James Madison, the father of the Constitution, wrote, “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood…” Thomas Jefferson warned us, “Law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual;” and “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” We failed to heed the Founders’ warnings…
The problem we face today, and former President Donald J. Trump is experiencing firsthand—with four separate criminal cases, charged with 91 felony counts—is explained by John Whitehead in his book, Battlefield America:
“Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to law professor John Baker, ‘There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.’ That is not an exaggeration.”
Despite the FBI improperly using warrantless search powers 278,000 times in 2021, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was reauthorized; this time around Congress exempted themselves from the surveillance provisions that apply to ordinary citizens! FISA was improperly used against President Trump and many of his supporters.
Just as devastating to most of us and not spoken about is the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which was significantly strengthened after 9-11. This Act turns banks and other financial institutions into spies for the U.S. Government, in particular, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Banks are required to automatically report all transactions of $10,000 or more, along with several transactions that, when added together, equal $10,000 or more.
In addition, certain cash transactions, roughly $300-to-$3,000 or more in cash deposits, may generate a suspicious activity report (SAR), along with any unusual payments or deposits that are atypical for our accounts. Furthermore, the bank and its employees cannot tell us that these reports have been filed with the IRS; if they tell us, they face jail time and huge fines. Hence, the title, Bank Secrecy Act, i.e. the Bank is secretly spying on us for the IRS!
Not only is the IRS receiving regular reports on our financial activities from banks and other financial institutions, but they are also the beneficiary of a powerful weapon that can be used against any of us if we irritate the wrong Deep State employee or a power-elite in government or any of their family, friends, or associates. With the passage of the money laundering statutes, as part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, tax evasion or tax fraud is considered money laundering.
The maximum punishment for tax evasion is $500,000 or twice the amount of money laundered, whichever is greater, and up to 20 years in prison for each count. For example, if you wrote five checks in one year and the IRS audited you several years later and deemed your tax structure to be tax evasion rather than legal tax avoidance, you may be facing a maximum penalty of $2,500,000 and 100 years in prison (18 USC § 1957). Unlike President Trump, most of us could not afford to fight this in Court and would most likely, if offered, plead guilty to a lesser charge.
Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz wrote the forward for Three Felonies A Day:
“Harvey Silverglate, an experienced and astute criminal lawyer, makes a compelling case that federal prosecutors are abusing their power by using the criminal law to prosecute law-abiding citizens whose conduct is arguably covered by extremely vague criminal statutes that are capable of reaching acts which are believed to be lawful by those who commit them. These prosecutors threaten to indict underlings for conduct that is even further away from the core of criminality unless they cooperate against the real targets. Because federal criminal law carries outrageously high sentences—often with mandatory minimums—these prosecutorial threats are anything but illusory. They turn friends into enemies, family members into government witnesses and employees into stool pigeons.
Our system of investigation and prosecution is unique in the world. We have politicized the role of prosecutor, not only at the federal level but in all of our states and counties as well. Nowhere else are prosecutors (or judges) elected. Indeed, it is unthinkable in most parts of the world to have prosecutors run for office, make campaign promises and solicit contributions. Prosecutors in other countries are civil servants who do not pander to the people’s understandable wish to be safe from crime, or campaign on the promise to ‘be tough on crime.’. . . But in the United States, prosecutors are not only elected, or in the federal system appointed in a generally partisan manner, but the job is a stepping stone to a higher office, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every senator or congressman who ever practiced law once served as a prosecutor. Winning becomes more important than doing justice, because voters vote for ‘winners’ not ‘justice doers.’”
Dershowitz wrote this forward 15 years ago before he wrote, Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law. In this book, Dershowitz analyzes the unremitting efforts by political opponents of Donald J. Trump to ‘get’ him, attempting to stop him from running in 2024. He discusses the challenges to due process, right to counsel, and free speech posed by these efforts.
In the former Soviet Union (USSR), Stalin’s KGB head “infamously said, ‘Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime’.”[1] Like the USSR, the Power-Elites in the Biden/Harris Administration identified “the man,” former President Donald J. Trump, and the Democratic Prosecutors went to work and found “the [fabricated] crime[s].”
“The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies A Day do not apply solely to ‘white collar criminals,’ state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch— [the Biden/Harris Administration]—and nothing less than the continued functioning and integrity of our constitutional [Republic] hangs in the balance.”[2]
As Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote: “The law [has been] perverted! And the police powers of the state [have been] perverted along with it! The law . . . not only turned from its proper purpose but [was] made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law [has] become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself [is] guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!”
Get a copy of Our Right To Privacy Hijacked By Government and Freedom vs. Democracy, available on our website or directly from Amazon.com. Read them and then pass them along to your family and friends. Americans need to hear the truth, not the propaganda spread through Marxist indoctrination in our academic institutions.
Finally, don’t forget to vote for Donald J. Trump and ALL Republicans on November 5, 2024… our Constitutional Republic “hangs in the balance!”
Dum Spiro Spero—While I breathe, I hope.
Slàinte mhath,
Robert (Mike) G. Beard Jr., C.P.A., C.G.M.A., J.D., LL.M.
[1] Harvey A. Silverglate, Three Felonies A Day, How the FEDs Target the Innocent, Encounter Books (2011), original copyright 2009 for hardcover edition.
[2] Id.