-By Warner Todd Huston
Only a month ago, Vogue editor Anna Wintour was being floated as an ideal candidate to become President Obama’s next ambassador to Britain but now the fashionista is in the news for another reason. A British newspaper has found that her boyfriend, J. Shelby Bryan, owes $1.2 million in back taxes to the IRS.
Despite owing the IRS such a hefty amount–he is also in arrears in Texas–Bryan was a high dollar fundraiser for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. The socialite was also close to President Clinton serving on his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 1996.
Bryan’s past due taxes are nothing new, either. He’s owed the money to the IRS since 2006.
Wintour and Bryan have been together since 1999 after he divorced his last wife leaving him with a hefty bankroll but in late 2000 he lost some $60 million because of bad investments in ICG Communications.
It wasn’t just his own money that Bryan lost, either. As the CEO of the company he also had a hand in losing $460 million of investor’s money and that is on top of the $2 billion in debt with which he saddled the company.
Under his guidance, in October of 2000ICG stock went from $28 a share to 62 cents.
When questioned by the Daily Telegraph, Bryan blamed “office confusion” and people in his employ that weren’t “doing their jobs” for his failure to pay his tax bills.
Bryan’s tax debt could impact Wintour’s confirmation as Obama’s next ambassador to Britain should the President make that nomination. In past Senate hearings, candidates often found their chances for confirmation dashed by revelations of such major financial irregularities.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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