IRS inspector general says intensive audits of former FBI Director Comey and deputy were random

By Holmes Lybrand

An inspector general for the Internal Revenue Service said this week that significant tax audits conducted for 2017 and 2019 — years where former FBI Director James Comey and then-deputy Andrew McCabe have said they were audited — were randomly selected and did not show misconduct by the IRS.

The report does not mention Comey or McCabe by name but says the assessment was conducted after a July New York Times article.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe somebody misused the IRS to get at a political enemy,” Comey said in a statement in July.

McCabe told CNN’s Laura Coates at the time that, “people need to be able to trust the institutions of government and so that’s why there should be some — we should dig through this and find out what happened.”

In July, The New York Times reported that Comey had received a highly intensive tax audit for 2017 and McCabe had received the same for 2019, questioning whether it was “sheer coincidence” that the two were selected.

The Times was first to report the inspector general’s findings.

An attorney for Comey declined to comment on the inspector general’s report and McCabe did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement that he had “requested a deeper probe into the former president’s use of the IRS against his political enemies” last month, noting that “this report alleviates some concerns” but hopes to receive more information from the inspector general.

The inspector general said in its report that the office will continue to examine certain IRS practices related to the intensive tax audits.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.