{"id":44566,"date":"2025-10-17T12:04:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T19:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=44566"},"modified":"2025-10-17T12:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T19:04:18","slug":"textbook-authoritarianism-trump-aims-irs-criminal-division-at-left-leaning-groups-donors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/10\/17\/textbook-authoritarianism-trump-aims-irs-criminal-division-at-left-leaning-groups-donors\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Textbook Authoritarianism\u2019: Trump Aims IRS Criminal Division at Left-Leaning Groups, Donors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"federal<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A masked federal agent is seen outside a courtroom at the New York Federal Plaza Immigration Court inside the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York on October 10, 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by Charly Triballeau \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporting by the Wall Street Journal indicates the active \u201cweaponization\u201d of the agency to target the far-right president\u2019s political opponents and groups peacefully organizing against his administration\u2019s destruction agenda.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jon Queally<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oct 16, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With reporting that President Donald Trump<\/a> has ordered \u201csweeping changes\u201d at the Internal Revenue Service, including aiming the agency\u2019s criminal-investigative unit at left-leaning nonprofit groups and individual donors, critics are warning of the chilling impacts of the weaponization of state power against the Republican administration\u2019s perceived political enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wall Street<\/a> Journal <\/em>on Wednesday, citing various people familiar with the shift in policy, reports that a \u201csenior IRS official involved in the effort\u201d has already created \u201ca list of potential targets\u201d for the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, which is also being installed with more loyal \u201callies\u201d of the president to administer the new direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RECOMMENDED…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Underreported Memo Is \u2018Declaration of War\u2019 Against Trump Opponents<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-DEMONSTRATION\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We Will Not Back Down,\u2019 Says Indivisible as Trump Aims FBI, IRS at Liberal Groups<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to<\/a> the WSJ<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes and are being driven by Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shapley has told people that he is going to replace Guy Ficco, the chief of the investigative unit, who has been at the agency for decades, and that Shapley has been putting together a list of donors and groups he believes IRS investigators should look at. Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups, according to a senior IRS official and another person briefed on the list. It couldn\u2019t be determined upon what grounds Shapley would seek to begin such an investigation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The reporting indicates that the decision to mobilize the IRS-CI for such an effort followed frustration experienced by Trump officials who encountered \u201cobstacles in a separate effort to strip tax-exempt status from certain nonprofits,\u201d including universities with whom the president has clashed over student protests and other campus policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent weeks, various high-level officials in the administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi, have been adamant that there\u2019s a network of progressive groups and donors that represent a \u201cviolent\u201d faction on the left, which must be dismantled and criminally prosecuted. Still, they have offered little to no evidence about who or what this network is or what criminal conduct they are talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citing people familiar with the new plan at the IRS, the WSJ <\/em>reports that \u201csome senior IRS criminal tax attorneys are already voicing concern about the methods of investigators while Trump encourages his administration to target donors and nonprofit groups.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are not the only ones expressing concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is using the government to destroy dissent,\u201d said<\/a> Denver Lee Riggleman III, an Air Force veteran and former Democratic congressman from Virginia. \u201cThis is textbook authoritarianism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) responded to the new reporting by warning about the \u201cweaponization\u201d of the IRS by Trump against groups and individuals based on political speech, a clear violation of First Amendment protections and an unlawful use of the agency\u2019s enforcement powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDonald Trump believes he\u2019s a king, and he\u2019s determined to wield every agency under his control as a weapon to crush political opposition and silence free speech,\u201d said Wyden in a Wednesday night statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Trump administration<\/a> will try to legitimize this abuse with legal opinions and procedural lingo, but the implicit threat is that if you give to a progressive cause, they\u2019ll deem you a terrorist and ruin your life,\u201d he continued. \u201cSenate Republicans have spent years faking outrage over what they called the weaponization of government. They\u2019ve spent more than a decade moaning about the IRS scrutinizing conservative tax-exempt groups\u2014scrutiny the IRS in fact applied to organizations across the political spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, added Wyden, that \u201cweaponization\u201d the GOP warns about, but which never came to pass with an IRS under Democratic control, \u201cis happening right now in front of their eyes, and unless Republicans stand up and speak out, they\u2019ll be complicit in Trump\u2019s assault on our Constitutional right to free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Schapitl, a former Democratic Capitol Hill staffer who served at the US Treasury Department and the US Senate<\/a> Finance Committee, warned<\/a> that \u201cthe total weaponization of tax enforcement leads down a dark road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNeedless to say, under normal circumstances,\u201d said Schapitl, \u201cpolitical appointees are nowhere near and know nothing about IRS criminal investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration<\/a> Council, said that directing the IRS to target specific people for political purposes is not just a misuse of the agency, but a criminal act under federal statute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a full-blown federal felony crime for anyone in the White House (and all Secretaries but the AG) to order the IRS to target people,\u201d said Reichlin-Melnick. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a crime to DO it, it\u2019s a federal crime for an employee not to REPORT such an order to the Treasury Inspector General.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Trump openly admitted last month, and the WSJ<\/em> noted in its reporting, the president has ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to identify and target those groups the White House has claimed are fomenting \u201cpolitical violence,\u201d but which critics warn is just a vague use of language so Trump can target organizations that protest or organize against his policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScott will do that,\u201d Trump said during a recent cabinet meeting in the White House, referring to the targeting of groups or donors. \u201cThat\u2019s easy for Scott.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Queally<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A masked federal agent is seen outside a courtroom at the New York Federal Plaza Immigration Court inside the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York on October 10, 2025.  (Photo by Charly Triballeau \/ AFP via Getty Images) Reporting by the Wall Street Journal indicates the active \u201cweaponization\u201d… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44566"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44567,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44566\/revisions\/44567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}