Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said Thursday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent should resign before complying with President Trump’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) instructions to revoke Harvard’s tax-free status.
In the thread Social Platform xSummers warned of the broader impact of using the IRS to target political enemies.
“The self-esteemed Treasury Secretary will rather step down from complicating the IRS’ weaponization against the president’s political enemy,” Summers wrote.
“Harvard endures and it’s not perfect, but if this directive is not retracted, the administration will be farther apart from the rule of law and democracy,” he continued.
The Treasury Department sent an investigation Wednesday to Andrew de Mello, acting advisor to the IRS, asking the agency to withdraw Harvard’s tax-free status. Washington Post.
The official order comes a day after Trump came to the idea of revoking Harvard’s status in his true social platform post.
The development is the latest in the school’s public fallout with the Republican administration, as it refused to comply with a list of requests to maintain federal funds.
Summers said Bessent should do more to protect the IRS from political interference, warning that if he doesn’t, the outcome could result in a sharp loss of the country’s revenue.
“@secscottbessent is abandoned in regards to what may be his most important duty: maintaining his rights under the law to respect the tax collection system. It violates privacy rules, the content of his enforcement capabilities, politicization of leadership, and political invasion of the status of certain taxpayers.”
“The result is more than $1 trillion in revenue losses over the next decade. There are costs that cannot be priced for the erosion of American democracy,” he continued.
Summers listened to the 1970s when former President Nixon tried to put pressure on his Treasury Secretary George Schultz to investigate his political opponents.
“George Schultz met President Richard Nixon for the test when he tried to sabotage the tragic IRS that @secscottbessent had not protected the IRS,” Summers wrote.
Oka reached out to the Treasury for comment.
