'Textbook Authoritarianism': Trump Aims IRS Criminal Division at Left-Leaning Groups, Donors

With reporting that President Donald Trump has ordered "sweeping changes" at the Internal Revenue Service, including aiming the agency's criminal-investigative unit at left-leaning nonprofit groups and individual donors, critics are warning of the chilling impacts of the weaponization of state power against the Republican administration's perceived political enemies.

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, citing various people familiar with the shift in policy, reports that a "senior IRS official involved in the effort" has already created "a list of potential targets" for the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, which is also being installed with more loyal "allies" of the president to administer the new direction.

According to the WSJ:

The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes and are being driven by Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Shapley has told people that he is going to replace Guy Ficco, the chief of the investigative unit, who has been at the agency for decades, and that Shapley has been putting together a list of donors and groups he believes IRS investigators should look at. Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups, according to a senior IRS official and another person briefed on the list. It couldn’t be determined upon what grounds Shapley would seek to begin such an investigation.

The reporting indicates that the decision to mobilize the IRS-CI for such an effort followed frustration experienced by Trump officials who encountered "obstacles in a separate effort to strip tax-exempt status from certain nonprofits," including universities with whom the president has clashed over student protests and other campus policies.

In recent weeks, various high-level officials in the administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi, have been adamant that there's a network of progressive groups and donors that represent a "violent" faction on the left, which must be dismantled and criminally prosecuted. Still, they have offered little to no evidence about who or what this network is or what criminal conduct they are talking about.

Citing people familiar with the new plan at the IRS, the WSJ reports that "some senior IRS criminal tax attorneys are already voicing concern about the methods of investigators while Trump encourages his administration to target donors and nonprofit groups."

They are not the only ones expressing concern.

"This is using the government to destroy dissent," said Denver Lee Riggleman III, an Air Force veteran and former Democratic congressman from Virginia. "This is textbook authoritarianism."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) responded to the new reporting by warning about the "weaponization" of the IRS by Trump against groups and individuals based on political speech, a clear violation of First Amendment protections and an unlawful use of the agency's enforcement powers.

“Donald Trump believes he’s a king, and he’s determined to wield every agency under his control as a weapon to crush political opposition and silence free speech," said Wyden in a Wednesday night statement.

"The Trump administration will try to legitimize this abuse with legal opinions and procedural lingo, but the implicit threat is that if you give to a progressive cause, they’ll deem you a terrorist and ruin your life," he continued. “Senate Republicans have spent years faking outrage over what they called the weaponization of government. They’ve spent more than a decade moaning about the IRS scrutinizing conservative tax-exempt groups—scrutiny the IRS in fact applied to organizations across the political spectrum."

Now, added Wyden, that "weaponization" the GOP warns about, but which never came to pass with an IRS under Democratic control, "is happening right now in front of their eyes, and unless Republicans stand up and speak out, they’ll be complicit in Trump’s assault on our Constitutional right to free speech.”

Ashley Schapitl, a former Democratic Capitol Hill staffer who served at the US Treasury Department and the US Senate Finance Committee, warned that "the total weaponization of tax enforcement leads down a dark road."

"Needless to say, under normal circumstances," said Schapitl, "political appointees are nowhere near and know nothing about IRS criminal investigations."

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, said that directing the IRS to target specific people for political purposes is not just a misuse of the agency, but a criminal act under federal statute.

"It's a full-blown federal felony crime for anyone in the White House (and all Secretaries but the AG) to order the IRS to target people," said Reichlin-Melnick. "It's not just a crime to DO it, it's a federal crime for an employee not to REPORT such an order to the Treasury Inspector General."

As Trump openly admitted last month, and the WSJ noted in its reporting, the president has ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to identify and target those groups the White House has claimed are fomenting "political violence," but which critics warn is just a vague use of language so Trump can target organizations that protest or organize against his policies.

“Scott will do that," Trump said during a recent cabinet meeting in the White House, referring to the targeting of groups or donors. "That’s easy for Scott."