Ex-Chief of Staff John Kelly tells the NYT Trump wanted the IRS to audit his enemies
On Sunday night, the New York Times published an article, “Trump Wanted I.R.S. Investigations of Foes, Top Aide Says”. The piece starts,
“While in office, President Donald J. Trump repeatedly told John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly, who was chief of staff from July 2017 through the end of 2018, said in response to questions from The New York Times that Mr. Trump’s demands were part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been critical of him, including seeking to revoke the security clearances of former top intelligence officials.”
Trump will accuse John Kelly of lying — just as he has thousands of other people. The accusation will have the weight of a lawn chair in a tornado. And it is reasonable to assume that Gen. Kelly is telling the truth. Although, it is also fair to ask why he waited so long.
I hope that the Dept. of Justice does not open an investigation. Prosecutors from New York and Georgia, to Florida, have already opened enough cases. America needs indictments rather than more noise - ASAP.
Rumors that Trump was using the IRS and the DoJ for his vendettas have long swirled. And based on Trump’s five-decade-long history of abusive tactics, it seemed a reasonable supposition. Congress even impeached him for using the threat of withholding military aid to extort Ukraine’s brand-new President Vladimir Zolynsky for dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden.
The Bidens were not the only targets of Trump's mob boss tactics. He was so aggrieved FBI Director James Comey refused to swear a loyalty oath he fired him. Then the news broke that Comey had received a letter from the IRS in 2019 saying it was randomly auditing his 2017 return. Not a regular audit, it was instead an Orwellian named ‘Compliance Research Examination’. This audit is so invasive, thorough, and lengthy that tax lawyers describe it as “an autopsy without the benefit of death”. The odds of a 2017 tax return being the target of this examination were one in 30,600.
More news dispelled any thought that this was a random event. In 2021 the IRS, still headed by Trump appointee Charles Rettig, told another man on the Trump shit list that they had 'randomly' selected him for the audit from hell. This time it was Comey’s successor as FBI director, Andrew G. McCabe. His odds of being the subject of this rare audit were one in 19,500.
The odds of these two successive FBI Directors, both objects of Trump’s invective, being randomly selected are one in 589 million. And because both men had filed joint returns, their wives were also under the microscope.
Rettig is not an upright man. He wrote an op-ed for Forbes that defended Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns. He bitched about a special wealth unit in the IRS focused on catching tax cheat billionaires. And he promised to slash IRS enforcement. All of which would benefit the man he owed his job to. Later, In a financial disclosure prepared for his confirmation hearings, he listed an interest in two rental properties in Hawaii but omitted to mention they were in a Trump-owned property.
In answering the NYT’s questions, Kelly said he believed he had convinced Trump not to pursue his vindictiveness. Maybe. But as soon as Kelly was out the door, the shit started flying.
The whole thing stinks. Although with the stench surrounding Trump, it is likely to be little noticed. Fine. Let the DoJ prosecute the thug under the Espionage Act for the provable crimes he committed by putting American national security at risk. The people need to know that no citizen is above the law. Especially one that will not stop breaking it.