Trump Team Plans IRS Overhaul to Enable Pursuit of Left-Leaning Groups - WSJ

[In It to Win It]

WSJ - Gift Link

The Trump administration is preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily, according to people familiar with the matter.

A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, some of the people said.

The undertaking aims to install allies of President Trump at the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, to exert firmer control over the unit and weaken the involvement of IRS lawyers in criminal investigations, officials said. The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes and are being driven by Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Shapley has told people that he is going to replace Guy Ficco, the chief of the investigative unit, who has been at the agency for decades, and that Shapley has been putting together a list of donors and groups he believes IRS investigators should look at. Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups, according to a senior IRS official and another person briefed on the list. It couldn’t be determined upon what grounds Shapley would seek to begin such an investigation.

The effort within the IRS coincides with a larger administration effort to probe left-leaning groups for helping to finance organizations that the president says are creating anarchy in Democratic-led cities. Trump has directed Bessent, who is also acting IRS commissioner, to identify financial networks that the president says are fomenting political violence. Democrats say the effort is politically motivated and not based on real evidence.

Again, it is a full-blown federal felony crime for anyone in the White House or Executive Office of the President to order tax investigations into anyone.

And it's not just a crime to DO it, it's even a federal crime for an employee not to REPORT such an order to the Treasury Inspector General.

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T02:52:24.682Z

[underpants]

1. A double irony bonus - "weaponizing government" AND their own made up "IRS Teabagger scandal"

Everything accusation is truly an admission.

[yellow dahlia]

2. WTF!

[58Sunliner]

3. I hope no one is surprised at what he is doing.

I foresee a future where our assets are at risk simply for being dems. If you have a house I would put in it in an LLC or whatever conveyance would offer the most protection.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. MaddowBlog-Team Trump eyes changes at the IRS that would make weaponization far easier

There were some indications that the president’s appointees were politicizing the agency in ways unseen since Watergate. The emerging picture is now worse.

Team Trump eyes changes at the IRS that would make weaponization far easier
There were some indications that the president’s appointees were politicizing the agency in ways unseen since Watergate. The emerging picture is now worse.
Read in MSNBC: apple.news/A477JlTXsRIm...
🚨🚨🔥🔥

— (@enuffsaysv.bsky.social) 2025-10-17T04:18:47.958Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-eyes-changes-irs-make-weaponization-far-easier-rcna237972

But just because things are awful at the IRS doesn’t mean conditions can’t get worse. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The Trump administration is preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily, according to people familiar with the matter. A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, some of the people said.

.....One of the first signs of trouble came six months ago, when The Washington Post reported that the Republican administration was “amassing influence over criminal investigations at the IRS,” in part by elevating Gary Shapley — whom the White House saw as a political ally because he raised concerns about Hunter Biden’s taxes in 2023.

The Post added in April that developments at the tax agency gave Trump political appointees “a direct line to tax investigations for the first time since Richard M. Nixon was president.”......

Reading this, I was reminded of a recent column from The New York Times’ Jeffrey Toobin, who highlighted Richard Nixon’s Watergate-era enemies list. From the piece:

The Internal Revenue Service took some preliminary steps to investigate Mr. Nixon’s enemies, but Donald C. Alexander, who was Mr. Nixon’s commissioner of the I.R.S. in 1973, shut down attempts to use audits and other forms of harassment in that way. Mr. Alexander later wrote that he took the step because ‘political or social views, ‘extremist’ or otherwise, are irrelevant to taxation.’ Mr. Nixon stewed about Mr. Alexander’s intransigence, and Mr. Alexander later wrote that the president had tried to fire him, but the I.R.S. commissioner stayed in place for the rest of the president’s time in office.

When historians and other observers argue that Team Trump’s abuses are worse than what Americans experienced during Nixon’s Watergate era, there are ample reasons to take the assessment seriously.

One of the grounds in the draft Nixon impeachment articles was misuse of the IRS to audit Nixon's enemies. trump may had done this to Comey and will now be able to really go after his enemies