Trump IRS Commissioner Nom Has Blunt Answer For Whitehouse Asking If He'll Target Political Enemies

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At today's Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) questioned William Long, President Trump's nominee for Commissioner of the IRS.

Transcript

00:00Thank you senator Whitehouse. Thanks very much representative Long welcome to the committee.

00:08The taxpayer advocate in Rhode Island noticed that service dramatically improved

00:13for regular taxpayers when the additional funding for the IRS came through to the IRS that wait

00:21times diminished that they could get answers much more quickly. Will you work with the taxpayer

00:27advocates and listen to them to make sure that their advice is heard in your office?

00:33Definitely we had a little bit of a discussion on that earlier and

00:38the people a lot of people still think I'm in Congress so they still contact me with their

00:42issues and I say I'm not at the IRS I can't talk about tax issues but and then I'll chat GPT the

00:48taxpayer equity service in their state and there's two or three offices six or seven firm and I've had

00:53very good response that they said that was helpful. What will your what will your policy be if if

00:58you're asked by political higher-ups say the White House to use the IRS against

01:06perceived political it's not going to happen that's how do we know on my watch huh how will

01:12we know it's not going to happen are there any guard rails you'll set up to make sure that that

01:15doesn't happen and I guess you gotta figure out if I'm telling you the truth or not but it's not

01:20going to happen on my watch I mean I congressman and there's nine people on your 27 person

01:28committee here that I served with in the house for 12 years most of them for 12 years yeah

01:32will you at least make that policy clear will you promise to make that policy clear when you get to

01:38the IRS yes because a lot of things we do with the department of justice sir one of the things about

01:44the department of justice is that they're very scrupulous about not letting little squirrels

01:50running around in the white house talk to little squirrels running around in the department of

01:56justice and influence prosecutions without the attorney general or the deputy attorney general

02:02knowing about it when you look at making sure in some kind of internal policy statement that you're

02:08not being circumvented with some person employed by you being told by the White House let's go screw

02:14this person and you don't know about it and then they say well there's no policy the IRS commissioner

02:18never said anything about that if I'm being circumvented then I'm not the commissioner of the

02:24IRS I mean so that should not happen all right well make sure that it doesn't

02:33because there'll be every incentive to try to push it we've seen the president do it with Harvard you had

02:38questions about that already we were told in the finance committee that the tax credit that you

02:44are helping these private individuals to hawk quote the tax credit does not exist

02:53when if you get to the IRS what are you going to do about that

02:57I'd senator Wyden and another senator have already started investigation and is my way of thinking and

03:06whatever my OGE says since I did refer some friends to capital edge strategies who

03:15if I can I mean anybody that's doing anything illegal should be investigated it just I mean it's common sense

03:22yeah I guess my concern is that we now have an

03:26IRS employee who has said this tax credit that you've been hawking does not exist and I'm wondering

03:33what they can expect by way of retaliation for having said that when I come in none all right I'm not

03:41so one other thing let me look at your donations here um the political stuff I think we've been over

03:46this before but if you could pull it up so you you lost your senate primary you carried 130 000 in debt

03:53uh as of august 2nd 2022 correct then time goes by and none of that gets paid down um in fact two years

04:04and five months go by nearly 30 months it's a pretty good long period of time uh to december 4th

04:14when suddenly it's announced that you're about to be the IRS commissioner and after two years and five

04:22months of no activity suddenly starting the following day and just in the next two months

04:28suddenly 165 000 floods in will you share with us all the communications with those donors

04:41by you or any known intermediary of yours that prompted that sudden flood of donations that ended up

04:51in your personal pocket as i've mentioned several times today everything that you do with the federal

04:59election commission you have to do it by the book by their rules and that's exactly what i did i've

05:06we followed the letter of the law with the fec if this stuff needs to be changed then you need to

05:12change what the fec does or how that will this is different this isn't just complying with the fec

05:17this is a senate hearing about whether you should be the irs commissioner or not and if you started

05:23using the office of irs commissioner to solicit funds back then that's the kind of thing that would

05:28be shown in the communications by you or intermediaries with these individuals will you promise to share

05:34with the committee any communications related to that sudden surge of contributions to you i'll share

05:43what we shared with the fec i mean i everything had to be reported everything had to be public it

05:49wasn't like i thought oh you know these people are sending money in and now you know i mean it's

05:57we all know here that what you file with the fec versus what happens when you conduct an investigation

06:02and look back behind the filings and look at the communications and the memos and the phone call

06:07records whatever took place i think we're entitled in this situation chairman by the way happy

06:12happy birthday thank you to uh to um you know have a look at that as if there were an investigation

06:20going on to see the actual documents behind all of this and so that will be my ask and um my time

06:27as i said is expired thank you

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