Word that the Breitbart News Network is being audited by the IRS doesn’t seem to have gotten a lot of lamestream media attention, but happily Crooks & Liars gave Matt Osborne of Breitbart Unmasked a wider platform to explain the charges:
Brietbart News, LLC announced Tuesday that they are being audited by the IRS. This is absolutely not a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to their business practices, but of course the website proclaims that the whole thing is a sinister plot by the Obama administration to shut them up…
It’s worth noting that the IRS is reviewing the site’s finances for 2012, which is the single most interesting period of time they could investigate, as it’s the year Breitbart died in the middle of an important transition.
A proud C student, Breitbart made sure he was the smartest person in the room by hiring low-rent people who would eat from his hand. He was also an authoritarian whose hand guided everything. This became readily apparent shortly after he died in 2012, when the ‘Big’ sites were all suddenly changed to Breitbart.com without redirecting the old URLs, cutting off search engine and social media traffic to the old content.
This move had been poorly-planned before his death, and was poorly-executed afterwards. Not only was it a preview of mismanagement to come, my sources suggest the switch was made to avoid tax liabilities related to the way Andrew had avoided his contractual liabilities after 2006.
The Next Gen lawsuit is also interesting because it names Andrew’s wife as a co-defendant. He died intestate, having never bothered to give her any kind of legal cover, so she remains the responsible party to answer legal action against his estate. And his fortune might have been considerable in 2012: Andrew reportedly collected almost $10 million in venture capital funding from two big donors a few months before his death, but it’s not clear what happened to that money, and the organization has done everything possible to keep anyone from finding out…
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Much, much more at the link. Apart from enjoying the schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Monday Evening Open Thread: Mess with the Bull…Post + Comments (48)