Examining Bachmann's Years as an IRS Lawyer: Tax attorney or tax collector? A closer look at the tea-party candidate's professional history
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As she flexes her credentials as a Republican presidential candidate in a field of former governors and corporate executives, Bachmann is more likely to describe herself as a "former federal tax litigation attorney'' -- as she did in her first nationally televised debate -- than as a three-term member of Congress. But she rarely, if ever, mentions the one and only employer of her legal services: the U.S. Department of Treasury. ...
Brandon said he didn't think tea party activists would be troubled by Bachmann's work for the IRS. The tax code itself is the problem, he said. But some of her rivals might be tempted to make her former job an issue. ...
Bachmann appears to have faced public criticism of her tax collection work for the IRS only once before, when she was running for Congress in 2006. "Will the real Michele Bachmann please stand up?'' demanded campaign literature distributed by a Republican rival, Jim Knoblach, who accused her of misleading voters about her legal experience. An Associated Press report at the time cited Bachmann's (now-defunct) web site,
http://www.keepitpositive06.com, where she said she was proud of her work for the Treasury Department.
Bachmann's official biography says she worked on "hundreds of civil and criminal cases'' before she stopped working after her fourth child was born. She received her law degree from the O.W. Coburn School of Law, created in 1979 by televangelist Oral Roberts and bankrolled by the father of conservative fiscal hawk Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).
The school rejected students or faculty who did not subscribe to Christian tenets, and the American Bar Association revoked its accreditation in 1981. The school gained it back but closed in 1986.
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