When the House Judiciary Committee convenes on Tuesday to consider the alleged misdeeds of the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, John Koskinen, it will contemplate action that has not been taken in more than 140 years, — and that in some respects has never been pursued: the impeachment of an agency head of Mr. Koskinen’s rank.
Tuesday’s hearing on accusations by House Republicans that Mr. Koskinen lied under oath to Congress and defied a congressional subpoena is a remarkable moment, even for a Washington long fractured by partisanship.
Not since Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876 has the House impeached an administration official other than the president, said Michael J. Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and an expert on the federal impeachment process. And an official below the president’s cabinet has never been impeached.
“This is unprecedented in many respects,” Professor Gerhardt said.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the chairman of the Finance Committee, has made clear that the Senate would not convict Mr. Koskinen, which would require a nearly impossible two-thirds vote. But the effort in the House highlights the extent to which the I.R.S. has become a symbol for House Republicans of everything they despise about the federal bureaucracy, and their outrage about what they view as a pattern of obstruction by Obama administration.
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