IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, during which he stated the IRS of Lois Lerner’s days used “totally improper criteria” to target conservative organizations’ tax-exempt status.
WATCH:
“Clearly all of this started from the IG report, noting that — he called it improper criteria — totally improper criteria were used to select organizations applying for further review,” Koskinen said in response to a question from Republican Iowa Rep. Steve King.
“Those organizations predominantly were conservative.”
Koskinen also stated the IRS “clearly failed” to preserve internal documents implicating Lerner and other IRS officials in the scandal.
WATCH:
“Did you fail to use every tool?” Rep. Darrell Issa asked the commissioner. “Did you fail to ask the kinds of questions of enough people, enough experts to know that the blackberry that still existed at the time of the investigation would have had these lost emails?”
“That the servers the tapes and other documents could have been recovered as you eventually discovered,” he added. “Would you say that this is a failure of yours that you will have to live with?”
“No we clearly failed,” answered Koskinen. “That Blackberry was in the hands of the IG from 2013 on. But as I’ve said we clearly failed in areas of preservation of documents, and I’ve said that was a mistake.”