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Day 8: January 24 – You have the right to remain silent. Use it.
By JJ MacNab | January 24, 2008
Threatening prosecutors is a really bad idea.
Ranting and raving (and admitting to at least one felony count) in writing to a federal prosecutor while threatening the US government is just not cool, especially after you’ve already been indicted and are awaiting your criminal trial.
At least Thursday morning wasn’t boring in the courtroom.
But first…
Government Witness: Michael Anderson, the IRS computer expert, continued his testimony and several more documents were entered in to evidence. One in particular caught my eye, but as of yet, it hasn’t been shown to the jury or the courtroom audience. It is addressed to accountant Wayne Paul, who is the brother of Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul. Wayne Paul has a bit of a history with the tax denier movement since he was the advisor to a Texas business man named Richard Simkanin, who is currently serving a seven year prison sentence for federal tax crimes.
During cross examination, the defense attorneys focused on the addresses listed for Snipes on various documents.
Government Witness: Shauna Henline works as a Senior Technical Advisor at the Frivolous Return Program in Ogden, Utah and is an 18 year veteran at the IRS. There are so many tax denier letters (100,000 per year) and federal income tax returns that make frivolous legal arguments (20-30,000 per year) that the IRS has had to set up a centralized department to do nothing but handle these nonsense filings.
She explained that anyone in the IRS can put questionable tax returns and letters in the “funny box” and that those returns end up in the Utah office once they’ve been verified to contain frivolous arguments. When a new argument pops up, the FRP requests a legal opinion from the IRS lawyers and if they opine that the argument is groundless, it’s added to a growing list.
In 2004, Snipes tried a new approach. He mailed a “Letter of Demand” with two books to the IRS: The High Priests of Treason and a 71-page booklet entitled An Investigation into the Meaning of the Term “United States”. You can read the latter work free online here.
Snipes’ “demand” was that the IRS place these booklets in his permanent record. Ironically, the IRS did keep these pages and they are now evidence in his trial.
Also in 2004, Snipes sent a letter to the Director of International Operations at the IRS claiming:
“One has read the law and understands that all past filing of IRS Form 1040 has been in error.”
Fortunately, calling himself “one” was a temporary theory because it makes his documents even more difficult to read.
In June of 2004, Snipes sent the IRS a “Notice of Material Facts” that was 263 pages long and gave the IRS 30 days to respond of they would default on his claims and he would be tax free! 30 days later he sent them a warning, and gave them an extra 10 days to respond. He repeated this exercise (263 pages at a time) for multiple tax years. The files in front of this witness were several inches thick with paper that Snipes had mailed not just to the IRS, but also to the Treasury Secretary, the Commissioner of the IRS, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
[It’s rumored that the Ocala National Forest is planning a huge protest outside the Federal Courthouse tomorrow in response to the mass murder of their fallen brethren.]
Meanwhile, back to the interesting event of the day…
Snipes was indicted in April 2006, and the indictment was unsealed in October 2006. On December 4, 2006, he sent in a doozie of a letter to the federal prosecutor who was assigned to his criminal case. It’s 29 pages long and contains a 600 page attachment. The package was also sent to the IRS office in Philadelphia, IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, and IRS Chief Counsel Don Korb.
[629 pages. 4 recipients. Trees can multiply, you know.]
The subject of this massive document was “Filing of Amended Return, and Tax Statements” and Snipes made numerous claims throughout:
- he doesn’t have a Social Security Number or Tax ID number
- his name is Wesley Trent Snipes, not WESLEY TRENT SNIPES
- his advisors had file that amended Form 1040 for 1997 in his name and he now issued a “sincere apology about the 1997 filing”. He claimed that when he filed the amended return in 2001, he “didn’t have the legal skills” that he does now and admitted that the “refund attempt may have been illegal.”
- he complained that he was being both ignored and persecuted
- he made it clear that he has not waived his sovereign immunity
- he asserted that he is a “nontaxpayer” not a taxpayer and is therefore free from taxes
- after claiming that he is a nonresident alien and instead of finally filing a normal Form 1040, he submitted a blank amended Form 1040NR-EZ and stamped “NOT LIABLE” on it in huge block letters
- he called the prosecutor and IRS people “public dis-servants” among other insults
- he threatened “significant personal liability” for anyone who tried to collect from him
- “Warning: pursuit of such a high profile target will open the door for your increased collateral risk.”
His anger and rhetoric were as strong as I’ve seen in any tax denier document.
“You and the organization you work for are in need of a SERIOUS education.”
His warning to the prosecutor was particularly interesting. He wrote that if they took him to trial, it would not be in the government’s best interest because he will expose them and the jury and the world will hear his evidence.
The witness, Ms. Henline, testified that there weren’t really any real questions in the 629 page document:
“It didn’t seem to me that there were questions so much as dissertations trying to convince me and the IRS of his positions.”
In my opinion, Snipes made a big mistake when he sent this document after he was indicted. First of all, his core defense in the trial is that his advisors (Kahn and Rosile) led him wrong. But now he knows better and he’s still refusing to file and pay taxes because of some new kooky tax denier theory. Secondly, he states that the Amended Form 1040 for 1997 was done by his advisors and not him (which is clearly shown to be untrue in other witness testimon.) And finally, you don’t threaten to harm people or entities in front of a jury when you’re trying to convince that jury that you’ve been acting in good faith all along.
Government witness: Gus Lesenvich has a cool job and a kickass resume. He’s been a forensic document examiner (aka handwriting analyst) for 40 years, starting at the Army Crime Lab and the Secret Service, and ending up in private practice. He was prepared to testify that Rosile and Snipes had both signed that Amended Tax Return for 1997 and that Snipes had signed several dozen other documents introduced into evidence, but at the last minute both Rosile’s and Snipes’ lawyers stipulated that those were indeed their clients’ signatures. I think the jury was a little disappointed by the stipulations since the witness had produced oversized booklets with handwriting analyses for each defendant which would have provided some welcome relief from tax issues for the poor bored jurors.
Do not tell the trees that all those exhibits were for nothing.
Government Witness: Kathleen Arth is an IRS Revenue Agent with almost 30 years of experience at the IRS. She described her attempts to contact Mr. Rosile and arrange a meeting to inspect his books and records.
Interesting bits:
- The government has only one more witness and should wrap their case up midday tomorrow. The Snipes defense team has said that their witnesses should take approximately two days, so this case could go to the jury by the end of next week.
- There has been no indication whether or not Snipes will take the stand.
- The defense attorneys have asked some of the IRS employees if they have read every page of the Internal Revenue Code and Regulations. All, of course, have said no. There’s no reason for anyone to read the books cover to cover; you only read the parts you need. While the Code may be several thousand pages long, for most taxpayers, only about 15 pages apply. For example, if I need to know the meaning of the word nonsense, I don’t have to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary.
Topics: Snipes, Tax Deniers, Willfulness | 11 Comments »
11 Responses to “Day 8: January 24 – You have the right to remain silent. Use it.”
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January 24th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
That flushing sound you’re hearing is the sound of any hope that Wesley Snipes can effectively institute damage control.
Can I say this any louder? He’s screwed.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:24 am
At or around June 2004, ‘one’ also was in the funny box at the Florida appeals court on the foreclosure of his Windermere mansion throwing silly arguments at those Appeals court judges.
They found ‘one’s’ stuff amusing too.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:48 am
…to mention the prosecution admitted to not knowing the object of the conspiracy after nine days of trial.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:52 am
“you forgot… Says:
…to mention the prosecution admitted to not knowing the object of the conspiracy after nine days of trial.”
That’s the best you’ve got? After a horrible day of testimony for the defendant, a conversation over the introduction of the use of an exhibit that didn’t occur in front of the jury???
Dang, you might as well comment that the defense team has prettier laptops (Apples) than the prosecutors (NECs).
January 25th, 2008 at 11:47 am
What is with the term “tax denier.” No one in Gov. call them this. The IRS can’t call them tax protesters but everyone else does. The Tax Division’s own manual’s chapter is titled “Tax Protesters” I know David Kay at NYT is not using Tax denier as well.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
lawdevil Says:
See this article here.
Just because the government mislabels a group doesn’t make it right…
You know no such thing. First of all his name is David Cay Johnston, and furthermore, he uses the phrase on a regular basis. See partial list below:
Date: January 19, 2005
Article Title: Another Income Tax Denier Will Have His Day in Court
Author: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Excerpt: See the title of the article
Date: March 25, 2004
Article Title: White Hats Take to the Web to Dispel Anti-Tax Schemes
Author: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Excerpt: “because the tax-denier arguments ”
Date: April 28, 2004
Article Title: Tax Fear and Loathing Among the Payroll Managers
Author: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Excerpt: “That prompted Dennis Carroll, who handles tax-denier claims by United States Postal Service workers, to announce”
Date: February 3, 2003
Article Title: THE PRESIDENT’S BUDGET PROPOSAL: THE TAX AGENCY; Budget Gives I.R.S. More Money to Investigate Tax Cheats
Author: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Excerpt: “and ‘tax denial’ schemes that are based on claims that the tax code does not apply to most Americans.”
January 25th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
And, for good measure, here’s the story David Cay Johnston of the NY Times wrote on Wesley Snipes’ criminal trial. There’s that pesky “tax denier” phrase again…
Date: January 14, 2008
Article Title: Wesley Snipes to Go on Trial in Tax Case
Author: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Excerpt: “Tax deniers maintain that the law only appears to require payment of taxes. All their theories have been rejected by the courts, including the one invoked by Mr. Snipes, which is known as the 861 position, after a section of the federal tax code.”
To read the entire article, go here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/business/14tax.html
January 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
You guys really don’t want to mess with her.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
“For example, if I need to know the meaning of the word nonsense, I don’t have to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary.”
Although that’s what tax deniers suggest we do.
*sigh*
January 27th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
That’s the best you’ve got? After a horrible day of testimony for the defendant, a conversation over the introduction of the use of an exhibit that didn’t occur in front of the jury???
Well (”begging the court’s indulgence”), the document the gov was looking for was the indictment, not an exhibit…just thought they should probably know what is included in that one…you don’t agree?
the defense computers are prettier!
January 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
They were looking for the indictment because they were arguing over the introduction of an exhibit.
BTW, it’s nice to see a member of the defense team posting on my blog. Welcome to thesnipestrial.com !