Journalist Matt Taibbi told Newsmax on Thursday he is still bewildered and suspicious over the way the IRS has targeted him and about the agency's explanations since his congressional testimony in March regarding the federal government conspiring with social media platforms such as Twitter to censor content.
During Taibbi's testimony March 9 about his reporting on the "Twitter Files," an IRS agent visited Taibbi's Washington home and left a note. When Taibbi called the IRS, he found out his 2018 and 2021 tax filings were flagged for possible identity theft.
"They said they rejected my returns: one from 2018 and one from 2021," Taibbi told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "But the 2018 issue I never heard about. The optics of it are pretty weird.
"Now that we have some answers about it, it definitely seems suspicious. I don't know what to think. I don't. I can't see an innocent explanation for it."
Taibbi tweeted a Wednesday letter from House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, in which Jordan said documents the IRS gave the committee regarding Taibbi "raise more questions than they answered." Jordan said the IRS told the committee it sent two letters to Taibbi, on Oct. 24, 2019, and March 23, 2020.
Jordan said the IRS also reported it opened an investigation into Taibbi's 2018 tax return on Christmas Eve 2022, a Saturday when most federal employees are not working and the day of a major "Twitter Files" release of the intelligence community's ties to Big Tech social media platforms.
"That was a very big day in my life," said Taibbi, who in March resolved his 2018 case with the IRS in which the agency said it owed him money, according to Jordan's letter. "It was probably the most consequential 'Twitter Files' story. I thought it was the one that I certainly worried about the most because it had reporting in it about connections between the FBI, the ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence], the DHS [Department of Homeland Security], the CIA, even.
"I was nervous about publishing that story, and I remember that day very well because I was checking and rechecking that story before I sent it. The date is just — it's very odd, the optics of it."
He said the only letter he received from the agency at his Washington address was about his 2021 return.
"I got at least one letter about [2021] that I know of, and that I thought was probably the real issue," he said. "It was the 2018 issue that really freaked me out because they say that they sent me letters and then didn't contact me for over three years about this, and then suddenly opened a case about 2018 on Christmas Eve."
Newsmax reached out to the IRS for comment.
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