One of the week’s more intriguing reports came by way of The New York Times, which reported Wednesday on James Comey and Andrew McCabe facing unusual IRS audits. It raised the prospect of Donald Trump engaging in Nixonian abuses: Both the former FBI director and his deputy drew the ire of the Republican president, and it seemed like it’d be an incredible coincidence if both were flagged for the kind of scrutiny few Americans ever experience.
Indeed, given the odds, it was only natural to wonder about a possible abuse, especially given Team Trump’s track record for corruption.
The matter is now under investigation from the agency’s inspector general’s office, which will presumably shed additional light on what happened. But in the meantime, there are related revelations to consider.
The Washington Post reported today, for example, that the rare audits really might be a coincidence — as Comey and McCabe became higher profile figures, their incomes grew in unusual ways, making it more likely that they’d be subjected to extra IRS scrutiny — though “the idea of using the IRS against political adversaries certainly crossed the former president’s mind.”
One former senior official said Trump would rant that people should be investigated and audited, though neither of the two officials who spoke to The Post said they ever heard Trump give specific orders to that effect….. “They did it to us,” Trump would say in 2017, accusing the IRS of carrying out politically motivated audits of pro-Republican groups under President Barack Obama, a storyline conservative media had focused on frequently, though no evidence emerged to support such a claim. “He would say this person should be investigated, this person should be audited. I never heard him give a direct order,” one of the former officials said.
Right off the bat, let’s reemphasize that “they” did not weaponize the IRS. As regular readers know, the Obama-era controversy Trump referred to was a mirage. The “scandal,” such as it was, collapsed when reality showed that the tax agency hadn’t singled out conservatives for unfair scrutiny and there was no conspiracy.
Congressional Republicans held hearings, which offered no evidence of wrongdoing. The FBI launched its own probe, and federal law enforcement didn’t uncover anything, either. The entire faux-scandal died with a whimper because it wasn’t real.
But even putting that aside, it’s no small detail that senior officials who worked with the Republican president heard him seek investigations and audits of his perceived political foes. The fact that Trump may not have given “direct orders” is hardly reassuring: When a president endorses such abuses, it’s emblematic of a leader corrupting his office, whether commands are specific or not. Indeed, such rants make abuses more likely: Officials who want to please their boss quickly realize that weaponizing government agencies is in line with his expectations. “He did not care one bit about what the rules were supposed to be,” one of the former officials told the Post, referring to Trump. After everything we’ve learned about the former president, that’s very easy to believe.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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