Palmer: IRS commissioner must go for misleading congress, allowing 24,000 emails to be destroyed

(Video Above: Rep. Gary Palmer speaks at a House Oversight Committee press conference calling for the removal of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen)
WASHINGTON — Alabama Congressman Gary Palmer (R-AL6) joined his fellow members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Monday evening to call for the removal of IRS commissioner John Koskinen, saying he “repeatedly gave misleading and false testimony to Congress, and failed to preserve evidence related to the troubling scandal where various conservative non-profit organizations were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for exercising their right to freedom of speech.”

“Mr. Koskinen has repeatedly provided misleading testimony to Congress and has failed to comply with a Congressional subpoena. This behavior is unacceptable, particularly for someone in such a powerful position,” said Palmer during Monday’s press conference..

Congressman Palmer stands next to a stack of 24,000 sheets of paper—one for every missing IRS email.

Together in a letter to President Obama, the Committee outlined the findings of their investigation thus far, including evidence Commissioner Koskinen failed to comply with a congressional subpoena, testified untruthfully before Congress, and failed to preserve 24,000 emails relevant to the investigation.

Mr. Koskinen was issued a subpoena shortly after being sworn into office in December 2013, creating a legal obligation to preserve materials relevant to the Congressional investigation. However, the Committee asserts, just one month later, with an awareness that a gap existed in Lois Lerner’s email production, the IRS destroyed back-up tapes during a midnight shift, despite an order from the IRS’s own Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for employees not to destroy anything.

“At best, Commissioner Koskinen was derelict in his duties to preserve agency records,” said Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz. “At worst, he and the IRS engaged in an orchestrated plan to hide information from Congress. Given Commissioner Koskinen’s obfuscation and misleading statements to Congress, and the false claims that key evidence was permanently destroyed, the result has been an unnecessarily protracted investigation. More importantly though, the American people will never know all the facts surrounding the agency’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups. This is an unacceptable outcome and one that demands those responsible be held accountable.”

The House Oversight Committee also criticized President Obama for changing his tune on whether or not the IRS targeting of conservative groups even occurred.

Last week, Wetumpka, Alabama Tea Party leader Becky Gerritson took it a step further during an interview on Fox News with Neil Cavuto.

“The President of the United States of America lied to the public,” Gerritson asserted. “He knows there was a TIGTA report that detailed the targeting. He knows that [former IRS director] Lois Lerner admitted to the targeting and said that it was wrong. He lied to the American people, and we are tired of being lied to.”