In his December 6 Washington Times op-ed, Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley claimed that the Clinton administration launched a “phony investigation” into whether former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), for whom Blankley served as press secretary, had violated tax law. Blankley characterized the Internal Revenue Service investigation as an implementation of what he called the Clintons' “policy of personal destruction.” In fact, the House ethics committee unanimously voted to launch its own investigation into the tax violations several months before the IRS investigation was reported.

Blankley brought up the Gingrich investigation as an apparent warning to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) about how, he said, former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) deal with their political opponents. Blankley wrote:

If Hillary Milhous Clinton begins to believe that Barack Obama is a threat to her inheritance of the White House, it will not be long before his own mother will not recognize the public image that Hillary's operatives will have drawn of him. He could ask Paula Jones (and all the other innocent women “her husband” attempted to seduce and abandon) or Ken Starr (one of the nation's most admired jurists before he was assigned to investigate “her husband”).

Or consider my old boss Newt Gingrich -- Bill Clinton's primary political opponent in the 1990s. Mr. Clinton's IRS very publicly opened an investigation of Newt for tax fraud. They kept it open for years, and then, a few weeks after he retired, the IRS quietly announced the investigation was complete and he was innocent. But not before Democrats spent years using that phony investigation as a basis for calling Newt a tax cheat. That's the way the Clintons play the game. They call it the policy of personal destruction. For Mr. Obama's sake, I hope he is ready for the game he is so anxious to get into.

In fact, the House ethics committee investigation appears to have preceded the IRS investigation by several months. The December 7, 1995, broadcast of the Public Broadcasting Service's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer quoted Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-CT), then-chairwoman of the House ethics committee, saying that the committee “unanimously voted a resolution of preliminary inquiry and will hire a special counsel in regard to allegations of improper conduct by Rep. Gingrich in connection with a college course and certain foundation.” The New York Times reported on December 23, 1995, that the ethics committee had selected former Justice Department prosecutor James Cole to “investigate accusations that a course Mr. Gingrich taught at two colleges in Georgia was a political effort intended to circumvent tax laws.” The Washington Post also reported on December 23, 1995, that there was a “question of whether Gingrich violated tax laws by using tax-deductible contributions to finance” the college course.

Though it is unclear from news reports when the IRS inquiry actually began, it was first reported nine months after the ethics committee investigation was launched. The Associated Press reported on September 3, 1996:

The Internal Revenue Service is conducting an audit of the college course House Speaker Newt Gingrich taught for two years, officials at two Georgia colleges confirmed Tuesday.

The IRS division that audits tax-exempt organizations has contacted the Kennesaw State University Foundation at Kennesaw State University and Reinhardt College.

[...]

The audit is separate from a House ethics committee investigation of Gingrich's course, but there's a common thread: Whether the course, which was financed by tax-deductible donations, met IRS rules for tax-exempt activities.

James M. Cole, an outside counsel hired by the ethics committee, last month submitted a still-secret preliminary report on his investigation of Gingrich's course.

The AP also reported on September 5, 1996, that an IRS spokesman “said the agency was prohibited by federal privacy law from commenting on tax audits” -- belying Blankley's claim that the Clinton administration “very publicly opened” the investigation.

On January 17, 1997, the House ethics committee panel voted 7-1, as the Times reported on January 18, 1997, “to recommend that the House impose the $300,000 penalty and formally reprimand” Gingrich. The Times excerpted portions of the committee report:

Had Mr. Gingrich followed his own tax lawyer's advice, the report says, he “would not have had his projects subsidized by taxpayer funds and would not have created this controversy that has caused significant disruption to the House.”

His use of tax-exempt organizations for political purposes and his submission of misleading materials to the committee, the report says, “was intentional or it was reckless,” and adds, “Neither choice reflects creditably on the House.”

The report is replete with references to Mr. Gingrich's providing the committee with “inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable” material that portrayed his course as having “no partisan, political aspects to it, that his motivation for teaching the course was not political and that Gopac neither was involved in nor received any benefit from any aspect of the course.”

According to the Times, “investigators urged the full ethics committee to send the evidence it had collected to the Internal Revenue Service to assist its investigations involving Kennesaw State University and Reinhardt College, where Mr. Gingrich's college course was taught.” On January 21, 1997, the Republican-led House voted 395-28 to reprimand and fine Gingrich. According to the January 22, 1997, Washington Post: “Exactly one month before yesterday's vote, Gingrich admitted that he brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information.”

The IRS released its findings in early 1999. CNN reported on February 3, 1999, that the IRS “cleared former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of an alleged tax law violation in connection with a controversial college course he taught.” However, the IRS report also noted that the House ethics committee refused to provide all the evidence requested by the IRS, apparently despite the investigators' reported request. According to the February 27, 1999, Los Angeles Times:

On its face, the IRS finding seems unequivocal. The 74-page document systematically examines the facts in the complex case and determines that the foundation “did not serve the private interests of” Gingrich or the GOP and did not play a role in any campaign.

However, in an unusual caveat, the IRS said that its conclusions were based “upon the facts available to us” and the agency did not have access to transcripts of witnesses' statements before the House Ethics Committee, which the panel refused to provide.

“It is possible that if the Ethics Committee had rendered full cooperation with our examination, the transcripts might have affected our conclusion,” the IRS memorandum said.

It still is not clear why the ethics panel did not provide the IRS with the transcripts.

There also have been debates over whether IRS supervisors really examined the evidence fully or simply took a bow in hopes of heading off a clash with a powerful figure.