IRS alum successfully killed story about political targeting prior to Comey and McCabe revelations: report

The bombshell report that former FBI leaders James Comey and Andrew McCabe were hit with an extremely rare and invasive tax audit was not the first time politics were feared to be involved in the process, rather it was just the first time that it was reported.

The story was published by The New York Times by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Schmidt, whose story about Trump asking Comey for a loyalty pledge and to close the investigation into Michael Flynn resulted in Robert Mueller being appointed special counsel for the investigation that resulted in Donald Trump's first impeachment.

But a new story in The Washington Post reports this was not the first time questions had been raised, just the first time they had ended up in print.

"The agency has faced previous suspicions that its examinations had been leveraged by political actors. Shortly after the 2012 presidential election, Mark Everson, who served as IRS commissioner during the George W. Bush administration, received a call from an investigative reporter about the coincidental enforcement audits of two aides to Mitt Romney, now a senator from Utah, who was the Republican challenger to Obama that year," the newspaper reported.

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Correspondents Jacob Bogage and Josh Dawsey spoke with Everson.

“I said to the reporter: ‘Please tell me you have something more than that the individuals said they were under audit shortly after the election,’” Everson told the newspaper.

The story never ran.

Read the full report.