Taibbi: My Crazy IRS Case
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Saturday, December 24, 2022 was one of the most memorable, and most panicked, days of my life. I spent Christmas Eve last year alone, holed up in the Parc 55 hotel in San Francisco, frantically trying to put together what I thought was the most explosive of the Twitter Files reports, “Twitter and Other Government Agencies.” My wife and children were due to arrive for Christmas the next day, and I spent the morning checking and re-checking a story I knew might make people upset.
It was based on documents passed to Twitter by the FBI-led Foreign Influence Task Force. They showed the company was receiving content recommendations in bulk from an array of federal agencies through the FBI, about a range of topics — from domestic extremist groups in the U.S. to leftist activists in Venezuela to Ukraine, Joe Biden, and the energy company Burisma. Moreover, Twitter was joining Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, and perhaps two dozen other firms in attending regular FITF-led gatherings. At that “industry meeting,” companies often received an “OGA briefing,” usually about foreign policy matters. “OGA” is generally understood to be a euphemism for intelligence services in general, or the CIA in particular.
The FBI had just denounced the Twitter Files as the work of “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole purpose” was “discrediting the agency.” If earlier reports made the Bureau unhappy, what reaction would this story inspire?
Thanks to a just-published letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, we now know an IRS investigation of me opened that day, December 24, 2022.
Ostensibly the case was about my 2018 tax return, about which even the IRS doesn’t claim to have contacted me for three years before this new “assign date.” The opening of the investigation preceded a visit to my home by an IRS agent on March 9, when I testified in Congress about the Twitter Files and government censorship.
Even more unnerving are other details in Jordan’s letter:
On January 27, 2023, the IRS assigned an agent to Mr. Taibbi’s case to initiate face-to-face contact. The IRS documents reflect that the case agent performed an extensive investigation of Mr. Taibbi, using publicly available search engines and commercial investigative software such as Anywho, Consumer Affairs, LexisNexis Accruint, and Google. The IRS’s dossier about Mr. Taibbi included information such as Mr. Taibbi’s voter registration records, whether he possessed a hunting or fishing license, whether he had a concealed weapons permit, and his telephone numbers.
When the IRS checks to see if you have a carry permit and visits your home, at a time when they owe you money, it’s time to worry.
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Either the agency has to show routine origins of this investigation or someone needs to go to prison.
@Jon said in Taibbi: My Crazy IRS Case:
Either the agency has to show routine origins of this investigation or someone needs to go to prison.
How did you get @jolly's login?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Jon said in Taibbi: My Crazy IRS Case:
Either the agency has to show routine origins of this investigation or someone needs to go to prison.
How did you get @jolly's login?
@George-K said in Taibbi: My Crazy IRS Case:
@Jon said in Taibbi: My Crazy IRS Case:
Either the agency has to show routine origins of this investigation or someone needs to go to prison.
How did you get @jolly's login?
Jolly wouldn’t post what I did. I doubt he would pause to think of the near impossibility of the 12/24 post being the cause of an entirely separate Agency reporting to a different cabinet Secretary opening an investigation on the same day, Christmas Eve no less.
If there is some kind of retaliation going on, it would have been precipitated by earlier actions of Taibbi, which would be just as criminal.
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In fact, Jolly would be as dead-dog certain that this is retaliatory as Ibrham X Kendi is that Jordan Neely was killed because he’s black. And for precisely the same reason - his media constantly tells him the system is unfair to his kind.
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In fact, Jolly would be as dead-dog certain that this is retaliatory as Ibrham X Kendi is that Jordan Neely was killed because he’s black. And for precisely the same reason - his media constantly tells him the system is unfair to his kind.
@Jon said in Taibbi: My Crazy IRS Case:
In fact, Jolly would be as dead-dog certain that this is retaliatory as Ibrham X Kendi is that Jordan Neely was killed because he’s black. And for precisely the same reason - his media constantly tells him the system is unfair to his kind.
Kendi is not a consumer of race narrative media. He is a profiteering producer of it.
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In fact, Jolly would be as dead-dog certain that this is retaliatory as Ibrham X Kendi is that Jordan Neely was killed because he’s black. And for precisely the same reason - his media constantly tells him the system is unfair to his kind.
@Jon said in Taibbi: My Crazy IRS Case:
In fact, Jolly would be as dead-dog certain that this is retaliatory as Ibrham X Kendi is that Jordan Neely was killed because he’s black. And for precisely the same reason - his media constantly tells him the system is unfair to his kind.
You know, hadn't read anything about this, but I still think it's retaliatory.
Maybe I'm just not as smart as you.
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The full letter:
From the RWEC:
The IRS claims that the visit was spurred by an investigation into his tax returns of 2018–four years ago since 2018 taxes would be filed in 2019–because they had questions about identity theft.
Um hmm. OK. How long has that investigation been going on, anyway? Have they been desperately trying to get in touch with Taibbi since 2019 and he has been avoiding them?
Well, no. Taibbi uses an accountant to do his taxes, and correspondence would go not to Taibbi alone but to he and his accountant. The IRS claims they sent two letters to Taibbi back in 2019 and 2020. Neither of the supposed recipients ever received the letter, and while Taibbi has the incentive to play dumb, his accountant most certainly doesn’t. If he has to choose between pissing off a small client or the IRS, his incentive is to keep the IRS happy for obvious reasons.
His job, literally, depends upon it. Plus there is the whole “penalty of perjury” thing, which these days only applies to political dissidents, not regime shills.
Still, OK. Assume that they are telling the truth and things got lost in the mail. Things have been dormant since March 2020, according to the IRS’ telling. No word at all from them, no concern, no nothing.
Then in 2022 Taibbi publishes the Twitter Files, and guess what?! A case was opened up on CHRISTMAS EVE, a Saturday, and a full-blown investigation of Taibbi begins.
Christmas eve. On a Saturday. I guess that was one very diligent IRS agent.
Saturday, December 24, 2022. I am impressed. Nothing suspicious here at all.
The IRS went into overdrive, investigating every aspect of Taibbi’s life. Using both public and private databases, downloading his Wikipedia page (which obviously has to do with his taxes), investigating his voter registration, his hunting and fishing licenses, and whether he had a gun permit.
Hunting permits. They compiled a whole dossier about Taibbi and his work.
All are very relevant to his 2018 tax returns, to be sure. Good to know that the IRS is thorough. It took them 3 years from the last time they even bothered to (they say) contact him, but they got around to putting his life under a microscope once he annoyed the Democrats.
Funny how that works.
And then they decided to make a very unusual visit. Not immediately, but the day Taibbi testified before Congress.
Nice life you have here. Would be a shame if something happened to wreck things.
The one great irony of all this is that Taibbi is very conservative in how he does his taxes, not wanting to piss off authorities more than he already does. When you go after the government, you don’t want to make it easy for them to retaliate.
The IRS owed him a tidy sum. The size of that sum is not revealed, but Jordan called the refund “substantial.” I assume that means thousands or tens of thousands. I have no idea.
To call looking into Taibbi’s fishing licenses “fishy” would be an understatement. To imagine that IRS agents make routine visits over small fry tax returns is ludicrous. It doesn’t happen.
This is the equivalent of the local protection racket guys just happening to show up with a baseball bat to offer their services. They are there to make an offer and refusing would be a mistake.
Things like this happen all the time in the world, but they happen to people in places we call dictatorships. The power of government in our Republic is not supposed to be wielded like this, but this behavior happened under both Obama and now Biden. Remember Lois Lerner?
The FBI and the IRS are now adjuncts of the Democrat Party. It is who they are and what they do. You may have read about how the IRS disbanded the Hunter Biden investigation. Just got rid of the entire team after they expressed concerns about the politicization of the investigation and interference from the Justice Department?
Now whistleblowers are literally being called traitors by Democrats.
Democrats like to talk about Nixon and Watergate, but what happened in 1972 has nothing on what the Biden people are doing.
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