http://thehill.com/policy/finance/249311-house-gop-to-obama-fire-irs-chiefBy Bernie Becker - 07/27/15 04:22 PM EDT
House Republicans will call on President Obama to fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on Monday – or threaten to try and remove him themselves, congressional aides said.
Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other GOP members of the Oversight panel will discuss their efforts later on Monday.
Koskinen took over the IRS late in 2013, more than six months after the agency acknowledged improperly scrutinizing Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status.
The IRS chief said at the time he hoped to restore the trust of taxpayers – and congressional Republicans – in the agency.
But GOP lawmakers have increasingly turned against him in the last 18 months, particularly after the IRS acknowledged that it couldn't find an untold number of emails from former official Lois Lerner.
Lerner, who first apologized for the agency's treatment of Tea Party groups, became the central figure of the IRS controversy, after declining to answer questions in front of the House Oversight Committee.
In a video released Monday, Oversight Republicans accused the IRS of doing a shoddy job of searching for Lerner's missing emails, and suggested that Koskinen had misled Congress about the IRS's efforts to find the emails. They also said that Koskinen might have misled Congress when he told lawmakers – before the IRS disclosed that Lerner's emails were missing – that the agency would hand over all her documents.
"Their failings leave the American people in the dark about how their First Amendment rights were trampled upon," the Oversight video said. "There must be accountability."
Democrats have long said that Lerner and the tax-exempt division bungled applications for nonprofit status, but that there's no proof the IRS's actions were politically motivated or that there was White House involvement.
Obama himself has become increasingly dismissive of the IRS controversy, saying last year that there wasn't a "smidgen of corruption" at the agency. The president blamed the problems at the IRS on a "crummy law" during an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" last week.
Politico first reported the Oversight panel's push to remove Koskinen.
