(PresidentialWire.com)- Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called on the FBI and the Department of Justice this week to pursue those who were responsible for leaking private tax information to ProPublica. It comes after the outlet published tax information relating to various high-profile wealthy American businessmen, including Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
McConnell said that there must be “consequences” for those who were responsible for the highly illegal leak of confidential information.
Speaking to Hugh Hewitt this Monday, McConnell speculated that somebody in the IRS leaked the information to influence the ongoing tax debate, and to remind Americans that there are some extremely wealthy Americans out there. He added that it’s important to consider that while there are many wealthy Americans, we “don’t tax wealth.”
McConnell stressed that tax returns are confidential by law because of this kind of reporting because of this kind of “shenanigans.” He added that those responsible for the leak should be “hunted down and thrown into jail.”
Does that include the government officials who have weaponized their power to take down former President Donald Trump, publish his tax returns, and tarnish his legendary real estate business?
McConnell insisted that those responsible should receive “actual consequences” to act as a “practical deterrent” to stop it from happening again.
A letter was also sent by ranking Republicans from the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees to the FBI and Department of Justice demanding that more is done to find those responsible, and that when they are found, they are prosecuting.
Senators Mike Crapo and Chuck Grassley said in the letter that American taxpayers have the right to expect that the IRS will not disclose their private information.
Prosecution seems like an important step towards preventing this from happening again, but the fact that it has already happened, and that the leak benefits the Democrats more than it does Republicans, suggests that supports of the Democratic Party are more likely to commit crimes like this to advance their political agenda.
And that’s scary.
