Here's the howler from the motion:
Libertas Lex wrote:The government introduced no evidence that Mr. Hendrickson‘s returns were in fact false. The government introduced no direct, reliable, subject-to-cross-examination evidence that Mr. Hendrickson‘s earnings constituted taxable income according to the Internal Revenue Code. Although Cheek contemplates the admission of extrinsic evidence to show intent, Gaudin commands that the government show that the defendant‘s under oath statement was materially false. The government here completely failed to make this showing.
The brief in support of the motion appears to be a cut-and-paste of what we've seen from Hendrickson in the past, but the following is worth commenting on:
Libertas Lex wrote:As Mr. Hendrickson eloquently articulated at his April 19 allocution, the government and the Court stubbornly claim that "all" earnings are taxable when the law (including Treasury regulations) clearly states that only "some" earnings are taxable. The government has never shown and cannot show that "all" earnings are taxable and has never shown that Mr. Hendrickson‘s earnings are within the "some" taxable wages.
LL has it backwards here, because the general rule found in the statute and regulations is that *all* income is taxable, *all* wages are subject to FICA, and *all* wages are subject to withholding, and that the burden is on the taxpayer to show an exclusion or exception, not on the government to show inclusion.
Moving on the claim that there was no evidence about the falsity of the returns, we find the following:
Libertas Lex wrote:Uchimura makes clear that the government bears the burden of showing, through direct, admissible evidence, not only that the challenged item of information on the sworn document is objectively false, but also that the item of information is "necessary" to determine the proper tax. Here, the government presented not even a scintilla of evidence supporting either of these essential elements. No witness directly testified that anything on Mr. Hendrickson‘s forms is false. Further, the government presented no witness or document supporting the notion that providing a number other than "zero" on any of the forms at issue is "necessary" to the determination of Mr. Hendrickson‘s alleged tax liability. In fact, the prosecution based its case on the proposition that all that is needed to determine Mr. Hendrickson‘s tax liabilities are the unverified W-2‘s filed with the IRS by the company for which Mr. Hendrickson worked.
In sum, the government, with the Court‘s assistance, successfully portrayed Mr. Hendrickson as doggedly disagreeing with IRS officials (some of whom ultimately agreed with Mr. Hendrickson) and federal judges on the issue of whether his "earnings" were taxable income. The government did not, however, present one witness or one document directly evidencing that Mr. Hendrickson‘s filings were "false" or, further, that they were false as to any "material" matter. The government tried a case by mere implication—presenting evidence only that the company for which Mr. Hendrickson worked inserted numbers on unsigned, unverified W-2 forms and sent those forms to the IRS, and the IRS in some cases accepted those numbers and rejected Mr. Hendrickson‘s under-oath rebuttals declaring that the correct number for Code-defined "wages" was zero. The government presented no witness testifying how or why the W-2s were correct and truthful, or how or why Mr. Hendrickson‘s rebuttals were not correct and truthful. Indeed, the government did not offer one word of substantive testimony about the contents of any of these forms. Nor did it present any testimony about how or why Mr. Hendrickson‘s rebuttals in any way obstructed or prevented the IRS from determining the proper amount of taxes. The government therefore failed completely to present any evidence of "falseness" or of "materiality".
Failing to mention that officers of Hendrickson's employers actually testified as to his employment is something that I would say borders on the unethical.