Update: Democratic senator: ‘DOGE is now at the IRS’
President Donald Trump on Thursday threw his support behind the Department of Government Efficiency investigation into alleged fraud and waste at the Internal Revenue Service.
Trump has long railed against the IRS, repeatedly claiming on the 2024 campaign trail that the office improperly targets conservatives for political reasons. After entering office in January, the president proposed closing down the IRS and replacing it with a new External Revenue Office. The president and his allies claim that revenue coming in from new Trump-era tariffs would sufficiently offset the loss of federal income taxes.
Gavin Kliger and other DOGE officials reportedly arrived at IRS headquarters Thursday afternoon, just before Trump’s Oval Office signing ceremony for his new reciprocal tariff agenda.
During the ceremony, Trump told reporters that “the Internal Revenue Service will be looked at like everybody.”
The president previously stated that he is personally directing Musk and DOGE to investigate specific targets, adding that he had not yet identified any government departments or agencies that DOGE should skip.
“Just about everybody’s going to be looked at. They’re doing a hell of a job. It’s an amazing job they’re doing,” he continued on Thursday. “I call it the force of super-geniuses, but it’s building, and they go up, and they talk to some of the people about certain bills, and they get all tongue-tied because these people get it. They’re very smart people.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) claimed that DOGE’s IRS audit “means Musk’s henchmen are in a position to dig through a trove of data about every taxpayer in America.”
Wyden added that DOGE’s audit “could very well be the reason” behind any possible delays in people receiving their tax refunds for 2024.
Earlier this week, Musk signaled that DOGE had set its eyes on Social Security, the nation’s largest retirement benefits program that the president had promised to “fight for” on the campaign trail.
Without presenting evidence, Musk suggested that DOGE had uncovered a number of people “that are 150 years old” or lacking any identifying information still on the Social Security beneficiaries list.
Both the White House and DOGE representatives did not answer questions about the audits of the IRS or Social Security.
Comments