While some members of Congress have found Koskinen’s actions distasteful – perhaps even incompetent – it’s not clear that many find those actions impeachable. And, even if they do find that his actions reach the level of impeachable offenses, not everyone in the House agrees that Koskinen has been afforded due process.
Here’s how impeachment typically works. Normally, an impeachment resolution is referred to the House Judiciary Committee which is tasked with the “infrequent but important role in impeachment proceedings.” After review, the Committee conducts an inquiry into the allegations raised in the resolution. After an inquiry, the Committee takes a vote and refers charges to the full House after receiving the Committee’s Report.
That hasn’t happened here. Instead, the impeachment process is being shepherded through the House following a staff report from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT). Chaffetz introduced a resolution to move impeachment proceedings forward last October. Since impeachment is a legal proceeding, while anyone can make a motion to start the process, the Judiciary Committee determines whether there are sufficient grounds for impeachment. To date, Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) has not moved the action forward amid suggestions that he does not agree that Koskinen deserves impeachment. He has, however, scheduled a number of hearings to investigate the matter: today’s hearing will be the third.
The House would need a majority of votes to impeach the Commissioner and move the measure to the Senate, where it would certainly fail to secure the 2/3 majority needed to remove him from office. All 183 Democrats in the House are expected to vote against impeachment, and a number of Republicans will likely follow suit. Earlier this month, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who has not been a vocal proponent of the impeachment process, described the matter as “more or less a conscience vote. Something that we all have to decide on our own.”
Among the allegations Koskinen will have to address at the hearing, as noted above, include those that he purposefully lied to Congress and that he tried to cover up former IRS Tax Exempt Organization Director Lois Lerner’s 2011 hard drive failure by waiting to notify Congress of the event. Koskinen has consistently denied that he purposefully lied to Congress and claimed that the delay in reporting the 2011 hard drive crash was tied to his directive to staff to attempt to recover the missing emails for purposes of the report. Emails at issue which were not produced by the IRS but were subsequently produced by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) represented less than 5% of the emails recovered from the hard drive loss and none of those emails, Koskinen claims, were found to be material to the investigation.
(For more on those missing emails, check out this prior post.)
Koskinen has continued to deny that he or his agency has failed to cooperate with investigations into the scandal. He has noted that over 250 IRS employees have spent more than 160,000 hours responding to congressional inquiries related to Lerner, producing over 1.3 million documents at a cost of nearly $20 million. Additionally, no criminal charges have been filed against any IRS employee related to the scandal, including Lerner. Lerner, however, was found in contempt of Congress for her failure to testify in the matter.
If impeachment proceedings were to move forward, it would be historically significant: no agency official has been impeached in more than 140 years. The last agency official to be impeached was Secretary of War William Belknap, who served under President Ulysses Grant. Belknap was accused of accepting money in exchange for cushy appointments. When he was found out in 1876, he attempted to resign but the House and Senate impeachment proceedings advanced anyway. Belknap was officially impeached by a vote in the House but not removed from office after being acquitted by the Senate. After the Belknap impeachment, the House determined that resignation nullifies an impeachment action.
