The IRS has done everything it can to protect Lois Lerner from Congress, even withholding documents and trying to keep Congress from getting everything on Lois Lerner’s hard drive.
Conservatives in the House have had enough and have now forced impeachment hearings to be held for the IRS chief by a seemingly reluctant judiciary committee:
THE HILL – In a meeting this month, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan and conservative ally Rep. Mark Meadows presented two options to Speaker Paul Ryan: Hold hearings to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen or we’ll force a vote on the matter on the House floor.
Ryan’s response: Give me 24 hours to figure things out.
Days later, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) announced his committee would hold two hearings examining alleged abuses by the top Internal Revenue Service official, though Goodlatte completely avoided the word “impeachment.”
The Ryan-Jordan-Meadows meeting, confirmed by several GOP lawmakers and aides, sheds some light on why Goodlatte, with little advanced warning, agreed to hold IRS impeachment hearings despite reluctance from GOP leadership. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hosted a second IRS meeting with key players just last week.
The cave by leadership marked just the latest example of the Freedom Caucus of conservative hard-liners flexing its muscle in the Ryan era.
For Freedom Caucus members, the impeachment of Koskinen, no matter how politically perilous, represents the House following through on promises — not just giving lip service — to voters.
Last fall, more than 80 percent of the group of conservative hard-liners voted in favor of impeachment, allowing the entire caucus to formally endorse that approach. And last month, on April 15, Freedom lawmakers gave a series of speeches on the House floor calling for impeachment of the tax commissioner.
“You have the right as an American citizen to speak out against your government and not be harassed for doing so. And yet the IRS did just that,” Jordan said in a fiery floor speech.
“And that’s why we filed these articles of impeachment and that’s why we’re asking that they move forward in the Judiciary Committee and we do what the American people sent us here to do.”
This is why we need to elect more conservatives in the House who will stand up to leadership and force them to make the right decisions. We have to take the Republican Party back from these mostly weak-willed media-loving RINOs.