(Bloomberg) -- House conservatives intend to re-launch an effort Tuesday afternoon to force a vote to impeach Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen this week in the final days of this congressional session.
The impeachment drive, confirmed by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and his office, comes after he and other members of the House Freedom Caucus had agreed to delay such action in September, at the urging of Speaker Paul Ryan and other party leaders.
Representatives John Fleming of Louisiana and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas had earlier offered a privileged resolution to force a vote on impeaching Koskinen after Republicans accused him of impeding an investigation into whether the tax agency improperly targeted conservative non-profits.
If such a resolution motion is offered Tuesday afternoon, and is deemed privileged, then the House has two legislative days to hold a vote. House Republicans are expected to leave Washington by Friday. If the resolution is adopted, it could carry over to the 115th Congress, meaning the Senate could consider action next year, according to House parliamentarian Thomas Wickham, Jr.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy indicated that saddling the Senate with an impeachment trial -- a prospect that has gathered little enthusiasm among senators -- could delay other priorities. “That would be a problem for repealing Obamacare,” he said without elaborating.
Representative Mark Meadows, the incoming Freedom Caucus chairman, emerged from a meeting in Ryan's office suite Tuesday saying, “I see no compelling reason not to proceed at this point.” As to whether an impeachment drive would complicate Congress's calendar, he said: “The American people care more about accountability than what the Senate or House thinks they can or can't do.”
Impeachment is unlikely to succeed, because it would require two-thirds of senators present to convict. Next year, Republicans are currently expected to hold no more than 52 of the 100 seats.
Koskinen, whose term is scheduled to end in November 2017, has said that “a new president can always ask me to step aside sooner.” That could put President-elect Donald Trump in the awkward position of removing and replacing the head of an agency he says has been auditing him for 12 years or more.
‘Tried Everything'
In the last week, both Fleming -- who is leaving Congress at the end of this year -- and Meadows, who was elected to lead the caucus Monday night, had been non-committal in interviews on whether the Koskinen measure would be taken up in the final days of the current Congress' lame-duck session.
But on Tuesday, during an appearance at an event with Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group, Jordan, the Freedom Caucus's outgoing chairman, said the motion would be introduced Tuesday afternoon. “We have tried everything else,” he said.
His office later confirmed that Fleming indeed plans to offer the privileged resolution.
The Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, has called the impeachment drive baseless and a distraction, adding that Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew continues to have full confidence in Koskinen.
Impeaching the IRS commissioner would be an unprecedented move for Congress, which has never removed an official below the level of Cabinet secretary.
‘Unfit' Conduct
The House resolution includes four articles of impeachment, including one accusing Koskinen of “engaging in a pattern of conduct showing he is unfit.” Fleming has argued that Koskinen made false statements to Congress, which confused the investigation.
Koskinen has acknowledged that the agency failed to preserve all the information that congressional investigators sought in 2014 probe of the agency. When he took office in December 2013, he was immediately mired in the agency's response to a scandal that predated his tenure: IRS officials admitted giving extra scrutiny to conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status beginning in 2010.
Congressional subpoenas to the agency sought all communications sent or received by Lois Lerner, the agency's former director of exempt organizations. Despite the pending subpoenas, IRS employees in n West Virginia magnetically erased 422 backup tapes, which eliminated as many as 24,000 of her e-mails, in March 2014. Subsequent investigations by the Justice Department and the Treasury Department's inspector general found that the destruction was accidental.
Koskinen's Testimony
Regardless, Koskinen testified to Congress in June 2014 that “since the start of this investigation, every e-mail has been preserved. Nothing has been destroyed.” He has said since then that his testimony reflected his understanding at the time.
The impeachment resolution requires a simple majority of the House. It would then go to the Senate, which would try the case. Senate leaders have indicated that they don't favor an effort to impeach Koskinen.
As recently as Monday, Fleming had said in an interview that “nobody has approached me about” relaunching the impeachment resolution.
“Again, it's not about the fireworks,” he said. “It's about making the change. You know, we have a new sheriff in town in terms of the Oval Office.”
He added: “But really, the thing that ought to happen is he ought to resign. And hopefully he will.”
--With assistance from Ben Brody To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Voskuhl at jvoskuhl@bloomberg.net, Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net.
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