‘Total Sham’: Hegseth Says Biden Admin Hit Him With Politically Motivated IRS Audit

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that the departing Biden administration hit him with a politically motivated IRS audit.

Hegseth, who was confirmed last month in a 51-50 Senate vote, posted a photo on X showing a letter informing him that he was being audited and owed the IRS a balance of $33,558.16. 

“Of course the outgoing Biden IRS rushed an ‘audit’ of the incoming SecDef. Total sham,” Hegseth wrote. “The party of ‘norms’ and ‘decency’ strikes again. We will never back down.”

Of course the outgoing Biden IRS rushed an “audit” of the incoming SecDef. Total sham.

The party of “norms” and “decency” strikes again. We will never back down. pic.twitter.com/coW1UpFPrD

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) February 17, 2025

The announcement came as President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project began evaluating the IRS for potential waste and abuse. 

“DOGE is seeking help from the public! Please DM this account with insights on finding and fixing waste, fraud and abuse relating to the Internal Revenue Service,” the X account for the DOGE team looking at the IRS posted on Monday. 

Elon Musk, who has promoted the work of DOGE, replied to Hegseth by saying, “They love the low blows.”

One unnamed former Biden official claimed to POLITICO that Hegseth’s announcement was a “vain attempt to distract from how the richest man in the world is rifling through Americans’ personal finances and Social Security information.”

The White House said that DOGE needed access to the IRS system to address issues at the federal tax-collecting agency.

“Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long. It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said Monday.

Trump has tapped former Missouri GOP Rep. Billy Long to be the next commissioner of the IRS. Long has worked as a tax advisor since he left Congress in 2023.

The IRS was previously embroiled in a political scandal under former President Barack Obama after it targeted conservative organizations over their political stances. The agency scrutinized groups that referred to “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” or said they wanted to “make America a better place to live.”

“The IRS’s use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in 2017, announcing a settlement over the incident. “It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions. Any entitlement to tax exemption should be based on the activities of the organization and whether they fulfill requirements of the law, not the policy positions adopted by members or the name chosen to reflect those views.”