**Written by Doug Powers

It’s once again “phony scandal” discussion time:

Also keep in mind that while you read this that Lois “Take 5” Lerner is still enjoying a cushy, taxpayer-funded retirement…

Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the issue of possible impeachment of John Koskinen, the IRS commissioner. Koskinen admitted that previous testimony he gave to Congress wasn’t factual, insinuating that he was misled by others. On his watch, “422 tapes containing as many as 24,000 emails” were destroyed — “accidentally” of course. But Koskinen said he shouldn’t be impeached, basically because demanding competence from Federal officials would set a bad precedent, or something like that:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told a House committee Wednesday that impeaching him would be “improper” because he did not obstruct a congressional investigation of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups as Republicans allege.

“I accept that is up to you to judge my overall record, but I believe that impeachment would be improper,” Koskinen told members of the House Judiciary Committee during more than three and a half hours of testimony. “It would create disincentives for many good people to serve. And it would slow the pace of reform and progress at the IRS.”

In 2009, Barack Obama promised that “transparency and rule of law will be the touchstones of this administration.” Oh, and accountability… lots of accountability. Obviously:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Wednesday the two unnamed employees who destroyed thousands of emails belonging to Lois Lerner, former head of the tax-exempt unit, kept their jobs at the agency.

During his impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Koskinen said the two officials had committed an “honest mistake” by wiping 422 back-up tapes believed to contain Lerner’s emails in 2014. The emails had been requested under a congressional subpoena during the investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.

“The IG’s investigation found that they were not aware” of the subpoena, Koskinen said of the employees who scrubbed Lerner’s records.

“Not even a smidgen of corruption.”

But Koskinen (and especially Clinton, Obama, etc.) doesn’t want anybody to make a big deal of all this because it might prevent people who would destroy subpoenaed documents from entering “public service.”

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe