Posted on 04/22/2002 10:00:48 PM PDT by Kay Soze
IRS Official to Judicial Watch: Clinton Enemies Were Audited Carl Limbacher, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
An official with the Internal Revenue Service has admitted that legal opponents of former President Bill Clinton were singled out for tax audits, according to court documents made public this week. "What do you expect when you sue the president?" senior IRS official Paul Breslan told Judicial Watch, the Washington-based legal watchdog group that had filed 50-plus legal actions against the Clinton administration and subsequently found itself in the IRS's cross hairs.
Breslan's quote is cited in Judicial Watch's complaint against the tax agency, based on a host of what look to be politically inspired audits that make the worst abuses of the Nixon administration appear puny by comparison.
"There were literally six witnesses in the room when Breslan told us we should have expected an audit," Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman revealed to NewsMax.com. "Four of them were lawyers."
The legal group became the target of an IRS audit in 1998, just four days after it filed an independent impeachment report against Clinton, based on years of investigation into everything from Chinagate to the Paula Jones case.
But Judicial Watch wasn't alone. Witnesses bearing damaging testimony against the president were a favorite target of the Clinton IRS. Those singled out for audits include:
Leak
The Jones case, which would eventually lead to Clinton's impeachment, was of particular interest to the IRS, which apparently leaked her confidential tax returns to the late New York Daily News reporter Lars Erik Nelson.
In a September 1997 column Nelson revealed details from Jones' filing to bolster claims that she was profiting from her sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton.
In a subsequent interview with NewsMax.com's Carl Limbacher (then with the Washington Weekly), Nelson insisted somewhat implausibly that a "friend" of Jones had come across her tax return during a visit to her home and decided to go public with the secrets.
Quite an Enemies List
As the Judicial Watch complaint notes, the Clinton IRS also went after organizations and even media companies it perceived as politically hostile, including:
The National Rifle Association, The Heritage Foundation, The National Review, The American Spectator, Freedom Alliance, National Center for Public Policy Research, American Policy Center, American Cause, Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for Honest Government, Progress and Freedom Foundation, Concerned Women for America and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.
Fox News Channel analyst Bill O'Reilly, a frequent critic of Bill and Hillary Clinton, has also pointed out how the IRS has repeatedly audited him.
The political nature of the Judicial Watch's audit seems particularly blatant.
"The IRS asked for our political affiliations in the first notice of audit," Klayman told NewsMax.
When he questioned why auditors wanted to know about the group's political ties, an IRS district director said the information had been deemed "relevant."
Worse still, each time Judicial Watch seemed to make legal headway against the White House, the IRS ratcheted up the pressure.
"When we would accomplish something big, like the criminal finding by Judge Royce Lamberth against Clinton in the Kathleen Willey Privacy Act case, our lawyers would get a call saying, 'We just want you to know that Judicial Watch is still on the IRS's radar screen,'" Klayman said.
"The same thing happened when we revealed the White House e-mail scandal," he added.
Shockingly, the IRS's intimidation tactics continue into the Bush administration, which has failed to sack Clinton's IRS Commissioner Charles Rosotti.
After Judicial Watch won the release of thousands of pages of documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force last month, a badge-wearing IRS agent showed up at the group's offices.
A personal meeting between Klayman and Bush Justice Department Criminal Division chief Michael Chertoff, who led the Senate investigation into the Clintons' Whitewater abuses, failed to yield any interest in pursuing IRS abuses, which now threaten to tarnish the Bush administration.
When noted columnist Robert Novak inquired of the Justice Department about Judicial Watch's IRS complaint, he was told by a department official, "I don't know what we are going to do with this Klayman."
"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," Klayman said. "By leaving Charles Rossotti as IRS commissioner, Bush obviously is sending a signal that political audits are fine with him."
LOL.... Next diagnosis, I'm awaiting in awe....
On that we agree.....
But he will sell it, right?
You are rude not to ping me when you say something about me ... especially when what you say it is simply untrue. And since I didn't get a chance to respond to your last remark to me on the previous thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668451/posts?), I will now. You wrote:
I haven't said that Mr. Klayman called it suicide. I said that I called it suicide.
At least we now have it established that you are the one claiming this. When you entered that thread by asking "What is Judicial Watch's latest version of the truth regarding Ron Brown's suicide" and "Even Klayman gave up on the murder theory", I'm sure I was not alone in thinking that you were claiming that JW was suggesting it was no longer a murder but a suicide. Glad to see you finally cleared up what appeared to be a dishonest allegation.
Now, perhaps you can do something besides avoid my SIMPLE questions to you about YOUR theory that it was a suicide. I asked you just a couple to make it easy for you. For example, why did the AFIP management LIE about the nature of the wound and their staff's opinions if it was a suicide? You seem to accept the contention that the evidence suggests there might be a bullet in Brown's head. So why was there no autopsy? Why would the Whitehouse order that no autopsy be done in the case of an "apparent" suicide? Surely they wouldn't hide a "suicide" from the Brown family?
And just how did Brown, if he crashed the plane, manage to do it with a bullet in his head? The plane went off course minutes before the crash. Did Brown seize control of the aircraft at that point and if so, how come the 34 other people on the plane didn't manage to wrest it back from him. Don't you think 34 ARMED people could have done that? Why not? And how did Brown, after occupying the cockpit to crash the plane (with a bullet in his head?) manage to get back to his seat so that his body could be found in a location that would suggest he was seated during the crash?
You government disrupters are getting desperate if you want to spin Brown's death as a suicide. But go ahead and try. You might motivate an autopsy.
Or swap it ... or so it's been said....
Later.... have a good one
We shall see who is right.
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