The day she announced her candidacy the Internal Revenue Service placed an $11,744 tax lien on a Wilmington home O'Donnell had sold in 2008.
"On March 9, 2010, around 10 a.m., I announced my plans to run for the Senate representing Delaware," O'Donnell said in her Post column. "Later that same day, my office received a call from a reporter asking about my taxes.
"It’s since come out, after a halting and unenthusiastic investigation, that a Delaware Department of Revenue employee named David Smith accessed my records that day at approximately 2 p.m. — out of curiosity, he says.
"That these records ended up in the hands of the press is just a coincidence, the IRS claims," O'Donnell said.
"The tax records given to the reporters weren’t even accurate,"she continued. "I had never fallen behind on my taxes, and a supposed tax lien was on a house I no longer owned.
"The lien was highly publicized and used as political ammunition by my political opponents. The IRS later withdrew the lien and blamed it on a computer glitch but, at that point, the damage — and the invasion of my privacy — was done," O'Donnell said. |
