Could tax questions scuttle U.S. Supreme Court nomination for Granholm?

Our friends (and sometimes antagonists) at Right Michigan point to information on past tax problems that could very well prevent President Obama from nominating Gov. Jennifer Granholm to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In March 2008, the Internal Revenue Service filed a $20,000 tax lien on the Granholm Cherry Inaugural Committee for failing to pay taxes dating back to 2003.

The U.S. Department of Treasury has placed a federal tax lien on the committee to the tune of $19,535 in unpaid taxes that date back to 2003.

That would have been Granholm’s 2002 inaugural committee. Some of the events happened in early 2003.

WZZM-13 in Grand Rapids noted that this followed an earlier tax problem for Granholm in 2006:

Late Thursday, the Michigan Republican Party issued a statement skewering Granholm for “tax evasion,” and likening the IRS lien to an $800 lien placed against the Wayne County home of Granholm and her husband in 2006 for failing to file unemployment insurance reports on their nanny.

It’s quite likely that such problems were merely the result of oversights on the part of an accountant. After all, the last thing any elected official would want is to get caught trying to engage in tax evasion. But regardless, after several other appointments in his administration have been scuttled due to tax issues, the mere appearance of impropriety here, the faintest whiff of a tax problem, may well be enough to cross Granholm off the short list for a Supreme Court nomination — and even for a lower court nomination later in his administration.

A major part of the process of picking a nominee for such a high position is vetting such issues. Teams of attorneys and accountants are poring over every tiny little detail of the lives of every potential nominee looking for precisely this kind of red flag in order to save the president from possible embarrassment. And when trying to pick a single person from a list of extraordinarily accomplished people, one little problem like this can be all it takes to be pushed to the side.