Thread: HISTORY OF IRS ABUSE - Paula Corbin Jones

HISTORY OF IRS ABUSE
Paula Corbin Jones

Posted on 05.15.13 9:11 AM CDT



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Under the Clinton administration, conservative groups ranging from the Heritage Foundation to the National Rifle Association reported that they had come under review from the IRS, but the most eye-opening example was the case of Paula Corbin Jones. She had publicly accused President Clinton of sexual misconduct -- and was subjected to an IRS audit almost immediately after declining an offer to settle the case.

"I find the timing very peculiar," a spokesperson for the Jones family said at the time. "They're a family with two little children. They have one car, they rent a little apartment. How many people renting and making under $40,000 a year get audited?"

A conservative group named Judicial Watch, which had sued the president over a host of issues ranging from the administration’s fundraising practices to the Jones case, was also audited. Its lawyers asserted later that they were told by a senior IRS official: "What do you expect when you sue the president?"

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lis...tml?state=stop

IRS Audit of Paula Jones Is 'Harassment,' Adviser Says

By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 15 1997; Page A06

The Internal Revenue Service has decided to audit the income tax returns of Paula Corbin Jones, who is suing President Clinton on charges of sexual misconduct, the chairman of Jones's legal defense fund said yesterday.

Jones and her husband, Stephen, were notified Friday, just a few days after Jones rejected an out-of-court settlement urged upon her by her lawyers, according to Susan Carpenter-McMillan, Jones's spokeswoman and chairman of the Paula Jones Legal Defense Fund.

"I call it harassment," Carpenter-McMillan said on NBC's "Meet the Press," confirming a report in yesterday's Washington Times. She said the IRS is even asking for apartment rental receipts although the Joneses do not claim the rent as a deduction.

Carpenter-McMillan said she was not accusing the White House or President Clinton of using the IRS to harass his detractors. "I would never be so blunt," she said. "I just find it very coincidental."

White House spokesman Lanny J. Davis declined to comment when asked if anyone at the White House had a role in the IRS decision. He referred a reporter to the IRS.

Asked the same question, IRS spokesman Frank Keith said federal tax law prohibits him from saying anything. "Absent permission from the taxpayer in the form of a written waiver," he said, "we cannot confirm or deny that an audit is underway." In general, he said, "the IRS audits tax returns for tax purposes."

This is "the first time in their entire lives" that either Paula Jones or her husband had been picked out for an audit, Carpenter-McMillan said. She said their 1995 return was selected for scrutiny although they were asked for details about their 1994 and 1996 returns as well. Stephen Jones reportedly earns $37,000 a year; Paula Jones, a housewife and mother, is not employed.

A former Arkansas state employee, Jones filed a lawsuit against the president in 1994, charging that he asked her for oral sex in his room at Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel on May 9, 1991, when he was governor of Arkansas. Clinton has denied her allegations.

After the Supreme Court ruled in May that the case could not be postponed until Clinton left office, her lead attorneys, Gilbert K. Davis and Joseph Cammarata, recommended this month that she settle for $700,000 and a general statement of regret from Clinton that would not admit any impropriety on his part but would attest that she did not engage in any sexual misconduct either.

The two lawyers withdrew from the case last Tuesday, citing "fundamental differences" with their client. Carpenter-McMillan, a former television commentator who met Paula Jones two years ago and has become her daily adviser, urged her to reject the settlement, calling Clinton's proposed statement "vanilla language" rather than an apology.

Carpenter-McMillan said yesterday that even the word "apology" might not be necessary, "but something has to be worked out so that it's broad enough, obviously, for the president to accept it, but narrow enough for Paula to accept it and the American public to realize that she wasn't the one that did something wrong. . . . This has never been about money for Paula. . . . Paula's never even talked to me about the money."

Disclosure of the IRS audit raised frowns from Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), whose House Government Reform and Oversight Committee begins hearings Wednesday on campaign financing abuses. He said it reminded him of the time he sent a subpoena to Attorney General Janet Reno for information regarding the late Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown.

"Two days after I sent that subpoena, an FBI agent walked into my campaign headquarters and asked for five years of my records," Burton said in a separate appearance on "Meet the Press." He said that "we in the Congress . . . ought to make absolutely sure that there's not an abuse of power by this administration."

Burton and other leading Republicans were at the same time harshly critical of Reno for not yet having requested the appointment of an independent counsel to take over the Justice Department's investigation of Democratic presidential fund-raising abuses.

Reno "should have appointed an independent counsel a long time ago," Burton said. "We've gone way beyond the pale."

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), on "Fox News Sunday," said that if Reno fails to seek the appointment, "she runs the risk . . . of having impeachment proceedings started against her in the House because she's refusing to do her duty."

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that talk of impeachment was "premature." But he said if Reno does not go forward with an independent counsel, especially in light of disclosures in The Washington Post that Vice President Gore raised funds that wound up in "hard money" accounts at the Democratic National Committee, "we would have to act in some responsible way."

While "preliminary steps" toward impeachment could begin in the House, Lott said, "the Senate also has options in terms of resolutions of condemnation."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), on ABC's "This Week," dodged questions about whether Reno should be impeached. But he called on Reno to seek an independent counsel. "I see no excuse for avoiding the appointment of an independent counsel because the assertions of potential violation of law are so clear and decisive," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...s/pj091597.htm

Scandal after scandal - The list goes on, and on, and on. Weaponizing the IRS is an old tactic.
Margaret Milner Richardson, "Peggy" Richardson, was involved with Terry McAuliffe and Anthony Rodham in the Greentech Automotive EB-5 VISA scandal. More on this on page three of this ALIPAC thread.
http://www.alipac.us/f9/virginia-res...55/index3.html


Originally created 02/01/97



Probe the partisan IRS 020197 - The Augusta Chronicle

By
Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff


The Liberal Establishment and its media allies were outraged when recently-released Watergate era tapes revealed President Richard Nixon ordered top aides to hire an Internal Revenue Service commissioner who would "go after my enemies." Well, it never happened. Nixon was just blowing off steam.

But while the high-and-mighty keepers of our civil rights waxed indignant over IRS abuses the 37th president only talked about, they're currently ignoring blatant IRS abuses occurring right now under the 42nd president.

The IRS is busily auditing about 12 conservative non-profit, tax-exempt organizations Ä including the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the American Spectator and William F. Buckley's National Review.

No comparable organizations or journals on the political Left are being audited or harassed!

When asked last week if President Clinton was politicizing the IRS, White House spokesman Mike McCurry huffed, "I'm not aware of any credible news organization that's reported anything like that."

Apparently he doesn't believe The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Times are credible. They're the news organizations that have been reporting the story. Maybe it's time The Washington Post, The New York Times and the major television networks stop fretting over Nixon's IRS abuses and begin reporting on those by Clinton.

The IRS is run by Margaret Milner Richardson, a self-described "yellow-dog Democrat" and close Hillary Clinton confidante. We don't think it's any coincidence whatsoever she ordered audits of two of the organizations prominently named in a recently-exposed White House "enemies' list."

The respected Heritage Foundation, which endorses no candidates or partisan activity, was inexplicably targeted after it sent out a fall fund-raising letter signed by Bob Dole. (Tax-exempt foundations of all ideologies routinely mail fund-raising letters signed by political celebrities.)

The director of the Western Journalism Center, which has reporters investigating the death of Clinton aide Vincent Foster, quotes one IRS agent as telling the group's accountant, "Look, this is a political case, and the decision about your tax-exempt status will be made at the national level."

Now we know why the audits are occurring. Both the Heritage think-tank and the Journalism Center were secretly listed as "enemies" in the widely-ridiculed White House conspiracy report that has just come to light. (And we thought Nixon was the only president who compiled such lists.)

It is clearly time for a full-scale congressional investigation, complete with hearings, to determine just how far Margaret Milner Richardson has politicized what must always be a non-political IRS audit process.

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories...l#.V_puF-VrhMw

Clinton IRS commissioner: Tax audit of Virginia farmer just ‘a coincidence’

By Kevin Mooney / June 18, 2013


‘TERRORIZED’: Virginia farmer Martha Boneta battles the IRS.


By Kevin Mooney | Watchdog.org

After clashing in court with a powerful Virginia environmental group, farmer Martha Boneta faced a second threat: an ominous U.S. Internal Revenue Service audit notice she received in the mail.

Boneta suspects the events are related, that her struggle to protect her property rights is part of a larger national story involving IRS harassment of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. A former IRS commissioner who serves on a council that has sparred with Boneta over her property said the concerns are unfounded.

“You are humbled and terrorized by the whole process,” Boneta told Watchdog. “You wake up every day with a terrible feeling, and initially you don’t want to tell anyone what has happened. But as I gradually began to speak out, more people began to join with me. Anyone who is a farmer, or a concerned citizen, has a stake in this fight. But I came into the process very reluctantly.”

As Watchdog previously reported, Boneta’s name is now synonymous with the fight for property rights in Virginia. The Boneta Bill (House Bill 1430), which is designed to strengthen and clarify the state’s Right to Farm Act, passed the House of Delegates in a 77-22 vote in February.

The legislation was later blocked in the Senate Agriculture Committee in an 11-4 vote, but Delegate Scott Lingamfelter, R-Woodbridge, has vowed to reintroduce the bill next year.

Inside the barn on her 70-acre property in Paris, Va., a small rural village in Fauquier County, an hour’s drive west of Washington, D.C., Boneta told Watchdog the IRS notice followed a fight that began when the Piedmont Environmental Council began working with county officials to rezone her property. PEC officials threatened to sue Boneta in 2009 for a variety of supposed violations before focusing their complaint on the presence of an apartment on the property.

Boneta and PEC settled in 2011, but by then, Fauquier County planners, prompted by PEC, had changed zoning laws to specifically ban Boneta’s sale of fresh fruit, vegetables, beverages and homemade handicrafts from her on-site farm store. That change led to the Boneta Bill.

It also led, in April 2012, to county citations against Boneta – each a claim that Boneta was violating the county’s planning ordinances.

Then came the IRS notice saying that Bryon C. Jose, an IRS agent based in Fairfax, would audit Boneta’s 2010 and 2011 tax returns. Boneta calls that time frame “highly suggestive” because it coincides closely with the heavily publicized litigation concerning the operations on her property.

Boneta asserts the IRS audit is the latest event in a “coordinated effort” aimed at forcing her off her farm.

It’s not just timing that makes Boneta suspicious of the IRS audit, or even the fact that the audit asks for information that was key to the lawsuit PEC filed against Boneta. It’s the presence on the PEC board of directors of Margaret “Peggy” Richardson, a Clinton-era IRS commissioner.

Richardson dismissed the idea that Boneta’s audit is the result of a coordinated effort, but said she understands why Boneta and her supporters see a connection.

“I could understand, given the external climate, that people might think there is something amiss,” Richardson told Watchdog. “I think that’s a stretch, but I understand why people might feel this way.”

While it may be difficult for people in Fauquier County familiar with the Boneta case to believe the IRS audit is a mere coincidence, this is very likely the case, Richardson said.

“Coincidences do happen.”
http://watchdog.org/91068/former-irs...a-coincidence/

There are no coincidences in the real estate business or the IRS. Law of the Universe.

Martha Boneta: A Linchpin Between The Clinton & Obama Administration’s IRS Scandals

ED WOOD — JULY 4, 2013

Martha Boneta. Do you know the name? Maybe you will remember.

Martha owns a farm in Fauquier County, VA, an area best known as a bedroom community for the District of Columbia. Martha might just be one of the linchpins that tie together several of the current Administration's violations of our constitutionally guaranteed protections. (See Amendment IV).



Martha Boneta on her farm in Fauquier County, VA

Martha made the mistake of wanting to sell fruits and vegetables grown on her little farm. Of course her entrepreneurial spirit was in contrast to the existing mindset among her neighboring government employees. So they established a "Piedmont Environmental Council" to rezone her property, and then threatened to sue her for being in violation of their newly enacted regulations.But they picked on the wrong person. Martha retaliated by persuading the Virginia General Assembly to introduce the Right to Farm Act, also known as "The Boneta Bill." It passed Virginia's House of Delegates by a 77-22 margin last February, but as usual got bottled up in the politically divided Senate. So what happened next? Martha got audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Twice. Imagine that!

However, let's jump back a step. Who was the driving force in the Piedmont Environmental Council? Why it was our old friend, Peggy Richardson! Ms. Richardson served as Commissioner of Internal Revenue at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during the Clinton administration. She headed Clinton's alleged abuse of the power of the IRS, and was either forced to resign, or was designated as Clinton's sacrificial lamb. Either way, there was never any accountability or prosecution.

Now the connections get a little more interesting. Margaret Milner "Peggy" Richardson is a partner in the Washington law firm of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. Guess who else is a member of that same law firm? Lois Lerner, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations, who took the Fifth before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, during their investigation of the IRS harrassment of Conservative organizations seeking 501(c)(4) taxation exemption. And in addition, Ms. Lerner's husband is also a partner in that same law firm, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.

Hmmm. Richardson told TheWatchdog.org that it might be difficult for people familiar with the Boneta case to believe the IRS audits were a mere coincidence, but that it is "likely to be the case."

Sure it is, Ms. Richardson. Sure it is. And if you are interested, I just happen to have this nice bridge up in New York City that I would like to sell.

http://freedomoutpost.com/martha-bon...dals-together/