Impeach IRS chief Koskinen: GOP
5 held, accused of scam posing as agents
WASHINGTON, May 25, (AP): Republicans gave an election-year airing to their complaints about IRS chief John Koskinen Tuesday, telling a GOP-run House committee that he should be impeached for lying to lawmakers and destroying evidence.
“Mr Koskinen was sent to the IRS to clean it up but it’s gotten worse,” Rep Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told the House Judiciary Committee, pressing a long-shot effort he’s led since last year to remove the agency’s commissioner. “As members of Congress, we have no reason to have any confidence that Mr Koskinen will run one of the most powerful agencies with any integrity.”
Koskinen and his Democratic defenders denied the allegations, with Democratic lawmakers accusing Republicans of pursuing a political vendetta. While the IRS has conceded that it treated conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status unfairly earlier this decade, Democrats said Republicans were ignoring previous investigations that have found the IRS’ destruction of some emails sought by Congress was due to incompetence, not a purposeful effort to hide evidence.
“This resolution fails by every measure,” said Rep John Conyers of Michigan, the Judiciary panel’s top Democrat. “It arises from the worst partisan instincts. It is not based on the facts.”
Citing recent travel, Koskinen declined to testify Tuesday but provided a written statement saying his agency “has responded comprehensively and in good faith” to congressional requests for documents.
But in one measure of the nasty
three years, introduced the legislation as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a mustpass annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon.
The measure failed to pass the Senate in March 2014, though Gillibrand, who sits on the armed services committee, said election year climate, Republicans on the committee refused to formally make Koskinen’s statement part of the record, with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif, calling it “self-serving.”
Conservative antipathy toward the IRS intensified in 2013 when the agency conceded that it had made unusually intensive, time-consuming demands of tea party groups attempting to qualify for tax-exempt status. Though some progressive organizations experienced similar problems, conservative organizations were singled out more often, drawing GOP wrath.
Passions
Chaffetz’ effort, co-sponsored by 73 conservatives, plays to those partisan passions. It’s won support from groups like the Tea Party Patriots, who emailed a fund-raising solicitation to supporters Tuesday that also urged them to press House GOP leaders to allow a vote on impeaching Koskinen.
Party leaders and many GOP lawmakers have been cool to the drive against Koskinen. It’s unclear if House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis, will allow a vote to impeach him during an election year in which Republicans are trying to cast themselves as constructive.
Even if the House votes to impeach Koskinen, it would take a two-thirds majority for the Senate to oust him — a margin Democrats could easily block.
The impeachment drive focuses on how Koskinen responded to congressional GOP efforts to learn if conservative groups were targeted for political reasons. Republicans have made that allegation, but it remains unproven after several federal and congressional
those votes were cast amid “false and misleading information” the Pentagon used to bolster its own argument.
“We know far more now about the extent of the military sexual assault problem than we did a year ago, and it’s clear that nothing has changed,” Gillibrand said at a news conference alongside both Democratic investigations.
Chaffetz chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, one of the panels that has investigated the IRS.
He faults Koskinen for not adequately responding to congressional subpoenas for all emails by Lois Lerner, who oversaw the IRS office that handled groups’ applications for tax exempt status. She was held in contempt of Congress after refusing to testify to a House committee and eventually retired.
A hard drive on Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011 and IRS employees erased 422 backup tapes in 2014 that Chaffetz says contained potentially thousands of her emails. That has prevented Congress “from ever learning exactly how and why” the IRS acted against tea party groups, Chaffetz said.
Koskinen also lied to Congress by asserting in 2014 that no emails were destroyed, and made little effort to recover the lost emails, Chaffetz says.
Also: WASHINGTON:
The Treasury Department has arrested five people in Miami accused of posing as IRS agents in telephone calls and demanding immediate payment of overdue taxes, a scheme that netted them an estimated $2 million, a top official said Tuesday.
J. Russell George, who heads the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration office, said Tuesday that the five defrauded about 1,500 people.
The IRS has called similar impersonators the largest such scam in agency history. George said overall,
and Republican senators. (RTRS)
Sanctuary city policy upheld:
Lawmakers in San Francisco voted to uphold the “sanctuary city” policy on Tuesday, almost a year after San Francisco was flung into a national debate about immigration 1.2 million Americans have reported receiving such calls, and around 6,400 of them have reported being cheated out of $36.5 million.
The callers pose as IRS or Treasury agents and demand immediate payment of back taxes or other fees, threatening arrest if they don’t. George said some scammers demand that people pay using iTunes or other prepaid debit cards.
The five arrested had their victims quickly wire them money — something George said the IRS does not do.
Sahil Patel of Tatamy, Pennsylvania, was sentenced last July to more than 14 years in prison for leading a similar scheme that prosecutors said victimized people in nearly every state.
The five arrested Monday were charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, George said.
He identified them as Jennifer Valerino Nunez, Dennis Delgado Caballero, Arnoldo Perez Mirabal, Yaritza Espinosa Diaz, and Roberto Fontanella Caballero.
A senior official with the office said they began investigating those arrested Monday after one victim complained to the Senate Aging Committee.
That official said the five all live in Miami and are Cuban nationals. He spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details he wasn’t authorized to discuss publicly.
Sen Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Aging panel, said in a statement that her committee contacted Treasury investigators after hearing from a woman whose distraught husband had an auto accident after receiving a scammer’s call instructing him to wire $2,000.
after an undocumented immigrant was charged in the fatal shooting of a woman.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved legislation that upholds the city’s policy on limiting law enforcement from providing assistance to federal immigration authorities aiming to apprehend or deport individuals.
The ordinance exempts from protection individuals who are currently being held on suspicion of committing a felony and were either convicted of a violent felony in the past seven years or convicted of a “serious” felony or have three separate convictions of most any felony in the past five years.
The FREE SF Coalition, a collection of immigrant and minority activist and legal aid groups, called the ordinance “an important step forward for San Francisco’s immigrant communities.” (RTRS)
Brakes on sleepy
taxi drivers:
Cabbies will have to pull over after driving 12 hours in any 24-hour period under rules proposed by New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH’-zeeoh) announced the proposed rules Tuesday and said they will keep sleep-deprived taxi drivers off the streets.
Under the new regulations, taxi drivers will not be allowed to pick up passengers for more than 12 hours in any 24-hour period. There will be a 72-hour limit in any seven-day period.
Drivers will have to take a break of at least eight hours before they can reset the 12-hour work clock and begin picking up fares again. (AP)