John Andrew Koskinen (born June 30, 1939) is an American businessman and public official. He served as the non-executive chairman of

Freddie Mac The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), commonly known as Freddie Mac, is a publicly traded, government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia.Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

(IRS) as

Commissioner of Internal Revenue The Commissioner of Internal Revenue is the head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), an agency within the United States Department of the Treasury. The office of Commissioner was created by Congress as part of the Revenue Act of 1862. Section ...

. On December 23, 2013, Koskinen was sworn in as the 48th IRS Commissioner after being nominated by President Barack Obama. His term ended on November 12, 2017, with David Kautter becoming his interim replacement, followed by Charles P. Rettig as his permanent replacement.

Early life

Koskinen was born on June 30, 1939 in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

. In 1957, Koskinen graduated High School at Ashland High School (now known as Paul G. Blazer High School) in

Ashland, Kentucky Ashland is a list of Kentucky cities, home rule-class city in Boyd County, Kentucky, Boyd County, Kentucky, United States. The largest city in Boyd County, Ashland is located upon a southern bank of the Ohio River at the state border with Ohio a ...

. He graduated

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

with a BA in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which relat ...

from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jame ...

in 1961, where he was a member of the

Sigma Chi Fraternity Sigma Chi () International Fraternity is one of the largest North American fraternal literary societies. The fraternity has 244 active (undergraduate) chapters and 152 alumni chapters across the United States and Canada and has initiated more th ...

and

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ar ...

. He graduated with an

Bachelor of Laws Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Ch ...

cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

from

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & World Re ...

in 1964, and did postgraduate work at

Queens' College, Cambridge Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the oldest colleges of the university, founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. The college spans the River Cam, colloquially referred to as the "light sid ...

in England from 1964 to 1965.

Career

Koskinen served as president of the U.S. Soccer Foundation from 2004 to 2008. He previously served as the deputy mayor of the

District of Columbia ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

, the deputy director for management of the

Office of Management and Budget The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). OMB's most prominent function is to produce the president's budget, but it also examines agency programs, poli ...

, and then later President Clinton's chairman of the President's Council on Y2K, 2000 Conversion, the Year 2000 problem. He served on the board of AES from 2004 to 2013 and American Capital, Ltd from 2007 to 2013. On March 11, 2009, he was announced as the interim CEO at Freddie Mac. On April 23, 2009, he became the principal financial officer after the death of Freddie Mac's acting CFO,

David Kellermann David B. Kellermann (August 1967 – April 22, 2009) was the acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac in early 2009. Early life Kellermann graduated from George Washington University with a master's degree in finance after a B.S. in Political ...

. In August 2009, with the hiring of a new CEO, he returned to his position as non-executive chairman of the board of

Freddie Mac The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), commonly known as Freddie Mac, is a publicly traded, government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia.The Palmieri Company as vice president, president, CEO, and chairman, working on the turnaround of large, failed enterprises such as the

Penn Central Transportation Company The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals (the Pennsylvania, New York Central and the ...

, Levitt and Sons, the

Teamsters The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), also known as the Teamsters Union, is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of The Team Drivers International Union and The Teamsters National Union, the u ...

Pension Fund, Mutual Benefit, and Equity Programs Investment Corporation. Earlier in his career, Koskinen served as administrative assistant to Senator

Abraham Ribicoff Abraham Alexander Ribicoff (April 9, 1910 – February 22, 1998) was an American Democratic Party politician from the state of Connecticut. He represented Connecticut in the United States House of Representatives and Senate and was the 80t ...

(D-Conn.) from 1969 to 1973, was legislative assistant to Mayor

John Lindsay John Vliet Lindsay (; November 24, 1921 – December 19, 2000) was an American politician and lawyer. During his political career, Lindsay was a U.S. congressman, mayor of New York City, and candidate for U.S. president. He was also a regular ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

from 1968 to 1969, served as assistant to the deputy executive director of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the " Kerner Commission") from 1967 to 1968, practiced law with the firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher from 1966 to 1967, and clerked for Judge David L. Bazelon,

chief judge A chief judge (also known as presiding judge, president judge or principal judge) is the highest-ranking or most senior member of a lower court or circuit court with more than one judge. According to the Federal judiciary of the United States, th ...

of the

U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate cou ...

, from 1965 to 1966. Koskinen chaired the

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

host committee for the

1994 World Cup The 1994 FIFA World Cup was the 15th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national soccer teams. It was hosted by the United States and took place from June 17 to July 17, 1994, at nine venues across the country. The United States w ...

and the

board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organi ...

. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Appointment as IRS Commissioner

On August 1, 2013, the White House announced President Obama would nominate Koskinen as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. On December 20, 2013, Senate Democrats voted 56–39 for

cloture Cloture (, also ), closure or, informally, a guillotine, is a motion (parliamentary procedure), motion or process in parliamentary procedure aimed at bringing debate to a quick end. The cloture procedure originated in the National Assembly (Fran ...

on the nomination, cutting off a Republican-led filibuster. Senators then confirmed Koskinen in a 59–36 vote, along party lines. On December 23, 2013, he was sworn in as the 48th IRS Commissioner. During the first seven months of 2014, Koskinen testified at ten Congressional hearings primarily focused on the questions surrounding the report in May, 2013 by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that the IRS used improper criteria for selecting, for further inquiry and delay, organizations applying for status as social welfare organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the

Internal Revenue Code The Internal Revenue Code (IRC), formally the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, is the domestic portion of federal statutory tax law in the United States, published in various volumes of the United States Statutes at Large, and separately as Title 26 ...

. The hearings also focused on the length of time it was taking the IRS to respond to requests for documents and the circumstances surrounding the hard drive crash in 2011 of the computer of

Lois Lerner Lois Gail Lerner (born October 12, 1950) is an American attorney and former United States federal civil service employee. Lerner became director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2005, and subsequently bec ...

, a major figure in the overall investigation. On November 24, 2015, Koskinen signed a memorandum that commits the IRS to fostering a model workplace free of conduct that negatively impacts employee engagement and productivity.

Impeachment proceedings

After the Justice Department notified Congress in October 2015 that there would be no charges against

or anyone else in the IRS, 19 Republican members of the

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee The Committee on Oversight and Reform is the main investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. The committee's broad jurisdiction and legislative authority make it one of the most influential and powerful panels in th ...

led by the committee's chairman,

Jason Chaffetz Jason E. Chaffetz (; born March 26, 1967) is an American retired politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2009 until his resignation in 2017. He chaired the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform from 2015 until 2017. Ch ...

(R-UT), filed a resolution to

impeach Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements. In ...

Koskinen."House Republicans, in last-ditch effort, move to impeach IRS commissioner over targeting scandal"
''Washington Post'', October 28, 2015.Theodore Schleifer and Tom LoBianco
"House Republicans move to impeach IRS head"
cnn.com, October 27, 2015; retrieved October 28, 2015. Those sponsoring the impeachment resolution to remove Koskinen from office accused him of failing to prevent the destruction of evidence in allowing the erasure of backup tapes containing thousands of e-mails written by Lerner, and of making false statements under oath to Congress. In a statement released by the committee, Chaffetz said Koskinen "failed to comply with a congressionally issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled. Impeachment is the appropriate tool to restore public confidence in the IRS and to protect the institutional interests of Congress." The IRS declared on October 27 that it did not have an immediate comment on the impeachment resolution. Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), the committee's top Democrat, said in a statement: "This ridiculous resolution will demonstrate nothing but the Republican obsession with diving into investigative rabbit holes that waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars while having absolutely no positive impact on a single American. Calling this resolution a 'stunt' or a 'joke' would be insulting to stunts and jokes." The resolution was referred to the House Judiciary committee, which held hearings on the matter on May 23 and June 22, 2016. The House leadership decided not to proceed further which led to threats to offer a privileged resolution for impeachment. On December 6, 2016, such a privileged resolution was offered, but the House voted to send the question back to the Judiciary Committee.

Personal life

Koskinen is married to Patricia Salz and has a daughter, Cheryl, and a son, Jeffery Koskinen. As of June 25, 2014, Koskinen had contributed almost

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

$100,000 to Democratic candidates and groups.

Legacy

Koskinen Stadium at Duke University, which hosts the Duke soccer and lacrosse teams, was named and dedicated in 1999 in honor of the support of John and Patricia Koskinen, who have various foundations.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Koskinen, John 1939 births American chairpersons of corporations American chief executives of financial services companies American civil servants American people of Finnish descent Commissioners of Internal Revenue Deputy Directors for Management of the Office of Management and Budget Duke University alumni Duke University trustees Living people People from Ashland, Kentucky Businesspeople from Cleveland Yale Law School alumni Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge People associated with Gibson Dunn 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople