House Republican Warns Trump Not to ‘Fall Into This Trap’ of Weaponizing IRS, DOJ to Go After His Political Foes

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) warned President Donald Trump not to “fall into this trap” of weaponizing the IRS or any other government agency against his enemies, Thursday, on SiriusXM’s The Dan Abrams Show.

After the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was planning to install allies at the IRS to go after Democratic donors such as George Soros, McCormick warned the president against the idea.

“Aren’t you concerned, if it’s true, that the president is installing allies at the IRS for the purpose of investigating Democratic donors?” asked host and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams.

McCormick responded, “First of all, the government should never be weaponized. Never, ever. Not by any party, not by any person, not by the president, and by the way, I think that we had exceedingly powerful presidents the last three presidents.” He continued:

We’ve gotten out of balance. The legislative branch is no longer equal to the executive branch and that really concerns me. I want to be consistent. I thought you made a really good point, very impassioned plea to be equal in application of our opinion. If it’s bad for Obama to do it, it’s bad for Trump to do it.

I don’t like the government being too powerful. In fact, most of the laws I focus on are to rein back in bureaucracies and even presidential power to make sure that we’re in balance with our Constitution, which is very frustrating to people because everyone wants to see change, but it’s the way we were designed on purpose, that we have an ineffective government so it would never become more powerful than the people themselves, and this has been abused by lots of presidents in the past.

I don’t want to see this president fall into that trap where, even though I do believe he was absolutely mistreated, absolutely had the law misappropriated against him, I don’t think we should use the same tactics against our enemies because I just think it’s wrong.

“I don’t care if it’s IRS, EPA, education. I don’t care what it is,” the congressman concluded. “I hate overreaching bureaucracies. The government should never go after people. I don’t care if it’s independent or in conjunction with the president of the United States.”

Watch above via SiriusXM.