Why do some big cases get investigated, and others don't? What makes the difference? Find out in my new column over at Crime Story.
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Last 5 posts by Ken White
- Now Posting At Substack - August 27th, 2020
- The Fourth of July [rerun] - July 4th, 2020
- All The President's Lawyers: No Bill Thrill? - September 19th, 2019
- Over At Crime Story, A Post About the College Bribery Scandal - September 13th, 2019
- All The President's Lawyers: - September 11th, 2019
Thanks for your excellent column explaining these cases. From the text:
In an era where federal laws, some downright inane and vague, have proliferated to the point that no citizen can expect to get through a day without committing three felonies, maybe limited prosecution resources aren't an entirely bad thing.
It is certainly good to see the feds prosecute good old fashioned bribery. Nailing some of the rich and famous is icing on the cake.
The downside is that their children have been tainted by their parents' criminal stupidity. Their children as well as the colleges are the victims here.
I think, En Passant, that the colleges are unindicted co-conspirators.
@En Passant
This is, at best, a terrible solution to a systemic problem. At worst, it's an opaque system rife with the potential for abuse. In this case, I think most people would probably agree that it's good that the lucky one-out-of-ten-thousand sent a message that no amount of wealth or celebrity puts you above the law. But imagine if the people making the prosecutions had a different agenda? When pretty much "everyone" is committing three federal felonies a day and nobody expects even a tiny fraction of them to ever be charged, then selective prosecution can effectively become a tool of persecution.
Remember the allegations a few years back that the IRS under Obama selectively targeted conservative groups? Was there any merit to those claims? I have no clue, and I'm probably a bit more knowledgeable about federal practice than the average person. It's perfectly plausible to me that people who self identify as more libertarian/conservative/anti-federal-overreach might be disproportionately aggressive in fudging their returns to minimize federal tax liability. It's also perfectly plausible to me that a president would push a federal agency to go after his political opponents. Proving discriminatory intent is a pretty huge bar, and I doubt anyone involved ever faced any meaningful consequences one way or another, so there really isn't any deterrent if, for example, the DoJ decided to make a tacit push charging prominent Jews.
@Robert Lipton
Were we reading the same article? While I don't doubt that somewhere out there, people who are really proxies for the university (i.e., admissions officers or administrators with the power to override admissions officers) have taken bribes, in the present case it seems pretty obvious that the universities were victims of honest services fraud. In other words, the universities weren't directly enriched, but actually got screwed over because someone they expected to share their honest, unbiased expert opinions on a matter lied in order to enrich themselves.
IForgetMyName says September 14, 2019 at 11:02 am:
I certainly don't think, and didn't say, that it is a solution. It is simply the present state of affairs. It is not entirely a bad thing, because nothing at all to slow down prosecution under dodgy law is a very low bar.
>Remember the allegations a few years back that the IRS under Obama selectively targeted conservative groups? Was there any merit to those claims?
True the Vote won $2 million dollars over this. You can find the ruling, case history and a summary of the evidence on that subject here:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/06/08/true-the-vote-wins-historic-2-million-settlement-against-irs/
Excerpt:
Political spying 1.0 was the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Nah, there was never any real merit. Turns out, according to two IG reports, that the IRS was overzealous in their scrutiny of 501(c)(4) organizations, but it was not especially partisan to either direction, was certainly not at the orders of the Obama administration, and apparently predated that administration by several years anyway.
https://www.newsweek.com/remember-irs-scandal-it-was-fake-news-all-along-681674
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
@Mike: The IRS lost $2 million in court. Is that what "overzealous" means to you? It strikes me as an odd turn of the phrase. It's weird also to juxtapose saying that there was "overzealous" behavior with declaring it "fake news." One statement admits that something is there, the other statement denies it. Claiming both things at once seems to require a bit of chutzpah.
I note that your the Newsweek article was written long before the judgement I pointed out and hasn't been updated recently that I can see. It's from 2017 (10/10/17 at 12:23 PM EDT) though perhaps they've written other stories since then?
When we get to the heart of it, Newsweek's Neil H. Buchanan claims: "As tax professor Philip Hackney points out, the non-scandal was always a two-part story: (1) the IRS targeted right-wing groups for extra scrutiny, and (2) the Obama Administration had ordered them to do so."
So which part is the lie? Well, not the first part, Neil admits:
"What we learned in 2013 is that the unit within the IRS that reviews 501(c)(4) applications had been using the names of organizations as an initial filter to determine who was likely to be engaged in impermissibly pervasive political activity."
To be more precise, he agrees that the actions occurred, but believes there is some other motive for the actions. Too bad he does not appear to be aware of the responses FOIA requests that show more about what they were trying to get. E.G. they requested donor names why, again?
https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/JW1559-003827.pdf
Neil more directly disputes the second part, though:
"We never had any proof that the second part was true."
Thing is, there are tons of docs obtained from FOIA, which the article doesn't even mention:
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-irs-documents-show-lerner-need-conservative-group-donor-lists-emails-mention-secret-research-project-top-irs-official/
Neil H. Buchanan simply doesn't bother to address any of those docs. The article references a TIGTA report, but doesn't appear to link to it, nor does it seem to do anything but offer conclusions allegedly based on said report without seeming to do so much as quote material parts thereof.
Heck, the "Dorf on Law" blog Newsweek links to writes this:
"No one has ever claimed that the IRS employees did nothing wrong. That was all covered in the TIGTA report, and the IRS's leadership had already ended the practice before the report was issued."
This is pretty much the opposite of what Newsweek itself claims! Given their willingness to cite sources that directly contradict their own article and apparent ignorance of the docs revealed by FOIA, it's hard to take their assertions that they've seen no evidence as anything but a statement of their own ignorance.
Moreover, that bizarre excuse from Dorf strikes me as being like a man who argues that he should go free because he stopped beating his wife before the cops showed up. Did no one notice that it's also an admission of guilt?
Is this part of that one-sided dishonesty Neil wrote about?
"I recently wrote about "one-sided dishonesty" in American politics. My claim was that Democrats are occasionally dishonest in the old-fashioned political sense, shading the truth and sometimes getting caught, whereas Republicans have applied the principles of mass production to the propagation of lies."
A statement like this makes it hard to see the article as some unbiased review of the facts, and this also impeaches any pretense of impartiality for Neil's own judgement of the motives regarding part one.
Is this what "fake news" means now? That we have no evidence except for the part where they admitted to the practice and paid millions of dollars in settlements?
Because it's kind of a weird definition and, like a certain Alice, I'm going to have to complain if these words can really mean all of these things at the same time.
Great article, Ken. You have an amazing ability to approach stories I'm sick of hearing about elsewhere with a unique angle that frames them in a meaningful way. I must say, though, that much of the work you do outside the blog lately seems to have replaced the indignant tone of the blog with a much more somber prose. While the subject matter is very much the same, it seems like anger has been replaced by sadness. Maybe it's just me and my own reaction to your pieces.
It's unfortunate that the comments immediately devolved into ridiculous conspiracy theories. Some people can take any story and relate it back to strange partisan fictions.
@Vincent
Don't you think it's a bit odd to use the words "conspiracy theory" for something that has led to millions of dollars in judgements and admissions of wrongdoing?
It's a pity my prior reply got eaten by a filter, probably for using too many links to sources like the original FOIA docs on this that give context widely ignored.
Newsweek–a publication which just today just came out with the shocking revelation that Trump might be a "pancake thief" [1]–claimed two years ago both that there's "no evidence" of IRS targeting and that yes, the targeting happened, but they're sure their motives are clean as can be quoted from the linked article above. This while ignoring all of the FOIA'd docs on the subject and gesticulating wildly at a report they failed to even link to.
Of course it hasn't been updated to reflect the admissions of guilt and settlements since then, but who expects that? They also cite Dorf's blog which gives the ridiculous excuse that it was somehow okay that they did it because they already stopped before anyone complained. I'm sure that lots of defendants would love that one. How does that work in court?
"Your Honor, you can't put me in jail! I was already done committing the crimes when I was caught!"
[1] I just read an article there claiming: "[Trump] was here one morning I was busy making pancakes and he had forgotten my husband had died," she said. "He put a few pancakes in [his] pocket and never said 'cheerio' or anything."
@An
Your incoherent rambling is irrelevant to the posted article and doesn't merit a serious response. I'm sure you will be able to find people to engage in such a discussion at one of those chan sites or reddit or something.
@Vincent:
Thank you for your response. I greatly appreciate your choice of strategy, because it requires no further argument while clearly illustrating the facts-don't-matter basis of your opposition.
You have no idea how incredibly helpful this is. Thank you for that and have a wonderful day!
Here's a direct link: https://crimestory.com/2019/09/13/podcast-ken-white-reads-felicity-huffmans-smarter-choices/