The I.R.S. audit of two of Trump’s closest advisers: Kelly, Comey, and the CNN Investigative Report on the Times
Kelly told The New York Times that Trump wanted the IRS to look into his political opponents.
The people that Trump wanted to get the I.R.S. on were the FBI directors, according to the newspaper.
“I would say, ‘It’s inappropriate, it’s illegal, it’s against their integrity and the I.R.S. knows what it’s doing and it’s not a good idea,’” Kelly said he told Trump, according to the Times.
The IRS selected the two fierce Trump critics to perform an intensive tax audit. The Times noted earlier this year that the odds of any one person being selected for the audit are about one in 30,600, raising questions about how two of Trump’s most visible critics were both selected.
McCabe, now a CNN law enforcement analyst, was one of the central leaders of the early Russia investigation that pursued Trump’s advisers and questions about whether the then-president had obstructed justice.
Trump and Comey had a similarly tumultuous relationship. The appointment of a special counsel was triggered by the firing of FBI Director James Comey by Trump. Trump has called Comey a “liar” and “leaker” and suggested that his actions were treasonous. Comey has bashed Trump as a stain on American democracy.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/politics/trump-irs-audits-kelly-mccabe-comey/index.html
Identifying Factors involved in the Audit Candidate Trump’s Audit: A Potential Trouble for the I.R.S.
it defies logic to think there wasn’t at least one factor involved in his random selection for the audit, he told Laura Coates in July.
I think that is a question that is reasonable. I think that it should be looked into. There needs to be some trust in the institutions of government so we should dig through this and find out what happened.
One point of potential trouble for Mr. Trump emerged from the report. The I.R.S. is considering disallowing the $21 million write-off Mr. Trump claimed in 2015 for agreeing not to develop much of the land on a sprawling estate in Westchester County, N.Y., known as Seven Springs. The agency is looking into the validity of the value Mr. Trump claimed was based on a qualified appraisal.
After The Times published its investigation revealing years of Mr. Trump’s tax data, I.R.S. officials met to decide how to respond to the numerous revelations, including questionable deductions, tax credits and cancellation of debt. The agency set high expectations for what to look at.
For instance, The Times reported that Mr. Trump had a pattern of writing off payments to unidentified consultants, totaling $26 million over nine years across all of his projects, and that at least some of that money went to his daughter Ivanka, even though she was earning a salary as an executive at his company. It raised the question of whether the payments reflected actual consulting work or were simply a way to claim an unwarranted tax deduction.
The report said the I.R.S. worried that the resources needed to examine would far outweigh any benefits from the payments, since they were spread out over many years. In a bit of circular reasoning, the agency ultimately determined that the fees were too “difficult to examine unless they were found to be fraudulent payments.”