Terry Lemons spent more than 26 years at the IRS, 11 of them leading communications for the agency. Before that he covered the 1992 presidential campaign, Congress, and the White House as a newspaper reporter. Today he handles public relations at Frost Law, and he just wrote a book about the 1926 St. Louis Cardinals.
He joined the IRS in 1998, right after the Roth hearings had put the agency through the wringer, and he stayed through six commissioners from Charles Rossotti to Danny Werfel. Around 2002 he built the Dirty Dozen, the IRS list of tax scams that still runs every year. As he tells it: "I branded it. . . . Went back to that old movie called The Dirty Dozen, and came up with 12 tax scams."
We talk about why he left reporting to go inside government, how he tried to humanize an agency people love to hate, and why he thinks so many taxpayers get pulled into scams. "That tax refund for a lot of people is the biggest single financial transaction they make all year," he says, and that is exactly what the scammers count on.
Then we get to baseball. His new book is "The Year St. Louis Became a Baseball Town: The Cardinals, Babe Ruth, and the 1926 World Series. He walks through the story behind Grover Cleveland Alexander, Branch Rickey inventing the minor league system, and a game seven that ended with Babe Ruth caught stealing second base.
Terry's book: The Year St. Louis Became a Baseball Town (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Midwest local bookstores)
Show notes: citedauthorities.com/episodes/terry-lemons
0:00 Cold open
0:13 Introduction
1:07 Covering the 1992 Clinton campaign
3:46 Leaving journalism for the IRS in 1998
6:38 Making the news instead of reporting it
7:42 Creating the Dirty Dozen
9:50 Tax scams, refunds, and TikTok
11:49 What drew him to journalism
13:36 Huntley, Brinkley, and wartime Washington
14:41 Movie knowledge and the Oscars swag bags
15:28 Humanizing the IRS
17:22 Six commissioners, one playbook
20:06 The gasoline in the tank of the government
20:50 The 1926 Cardinals book
23:34 Hornsby, Alexander, Rickey, and Ruth
25:18 1926 vs. the 2025 World Series
28:16 What readers will take away
29:26 Closing
Cited Authorities is a legal interview podcast hosted by Alexander Powell, tax attorney in Washington, DC. New episodes every other Wednesday.
All episodes and show notes: https://citedauthorities.com
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