WASHINGTON – U.S. House Republicans remain divided over whether IRS Commissioner John Koskinen should face impeachment over accusations he obstructed investigations into the IRS targeting scandal that consumed the agency in 2013.
Republican Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-06) isn't for moving in that direction, and only one member of the Illinois delegation has signed onto the effort to impeach Koskinen: U.S. Rep. Mike Bost (IL-13).
"Commissioner Koskinen violated the public trust," said Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz last October. "He failed to comply with a congressionally issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled."
Chaffetz filed a resolution calling for impeachment proceedings to proceed after Koskinen testified before Senate lawmakers over the targeting scandal, and shortly after the Justice Department said it would not bring charges against Lois Lerner or any of the other IRS officials involved in the processing of applications for tax-exempt status.
Thursday evening, those charges were revived on the U.S. House floor by several conservative members.
"You have an IRS commissioner who breached multiple duties that he owed to the public, and he violated the public trust," the UPI reports Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla. said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, noted Koskinen was installed as commissioner to reform the IRS after the political targeting was exposed, but "every single duty he had, he breached."
Earlier in the day, however, The Hill reports that Illinois' Roskam said he "was not sure" if it would be a good idea to proceed with the call for impeachment, citing the dwindling length of Koskinen's term, the short congressional schedule and the realities of what the Senate would do if the House took action.
Roskam was active in the U.S. House's investigation into former IRS chief Lois Lerner's alleged dragging out the IRS approval process for conservative groups applying for non-profit tax status.
Roskam said this week if Koskinen were impeached, "the question then becomes who would come along and who would be the new person. And I think that there is an advantage to having the current IRS commissioner in place in that you know exactly what he's going to say, exactly what he's going to defend, and so forth."
None of the other Illinois delegation have signed onto House Resolution 494, other than downstate Congressman Mike Bost.
