IRS Commissioner Asks Inspector General To Probe Rare, Exhaustive Comey-McCabe Audits

The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said that its commissioner, Charles P. Rettig, asked the inspector general to probe into the rare, exhaustive audits of former FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe.

The issue was raised after questions regarding the audits of the two officials, who are known to be enemies of the Trump administration, were hit with supposedly random investigations. If the investigation finds that there is no connection, the incident still marks the dark periods when the country's tax agency was used or seemed to be used, as a political weapon.

Rare, Exhaustive IRS Audit

The news that the former FBI officials were facing audits was revealed on Wednesday and McCabe immediately called for an investigation. In a statement on Thursday, he said that the occurrence of the "coincidental" situation is a one in 30,000 possibility. For it to happen twice, for the same people who were targeted in the same way by the former president, incites disbelief.

While there is no direct evidence that shows the IRS specifically targeted Comey and McCabe, it brings into question whether or not the Trump administration played a role in the incident. It also comes as the tax filings for which the two officials were audited, as per CNN.

The spokesperson for the IRS, Jodie Reynolds, said that it was "ludicrous and untrue to suggest that senior IRS officials somehow targeted specific individuals" for such audits. The situation comes as former President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked Comey and McCabe over the FBI's Russia investigation.

The probe shadowed the Republican businessman's presidency for years and forced him to fire Comey in 2017 in the midst of the investigation. The probe was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller who was named to the position by Trump's Justice Department.

According to US News, the FBI inquiry began in the summer of 2016, several months before Trump was elected as president. The agency had learned that a former Trump campaign aide had been saying, before it was publicly known, that Russia had dirt on Trump's Democratic rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton, in the form of stolen emails.

Trump's Political Enemies

The emails were allegedly hacked from Democratic email accounts by Russian intelligence and were released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks before the election. American officials said that the acts were done in an attempt to harm Clinton's campaign and support Trump's.

The Justice Department's inspector general conducted a review in 2019 that knocked down multiple lines of attack against the Russia investigation. It found that officials properly opened the inquiry and that law enforcement leaders were not motivated by political bias.

The situation comes as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, said that Trump has no "respect for the rule of law." He argued that if the former president did try to subject his political enemies to additional IRS scrutiny, it would be no surprise to anyone. The senator noted that there was a need to understand what happened because it raises serious concerns, the New York Times reported.