The IRS still refuses to answer why it showed up at the home of independent journalist Matt Taibbi in March, as Taibbi was detailing evidence that Twitter was suppressing speech to help Democrats.
Republican Rep. Greg Steube attempted to get IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel to explain the issue from the agency’s perspective at a House Ways & Means Committee hearing on Thursday.
The saga involving Taibbi stems from his testimony in early March before the House Republicans’ subcommittee investigating the “weaponization” of the federal government against conservatives.
Taibbi appeared shortly after the Biden administration, through the Federal Trade Commission, demanded that Twitter owner Elon Musk turn over information about journalists that were given access to Twitter’s files.
The same day he testified before Congress, IRS agents showed up at Taibbi’s home.
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On Thursday, Steube, a Sarasota Republican, recalled the incident and noted that the IRS agents left a note for Taibbi to call them. Steube said if the issue could be handled with a phone call, there seemed to be no reason to actually send agents to Taibbi’s home.
“The presumption has to be that this was an attempt to intimidate a witness, unless it can be proven otherwise,” said Steube. “These are the kind of tactics you see in [the] Soviet [Union] or communist China.”
He then asked Werfel if at a minimum the incident suggested there was “impropriety” on behalf of the IRS, considering the timing of the visit.
Werfel repeatedly declined, saying federal law prevented him from discussing cases involving individual taxpayers.
When Steube asked him to explain the process generally, Wefer finally replied, “The IRS reaches out in multiple ways to educate taxpayers, while ensuring it fairly enforces our tax laws.”
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Under questioning from Steube, Werfel refused to explain the process that starts an investigation, how agents are sent to taxpayers’ homes or that might involve him as a decision-maker.
At one point, he did admit that he does not generally get involved in the initial decisions that lead the agency to open an investigation of an individual taxpayer’s wrongdoing. Those are made by high-ranking subordinates, Werfel added.
Speaking generally, Werfel said agents knock on a taxpayer’s door after the agency has issued the person a letter or tried to contact through another “less invasive method.”
“If we fail to hear from that taxpayer, then going to someone’s home is a possibility,” said Werfel.
But Steube was not the only lawmaker asking the IRS to explain itself last week.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a letter to the IRS and the Treasury Department requesting information about the visit to Taibbi.
“The IRS’s intrusive actions do not appear to be consistent with [the] agency’s standard practices for contacting taxpayers,” Johnson noted in a press release. “The chances are so infinitesimally small that an IRS agent would show up at the journalist’s door the day that journalist is testifying before [a] House committee.”
“The IRS’s alleged decision to not follow standard practice and conduct an unannounced visit to Mr. Taibbi’s home, on the same day he was testifying before Congress, serves only to underscore taxpayers’ negative views of the IRS,” Johnson added. “The IRS owes the American people a full explanation about its visit to Mr. Taibbi’s home the day he was testifying before a Congressional committee. The public deserves complete transparency about this troubling incident.”
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