Remember a decade ago when the IRS was caught using "keywords" to target conservative groups -- where businesses/groups with names including words such "patriot" were automatically triggered into a much more likely audit?
Remember how agency head Lois Lerner was not cooperative, and then claimed that 7 different hard drives with potential evidence "crashed" (lol)?
Well, we have two fresh new scandals this decade.
Scandal #1 was recently known. IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley was a whistleblower who claimed that there was political interference regarding the Hunter Biden probe. He claimed that he watched prosecutors engage in "deviations" from the normal process, in ways that "seemed to always benefit the subject [Hunter]."
Upon his speaking out, he was abruptly yanked off the Hunter Biden probe.
Scandal #2 became known much more recently. Matt Taibbi, the
liberal-turned-conservative journalist who presented "The Twitter Files" shortly after Elon Musk bought the company, exposed a censorship scandal taking place between Twitter and the federal government. It strongly appears that he was targeted by the IRS this year as a form of retaliation for doing this.
The IRS' own records show that the investigation into his tax return began on December 24th -- which was both Christmas Eve and a Saturday. That happened to be the same day he dropped the 9th installment of The Twitter Files. An IRS agent also visited his home in March, which was nonstandard, and seen as an intimidation tactic. Taibbi revealed today that he did not owe the IRS any money, and in fact they owed him money. The IRS cannot explain what triggered this sudden and urgent investigation of him -- enough to pay overtime to an agent to work on Saturday, December 24th to start an investigation on him. They are weakly claiming that they had sent him "notices" dating back to 2019, but they have provided no proof of such notices, nor did Taibbi's accountants ever receive them.
This is now at least the third incident in the past decade -- and second within the last few months -- where the IRS was weaponized to help Democrats.
Note that Biden set aside a shitload of money last year in order to hire 87,000 new agents.
Here's a good WSJ editorial about it:
https://archive.ph/UmhY2
So corrupt. The US is legit turning into an authoritarian regime, where those who either speak out against the government or question the current narrative are targeted, discredited, censored, or ruined.
But if you ask any Democrats, the real fascist is Ron DeSantis, because he's taking pornographic books out of elementary school libraries.