Can Congress investigate and audit a private citizen? Sure seems government over reach to me.
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Former President Donald Trump repeatedly told his onetime White House chief of staff, John Kelly, that he wanted the Internal Revenue Service to investigate his political foes, Kelly told
The New York Times.
Among the people Trump wanted to “get the I.R.S. on” were former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Kelly told the newspaper.
“I would say, ‘It’s inappropriate, it’s illegal, it’s against their integrity and the I.R.S. knows what it’s doing and it’s not a good idea,’” Kelly said he told Trump, according to the Times.
“Yeah, but they’re writing bad things about me,” Trump responded, according to Kelly.
McCabe and Comey, both fierce critics of Trump, were ultimately selected by the Internal Revenue Service for an
intensive tax audit. The Times noted earlier this year that the odds of any one person being selected for the audit are about one in 30,600, raising questions about how two of Trump’s most visible critics were both selected.
The IRS denied any “politically motivated audits” in a statement to CNN earlier this year, and Kelly told the Times he believes that he guided Trump away from seeking out such investigations during his tenure as chief of staff.
Still, the head of the IRS, Charles Rettig, asked a watchdog to
investigate the decision to conduct audits on the pair earlier this year.
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly told his onetime White House chief of staff, John Kelly, that he wanted the Internal Revenue Service to investigate his political foes, Kelly told The New York Times.
www.cnn.com
