Three Florida Republican congressmen are in the vanguard of the effort to impeach the IRS commissioner.
U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who is running in the Republican primary to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., and U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., are pushing a House resolution for Congress to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, accusing him of ignoring subpoenas from Congress, misleading testimony and not telling Congress that evidence concerning the IRS targeting tea party groups had vanished.
U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz R-Utah, had brought out the impeachment motion with almost twenty original co-sponsors including DeSantis, back in October. But the resolution has been ignored by House leadership and has been stuck in the Judiciary Committee since October.
Last week, DeSantis took the case to impeaching Koskinen to the House floor, calling on Republican members to support his cause.
“There is a need to get the truth, but there is also a need for this institution here to stand up for itself,” DeSantis said on the House floor on Thursday. “It’s really a question of the House’s self-respect. How much longer can we, as elected officials, allow the bureaucracy to simply walk all over the Congress? We are supposed to be the people’s representatives, we are supposed to be able to do justice for them when the government is not acting appropriately… [There is] no excuse for our failure to discharge our basic constitutional duties.”
Last summer, DeSantis teamed up with U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to pen a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Koskinen to be removed. DeSantis continued on that line of attack during the fall.
“IRS Commissioner John Koskinen needs to go,” DeSantis said at the end of October. “No one is above the law. A taxpayer would never be able to get away with obstructing an IRS audit in the same way that the IRS and Koskinen have obstructed Congress.
“From destroying 24,000 of Lois Lerner's emails that were under a congressional subpoena to making a number of false statements before congressional committees, Commissioner Koskinen has violated the public trust and breached the duties an official of his stature owes to the public," DeSantis added.
