CNN on the Liberty Dollar Raid

I received this earlier concerning the same type of thing back in the 80's.
with the NCBA:

FYI, here's a little more detail on the NCBA issues.

At gunpoint, the IRS raided six of our offices around the country on Good Friday, April 5, 1985. They provided no search warrant in response to our demands for one, but seized everything, as the good Judge John Kane would later put it, "...that was not nailed to the floor."

We filed a complaint with the US Dist Court on Monday, and went before Judge Kane on Thursday. They produced a warrant for the court after the fact(!), but could supply no probable cause for their actions, so Judge Kane ruled their actions illegal, pinned their ears back with a little rhetoric about our founding fathers and the constitution and the rule of law, and ordered them to immediately return everything taken. The gummint appealed, but the Tenth Circuit upheld Judge Kane's order, in full (When they said, "In full," it meant that they even endorsed his rhetoric!). The IRS delayed returning anything until the last minute, just days before their time expired to file a final appeal, this time with the Supremes. They apparently decided at the last minute that an appeal to the Supremes that could possibly result in solidifying our position and totally destroying theirs was not a good risk. So, in December, they returned everything--everything except the monies (silver, gold, and frns), of course.

They filed a jeopardy assessment of $20million per IRC Section 6700 as their reason to hold onto the silver, gold and frns, alleging that we were promoting an illegal tax shelter of some sort. We complained to Judge Kane that they were in contempt of his order to return, but he told us that the jeopardy assessment was a different issue and that we'd have to contest it and defeat it in a separate action, so we filed a court challenge to the 6700 penalty. After dodging our process servers and filing all kinds of goofy responses to our pre-trial motions over the next 8 years, we were finally within 2 weeks of going to trial and the gummint still hadn't produced anything to support their allegation of us being an abusive tax shelter. Apparently deciding at the last minute that they wouldn't be able to support their assessment in court, they then filed a motion to dismiss their assessment. For a brief moment, we thought we'd won and were going to get everyone's money back.

However, on the heels of their jeopardy assessment dismissal, they filed a new penalty against us, which we answered with a Motion to Dismiss. This time they accused us of being more than an association of like-minded citizens; they now viewed us as a partnership whose thousands of partners had failed to file partnership returns on their "partnership profits" and they estimated that all of the $250/partner failure-to-file-partnership penalties (IRS Sec 6698) added up to around $4.2million--the amount of the new penalty assessed (that would be 16,800 members/partners--their estimate). Since the gold, silver and frns taken only amounted to $2million, they figured we still had to come up with $2.4million to pay the 6698 penalty.

As you know, the taxpayer must prove that an IRS assessment is in error--the agency's calculations are given a "presumption of correctness." After another expensive two years of pre-trial motions and motions hearings, we and the IRS wound up before US District Court Judge Richard Matsch, who was rumored to be the next to become Chief District Court Judge (he was promoted to that position shortly after our case). At trial, we questioned the IRS CPA whose name was on the 14-pages of "assessment justification" as the author (if you'd like to see a copy of this excellent example of creative writing I think I could still find it for you). The 14 pages of rather convoluted reasoning sought to explain that our partnership profits were what they figured we had saved on our individual taxes by sharing our studies and knowledge of tax law with each other--no crime in minimizing your taxes, but presumably a partnership activity that produced "saved taxes income" and therefore required the filing of returns by all partners! He admitted that he personally did not believe we were a partnership nor did he believe that we were subject to the penalty as assessed, but said that he was forced by his supervisor, the local IRS Counsel, to agree to and sign the assessment and the 14-page supporting document. So we tried to get the IRS Counsel to take the stand to explain the assessment, but the judge protected him, saying we could not question counsel because that would violate attorney-client privilege! Slick.

Our only other recourse to defeat the assessment was to submit an affidavit listing all members/supporters by name and address (violating their supposedly 1st amendment guaranteed right to assemble and petition government for redress of grievances, and inviting harassment by the Gestapo) stating that they had not received any such "saved taxes profits", and of course that would open the door for the gummint to subpoena each one to testify under oath to the truth of the affidavit, their general filing status, etc. Besides being tapped out for continued litigation funds, the members were not about to agree to going public and risk having the remaining gold/silver in their possession being seized too--so we were done. Obviously, the gummint had thought out this process of attack a little more thoroughly than the earlier spurious 6700 penalty, and cleverly figured it was going to be the way they finally were going to get us to publish a membership list (or so they hoped), after being told twice before by the courts that they were not entitled to one.

So, 10 years and tens of thousands of additional litigation dollars later, we had to toss in the towel. Along the way, the Congress changed the Code to cover our warehouse exchange activity (IRS pressure, perhaps?): previously, only banks and other commercial financial institutions were required to submit Currency Transaction Requests, or CTRs when they handled cash in amounts equal to or exceeding $10,000--new verbiage changed that to specifically include associations, too. When we informed the members of this new law, those who still had accounts with us closed them out rather than risk having their names and social security numbers put on CTRs and submitted so that the Treasury agents could once again, like in 1933, be able to come knocking on their door demanding that they surrender their gold.

Admittedly, all of this action was couched in terms of tax-related issues and allegations, but that was subterfuge--the IRS never really proved any of them, because there really were none. So, what was the real reason behind the raid and the prolonged, costly court battles? To protect the Federal Reserve's monopoly on the nation's money system, of course. It's no coincidence that the IRS and the Federal Reserve were both legislated into existence in 1913 as you know; the bankers needed an enforcement arm to keep competition out ("Competition is a sin," according to John D. Rockefeller), and armed IRS agents were the answer. The word of our activities was spreading; our Abolish the IRS resolution in the US House had 48 co-sponsoring Representative signatures; and we had grown to the point where we had 49 warehouse exchanges across the nation handling over a million dollars in account activity every few weeks--so, even though that's only peanuts compared to the billions in the Federal Reserve's pipeline, we were exhibiting steady growth and stability and had to be shut down.

I believe the Liberty Dollar group has been viewed as a similar competitive threat. Whether they were doing that kind of volume yet or not, the bankers decided to nip them in the bud before they became as big a headache as NCBA. I'm sure sorry to see it happen, but I told Bernard back in 1989 that I was sure it would, whether he had letters from the Treasury to show to any IRS agents or not (which reminds me of Lowell Anderson's funny anecdote about the farmer, the bull and the IRS agent....) And he's not going to have any easier time of it in the courts; to the contrary, I'm sure his fight there will be tougher than ours was because I'm convinced that there isn't an unintimidatable or uncorrupted judge left on the federal bench.

Best regards,

John Voss"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles

This was an AP story - they picked the "illegal" terminology.

Maybe Ron Paul does have a shot at winning...

I heard it called the Clinton News Network and someone asked what kind of dirt they had on the studio heads that they would lather Hillary's ass in honey and roll over for her like that.

Canada Loves Ron Paul

Freedom is not FREE!!

Each and every one of you should feel proud.

All of this is to scare people. It is a DIRECT attack against RP. There would be no other logical conclusion for this move. I am sure the Federales(uh FBI) and elitist in this country are that worried. Imagine the number of new registrations in the Republican party. They know and they are frightened.

Each time something like this happens is worth at least 10,000 votes and they are to ignorant to understand. The gov. does not understand the amount of discontent or anger.

The presumption of guilt shown in this article is disgusting...

Especially since the FBI also seized/confiscated US minted silver and stated that it was illegal currency as well. This is a level of panic that we have never witnessed. Who would have thought that standing up for the Constitution and supporting a man who has vowed to uphold it, would put so many in such a state of fear?

The negative headline is typical. I'm sick of the media vendetta against the rEVOLution.