The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has requested that the inspector general of the US Treasury Department conduct an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding extensive tax audits that were conducted against two former FBI agents who were frequently the targets of ex-President Donald Trump’s resentment.
According to IRS spokesman Jodie Reynolds, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig personally contacted the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on Thursday to inquire about the audits of former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
According to Reynolds, the inspector general has formally been tasked with looking into the situation.
Reynolds claimed that it is “ludicrous and incorrect” to imply that senior IRS employees in any way singled out certain people for National Research Program examinations.
The investigation was announced just one day after The New York Times revealed that Comey and McCabe had been subjected to an unusual IRS audit of their tax returns.
Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 while the investigation into possible ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign was ongoing.
According to US media reports, the IRS said in a statement released on Thursday that “Federal privacy rules prohibit us from discussing specific taxpayer situations.”
“Career civil servants who specialize in audits conduct them, and the IRS has significant safeguards in place to protect the audit process and deter politically influenced audits.”
The investigation was announced a day after The New York Times revealed that Comey and McCabe had undergone an unusual IRS audit of their tax returns.
According to the article, McCabe discovered he was under investigation in 2021 and Comey learned about the audit in 2019.
According to the Times, there is a very slim chance that you will be chosen for the intrusive audits: “Out of over 153 million individual returns submitted for 2017, for example, the IRS targeted about 5,000, or around one out of 30,600,” it claimed.
On Thursday, McCabe said in an interview with CNN that he thought sending the case to the inspector general was “the appropriate approach, but let’s see if the IG works on it and then makes their conclusions public.”
The FBI’s Russia investigation, which for years was a cloud over Trump’s presidency, was the subject of frequent attacks from both men. In the midst of the investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign, Comey was fired by Trump in 2017.
Read more:-
- Trump Foes Comey and Mccabe’s Audits Are Being Closely Examined, According to the Irs.
- Could Politically Motivated Attacks Against American Citizens Use the Irs? Seven Things to Know
- Could Politically Motivated Attacks Against American Citizens Use the Irs? Seven Things to Know
Nearly a year after he was fired, Comey charged that the former Republican president was “morally unfit” to hold the position. Comey stated in an interview that the difficulty with this president is that he will leave a stain on everyone around him.
After the Justice Department’s inspector general found that McCabe had authorized the distribution of information to a newspaper reporter and then lied to internal investigators about his participation in the leak, he was fired in March 2018.
A few hours prior to McCabe’s scheduled retirement, Jeff Sessions, the current attorney general, fired him.
