IRS asks IG to review audits of Comey, McCabe
The IRS said Thursday that it had asked the inspector general who oversees tax matters to investigate how James Comey, the former FBI director, and his deputy, Andrew McCabe — both perceived enemies of former President Donald Trump
— came to be faced with rare, exhaustive audits that the agency says are supposed to be random.
“The IRS has referred the matter to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration for review,” the agency said in a written statement, adding that its commissioner, Charles Rettig, had “personally reached out” to the inspector general after learning about the audits.
The disclosure from the IRS came a day after The New York Times reported Comey and McCabe had been the subjects of audits that target just several thousand Americans a year.
In 2017, the tax year Comey was audited for, the IRS said it randomly selected about 5,000 returns for the audit out of the 153 million people who filed them. For 2019, the year McCabe was audited for, the agency said it picked about 8,000 returns of the roughly 154 million that were filed.
It is not clear how two close associates both came to be scrutinized under the same audit program in a matter of a few years. Comey and McCabe both told the Times that they had questions about how the audits had come about.
Trump said he had no knowledge of the audits. The IRS has denied that any wrongdoing occurred.
“Federal privacy laws preclude us from discussing specific taxpayer situations,” the IRS said in a statement released Thursday. “Audits are handled by career civil servants, and the IRS has strong safeguards in place to protect the exam process — and against politically motivated audits. It's ludicrous and untrue to suggest that senior IRS officials somehow targeted specific individuals for National Research Program audits.”
Former IRS officials and tax lawyers said that because Comey and McCabe were attacked so frequently by Trump — who pushed for their prosecutions and accused them of treason — an inspector general or congressional committee should investigate the matter. The chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said that Rettig had reached out to tell him that he had asked the inspector general to investigate the matter and “to reiterate that any allegations of wrongdoing are taken seriously and are referred to the IG for further review.”
“Donald Trump has no respect for the rule of law, so if he tried to subject his political enemies to additional IRS scrutiny, that would surprise no one,” Wyden said.