No Truce With Kings

Here’s recent e-mail from Chip Mellor at the Institute for Justice.

IJ’s fight to end civil forfeiture continues with a new lawsuit on behalf of Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural North Carolina who had $107,702 seized last summer by the IRS. Despite a policy change by the IRS last fall indicating that they would no longer pursue such cases, the DOJ filed a civil forfeiture complaint in December against Lyndon to forfeit his cash without even accusing him of a crime.

After Lyndon’s case was brought up in congressional testimony this past February, the U.S. Attorney in charge of Lyndon’s case told Lyndon’s lawyer, “Whoever made [the document] public may serve their own interest but will not help this particular case. Your client needs to resolve this or litigate it. But publicity about it doesn’t help. It just ratchets up feelings in the agency. My offer is to return 50% of the money. The offer is good until March 30th COB.”

Lyndon, however, is unwilling to give the government a single penny of his hard-earned money and teamed up with IJ to get his money back. You can read more about the lawsuit in the New York Times article[…]

The NYT article is fairly short and worth your time.

And here’s a video IJ produced about this case.

So, yeah, let’s "ratchet up feelings in the agency." That sounds like an excellent idea to me… just in a different manner than Steve West (the U.S. Attorney quoted above) has in mind. Maybe a 50%, across-the-board staff reduction at the IRS would do it? Then we could look at DOJ too?

The gall of a government lawyer saying, basically, "shut up before we get really ticked off" piques my ire. It’s a stereotypical lawyer’s line, isn’t it? What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?

And the idea of a government attorney haggling over $50,000 gives you some idea of how much "justice" is going down at the Department of Justice. That’s a whopping 0.0000157 of the $3,176,000,000 Congress enacted for the 2015 US Budget. No reflection on Mr. McLellan’s business, but it’s like the Mafia shaking down kids with lemonade stands. (Except the thugs’d have too much pride, I think.)

That 0.0000157 is impressive! They only need 63,520 more cases like this one to pay for this year’s Federal spending. Hey, don’t laugh… you could be next.

I think someone needs to quit his government job and go find a real one. Maybe one where he’s not biting the hand that feeds him.

More seriously, Congress needs to call its damned dogs and put a clear and definite end to civil forfeiture.

Update 5/14
More e-mail today from Mr. Mellor:

Less than two weeks after IJ announced its involvement in a civil forfeiture action against Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural North Carolina whose entire bank account of more than $100,000 was seized by the IRS, the government has admitted defeat and dropped its case against Lyndon. This means he will get back all the money he worked so hard to earn.

The case has made national headlines, including The New York Times, Drudge, Fox News, Forbes, Vox, and MSN.com. You can read early coverage of the dismissal in the Raleigh News & Observer piece below.

All the best,
Chip

Raleigh News & Observer
Prosecutors drop IRS seizure case against Fairmont convenience store owner
By Anne Blythe
May 14, 2015

Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural Robeson County, became an emblem for the many ways that IRS seizure and civil forfeiture laws have dogged run-of-the-mill business owners who operate with cash.

For nearly a year, the 50-year-old Fairmont man has been fighting the federal government to recover the $107,702.66 seized from his business account without any allegations of crime.

On Wednesday, nearly two weeks after The New York Times profiled his struggle with the government, McLellan received a welcome call from his lawyer.

U.S. Attorney Thomas Walker, the top federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of North Carolina, had dismissed the case that since July had blocked his access to his money.

Thank goodness for the IJ. I don’t know many more practical ways of spending your money to fight government overreach than by donating to IJ.