I will admit that this has succeeded in freaking me out a little bit:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on Charlie Kirk’s show and said the quiet part way too loud: calling Kirk’s assassination a “domestic 9/11” and promising to “compile lists” of left-wing groups to investigate. Tim Miller breaks down how this rhetoric crosses every line and why this “war on terror 2.0” mentality is straight-up un-American.
Bob Bauer, former White House Counsel, breaks it down:
Donald Trump has demonstrated his administration’s programmatic commitment to weaponizing the government to settle scores with political adversaries or weaken their opposition to him and his policies. Much of the fiercest public controversy has involved the Department of Justice and, so far, the president’s direction of the criminal prosecutions of old foes such as former FBI Director James Comey and New York State Attorney Letitia James. Now, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, his administration is turning its attention to an overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that would enable the agency to “pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups” and “major Democratic donors.”
As reported, this is a full-on assault on a long-standing policy, expressed in law and norm, that the IRS should be kept clear of political misuse. President Nixon was impeached for attempting to abuse the IRS’s power for political gain. Following that incident, and with overwhelming bipartisan support, the tax code was amended to prohibit “the President, the Vice President, any employee of the executive office of the President, and any employee of the executive office of the Vice President” from “conduct[ing] or terminat[ing] an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer.” The law imposes fines and imprisonment as penalties for violations, and it requires that any employee who receives any request or directive to violate the statute report it to the Inspector General for Tax Administration.
It is also a striking development because it comes some years after Republicans in Congress investigated alleged political abuse of the Service’s authority to grant or deny exemptions to nonprofits engaged in various forms of issue advocacy. To simplify a complicated story, the IRS Inspector General found that the IRS had discriminated against conservative organizations in the application of its power over exemptions. Democrats joined Republicans in decrying any such political misuse of tax regulatory authority but argued that the record pointed to “equal opportunity mismanagement and equal opportunity bedlam” that also affected progressive organizations. Congress subsequently enacted a freeze on all further rulemaking activity in this area.
Now the Trump administration appears to be breaking with the bipartisan consensus that the IRS should be insulated from politics. And it is notable that reports of this weaponization policy have surfaced within days of a federal court decision, in Freedom Path v. Internal Revenue Service, that highlighted the dangers of the IRS’s power to grant or deny exemptions from tax for organizations active in the political process. The case brought by Freedom Path, a nonprofit social-welfare organization that supports conservative fiscal policies and has financed ads calling for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, illustrates how this intersection of tax regulation and politics is a problem at all times—and, now, one that could become far worse under the reported plans for IRS weaponization.
Bessent is nuts, as Tim Miller amply demonstrated in that rant above. And I guess he wants a big piece of the police state action.
I would just add that the the Wall St. Journal reports that the guy they’ve put in charge of this is a hard core MAGA fellow by the name of Gary Shapely who was a big “whistleblower” in the Hunter Biden case and was ousted as head of the IRS under Trump after only three days. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be too sanguine that this is a person of good judgement.
