Another Clinton Scandal Looms

If this leak is any indication, the Clintonoids have failed to suppress some pretty damaging aspects of the Cisneros investigation:

Spurred by Ms. Medlar's report of monthly gifts from Mr. Cisneros that ran into the tens of thousands of dollars annually, a regional IRS office in San Antonio, Texas, began looking into possible tax violations by the Cabinet official. When the office of the independent counsel decided for similar reasons to look into possible tax violations, it asked the attorney general at the time, Janet Reno, for expanded jurisdiction and access to the findings of the ongoing IRS investigation.

According to people familiar with the report, an alleged effort that followed aimed at shutting down the regional IRS investigation and at blocking the independent counsel from accessing its findings constitutes the bulk of Mr. Barrett's report. They say it details an effort by Mr. Finkelstein to have the regional IRS investigation relocated to Washington, D.C., where it was eventually closed, and a simultaneous effort by Mr. Radek to ensure that the attorney general did not approve an expansion of the independent counsel's investigation.

The report is said to lay blame for the length and cost of the inquiry on Messrs. Radek and Finkelstein and to hint that the two men were taking di rection from the White House. The two former Clinton administration officials are said to deny emphatically the charges in an appendix to the report.

A key element of the independent counsel's case, persons familiar with the report say, is a memorandum written in 1997 by a former chief of the criminal investigation division for the IRS's South Texas District, John Filan, to the chief inspector of the IRS in Washington. In the memo, Mr. Filan accuses Mr. Finkelstein of ordering the unprecedented removal of a regional investigation to Washington. The memo also claims that Finkelstein directed his subordinates to kill the case and that he worked in tandem with senior officials at the Department of Justice to make sure the case was not referred to Mr. Barrett for potential prosecution.

The removal of a regional IRS investigation to Washington is "extremely unusual," according to a former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Andrew McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy worked briefly for the independent counsel.

"In my 20-year experience I am unfamiliar with any similar behavior," Mr. McCarthy said. "The reason for field offices is to work the cases, not have Washington work the cases."

Expect the LWM to stay away from this story in droves until their masters in the DNC get the talking points circulated tying this into the Republican "culture of corruption."