Top Republican wants to DEFUND the (tax) police: GOP senator tries to disarm the IRS law enforcement agency that helped jail New York mobster Al Capone
- Joni Ernst, a Republican senator for Iowa, says US federal investigators should not carry guns
- The ardent Trump loyalist and vocal proponent of the Second Amendment wants to pass a bill that would disarm the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit
- But just over 2,000 IRS special agents, who under U.S. law have the authority to make arrests when investigating fraud, actually use firearms
A top Republican once close to ex-President Donald Trump wants to repay the anti-fraud police who jailed mobster Al Capone and take their firearms.
Senator Joni Ernst, who represents Iowa in the House of Representatives of Congress, has introduced a bill which aims to ‘disarm the IRS (Internal Revenue Service)’.
“The tax authorities are taxed entirely at the expense of the taxpayer,” Ernst claimed. “Any further weaponization of this federal agency against hard-working Americans and small businesses is of great concern.”
IRS Criminal Investigations unit predecessor helped jail New York mobster Al Capone in 1931
Ernst, an outspoken defender of the Second Amendment, introduces a law that denies tax enforcers the right to bear arms
Her claims echo a Republican-backed but oft-debunked conspiracy theory, circulated online last year, that the Biden administration was about to arm as many as 87,000 IRS agents to raid the homes of ordinary Americans.
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who bashed Ukraine, repeated the false claim on social media last August.
Ernst, who once came up as a possible Trump VP pick in 2016, wants to pass her “Why Does the IRS Have Guns Act” that would strip the IRS of its right to buy, receive or store guns and ammunition.
The ex-serviceman also says all existing firearms owned by the IRS must be sold to pay off the federal deficit that reached an eye-watering $1.4 trillion by 2022.
She cited findings from the watchdog group Open the Books, which showed that since 2006 the IRS has spent $35.2 million on military-style guns, ammunition and equipment.
But her outlandish call may raise eyebrows in mainstream GOP circles, where Republicans have traditionally supported law enforcement and value adhering to the law.
As most American lawmakers know, the IRS established its criminal investigation unit over a century ago in 1919.
Its purpose was to disrupt and dismantle major drug and money laundering organizations, and its officers helped convict mob boss Al Capone in 1931.
The name of the elite unit was then simply the IRS Enforcement Branch.
And in 2009, her agents helped put disgraced financier Bernie Madoff behind bars for defrauding investors and pension funds out of billions of dollars.
Fraudster Bernie Madoff was brought down after an investigation by IRS special agents and is now behind bars
Today there are just over 2,000 IRS special agents out of about 80,000 employees who carry firearms.
The unit is a federal law enforcement agency that investigates potential white-collar crimes such as tax fraud and has extensive powers to make arrests.
The right of those officers to bear arms is enshrined in federal law known as the United States Code.
Only 8,000 of the total workforce are actually involved in auditing tax returns filed by US companies and employees.
IRS Commissioner Dan Werfel told a Congressional hearing in April that claims that the IRS’ entire workforce would be given guns and powers of arrest would be false.
“Our criminal investigation division is where we work to curb and commit tax fraud and acute areas of tax evasion where, in order to enforce, we endanger the lives of federal employees and therefore we must arm ourselves,” he said. .
Ernst, 52, remains an influential figure on the right of the Republican Party, and she drew several GOP presidential candidates to her annual “Roast and Ride” event in Iowa on June 3.
Her bill to abolish the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Unit has little chance of becoming law, as Democrats currently control the Senate.