The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is a “criminal,” according to a public interest law firm fighting an audit attempt launched by the tax agency under the Clinton administration.
Judicial Watch chairman and general counsel Larry Klayman contends that the Charles Rossotti-led IRS initiated a probe of his firm in retaliation for its litigation against perceived enemies of former President Bill Clinton.
Klayman’s Washington, D.C.-based group also requested criminal and civil investigations against Rossotti for “criminal conflict of interest” in holding stock in a company he founded while it did business with the IRS.
Rossotti was forced to sell his shares of his company, American Management Systems, after a complaint by Judicial Watch that followed a waiver granted to Rossotti by Clinton near the end of his presidency.
But Klayman told WorldNetDaily the matter is not resolved.
“Rossotti is a criminal,” Klayman said, and he must be prosecuted.
Klayman, noting that Rossotti is a Clinton appointee, wonders why he “inexplicably” continues to serve under President George W. Bush.
“It’s to the Bush administration’s advantage, it must think, to watch Rossotti continue to illegally audit Judicial Watch for political purposes,” Klayman said.
Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit to force the release of information about Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force.
“Why Bush would leave Rossotti in charge unless he wanted Rossotti to do similar things, is beyond belief,” he said.
Klayman said Judicial Watch also has pursued “illegal Republican fundraising, the sale of national security briefings for campaign contributions by the Republican national congressional committee and the sale of meetings with Bush administration officials in the White House.”
Judicial Watch turned over evidence to Attorney General John Ashcroft one year ago indicating that the IRS targeted groups that publicly opposed the Clinton administration, Klayman said.
“They don’t need to be rocket scientists; they know that all the conservative groups were audited; they know that Jesse Jackson’s group and no other liberal group was audited,” he said. “They know that most of Judicial Watch’s clients were audited.”
On May 13, 1998, Judicial Watch filed a complaint on behalf of the Western Journalism Center, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization founded by Joseph Farah but entirely autonomous from WorldNetDaily, which he started in 1997.
The Western Journalism Center’s 1996 audit, which took nine-months, ended with an extension of the group’s non-profit status. But the agent in charge of the investigation warned that it was “a political case” and that the decision about the center’s fate would be “made at the national level.”
Just five months after Klayman filed the WJC complaint, the IRS audited Klayman’s group and a long list of organizations and individuals critical of Clinton, including Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick, former White House travel office head Billy Dale, and Katherine Prudhomme, who during an open forum asked Vice President Al Gore about Broaddrick’s rape accusation against Clinton
In January 1999 an IRS official, speaking of the propriety of the Judicial Watch audit, admitted to representatives of the group: “What do you expect when you sue the president?”
Immediately following Judicial Watch’s uncovering of the Clinton-Gore White House e-mail scandal in February 2000, the group said it got a call from an IRS official who informed them that they were still on the IRS’ “radar screen.”
“Once again, we have smoking-gun evidence the IRS has been used as an attack dog to go after political enemies of those in power,” said Farah. “It happened with me and my organization, and it happened again to Judicial Watch when that group came to our aid.”
Klayman says the implications of the case reach far beyond Judicial Watch and the other targeted individuals and organizations. He contends his case will demonstrate a pattern of conduct that potentially threatens democracy.
“Fiscal entities have been used for these purposes, not just in the United States, but throughout the world,” Klayman said. “This is how people are harassed. That’s why people hate the IRS; it’s the most hated government agency; it’s the most corrupt agency.”
Farah agrees that every citizen should have an interest in this case.
“It is amazing to me that civil libertarians are not screaming about such current abuses,” Farah said. “Abuse of the IRS in this manner was one of the impeachment counts against Richard Nixon. It seems the establishment press, the Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union have very selective outrage. Most distressing of all, however, is that Attorney General John Ashcroft, too, turns a blind eye to this kind of blatant civil rights abuse.”
Klayman notes that former IRS commissioner Don Alexander, who served under presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, has publicly stated that this kind of abuse has been carried out by almost every administration.
“He acknowledges that it’s been a big problem and the audits usually start either with the participation of, or through, the White House and the Justice Department,” Klayman said.
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