Trey Gowdy tears into John Koskinen, teaches him a thing or two about evidence

If you watched last night's hearing, you saw a still-defiant IRS Commissioner doing everything in his power to pretend that things within the Internal Revenue Service are just hunky-dory. The destruction "loss" of Lois Lerner's emails, while conveniently timed, was just one of those things. Hey, stuff happens, and as he said we still "have a significant number of un-lost emails." If Koskinen is to be believed, not a single, solitary, criminal statute was violated in connection with the scandal.

So, Trey Gowdy challenged Mr. Koskinen to name the statutes to which he was referring. Gowdy, of course, is a high-powered, and well-respected, prosecutor. Mr. Koskinen is ...not. It didn't go well. Apparently, Koskinen has no idea what statutes might even apply to this situation. Instead, he relies on "common sense" to make his claims. The revelation set Gowdy on the warpath:

“Common sense? ...Instead of a criminal code, you want to rely on common sense? You can shake your head all you want to commissioner. You have said today that there’s no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and I’m asking you: What criminal statutes you have reviewed to reach that conclusion?”

Gowdy went on to educate Mr. Koskinen about why little things like "spoliation of evidence" are a problem. Then he outlined a few criminal statutes that could be applied to the emails we already have. Eventually, Koskinen's smirk faded and he was acknowledged that he has “reviewed no criminal statutes.” Then he was forced to admit that the President and Jay Carney were wrong when they claimed this was a phony scandal without a "smidgeon of corruption." ...And then he went on to blame a lack of funding for his agency's woes. ...And he blamed Congress. ...And he blamed Windows XP. And on, and on, and on....

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