IRS commissioner under fire

Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee on the latest with this investigation

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," June 24, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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O'REILLY: "Impact Segment" tonight. The new IRS commissioner John Koskinen has been hammered in front of two House committees. Basically, the man is being called a liar over the missing IRS emails.

Joining us now from Washington, Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Overnight Committee.

First of all, you and the IRS commissioner went back and forth last night. What's your personal assessment of the man? Is he a deceiver?

REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE OVERSIGHT & GOVT REFORM CMTE: The simple answer is yes. He had an opportunity when he learned that his earlier testimony was at a minimum incomplete. To come back and tell us that rather than allow it to go to the White House and then only come out to us when we discovered through other subpoenaed documents at the Department of Justice that, in fact, we hadn't received all of Lois Lerner's emails.

O'REILLY: All right. It's a little complicated. Just so everybody understands. Initially, you asked for all of Lois Lerner's emails. Mr. Koskinen said, sure, I'll hand them over to you. OK? Then he made a visit to the White House. After that visit, they came out and he said, oh, a lot of them are erased that you want, and they are all pertaining to Lois Lerner's activities about the Tea Party conservative groups.

So, you say that he knew that these things were gone or vanished or whatever story, and he didn't tell you the whole story. Do I have it right?

ISSA: Pretty close. We subpoenaed them in August of last year for all the documents. All that time went by and apparently they weren't actually looking for them. We had the commissioner in front of us in February. At that time, he says he didn't know but he did know there was a problem. He never disclosed the nature of a problem or concern.

O'REILLY: Right. In between August and February, that's a long time to not know. So, I'm not buying it either. I'm not buying it. I think most of my viewers aren't buying it.

We feel that there is chicanery, another word of the day in the air.

Now, I have to ask you this question -- do you feel other members of the government working for the IRS or otherwise purposefully destroyed Lois Lerner's emails because they would have incriminated the agency? Do you believe that's the case?

ISSA: We don't have evidence of that. But, Bill, what we have at the IRS is a conscious decision for the IRS to destroy all documents after six months unless they are saved by the individual.

So, think about this. You self-select the documents you want to keep, the rest disappear after six months. That's how your IRS does business. And everybody --

O'REILLY: Could you imagine --

(CROSSTALK)

ISSA: Sure.

O'REILLY: And every department, if you do something that you might get caught, you are going to delete it. Every human being would do it.

Now, we have to advance the story. The way to get this thing clarified is to give Lois Lerner immunity, to force her to testify. Is it not?

ISSA: I wish it was. She's already been referred for four criminal indictments. She plead that she is innocent and has done nothing wrong. As you know, if she were willing to proffer through her attorney that she would tell us something meaningful, disclose how these crimes were committed, how they sought to and who sought to go after conservative groups because of their values, then we could. And I would. I would grate her immunity or have a vote to grant her immunity.

O'REILLY: But there's no guarantee she'll tell you anything, so you don't want to do it preemptively and waste your time.

ISSA: You know Trey Gowdy is an experienced prosecutor on my committee. He said very simply, you never offered immunity until you have a proper, an offer basically --

O'REILLY: OK.

ISSA: -- of what will be told. She has offered only that she is innocent and misunderstood.

O'REILLY: Got it, got it.

ISSA: We have referred criminal charges from congress because she's not misunderstood. We understood pretty well.

O'REILLY: But you know -- last question and I have got to run. But you know, that the attorney general of the United States is not going to aggressively pursue Ms. Lerner. You know that. So, it looks to me like this is never going to be clarified.

Last word.

ISSA: We have, in fact, referred out of the Ways and Means four criminal charges and she's been held in contempt. That is a certainly a good start to say she committed crimes against conservatives in her official role and, in fact, once she is charged by the Justice Department if Eric Holder ever does it?

O'REILLY: He won't.

ISSA: Then we have an opportunity to offer her immunity. Right now, she doesn't feel the Justice Department of President Obama and Eric Holder.

O'REILLY: That's right.

There you go. And that's not the way the government should work, Congressman.

We appreciate your time tonight.

ISSA: Thank you, Bill.

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