Texas Nonprofit Is Cleared After GOP-Prompted Audit
Group Says Probe Was ‘Political Retaliation’ by DeLay Allies
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Internal Revenue Service recently audited the books of a Texas nonprofit group that was critical of campaign spending by former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) 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-Tex.), was in turn responding to a complaint about the group, Texans for Public Justice, from Barnaby W. Zall, a Washington lawyer close to DeLay and his fundraising apparatus, according to IRS documents. …

“This audit was political retaliation by Tom DeLay’s cronies to intimidate us for blowing the whistle on DeLay’s abuses,” [the group’s director and founder, Craig L.] McDonald said. “Enlisting the IRS to intimidate critics is a dirty trick reminiscent of Richard Nixon. . . . It is not a crime to report a crime, as we did with DeLay.”

No wonder New Mexican Republicans assume a recent audit of the state GOP was political — they assume everyone acts as they do. mjh