Source: https://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/2019/01/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 19:51:30+00:00

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I listened to this podcast covering a moment history where the President and Vice-President were each under separate unrelated criminal investigations. This focuses on the Vice-President. Everybody knows about the outcome of the President -- resignation and pardon by his sucdessor, Gerald Ford (I do summarize the key background below). For most of us, if we know VP Spiro Agnew at all, it is as a footnote and most of us (like one famous Supreme Court Justice at least claimed) don't read footnotes. We ought to. Sometimes. Terry Gross and her guests lift this footnote and brings it to general public attention because it is relevant to today. Bad Behavior By People In High Office': Rachel Maddow On The Lessons Of Spiro Agnew (NPR Fresh Air 1/9/19), here.
And, not only is it history, there is a federal tax crime involved which is the excuse for this posting.
The Fresh Air presentation is a good summary podcast (43 minutes) of a larges podcast series called Bagman, here, a Rachel Maddow presentation (without blatant political rhetoric). Bagman is a 6 episode series. I listen to the larger series next on my daily walks, but I can highly recommend the Fresh Air presentation because Terry Gross is a good guide to get to the essentials in a single podcast of 43 minutes. Many of you may not want to go into the details after the Fresh Air presentation.
But, I will give my own shorter summary of this event and its historic setting - Watergate (Wikipedia here).
The Watergate break-in had occurred. It looked like some hacks of no consequence breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. But, as the facts dribbled out, it turned out to be a political operation orchestrated from the White House. The ripples from that were slow to start. But built to a crescendo that eventually led to President Nixon's resignation. But before getting there, there was a grand jury investigation. Some persons (including the infamous John Dean) pled guilty. The grand jury indicted former White House aides, including Presidential top level assistants Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and the Attorney General, John Mitchell. Nixon appointed Elliot Richardson to replace Mitchell as Attorney General. Richardson then named Archibald Cox as special counsel to investigate the Watergate scandal.
The Senate Watergate Committee then uncovered Nixon's taping of Oval Office conversations. Cox, as special counsel, was keenly interested in the tapes and issued a subpoena. Nixon refused to produce and fought all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ordered him to produce. Nixon ordered Cox to drop the subpoena. Cox refused. On October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox in order to stop the compulsion of the subpoena. Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the next in line, the Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the next in line, Solicitor General Robert Bork (yes, that Robert Bork), to fire Cox. Bork fired Cox. That culminating event, happening on a weekend and now enshrined in history as the Saturday Night Massacre, shocked the country and led to Nixon's resignation.
A few days before the Saturday Night Massacre, the Vice-President, Spiro Agnew resigned and immediately thereafter pled nolo contender to a single tax crime. A nolo contendere plea is sometimes accepted by courts for defendants who will take the punishment but do not want to formally admit that they committed the crime(s). Agnew could have been indicted for a slew of other crimes, all unrelated to Watergate and stretching back to corruption before he was VP (but continuing while he was VP). Because of the crisis the country was in, Richardson agreed (over the objection of the federal prosecutors involved) to permit Agnew to plead nolo contendere to a single count of tax evasion with an agreement that he would serve no time and be sentenced only to three years of unsupervised vacation.
The podcast discusses the events leading to the Spiro resignation and plea of nolo contendere to tax evasion in the midst of the Watergate crisis sweeping over Nixon's administration that would soon lead to Nixon's resignation.
Richardson and the prosecutors had to deal with such issues as to (i) whether a sitting VP could be indicted (sound familiar) and (ii) whether, since the evidence of mass corruption by Agnew seemed so strong, should DOJ insist on some jail time either by plea or after indictment and conviction or, on the other hand, was it important to the country to get his resignation which required the sweet deal nolo contendere plea.
I highly recommend the Fresh Air offering. After listening to the full podcast series, I may offer more.
Restitution is a common feature in criminal tax convictions. Although statutory restitution excludes the Title 26 tax crimes, restitution is allowed for the ubiquitous Klein conspiracy (the defraud conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. 371). And, where statutory restitution is not available, DOJ Tax commonly requires contractual restitution in plea agreements. I provide materials on restitution in tax cases at the end of this blog entry.
If you’re charged with a crime, the Sixth Amendment guarantees you the right to a jury trial. From this, it follows that the prosecutor must prove to a jury all of the facts legally necessary to support your term of incarceration. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466 (2000). Neither is this rule limited to prison time. If a court orders you to pay a fine to the government, a jury must also find all the facts necessary to justify that punishment too. Southern Union Co. v. United States, 567 U. S. 343 (2012).
But what if instead the court orders you to pay restitution to victims? Must a jury find all the facts needed to justify a restitution order as well? That’s the question presented in this case.
[T]he government argues that the Sixth Amendment doesn’t apply to restitution orders because the amount of restitution is dictated only by the extent of the victim’s loss and thus has no “statutory maximum.” But the government’s argument misunderstands the teaching of our cases. We’ve used the term “statutory maximum” to refer to the harshest sentence the law allows a court to impose based on facts a jury has found or the defendant has admitted. Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 303 (2004). In that sense, the statutory maximum for restitution is usually zero, because a court can’t award any restitution without finding additional facts about the victim’s loss. And just as a jury must find any facts necessary to authorize a steeper prison sentence or fine, it would seem to follow that a jury must find any facts necessary to support a (nonzero) restitution order.
The government is not without a backup argument, but it appears to bear problems of its own. The government suggests that the Sixth Amendment doesn’t apply to restitution orders because restitution isn’t a criminal penalty, only a civil remedy that compensates victims for their economic losses. But the Sixth Amendment’s jury trial right expressly applies “[i]n all criminal prosecutions,” and the government concedes that restitution is imposed as part of a defendant’s criminal conviction. Federal statutes, too, describe restitution as a “penalty” imposed on the defendant as part of his criminal sentence, as do our cases. Besides, if restitution really fell beyond the reach of the Sixth Amendment’s protections in criminal prosecutions, we would then have to consider the Seventh Amendment and its independent protection of the right to a jury trial in civil cases.
If the government’s arguments appear less than convincing, maybe it’s because they’re difficult to reconcile with the Constitution’s original meaning. The Sixth Amendment was understood as preserving the historical role of the jury at common law. And as long ago as the time of Henry VIII, an English statute entitling victims to the restitution of stolen goods allowed courts to order the return only of those goods mentioned in the indictment and found stolen by a jury. In America, too, courts held that in prosecutions for larceny, the jury usually had to find the value of the stolen property before restitution to the victim could be ordered. And it’s hard to see why the right to a jury trial should mean less to the people today than it did to those at the time of the Sixth and Seventh Amendments’ adoption.
So why does the jury trial still mean less to the people today facing restitution punishments than it did to those at the time of the Sixth and Seventh Amendments’ adoption? The only answer I can provide is hinted in the title of post. Supposed SCOTUS originalists like Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh apparently do not want to here follow originalist principles to what would appear to be their logical conclusion. Supposed SCOTUS liberals like Justices Ginsburg and Kagan do not want to here protect a certain type of right of a certain type of criminal defendant. (Justice Sotomayor, who never shrinks from following constitutional rights wherever she thinks they must extend, joined Justice Gorsuch's dissent here).
In In re Grand Jury Subpoena, Dated March 21, 2018 (9th Cir. 12/28/18) (unpublished), here, the Court affirmed a district court order of contempt for compelling the wife of a grand jury target to produce records of her foreign bank activity for the years 2011 through 2016. She asserted that the spousal testimonial privilege protects her from compelled production of the documents. The district court rejected her claim of spousal testimonial privilege and held her in contempt for her continuing refusal to produce. The Ninth Circuit held that the spousal testimonial privilege was not applicable.
The Ninth Circuit's analysis is contained in one paragraph with one footnote, so I just cut and paste them.
Doe asserts that the spousal testimonial privilege protects her from producing documents responsive to the subpoena because the grand jury is currently investigating possible federal tax crimes committed by her husband. n1 For the spousal testimonial privilege to apply, “the anticipated testimony ‘[must] in fact be adverse’ to the nonwitness spouse.” United States v. Van Cauwenberghe, 827 F.2d 424, 431 (9th Cir. 1987) (citation omitted); see also United States v. Fomichev, 899 F.3d 766, 771 (9th Cir. 2018) (“[T]he witness-spouse alone has a privilege to refuse to testify adversely.”) (emphasis added) (citation omitted). Here, “the testimonial aspect of [Doe’s] response to a subpoena duces tecum does nothing more than establish the existence, authenticity, and custody” of any responsive foreign bank account records. United States v. Hubbell, 530 U.S. 27, 40–41 (2000). Because this bare testimonial aspect of Doe’s act of production does not itself adversely affect her husband’s case, Doe is not relieved of her obligation to produce foreign bank account records over which she has care, custody, or control.
n1 Although Doe also raised claims of privilege under the Fifth Amendment, and the marital communications privilege, before the district court, these arguments were not raised on appeal and are therefore waived. Smith v. Marsh, 194 F.3d 1045, 1052 (9th Cir. 1999) (“[O]n appeal, arguments not raised by a party in its opening brief are deemed waived.”).

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