House GOP gives election-year airing to IRS gripes

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.

[...] in one measure of the nasty 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.

Democrats defended Koskinen, 76, who has had a long career in and out of government and took over the IRS in December 2013 after President Barack Obama named him to lead the agency away from the uproar over its actions.