The last time IRS Commissioner John Koskinen faced Congressman Trey Gowdy, he found himself on the receiving end of an epic verbal assault that culminated in a crash course on criminal statutes concerning evidence. That was about a month ago. Yesterday the overconfident, smug, IRS honcho came back for round two, and ...let's just say things didn't go any better.
“I’m going to read a quote for you from June 2014," Gowdy began. "And I want you to tell me if you know who said it. Okay? 'We confirmed the backup tapes from 2011 no longer existed because they had been recycled pursuant to the IRS normal policy.' Do you know who said that?”
"Sounds like me.” Koskinen admitted.
From there, things got worse, as Gowdy taught Koskinen how the Inspector General functions, as well as the meanings of the words "we" and "confirmed."
“What does the word ‘confirmed’ mean to you?” Gowdy asked.
“Confirmed means that somebody went back and looked," Koskinen said. "And that any backup tapes that had existed had been recycled.”
Gowdy fired back. “'Confirmed' is a pretty strong word, Commissioner. Are you still ‘confirmed’ that no backup tapes exist?”
“Well, At this point..." Koskinen stammered, "I know the IG is looking and he hasn't found anything...”
“I'm glad you mentioned the IG...and I find this confounding. I find it vexing that once the IG was involved nobody else could do anything. That is not supported by the law."
From there, Gowdy ripped into Koskinen, educated him about the nature of investigations, and railed against his willful inaction.
"Let me give you a possibly alternative view, Commissioner. People cite ongoing IG investigations when it suits them to not cooperate, and they don't cite ongoing IG investigations when it doesn't suit them."
"That's not my policy." Koskinen defended.
"Well," Gowdy fired back "You can certainly understand how a cynic might view it that way, right? Because there is nothing about an ongoing IG investigation that would keep you from doing your job."
"...Here’s a piece of advice I would give. If the folks like Lois Lerner and others would have spent more time working on the backlog, more time working on their caseload and less time targeting groups and less time trying to overturn Supreme Court decisions they didn’t agree with, maybe morale would be better and maybe their backlogs would be lessened.”
Boom!
You can watch the whole thing below. It's pretty great.
