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Why Is It a Crime For Dennis Hastert To Evade Government Scrutiny?
HughPickens.com writes: Dennis Hastert is about the least sympathetic figure one can imagine. The former House Speaker got filthy rich as a lobbyist trading on contacts he gained in office, and his leadership coincided with Congress's abject failure to exercise oversight or protect civil liberties after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Now, Hastert stands accused of improper sexual contact with a boy he knew years ago while teaching high school and trying to hide that sordid history by paying the young man to keep quiet. If federal prosecutors could meet the legal thresholds for charging and convicting Hastert of a sex crime, they would be fully justified in aggressively pursuing the matter.
Yet, as Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic, the Hastert indictment doesn't charge him for, or even accuse him of, sexual misconduct. Rather, as Glenn Greenwald notes, "Hastert was indicted for two alleged felonies: 1) withdrawing cash from his bank accounts in amounts and patterns designed to hide the payments; and 2) lying to the FBI about the purpose of those withdrawals once they detected them and then inquired with him." It isn't illegal to withdraw money from the bank, nor to compensate someone in recognition of past harms, nor to be the victim of a blackmail scheme. So why should it be a crime to hide those actions from the U.S. government? The current charges could be motivated by a desire to prosecute Hastert for sex crimes. But that dodges the issue. "In order to punish him for that crime, the government should charge him with it, then prosecute him with due process and convict him in front of a jury of his peers," says Greenwald. "What over-criminalization does is allow the government to turn anyone it wants into a felon, and thus punish them without having to overcome those vital burdens. Regardless of one's views of Hastert or his alleged misconduct here, it should take little effort to see why nobody should want that."
Yet, as Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic, the Hastert indictment doesn't charge him for, or even accuse him of, sexual misconduct. Rather, as Glenn Greenwald notes, "Hastert was indicted for two alleged felonies: 1) withdrawing cash from his bank accounts in amounts and patterns designed to hide the payments; and 2) lying to the FBI about the purpose of those withdrawals once they detected them and then inquired with him." It isn't illegal to withdraw money from the bank, nor to compensate someone in recognition of past harms, nor to be the victim of a blackmail scheme. So why should it be a crime to hide those actions from the U.S. government? The current charges could be motivated by a desire to prosecute Hastert for sex crimes. But that dodges the issue. "In order to punish him for that crime, the government should charge him with it, then prosecute him with due process and convict him in front of a jury of his peers," says Greenwald. "What over-criminalization does is allow the government to turn anyone it wants into a felon, and thus punish them without having to overcome those vital burdens. Regardless of one's views of Hastert or his alleged misconduct here, it should take little effort to see why nobody should want that."
to turn anyone it wants into a felon!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Never talk to the cops...and seven times never talk to the FBI...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Ironically, its a crime because he made it one. Hiding large bank transactions was made reportable to the FBI and lying to the FBI about them was made a crime both by the Patriot Act that was pushed for and voted for most vociferously by then House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
See here:
http://popehat.com/2015/05/29/...
(Note the writer is a former federal prosecutor)
From the article:
"We imagine law enforcement operating like we see on TV: someone commits a crime, everyone knows what the crime is, law enforcement reacts by charging them with that crime. But that's not how federal prosecution always works. Particularly with high-profile targets, federal prosecution is often an exercise in searching for a theory to prosecute someone that the feds would like to prosecute. There is an element of creativity: what federal statute can we find to prosecute this person?"
Someone wanted to go after Hastert, they found a way.
Do you have ESP?
“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
I'm not sure there's any mandatory reporting on withdrawals,
Yes. Any time you take or drop $10k in cash in a bank or $5k in cash in a casino, there will be a report.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... interfering with a police investigation should be legal if the person being investigated feels they've done nothing wrong? Good luck getting widespread buy-in with that concept.
1) The FBI found just cause to suspect a crime; what the subject was doing appeared to be money laundering, which - as it should - triggers an investigation. 2) They began to investigate the crime. 3) They found no crime, and thus did not prosecute for it. However, in the process, the subject deliberately interfered with the investigation and made false statements to the police, which is a crime. 4) The FBI prosecutes for the crime committed in #3.
I fail to see the problem here.
That said, I'm not surprised that Greenwald does. And I can just imagine the riot he'll throw if they ever go after him for his long-time lack of payment of the court-imposed levies concerning his tax evasion for his porn business.
"Who the **** put an emergency exit in the interrogation room?!" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
How is this news for nerds?
The government's ability to monitor everyone's financial transactions is part of the broad surveillance state enabled by technology. We face a choice between an Orwellian future, where the state is capable of monitoring every aspect of our lives: what we buy, where we go, who we talk to, or a future where technology empowers individuals by making government transparent, efficient, and accountable. That is one of the biggest choices of our time, and this story is another warning that we are on the wrong path.
And ironically enough it appeals to the authoritarian crowd too, since it brings up aspects of Hastert that, if true, probably should be prosecuted if they could be, and demonstrates an alternate means of getting at him if other channels are not available. Kind of like how the US Government got Al Capone on taxes when they couldn't get him for the really awful things his organization did to people...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It isn't illegal to withdraw money from the bank
It is illegal to withdraw money from a bank in a manner designed to avoid detection. It's called structuring. If you withdraw large amounts (over $10,000US) the bank is required by law to investigate whether the transaction might be related to illegal activity. The bank is also obligated to investigate unusual or suspicious patterns of money movement. This is primarily due to laws aimed at combating money laundering and financing criminal and terrorist groups. In this case it appears Mr. Hastert was moving money to cover evidence of other (allegedly) illegal activity. That is exactly what these laws are designed to catch.
lying to the FBI about the purpose of those withdrawals once they detected them and then inquired with him
Lying to a law enforcement officer is always illegal. They may or may not care about why you engaged in the activities you did but lying about it is clearly a crime in our justice system. Realistically it cannot be otherwise if you wish to have effective investigations of crimes.
So why should it be a crime to hide those actions from the U.S. government?
It may be that the statute of limitation on the original crime has expired and these follow on crimes are what is still possible to prosecute. Obviously I don't know what the prosecutors are planning but I'm pretty sure there is a good reason. I doubt they would be worrying about these lesser charges if statutory rape were a charge they could use.
To answer the question however, it's a crime because there is no legitimate reason for him to lie. He (allegedly) was attempting to cover up other illegal activity. If his actions were honest he had the option to either decline to answer in accordance with his 5th amendment rights or to answer truthfully. Saying "none of your business" doesn't apply when we are talking about evidence of rape.
It is a lot broader than that. The Houston Chronicle has a decent article summarizing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).
Then there is that question about taking more than $10,000 in cash out of the country when traveling.
And, of course, seizures of suspicious amounts of cash when stopped by a law enforcement officer anywhere for anything.
(Suspicious being anything the local LEO decides it is. How fucked up is that?)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
If you applied any of the same logic on what is hitting hastert... and overreacted to the same extent... Hillary would be executed.
hastert is being pushed around for moving his money around in suspicious ways. The Clintons do that every day. No. Literally every day. They did it yesterday and they'll do it tomorrow. They've been doing it for years and years and years. The Clinton scandals go back to before Bill became president. And no... it isn't all the vast right wing conspiracy. Even MSNBC and the NYTs are admitting it is a fucking problem.
Do I like Dennis? No... I don't care for the man. But I have a bigger problem with the justice department becoming politically compromised and doing whatever it wants on the basis of political alliances. It needs to be politically non-aligned. And we can see very clearly that is not what is going on.
The justice department, the IRS, the EPA, the Department of Labor... they're all being used to protect political allies and hurt political enemies.
Don't like someone? Audit them with the IRS. They didn't get the hint? Send the EPA in there to find some nit picky thing going on that is impossible to comply with to fine the person with. That didn't work? Send in the department of labor. Ask all the women that work there if any of them would like to get a million dollar settlement for filiing a false discrimination lawsuit.
Keep it up. Everyone submits when the pressure comes down on them.
The Gibson guitar factory got raided by the FBI for having rare woods... finger boards... and they said something about how that was a violation of some law from the 1920s that makes no sense. Coincidentally, the CEO of Gibson was giving money to the rival political party. Tisk tisk. Didn't the fool know you're only allowed to make donations to the ruling party?
And on and on and on.
Here someone will say I'm exaggerating or only painting one party in a bad light. That isn't my intention. I am equally against either party really. My issue is that THIS party is the one doing it RIGHT NOW. So I'm going to focus on them. RIGHT NOW. If they lose power and the other party starts doing it, THEN I'll be talking about them. it isn't happening right now.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Will you feel sympathy for the next small business owner who gets caught up in this "structuring" bullshit?
I certainly will. It's a tragedy that sometimes innocent people get accused of crimes they didn't commit. However that doesn't make the laws bullshit. If you have a better way to catch criminals engaged in money laundering, by all means let us know. They certainly are imperfect laws. However here we have a guy who apparently was engaging in structuring to avoid detection of a statutory rape. It is unlikely his actions would have been discovered otherwise. This is EXACTLY the sort of crime these laws were intended to deal with.
It sounds like he got caught lying about a crime he didn't commit, which is one of the more ridiculous aspects of the US judicial system.
If he didn't commit a crime there was no reason to lie about it. He had the option to say nothing under the 5th amendment. He certainly cannot reasonable argue that he didn't know it was a crime to lie to the FBI about his activities especially since he helped write some of the laws pertaining to prosecution of those very same activities.
The $10,000 limit was set forth in 1970 and never indexed for inflation.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
We could get rid off the reason for money laundering laws in the first place. End the stupid drug war already. Have a tax system that does not require tracking one's every financial transaction. Then there's no excuse for this part of our garbage heap of a legal code.
I hate to use this guy as a catalyst for reform, but if that's what it takes so be it.
Could it be that old white conservative politicians are worthy of defending against government over reach, and a liberal women is not? In her case the trigger was getting a stock tip, and in his case it was sex with a high school student he was coaching. Which is a greater abuse of position? Which of the two is more of a government victim given the nature of their initial offense?
Why is Snark Required?
Back in the 20s and 30s in the US, the mob ran roughshod over the land. The only way devised to corral them-- because of massive corruption on local, state, and federal levels-- was to invoke tax laws. It worked. It got Capone, and a bunch of the mob.
Hastert is caught in a similar pickle. Meet the reporting requirements; they're designed to trap this, and other kinds of illicit behavior. Trillions of dollars have left the USA, some of it legally (Apple Computer) and some of it not. The laws were designed to trap floods of untracked cash (Dennis Hastert's payments). It worked. I want the law; I want the reporting requirements; don't presume you understand the motivations of /.ers.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
That would be $62,284.35 in 2015 dollars.
First of all, I do agree, that neither bank-withdrawals (in whatever "pattern"), nor lying to anyone (unless under oath) should be a crime. Absolutely not.
But, as long as it is a crime, people like Dennis Hastert — who had the power to do something about these laws, but did not, absolutely must be prosecuted under them. To the fullest extent and without mercy. (I argued the same thing about Spitzer — whose case was even worse, for he not only kept the laws he broke on the books, he strengthened them.)
He is not a regular citizen — employee, student, businessman. He had the power — and more of it, than even an "average" Congressman.
All that said about him, I find it disturbing, that the ruling party would prosecute the opposition's politicians. It does not look good. At all... They should be focusing on their own — like the aforementioned Mr. Spitzer, whose sole "punishment" for breaking federal laws, was resignation...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
One might ask why we believe that our internet communications should be private, but our monetary transactions should be carefully tracked. Especially in the sense that today, more than ever, money transfer is now mostly just the transfer of bits.
People frequently go on about how the government could harass or attack politicians or activists with the information they obtain, but here we have the government doing the same thing with financial reporting. Sure, Hastert's probably a scumbag sex offender, but no one has charged him with that. They're using other laws to push their agenda.
It was a clever little bit of legal trickery which got Al Capone in jail for tax evasion, and certainly you could argue that he needed to be stopped. The problem is, we really never reformed the system to make someone like Capone less likely to be able to corrupt the state and local governments, we're still relying on these sort of loopholes to get convictions that the government wouldn't otherwise try to get in a court of law on the merits of their actual case because they'd fail. It is skating very close to laws being passed to make you a felon in cases where you wouldn't be convicted, but the prosecutor (and not the judge or jury) really wants you convicted of something.
We must disagree.
We did indeed pass and have enforced, a lot of legislation that's helped reduce corruption. No, it's not stopped,and SuperPACs allow bribery on a huge scale. But the RICO Act, along with a long list of others, have helped keep things somewhat open and at least partially above board. They're not thoroughly successful. If Hastert had done the reporting, he wouldn't be in deep crap at this point, his secrets intact for better and worse. The reporting has a purpose: keep large transfers from skirting reporting in taxes.... like taking your annual profits to a tax haven, and so forth.
The man otherwise, appears to be a skunk for this and many other reasons.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The primary objection to these laws — and the reason they are considered "bullshit" — is that they allow confiscation of funds without having to prove anything. The government does not even need to file a suit!
None of the victims are "criminals" — because nobody is a criminal until found guilty in a court of law — and your above-quoted excuse for the law is thus automatically invalid.
Worse, the practice — and the bullshit laws "authorizing" it — are in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment, which purports to protect us against this exact practice (emphasis mine): "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Hastert is caught in a similar pickle. Meet the reporting requirements; they're designed to trap this, and other kinds of illicit behavior.
They don't just trap illicit behavior. Legitimate businesses have been hit, many times, for structuring. They charge the money in the bank account, not the individual or business, so you have to *prove* it's legitimate. Often they'll let you get half or so of it back in exchange for not involving the legal system. People have been out of tens of thousands of dollars for this.
Restaurants
A Mexican restaurant: "Critics say the I.R.S. rarely investigates such cases to see if the business owner has legitimate reasons for making small deposits, such as an insurance policy that covers only a limited amount of cash."
Multiple small businesses in Michigan
Simply speaking: Many businesses will frequently make deposits under $10k for two reasons:
1. That's simply what they make
2. Insurance policies that only cover 'up to' $10k or so of cash, so business policy is to make a deposit whenever they're close to that amount so they're always covered.
The IRS doesn't care, will look at it as 'structuring', and seize all your bank accounts.
I don't read AC A human right
If the intent is to catch actual criminal wrongdoing, rather than make large swathes of the population criminal, the structuring rules are a very good examples of a bad law. First off, the reporting requirements are poorly understood by banking officials who should know better, and the actual reporting can be for cash amounts of as little as $3000.
A few years back I was involved in what became a rather complicated transaction to buy a rather expensive used car. Because the owners were extremely flakey and confused there ended up being a number (I think five) wire transfers to different accounts. This produced a blizzard of enquiries from my bank and later from federal officials with various agencies with three-letter acronyms. All of the enquiries were worded in a maximally threatening way. All I wanted to do was buy a stupid car. Which turned out to be a piece of shit anyway.
There are lots of examples of this. The Migratory Bird Treaty act is a great example. Say you find some bird feathers in your yard, and decide to keep them. Say your kids find some more and keep them too. Oops! $5000 fine per feather. Remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse. And by the way, if you can identify your bird feathers and they came from non-migratory birds, you are fine. Unless they are eagle feathers, in which case you are screwed. Except if you are Native American and using the eagle feathers for legitimate cultural purposes.
Don't even get me started on insider trading laws. Oh hell, as the insider trading laws are written, there is no way to be employed by a company doing useful work and not be at least technically in violation of said laws. Whatever guidance your corporate attorneys give you is based on the SECs guidance on what they actually want to prosecute. That guidance could change tomorrow if they decide to go after you.
I remember somewhere that this kind of administrative law crap was a substantial factor in what caused the American Revolution.
Did you read what I wrote? The fact that he tried to hide what he did with his money is not a crime. Your pointing this out means nothing as I made the exact same comment. But it is a simple fact that making suspicious financial transactions triggers investigations, as they should. The police can and should investigate when it looks like people are trying to launder money. And then he made false statements to the police during the investigation, which is a crime. You never have the right to lie to the police, even if you feel you've done nothing wrong.
It's his bed that he's made and he has to lie in it.
The stupid thing is all he had to do was plead the fifth. Which any lawyer would have advised him to do. But he was so concerned with trying to sweep this thing under the rug that he didn't want to do anything that might make it look like he had something to hide and decided that lying to the police was the best option.
"Who the **** put an emergency exit in the interrogation room?!" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
One restaurant owner used to make a $10,000+ cash deposit every three days. After the restaurant got robbed at gunpoint, the owner made daily cash deposits to reduce the amount of money stolen at one. Because the restaurant didn't accept check or credit cards, the IRS viewed the daily cash deposits as structuring and confiscated the cash. The owner won in court but the IRS refuses to return the money. That's a typical story.
Politicians should not be prosecuted for LYING. After all, it's their primary function. They can't help it. It's like trying to prosecute an ordinary citizen for drawing breath. What would be unusual is a politician telling the truth.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
it's a requirement that banks report cash transactions of $10k or more
In Soviet Russia, it was a requirement to report suspicious neighbors to the NKVD.
That's true to a point. The monies directly seized by the Feds go into a single pool that they have complete control over (it is not regulated by congress) but the various federal agencies often partner up with state or local agencies and when doing so offer them a cut of the take.
1 stat from 2012 had just the IRS seizures in the neighborhood of 640 cases (almost 6 times the amount from just 7 years before) with less than 20% even resulting in charges being filed.
Due to the length of time it takes to process a claim against the government to get your money back and the sums involved (usually in the ballpark of $40k) most people take the standard offer of 50% and go home. Even when the victims win in court or the government just gives in, they have been known to skip out on paying the court costs, back interest and other expenses to the victim like they are legally required to.
This was a letter written to the lawyers of Lyndon McLennan from the U.S Attorney after theiy seized his life savings and he went public:
He didn't settle and the case was later dropped and his money returned but none of his expenses were covered.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!