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."
If you typed that with a straight face, you should go ahead and take the LSAT and work for JW.
Bill Clinton must be your professor.
Weasel words. Just like Larry.
It seems that every single time Larry is "misquoted" or "stretches the truth," you think it's a darned good reason, too. You're learning well.
Of course that Judicial Watch headline is telling the truth
I believe you have proved Luis' point for him. If JW is telling the truth, then you ARE NOT.
I am more curious about your and Howlin's definitions of MURDER and MASS MURDER. They sound very ... well ... Clintonesque.BeAChooser, I have asked you three times to produce what YOU SAID I said, and you are unable to do so.155 posted on 5/7/02 6:25 PM Eastern by BeAChooser
________________________________________________
To: Amelia, Howlin
I have asked you 3 times already, and I'm still waiting for you to post my definitions of MURDER and MASS MURDER, along with links to where I posted them.
Are you and Howlin clones? Or just using the same talking points and suggested debating tactics booklet? Why do you seem so afraid to answer my simple question about whether you believe Brown was murdered or not? And, by the way, THAT tells us your definition of murder and mass murder.
259 posted on 5/7/02 11:54 PM Eastern by BeAChooser
You have produced ample evidence that you are following me (and others) from thread to thread, carrying arguments from thread to thread in clear violation of forum rules, bringing up unrelated topics in each thread, and accusing me (and others) of saying things we've never said.
When challenged to prove your specious assertations, you've been unable to do do.
You have also been calling other posters LIAR and other names.
I'm asking you for the last time, prove it, apologize, and/or GO AWAY.
You shouldn't attack her for this. What it means is that she's the only other Freeper besides me that reads your ramblings.
That's nice Advogado, but your forgetting. FR readers worldwide read these threads - and I'd wager that all of them - know full well that you, Amelia, Howlin and a few others in this thread - are simply - move-oners. And you mover-oners are a disgrace to the Rule of Law.
That's the headline.
You have lost any semblance of credibility.
Good bye.
I have already told you that is not my plan for after school. And I would appreciate it if you would stop your ad hominem attacks on me. Just because I know that headline is not a screaming lie, does not mean that I use Bill Clinton tactics on this thread.
Like I said before, I do not believe that Judicial Watch was "lying" in this headline, they were making a connection and calling a spade a spade. I guess that we will just have to agree to disagree on this one.
With the NRST, there would be one less weapon for politicians to use against their enemies.
Click here for information about the National Retail Sales Tax.
We will never be a FRee country so long as we have an income tax and the IRS.
Makes you wonder why some of the birds here are defending this politically motivated IRS audit so much, or even at all.
Rebeckie, you can't keep personalities out of it can you?
Wouldn't it be nice to have this all behind the "eWW" now? He could have and at a lot less cost to his donors/supporters had he complied back in 1998 and completed the audit. Yep he wouldn't be needing the $150,000 per month just to gather documents and pay lawyers to do follow this mess he's created.
Oh well, at some point he can get back to more cruises and ferreting out gov't corruption. Maybe even get that New York office opened but may have to delay the Mid-west office for a few years. Money is the life line of the 501c3s and when the donors get a gut full 'eww' may have to find another line.
She rejected me, Registered. She rejected me.
I suppose she's all yours now and I hope you will take good care of her. I never even got a chance to actually see her, but she described herself to me and she sounded just about perfect (assuming she's on the short side).
Try not to worry about me. Of course, today I shall be tormented (haunted, in fact) by the mental image that she so cruelly left with me. But I'm hoping that maybe by the time I get to the third hole (a long par 5), my mind shall become otherwise occupied.
My very best wishes to both of you.
Notice, folks, that even in her denial she can't utter the words "I don't believe Linda Tripp lied". Instead she just repeats the Clintonesque phrase "I ... snip ... deny I ever said " over and over and over and expects us to ignore the MEANING of what she posted on several occasions.
You posted what I said; the other conclusions are from your obsessed mind.
Well I admit that I am obsessed with the idea of Bush respecting the oath he took to see to it that the laws of this country are obeyed ... even by our leaders and their party members.
You are a dishonest poster. I've asked you at least five times to either produce the post of mine where I said she was a liar, or stop telling people I said it.
But how else are we to interpret your statement that matters such as Filegate were investigated and found to be about "nothing" ... unless you also think Tripp lied under oath? Why were the first words off your fingers after I listed the items supporting the allegation that crimes were committed in Filegate (where Tripp's was the most important deposition) that people lie all the time under oath. If you weren't implying that Tripp is a liar, then what were you implying?
You have yet to do so; now it's time for you to admit you're not telling the truth, and stop posting that about me.
Well from now on I'll be sure to write you IMPLIED that Tripp is a liar in her Filegate deposition. Satisfied?
Produce it, or stop this dishonesty.
There is nothing dishonest about that statement. You didn't say you believe Tripp, only that you never called her "a liar". How Clintonesque!
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