As Americans recover from the shock of revelations that the FBI has opened a full counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for no good reason, the IRS is stepping in to say, ‘Hold my beer’.
On Friday morning, Gary Shapely, a 14-year veteran of the Internal Revenue Service, testified behind closed doors before Congress. He alleges that a sensitive political investigation he was leading was obstructed and obstructed by his superiors and, ultimately, by the Justice Department itself.
What case are you asking?
It would be none other than the five-year investigation into the shady finances of President Biden’s cursed son, Hunter. Considering its length, this has to be the most convoluted tax case in history, or maybe, just maybe, something else is brewing?
Here’s what Shapely, who is still employed by the IRS, told CBS News: “There were several steps that were slow – just weren’t done – under the direction of the Department of Justice” .
“When I took control of this particular investigation,” he added, “I immediately saw deviations from the normal process.” It was way outside the norm of what I have experienced in the past.
Are we honestly supposed to believe it’s just a great coincidence that in a career spanning more than a decade, the first time Shapely witnessed this kind of special treatment is in a case against Hunter Biden?
What are the chances? Why on earth would such an investigation be “slow”?
On Friday morning, Gary Shapely, (above, left) a 14-year veteran of the Internal Revenue Service testified behind closed doors before Congress.
Shapley alleges that a sensitive political investigation he was leading was obstructed and disrupted by his superiors and, ultimately, by the Justice Department itself.
We know the leviathan of tax collection can act quickly when it wants. Ask freelance journalist Matt Taibbi.
Taibbi has just been revealed that on Christmas Eve 2022, a Saturday no less, a dodgy IRS case was opened against him.
It happens to be the exact same day that Taibbi published his ninth edition of The Twitter Files – a deeply reported dive into Twitter’s internal coordination with US law enforcement and left-leaning politicians and organizations to censor the speech of ordinary Americans.
It had to be a coincidence.
Do you think you could get someone on the phone at the IRS on Christmas Eve?
And these shots of serendipity do not stop there.
Guess who showed up ominously on Taibbi’s doorstep a few months later in March, the same day he was testifying before Congress about the federal government’s soccer game with the social media giant.
A tax official.
You’d assume Matt was in big trouble. But no, in the end we learned that it was the government that owed Taibbi money, and not the other way around.
Even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin, who oversees the FBI, found this a little odd. “I’m not aware of IRS agents doing that except … in cases where there’s an ongoing investigation for a violation of the law,” she told a House committee in March.
It’s not even subtle; semaphore flags couldn’t send the message more clearly.
If you dare to speak the truth, if you dare to attack government agencies, you will be hit directly by a target. But if you’re one of them – well, kid’s gloves for you.
Of course, this is nothing new. But what’s incredibly disturbing — to the point of being existentially terrifying — is that the federal government seems utterly unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
We all remember the targeting of conservatives and right-wing organizations by the IRS during the Obama administration.
The IRS said it was just a mistake (another damn coincidence) that any organization applying for tax-exempt status that had “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in their titles was singled out for further consideration.
The Director of Exempt Organizations, Lois Lerner, took responsibility and after that – we are told – everything would be cleared up.
Taibbi (above) has just been revealed that on Christmas Eve 2022, a Saturday no less, a dodgy IRS case was opened against him.
It would be none other than the five-year investigation into the shady finances of President Biden’s cursed son, Hunter.
How does it work for Matt Taibbi?
For its part, the FBI also promised Americans they would make changes after a report by a DOJ inspector general found that government lawyers had lied and misled the powerful FISA secret courts to getting permission to spy on Trump campaign associates.
And after Special Counsel John Durham released his damning report on the FBI’s botched handling of the bogus Russian collusion investigation, the FBI said there was nothing to see here.
“Management has already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time,” according to their statement.
But if that’s the case, then why did we just learn that the agency improperly spied on Americans more than 278,000 times in 2021 alone?
All of this is still happening in plain sight. The demands for reform are clearly a laughable attempt to pat the American people on the head as if we were good little children. Just believe what you are told, they say.
But we don’t.
More and more Americans are becoming aware of this corruption of our alphabet of agencies that somehow only seem to harm those on the right and help those on the left.
We want it fixed – permanently.
But not only do Biden and the Democrats have no interest in fighting tax corruption, they want to spend an additional $80 billion to hire 87,000 tax officials.
Is it any wonder that Biden gives money to the very organization that is supposed to protect his own son?
In no sane world would we give an agency with such a long history of malicious bias an extra penny, let alone tens of billions of dollars.
This is until and unless the core rot is removed.
Is it any wonder that Biden gives money to the very organization that is supposed to protect his own son?
That’s why House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is right to demand that this ridiculous windfall from the IRS be clawed back in the debt ceiling negotiations.
It’s not a swamp, but an ocean of corruption, and McCarthy and the Republicans know that the ship of state — and Americans’ faith in it — is sinking like the Titanic. There can be no more important issue for the future of the country than getting these agencies cleaned up, be it the IRS, DOJ, FBI or a host of others, top to bottom.
It’s not just a few bad apples, it’s a system of inequity. It’s a culture of bias.
Every GOP presidential candidate should put this at the top of their agenda, as Ron DeSantis did when he promised to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray. Each candidate should present specific plans to restore basic fairness to a federal bureaucracy that in recent history has responded to no one and nothing.
No more sluggishness in filings for powerful Democrats, no more tax officials knocking on the doors of political dissidents, no more raids on Mar-a-Lago, no more Catholics targeted in their churches by the DOJ, no more license plates registered parents at school board meetings.
All of this must stop now. Because honestly, if we don’t, it doesn’t matter who we vote for, it doesn’t matter what the courts rule legal or not, relentlessly, this tyranny of the unelected will destroy America.
There is still time to fix it. The sun has not yet set on a federal government that treats its citizens the same regardless of policy. But it’s dark enough, and the time to act is upon us.
