Department of "Justice" spending $6 billion to steal from innocent Americans

Private sector contractors are coming for your stuff with a Deputy Badge

The Institute for Justice continues their wildly valuable work in holding the metastasizing cancer of the Federal Government to some form of account.

As highlighted in a recent video, the IJ exposes the fact that we US taxpayers are being forced to borrow $6,000,000,000 so the Department of “Justice” can pay private sector companies to steal property from our fellow citizens.

https://youtube.com/shorts/KnDd-qyMveA?feature=share

Whilst the Constitution prohibits individual States from issuing Letters of Marque - incidentally, my third favorite kind of Letter - apparently an unelected organ of government has decided it can issue land-based Letters of Marque to modern privateers so long as they do their theft via paperwork and without rippling broadsides on the high seas.

The Institute’s wonderful book, Policing For Profit, is in its 3rd edition and should enjoy pride of place on every American’s bookshelf right next to the family Bible, Koran, Torah or sacred scripture of choice. To give you a sense of its paramount import:

In 2019, nursing student and single mother Stephanie Wilson had not one, but two cars seized by the Detroit Police Department, losing the first one forever. That same year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Transportation Security Administration seized retiree Terry Rolin’s life savings of $82,373 from his daughter as she passed through Pittsburgh International Airport on her way to open a joint bank account for him. Three years earlier and about 1,000 miles away, a sheriff’s deputy in rural Muskogee, Oklahoma, seized more than $53,000 from Eh Wah, the tour manager for a Burmese Christian musical act, during a routine traffic stop; the funds were concert proceeds and donations intended to support Burmese Christian refugees and Thai orphans. None of these victims were convicted of any crime.

Their stories illustrate a nationwide problem: civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture allows police to seize property on the mere suspicion that it is involved in criminal activity. Prosecutors can then forfeit, or permanently keep, the property without ever charging its owner with a crime. By contrast, criminal forfeiture requires prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an owner is guilty of a crime and then, in the same proceeding, prove the property is connected to the crime.

Does this sound like the America you believe you live in? Me, neither. From 2000 to 2019, the Federal government stole, er “compelled civil forfeiture” of property valued at $45,700,000,000. Not content with fleecing innocent Americans of that property, the bright sparks at “Justice” are now going to spend more than $6 billion on private contractors to help them steal more from us.¹

I love it when the media calls anyone a “right wing paranoid conspiracy theorist” for merely quoting government agencies. Over at the Asset Forfeiture Slush Fund Office, it’s a non-stop party:

I would love to be a fly on the wall for the staff meetings. How does one encourage American civil servants to head out on a theft rampage targeting innocent people? Is that covered in How to Win Friends and Influence People?

Given that the United States and Eritrea are the only two nations which tax their citizens’ income no matter where a person lives, one can only assume there are fat expatriate postings for diligent asset thieves baked into this $6 billion privateer fund. A Kiwi friend took a picture of the DOJ team appropriating Maori war dance traditions ahead of stripping unsuspecting Americans of their rightfully owned property.

I await news of their gargantuan haul. It is sure to snag some choice pounamu carvings which I bet mysteriously disappear from the DOJ warehouse before being logged for sale at auction.

What can you do? Well, amazingly enough in the House of Representatives, there is some motion on stopping this appalling madness.

In March, Congress reintroduced an enhanced version of the bipartisan Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, H.R. 1525, which would enact a sweeping overhaul of federal civil forfeiture laws. The bill would remove the profit incentive that drives so many federal forfeitures, end the federal “equitable sharing” program that is used to circumvent state law protections for property rights, and eliminate the unfair administrative forfeiture process.

The vast majority of federal forfeitures are civil in nature, meaning that the government is not required to charge the owner with a crime, let alone secure a conviction, in order to permanently keep their property. From 2000 to 2019, 84% of DOJ forfeitures were civil forfeitures, while from 2000 to 2016, 98% of Treasury forfeitures were civil forfeitures. The vast majority of those civil forfeitures—93% of DOJ’s and 98% of Treasury’s—were processed administratively, meaning property owners never got their day in court.

While forfeiture is a multibillion-dollar business for law enforcement, most seizures and forfeitures are quite small. From 2015 to 2019, half of all DOJ currency forfeitures were worth less than $12,090. From 2015 to 2016, half of Treasury’s currency forfeitures were worth less than $7,320. Those figures show how ordinary Americans—not drug lords or mafia kingpins—bear the brunt of federal forfeiture abuses.

The Institute for Justice advocates to end forfeiture through litigation, strategic research, and legislation. IJ has class action lawsuits aimed at stopping suspicionless seizures of cash at airports, roadside seizures on highways, and the FBI’s unconstitutional forfeiture notices. IJ’s landmark study looking at state and federal forfeiture, Policing for Profit, is now in its third edition. IJ’s advocacy has led to Maine, Nebraska, and New Mexico ending civil forfeiture and replacing it with criminal forfeiture.  

Find your Representative with this helpful link: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

After your obligatory chuckle about using a governmental website to find your member, call him or her to express your deep anger at this awful practice and demand they vote to end civil forfeiture. Presumably, if enough people demand the abolition of civil forfeiture, the gremlins and goblins who do the actual bill drafting will get down to work making America a better, freer place.

God Bless America, whose citizens may one day live lives free of Overweening Administrative State Oppression as their Creator and Founding Fathers intended.

1. You’ve Got to Spend Money to Take Money: DOJ Announces $6B in Contracts to Ramp Up Forfeiture - Institute for Justice (ij.org)