The aftermath of the pandemic is still being felt, and with the presidential election almost here, some of the decisions the Trump administration made during that period are coming under scrutiny. One of these decisions that is now being called into question comes from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the COVID-19 stimulus checks that were distributed.

This controversy started in April 2020, when the Treasury Department sent an order out demanding that President Trump’s name should appear on Economic Impact Payments sent out to Americans. This was the main relief measure against the impact of COVID.
The government checks that the IRS sends usually has a civil servant will sign checks and letters issued by the Treasury Department as a way to maintain nonpartisanship, and this would be the first time in history that a president’s name would appear in the check. This was concerning to IRS employees, as it could be perceived as a violation of the Hatch Act.

This Act is a “federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs. The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.”

The Truth About The IRS Stimulus Checks

This concern started a flurry of communications ensuring the legality of this move and confirming the fact that this would not be seen as the IRS endorsing in any way President Trump’s candidacy for the November 2020 election,

An email obtained by Bloomberg via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from one agency official to IRS commissioner Charles Rettig and other agency officials sums up the agency’s concern “Did Counsel push back on this? Did anyone raise the concern about how this makes the IRS appear?”

Another email from Kenneth Corbin, a Wage & Investment commissioner to Deputy Commissioner Sunita Lough goes even further expressing “The one thing I want to document and get for us on the IRS side is a position from” ethics officials “that the IRS is not violating the HATCH act. I imagine we want this cover for all parties at the IRS.”

Even though no violations were found in the request, since there was “no clear legal prohibition” in including the president’s name, another issue arose as part of the confusion.

The back and forth emails had as a consequence a delay in the relief checks, which, as the country was devolving into chaos, were needed more than ever. The last minute changes that had to be made to the checks to put the president’s name on them and rebranding the checks to fit the narrative made it so that the mailing deadline was cut close.

The situation was made worse, if at all possible, because of reporters from The Washington Post being made aware of the situation, and prematurely printing that the IRS “is now racing to implement a programming change that two senior IRS officials said will probably lead to a delay in issuing the first batch of paper checks.”

Despite the checks going out on time, the headlines had already done the damage, and the agency was flooded with complaints and demands. Another IRS official from Rettig’s office wrote in an email following the headline “For your awareness, people are now calling to complain about the checks being held back because the president wants his name on them.”

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An entirely needless scandal that made a complicated time for Americans even more difficult, especially for those who were in dire financial need and felt betrayed by the agency that was supposed to help them.

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