Members Demand President Trump Remove IRS Commissioner
WASHINGTON – Yesterday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and 37 House members sent a letter to President Trump demanding the removal of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner, John Koskinen. The letter highlights how Koskinen provided false testimony before Congress and his obstruction of the congressional investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative political groups.
Excerpts from the Letter:
“By applying additional rigorous scrutiny and unjustifiable, interminable delays to their applications for tax-exempt status, our own government betrayed the fundamental principles of liberty, free speech and democracy for partisan political reasons.”
“{Koskinen} made false statements under oath to Congress and failed to exercise any reasonable amount of diligence in preserving the crucial Lerner email records.”
“So long as the IRS commissioner is a man who has misled the people, destroyed evidence, and failed his legal duties to the people’s representatives in Congress, the IRS is not ‘controlled by the people.’ For that reason, we request you immediately remove Koskinen.”
Full text of the letter is here.
Background:
After repeated calls for his resignation as IRS Commissioner, the Oversight Committee passed a resolution to condemn and censure Koskinen. The Committee released a video outlining the timeline of key events in the IRS targeting scandal.