IRS CID Special Agent Acquitted of Tax Fraud, what do you think of this verdict?

Former IRS CID Special Agent Joseph Banister Acquitted of Tax Fraud And Conspiracy
Government Unable To Prove U.S. Law
Requires Income Tax Withholding or Filing

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doci...


Sacramento California -- On Thursday June 23, a federal jury found former IRS Criminal Investigative Division (CID) Special Agent and CPA Joseph Banister not guilty of all counts alleging criminal tax fraud and conspiracy related to actions he took on behalf of a California business owner who had openly defied the IRS over several years by stopping withholding of all income and employment taxes from the paychecks of his workers.

During the trial the Department of Justice was unable to put forth any evidence that Banister had either engaged in a conspiracy or had acted unlawfully when he shared legal research with business owner Al Thompson concluding that he had no legal obligation to withhold taxes from his workers or when he (Banister) prepared corrected tax returns for Thompson claiming his taxable income was, under U.S. law, zero.

During the trial, Banister's former supervisor at IRS鈥檚 San Jose CID office, Robert Gorini (who testified via video recording) when pointedly asked, was unable to cite any U.S. law that required Banister to pay income taxes.

Banister, who was forced to resign in 1999 after questioning IRS officials about their legal authority, gave Thompson鈥檚 worker鈥檚 a presentation in 2000 which reviewed his detailed investigative research of U.S. tax law which concluded that not only did the IRS lack any authority to impose income taxes on the workers, but there was no legal requirement for the business to withhold any taxes from the worker's paychecks.

Banister is part of a nationwide effort seeking to force the U.S. Government to respond to a series of detailed legal Petitions for Redress of Grievances directly challenging the authority of the IRS. Last summer, the We The People Foundation initiated a landmark lawsuit with 2000 plaintiffs against the government because it has refused to answer the Petitions.

The Right-To-Petition lawsuit, of which Banister is a plaintiff, is the first time in history that U.S. courts have been asked to define the meaning of the final ten words of the First Amendment.

Court documents for the RTP lawsuit and scholarly research regarding the Right to Petition can be downloaded from the Lawsuit Information Center on www.GiveMeLiberty.org.

Following the verdict, Banister was greeted by a throng of WTP supporters and members of his family.




Also check: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doci...


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I've worked with Joe on a tax case, as part of a legal defense team for someone else. He seemed like a reasonable and intelligent person.

BTW, the news story is incorrect when it says the govt "unable to cite any U.S. law that required Banister to pay income taxes". That wasn't the legal issue in the case, and it is a mis-statement of the law.

The actual issue was that the govt couldn't prove that Banister did anything wrong in his interactions with the IRS, and that he was acting reasonably given his understanding of the laws.