(FiveNation.com)- Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are asking Government Accountability Office to look into the delayed IRS audit into former President Trump’s finances, Politico reported last week.
Democrat Congressman Jimmy Gomez and his 14 Democrat colleagues told GAO Comptroller Gen. Gene Dorado in a letter last week that Congress requires information into why the IRS failed to conduct “presidential audits” when Trump was in the White House so lawmakers could be “adequately equipped to assess and address the integrity and continued function of the presidential audit program” and, if needed, can make “necessary improvements to the program.”
The Democrats want the GAO to find out why the IRS did not ask for additional resources from the Treasury Department or Congress when they struggled to conduct an audit of Trump’s returns.
The 15 Democrats also want to know what legislative or administrative actions are needed to protect the IRS from possible meddling after it was revealed that only one IRS agent was assigned to Trump during his presidency.
According to Forbes, the Government Accountability Office has no enforcement ability. It is an information-gathering resource for Congress to aid in congressional investigations and to determine if any laws were broken. The GAO will decide which investigations it will take, prioritizing requests that come from senior congressional leaders or committee heads.
At the end of the 117th Congress, the Democrat-controlled Ways and Means Committee released six years of Trump’s tax returns. The documents showed that the former president claimed losses in 2017 and 2020. In 2018, he paid nearly $1 million in taxes while in 2019, he paid $144,445.
The primary controversy arose when no presidential audit was conducted during the former president’s first two years in office.
In late December, former Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neil (D-MA) described the lack of a presidential audit as “a major failure of the IRS under the prior administration.”
