
I have to begin by acknowledging Melissa
Siskind's powerful effort to make me look like a
terrible person. She is very skilled.
But I believe Ms. Siskind's studied
hostility is really just a tactic. I think she is
implementing the concept that “the best defense is a
strong offense”. Ms. Siskind wants to drive from
everyone's mind the fact that the verdict in my trial
was achieved, in part, by her astonishing lie to my jury
that
early government efforts against my husband were
just an audit.
With that lie my jury was misled about the
real background of events leading up to the production
of the unlawful orders I resisted. With that lie my jury
was given false cause to doubt my truthfulness. With
that lie my jury was given false cause to doubt the
legitimacy of my exhibits; and with that lie my jury was
given false cause to doubt one of the bases presented
for my good-faith conclusion that I was not under a duty
in regard to these orders, which rested on an accurate
picture of the sequence of events of which the issuance
of these orders was a part.
Under the influence of Siskind's lie I was
declared guilty. I have to say “declared” rather than
“found”, because due to a jury instruction Siskind
persuaded the court to deliver, it cannot be known that
a single juror found I had actually committed one or the
other acts with which I am charged, and neither charged
act can be taken as found by a unanimous jury. It seems
that engineering verdicts against innocent women is
another skill honed by Ms. Siskind.
Now Ms. Siskind hopes to continue her
streak. She means to keep everyone, and especially you,
Judge Roberts, from remembering her earlier lie, and
from thinking about the fact that whatever you do today
rests on the legitimacy of a verdict issued under the
influence of that lie.
Siskind hopes to distract you with more
bluster, misdirection and additional falsehoods into
disregarding the facts and acting instead on her
primitive, hind-brain proposition that it doesn't matter
that the government couldn't honestly prove me guilty as
charged, because I'm a terrible villain anyway, and
ought to be locked up on general principle.
The fact is Melissa Siskind doesn't know me
at all, and I am not the bad person she would like you
to imagine. I am just an American woman who believes she
has a right to control the content of her own
expressions, and a right to defend her own interests in
any legal contest-- even a tax-related legal contest.
I want to explain what I believe is the
legal dynamic of such contests, and what has been done
to me that has led us to this day.
Our legal system here in America is
designed to protect everyone's right to make claims,
rebut allegations and defend herself against the claims
of others. One of the key ways in which these paramount
goals are accomplished is by providing that no one can
be told what she must say in a legal contest.
I get to say my piece, and the other side
gets to says its piece. Each of us get to say, without
hindrance, intimidation or interference, whatever we
think serves to support our claims. If what is said by
the two sides is in disagreement, an appropriate and
duly-authorized agency or tribunal makes a determination
as to the outcome in accordance with the relevant
provisions of law.
No one, not even the government, gets to
pre-emptively evade the contest or control its outcome
by taking, or being given, control of what its opponents
say-- even if it really thinks what is being said or
might be said is wrong. Both sides must rely on the
strength of their own arguments to overcome those of
their opponent, and are prohibited from using strong-arm
tactics against each other. In fact, efforts to secure
favorable testimony in such a contest by threats or
coercion are crimes. Both sides must rely on the threat
of a prosecution for perjury as their protection against
deceit.
That's how it works, that's the only way it
can work, and that's the only way it is allowed to work
under our law here in America, where a declared purpose
of bringing the federal government into existence in the
first place is identified in the preamble to the United
States Constitution as being to “establish justice”. The
First Amendment to that Constitution says no one can be
told what to say, and the Fifth Amendment guarantees
everyone the right to due process.
In keeping with these principles,
prescriptions and proscriptions, not only is no organ of
government allowed to order any person to relinquish her
own claims, or to agree with another's, but none has any
plausible reason to do so-- at least, no reason that is
honest.
For me, though, eight years ago a judge
issued just such orders, at the request of a government
agency wanting to make claims to my property. I was
ordered by this judge to repudiate my own freely-made
testimony relevant to a couple of government claims and
to create sworn declarations of belief that would
instead validate the government's competing claims. In
another order I was told to refrain from disputing any
future government claims.
The absurd pretext used to justify these
plainly illegal orders was that I was only being told to
say what was “correct”, as though my rights to control
my own expressions and advocate for my own interests
evaporate whenever some government official decides my
expressions and advocacy are “incorrect”. This is
ridiculous, and it is wrong-- my rights are not subject
to the whims of officialdom in this fashion.
Further, I was NOT simply being told to say
what Nancy Edmunds decided was “correct”-- I was being
ordered to say that I
BELIEVED what Nancy Edmunds decided was
“correct”-- or really, what my government opponent
simply TOLD Nancy Edmunds was “correct”, even though no
government official, from the Secretary of the Treasury
to a lowly IRS worker, had been willing to sign off on
the government's assertions under any risk of penalty
for being untruthful. Robert Metcalfe, the DOJ attorney
who asked Nancy Edmunds to make me say I believed
these assertions, had to resort to an unsigned,
self-declaredly “informal” IRS examination report as his
pretended evidence that the government itself believed
this nonsense.
Nonetheless, without even so much as a
single hearing of any kind, Nancy Edmunds ordered me to
say I believed what she herself had no reason whatever
to believe to be true, at the government's mere request,
and over my objections and formal, sworn dispute of all
its allegations of fact and law. As requested, Edmunds
ordered me to say I believe that my earnings are of a
taxable sort, suitable to declare to be “income” as that
term is meant in tax law.
But I don't
believe this. In fact, I know full well that it isn't
true, just as the government knows full well that it
isn't true, as is unambiguously proven by no government
official being willing to declare it as a personal
belief over a signature.
That a government official CAN make such a
declaration is why government control of speech such as
I am accused of criminally resisting is fundamentally
and grotesquely wrong as a matter of law and principle.
It is also why there is NEVER,
EVER a legitimate
government interest or necessity requiring or justifying
this ugly mechanism for its fulfillment. It's this
simple: If the government believes something is correct
and needs to be said, it can have one of its own
officials say it. In regard to the matters involved in
this case, there is actually a statute that says not
only that such a declaration MUST be made by a
government official, but that when one is, that
declaration is good and sufficient for all legal
purposes.
If what that official swears to is then
deemed to be correct by the proper authority-- say,
Judge Nancy Edmunds, perhaps-- and what I say is deemed
to be incorrect, then that decision can be enforced
without any declaration of agreement or belief being
needed from me.
Thus, the orders sought by the government
and issued by Edmunds are neither necessary nor proper,
both of which standards must be met, as specified at 26
USC 7402(a), for her to be authorized under law to issue
any kind of injunction. Even if the orders Edmunds
issued to me were not specifically prohibited by the
First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution, they
would still not be within her lawful power to make.
Of course, beyond the creepily sick
proposition that I was just being ordered to say what
was “correct”-- however fraudulently and unlawfully--
there was another pretext given by the government in
asking Judge Edmunds' to issue her orders. This was the
even more creepy and downright scary argument that my
being forced to say I believe what the government wanted
would discourage other Americans from making claims of
their own which the government dislikes.
Needless to say, the government
self-servingly characterizes such disfavored claims as
"false". Part of its elaborate pretense in the lawsuit
brought in Edmunds' court is the phony assertion that my
husband's book
Cracking the Code argues that only federal,
state and local government workers are subject to the
income tax, and the equally phony assertion that claims
like mine on my freely-made tax returns are based on
this falsely ascribed and patently false and frivolous
notion.
But you know what? I characterize
the government's
assertions as "false", just as do the many thousands of
other Americans making claims the government hopes to
chill by attacking me-- and
unlike Nancy Edmunds, we've actually read the
book. Sorting out who is right in each case is why we
have a legal system, and keeping that legal system real
and legitimate is why our First and Fifth Amendment
proscriptions and prescriptions prohibit efforts by the
government to evade its requirements by ordering people
to say what it wants to hear through the means of
cooperative judges, or attempting to chill inconvenient
speech in advance by means of such orders.
Here is how the Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals put this in Beaty v. United States, 937
F.2d 288:
“A central tenet of our republic--a
characteristic that separates us from totalitarian
regimes throughout the world--is that the government and
private citizens resolve disputes on an equal playing
field in the courts. When citizens face the government
in the federal courts, the job of the judge is to apply
the law, not to bolster the government’s case.”
Everyone in this room knows this. Everyone
in this room knows the government's call to Nancy
Edmunds to issue her orders to me was wrong and
lawless-- as are the orders themselves-- and that the
pretense of a legitimate government interest in chilling
the free expression of other Americans was even more
broadly and darkly criminal. It does not speak well of
Nancy Edmunds that she didn't refer Mr. Metcalfe for
prosecution upon being presented with his demand and its
revealing justifications.
Here today, those speaking for the
government are making the same demented, un-American and
Constitution-defying argument. They advise you to
sentence me harshly as a “deterrent”. But a deterrent to
what?
It can't be as a deterrent to resisting
government-requested orders from a court dictating what
they must say they believe to be true and correct. No
such orders have ever been issued to anyone in American
history before this was done to my husband and me, and
none have never been issued since. No surprise-- orders
of this sort are ILLEGAL.
Therefore, what the government must mean is
to deter other Americans from testifying freely and
honestly on their own tax forms, or anywhere else they
are asked or expected to say what they believe to be
true and correct, or have a need to make claims on their
own behalf or assert and defend their interests in a
legal contest. Thus, the government's call for a harsh
sentence is a call upon this court to use a sentence
upon me to commit a crime against the speech, conscience
and due process rights of other Americans-- indeed, all
Americans.
I note that whoever spoke for the
government in its response to my sentencing memorandum
also made much of the fact that one of my supporters
started a petition on my behalf a few weeks ago. The
government says those who have signed the petition are
examples of Americans needing to be deterred by the
sentence you issue today. I suppose the government
attorneys here also feel that the good people behind me
[and filling the hallway outside] need to be deterred
from exercising THEIR rights, too.
Frankly, those who have signed that
petition, and those here today, are examples of the
millions of Americans who need to be reassured by what
you do today that their rights will be respected by
public officials, and that their courts recognize that
it is efforts to chill their exercise of speech and due
process rights that are criminal, not resistance to such
efforts.
Here is what the person who started that
petition has as its “mission statement”:
“We, the undersigned citizens of
America, are concerned for the security of our rights,
seeing them threatened by the attack on those of our
sister, Doreen Hendrickson. Doreen is plainly being
punished by the United States for exercising her rights
of speech and conscience, and her right to due process
of law in any legal contest between herself and the
United States, whether that contest concerns tax matters
or otherwise.
We call upon our public servant, federal
district court judge Victoria Roberts, to abandon this
violation of Doreen's rights and to exercise her
authority under the federal rules to arrest this
judgment, dismiss the indictment under which Doreen was
tried, or otherwise vacate and dispose of the lawless
charges and proceedings against Doreen.”
I don't know anything about whether the
remedies being asked for in those words are available at
this point, but for the record, I echo them now.
I also ask you to understand that all of
the petition signers, and all the folks here today, and
all the many tens of thousands who are following this
case and will continue to do so are Americans who, in
their own study of the law, have concluded that what
Judge Edmunds did is wrong and unlawful, and that what I
have done is not.
All these good Americans are not alone,
either. They are joined by others who may not be
following this case today, but have already staked out
their positions very plainly.
Let's start with the real heavyweight
experts:
“Congress shall make no law abridging the
freedom of speech”; and “No person shall be deprived of
life, liberty or property, without due process of law.”
Now here's the United States Supreme Court
in Armstrong v. Manzo, 380 U.S. 545, explaining
the meaning of “due process of law”:
“A fundamental requirement of due process
is “the opportunity to be heard.” Grannis v. Ordean,
234 U.S. 385, 394. It is an opportunity which must be
granted at a meaningful time and in a meaningful
manner.”
In Flaim v. Med. Coll. of Ohio, 418
F.3d 629, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals says:
“Notice and an opportunity to be heard
remain the most basic requirements of due process.”
“Opportunity to be heard” means an
opportunity to be heard saying what
I
want said, not what my government opponent wants to hear
said. Plainly, an injunction telling me I will be
punished for saying things the government doesn't want
said on a tax form by which I testify and make my claims
in a contest over who gets ownership of my money is a
violation of my rights, and so is an injunction telling
me that I must say what my opponent wishes said on such
forms.
Here is the Supreme Court on the freedom of
expression issue in Agency for Int’l Development v.
Alliance for Open Society Int’l, Inc., 133 S. Ct.
2321, a case decided just a month before I was arrested
for exercising my speech rights:
“It is, however, a basic First Amendment
principle that “freedom of speech prohibits the
government from telling people what they must say.” ...
“At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle
that each person should decide for himself or herself
the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression,
consideration, and adherence.” ... “The government may
not . . . compel the endorsement of ideas that it
approves.”.
“[W]e cannot improve upon what Justice
Jackson wrote for the Court 70 years ago: “If there is
any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it
is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what
shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or
other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by
word or act their faith therein.””
And here is how the Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals puts it in Newsom v. Morris, 888 F.2d
371:
“[E]ven minimal infringement upon First
Amendment values constitutes irreparable injury...”
and
“[D]irect retaliation by the state for
having exercised First Amendment freedoms in the past is
particularly proscribed by the First Amendment.”
Doesn't that last line bring things right
home? What is happening here today is the government
asking you, Judge Roberts, to retaliate against me for
exercising my First Amendment freedoms by expressing
myself as I felt was right and true in the course of
exercising my Fifth Amendment right to due process. That
is exactly the retaliation that the Sixth Circuit says
is “particularly proscribed by the First
Amendment”.
So, am I missing something? Didn't every
government official in this room-- including these
government attorneys who are urging you to engage in
this retaliation, and to “do it hard” so as to put a
proper fear of the same treatment into all of these
other people here, and those around the country who have
signed that petition, and everyone else who is following
this case-- didn't you all take oaths to uphold and
defend the Constitution by which the Sixth Circuit says
this punishment of me today is