Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., told Newsmax on Tuesday that it's "very obvious" that the IRS's recent unannounced visit to journalist Matt Taibbi's home after he finished testifying before the House weaponization subcommittee on the Twitter Files was an attempt at witness intimidation.
"I smell a rat, and it absolutely warrants additional investigation," Hageman said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren." "How often do we hear about IRS agents actually making personal visits to tax filers in this country? It just doesn't happen. There aren't enough of them, number one, and number two, that just isn't the way that they do business. How many people complain that they can't even get somebody from the IRS on the telephone … and yet they're sending an agent out to the personal home of a journalist who just happens to be testifying before the select committee on the weaponization of the federal government?"
"I think that it is very obvious that this is an attempt at intimidation and to send a message to any other witness that may appear before our committee," she added.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan reportedly sent letters Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demanding an explanation for the timing of the visit and why it was unannounced.
When asked about a Democrat member of the House subcommittee calling Taibbi a "so-called journalist," during his testimony, Hageman agreed that the label was insulting "and it was intended to be insulting."
"If you watch the film of that hearing, what you'll see is a couple of hours of just pure, brutal attacks from the Democrats against these two men who are admittedly Democrats, both of whom voted for Joe Biden," she said. "But what they've done is they've come forward and they've talked about what the Twitter Files show. They have exposed the fact that the federal government, through a variety of agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, were using Twitter to suppress the free speech rights of individuals in this country."
Hageman said that various examples of abuse of power by the federal government show that the current situation is "much worse than a slippery slope."
"I think that they're head over heels, running down that hill in an effort to try to suppress the constitutional rights of the folks that you're talking about," she said. "You put all of those things together that you have just described, and it's very clear that there is a good reason as to why the Republican Congress created the weaponization committee in the first place."
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