‘Shocked’ the IRS Did Not ‘Follow Its Own Policy’: Congressman Stunned By Revelation Trump Not Properly Audited During Presidency

CNN’s Victor Blackwell interviewed House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) Wednesday about the committee’s recent report on and the upcoming release of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Blackwell began by noting the committee “released a summary of their findings, and they revealed that Trump paid zero federal taxes in his last year in office. They also found the IRS failed to follow its own mandate to properly audit presidents and only began one audit of Trump over his term.”

“Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He joins me now. Good to have you back, Congressman. Those are the headlines that I pulled from what your committee has released. What is your top takeaway?” Blackwell asked Kildee.

“Well, a couple of things. First of all, Victor, thanks for having me on. Two significant takeaways for me. One was that I was actually shocked that the IRS had not been following its own policy,” Kildee replied, adding:

It has been a practice of the IRS since 1977 to audit presidential tax returns. In the Trump era, they simply didn’t do it. And in fact, the only audit they initiated was initiated on the very same day that they received the letter from Chairman Richard Neal asking under Section 6103 for access to these returns and information about the audits.

That was one big shocker. But then as we examine the returns themselves, we’ve talked about this. We’ve speculated about well, about what Mr. Trump was doing with his businesses to avoid taxes. But to see two years where he paid $750 in income taxes to the federal government one year where he paid zero, and then all the various ways that he obviously used undocumented or unsubstantiated expenses to avoid paying taxes.

“It became very clear to me that something is dramatically wrong here and something has to be done. And of course that leads to the purpose of the inquiry in the first place to produce legislation to correct this problem,” Kildee concluded.

“So so you’re two headlines here. When you say there’s something dramatically wrong here and you highlight how much the former president did or did not pay in federal taxes. Did you see any evidence that suggest illegality?” Blackwell asked.

“You know that I don’t know. It’s you know, to me, it’s hard for me to imagine that it’s legal to be one of the richest people in America, according to his own assertions, and to have all sorts of wealth coming in on a regular basis but never have any income and actually have nothing but net losses,” Kildee replied, adding:

So, you know, I’m not a tax expert, except I see what I see on the page and I know that there’s something not right. It clearly at least points to a situation where there are two tax codes in this country. One for people who go to work every day and other and other tax code for the people like Donald Trump, who can hire the professionals to dodge responsibility. I don’t know if any of this was illegal, but I can tell you this it doesn’t look right to me as a person who’s studied the tax code for a long time.

And that’s why we felt it was important to send this information to the Congress, along with recommendations that we act upon it. And frankly, I didn’t think it was sufficient simply to send our analysis.

“I personally was very much of the view that we have to send the full documentation so that we don’t get into a situation where Trump’s allies who will pick any way they can to defend him, will simply say that we selectively pick pieces of his returns in order to highlight the most egregious aspects of it. They can look at the whole thing and they can make their own judgments,” Kildee replied.

The interview wrapped with Blackwell asking Kildee about whether or not the IRS’s failure to properly audit Trump was due to a lack of resources. Kildee noted the IRS needs additional resources to conduct audits, but was unconvinced that was the sole reason for their apparent dereliction of duty.

Watch the full clip above via CNN