IRS Investigating Possible Abuse Of Power By Trump

Not long ago, former Trump chief of staff John Kelly claimed that Donald Trump forced the IRS to carry out audits of his political enemies - something that Kelly claimed he had objected to for various reasons. The IRS took notice, and now the agency's inspector general is investigating those claims. If this inquiry bears fruit, it could lead to a nightmare prosecution scenario for Donald Trump, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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.

I think at this point it's kind of safe to assume that Donald Trump has what, let's call it the reverse Midas touch, because everything that Donald Trump seems to touch immediately turns to crap. And in many times, turning things to crap also means that he did something illegal. And we've now learned that Donald Trump is under yet another potential criminal investigation that could result in felony charges against him. This investigation is taking place at the irs, but it does not involve Donald Trump's taxes. It involves the taxes of James Comey and Andrew McCabe. The two individuals who, according to former Chief of Staff General, John Kelly Trump ordered the IRS to audit. He wanted to make their lives hell. So John Kelly came out publicly recently. It said Trump ordered the irs one of his appointed people at the IRS to audit these individuals. And the audits then of course did happen. John Kelly says that he told Trump, don't do this. This is illegal. But Trump did it anyway. And now the Inspector General at the IRS is looking into these audits that again, did take place.

So if the Inspector General finds something that looks like it could have been improper, Donald Trump could be hit with felony criminal charges that do carry a five year prison sentence. And what makes this even more interesting is that General John Kelly has said that I'm willing to cooperate. Oh, and by the way, here's the best part. I do have a little bit of evidence to back up what I'm saying. So that's gonna be interesting when that finally happens, if that finally happens, right? But here's the thing, Donald Trump asking, or basically demanding that the IRS audit his political enemies, even if they hadn't conducted the audit, the request itself is what's illegal. Whether or not the audit was conducted doesn't matter, even though in this case it was so, you know, it kind of adds a little fuel to the fire. But here it is, section 7 2 17 of Title 26 of the United States Code makes it a crime for the president to request directly or indirectly any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer.

So it's literally written into the law into the United States that the president can't tell the IRS to go audit somebody or to stop auditing somebody. I'm kind of shocked, right? Because at first it's like, okay, this seems like an abuse of power, but it turns out, nope,

This might actually be a real felony breaking a specific letter of the law. Cuz I didn't know there was a law that says, by the way, the president can't have the IRS audit somebody. It seems like a very specific law, like why would you have that? And of course now we know because eventually you're gonna get somebody like Donald Trump in office who abuses his power and tells the IRS to go audit people he hates. Again, it does carry a five year prison sentence. And because there was two, uh, separate instances of it that would add up to 10 if prosecutors chose to go that route. But it's gonna depend on what the inspector general finds. That could take months for some reason, instead of just calling up the guy that Donald Trump called up and say, Hey, did he do this? Oh he did. Awesome. Thanks