Impeaching John Koskinen
Floor Speech
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Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, John Koskinen should no longer hold office. John Koskinen should no longer be the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. Tonight I am joined by some of my colleagues to talk about why that should happen, why he should be removed from office.
If you remember what took place here, the Internal Revenue Service targeted our fellow citizens for their political beliefs. They did it, and they got caught. Maybe most importantly tonight, thinking about the current Commissioner, the targeting continues.
Now, you don't have to take my word for it. You can take what the United States Appellate Court for the District of Columbia stated. This is a decision from August 5, 2016, last month, from the opinion.
The IRS has admitted to the inspector general, to the District Court, and to us--the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia--that applications for exemption by some of the plaintiffs have never to this day been processed. They are still targeting conservative groups.
They say it again right here:
It is absurd to suggest that the effect of the IRS' unlawful conduct, which delayed the processing of plaintiffs' applications, has been eradicated when two of the plaintiffs' applications remain pending.
So here is the takeaway: they are still doing it.
Here is the standard for removing someone from office: gross negligence, breach of public trust, dereliction of duty.
Mr. Koskinen has certainly had those things take place under his tenure at the Internal Revenue Service.
Here are the facts. February 2014, John Koskinen's chief counsel is on notice that there are problems with Lois Lerner's hard drive and missing emails from during the time of the initial targeting. They wait 4 months before they tell Congress and, therefore, the American people.
During that 4 months, they learn in February: Oh, we have got missing emails, problems with Lois Lerner's hard drive, an essential figure in this scandal.
They wait until June before they tell Congress and the American people.
During that 4-month timeframe, 422 backup tapes are destroyed. Most importantly, they are destroyed with three orders to preserve all documents, and two subpoenas to get those documents are in place. Now, think about that. You have got missing emails, the backup tapes that contain those missing emails are destroyed during the 4 months you are trying to figure out and 4 months before you tell Congress, and those 422 backup tapes contain potentially 24,000 emails.
That is why he should no longer hold office. That is why it is important that we take this vote at some point and remove him from office. So you have got the standard, which he certainly meets based on that fact pattern; and you have got the court, which just told us last month the targeting continues.
The last thing I will say before turning to my colleagues: No private citizen could get away with that same scenario. If any one of us, any one of the three-quarters of a million people we all get to represent, any of those folks back in the Fourth District of Ohio, which I have the privilege of serving, if any one of those folks are audited by the IRS and they discover that they are missing documents that are critical to that audit and critical to what the IRS is looking for and they wait 4 months to tell the IRS that they are missing those documents, and during that time the backup disk or the backup tape that contains those missing documents somehow gets destroyed, what is going to happen to them?
Well, they are definitely getting fined and they are probably going to jail. But somehow when it happens to John Koskinen, the Commissioner of the IRS, it is okay. It is not okay. It is not okay in this country. This is what frosts so many Americans today. There are now two standards in this country. One for we, the people, and a different one for the politically connected. One for us regular folks and a different one if your name is Lerner, Koskinen or Clinton. That is not supposed to be how it works in this country, not in the greatest Nation ever, where we are all supposed to be treated equally under the law.
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Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his hard work on this issue and for bringing the motion forward to get this issue in front of Congress.
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