Jeff Sessions On Asset Forfeiture
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 5 months ago
Speaking at a National District Attorneys Association conference in Minneapolis Monday, Sessions said state and local law enforcement could expect changes from U.S. Attorneys in several areas: increased prosecution of gun crimes, immigration offenses, gang activity, and prescription drug abuse, as well as increased asset seizure by the federal government.
“[W]e hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture—especially for drug traffickers,” Sessions said. “With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures. No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime. Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners.”
Except that the use of drug traffickers to make his point is a red herring. Asset forfeiture has occurred with TSA when travelers carry more money than the fedgov thinks they should be, when local police get a call from a pissed off woman who wants her ex- to get his guns confiscated, local, county and state police when a person is suspected or charged with a crime (not convicted of that crime).
Sessions is using drug traffickers as the straw man. But I have a question for attorney general Sessions. If criminals shouldn’t be able to keep the profits of their illegal activities, then what about the federal government? Should they keep their profits, and what makes the heavy taxation any different than theft or home invasion in the middle of the night by masked criminals?
In Scripture, kings who demanded more than God Himself (a tenth) are looked upon as evil. So too are kings who banned weapons. For evidence you need to go no farther than Nebuchadnezzar. Between sales tax, local taxes, state taxes, federal taxes and FICA, we’re way above a tenth, and thus the government is a criminal organization in God’s eyes.
Turning from my question to Sessions, I would also point out as I have before that the notion of a debt to society is a wicked abomination. In Biblical law, when someone is guilty of theft, he repays the innocent party from whom he stole multiple times over. If not, he might just have been put to death. Indentured servitude has a rich Biblical history, and it has to do with repaying debts.
If you raped, kidnapped or murdered someone, the town would take you outside the gates, following Biblical law, and stone you to death. There was no notion of rehabilitation, and the rehabilitative role of modern prisons is a function of pagan philosophy embodied in contemporary men like John Dewey, who also fathered the modern American school system. Man is a tabula rasa, and so he can be unlearned, so they say. There is no accountability, no judgment, no justice in modern “criminal justice.”
No man owes a debt to society at large. Society at large cannot collect a debt from an individual and call or consider it righteous, for it is not, it never was, and it never will be. Prisons are evil, a hotbed for criminal and pagan Muslim recruitment, and the posse – the judgment of the community – far from being vigilante justice, is righteous judgment. [The use of prisons in counterinsurgency is one of the many reasons the U.S. failed so badly in both Iraq and Afghanistan].
Neither the government nor society is God, it cannot lay claim to debts from its citizens, and it cannot rehabilitate criminals.
On July 19, 2017 at 8:43 am, June J said:
Excellent post. Electing Trump over Felonia Von Pantsuit seems to have only delayed the inevitable boot of a total police state.
On July 19, 2017 at 9:43 am, DAN III said:
Pardon my repetition. However:
“Democrat/Republican….Left Wing/Right Wing, same bird !”
On July 19, 2017 at 11:18 am, Randolph Scott said:
Great post, and I can add nothing to it. More God, Guns and Glory is what we need to remove the evil ones and make take back pour liberties.
On July 19, 2017 at 12:04 pm, Col. Douglas Mortimer said:
I’m with Randolph. Theft is theft, gubmint sanctioned or otherwise.
On July 19, 2017 at 3:33 pm, Yuri said:
Hmmm, only one item on the following list approximates the plunder and tyranny $h!tbag Sessions advocates.
“let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled ….”
Celebrate Serfdom!
HAIL TRUMP!
On July 19, 2017 at 6:35 pm, Joe said:
My cynicism and disgust are snowballing … here’s a link to an retrospective and update on Federal seizure policy…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-19/feds-just-expanded-civil-asset-forfeiture-laws-nationwide
On July 19, 2017 at 9:42 pm, George said:
“…we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures.”
– Of course they do. And yes, Sessions is using drug traffickers as a straw man because that is the only way that he can “justify” this most unjust process of robbing the populace. The stark reality of this matter is that asset forfeiture has evolved into a very profitable industry not only for police, but for auctioneers (who auction off the booty that the cops bring in from the street), the township and county government officials that encourage (off record, of course) the practice, lawyers that hold seminars for cops on how to comport themselves when conducting raids on homes and confiscate property under this forfeiture law, the arms businesses who ultimately are paid with confiscated funds for arms, munitions and body armor, and finally the Fed Gov itself which “adopts” the confiscated money and items and then returns part of it to the local police forces. So what about this is “not to like” for the corrupt cops and those corrupt local, county and Federal governments?
What needs to be said here is that only a small part of this “business” involves busting real drug dealers and criminals. There are literally thousands of people who have been robbed of their cash, their vehicle, and the funds in their bank accounts via their debit cards while traveling through the country and the robbers are local and state cops who have pulled them over for some real or made-up traffic violation and then claim that the K9 in the cruiser “smelled cocaine” as justification for the robbery. There does not need to be any cocaine or other drugs actually found in the victim’s car, the cop’s “suspicion” is enough. Others have lost their home and all possessions within that home because their son (unbeknownst to the owner of the house) who still lives at home with his parents has been found to be in possession of some quantity of illegal drug.
Police have been given a new tool to help them rob people of their money in the form of an electronic device that allows them to insert the debit card confiscated from a victim of their highway scam into said device and strip all funds from the victim’s bank account. Cases like this are numerous and the source of a lot of ill gotten gain to corrupt police and corrupt politicians. Let us not kid ourselves; a good portion of this money finds its way into the pockets of police, local officials and politicians throughout the country. The US has become like Mexico- incredibly corrupt as well as inept and for this and a host of other reasons the nation is bound to fail in the not too distant future.
On July 19, 2017 at 11:15 pm, DAN III said:
George,
Here, allow me to shorten your lengthy and detailed remark in five, short words:
“There Are No Good Cops !”
On July 20, 2017 at 12:07 pm, Michael said:
Jeff Sessions is just evil. Plain and simple. An evil statist. He cares not one whit for liberty, freedom, etc.
On July 20, 2017 at 6:54 pm, Randolph Scott said:
As Dan III has said “There Are No Good Cops !”
What we have her in America are thugs with badges. That is all they are, scared for their piss ant fucking lives, punks ass bastards who kill citizens pets, no good chickenshits that throw stun grenades into citizens houses, and lying thieving sons of bitches that rob us of our property.
Judgement day is coming, I don’t know when but I do know it is coming. These thugs will either fall by .308’s, 5.56’s or by the Hand of the Lord. I does not matter to me how they go.
On July 23, 2017 at 6:40 pm, dutch said:
Cops and the government are in cahoots to illegally remove your property and your money without due process, which is unconstitutional. This must stop, and if Jeff Sessions wants to expand this power, he needs to be removed immediately. I am a conservative, but this isn’t conservative, this is government gone too far and trampling all over what our forefathers wanted.