Situation in Brown Tax
Evasion Case Uncertain
By Mark Anderson
As last week’s American Free Press went to press, AFP
learned that circumstances surrounding the New Hampshire couple faced with tax
evasion charges were changing constantly.
The reports of this matter in The Union Leader, other New Hampshire
news media and The Boston Globe—most
of which are running variations of the same Associated Press story—all are
using the stark verbal imagery that resident Ed Brown is “holed up” in his
rural Plainfield, N.H. home, or some say “fortress,” and that he will not leave
his 110-acre, solar-powered homestead, despite his conviction for federal
income tax evasion on Jan. 18 in federal court in Concord.
The Associated Press article in The Union Leader newspaper, to which a Leader staffer contributed information,
couldn’t resist the highly charged word “compound,” which conceivably could
create a bunker mentality in the minds of readers and may quell public outrage
if federal agents ever decide to forcibly enter Brown’s home to arrest him.
As the article noted: “A jury
decided that the Browns plotted to hide their income and avoid taxes on Elaine
Brown’s income of $1.9 million between 1996 and 2003. Over 10 years, they also
used $215,890 of postal money orders broken into increments just below the
reporting threshold to pay for their hilltop compound and for Elaine Brown’s
dental offices.”
Repeated attempts by AFP to reach
Brown directly were not successful.
Mr. Brown, according to some news
accounts, is armed and joined by friends and supporters while expecting a
federal ambush of his home. However, a U.S. Marshal’s office spokesman in New
Hampshire, Stephen Monier, told AFP and other news outlets, as recently as
Friday, Jan. 19, that there was no plan as of that date to enter the property
and arrest Mr. Brown.
Monier and members of his staff
say they have had continued phone conversations with Mr. Brown. Months likely
will pass before the Browns are sentenced. U.S. Marshals have to decide how to
seize the Browns’ assets, possibly including their home, as the national media
noted.
According to Assistant U.S.
Attorney Bill Morse, Mr. Brown violated his bail conditions and is in contempt
of court, adding that he understands Mr. Brown would rather die than serve time
in prison. Notably, Morse said he hopes
Mr. Brown decides not to end this matter in a way that harms either him or his
wife, “or anyone else involved in bringing this matter to justice,” as he told
the national media. Mr. Brown’s wife, Elaine, was convicted Jan. 18 as well.
Both are supposed to be sentenced April 24 for not paying income taxes since
1996.
The government claims the Browns
owe $625,000 in back taxes. Most of the couple’s income came from Mrs. Brown’s
oral surgery business. Mr. Brown is a retired exterminator.
The Browns have gone their
separate ways. Partially at the urging of U.S. District Court Judge Steven
McAuliffe, and supposedly due to her own choice, Mrs. Brown did not return home
and is instead staying at her son’s house in a neighboring state after attending
court to hear the conviction. Mr. Brown had been in court with Mrs. Brown Jan.
9-11 but stopped attending on the grounds that the process seemed like a
“kangaroo court” in which Judge McAuliffe obstructed him from bringing in the
evidence and/or witnesses to argue his point that there is no law requiring
payment of an unapportioned direct tax, such as the federal income tax, on the
labor of American workers, including he and his wife.
As AFP’s last report noted, the
judge’s decision to disallow evidence and witnesses for the defendants—along
with his notes to the jury that he would not allow Mr. Brown to try and
persuade the jurors on the validity of his claims that there is no law
requiring payment of income tax on labor—are examples cited by those in the
national movement to pass ballot initiatives to reign in judicial corruption.
These advocates say it is just such an apparent violation of due process that
creates the need for these initiatives.
Citing a new twist in this case,
a recent issue of the Globe noted:
“Although federal agents seized
more than 30 weapons from the Brown house in May, Ed Brown said some weapons
were left on the property. Brown said he expects more supporters to come to the
house within the next few days.”
As reported in AFP issue 5 for
2007, they are charged with “conspiring to evade taxes, conspiring to disguise
large financial transactions, and disguising large transactions.”
Filmmaker Aaron Russo’s America: From Freedom to Fascism
documentary interviews a number of former IRS agents and other authoritative
people who say that the powers that be, when asked to provide a copy of the law
(such as an enabling statute) that requires American workers to pay federal
income tax on their wages, come up empty-handed. Russo’s view is that the
income tax only applies to corporate capital gains, not the incomes of
individuals, and that the IRS doesn’t even define income.
“Most Americans would cower and
cringe and raise their hands and surrender like a good little slave,” Mr. Brown
said around the time of his conviction. He was also quoted as saying the state
motto “live free or die.”
The Union Leader seems also to have played the “anti-government”
card in order to incite public sentiment against Mr. Brown. The Leader noted: “During the past few
decades, Brown has claimed membership in several anti-government (emphasis
added) and militia groups including the Constitution Rangers of the Continental
Congress of 1777, the Constitution Defense Militia and the UnAmerican
Activities Investigations Commission, which he founded.”
January 20, 2007
