The political weaponization of the federal government under Democratic President Joe Biden continues to get worse, leaving Republicans furious and demanding answers as well as action.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Daniel Werfel on Wednesday, seeking an explanation for the visit made by IRS agents to journalist Matt Taibbi on the same day he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, the Post Millennial reported.
In a written response to a March 27 letter regarding the IRS visit to Taibbi’s residence, Jordan expressed that the documents received from the agency on May 6 “raised more questions than they answered.”
The IRS opened a case on me on a Saturday, Christmas Eve 2022, which just happened to coincide with a major Twitter Files report on FBI/intelligence community ties to tech platforms.
This is revealed in a new letter to the IRS Commissioner by House Judiciary Chair @Jim_Jordan: pic.twitter.com/WnbouNJMdQ— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 24, 2023
“The IRS asserted to the Committee that it sent a letter to Mr. Taibbi on October 24, 2019—nine days after Mr. Taibbi filed his 2018 tax return—asking Mr. Taibbi to verify his return because it met identity theft criteria and could not be processed until he confirmed,” Jordan’s letter said.
It went on to say that the IRS said it sent a second letter to Taibbi on March 23, 2020.
“However, according to Mr. Taibbi, neither he nor his accountant received either of these letters or any other notification that there was an issue with his 2018 tax return—that is, until the IRS conducted a field visit at Mr. Taibbi’s home three years later. The IRS also failed to produce these purported letters to the Committee,” Jordan’s letter continued.
Jordan’s letter stated the IRS documents disclosed that the agency initiated its review of Taibbi’s 2018 tax return on December 24, 2022, which was a Saturday and Christmas Eve. The timing is particularly noteworthy as it occurred three weeks after Taibbi published the initial Twitter Files, which highlighted instances of government misconduct on the social media platform.
The date was also “the same day that Mr. Taibbi published the ninth segment of the Twitter Files, detailing how federal government agencies ‘from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA’ coordinated to censor and coerce speech on various social media platforms,” the letter explained.
“It is unclear from the documents alone why the IRS opened its examination of Mr. Taibbi’s tax return on such an unusual date or whether it coincided intentionally with Mr. Taibbi’s reporting about government censorship,” Jordan wrote.
He added that an IRS agent was assigned to Taibbi’s case in January and was instructed to initiate face-to-face contact after beginning an investigation.
“By the time the agent appeared at Mr. Taibbi’s home, it had been nearly three years since the IRS claims it last tried to contact Mr. Taibbi about his 2018 tax return. Instead of attempting to reinitiate contact with Mr. Taibbi by less intrusive means, the IRS scheduled its field visit for March 9, 2023—the very day Mr. Taibbi was to testify before Congress,” Jordan wrote.
Taibbi resolved his tax issue in March and was issued a Notice of Case Resolution on the 23rd, indicating the case was closed.
“The IRS’s production, however, lacks any indication of the IRS’s decision-making process to open a case against Mr. Taibbi, or to conduct a field visit at his home,” Jordan’s letter said, demanding that the agency produce to the committee all documents relating to the decision to open an examination into Taibbi’s tax returns and its justification, the Post Millennial added.
