June 12,2025

Ahead of Confirmation Vote, Wyden Urges Senate to Reject Billy Long Nomination, Keep Trump's Corruption out of IRS

As Prepared for Delivery

In a few minutes the Senate will vote on whether to put somebody who’s knee deep in tax scams, corruption and cover-ups in charge of the IRS.

This ought to be an easy no. It’s one corruption bombshell after another with former Congressman Billy Long.

Fake tax credits. Scam tax advice. Shadowy political donations that went straight in his pocket. Promises of personal favors. No-show jobs with high-paying federal salaries. That’s quite a rap-sheet.

Yesterday came the latest revelation. My Finance Committee staff investigators have determined that Long appears to be implicated in a major bribery scheme in his old Congressional district. The scandal unfolded while he was in office.

Twelve people in Missouri and Arkansas pled guilty or went to jail when these crimes were prosecuted. It was a criminal case the size of the Ozarks.

Court documents identify him in one guilty plea as “U.S. Representative #1.” That’s the guilty plea of a man named Donald Andrew Jones -- D.A. Jones.

Jones’s prosecution involved kickbacks and other illicit payments, a network of executives and the misuse of charity funds in Springfield, Missouri, Billy Long’s home town.

The Justice Department’s summary of the case describes, quote “payments routed through different business entities or lobbying firms,” as well as D.A. Jones’ “advocacy services, including direct contact with elected and appointed public officials.”

The guilty plea describes multiple communications in which Jones said he interacted with Billy Long, U.S. Representative #1. It includes discussions of services performed by Long’s office. It includes descriptions of interactions with Long’s top advisor. It includes Jones directing political donations and offering to hand-deliver a check to Billy Long to guarantee he was immediately aware of the money’s source.

For his role in this bribery scheme, Jones got a prison sentence of a year and a day behind bars.

The Finance Committee held Billy Long’s nomination hearing a few weeks ago. I asked several questions in writing about this matter that were informed by certain reports brought to my investigations team.

I laid out the names of all the characters and organizations involved in this massive bribery scandal. I asked former Congressman Long whether he or his campaign received payments from anyone involved. I asked whether he was an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal criminal case involving any of them. I asked whether he was ever interviewed by federal prosecutors or law enforcement agents in relation to this criminal investigation. I asked if he ever acknowledged to the Department of Justice that he received bribes from individuals involved or if he struck any kind of cooperation agreement to avoid prosecution himself. I asked whether his decision to leave Congress in any way related to his involvement in this investigation or a condition to avoid prosecution.

Here was his answer:

“I had nothing to do with any of this and I do not know of any of these people or organizations.”

Colleagues, this is simply impossible to believe.

We’re talking about a major bribery scandal that unfolded in Billy Long’s hometown. Not even on the other side of the district. He’s implicated in a guilty plea as U.S. Representative #1.

The idea that he doesn’t know anybody involved is just ridiculous.

I’m convinced there’s more to this story. Senators ought to ask themselves whether they want to be on the record supporting his nomination when the rest of it comes to light.

And in my view, this nomination should never have made it to the Senate floor in the first place.

Billy Long never did any serious legislating on tax issues. He has no experience in tax policy. What he has is experience in tax fraud. He left office in 2023 after an unsuccessful Senate campaign. He went straight into the tax fraud industry. He teamed up with a bunch of sketchy operators selling tax deals that were questionable at best. He got paid to promote fake “tribal tax credits” by a firm called White River Energy.

Neither Long nor White River can tell us what tribe they acquired these so-called tax credits from. The IRS confirmed to my staff that the credits were fake, and that promoters of them could face prosecution.

The very same day a Bloomberg News article exposed this scheme, December 19th, just a few days after Trump announced Long’s nomination, the CFO of the company got on a call with investors and told them they’d soon have friends at the IRS to clean up their mess. My investigators obtained the audio. We’ve got it on tape.

Not long thereafter, White River executives started cutting checks to Long’s failed Senate campaign that had ended years before. Between their donations and others that poured in after his nomination went public, Long was able to stuff $130,000 into his own pockets by repaying his personal campaign loans.

He has refused to answer any questions about this scheme and his role in it. If that’s not reason enough to oppose this nominee, let’s talk about Employee Retention Tax Credit.

This was a small business rescue program Congress created during the depths of the pandemic. But after it expired, the scamsters came in, and they turned it into a firehose of fraud.

Billy Long must have seen an opportunity, and he used his credibility as a former Congressman to sling these tax credits to anybody who would listen.

We have him on tape saying that “everybody qualifies” for the ERTC. That’s a lie. He bragged about getting money for a funeral home even though the pandemic was a boom time for that kind of business due to the number of Americans dying of Covid-19.

Finance Committee investigators obtained another recording, this time of an executive at a firm called Appreciation Financial that sold these scam-ridden tax credits.

He said he made Congressman Long his guest to the inauguration earlier this year. He said they had dinner and spent a few nights together. His exact quote on the subject of IRS enforcement around employee retention credits is this:

“We could be worried about promoter audits now but we don’t have to worry about any of that now with Billy coming in.”

I asked Long about this at his nomination hearing and in written questions -- whether he knew this executive and what he’d promised him. Long didn’t provide a real answer either time.

Now colleagues, I’ll say it again -- that ought to be enough to vote down this nomination.

If you need more scandal, let’s talk about no-show jobs at the Office of Personnel Management.

Back in March, Long was made a senior advisor to the director of OPM.

My staff asked Long in a due diligence meeting what his responsibilities were in that role.

He picked up a recent OPM press release and read it word-for-word, and said he worked on that. When asked for additional detail or more examples of his duties, he mumbled a few things about retirement and proofreading. No other information. Former Congressman Long is a talkative guy. His brevity on this subject spoke for itself.

After that meeting, Finance Committee investigators obtained copies of internal OPM work calendars belonging to Billy Long and three individuals who were hired with him. They were nearly blank. A scant meeting here and there. No evidence of any legitimate work performed.

An investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo dug into this matter, and neither Billy Long nor OPM gave him any real answers either.

It sure looks to me like the former Congressman got high-paying, no-show jobs for himself and three others.

If they were doing real work, they’d tell us what they were doing. They have nothing to lose if everything is on the level.

Somebody who’d rip off the taxpayer by accepting a no-show job on a maxed-out salary cannot be trusted to run the IRS. It’s just that simple.

And let’s remember, this was going on just as Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE henchmen were first breaking into OPM with the goal of terrorizing public servants and triggering mass layoffs.

I’ll close by asking this. How can the Senate possibly put this individual in charge of our tax system?

The reality is, it wouldn’t be all that difficult for the Trump administration to go back and find a tax expert or somebody with lots of management experience to run this vital agency. I had a great working relationship with the first Trump IRS commissioner, Chuck Rettig. This is not a matter of whether you’ve got an R or a D next to your name.

There are serious issues to deal with when it comes to our tax system. Protecting taxpayer data. Building on our improvements in taxpayer service. The Trump administration is signaling that the wealthy have a green light to commit tax fraud, which is outrageous and will have terrible consequences for years to come.

Bottom line, fairness matters at the IRS. Independence matters at the IRS. Ethics and honesty matter at the IRS. The American people aren’t going to get any of that from Billy Long. He is surrounded by a cloud of corruption. We’ve got to keep that away from the IRS at all costs.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the Long nomination. I yield the floor. 

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