The Barrett Report
According to R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. and Brian McGuire, years of legal and political wrangling have paid off because it appears that the Barrett Report will be published. Here’s what they say:
A long-awaited report detailing an independent counsel investigation of a former secretary of housing and urban development, Henry Cisneros, outlines a coordinated effort by Clinton administration officials to first block and then limit the probe as a way of taking pressure off an administration that was already beset by scandals.
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During his FBI background check, Mr. Cisneros lied about adulterous relations, his payments to a mistress, the extent of his income, and his tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Cisneros, a former San Antonio mayor, eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of lying to the FBI. He paid a $10,000 fine and was pardoned by President Clinton on Mr. Clinton’s final day in office.
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People familiar with the report say Mr. Barrett’s narrative focuses on the actions of a former chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice, Lee Radek, and a former assistant chief counsel for criminal tax matters at the IRS, Barry Finkelstein.
In other words, the Clintons hired sleazy people who knew how to keep them just barely out of the loop when it came to hiding questionable actions.
At issue in the second half of Mr. Barrett’s investigation were the implications of a 1994 appearance that Mr. Cisneros’s mistress, Linda Medlar, made on the program “Inside Edition.” There she detailed the amount of money she had received over the years from Mr. Cisneros, triggering the call for an independent counsel. The interview raised questions about whether Mr. Cisneros had concealed substantial amounts of income from the IRS over a period of several years.
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, TX, 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.
This is gonna get ugly, even if the Clintons can’t be implicated. The truth is that Clinton administration political appointees did some very questionable things. It appears that, at a time when Nancy Pelosi is daily repeating her line about the Republican “culture of corruption”, that the Democrats had their own “culture of corruption” enterprise going.
Ms. Pelosi would be wise to tread lightly with her “culture of corruption” campaign. Unfortunately for Democrats, Ms. Pelosi isn’t wise.
UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin: “The Barrett Report, Finally”
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing