IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, shown before
he testified to a Senate committee on another
matter in April, is the target of impeachment
proceedings.
Here are two important questions which
are often obscured by the noise and
spatter from the blood sport of electoral
politics.
Does honest government matter?
Can anything be done to prevent
dishonest government or clean it up?
The answer to the first question is yes, it
matters. Voters make choices based on
the information they have. A
government that makes dishonest
statements cannot claim to have the
consent of the governed. Instead, it’s
governing by force and fraud.
The answer to the second question is yes,
unless the government is dishonest.
The tools for preventing and cleaning up
dishonest government include laws like
the Inspector General Act of 1978, which
created internal watchdog offices in
government agencies, Justice Department
prosecutions, and congressional
oversight.
It’s easy to dismiss congressional
investigations as politically motivated,
but the Constitution gives Congress
broad authority to conduct oversight, per
the language of Article II, Section 4: “The
President, Vice President and all civil
Officers of the United States, shall be
removed from Office on Impeachment
for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery,
or other high Crimes and
Misdemeanors.” The House of
Representatives “shall have the sole
Power of Impeachment,” and “the Senate
shall have the sole Power to try all
Impeachments.”
A necessary part of the power to
impeach is the power to investigate.
The House has just initiated
impeachment proceedings against IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen. He’s
accused of failing to respond to a lawful
subpoena for documents, obstructing a
congressional investigation, giving false
and misleading statements under oath,
and failing to competently oversee an
investigation into “Internal Revenue
Service targeting of Americans based on
their political affiliation.”
Because the definition of “high crimes
and misdemeanors” is left to our elected
representatives, impeachment is
completely different from criminal
charges, which the Justice Department
declined to bring against anyone in the
case of the alleged IRS targeting of
conservative groups seeking tax-exempt
status.
“Our investigation uncovered substantial
evidence of mismanagement, poor
judgment and institutional inertia,’’
Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik
said in a letter to Congress. “But poor
management is not a crime. We found
no evidence that that any IRS official
acted based on political, discriminatory,
corrupt or other inappropriate motives
that would support a criminal
prosecution.’’
They may have found no evidence
because 422 back-up tapes containing
the e-mail correspondence of IRS official
Lois Lerner were degaussed
(magnetically erased) by IRS employees.
The Treasury Department’s inspector
general said the destruction of the tapes
happened “on or around March 4, 2014,
one month after the IRS realized they
were missing e-mails from Lois Lerner,
and approximately eight months after
the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform requested ‘all
documents and communications sent by,
received by or copied to Lois Lerner,'
Was it a misunderstanding or a
successful cover-up?
Consider this: Last year, 47 inspectors
general signed a letter protesting that
three agencies, including the Justice
Department, were obstructing
investigations of alleged wrongdoing.
Then in July, the Justice Department
issued a new policy that blocks IGs from
gaining access to certain kinds of
evidence, including grand jury and
wiretap information, unless they first
obtain the permission of the head of the
agency they’re investigating.
Nixon was run out of town for less.
If an administration won’t investigate
itself, there’s no tool in the toolbox
except congressional oversight and, if
necessary, impeachment.
The only other check on dishonest
government is the ballot box. But first,
voters would have to believe that honest
government matters.
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