The Trump DOJ Scandals

[raison de arizona]

Ah, I see.

[Dr. Ken]

Sessions don't know nuttin' either:

He wasn't even here. He didn't even wake up this morning.

[Dr. Ken]

I want to know why Apple caved so quickly unlocking these records, but blocked opening up anything from the San Bernardino shooter a few years back. How does that work Apple? They dodged what, like a dozen court orders to unlock that bad boy, but Schiff and Swalwell they just roll over for? WTF?

If I recall correctly, the San Bernardino shooter request involved unlocking someone's phone, while this one only involved metadata that would be up on Apple's servers.

But it would also not surprise me if Apple has gotten more cooperative. They take a lot of heat for customer privacy stuff, and the technoweenie crowd who normally love privacy tend to see hating Apple as a virtue signal, so hard to say how much good will it gets them.

Well now it looks like it wasn't just apple, Microsoft received a subpoena from the DOJ too

[jcolvin2]

NYT says Apple was unaware of the nature of the investigation
NYT Article

Excerpt:

Without knowing it, Apple said, it had handed over the data of congressional staffers, their families and at least two members of Congress, including Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, then the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat and now its chairman. It turned out the subpoena was part of a wide-ranging investigation by the Trump administration into leaks of classified information.

The revelations have now plunged Apple into the middle of a firestorm over the Trump administration’s efforts to find the sources of news stories, and the handling underscores the flood of law enforcement requests that tech companies increasingly contend with. The number of these requests has soared in recent years to thousands a week, putting Apple and other tech giants like Google and Microsoft in an uncomfortable position between law enforcement, the courts and the customers whose privacy they have promised to protect.

The companies regularly comply with the requests because they are legally required to do so. The subpoenas can be vague, so Apple, Google and others are often unclear on the nature or subject of an investigation. They can challenge some of subpoenas if they are too broad or if they relate to a corporate client. In the first six months of 2020, Apple challenged 238 demands from the government for its customers’ account data, or 4 percent of such requests.

***
“In this case, the subpoena, which was issued by a federal grand jury and included a nondisclosure order signed by a federal magistrate judge, provided no information on the nature of the investigation and it would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users’ accounts,” he said. “Consistent with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide any content such as emails or pictures.”

[Suranis]

that would mean that Apple received around 5,950 such requests in 2020, or around 16 a day.

[Slim Cognito]

Just now saw on twitter a reference to trump's "immaculate subpoenas."

[Kendra]

Breaking NYT: Apple told Don McGahn, Trump's White House counsel, last month that the Justice Dept. had subpoenaed information about an account that belonged to him in February 2018, and that the government barred the company from telling him at the time.

[RTH10260]

Comey and McCabe, Who Infuriated Trump, Both Faced Intensive I.R.S. Audits
The former F.B.I. director and his deputy, both of whom former President Donald J. Trump wanted prosecuted, were selected for a rare audit program that the tax agency says is random.


By Michael S. Schmidt
July 6, 2022 Updated 7:49 p.m. ET

Among tax lawyers, the most invasive type of random audit carried out by the I.R.S. is known, only partly jokingly, as “an autopsy without the benefit of death.”

The odds of being selected for that audit in any given year are tiny — out of nearly 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, for example, the I.R.S. targeted about 5,000, or roughly one out of 30,600.

One of the few who received a bureaucratic letter with the news that his 2017 return would be under intensive scrutiny was James B. Comey, who had been fired as F.B.I. director that year by President Donald J. Trump. Furious over what he saw as Mr. Comey’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump had continued to rail against him even after his dismissal, accusing him of treason, calling for his prosecution and publicly complaining about the money Mr. Comey received for a book after his dismissal.

Mr. Comey was informed of the audit in 2019. Two years later, the I.R.S., still under the leadership of a Trump appointee after President Biden took office, picked about 8,000 returns for the same type of audit Mr. Comey had undergone from the 154 million individual returns filed in 2019, or about one in 19,250.

Among those who were chosen to have their 2019 returns scrutinized was the man who had been Mr. Comey’s deputy at the bureau: Andrew G. McCabe, who served several months as acting F.B.I. director after Mr. Comey’s firing.

Mr. McCabe was later dismissed by the Trump Justice Department after its watchdog accused him of misleading internal F.B.I. investigators. Like Mr. Comey, he had come to be perceived as an enemy by Mr. Trump, who assailed him, accused him of treason and raised questions about his finances long after pushing for his dismissal and prosecution, a pattern that continued even after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and began trying to overturn the results.

Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe — whose spouses were also audited because both couples filed joint returns — provided the letters initiating their audits to The New York Times. Mr. Comey provided The Times with a privacy release allowing the I.R.S. to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request about his case. Neither man knew that the other had been audited until they were told by a reporter for The Times.




https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/us/p ... udits.html

[jcolvin2]

The IRS conducts several thousand research audits every year, looking in every cranny of a person's or entity's financial affairs, partly in order to refine its ability to risk assess the remainder of the population for audit potential. While these audits are in theory random, this does not necessarily mean random across the population. In some instances, certain types of return are chosen for intense study for a year or two. About 15 years ago, I had a client living in Canada who had filed a Form 1040-NR for the commission-based service business performed for US companies. The IRS had selected several hundred of these individuals so it could better understand Form 1040-NR findings. The Comey audit started in 2019 and the McCabe audit began in 2021, long after Trump was gone. Putting aside the sinister explanation implied by the NYT, it is possible that this is just be total coincidence. However, it also could be the IRS is looking at filers whose primary income is received through a W-2, but who also report a Schedule C business. Alternatively, it could relate to the fact that each likely reported significant legal expenses on their respective Schedule Cs.

*Modified to fix typos 7/7/2022 9:11 am PDT

[MN-Skeptic]

I remember hearing about that type of audit back in 1975, my first year out of college, working in the tax department of a Big 8 accounting firm. One of my co-worker's clients had been selected for this type of audit and even had to present his wedding certificate to prove that they were married.

[p0rtia]

Jesus fucking christ. It's turtles all the way down.

[jcolvin2]

I remember hearing about that type of audit back in 1975, my first year out of college, working in the tax department of a Big 8 accounting firm. One of my co-worker's clients had been selected for this type of audit and even had to present his wedding certificate to prove that they were married.

The IRS use to call that type of audit a TCMP audit (think The acronym stood for Tax Compliance Measurement Program). Congress received so many complaints, it ultimately forced the IRS to discontinue the program. The current research audits are marginally less invasive than the old TCMP audits, but still not much fun.

[MN-Skeptic]

The IRS use to call that type of audit a TCMP audit (think The acronym stood for Tax Compliance Measurement Program).

I remember that acronym, heaven knows why. I got out of public accounting in 1979, then out of corporate tax accounting in 1990, and yet I remember that conversation and that acronym from 47 years ago.

[humblescribe]

I'd be more inclined to believe that these individuals might have slightly more complex returns than the average taxpayer. We know that they have W-2 income. Beyond that, we are ignorant.

Most income that we report is matched with information returns filed by payors, so any "audit" of those amounts are easily handled via correspondence with the dread CP2000 notice if there is alleged underreporting.

That leaves us with income and deduction and credit that cannot be matched up with a 1099 or other information reporting form. There are any number of areas that could be ripe for a "research" audit F/K/A TCMP. But I think that it is beyond coincidental that these two people were selected randomly. They are both lawyers. Comey was in private practice for many years, but McCabe has been career FBI. Maybe Comey acquired investments when he was in private practice, but I think it is unlikely that McCabe has many of those. Perhaps there are spousal investments of significance.

And, if there were an interest in the lawful deduction of legal fees from a Schedule C or E this could easily be addressed with a routine office examination, not a full-blown audit of the return.

[RTH10260]

I.R.S. Asks Inspector General to Review Audits of Comey and McCabe
The agency said its commissioner asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration to look into the audits after The Times raised questions about them.

By Michael S. Schmidt and Glenn Thrush
July 7, 2022 Updated 6:18 p.m. ET


The I.R.S. said on Thursday that its commissioner, Charles P. Rettig, had asked the inspector general who oversees tax matters to investigate how James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe — both perceived enemies of former President Donald J. Trump — came to be faced with rare, exhaustive audits that the agency says are supposed to be random.

“The I.R.S. has referred the matter to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration for review,” the agency said in a written statement, adding that Mr. Rettig had “personally reached out” to the inspector general’s office after learning about the audits.

The disclosure from the I.R.S. came a day after The New York Times reported that Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe had been the subjects of audits that target just several thousand Americans a year and are highly invasive.

In response to the story, Democrats also called for an inspector general’s investigation. They raised questions about whether Mr. Trump — who has a long history of trying to use the federal government for his political means — had played a role in ordering the audits. Both audits were conducted during a time when Mr. Rettig, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2018 to a term that is scheduled to expire in November, was running the agency.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/us/p ... ccabe.html

[DrConspiracy]

This appeared on Twitter:


The image is a fake (notice how "They had it coming" is sharper than the rest of the image, taken from a Fox interview a year ago).

[humblescribe]

Tucker Carlson always looks either like a constipated baby or a baby that just dumped a load in his diaper after said constipation.

[RTH10260]

This appeared on Twitter:
https:// twitter.com/Roshan_Rinaldi/status/1545367725563940868

NEW: Rudy Giuliani denies "categorically", that the Trump Administration had any involvement in the IRS audits of Comey and McCabe.

"The President had nothing to do with it", he told Fox News. "Not only that,...", he shouted,

And how would Rudy know this, he was not part of the WH, only representative of 45 after the election.