A government watchdog has found no misconduct in IRS tax audits of former FBI Director James Comey and former acting and deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, putting to rest speculation that former President Donald Trump had pulled strings at the agency to target his political foes.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report (pdf) released on Dec. 1 that it had found no evidence that the IRS was in any way manipulated to pick Comey and McCabe for the audits.
Then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe listens during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 11, 2017. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)
The watchdog’s review came at the request of members of Congress and former IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig, a Trump appointee who headed the tax agency at a time when Trump frequently criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in a probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that later morphed into the so-called “Russian collusion” investigation that Trump and his team denounced as a “witch hunt” meant to hurt him politically….