WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS commissioner has asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general to immediately review the circumstances surrounding intensive tax audits that targeted ex-FBI Director James Comey and ex-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, both frequent targets of President Donald Trump’s anger.
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IRS spokesperson Jodie Reynolds said Thursday that IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig had personally reached out to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Reynolds said the agency has officially referred the matter to the inspector general.
But Reynolds insisted it is “ludicrous and untrue to suggest that senior IRS officials somehow targeted specific individuals for National Research Program audits.”
The probe comes a day after The New York Times reported that Comey and McCabe were subjected to rare IRS audits of their tax returns. The newspaper said Comey was informed of the audit in 2019 and McCabe learned he was under scrutiny in 2021.
Trump repeatedly attacked both men over the FBI’s Russia investigation that shadowed his presidency for years. Trump fired Comey in 2017 in the midst of the Russia probe.
McCabe was fired in March 2018 after the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded he had authorized the release of information to a newspaper reporter and then misled internal investigators about his role in the leak. The termination by Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, came hours before McCabe was due to retire.
Target Trump and its fair game, target Trumps adversaries and its collusion corruption.
That’s okay. Lois Lerner illegally went after Republicans and Tea Party candidates and groups and you leftists didn’t say boo. Now that the show is on the other foot, oh the world is coming to an end. I’m sure CPA Letitia James can check all their personal tax returns and see if there are any irregularities.
If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander! I’d love to see them sweat!
The article misses to point out, that these audits are rare, and by law should only be random (for research purposes)
This means that there couldn’t possibly be a logical explanation to that, just a statistical one.
For example: if you can find a list of 100 Trump pubkic enemies (of this magnitude, a high estimate), the math works like this
For each individual, each year’s chance is 1/30,000
For the span of 3 years, 1/10,000
For the group of 100, there is a 1/100 chance that anyone of the should be audited.
And there is a 1 out of 10,000 chance that 2 of them should be audited at random (a very low probability)
The less the group of potential subjects, the less the probability to the 2nd power.
I.e. if you can only find a pool of 50 subjects, it would be 1/40,000.
Hey, if they have nothing to hide, this shouldn’t be a big deal.
At least that’s what they said when investigating Trump.
Comey, the double crossing SOB cholera, should be in jail !!!
Some clarification here is needed because the usual crowd is ranting about things they apparently know nothing about…
So, as far as anyone knows these audits were completed with one resulting in a small refund and the other a small amount due. Nothing criminal or significant has come out of these audits.
What is important to understand is that this type of audit is pretty rare and it was via accident (they each separately talking to the NYT and from there finding out the other was also audited) that they found they were both audited and upon them and others realizing this it raised red flags that perhaps an overzealous Trump supporter (no one is really suggesting that Trump could have personally directed this due to how the IRS is organized since the days of Nixon) inside the IRS was able to instigate these audits.
For those trying to compare congressional investigations of Trump with this, that is simply ridiculous as congress is tasked with oversight over the President (i.e. what do you think the power to Impeach and Convict is?) whereas the IRS is an administrative agency that is specifically not supposed to allow politics to play a role in who gets audited.
Oh, if you want to respond with something about the IRS targeting the Tea Party, please provide specific details about how you feel they were targeted and not just the usual generic nonsensical rants.
Yakov Doe and QAXZC, if they had nothing o hide, audits should be no big deal for them.