The Barrett Report

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Not hearing too much in the MSM about the Barrett report are ya? Shocking! Ok, not that shocking, just the same ole crapola from the MSM.

The long-awaited final report by independent counsel David Barrett, to be released today, was severely censored by court order but not enough to sufficiently obscure its importance. As long forecast, it alleges serious corruption in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service. The question is what was contained in 120 pages removed by the judges.

These allegations explain why Barrett finally has closed down after 10 years the last prosecution under the lapsed independent counsel statute. Its target, Henry Cisneros, long ago resigned as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in a plea bargain after admitting he lied to FBI interrogators to gain Senate confirmation. What kept Barrett in business was what he and his prosecutors contend is a Clinton administration cover-up of income tax evasion charges against Cisneros.

Not only Barrett’s stubbornness but also a tip from an IRS whistle-blower in San Antonio meant the case did not end with Cisneros’ personal disgrace. But for now, the cover-up has succeeded. No tax prosecution was brought against Cisneros, and IRS conduct has not been questioned.

Friends describe Barrett, a Republican lawyer from Washington, as feeling at age 68 that he has failed fully to uncover the scandal and that it is now up to Congress to get out the truth.

This probably would have been just another undiscovered scandal had the whistle not been blown by John J. Filan, chief of the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division in the South Texas District. In a March 31, 1997, memo, Filan expressed outrage that the IRS chief counsel’s office in Washington on Jan. 15 had pulled a tax evasion case out of San Antonio because it required “centralized review.”

Told to “box up” his evidence and send it to Washington, Filan wrote: “I am not aware of any other criminal tax cases that have been pulled from experienced District Counsel attorneys.”

With the case now in Washington, the IRS declined to prosecute. In a second memo on April 25, Filan said IRS Assistant Chief Counsel Barry Finkelstein’s conclusions “are just plain wrong.”

Payments to Cisneros’ former mistress and money spent for other purposes exceeded declared income, said the whistle-blower, and “clearly proves Cisneros knowingly and willingly signed and filed false and fraudulent income tax returns” for 1991, 1992 and 1993.

That launched Barrett on four frustrating years of attempting tax evasion prosecution in the face of Attorney General Janet Reno’s obstructions. Permitted by Reno to focus on only one year, the independent counsel could not make the case of extended tax evasion.

According to people with access to Barrett’s draft, it goes into intense detail about this obstruction and on the unprecedented seizure of the Cisneros tax case by the IRS in Washington. That much in the 400-page report has survived the three senior federal appellate judges with supervising authority over the independent counsel.

Nevertheless, the question remains what three judges ? David Sentelle (D.C.), Thomas Reavley (Texas) and Peter Fay (Florida) ? blacked out in 120 pages worth of redactions. Even after the report is released, Barrett and his lawyers would face judicial sanctions if they disclosed anything that was redacted.

So basically Barrett is saying that the Clinton administration has been successful in covering up this scandal.

[…]there was a concerted and successful effort in Congress to redact the most damning evidence presented in Barrett’s report before it was released.

Fox News noted that in the final report, at least one portion of Section Five was “redacted pursuant to court order,” as were four appendices.

In addition, at least 146 motions have been filed by lawyers connected to the individuals cited in the 474-page report, delaying its release.

[…]

States the report: “Beginning in the summer of 1997, the OIC [Office of Independent Counsel] developed, to the extent it could, evidence concerning efforts by officials of DOJ and the IRS to contain and limit the investigation of Cisneros’ actions.”

“In the end, enough high-ranking officials with enough power were able to blunt any effort to bring about a full and independent examination of Cisneros’ possible tax offenses in the face of what seemed to many to be obvious grounds for such an inquiry.”

After 10 years he has given up and now it’s up to our elected leaders to find out the rest.

If any group enbodies the Culture of Corruption it’s the Democrats. The fact that this much pressure has been put on this inquiry is telling, I mean how much power do they have when they can redact whole sections of this report? Scary.

Yesterday Harry Reid told this silly story about his days back in the 1800’s when he fought the mafia in Nevada and helped rid the state of La Costra Nostra (cough bullshit cough) but isn’t this effort by the Democrats to keep huge chunks of this report an example of something the mafia would do?

But hey, good news is that the lefts hero, Bill Clinton can now practice law again:

After five years of banishment from the legal profession, President Clinton will be eligible this week to reclaim the law license he gave up as a consequence of the inaccurate responses he gave under oath to questions about his relationship with a White House intern.

Culture of Corruption my ass.

What Other’s Had To Say:

American Princess

This has been repeatedly decried by Democrats as an attempt to implicate the Clintons in something, anything, and its just a waste of time, but that assertion is, by iteslf, hypocricy. The Democrats are grasping at straws right now, trying to find something, anything that might send the Bush Administration into a talespin, and their main contention is that the President abused his power when he ordered NSA wiretapping for national security reasons. Here, the Clintons (and I include them both, mostly because I believe that neither ever did anything without the other: Bill Clinton was the face, Hillary Clinton was the evil insides), overstepped the boundaries of the Executive Office to assist a friend and a good Democratic strategizer: they used the IRS, they used official agencies, they used the tax power, to undermine an investigation. Take it or leave it, the IRS was being manipulated, and possibly the larger justice department.

Austin Bay Blog

The Clinton Coverup

Hey, it works when you have : (1) a sympathetic national press corps, (2) corrupt underlings, and (3) senators who are willing to ?redact? information from the prosecutor?s report.

The Strata-Sphere

Clinton was the Playboy President. And he had some playboy friends around him like Cisneros. They had mistresses on the side, and they built a facade of doing really important things and being really powerful men. But in fact they were afraid of scrutiny and, when they had to stand in the light of public opinion, they did all they could to obscure that view. They were not down deep confident.

Gateway Pundit

Meanwhile back in the real world, where people are investigated for crimes occasionally when Janet Reno is not stepping in the way, the revolting stench of the Clinton Administration is filling the air again today, nearly five years after the Bill-Hill team left office, with the planned release of the Barrett Report.

Newsbusters

In his report released Thursday on Henry Cisneros, Clinton’s HUD Secretary for several years who had pled guilty in 1999 to some charges, Independent Counsel David Barrett asserted that his probe was hindered by Clinton administration officials, even after they left office. But the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, which had time for some hardly hot news stories, such as a popular restaurant in New Orleans, didn’t utter a word about Barrett’s complaint. ABC’s World News Tonight allocated 35 seconds to Barrett and Cisneros. Anchor Bob Woodruff pointed out how ?Barrett accused Clinton officials of using their power to quote, ‘blunt any effort to bring about a full and independent examination.’? Woodruff added: ?Critics called Barrett’s investigation ‘incompetent,’ ‘wasteful’ and ‘without merit.'”

Ace of Spades

That Scott-Ritter-looking buffoon from the NSA was of course a “whistleblower” for revealing highly classified information. But the man who leaked the Barrett report to the NYT isn’t:

A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known.

Other’s Blogging:


Yesterday Harry Reid told this silly story about his days back in the 1800’s when he fought the mafia in Nevada and helped rid the state of La Costra Nostra (cough bullshit cough) but isn’t this effort by the Democrats to keep huge chunks of this report an example of something the mafia would do?

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