White House won’t say if Biden has confidence in IRS commissioner

Alex Gangitano
·2 min read
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The White House on Thursday wouldn’t say if President Biden is confident in IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig amid calls for an investigation into if top former FBI officials had been illegally targeted for especially intensive audits.

“As you know, the IRS commissioner, his term is up in November, but I don’t have any updates on that. Can’t speak to anything more besides, you know, we would refer you to the IRS on that specific thing. And he is going to be up in November, so I will leave it there,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about Biden’s confidence in Rettig.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for an investigation of the audits by the IRS under Rettig, an appointee of former President Trump, who viewed the officials as political enemies.

The New York Times reported that former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had been the object of successive, particular types of audits that are supposed to be conducted at random.

When asked a second time about Biden’s confidence in Rettig for the remainder of his term, Jean-Pierre again noted that Rettig’s term ends in November.

“Again, I’m going to say that he is up in November, he is a commissioner of the IRS, part of the administration, so I’m just going to leave it at that,” she said.

Jean-Pierre said she wouldn’t get ahead of the president when asked if her mentioning that his term is up in November is an insinuation that he wouldn’t be renominated.

“That is a decision for the president to make and I’m not going to get ahead of that decision,” she said.

She added that she wouldn’t comment on enforcement actions taken by the IRS.

Comey, who was fired by Trump, had about a 1-in-30,000 chance of getting this special kind of audit, which is part of something called the National Research Program at the IRS, according to The New York Times.

McCabe’s audit, which was part of the same program, had about a 1-in-20,000 chance of occurring, and happened only two years later.

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