Congress

The Fake IRS Scandal is Finally Dead

Written by SK Ashby

Good news for those who would rather not see an agency official impeached for no substantive reason.

The Flying Monkey Caucus failed to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen as the House voted to refer his impeachment back to a committee that will not meet again before the end of the current session of Congress.

The House has turned aside an effort by conservatives to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (KAHS'-kihn-ihn). [...]

[The] House voted 342-72 to refer the impeachment resolution to the House Judiciary Committee. That in effect will prevent a Senate impeachment trial and kill the effort for now because of Congress' upcoming adjournment.

You could be forgiven for not remembering what the hell this was all about.

In short, the Freedom Caucus sought to impeach Koskinen over the fake IRS scandal that occurred before he even became the commissioner. Koskinen was accused of intentionally withholding public records (emails, of course) from Congress. Koskinen believed the records were lost when the hard drive of former IRS employee Lois Lerner was recycled, but some of them were later recovered.

Supposedly, the smoking gun that proves the White House ordered the IRS to scrutinize conservative non-profits was contained on that hard drive. You know, just like the smoking gun proving Hillary Clinton did Benghazi was contained in missing emails. Or something.

The image of Darrell Issa sitting in the Oversight Committee chairman's seat is not one I will soon forget. A war he started nearly 4 years ago is finally over, but there are others.