My objection is that the justice department has seized Gibson assets with out court order or any other legal reason. It is acting as a dictatorial power center in an administration that is pursuing the establishment of a dictatorship through the guise of a people’s socialist “republic.”
Besides, fenders should be on cars, not guitars.
If you drive from Nevada into California and are stopped an agricultural inspection station, the folks from California will seize your produce without a court order. The legal reason is there's a California law saying you can't bring it is.
In Mexico, you can buy western boots, an belts, and wallets, made from sea turtle. At the border checkpoints in Texas or California, your boots. or belt, or wallet, will be confiscated as contraband. It's illegal to own in the U.S. under CITES (a simplification).
If you are pulled over for a traffic stop and the back of your pickup is stacked with packages of cigarettes that don't have tax stamps on them, they'll be confiscated as contraband, because the law says they're contraband without tax stamps.
If you are arrested for domestic abuse and the cops find a meth lab, they'll seize the meth without a court order to do so.
The seizures at Gibson have gotten publicity, but there are hundreds and hundreds of other Lacey Act seizures. Some involve South Florida landscapers trying to bring in exotic and 'endangered' plants whose export is illegal from the countries of origin. The plants are automatically contraband. That's the 'legal reason' for seizing them. Many others involve wood flooring companies bringing in exotic hardwood flooring made of species which are illegal to export from the country of origin. Again, automatically contraband - and that's the 'legal reason' for confiscating.
The wood seized from Gibson (a) wasn't the product listed on the export papers and was therefore contraband; (b) became contraband when LMI switched the HS codes, twice, from export to import to final declaration; (c) became contraband when LMI (an expert) imported it without a Lacey Act declaration; (d) became contraband when LMI put a false ultimate designee on the customs paperwork; (e) became contraband when LMI put a false written description of the contents of the containers on the import paperwork; and (f) a few other reasons.
One USFWS was called in they saw three things: (a) contraband; (b) Theodor Nagel Gmbh, LMI (a Nagel company, and Gibson involved - the same parties from the 2009 transaction in which Gibson employee Gene Nix had alerted Gibson that the purchase from Nagel and Thunam was illeal; and (c) another LMI/Gibson shipment through Canada, also with bogus paperwork.
Gibson had a search warrant. Gibson had to file its seizure notice with a federal judge and Gibson (and LMI and Nagel) had a chance to protest the seizure.
And Fenders should be in Stevie Ray Vaughn's hands, or Jimi Hendrix's, God rest their souls.