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IRS reveals Bill Clintons' smoking gun
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
IRS reveals smoking gun
July 29, 2002
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
The mystery surrounding Internal Revenue Service tax audits against critics of President Bill Clinton during his administration has been cracked. A smoking gun has just been released by the IRS. The unmistakable evidence is that the supposedly nonpolitical tax agency responds to complaints by prominent politicians.
The IRS, perhaps unknowingly, incriminated itself July 8 with a 1,500-page document dump answering to four years of freedom of information requests by the watchdog organization Judicial Watch. The material shows that the IRS audit of Judicial Watch was preceded by written complaints from the White House and prominent Democratic members of Congress. Furthermore, existence of supposedly secret audits was unsealed thanks to a Justice Department tax litigator who is, implausibly, active in local Democratic politics.
Judicial Watch's lawsuits have made the organization as obnoxious to the Bush administration as to its predecessor. Nevertheless, the White House is concerned about one abuse close to the political bone: IRS disclosure of confidential tax information about the Republican candidate for governor of California.
Until the July 8 document dump, Judicial Watch got little satisfaction from the IRS in fighting the costly, time-consuming audits. Among the 1,500 pages was found this Aug. 14, 1998, e-mail to President Clinton (with the sender's name blackened). ''I have received solicitation for funds and a questionnaire from Larry Klayman, of Judicial Watch. They have targeted you and the Vice President. My question is how can this obviously partisan organization be classified as tax exempt.... I think you and your wife have done a great job in spite of the partisan attacks against both of you.''
According to the IRS documents, the Clinton fan's complaint was received by the IRS from the White House on Sept. 14, 1998, and dispatched to Commissioner Charles Rossotti's office. That same day, the file indicates, a telephone call in connection with this matter was made to a person whose name was blacked out. Just two weeks later, Judicial Watch received its first notice of an audit.
While Judicial Watch received continued audit notices, the IRS was pressured by prominent Democrats. Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, on Feb. 2, 1999, wrote questioning whether the watchdog group was entitled to a tax exemption. Rangel's letter noted complaints from Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, a member of the Democratic leadership who received a constituent complaint about Judicial Watch solicitations.
Marcus Owens, head of the IRS' Exempt Organizations Division, responded to both Rangel and Frost. ''We have forwarded the information you provided to the key district with examination jurisdiction over these organizations,'' Owens said. Translated from bureaucratese: An IRS probe was under way. As audit notices went out, complaints came in from other Democrats--including Senators Richard Bryan of Nevada and Tom Harkin of Iowa and Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia.
Judicial Watch's fight against a political audit was unsealed by the federal District Court in Baltimore, with proceedings sent to the Tax Notes Today publication. A filing in the court last Jan. 7 indicates the documents were released by lawyers from the Justice Department's Tax Division. The government's chief litigator against Judicial Watch has been a remarkable Washington bureaucrat named Stuart Gibson.
While serving as a civil service tax lawyer, Gibson also is a liberal activist in suburban Fairfax County, Va., where he was elected to the school board with Democratic backing. He was the lead litigator in the public disclosure of tax shelters by individual taxpayers--including Bill Simon, the Republican nominee for governor of California.
The Bush White House has a great deal more concern for Simon than Klayman, particularly because Judicial Watch filed suit against Vice President Dick Cheney. The broader question is political motivation behind the IRS audits. There is now evidence that the audit of at least one Clinton ''enemy'' was triggered by the White House. The background of other such audits might yield other smoking guns, if Congress or the Bush administration were interested enough to investigate. http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak29.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
July 29, 2002
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
The mystery surrounding Internal Revenue Service tax audits against critics of President Bill Clinton during his administration has been cracked. A smoking gun has just been released by the IRS. The unmistakable evidence is that the supposedly nonpolitical tax agency responds to complaints by prominent politicians.
The IRS, perhaps unknowingly, incriminated itself July 8 with a 1,500-page document dump answering to four years of freedom of information requests by the watchdog organization Judicial Watch. The material shows that the IRS audit of Judicial Watch was preceded by written complaints from the White House and prominent Democratic members of Congress. Furthermore, existence of supposedly secret audits was unsealed thanks to a Justice Department tax litigator who is, implausibly, active in local Democratic politics.
Judicial Watch's lawsuits have made the organization as obnoxious to the Bush administration as to its predecessor. Nevertheless, the White House is concerned about one abuse close to the political bone: IRS disclosure of confidential tax information about the Republican candidate for governor of California.
Until the July 8 document dump, Judicial Watch got little satisfaction from the IRS in fighting the costly, time-consuming audits. Among the 1,500 pages was found this Aug. 14, 1998, e-mail to President Clinton (with the sender's name blackened). ''I have received solicitation for funds and a questionnaire from Larry Klayman, of Judicial Watch. They have targeted you and the Vice President. My question is how can this obviously partisan organization be classified as tax exempt.... I think you and your wife have done a great job in spite of the partisan attacks against both of you.''
According to the IRS documents, the Clinton fan's complaint was received by the IRS from the White House on Sept. 14, 1998, and dispatched to Commissioner Charles Rossotti's office. That same day, the file indicates, a telephone call in connection with this matter was made to a person whose name was blacked out. Just two weeks later, Judicial Watch received its first notice of an audit.
While Judicial Watch received continued audit notices, the IRS was pressured by prominent Democrats. Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, on Feb. 2, 1999, wrote questioning whether the watchdog group was entitled to a tax exemption. Rangel's letter noted complaints from Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, a member of the Democratic leadership who received a constituent complaint about Judicial Watch solicitations.
Marcus Owens, head of the IRS' Exempt Organizations Division, responded to both Rangel and Frost. ''We have forwarded the information you provided to the key district with examination jurisdiction over these organizations,'' Owens said. Translated from bureaucratese: An IRS probe was under way. As audit notices went out, complaints came in from other Democrats--including Senators Richard Bryan of Nevada and Tom Harkin of Iowa and Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia.
Judicial Watch's fight against a political audit was unsealed by the federal District Court in Baltimore, with proceedings sent to the Tax Notes Today publication. A filing in the court last Jan. 7 indicates the documents were released by lawyers from the Justice Department's Tax Division. The government's chief litigator against Judicial Watch has been a remarkable Washington bureaucrat named Stuart Gibson.
While serving as a civil service tax lawyer, Gibson also is a liberal activist in suburban Fairfax County, Va., where he was elected to the school board with Democratic backing. He was the lead litigator in the public disclosure of tax shelters by individual taxpayers--including Bill Simon, the Republican nominee for governor of California.
The Bush White House has a great deal more concern for Simon than Klayman, particularly because Judicial Watch filed suit against Vice President Dick Cheney. The broader question is political motivation behind the IRS audits. There is now evidence that the audit of at least one Clinton ''enemy'' was triggered by the White House. The background of other such audits might yield other smoking guns, if Congress or the Bush administration were interested enough to investigate. http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak29.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
Hillary Rodham Clinton emerges as moderate
'She has never been the wild lefty'
July 29, 2002 Posted: 12:29 PM EDT (1629 GMT)
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Hillary Rodham Clinton began her Senate bid, some on the right warned she would make even liberals such as Ted Kennedy look conservative.
Fund-raising letters that raised millions of dollars for Clinton's Republican opponents decried her "wild-eyed radical leftist views" and branded her as "a liberal's liberal."
But since she won election in 2000, Clinton's behavior has often belied those predictions.
On Monday, she was giving the keynote address at a Democratic Leadership Council meeting in New York. The centrist group, whose "third way" ideas were popularized by her husband, is also home to Democrats including Louisiana Sen. John Breaux, whom President Bush courted for his Cabinet, and Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, who flirted with becoming a Republican.
Once a supporter of Republican Barry Goldwater, Clinton now receives high marks from liberal groups. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group scores her 85 out of 100 while Americans for Democratic Action gives her a 95 percent positive rating.
But far from aligning herself with Kennedy, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone and the other members of the party's liberal wing, Clinton has cast herself as a New Democrat on some key issues.
"I have always tried to strike a balance and to be someone who was a New Democrat, a third-way thinker, about how we end the gridlock and brain-dead politics of the past," Clinton said Friday.
"I think you have to view the world as it is, not as you would wish it to be," she added.
Clinton supported bankruptcy changes even though critics complained they did not do enough to protect mothers owed child support or those facing catastrophic medical bills.
She is co-sponsor of a welfare bill that increases child care aid but also work requirements. That so angered some poverty advocates they protested outside her Washington home.
She bucked her liberal Hollywood supporters and teamed with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Connecticut, on a bill that would penalize the entertainment industry for marketing sex and violence to children.
Supporters say it is no recent conversion.
"This has always been who Hillary is," said DLC founder Al From, who worked closely with both Clintons leading up to Bill Clinton's presidential bid.
"From her days as first lady of Arkansas, when she was pushing teacher accountability standards, she has never been the wild lefty," From said.
Former California Rep. Vic Fazio, a pioneer in pulling Democrats toward the center, agreed.
"The mythology of the Clintons is very different than the Clintons themselves. That is especially true for Hillary," Fazio said.
'The Madonna of politics'
Others see a calculated makeover intended to position her for a return trip to the White House.
"She is a complete and utter opportunist," said Morton Blackwell, the Virginia Republican committeeman who formed an "Emergency Committee to Stop Hillary Rodham Clinton" during her Senate bid.
"The Madonna of politics," added Tripp Baird, Senate analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, likening Clinton to the pop star famous for makeovers. "It's phony. I think she's angling for the presidency and she can't do it as a Ted Kennedy liberal."
While Clinton has said she will serve out her six-year Senate term and not run for president in 2004, she is not as definitive on 2008.
It is notable that the three Democrats considering presidential runs in 2004 -- Lieberman, John Kerry of Massachusetts, and John Edwards of North Carolina -- are all DLC members.
Clinton's DLC credentials are not quite as clear.
Her most visible foray into policy as first lady was the attempt to bring about a national health care reform, a plan critics denounced as socialized medicine. It was shelved.
"People from the right and the left kind of project on to me their ideals without any sense of where I am or what I am doing," Clinton said.
"I have always tried to do what I thought was both right and practical," she said. "It's important to have core principals and values, but if you're going to be active in policy and politics you have to be a realist."
Any similarity to the former president's message should come as no surprise, said Mike McCurry, one of Bill Clinton's former press secretaries.
"Politically, these two human beings have been so connected for so many decades, their thinking is intertwined like DNA strands," McCurry said.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/07/29/democrats.hillary.ap/index.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
If we do find more smoking guns regarding Clinton "revenge audits," though, he and the IRS should be held accountable for conspiracy.
As for Hillary, she's grooming for a Presidential run, didn't you know? The trouble is, I can't see how she can possibly win even big Democratic support so long as she has that liability, that ball and chain called Bill. I don't think she'll be palatable to most Americans, even the liberal ones, until she's a divorced woman, because I'm convinced there are not a lot of people who want Bill anywhere near the White House again.
- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878