IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress last year that Lerner emails were lost and could not be found – The agency then later destroyed the email files.
In March 2014, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform. Koskinen told Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) during the hearing that Loise Lerner’s emails were archived and it would take a long time to retrieve them.
In June 2014 the IRS told Congress Lois Lerner’s emails were lost in a computer crash.
There were audible gasps in the room on June 20,2014, when IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress that Lerner’s hard drive was tossed out. Koskinen testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the IRS conservative targeting scandal.
Via OutNumbered:
Today Congress discovered that the IRS destroyed Lerner emails during the probe of IRS targeting.
Now Congress is considering impeachment of the scandal-plagued commissioner.
National Review reported:
House Republicans investigating the IRS’s targeting of tea-party groups are seriously considering an effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen or other agency employees for “culpable misdemeanors” pertaining to the destruction of e-mails written by Lois Lerner, the former official at the heart of the scandal. “We’ve briefed the leadership’s counsel, and I think that they’re open to it, but it’s the type of thing where this town is like, ‘oh, that’s not how we do things, it’s not really been used lately,’” a Republican member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says. “But, quite frankly, we really haven’t had executive branch officials behave this way like we do now.”
“We’ve briefed the leadership’s counsel, and I think that they’re open to it, but it’s the type of thing where this town is like, ‘oh, that’s not how we do things, it’s not really been used lately,’” a Republican member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says. “But, quite frankly, we really haven’t had executive branch officials behave this way like we do now.”
Lawmakers have been privately mulling the unconventional tactic for months, in part due to frustration that cutting the agency’s budget and holding Lerner in contempt of Congress failed to speed up the glacial pace at which the agency has produced documents requested by the committee. The ultimate decision depends on their ability to demonstrate that the IRS has obstructed the investigation — a public case that might begin Thursday, when the Treasury Department’s inspector general announces that IRS officials destroyed the files “most likely to have contained Lerner’s emails” after telling Congress they could not be found, according to a transcript of the IG’s forthcoming testimony to the Oversight Committee obtained by NR. Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the committee, says the next steps depend on what emerges from the hearing. “We are going to have the hearing, digest the content, read the report, and then chart a way forward,” he says.
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