WASHINGTON — The IRS opened an examination of journalist Matt Taibbi’s 2018 tax return on Christmas Eve of last year — three weeks after he exposed sensitive documents about government officials pressuring Twitter to censor content.
The House Judiciary Committee said Wednesday it obtained that detail and other information about the case from the IRS following the outcry over a tax agent visiting Taibbi’s home on March 9, 2022 — the same day he testified to Congress about the “Twitter Files.”
Documents provided to the committee “raise more questions than they answer,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel in a letter requesting that he make further disclosures.
The IRS told the committee it was trying to ensure the reporter wasn’t the victim of identity fraud, Jordan wrote.
The agency said a letter was sent to Taibbi in 2019 which explained the discrepancy.
But critics seized on documents obtained by the committee, which showed the IRS opened its examination of Taibbi’s 2018 tax return on December 24, 2022 — a Saturday.
Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone journalist who now writes for Substack, did not owe taxes and the IRS actually determined it owed him a refund and closed the case on March 23, Jordan wrote.
“The IRS asserted to the Committee that it sent a letter to Mr. Taibbi on October 24, 2019 — nine days after Mr. Taibbi filed his 2018 tax return — asking Mr. Taibbi to verify his return because it met identity theft criteria and could not be processed until he confirmed.
“The IRS alleged that it sent a second letter to Mr. Taibbi on March 23, 2020,” Jordan wrote.
“However, according to Mr. Taibbi, neither he nor his accountant received either of these letters or any other notification that there was an issue with his 2018 tax return — that is, until the IRS conducted a field visit at Mr. Taibbi’s home three years later.
“The IRS also failed to produce these purported letters to the
Committee.”
Jordan went on: “The IRS’s production shows that the IRS opened its examination of Mr. Taibbi’s 2018
tax return on December 24, 2022. Not only was this date Christmas Eve and a Saturday, but it also happened to be three weeks after he published the first Twitter Files detailing government abuses and the same day that Mr. Taibbi published the ninth segment of the Twitter Files, detailing how federal government agencies ‘from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA’ coordinated to censor and coerce speech on various social media platforms.”
Taibbi revealed in March that an IRS agent visited his New Jersey home and left a note instructing him to call the tax bureau four days later.
When he did, an IRS agent reportedly told him that his returns for 2018 and 2021 had been rejected due to identity theft concerns.
The new Jordan letter doesn’t mention Taibbi’s 2021 tax return, but Jordan previously said that it had been rejected as well on identity fraud grounds.
Jordan, who also leads a select subcommittee focused on the alleged weaponization of government agencies, wrote to Werfel that he was alarmed that a tax investigation would be opened on Christmas Eve.
“It is unclear from the documents alone why the IRS opened its examination of Mr. Taibbi’s tax return on such an unusual date or whether it coincided intentionally with Mr. Taibbi’s reporting about government censorship,” Jordan wrote.
The IRS did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Taibbi responded on Twitter: “The IRS opened a case on me on a Saturday, Christmas Eve 2022, which just happened to coincide with a major Twitter Files report on FBI/intelligence community ties to tech platforms.”
Jordan’s request for even more records comes as an IRS whistleblower prepares to testify privately Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee about an alleged coverup in the five-year-old tax fraud investigation of first son Hunter Biden.
A second IRS whistleblower came forward this week after the tax bureau reassigned the entire 13-person investigatory team after they registered internal concerns.