House Judiciary Move on Minor Testimony; Senate Judiciary No Action on SC Vacancy
The House Judiciary Committee convenes today to consider the possible impeachment of the current head of the IRS, John Koskinen. An impeachment of the head of a sub-cabinet agency has never occurred in the history of our country so, once again, Republicans have broken new ground in partisan political tactics. The dispute revolves around the delivery of emails subpoenaed by the House in regard to the “scandal” of the IRS scrutiny of tax exempt organizations. There is no guarantee, even if the Judiciary Committee votes for impeachment, that the full House would even consider it or vote to impeach. And the Senate has already indicated it would not convict. So this is just another exercise in futile political grandstanding by House Republicans, echoing their dozens of votes to repeal Obamacare. As the Times points out, part of the motivation for these hearings is that the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Robert Goodlatte, is facing a strong primary challenge from his right.
As I noted in an earlier post, it is hard to see the full House taking up Koskinen’s impeachment, if the Judiciary Committee recommends it. The optics of carrying on an impeachment inquiry over some relatively minor Congressional testimony in the House while the Senate Judiciary Committee refuses to even consider holding a vote for Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court will probably not go down well with a majority of Americans. But we’ve all seen House Republicans do crazier things…
On a personal note, it is great to see Mike Gerhardt, my former college roommate and current constitutional law scholar at UNC get a few quotes in the Times article. He seems to have become the media’s go-to guy on constitutional law, replacing the ever-quotable Bruce Fein.