Republicans warned that tax auditors would become the “speech police” — but now Trump is reportedly getting ready to do just that.
The Trump administration is preparing to overhaul the IRS so it could pursue criminal investigations of left-leaning groups more easily, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. A senior IRS official has “drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors” such as George Soros and his groups, per the story. The president is trying to place allies at the IRS’ criminal-investigative division (IRS-CI) and replace longtime agency officials. The IRS does not have the guardrails that the Federal Reserve has to ensure its independence.
The move comes as the administration has sharpened its efforts to criminally go after Trump’s political opponents — in recent weeks, the Justice Department pushed through prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both reportedly without sufficient evidence of them committing crimes.
A White House that uses the IRS as a tool for political punishment is exactly the accusation that Republicans, such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio, levied against the last two Democratic administrations. Vance argued the Biden White House weaponized the IRS to conduct investigations of conservative groups.
“It’s another example of using the government to target political opponents,” then-Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said in a November 20, 2023, Fox News interview. “This is really not about left versus right. This is about whether we have functional constitutional government in this country. If the IRS can go after you because of what you think or what you believe or what you do, we’d no longer live in a free country.”
And scores of Republicans like Rubio contended that the Obama White House ordered the IRS to intensively scrutinize the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.
“We’re talking about a deliberate abuse of power. And I can’t think of a more powerful agency in the U.S. government than the IRS. It affects every single American,” then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in a May 16, 2013, Fox News interview. “It is a crime for an IRS employee to target people based on their political leanings.”
No evidence substantiated either claim.
