Abuse of Power Part 1: FDR

[David] Burnham [formerly a New York Times investigative reporter] writes that “confidential government documents prove . . . that . . . Roosevelt [FDR] and the officials around him did not hesitate to mobilize the IRS in efforts to destroy the careers of individuals they had decided were enemies. The records even show that on one occasion an inquiry from Eleanor Roosevelt prompted Treasury Secretary [Henry] Morgenthau to order a tax investigation of a conservative newspaper publisher who had become one of the Roosevelt administration’s leading critics.”

Roosevelt was particularly hostile toward Andrew Mellon, a former Republican Treasury secretary and successful businessman. “Probably the single most brazen display of the Roosevelt administration’s willingness to use the tax agency for political purposes,” declares Burnham, “was its attack on Andrew Mellon, the millionaire capitalist who served as the Republican secretary of the treasury from 1921 to 1932. . . . Elmer L. Irey, the first director of what is now called the Criminal Investigation Division, acknowledged that Treasury Secretary . . . Morgenthau ordered him to develop serious tax charges against Mellon even though he knew that the just-retired treasury secretary was innocent. It seems unlikely that Morgenthau would have mounted such a campaign without the approval of FDR.”

Mellon was harassed for years, with false charge after false charge filed against him. In the end, “all criminal and civil fraud penalties the Roosevelt administration had brought against him” were dismissed.

Burnham explains that Roosevelt “was a driven man who did not hesitate to adopt questionable tactics to maintain his power.” “The Mellon case was hardly the only occasion on which the Roosevelt administration mobilized the tax agency for political purposes. From his very first moments as the Democratic presidential candidate in 1931, for example, Roosevelt had understood that Huey Long . . . represented a genuine political threat.” “The administration’s deep concern about Long was translated into action exactly three days after Morgenthau became Roosevelt’s treasury secretary . . . , when Morgenthau ordered . . . Irey, the man he had instructed to go after Mellon, to launch a second campaign against Long.”

Source: Unfreedom of the Press (2019) by Mark R. Levin.