IRS Commissioner Koskinen Impeachment Trial Would Be Historic

Unless, like a sensible person, you have been shielding yourself from learning about developments in the interminable, never-ending IRS scandal, now on Day 902 by Tax Prof count, you are aware that impeachment articles against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen have been drawn up.

If the House votes to impeach Mr. Koskinen, he gets tried by the Senate. Two-thirds of the senators have to vote in favor for there to be a conviction.  The effect of conviction would be that Koskinen would be immediately fired and if they want to rub it in disqualified from ever holding federal office.  There is no appeal.

It’s About The E-mails

Mr. Koskinen came into the IRS after what I call the “core scandal”, delays and intrusive inquiries on tax-exempt application by Tea Party and similar groups. His “high crimes and misdemeanors” relate to IRS response to the investigation by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the House of Representatives.  IRS employees in Martinsburg, West Virginia erased 422 backup tapes destroying as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner e-mails.  A couple of months later Mr. Koskinen testified that nothing had been destroyed.  He also testified that backup tapes from 2011 had been recycled.  Previously he had promised to provide all the Lois Lerner e-mails. He was slow in informing the Committee that there were problems with crashed hard drives and backup tapes.  Subsequently TIGTA investigators found more than 1,000 Lois Lerner e-mails that the IRS had missed in all its rooting around.  This video dramatizes it if you don’t want to slog through the resolution.