Pulling Out All The Stops

In the effort to discredit those who have been pointing out the illegal and unethical behavior of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tx), some of Tom's friends in DC had the IRS audit a non profit.

WASHINGTON : The Internal Revenue Service recently audited the books of a Texas nonprofit group that was critical of campaign spending by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, after receiving a request for the audit from one of DeLay's political allies in the House.

The lawmaker, House Ways and Means Committee member Sam Johnson, R-Plano, was responding to a complaint about the Austin-based group, Texans for Public Justice, from Barnaby Zall, a Washington lawyer close to DeLay and his fundraising apparatus

This sounds like a return of Richard Nixon to DC.

In the end the audit found no violations. As a result of the audit, the group starting looking into the basis for why an audit was performed.

But the circumstances behind the effort, uncovered by the group's director and founder, Craig McDonald, using the Freedom of Information Act, prompted him to allege that the audit was an abuse of the IRS' mandate. He said there was no evidence of wrongdoing in the complaints.

That is the key, there was a request for an audit, there were accusations of wrong doing, but there was never any evidence presented that would indicate any violations. Still the IRS did do an audit.

Are politically inspired whispers all that is required to trigger an audit? If so, I have a long list of groups who the IRS could visit, starting with Rick Santorum's Charity, Operation Good Neighbor.


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IRS DeLay