JUDICIAL WATCH FIGHTS CLINTON IRS ATTEMPTED AUDIT

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the non-profit educational foundation that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it was fighting in court an audit attempt instituted by the Clinton IRS in retaliation for Judicial Watch’s litigation against President Clinton. Judicial Watch first received notice of an attempted IRS audit on October 9, 1998, a few days after its “Interim Impeachment Report,” which called for Bill Clinton’s impeachment for misuse of the IRS, was officially made part of the Congressional record. The IRS’s initial audit letter demanded that Judicial Watch “[p]rovide the names and addresses of the directors and their relationship to any political party or political groups.” In January, 1999, an IRS official admitted to Judicial Watch representatives, in the context of the propriety of the audit, “What do you expect when you sue the President?” Another IRS official admitted in June, 1999, that the political affiliations of Judicial Watch’s directors is a factor in any IRS audit.

After Judicial Watch scored legal victories against the Clinton Administration, Judicial Watch received audit notices and warnings from the IRS. For instance, immediately following its uncovering of the Clinton-Gore White House e-mail scandal in February, 2000, Judicial Watch lawyers received a call from an IRS official to inform them that Judicial Watch was still on the IRS’s “radar screen.” The IRS finally agreed to defer on deciding whether to audit Judicial Watch until after the Clinton Administration ended. Despite this agreement, in one of the last acts of the Clinton Administration, the IRS sent Judicial Watch another audit notice on January 8, 2001. The IRS also sent new audit notices throughout 2001 after Judicial Watch criticized IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti. Rossotti is a Clinton appointee who “inexplicably” continues to serve under President Bush. In addition to presiding over the audits of perceived critics of the Clinton Administration, Judicial Watch requested criminal and civil investigations of Rossotti for his criminal conflict of interest in holding stock in a company he founded, AMS, while it did business with the IRS.

Judicial Watch now is fighting the attempted audit in federal courts in the District of Columbia and Maryland. As Robert Novak reports in his April 18th column, despite repeated requests to Attorney General Ashcroft to investigate, his Bush Justice Department has thus far refused to do so. (See Judicial Watch's letter to Attorney General John Aschroft) Instead, in the context of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit against the Cheney Energy Task Force, a Bush Administration official told Novak, “I don't know what we are going to do with this Klayman.” A copy of Judicial Watch’s complaint against IRS officials is available by clicking here.

“Judicial Watch has no objection to IRS audits at the proper time and place, under correct, non-political circumstances. We have nothing to hide. But when we were told that we were being audited because we sued Bill Clinton, we had no choice but to stand up and fight in court. Now, for its own reasons, the Bush Administration is content to let Clinton appointee Rossotti continue to harass Judicial Watch. Our lawsuits in response are intended not only to protect Judicial Watch, but are for the good of all Americans,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.

Klayman is really anti-Bush, and then is accusing the Bush administration of payback.

Well, interesting you should wonder; I found one person's opinion:

April 18, 2001

Clinton-basher Klayman targets Bush, GOP

Larry Klayman made his name suing Bill and Hillary Clinton every time they turned around. Last week the founder and head of Judicial Watch turned his guns on President George W. Bush and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas). They are, he intimates, not much better than the Clintons, and unless they straighten up and fly right he is ready to sue, sue, sue.

Klayman, who founded Judicial Watch in 1994 to serve as a conservative “watchdog” over the ethical and legal wrongdoing so much in the news in those days, began suing the Clintons almost immediately, finding the administration what the military calls a “target-rich environment.”

Many of his suits came to naught and some have yet to be resolved, but his efforts unearthed more than a little Clinton wrongdoing that others had missed. It was Klayman, after all, who managed to find John Huang and begin uncovering Bill and Hillary’s involvement with “fundraisers” who were, in fact, operatives of the Communist regime in Beijing.

What’s more, it was Klayman who stepped forward to take the case of the first Bush administration officials whose FBI files had been illegally transferred to the White House and apparently became bedtime reading for the first lady. Hillary and a few of her cohorts continue to be at some legal risk as a result of this and other Klayman-initiated cases.

It’s no wonder that Klayman soon became one of the most hated and admired figures in town. The Clintons and their friends came to despise the man who fast emerged as a watchdog with real bite. Both Clinton critics and Clinton haters came to see him as a hero, a courageous lawyer battling to get at the “truth” that they were firmly convinced would ultimately sink the gang from Arkansas.

Klayman basked in his notoriety, became a regular on cable television and built Judicial Watch into a truly formidable operation. The numbers tell the story. In 1995, Judicial Watch raised less than $10,000, but by 1998 the operation was bringing in more than $11 million a year through advertising and direct mail.

While others were celebrating the fact that with the election of George W. Bush the Clintons would at last be leaving town, Klayman began hinting that the only reason Bush wasn’t anxious to continue pursuing the Clintons in court was that he was contemplating the same sort of activities. Why else, he hinted, would the new president keep saying he wanted to “put this behind us” when there was so much yet to investigate?

Indeed, Klayman began questioning Bush’s ethics even as he was taking office. Things in Washington haven’t changed much, Judicial Watch advertising seemed to be suggesting, but the public should be assured that he and his team of lawyers are still on the job.

Then, last week, Klayman held a press conference damning the Bush administration, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and DeLay. They were, he fulminated at a press conference, engaged in the same sort of illegal activity that characterized the Clinton administration.

He followed this up with a complaint alleging that an NRCC fundraising appeal represented an attempt to “sell” meetings with government officials and was, in effect, an effort to solicit “bribes.” The charges were, to put it mildly, a stretch, but did represent a Klayman declaration of war on the GOP and the president.

Klayman then promised a Judicial Watch “probe” of the supposed “secret deal” that resulted in the release of the 24 American fliers being held by China. “We aim to find out if any secret promises were made to the ‘Butchers of Beijing’ behind closed doors,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. How? By going to court.

Cynics suggest that Klayman pursues his watchdog role because he can’t help himself. This, after all, is a man who sued his mother. Others say his motives are suspect in the NRCC-DeLay case because of a business dispute, but if one takes Klayman at his word, he comes across more as a super litigious Common Cause type than as a conservative.

Indeed, to listen to him, one is forced to conclude that he just happened to be targeting Democrats and liberals during the Clinton years, but is now ready to go after conservatives and Republicans with equal vigor. He even implicitly took credit for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” vote in the Senate during his press conference attacking DeLay.

The question is whether he can get conservatives or others to continue to write checks to his operation while he attacks DeLay rather than Clinton. Whether one likes him or agrees with him, Larry Klayman has now put his future and that of the organization he founded on the line.

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