The I.R.S.’s inspector general said that returns from James Comey and Andrew McCabe were initially part of a randomly generated pool, but that a flaw in the final winnowing required further attention.
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James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was audited by the Internal Revenue Service after clashing with President Donald J. Trump.
The Internal Revenue Service’s inspector general said in a report on Thursday that highly invasive audits of two of former President Donald J. Trump’s chief enemies — the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe — happened after their tax returns were randomly selected for inclusion in the initial pools from which the agency drew to carry out the examinations.
But the 19-page report said there appeared to be some deviations from the I.R.S.’s rigorous rules for random selection when the agency winnowed down the initial pools to make the final selections of the returns that would be audited. That created a risk, the report said, that the I.R.S. “could have ensured that specific taxpayers from the original sample remained in the subsamples.”
As a result, the report said, the inspector general, known as the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, or TIGTA, would continue to look into what happened.
“Although we did not identify misconduct during our review, TIGTA is taking additional steps to assess the process used to select” the returns that would be audited, the report said.
The report said that I.R.S. officials involved in the selection of taxpayers said that neither the commissioner of the agency at the time, Charles P. Rettig, nor any other senior I.R.S. officials told them to pick specific people for the audits. The review also found no malicious code that could be used to manipulate the computer program that generates random returns for audit, the report said.
Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement that the report had assuaged “some concerns” about the possibility that the audits were the result of a politically motivated effort to target Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe.
But he said he remained concerned about recent statements by John F. Kelly, a White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump, who told The New York Times last month that Mr. Trump had repeatedly expressed a desire for the I.R.S. to investigate his enemies, including Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe. Mr. Neal said he had “requested a deeper probe into the former president’s use of the I.R.S. against his political enemies” and hoped to have more from the inspector general soon.
What to Know About the Trump Investigations
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Numerous inquiries. Since leaving office, former President Donald J. Trump has been facing several investigations into his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:
Classified documents inquiry. The F.B.I. searched Mr. Trump’s Florida home as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified materials. The inquiry is focused on documents that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House.
Jan. 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a comprehensive narrative of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence could allow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation, to indict Mr. Trump.
Georgia election interference case. Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney, has been leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the efforts of Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. This case could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.
New York State’s civil case. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has accused Mr. Trump, his family business and his three adult children of lying to lenders and insurers, fraudulently inflating the value of his assets. The allegations, included in a sweeping lawsuit, are the culmination of a yearslong civil investigation.
Manhattan criminal case. Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has been investigating whether Mr. Trump or his family business intentionally submitted false property values to potential lenders. The inquiry has yielded criminal charges against the Trump Organization and a plea deal with its chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg.
The Times reported in July that Mr. Comey and his wife were subjected to an audit of their joint return for 2017 and that Mr. McCabe and his wife were audited for their joint return for 2019. Mr. Trump, who publicly vilified both men for their roles in the Russia investigation, has denied any involvement in the audits.
After the report by The Times, Mr. Rettig, who ran the I.R.S. as a political appointee of Mr. Trump until last month, asked the inspector general in July to investigate how Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe were subjected to the audits, which are so comprehensive that they are known among tax lawyers as “autopsies without the benefit of death.”
Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe were not named in the report released on Thursday, reflecting rules for taxpayer privacy.
According to the report, the I.R.S. used a well-established system to randomly generate an initial pool of 10,900 tax returns for both of the tax years 2017 and 2019 that could be used for a program known as the National Research Program, which assesses levels of taxpayer compliance across different income levels.
The inspector general’s review found that when it replicated the process of generating the random selection, it produced the same returns as the system had initially, indicating that no one had manipulated the system to insert a particular taxpayer’s return.
But because of budget constraints, the I.R.S. was able to audit only 4,000 of those returns for each of the two years. The process the agency used to select those 4,000 returns from the initial pool of 10,900 deviated from the established process, the report found.
The report cast the discrepancy as technical and emphasized that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. But it said the relevant division of the tax agency had acknowledged that it could improve the way it narrows the pool of returns to be audited to be more transparent and to “avoid the perception of gaming.”
The report showed that the chances of being picked for the type of audit done on Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe were extremely low.
For the tax year 2017, for which Mr. Comey was audited, 4,000 taxpayers were selected out of the 153 million individual returns filed.
The report said that those individuals in higher tax brackets are more likely to be picked. It did not say which tax bracket Mr. Comey fell into — but if Mr. Comey was in the highest tax bracket, he would have had a one in 138 chance of being selected. If he was in the middle stratum, he would have had a one in 4,828 chance of being picked.
For 2019, the year Mr. McCabe was audited for, the agency conducted about 4,000 taxpayer audits out of the 154 million returns that were filed. If Mr. McCabe was in the highest tax bracket, he would have had a one in 202 chance and a one in 4,410 if he was in the middle stratum.
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump spoke publicly and privately about how he wanted to use the powers of the federal government — particularly the Justice Department — to investigate Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe. He privately pressured department officials to prosecute them and erupted in anger when they failed to follow through on what he wanted.
In the interview with The Times last month, Mr. Kelly said that when he worked as White House chief of staff from the middle of 2017 through the end of 2018, Mr. Trump repeatedly said behind closed doors that among those “we ought to investigate” and “get the I.R.S. on” were Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe.
Mr. Kelly said that when he worked for Mr. Trump, he was able to lead him away from trying to use the powers of the federal government to punish his political rivals.
After firing Mr. Comey in 2017, Mr. Trump, furious over what he saw as the former director’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, continued to rail against him. Mr. Trump accused him of treason, called for his prosecution and publicly complained about the money Mr. Comey received for a book.
Mr. McCabe was later dismissed by the Trump Justice Department after its watchdog accused him of misleading internal F.B.I. investigators. Like Mr. Comey, he had come to be perceived as an enemy by Mr. Trump, who assailed him, accused him of treason and raised questions about his finances long after pushing for his dismissal and prosecution, a pattern that continued even after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and began trying to overturn the results.
Source: nytimes.com
