Trump Tried To Get The IRS To Target His Political Enemies

According to General John Kelly, Donald Trump's longest-serving chief of staff, the former president wanted to use the IRS to target his political enemies by making their lives a living hell. Kelly claims that he warned Trump about the legal and ethical issues of having the IRS go after his enemies, and many other former aides have corroborated these claims in recent years. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

Check out our merch by visiting our store

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to General John Kelly, Donald Trump's longest serving chief of staff. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Kelly claims that Donald Trump repeatedly attempted to use the IRS and sometimes even the DOJ to target his political enemies. East Kelly recanted the story of how Donald Trump had wanted to use the FBI to go, or the irs, excuse me, to go after FBI director James Comey, and of course Andrew McCabe, cuz Donald Trump was mad that they were investigating him. So he told Kelly, We gotta get the IRS to investigate these guys, to audit them, to make their lives. Hell,

Kelly told the New York Times that he warned Donald Trump of the legal and ethical issues of this said he wasn't on board with it. But then as soon as Kelly left the administration, a weird thing happened. Do you know what that was? James Comey got audited by the irs. So I'm inclined to believe that Kelly did in fact put up a wall of resistance for Donald Trump saying, Dude, you can't do this. You're gonna get in lots of trouble. And then as soon as Kelly leaves Trump's like, Who? Boy, let me go call the irs. And yes, it was a Trump appointee who ended up auditing James Comey. So it's pretty clear that Donald Trump used the IRS and his connections there to target his political enemies. Mc Kelly wasn't done. It wasn't just Comey and McCabe. Here's the whole list along with Comey and McCabe. Mr. Trump discussed using the IRS and the Justice Department to investigate the former CIA director, John Brennan, Hillary Clinton, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and the owner of the Washington Post, whose coverage often angered Mr. Trump Peter's truck, the lead FBI agent on the Russia investigation, and Lisa Page, an FBI official who exchanged text messages with Mr. Str that were critical of Mr. Trump. So Trump just wanted to go after everybody.

Now, most of these didn't happen. Of course, we know that. Here's the problem. If Trump were to get back into office, and that's a big if, I don't even think it's possible, but if, and we have to take this seriously, if he did, what would that look like?

Well, for one, he wouldn't pack his administration with people like John Kelly, Independent thinkers, right? Yeah, you're a hardcore Republican, but you do have some morals in there somewhere. Trump won't do that again, he won't make that mistake. He will make sure that everybody in his administration, everybody that he appoints to any position, would be a 100% yes person. So if Trump walked up to them and said, Hey, I wanna get the IRS to investigate every left wing talk show host in this country, that person would say, I, I Captain will make it happen. If Donald Trump walked over to the DOJ and he said, Hey, I want you to investigate everybody that's ever said something critical about me on Twitter, he'll make sure that he has somebody in power at the DOJ that says, Absolutely, sir, We're on it right now. That's what Trump learned from his first time in the White House, to make sure that he only packs the administration with yes people, and that is the real danger.

He has already made several comments about jailing reporters throwing journalists in jail, and now we know that he did attempt and apparently was at least a little bit successful in abusing his power while at the White House to target his political enemies. And that list of political enemies, by the way, has grown exponentially since he left office. It's now not just Democrats. There's a lot of Republicans on there too.