Political appointees including the IRS commissioner have never had direct access to the system before given its sensitivity. There are likely legal ramifications that will be worked through the courts on this.
What goes around comes around, wake me up when something unexpected happens
This is a false equivalency I've been seeing for a very long time: Someone on the right claims that the left is just as extreme as the right (usually they're claiming the left is more extreme), when the people they are referring to on the left are nobodies with little to no political influence or power, whereas on the right the extremists run the entire party and currently control the entire government. It isn't a valid comparison.
There will always be nuts in any large enough group, the difference is that the left doesn't give them outsized power, whereas the right elects them as congresspeople and president.
If it was wrong for "leftists" to do something, that makes it morally correct for right wingers to do it? Do no t right wingers have moral agency of their own?
Beyond all that, these "leftists" weren't the US government, they did not have historical employment and income and related data, and they didn't have the capability of organizing some kind of large scale smear campaign with other arms of the government.
The federal government is nearing a state of abeyance. It's run by a mafia. Why wouldn't they come for judges next?
That's more "performative bloviation" than anything of substance.
I don't think this is the case anymore, I hope I'm wrong.