The People now have four options: 1. Petition the United States Supreme Court to hear the case. The appeal to the Supreme Court is "not of right" meaning the Supreme Court decides whether it wants to hear the case. The Petition would have to be filed before August 6th. 2. Return to the DC Court of Appeals with a Petition for Rehearing by the three-judge panel that decided the case. The Petition would have to be filed before June 22nd. 3. Return to the DC Court of Appeals with a Petition for Rehearing En Banc, meaning our Petition for Rehearing would be put before all 14 judges of the Court of Appeals. If a majority decide the case should be reheard, it will be, and a new decision will be issued, either affirming, reversing or modifying the earlier decision. The Petition for Rehearing would have to be filed before June 22nd. 4. Return to the DC Court of Appeals with both a Petition for Rehearing by the same three-judge Panel that originally decided the case and a Petition for Rehearing En Banc. The ruling by the Panel would probably precede any En Banc ruling. Both Petitions would have to be filed before June 22nd. We are leaning towards option 3 or 4. As we have said all along, whether the United States or the People ultimately lose at this mid-level Court, the matter will eventually to taken to the United States Supreme Court.
Please
remember our agreement with attorney Mark Lane is for him to
represent the Plaintiffs until we have exhausted our
judicial remedy, for a total of $285,000. There is still
much work to be done at the Court of Appeals and then at the
Supreme Court. We have already paid Mark $200,000 and need
to make another payment now. Please send your generous
donation today. We are
very grateful for your contribution and continued support.
We shutter when we think of all that is at stake in the
outcome of this case. The IRS’s Unconstitutional Application of the IRCOur epic, besides its story of the history of our Freedom Keepers’ defense (in and out of court) of the capstone Right under the Petition Clause to hold Government accountable to the Constitution, contains a still-unfinished chapter detailing the ongoing warfare between the Constitution and the misuse by the Government of a constitutional law, i.e., the Internal Revenue Code. To the dismay and disgust of many, the IRS and the DOJ have engaged in an “institutional hijacking” of the law in such a way as to result in a tragic and terrifying tyrannical abridgment of constitutional protections. This deliberate program involving the misuse and misapplication of the government’s (limited) legal authority to collect taxes has punished Freedom Keepers from coast to coast, depriving them of their freedoms including the Rights of Speech, Press and Association, Privacy and Due Process, to say nothing about the egregious abridgments of their First Amendment Right to Petition for Redress of Grievances. We refer specifically to the laws -- the Acts of Congress, that authorize the IRS to serve summonses, to lien and levy property, to investigate illegal tax shelters and to seek injunctions to stop people from promoting illegal tax shelters. On their face these laws are constitutional, but when invoked with vengeance by IRS and DOJ with the intent to silence the Freedom Keepers and quash the lawful exercise of their unalienable Rights they become unconstitutional by their application – an abomination, a source of utter disgust, an overwhelming repugnancy. Our epic is also about the abdication of the constitutional role of the federal courts in allowing these abuses to continue unchecked as hordes of IRS and DOJ agents unabashedly enforce the Internal Revenue Code in an unconstitutional manner to satiate their cravings to secure tax bounties for their managers at any cost -- even Liberty itself. Rather than wait for the People to exhaust their judicial remedies, rather than wait for the meaning of the Constitution to be determined by the ultimate arbiters of the Constitution, rather than honor the principles of the Rule of Law and Due Process to settle the exceptionally important questions regarding the Rights of the People and the obligations of the Government under the Petition Clause of the First Amendment, the IRS and the DOJ under color of the law are doing everything in their power to shut down the Petition process. For instance, it is now abundantly clear that the IRS is openly attacking and harassing the 1700 named plaintiffs in the landmark RTP lawsuit, most of whom have filed sworn affidavits with the Court that they are claiming and exercising their Right to withdraw their financial support of the Government because the Government has not responded to their four Petitions for Redress of constitutional torts! This is obstruction of justice! In addition, under the guise of what is otherwise a constitutional law designed to prevent illegal tax shelters (26 USC Section 6700), the IRS has been seeking the identities of everyone who is supporting the Petition process. In 2003, the IRS informed WTP that it had reviewed certain material published by WTP and was, therefore, initiating an investigation under Section 6700 of a “potentially illegal” tax shelter. Under the cover of its “Section 6700 investigation of a potentially illegal tax shelter”: 1. In 2003, the IRS served a first party summons on Schulz. Schulz sued the IRS to quash the summons. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held Schulz did not have to comply with the summons without a court order. 2. In 2005, the IRS served a third party summonses on WTP board members, naming Schulz as the target. Schulz sued the IRS to quash the summonses. The matter is before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The case will probably be decided on a technicality. The IRS missed the statutory deadline for notifying Schulz that it served Summonses and Schulz missed the statutory deadline for serving the Petition on the IRS. 3. In 2005, the IRS served a third party summons on PayPal at its San Jose office, and a third party summons on PayPal at its Omaha office. Both summonses named Schulz as the target. Schulz sued the IRS in San Jose and in Omaha to quash the two summonses. The matters are before the United States Courts of Appeals for the Eight Circuit (Nebraska) and the Ninth Circuit (California). In both cases the lower courts have closed their eyes to the constitutional arguments, seeing only the law that authorizes IRS to issue summonses. 4. In 2006, the IRS served a third party summons on the Glens Falls National Bank and Trust Company in New York, naming Schulz as the target. Schulz sued the IRS to quash the summons. In this case, the IRS agent perjured herself by submitting a Declaration under penalty of perjury that a reason for the summons was the IRS had evidence that money had been transferred from PayPal to accounts at the bank controlled by Schulz. This was obviously a false statement and the agent knew it. The agent has since been removed from the case and Schulz has asked the court to sanction the agent. The matter is pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. In each of these cases Schulz has argued that the summons was served to chill the enthusiasm of Schulz and his supporters and is an infringement of Schulz’s First Amendment Right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association and, of course, his freedom to petition for redress of constitutional torts. In other words, the summons was issued in bad faith. IRS’s only argument is that it has the authority under 6700 to conduct investigations and that it does not have to worry about the Constitution in doing so. Our epic, therefore, includes this warfare between the Constitution and the Law. The issue is whether the IRS can apply the otherwise constitutional Internal Revenue Code in a manner that patently violates the Constitution. After four years, it wasn’t until April 3, 2007 that the IRS finally identified exactly what WTP material it considered to be subject to penalty under Section 6700 and why. On April 3, 2007 the United States filed a civil injunction complaint against Schulz and WTP in the New York District Court, seeking to prohibit Schulz and WTP from making certain statements regarding wage withholding. (RIGHT-Click to download the Complaint, 1.2 MB) On May 23rd Schulz filed a motion to dismiss the civil injunction case on ground that the United States has failed to make a claim for which relief can be granted under the First Amendment and under Section 6700 itself. On May 24th Schulz filed a motion to consolidate his bank summons case (Schulz v. United States) with the new civil injunction case (United States v Schulz).
WTP has
responded to these shallow attempts to unlawfully interfere
with our organization’s ability to freely exercise our First
Amendment Rights, particularly the Right of Petition, speak
freely and to prosecute a substantial number of ongoing
Right-to-Petition related lawsuits that have now reached,
without final resolution, four of the eleven Circuit Courts. The 6700 lawsuit may be the best evidence yet about the impact that our organization is having on the Government’s ability to perpetuate the income tax fraud as well as the unconstitutional acts and appendages of the federal leviathan.
We ask for
your continued
support and participation as we continue our
defense of Freedom against those who seek to destroy it. A
glorious day awaits us if we have the heart and
determination to embrace the Light of Liberty and stand tall
for the final battles. GML 2007 Conference Record Now Available
Approximately sixty days ago a throng of souls committed to
the defense of Liberty came together in person and live via
the Internet in
Alexandria,
Virginia
to experience Give Me Liberty 2007 -- the Conference on the
State of the Constitution. In an effort to bring these disturbing realities to the American public and assure them that all is not yet lost, the Give Me Liberty conference staked out “new ground’ revealing areas of abuse, that although known to many individuals and organizations, had yet been “framed” as specific Constitutional violations that can be peacefully remedied -- not through political means, but through the potent legal weapon provided by the Constitution itself, i.e., the Right to Petition government for Redress of Grievances.
As we have
written about extensively, this profound Right, articulated
by the last ten words of the First Amendment is an
expression of Nature herself, giving dominion over servant
governments to the People that create them. This is the
essence of the Right to Petition. It is the practical means
of exercising Popular Sovereignty.
We urge
everyone to
obtain a copy of the GML 2007 record.
The record
is
now available on a two-disc DVD-ROM set.
US Court of Appeals RTP Decision (5/07)
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