Following up on “Don’t shoot Matt Taibbi either,” I want to note Matt Taibbi’s subscribers-only post “My crazy IRS case.” Taibbi has of course been a key contributor to the Twitter Files. In his Twitter Files reporting Taibbi has documented the government/social media censorship industrial complex led by the FBI. See, for example, his December 24, 2022 Twitter Files thread “Twitter and ‘other government agencies.'”
The FBI disapproved of Taibbi’s work. The FBI gave the New York post this statement on December 21, 2022:
“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the FBI told The Post in a statement in response to the latest jaw-dropping revelations from the “Twitter Files.”
“As evidenced in the correspondence,” the bureau went on, “the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.
“The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,” the statement concluded. “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
That statement all by itself discredits the FBI.
On December 24 — a Saturday, let it be noted — Taibbi published the Twitter Files thread linked above and, we now learn from a just-published letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, the IRS opened an investigation of Taibbi. Jordan’s May 24 letter to Werfel is posted online here.
Taibbi comments: “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.” He asks:
What possible legitimate explanation could there be for someone at the IRS logging on, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, on a Saturday, to assign a case over a three-year-old matter, involving a taxpayer owed a substantial return [sic]? Was the state in a hurry to square its books with me? What supervisor was overcome with that itch on that particular day, and why?
Indeed, as Jordan’s letter states, the IRS owed Taibbi “a substantial refund.”
Jordan is on the case demanding the appearance of IRS witnesses, but I doubt we’ll be getting answers to the obvious questions any time soon. Taibbi concludes his post with an expression of thanks and a (rhetorical) question of his own: “Thanks to Jim Jordan’s committee for help with this, and for the journalists who want to roll eyes, I’d ask: why is he the one defending reporters, while so many news organizations have stopped?”
UPDATE: David Strom has much more in this Hot Air post.
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