IRS Denies Charitable Deduction to Attorney Who Donated Timothy McVeigh Files to University

Leslie Steven Jones was a court appointed attorney for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. As part of his representation of McVeigh, Jones acquired 171 boxes of documents, computer discs, audio and video cassettes and photographs. The federal government provided similar materials to various state and federal agencies. Jones donated the documents to the University of Texas at Austin.

Although the documents were not the originals and existed elsewhere, Jones’ appraiser, John R. Payne, determined the gift value to be $294,877; Payne used gifts of original documents as comparables in establishing this amount. However, the IRS denied Jones a charitable deduction stating that Jones did not own the documents. The court explained that because the documents were not attorney work product, they belonged to the client and not the attorney.

According to the Editor’s note following this article, the court was uncomfortable with the appraisal and with the consequences of attorneys gifting their client files to public institutions for personal gain.

See No Charitable Deduction for Attorney Gift of Timothy McVeigh Files, Washington Hotline, mcintire.giftlegacy.com, Nov. 2007, Week 1.

Special thanks to Russell R. Winer, Attorney at Law, for bringing this article to my attention.