Norquist Doings Not Criminal? Not So Fast

It would appear that if there’s a will, there’s a way to prosecute Grover Norquist.

Yesterday, I noted former federal prosecutor Melanie Sloan’s opinion that the Justice Department would not be pursuing Norquist on criminal charges for using his nonprofit, Americans for Tax Reform, as a money-washer and lobbying front. He’s in real trouble with the IRS, she said, but it’s not clear he committed a crime.

We at TPMm have some current and former federal prosecutors in our readership, who wrote in to disagree with Sloan’s analysis.

One, who currently works in the Justice Department, wrote in to say that any material false statement by Norquist in his filing documents with the IRS would be a felony.

And here’s another reader, a former federal prosecutor:

If Norquist was running ATR as you describe (or as the Senate report describes), it’s virtually inconceivable that he was doing so completely on his own. But if he had even a tacit agreement with at least one other person to make ATR appear eligible for 501(c)(3) status when in fact it was not, then he and that other person conspired to impede the lawful functions of the Internal Revenue Service, which is known to federal prosecutors (like myself, once) as a “Klein conspiracy.” It gets you up to five years in prison under section 371 of Title 18 of the United States Code.