Posted on 06/03/2015 11:41:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Yesterday I started to delve into the Dennis Hastert case, paying particular attention to the specific crimes with which the former Speaker is being charged. But even after I finished writing about it and reading some of the comments here, I wasn’t very happy with my conclusions. There’s something very unsettling about the entire case (leaving out the obvious, horrible alleged child rape parts of it) but I felt that I wasn’t quite able to put my finger on it. Today I found someone who has done a better job of wrestling those questions to the ground and it was Connor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic. He poses a few questions which capture the essence of why this case seems so entirely wrong from a government overreach perspective.
It isn’t illegal to withdraw money from the bank, nor to compensate someone in recognition of past harms, nor to be the victim of a blackmail scheme. So why should it be a crime to hide those actions from the U.S. government? The alarming aspect of this case is the fact that an American is ultimately being prosecuted for the crime of evading federal government surveillance.
That has implications for all of us…
Again, the payments weren’t illegal. But as it turns out, structuring financial transactions “to evade currency transaction reporting requirements” is a violation of federal law.
Recognizing that Hastert is probably one of the least sympathetic figures in the news these days – aside from terrorists and mass shooting suspects – Connor helps us put this question in easier to digest form by applying the scenario to someone less sinister.
Imagine that a documentary filmmaker like Laura Poitras, whose films are critical of government surveillance, is buying a used video camera for $12,000. Vaguely knowing that a report to the federal government is generated for withdrawals of $10,000 or more, she thinks to herself, “What with my films criticizing NSA surveillance, I don’t want to invite any extra scrutiny—out of an abundance of caution, or maybe even paranoia, I’m gonna take out $9,000 today and $3,000 tomorrow. The last thing I need is to give someone a pretext to hassle me.”*
That would be illegal, even though in this hypothetical she has committed no crime and is motivated, like many people, by a simple aversion to being monitored.
Let’s toss in one more hypothetical from Friedersdorf just to drive the point home.
What if the government installed surveillance cameras on various streets in a municipality and then made it a crime to walk along a route that skirted those cameras?
That’s it in a nutshell. (And I only wish I’d summoned up the same clarity of thought to frame the issue that way.) We are a nation of laws and we don’t support people breaking them… and that includes the tax laws. But if you’re not actually breaking any of those laws, what are you really guilty of if you intentionally obfuscate your activities or hide yourself from the prying eyes of Uncle Sam? I’m failing to see how that is validly held to be a crime under our constitution.
The $10K transaction reporting requirement is controversial and Connor goes into it in detail, but I’m not sure that’s where we pin the blame here. After all, it’s not the job of the government to make it easier for you to commit a crime, and unusually large cash transactions – while not illegal in and of themselves – frequently do take place in conjunction with actual crimes. Making the banks report such account activity is not the same as charging someone with a crime, but rather is simply a hint of where prosecutors might want to look. After all, we don’t charge bank robbers with failing to leave a sufficiently clear trail of breadcrumbs back to their hideout. The problem arises with what they typically do with that information and the additional layers of laws which are piled on top of the process which follows.
If you are not providing testimony under oath in a court of law, why is it illegal to lie to investigators absent some other crime? I suppose exceptions could be made for things like providing a fake ID or forged insurance documents or something, but those are actually other crimes in their own right. But when the man from the IRS or the FBI or the Justice Department comes knocking on your door and asks you why you were doing this or that with your bank account, you should absolutely tell him that you’ve done nothing wrong and what you do with your money is your own damn business. If Hastert had done precisely that I assume he wouldn’t be in any trouble today on the “lying to authorities” front, though the “structured transaction” charge would stick. But he made up a story about stashing money at home because he didn’t trust the banks. That, as it turned out, was a lie. But the lie seems to be the only thing they have him on.. Is a lie that much worse than telling the investigator to go pound sand and refusing to cooperate?
I think the camera question that Connor poses is the one that really got me. For the record, I’m not opposed to there being cameras covering public spaces and making such footage available to law enforcement (with a warrant) as part of their investigation into an actual crime. But if you scope out where all the cameras are and purposely walk on paths which avoid them every day while not breaking any laws, how on Earth could they consider prosecuting you? Apparently under the current theory of government practices, they just might be able to. And yes… that’s disturbing.
“A government employee or elected official with clearance do not have a right to hide being blackmailed”
Forget, for a minute, that he was a government official being blackmailed (since they didn’t charge him with a crime related to that). Would he have a right to hide legitimate, legal financial transactions from government scrutiny?
Is it a crime to drive 65 mph because you’re avoiding breaking a 70 mph limit?
Yeah, if that $10,000 had kept up with inflation, it would be $50,000 now. Or something like that...
Wait’ll $10,000 is your typical monthly rent. That’ll be fun. :-)
RE: Is it a crime to drive 65 mph because you’re avoiding breaking a 70 mph limit?
I dunno, here in NY State, the speed limit in many highways is still 55 MPH and ALMOST NO ONE I know drives below that.
“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” ― Ayn Rand
Nice article but I think the hidden news here is this is vindictive prosecution. Punishment for something.
Thing is, the fedgov clearly DOES track <$10k transactions. Otherwise, they would not know that he broke the rule!
I still use cash for a lot. But I’m a stubborn SOB...
I think there more to this story than is being reported. I suspect that the “hush money” story is a facade for other financial misdeeds. Why would a former House Speaker who has been out of government for years pay $3M in hush money over something that happened more than 30 years ago before he was even in government?
We need to repeal bad laws, and “structuring” laws should join “civil asset forfeiture” laws and all federal firearms laws in being repealed as soon as possible.
Post of the day imho.
“Post of the day”
I’m honored. Thank you.
Care to expand on this interesting anecdote?
How the heck would the polices know about the transaction?
Because we are no longer a truly Free People.
When we reach the point, which we have, that some in the Media and out Fellow Citizens advocate limits in Free Speech with no blowback, we are doomed.
Farmers in the 70’s and 80’s would often carry 10-15 thousand on them in E.Tennessee.
You never knew when a deal would come along.
They also carried guns with narry a permit.
Privileges? Silly me, I thought it was a Right to privacy...
The dealership called the cops. The manager told him that they couldn’t take cash, and that it put him in danger of getting the whole thing seized. The cops were outside before he was through.
He was lucky. They knew of him, and didn’t take the cash. He could have lost it to asset forfeiture, and never seen it again
And close to 300,000 gun owners in the state of Connecticut are defying the new laws requiring registration.
Mass defiance in Connecticut against assault weapon registration law
by Rick Moran
As J.D. Tuccille points out in this Hit and Run article on non-compliance with the new Connecticut assault weapons registration law, the morons who wrote it evidently knew nothing of history.
A bit of miltary wisdom has it that you should never give an order you know won’t be obeyed. Issuing such an order accomplishes nothing except to undermine your authority and expose the extent to which, no matter what enforcement mechanisms are in place, you rely upon voluntary compliance. But now that Connecticut’s resident class of politically employed cretins has awoken to the fact that, in their state, like everywhere else, people overwhelmingly disobey orders to register their weapons, they’re acting like this is a shocking revelation. They’re also promising to make those who tried to comply, but missed the deadline regret the effort (proving the point of the openly defiant). And the politicians’ enablers in the press are screaming for the prosecution of “scores of thousands” of state residents who, quite predictably, flipped the bird at the government.
snip
Hopefully, word about the dealership's snitching tendencies got out on the street, and impacted their bottom line.
Really?..then why didn't Hillery have the right to have a private email server?....Why did the government....and the public... have the right to see her email?...
one private citizen doesn't have the right to see another private citizens emails
so how the hell if you're treating Hillary is a private citizen do you have the right to demand to see your email?..
you have the right because she's not acting as a private citizen she's acting as Secretary of State...and it the same reason Haster can not hide hush money payments
Haven't your noticed the press and the left being surprisingly surprisingly sympathetic to Haster a Republican...why???.... get a clue they want your to be hypocritical....
good God you trying to say Haster a government official had the right to hide he was paying hush money for this ...great you win that battle an established that precedent...then how the hell do you later argue Hilary didn't have the right to hide email correspondence
You're being set up for the left in government to establish the precedent to hide all sorts of things from public scrutiny
..government officials are not private citizens, quit treating them as such, otherwise they will walk all over the public and hide all sorts of dirty tricks
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