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Conservatives To Force IRS Chief’s Impeachment To House Floor

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Conservatives in the House of Representatives will force a motion to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen onto the House floor Tuesday, according to Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan.

Jordan — outgoing chairman of the House Freedom Caucus who has worked to punish Koskinen for months — made the announcement during a Judicial Watch panel on addressing government corruption in the first 100 days of Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. Judicial Watch is a non-profit government watchdog.

“John Koskinen needs to be held accountable for his conduct when he was brought in to clean up the IRS, and he hasn’t done so,” Jordan said.

After a conservative member, likely Louisiana Republican Rep. John Fleming, pushes the privileged motion onto the floor sometime Tuesday, the House will have two legislative days to table the motion, vote on it, or refer it to a committee.

“We think this is the only remedy,” Jordan said. “We have tried everything else.”

President Barack Obama appointed Koskinen in 2013 to clean up the agency following exposure of the federal tax agency’s illegal targeting of conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns.

Jordan and his allies maintain that Koskinen lied to Congress and defied congressional subpoenas and preservation orders when he allowed the IRS to destroy 422 backup tapes belonging to Lois Lerner, former head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division and the central figure in the targeting scandal. (RELATED: Koskinen Denies Conservative Targeting Despite Contrary Court Ruling)

Outgoing Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp tried a similar legislative move to impeach Koskinen in September, but it failed.

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