RICO: The real way to hold the IRS accountable

RICO: The real way to hold the IRS accountable

23 July 2013One Comment

When the federal government acts like an organized criminal enterprise, it’s time to treat them like one.

Appearing in the Daily Caller.

If you are looking for a political-judicial solution, such as congress, impeachment, or a special prosecutor to hold accountable the unlawful acts coming out of the Obama administration, beginning with the Internal Revenue Service’s abuse and targeting of conservatives, Tea Party groups, and Christians, you are looking in the wrong place. What the IRS did tilted President Barack Obama’s re-election in his favor.

The IRS targeting reportedly began as early as 2010. Three years later, no one has been held accountable and the facts continue to drip out in slow motion.

Last week, for instance, as the Daily Caller reported, retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull testified before California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and implicated Obama appointee, IRS Chief Counsel William J. Wilkin, in addition to the Washington-based head of the IRS’s exempt organizations office, Lois Lerner, in the IRS targeting scandal. Lerner already has pled the Fifth. Hull made it clear that the targeting of conservatives and Tea Party groups started in Washington.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department declined to prosecute a government employee who apparently knowingly improperly accessed former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell tax records. Does anyone really believe they will see justice from the Obama administration in these cases?

The bottom line is this. You can’t get justice within the political system in America anymore because the politicians own it. What ultimately stopped the mafia? The Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). What can stop the Obama administration, starting with holding corruption at the IRS accountable? RICO.

For years, as documented in The Whistleblower: How the Clinton White House Stayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House & World Stage, Washington’s ruling elite have comprised a protected class, with rules that don’t apply to everyday Americans. If you or I lied before Congress or to federal investigators we would have been charged with perjury long ago.

In Washington, Attorney General Holder and National Security Director James Clapper can lie to Congress and hold onto their powerful positions without consequence.

People forget how the Office of Independent Counsel Special Prosecutor Robert Ray used his prosecutorial discretion when he declined in the 1990’s to charge Hillary Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice. Others might not know that additional potential crimes were not included in the articles of impeachment during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings which might have prevented the Clintons and the Clintonistas from re-emerging in the Obama administration and on the world stage. People have failed to recall how the Bush administration declined to prosecute quid-pro Pardongate in which Eric Holder was knee deep in.

Aside from the occasional PR-savvy fall-guy resignations the federal justice system has been dead for decades.

This is why RICO — the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act is the solution for Americans to use to see some long overdue justice in Washington. RICO provides a peaceful way to hold corruption accountable.

Successful cases against organized crime have been built around RICO, which was enacted in 1970 to target the mafia. What is needed is to use RICO to specifically hold corrupt politicians and federal officials accountable.

RICO has already held corrupt politicians like former mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick, and his childhood friend Bobby Ferguson, accountable. Under the RICO statute, they were convicted on March 11, 2013 of using Kilpatrick’s office to run a criminal organization to extort bribes in exchange for city contracts. It can be done.

According to 18 USC § 1961, crimes under RICO include everything from extortion, obstruction of justice, obstruction of a criminal investigation, and witness tampering, to kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter and financial institution fraud. RICO also permits a private individual harmed by the actions of an enterprise to file a civil suit, and if successful, to collect treble damages (damages in triple the amount of actual/compensatory damages).

In the U.S. the act of engaging in criminal activity as a structured group is referred to as “racketeering.” In short, RICO requires at least two acts of racketeering activity, establishing a pattern which occurred within ten years after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity. It’s clear based on the number of conservatives and Tea Party groups that were targeted by the IRS that a pattern exists. It’s also clear from the testimony before Congress and in the Inspector General report that a number of officials were involved who were following orders from above. The evidence of a pattern and conspiracy already has been established. It’s time to use it.

Americans who have been targeted by the IRS or deprived of their rights by other government agencies should consider filing civil RICO suit under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 – Civil Remedy for Deprivation of Rights and RICO: Civil Remedies for Conspiracies to Deprive Rights. Civil RICO does not rely on the politicized criminal justice system to work. This is especially critical considering those politics appear to have corrupted justice within AG Holder’s own department.

This American University Law Review report called, Using the Master’s Tools: Fighting Persistent Police Misconduct with Civil RICO, by Steven P. Ragland, could serve as a blueprint. This case shows how civil RICO was successfully used to root out corrupt policemen in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and can be applied to corrupt officials at the IRS and other agencies where corruption exists. Substitute the bad cops with the individual corrupt government workers, LAPD with the government agency in question and off you go.

Remember, the beauty of RICO is it can begin at the local and state level, and be brought as a civil RICO action first that doesn’t involve the federal government or any agency to participate. It is a private matter. Civil RICO will not put anyone in jail but may lead to financial damages. It “provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.” That means as these civil RICO suits evolve and new potential criminal information is brought to light through the discovery process, these suits can merge and potentially become criminal RICO actions that can be brought before a grand jury and spread to D.C. Victims of IRS targeting can and should start throwing down the gauntlet now.