Former IRS CID Special Agent Acquitted of Tax Fraud and Conspiracy

    We The People Foundation For
Constitutional Education, Inc.
2458 Ridge Road, Queensbury, NY 12804
Phone: (518) 656-3578
Fax: (518) 656-9724
www.GiveMeLiberty.org
[email protected]

For Immediate Release
Contact: Robert Schulz
(w) 518-656-3578
(c) 518-573-8046

/24-7PressRelease/ - Sacramento California, June 24, 2005 -- On Thursday June 23, a jury found former IRS Criminal Investigative Division (CID) Special Agent and CPA Joseph Banister not guilty of all counts alleging federal criminal tax fraud and conspiracy related to actions he took on behalf of a California business owner who had openly defied the IRS 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's San Jose CID office, Robert Gorini (who testified via video recording) when pointedly asked, was unable to cite any U.S. law that explicitly required Banister to pay income taxes.

Banister, who was forced to resign in 1999, gave Thompson's worker's 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 several year, 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.

In January of this year, Schulz obtained a ruling from the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals holding that IRS must have an order from a U.S. District Court before it can injure a taxpayer by utilizing administrative enforcement actions such as summons, liens or levies. The record of that case and the Court of Appeals Order are available on the website as well.

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