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 Knox 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: 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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