IRS chief John Koskinen says he’s never spoken to Lois Lerner

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has declined to testify in his own defense at a congressional hearing Tuesday, but insisted in a statement that his agency’s bungling of a subpoena doesn’t rise to the level of “treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors” needed for him to be impeached.

The Judiciary Committee hearing is being viewed by some House Republicans as the precursor to impeachment, with the House’s top investigator saying Mr. Koskinen defied a congressional order that demanded all of former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner’s emails be preserved as part of an investigation into tea party targeting.

But Mr. Koskinen, who said his schedule is too crowded for him to be able to appear on Tuesday, said the allegations against him are “unwarranted,” and no matter what, they don’t rise to the level of impeachment.

In a point-by-point refutation of the four counts of potential impeachment, Mr. Koskinen says he “acted in good faith” and was telling the truth as best he knew it when he told Congress all of the emails were preserved. He said he only became aware later that emails were lost after Ms. Lerner’s computer hard drive crashed and backup tapes stored at an IRS facility in West Virginia were erased.

“The IRS made great efforts to produce all available Lerner emails, conducting a broad search at substantial expense. The breadth of the IRS’s efforts illustrates the good faith underlying the promise to comply with the committee’s request,” he said in his statement.