For the 2017 tax year, in which Mr. Comey was audited, 4,000 taxpayers were selected out of 153 million individual returns filed.
The report stated that those individuals in higher tax brackets are more likely to be selected. He didn’t say which tax bracket Mr. Comey fell into — but if Mr. Comey had been in the highest tax bracket, he would have had a 1 in 138 chance of being selected. If he was in the middle tier, he would have had a 1 in 4,828 chance of being selected.
For 2019, the year Mr. McCabe was audited, the agency conducted about 4,000 audits of taxpayers out of 154 million filings. If Mr. McCabe was in the highest tax bracket, he would have had one chance in 202 and one in 4,410 if he was in the middle class.
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has spoken publicly and privately about how he wants to use the powers of the federal government — especially the Justice Department — to investigate Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe. He privately pressured administration officials to sue them, and grew angry when they failed to follow through on what he wanted.
In an interview with The Times last month, Mr. Kelly said that when he served as White House chief of staff from mid-2017 until the end of 2018, Mr. Trump said repeatedly behind closed doors that among those “we have to investigate” and “get an interest.” Taxes” was Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe.
Mr. Kelly said that when he worked with Mr. Trump, he was able to distance him from trying to use the powers of the federal government to punish his political rivals.
After Mr. Comey was fired in 2017, Mr. Trump, furious at what he saw as the former director’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, continued to bully him. Mr. Trump accused him of treason, and called for his trial, publicly He complained about the money Mr. Comey received for a book.
Mr. McCabe was later fired by Trump’s Justice Department after its surveillance accused him of misleading internal FBI investigators. Like Mr. Comey, he came to be seen as an enemy by Mr. Trump, who attacked him for treason and raised questions about his finances after a long period of lobbying for his impeachment and impeachment, a pattern that continued even after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and started trying to overturn the results.
