Freedom Lawyers of America

> I spent part of this week in a bizarre world. U.S. District Judge John
> McBryde, the no-nonsense judge once accused by a fellow federal judge of
> "bizarre and bullying conduct," locked me along with dozens of other
> spectators in his courtroom. McBryde really did order his bailiffs to lock
> the door.
>
> And who was I locked in there with? An all-star team of federal income-tax
> haters, some of whom don't recognize the authority of the United States
> government, and showed this by refusing to stand whenever the judge and
> jury entered the courtroom.
>
> It was the trial of Bedford businessman Richard Simkanin, who was
convicted
> Wednesday of 29 counts of violating U.S. tax laws. McBryde locked the door
> because he said he didn't want people running in and out. But courthouse
> security was tight and protesters outside held signs demanding McBryde's
> impeachment.
>
> I would bet you money, tax-free of course, that hardly anybody in that
> courtroom pays federal income taxes. Most were proud of it, and who
> wouldn't be if they could get away with something like that? Even a
> reporter for a "patriotic" Web site sitting next to me said she didn't pay
> federal income taxes. "But don't put my name in the paper," she said.
>
> Simkanin has been locked in a federal cell for months after he supposedly
> had a meeting at his Bedford office and, an informant alleged, said that
> killing a few judges might attract attention to the cause. His supporters,
> including a Round Rock talk radio host who told me that he attended the
> meeting in question, said Simkanin never said any such thing. But McBryde
> wasn't taking chances.
>
> The tax haters in the courtroom hated McBryde as much as they hate income
> taxes. They acted surprised when he didn't let the trial become a circus
> testing the validity of federal income tax laws. No, McBryde figured his
> job was to help a jury determine whether Simkanin broke laws when he
> stopped filing personal tax returns and ceased withholding federal taxes
> from his Bedford employees' paychecks.
>
> Simkanin may be the ultimate Bedford character in a city of great
> characters. After research in his library, which he called "one of the
> largest tax-book private libraries in Texas," he testified that he
> concluded taxes were, in his words, "alleged taxes."
>
> At one point, he became so angry about the federal tax system that he
> announced on his Web site that he was expatriating himself from the United
> States, which he said was a government "in rebellion against the Republic
> of Texas."
>
> He began telling his employees that those who pay federal taxes "become
tax
> slaves." And although we all know that's true, he took it much further.
>
> Once he received a letter from the Department of the Treasury, but he
> challenged it, testifying that for all he knew, it could have been from
the
> Department of the Treasury of Puerto Rico.
>
> He surrendered his Texas driver's license and replaced it with his own ID
> cards, including one from the "International Governmental Affairs Agency."
> He admitted he made that up because, he testified, "it just sounded good."
>
> He named his sister-in-law, who joined the company as a file clerk, his
> replacement as president. He asked her to pay him in cash and take his
name
> off official papers so he could drop off the government's radar. His
> accountants told him he was making huge mistakes, and when he wouldn't
> listen, they resigned.
>
> But for someone who wanted off the radar, he sure flew back on. With
> others, he took out a full-page ad in USA Today explaining why he had
> serious reservations about the federal income tax system. And he
surrounded
> himself with that all-star team of anti-taxpayers who are household names
> in households that don't pay taxes. These buddies served as a crazy cast
of
> character witnesses at his trial.
>
> There was Joseph Banister, a former IRS special agent who was recently
> hauled into a San Francisco federal court by prosecutors who demanded that
> he stop telling people income taxes were illegal. At first, the feds
> considered having Banister's hearing last month on an isolated federal
> island to keep out the kind of crowd with whom I shared the locked
> courtroom. But later they relented and yanked him into a regular
courtroom.
>
> There was Eduardo Rivera, a pony-tailed lawyer from California who took
the
> stand to say that he didn't believe that everyone had to pay income taxes.
> But under cross-examination by federal prosecutors, he acknowledged that a
> permanent injunction had been placed against him in a California federal
> court that prevented him from saying just those things.
>
> There was Bob Shulz, the founder of We the People for Constitutional
> Education, who complained on the witness stand that this whole anti-tax
> argument stems from the fact that the 16th Amendment enacting a federal
> income tax was improperly ratified in 1913. Somebody should get on that.
>
> And there was Larken Rose, an Internet anti-tax rebel who called income
tax
> a "fraud without rival in history" and said the IRS was an "extortion
> racket." On a Web site, I found a letter by him titled "Please Prosecute
> Me" that begins, "I, Larken Rose, have not filed a federal income tax
> return for 1997 or any subsequent year."
>
> But Rose has not been prosecuted, probably because he doesn't make enough
> money selling videotapes off his Web site for the government to spend
money
> chasing him. It is Simkanin, now Bedford's own convicted tax martyr, who
is
> the newest hero of the movement.
>
> In closing arguments, his lawyer asked the jury, "Does he look like a
> criminal to you?"
>
> These jury members, who see an April 15 tax deadline coming their way, are
> no suckers. Hey, if they pay, why shouldn't the guy with the funny
driver's
> license pay, too? So in answer to the question about whether he looked
like
> a criminal, they unanimously answered that he did.
>
> Dave Lieber's Column Appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
>