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The Trump administration is preparing to install “allies” at the criminal investigative division of the Internal Revenue Service to target “major Democratic donors,” according to a report.
A list of potential targets being drawn up by a senior IRS official includes the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who President Donald Trump has said “should be in jail,” and his Open Society Foundations, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The move would make it easier for the Trump administration to probe left-wing groups and donors as they seek to “exert firmer control over the unit and weaken the involvement of IRS lawyers in criminal investigations,” according to the outlet.
The plans are reportedly being spearheaded by Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who briefly served earlier this year as IRS commissioner for just three days.
Shapley has reportedly told staff he would replace the current chief of the investigative unit, Guy Ficco.
The IRS criminal investigative division probes potential criminal violations of the tax code, and has more than 2,000 agents at its disposal.
Trump’s allies “encountered obstacles in a separate effort to strip tax-exempt status from certain nonprofits” and have since turned to using the IRS criminal investigative division, according to the Journal.
It is the latest in a series of moves by Trump and his allies to rail against left-wing groups and figures, blaming them for growing hostility against conservatives.
Bessent, while discussing the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, said this week that the Treasury Department was moving forward in targeting financial networks that allegedly support violent left-wing groups.
There is no evidence that Kirk’s accused killer had ties to left-wing groups.
“We have started to compile lists of the other networks, and there’s a long record here,” he told MAGA podcaster Andrew Kolvet. “This is mission-critical for us now… We are operationalizing this here at Treasury.”
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