The Kent Hovind Story 11 APR 2013

The Kent Hovind Story: The IRS, Something God did NOT Create.

Non-Christian fb friends will want to see the legal issues in this post.

Some of us have already had noxious knocks on our doors. Minds feel safer w/ law & order, they feel scared facing repression, secret police & mock trials. For good reason, more people were killed by secret police in the 20th century than all the wars of that century! Defenseless citizens are subjected to constant surveillance, illegal interrogation, torture & terrorism by their govt. As a soviet shrink enlightened a political dissident, “Your disease is dissent.”

Since its creation, the dog that has been sicced on Amer. dissenters has been the IRS, which keeps secret profiles on everyone & falsely codes dissenters of govt. tyranny with false codes like “drug dealer”. (This was told me directly by an ex-IRS whistleblower, Joe Bannister, who ended up in a secret Fed. prison island while I was in.)

After coming out hard against the elite PTSNB, Father Coughlin & Texe Marrs had the IRS sicced on them. Their investigations showed the IRS owed them, but others haven’t been so fortunate. (Another topic—too large for here—is how the IRS is used to control churches. Gov’t. sanctioned IRS approved churches sign a document declaring all rel. are equal, & no one will be required to renounce other beliefs! So much for separation of church & state!)

Now to Why Pastor Kent Hovind was put in prison.…(He has strong appeal issues; so did I, they were ignored.)…Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) began Jan. ‘89 shortly after Kent & family moved to Pensacola, FL. The outreach grew quickly & soon he was travelling to all 50 states & over 30 foreign countries. They produced videos & DVD’s of the creation seminar & allowed free copying . Kent Hovind did over 100 debates with evolutionists, 20 of these are also available on DVD.

In ‘99 CSE became part of Faith Baptist Fellowship & the 2 (at that time) properties were transferred into their name. In 2002 Pastor Mooneyhan was retiring & the board of elders voted to disband FBF. To prevent CSE from being “orphaned”, church ministry trusts were created and the property & bank acts. were put in these trusts to give Kent Hovind the freedom to travel & preach as he had been doing 700+ times/year. So what happened?

Over the many years, Kent Hovind’s wife would withdraw money to pay ministry bills & compensate the people serving in the ministry. In 2002 this stopped. On 7/13/2006, w/ no warning or notice of any kind that there was or had been a problem, about 20 armed IRS agents swarmed onto the ministry property as Kent was preparing for staff devotions & his wife was sleeping. 4 armed agents surrounded her bed & woke her up to handcuff her in her nightgown. She was not allowed to get dressed, put on a robe or go to the bathroom even though she begged for these simple courtesies.

They were taken to the Fed. courthouse & indicted for “structuring”. They had no clue about what that was let alone that they had broken it. They banked at the same bank & normally at the same teller for over 10 years. They learned later laws were passed years ago to try to slow or stop drug dealers from moving large amounts of cash. Any transfers over $10,000 would require the bank to fill out a form & notify the govt. Although 4 times Kent Hovind’s wife did take out over $10,000, the bank filled out their form. No problem.

They had also made it illegal to “break down” a large sum into smaller amounts to “evade” this reporting requirement. For example: if you had $25,000 to deposit but broke it down into 3 deposits of less than $10,000 & made 3 deposits at the same or even different banks on the same day you could be found guilty of one count of “structuring” and sentenced to 5 years in prison! As it turns out, the IRS had cherry picked 45 times out of hundreds of transactions over the years that were under $10,000 & charged each one as a separate count of structuring even though they averaged 12 days apart (not same day), were not part of a large amount being “broken down”, were not from drugs or any other illegal trade and were not trying to evade anything. It was money donated or earned in legitimate ways & spent on legitimate ministry bills.

After a 2 wk. trial their attorneys advised them not to even give a defence since no laws had been broken & in Amer., in theory at least, you are innocent till proven guilty. (Sounds like mine who said we needed no defense because they never proved anything.) It is not illegal to take any amount of money out of your own bank! (Unless they say it is.)

As Hovind’s attorney was giving his closing argument he was reading the jury instruction verbatim that said the amount had to be over $10,000 in order to structure a transaction. The Asst. US Attorney stood up & objected to her own jury instruction! The judge took a 45 min. recess & returned with a new jury instruction that said if they found that Kent Hovind & his wife had taken out less than $10,000 then they must be found as guilty! The Hovind’s attorneys objected since this was not what the law said & changing jury instructions after trial is against the rules. The objections were overruled and they were found guilty. Kent Hovind was given 10 yrs. & his wife a year & a day. She is now out.

If this case is not overturned, anyone who takes any money out of their own bank will eventually be guilty of structuring. If you took $100 out each week for 100 weeks you would be guilty of 100 counts of structuring & could be given 500 years in prison!

To make matters worse, the govt. said all the money w/drawn in those 45 counts should be given to them – even though the govt. admitted that the money was used for legal purposes!

Kent’s lawyers objected since there were no drugs involved, the money was earned in legitimate ways & spent on ministry bills years go. There was never a tax loss to the government. The fellow ministers at CSE testified that they had paid all taxes they owed. There were no damages & no one can figure out what this money was “owed” to the govt. for but the judge overruled the objections. So now, Kent Hovind was not only in prison, but he also owed $430,000! Next, the govt. seized all of CSE’s property.

All 3 forms (CIR, 940 & 941) that Kent is in prison for, were expired forms. The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) says he cannot be penalized for not filling out a form that is expired yet he is still in prison. If the SC rules for them on this one it will not only free him & remove forfeiture but will help thousands of others currently in prison. The PRA can be raised as a complete defence at any time, even post convictions. A PRA defense has never been brought before the Sup. Ct. yet.

This case is one of the first to bring this issue before the SC since the 1995 PRA was passed. This issue is HUGE for many. Seewww.penaltyprotestor.com for lots more on the PRA. The 11th circ. ignored this issue in their denial of his appeal. Just the PRA alone will remove 57 of the 58 counts Kent Hovind is in prison for. Count 58 was for “threatening” an IRS agent in the “DUE administration” of his duty. When he was asked during trial how Kent Hovind threatened him, he said it was when he prayed for him in his daily radio program! Kent got 3 years for that!