Congress

House Republicans Move to Impeach the IRS Commissioner for Virtually No Reason

Remember the fake IRS scandal? That's still a thing.

The long-gestating movement to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen for virtually no reason may come to fruition as the Flying Monkey Freedom Caucus attempts to force a vote.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, announced on Monday after a meeting of the Freedom Caucus that he will call up a resolution seeking to force a vote on whether Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen will be impeached.

Fleming’s resolution builds on the work of Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has advocated for Koskinen’s impeachment for at least a year.

Why do they want to impeach Koskinen and why do I say there's virtually no reason to do so? We've covered this numerous times before in the three years since the "scandal" broke, but here's a refresher.

In short, House Republicans have accused Koskinen of lying to them.

The IRS turned over all of former Exempt Organizations Unit director Lois Lerner's emails to federal investigators, or so the agency thought. Commissioner Koskinen testified that the agency handed over all of her emails, but that turned out to not be the case. A portion of her emails had actually been erased and destroyed because they were stored on archaic data-tapes that are stockpiled at a facility in West Virginia where old government hardware is sent to be recycled.

Koskinen had no way of knowing that. Moreover, Koskinen wasn't even the commissioner of the IRS when the supposed scandal occurred.

The witch hunt investigation of the IRS overseen by former Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) uncovered no evidence that the IRS was ordered by the Obama administration to target conservative groups. In fact, the investigation revealed that the Exempt Organizations Unit actually scrutinized a greater number of liberal than conservative groups.

There's no there, there. They want to impeach Koskinen for no substantive reason.

We're 17 days away from a possible government shutdown.