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September 30, 2005
USDC To
Hear 16th Amendment Fraud Issue
DOJ
Lawsuit Against Bill Benson Backfires
Twenty-five years ago Bill
Benson, a former Illinois Department of Revenue investigator, began a
cross-country trip across the forty-eight states that comprised the Union
in 1913 seeking documentary evidence regarding the ratification of the
16th Amendment. This was a most important undertaking, because the
government uses the 16th Amendment as its sole authority to tax
an individual’s wages and salaries.
During his two-year trip,
Benson collected thousands of certified legal documents from both state
and federal archives documenting exactly how the 16th Amendment was acted
on by each state legislature and handled by the office of the Secretary of
State for the United States.
In the end, Benson had assembled an
irrefutable mountain of evidence showing that during the final days of the
William Howard Taft administration in 1913, the 16th Amendment was
fraudulently declared by the U.S. Secretary of State, Philander Knox, to
have been properly ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.
Bill Benson, and his co-researcher Red Beckman, documented the results of
their work in a two volume research report entitled, “The Law That Never
Was.”
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Until now, no federal
court has agreed to examine the vast body of legal evidence compiled
by Benson. Indeed, the federal courts, both District and
Appellate, have consistently refused to tackle the troubling issue,
claiming the matter of the fraudulent ratification of the Amendment
to be a “political question” for Congress to decide, and beyond the
jurisdiction of the courts.
For more than 20 years,
this judge-made “political question” doctrine has blocked a
resolution of the issue. |
Today, as the result of a
dramatic court battle now being waged in Chicago, Bill Benson and Red
Beckman may be on their way to vindication and the federal government may
soon find itself scrambling for a new principal source of
revenue.
In November 2004, the
Department of Justice filed
a lawsuit against Benson in the USDC in Chicago, accusing him
of operating a “fraudulent tax shelter” and violating Section 6700 of the
Internal Revenue Code.
At the heart of Benson’s alleged fraudulent
tax shelter “scheme” is the two-volume research book, The Law That Never
Was. The hard bound publication is an
exhaustive, detailed review of each state’s legislative process regarding
its adoption, or rejection, of the 16th Amendment.
The government
claims Benson fraudulently induced large numbers of Americans to stop
paying income taxes because they relied upon fraudulent statements
contained in Benson’s “Reliance Defense Package”.
Shortly after
being charged, Benson’s lawyer, Jeff Dickstein, filed a Motion
to Dismiss the suit, claiming that Benson, as a matter of law,
could not present a defense as to the factual truth of his claims
regarding the ratification fraud because the federal courts have
repeatedly ruled that the issue is outside their legal domain, and
hence, the courts are without subject matter jurisdiction.
Specifically, Benson’s attorney argued that because the fact of
making “false or fraudulent statements” is a central element of the
alleged unlawful act, Due Process requires that Benson must be given an
opportunity to directly defend the factual question of whether Benson’s
claims are true or false – despite the fact that the federal courts
apparently lack any jurisdiction to consider or adjudicate such a
question. This legal “Catch-22”, Dickstein argued, required the dismissal
of the case.
Ignoring this constitutional quagmire, the District
Court in Chicago rejected Benson’s Motion to Dismiss for lack of subject
matter jurisdiction, thereby indirectly admitting it did, in
fact, have subject matter jurisdiction regarding the ratification of the
amendment.
Most importantly, the Court must now address
the exercise of Benson’s Due Process Rights which include challenging the
factual substance of the government's allegations, i.e., that Benson is
willfully and falsely telling people that because the 16th
amendment wasn't ratified, people do not have to file a federal income tax
return.
During a status conference, the Court specifically stated
it would study The Law That Never Was and also ordered Benson to
submit a legal brief arguing the details of the fraud for the Court. On
August 1, Benson’s attorney filed the legal
brief
detailing aspects of the ratification fraud.
As Benson’s
documentation overwhelmingly establishes, the fraud was deliberate and
pervasive throughout the four-year long amending process. As a single
example, consider Kentucky’s resolution on the 16th Amendment
which was recorded by the Secretary of State as having passed the
amendment on a vote of 22 to 9. In fact, the source historical
record shows that Kentucky’s
resolution was
rejected on a vote of 22 to 9, thereby voiding the 16th
Amendment, which Philander Know alleged had been passed with only a
two-state margin.
Will Benson Enjoy
Due Process Or
Will His Claims Be Judicially Presumed False?
On
its face, Benson’s legal proceedings can be considered the worst possible
scenario for the government. Despite all efforts to avoid such, the
government is slowly being forced by a District Court into directly
confronting the legal evidence put forth by Benson.
That is, to
successfully sustain its legal claim against Benson for allegedly
violating Section 6700 of the Internal Revenue Code, (i.e., running a
“fraudulent tax shelter”), the government must establish for the record
that Benson had an “illicit state of mind” by proving that Benson could
have had NO rationale or reasonable basis to believe that his claims
regarding the 16th Amendment are, as a matter of law,
true.
Unfortunately for the government, standing in its way are
thousands of certified, legislative documents and a court-ordered hearing
to examine Benson’s rationale in advancing his allegedly fraudulent
claims.
According to Benson, at an earlier status conference, DOJ
officials openly offered to settle out of court and that they only wanted
to bar him from distributing his 16th Amendment “reliance
package”. However, as part of the settlement, DOJ also wanted a list of
Benson's customers. In response, Benson asserted his right to remain
silent because an IRS CID special agent asked about Benson in connection
with an on-going grand jury investigation in another state. Benson did not
settle out of court.
On August 4, presumably to avoid any further
public hearings on the matter, the government filed a Motion
for Summary Judgment. Benson's attorney is currently working on
a response to this motion and is preparing a cross-motion for summary
judgment. Oral arguments regarding Benson’s research have not yet been
held.
Benson, who for years failed in his attempts to force the
government to honestly respond to his legal research has, through a
strange turn of events involving these Section 6700 civil charges, been
drawn into a legal conflict where he may yet have his questions
answered.
Ironically, in its insatiable desire to suppress the
distribution of an ever-growing body of research exposing the legal fraud
of our tax system, and to quash those that act in good faith upon that
research to secure their Rights, the government, in its lawsuit against
Bill Benson, has inadvertently put itself in the position of having to
confront the very thing it dreads – a public, judicial hearing where it
must rebut the existence of thousands of certified legal documents that
irrefutably establish that our income tax statutes have no constitutional
authority.
Some might conclude the government’s lawsuit against
Bill Benson has backfired.
Story Related Links
(Suggestion: Right-Click to download these
documents
to your computer before attempting to open.)
Benson’s original Motion
to Dismiss
The Government’s Motion for Summary
Judgment
Benson’s brief
on the 16th Amendment fraud
Go to Benson’s website: http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/
to order
Vol. I & II of The Law That Never
Was
Click Here to order a copy of the record of the WTP Truth In
Taxation Hearing
in which Benson testified extensively under oath
about the income tax fraud.
Over 14 hours of
video + 450 legal
exhibits + transcript + multi-media interface
(CD-ROM or
VHS)
Benson would also appreciate financial support to finance his
legal defense.
His address is:
Bill Benson
PO Box
550
South Holland, IL 60473
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