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FIRST ON FOX: A Texas Republican congressman led a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about the agency’s ammunition stockpile.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, sent the letter with several of his colleagues to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig on Friday regarding the agency’s purchase of $700,000 worth of ammunition as the agency is set to get billions of dollars in funding for tax enforcement.
“If the Department of Justice will politically target President Trump and raid his home, I can assure you that the current Administration is willing to target his supporters,” Cloud told Fox News Digital.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, speaks during the Freedom Caucus press conference on immigration outside the Capitol on March 17, 2021. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“With a possible 87,000 new agents at the IRS, I have serious concerns as to how this agency could be weaponized against law-abiding Americans who oppose the far-left ideology of this Administration,” he continued. “The IRS has politically targeted Americans before, we can’t let it happen again.”
In the letter, Cloud and his colleagues noted “the justification” for the Inflation Reduction Act “is to identify and investigate tax cheats,” but said they “are concerned that the power this bill gives to the IRS will be used to scare and threaten law-abiding Americans.”
“Proponents of the Inflation Reduction Act have highlighted the need for increased funding to better investigate tax evasion,” the letter reads. “The $80 billion being allocated to the IRS by Congress, however, is more than six times the current IRS budget of $12.6 billion. Of the $80 billion, $45.6 billion will be dedicated specifically to tax enforcement.
“Naturally, we have concerns over how this significant amount of money will be spent by the IRS. The IRS came under fire for buying nearly $700,000 in ammunition at the beginning of 2022,” the GOP lawmakers continued. “We understand that this is not new, considering that a 2017 GAO Report found that the IRS has roughly 5 million rounds of ammunition and 4,487 guns.”
“We are concerned, though, with how the enforcement arm of the IRS will grow and if it could be weaponized against the American people,” they added.
Cloud and the lawmakers posed 10 questions to Rettig, asking him “how many” of the new 87,000 agents will come from law enforcement and how many agents are currently working remote.
The GOP lawmakers’ letter comes as the IRS is set to receive $80 billion over 10 years and 87,000 new agents from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
The agency posted a job listing on Wednesday seeking applicants to become “criminal investigation special agents.”
The role required applicants to be “willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”
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The job posting was briefly deleted by the agency and drew heated criticism online over the listing, although other law enforcement listings used similar language.
The IRS criminal investigations unit is the law enforcement arm of the agency and is the division that typically carries weapons.