During a Senate Finance Committee hearing last week, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) asked IRS nominee and former Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) if he would recuse himself from investigations into firms that donated to his campaign.
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00:00Thank you Commissioner. Senator Warnock. Thank you Chairman Crapo. Happy birthday and I hope you get some time after this hearing with your family and your friends. But blessings to you.
00:14Congressman Long, Americans deserve fair treatment from the IRS. No one should be favored for their wealth or connections nor should anyone be targeted for their political views.
00:29Sadly, attempts to weaponize the IRS are not new. We've seen this time and time again in our history. In the 1970s, President Nixon repeatedly tried to use the IRS to investigate his enemies, who included civil rights leaders, it included journalists, and even members of Congress.
00:53Luckily, multiple IRS commissioners refused to carry out the President's orders. These public servants, in my view, are American heroes. They put the rule of law above partisan politics. And in a real sense, they put it above their careers. They were focused on what's right.
01:14And in response to their principled stand, Congress passed a law on a bipartisan basis, on a bipartisan basis, to prohibit any President from directing the IRS to target any taxpayer.
01:33Thank you so very much. I enjoyed meeting with you in my office last week.
01:40And when we met, you and I discussed how President Trump has called for auditing Harvard University because of their political stances.
01:52We also talked about how an administration official suggested that the IRS should stop auditing some of the President's top political allies, including Mike Lindell.
02:06And so I just have a few yes or no questions for you. And I want to get through this is why I was going to ask you some yes or no questions.
02:17You told me that if you got a request from the President, if you got a request from the President to audit a taxpayer, you'd follow the law and ignore that request.
02:29Is that stupid? Is that correct? Is that correct? Yes or no?
02:32It's partially correct. I think that I told you he wouldn't do that in the first place. But if he did, I'd do exactly what you said. So yes.
02:39The answer would be yes. Yes. Okay. You also told me that if you got a request from the President to halt an audit on one of his friends or allies, you'd follow the law and you'd ignore that request as well.
02:58Is that still correct? Yes or no? Yes.
03:02You also said you would report those illegal requests to the Treasury Inspector General. Is that correct?
03:11The IG's office. Yeah, we talked about that. Yes, sir.
03:14You would report it to the IG office for the Treasury Inspector General. Great.
03:21And that you would report such requests to the Senate Finance Committee, both the chair and the ranking member. Is that still correct?
03:29If that's what is protocol, yes.
03:34It's not just the President who can exert enormous influence over the IRS. Clearly, the President could. After your nomination to head up the IRS, you received nearly $200,000 in campaign contributions, including from tax preparation firms who might have committed tax fraud. When we met, I asked if you would recuse yourself from decisions involving those donors.
04:03You very clearly said that you would not recuse yourself. That's what you said to me a few days ago. But it's been a few days. So I want to ask again, for the record, is it still your testimony that you will not recuse yourself from investigations involving these campaign donors?
04:23I'm not going to deal in hypotheticals, but the OGE report or whatever it's called that I signed has very specific things on what I could be involved in and not. So I'm going to go with the OGE that I signed.
04:41Do you think that in the matter of public service perception matters that taxpayers, that American taxpayers should have confidence that you are making decisions based on what's right for them and not what's right for you? Do you think that that's?
04:58If I wanted what was right for me, I probably wouldn't be sitting here today. But yeah.
05:03Well, you chose to sit there, which is why I'm asking you the question.
05:06Yeah. No, I'm saying, yeah.
05:07So perception matters.
05:09Perception.
05:10In terms of the public trust.
05:11Right.
05:12Perception is reality in the mind of the perceiver, sure.
05:15I'm going to, I'm out of time. So thank you very much.
05:20Thank you. Thank you for the time in the office. I really, really enjoyed that meeting.
05:24And thank you.