Trump IRS Would Use Investigators To Target Perceived Political Foes

WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 13: A sign for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on February 13, 2025. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

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President Trump’s use of the Internal Revenue Service to attack his perceived political enemies has taken another, deeply troubling turn.

According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal (paywall), the Administration plans to use the agency to pursue criminal investigations against left-leaning organizations. The Journal reported a Trump ally at the Treasury Department has prepared a list of targets, including donors to Democratic candidates. The initiative would include an unprecedented effort to install a team of Trump political supporters in the agency’s Criminal Investigative Division and ease IRS rules intended to prevent abuses by the office.

A Parallel Effort

This attempt to use the CI division as a weapon against perceived critics parallels a separate Trump initiative to criminalize activity the Administration defines as domestic terrorism. That effort, ongoing in the White House and among congressional Republicans, would revoke the tax-exempt status of groups that support, among other activities, “extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Experts in tax-exempt law fear such a broad definition would open the door to widespread attacks on tax-exempts that support what Trump has deemed “the enemy from within.”

For example, GOP congressional leaders and top Administration officials have labeled the “No Kings” demonstrations set for October 18 as “hate America” rallies. Others have suggested organizers and funders of the event could be targeted by the Administration.

But the reported efforts to use CI to investigate disfavored groups may takes another step: threatening criminal charges against dissidents. It would be an even more direct threat to Trump critics and those that support them. And the move is disturbing in many respects:

Encouraging More Fraud

It threatens the credibility of the IRS and the income tax itself. The nation’s voluntary tax system is based on the IRS as a politically neutral tax collector, not a partisan weapon. How will tax filers respond to an otherwise legitimate audit?

It opens the door to more tax fraud. The Administration and Congress already have made deep cuts in the agency’s compliance budget. And Trump has proposed cutting its enforcement budget by another one-third in 2026.

These reductions are especially troubling since CI normally targets tax violations that accompany related criminal activity, such as drug dealing or money laundering, or fraud by tax practitioners against their own clients. Fraud cases are extremely difficult and time-consuming to prove since they require the government to show intent. Targeting perceived political enemies will further deplete the agency’s ability to bring these cases.

It is highly unusual, and perhaps illegal, for Trump to place allies in IRS positions. By law, the agency has only two political appointees, the commissioner and the chief counsel. Still, gaining control of the IRS by seeding it with political allies was laid out in the Project 2025 conservative manifesto that has become a blueprint for much of the second Trump Administration.

A Double Standard

The Journal reported the effort to use CI to target Trump opponents is being led by Gary Shapley, a former CI staffer who was highly critical of what he saw as the agency’s foot-dragging in its investigation of President Biden son, Hunter. He later became an outspoken supporter of Trump, who named him acting IRS commission in April but rescinded the appointment two days later.

The effort also raises questions of a double standard. A decade ago, Republicans were outraged that the IRS tax-exempt division and its then-leader Lois Lerner targeted conservative groups seeking non-profit status from 2010-2012. Later investigations showed that while the effort was aimed primarily at conservative political organizations, it also focused on some liberal groups.

A major difference between that effort and the current initiative is the 2010-2012 episode was initiated by mid-level IRS staffers without the knowledge of the White House or even top IRS officials. The current targeting is being encouraged by the president.

Similarly, Trump and many Republicans have justified their efforts to cut IRS enforcement by claiming the agency has been overly aggressive in its audits, though its audit rate of individual returns is less than 1 percent. Earlier this year, House Ways & Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) praised Trump’s effort to cut IRS staff by saying this: “More invasive audits from the tax collector would be ripe for abuse given that the agency has been out of control”.

Now that the Trump Administration appears to be ordering invasive investigations of political opponents, Smith and others are silent.