‘It defies belief’: McCabe reacts to IRS audit

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said an investigation should be launched into how he and former FBI Director James Comey were both selected by the Internal Revenue Service for an intensive tax audit. The IRS denied any "politically motivated audits" in a statement to CNN. #CNN #News

69 comments

  1. “Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences and stupid people already have all answers.”

  2. Even if you limit a person’s power to handing out the hymnbooks in church, they will still figure out a way to abuse that power.

    1. @Killed The Cat lol, yeah and that might be the case. But if that’s the case then someone will probably talk.

    2. @Killed The Cat 🙂I don’t even see it as arguing.

      They believe they are trolling the DEMs with their silly alternative facts when in reality they just sound like a drunk person at the bar who we are just making fun of them.😂

    3. Not all people, but there obviously need to be more enforceable rules & laws to keep the powerful in check. The “honor system” only works on people who have honor.

  3. “The IRS in not subject to political manipulation or force.” Neither is the Supreme Court. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

  4. *Well, here’s the deal… -Trump made an emergency announcement!!.* EVERYDAYS.ML

    Mr.Dunn – respect.

    1. Cheques are usually in the mail, but one side likes than hand delivered these days otherwise they cry and cry and cry. 😀

    2. It should not take long to track down who took the decision to audit the people selected and why.

    1. Where will the funds to do so come from?
      The I.R.S. keeps getting it’s budget slashed, there is a reason they prefer to go after those of us who can’t afford lawyers.

  5. As an agent in FBI, you should be audited often. More and more digitalized systems will help us not even having to audit. The computers will make the alarms themselves.

  6. If a sycophant is in charge in any agency it is very possible. All of these people need to be flushed out.

    1. @ogoshen What do I know about what? Ask a specific question and get a specific answer. Hope this isn’t over your head.

  7. What i don’t understand is why we keep assuming that when you put political appointees in charge of gov institutions that are supposed to be politically neutral, they are gonna be apolitical in the execution of their duties. It defies logic and fully assumes that every appointed individual is outside the human norm and just full of virtues, incorruptible, without any political, financial, ambitions, etc. This is not just a US issue, but it’s particularly problematic there, where most appointments are political or elected officials instead of people that arrived in those positions based on experience and professional vetting in their respective fields.

    1. @jorge gonzalez-larramendi Not sure “mm” is me, but just in case.

      I was paying close attention and had a front row seat in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I should mention that I am not biased against GW. I went to college in Texas and even briefed GW as president. He is down-to earth, polite, self-effacing, and, most importantly, his BS isn’t at all weak (high compliment in TX). Basically, GW is a reg. guy. That said, my critical assessment is the GW Bush administration screwed the pooch (STP) several times, which is pretty damning thing to say about the administration of a a former pilot, even if he was just a national guard pilot. STP #1 – clearing scrub instead of heeding the intel about the 9/11 attack. That was very personal for me. Bush’s negligence killed a good friend of mine. STP #2 – Missing BIn Laden at Tora Bora. STP #3 – invasion of Iraq. STP #4 – being asleep at the wheel before the 2008 Financial Crisis.

      The relationship of the above to your comment, is that one could also say that HW Bush and his politically appointed Judge both STP’d. An Al Gore administration wouldn’t have STP’s on 9/11, the evidence was too strong. Ditto for Tora Bora. They wouldn’t have had VP Cheney, so they woudn’t have STP’d on Iraq. Honestly, I don’t know about the 2008 financial crisis.

    1. @Wasn’t Me “Got gas ?
      it’s expensive now isn’t it. thanks trump for driving the prices up!

  8. The IRS doesn’t even answer the damn phone when you try to call them to ask about your taxes!

  9. This issue begs the question as to how many members of the top .5 % of incomes were audited (over the past 20 years). If corruption exists one way (revenge audits or ‘unwarranted’ ie ‘illegal investigation’ audits) could they also exist the other way (a sort of ‘privileged avoidance of audit’)?

    1. You can look this up, Roy. Over the past several years, most people between about 25,000 and 200,000 in income have less than 0.5% chance of being audited. If you have $1,000,000 income the chances jump to about 3%, $10,000,000 and above about 12%. That’s why very few sane people thought it was “weird” or any sign of political corruption when Trump happened to be under audit while he was running for president. If you’re rich, you’ll be audited several times in your life by probability.

    2. Aug 8, 2018 Federal prosecutions of white-collar crime — a category that includes tax, corporate, health-care or securities fraud, among other crimes — are on track this year to reach their lowest level on record. That’s according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, whose data go back to 1986. Prosecutions of crimes related to public corruption are also on pace to set a record low.

  10. I used to work in a different government, conducting surveys of staffing procedures, asking hiring managers about how it was done, how long it took, etc.; all stuff meant to monitor efficiency and effectiveness. Though we had to know who the manager was, in order to e-mail them the survey, once the data was collected, every single person was just another anonymous data-point in a large file for analysis at the system-wide level. We got their contact info via a 12% random sample of documented staffing actions in a government-wide file. As it happens, some managers do a lot more staffing than others, and so they would come up in the random sample on a fairly regular basis, leading them to believe – and I know because I got the aggravated e-mails from them – that they were being *personally* audited; something I had to talk them down from.

    I can’t say with complete confidence that Mssrs. McCabe and Comey were definitely NOT being picked on. But at the same time, popular beliefs about “randomness” are often misinformed. People think “Well, what are the odds…?”, and “How come me and not them?”. But you know, that’s what “random” is. In all my 70 years, I have *never* been selected for jury duty, but my wife has…twice. That’s how “random” works.

    1. The odds are just TOO GREAT for public confidence. I’m 61 and have been called for jury duty 6 times in my life, it happens. I STILL say somebody needs to look into the IRS investigations and SEE THAT THERE IS NO TARGETED INVESTIGATION going on. *I think ALL government agencies needs to review ALL their employees and their online presence to make sure our goverment isn’t paying salary to insurrectionists and seditionists.*

    1. Yep. Every elected position. Yearly audits. Every. Single. Elected. Official. I’ve been saying this for a while now.

    2. Yes we all agree but it has to be fair ,even a nasty ,mean & angry President like the donald should go trough the same .Nobody is above the law ,I wish it would be true.

    3. So, are you in favor of expanding the power of the IRS? Are you willing to permit the significant increase in IRS spending to have the people tp do all these audits? Oh, and what about Trump’s audit?

  11. Our family is just an average lower middle class family, one young child, both income earners…but in 2001 I was an activist against the DOD in shipping nuclear fueling rods through our little town and parking them outside the city limits. The following two years, after having won our fight, our little family were audited. I learned then, that if you do something the government doesn’t like, they will come after you one way or another. Not justified…but targeted

  12. Lesson from this story.

    IRS needs to audit more.

    I remember wen the head of the irs said how they don’t have the money or staffing to audit the rich, so they just don’t

  13. The IRS will actually do your taxes for you if you make under a certain income, so why not let the IRS do every elected official or political appointee’s taxes? I am okay with everyone running for office, in office or appointed by a politician being audited. Let’s just weed out the criminals before they get into office.

    1. To be fair, they should be doing *everyones* taxes.
      The only thing you should have to do is confirm their numbers are correct….

  14. Why is this a mystery? Hasn’t anyone listened to Nixon’s tapes?

    In one of the tapes, he’s talking to someone (AG?) saying that he wants to have a new guy in charge of the IRS. He said he needs someone who will target the people he says to target, leave his friends alone, and hand over anyone’s tax forms that he asks for.

    So why are people surprised that it can happen again?

  15. Good to hear that they’re cooperating so well. Glad to hear it’s not just common folks who are being investigated. Leadership by example folks. That’s what this country needs

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