PASTOR KENT HOVIND FACES
LIFE IN PRISON FOR CHALLENGING GOVERNMENT'S UNLAWFUL ACTIONS
AGAINST HIM
SEE: http://the-trumpet-online.com/hovind-faces-life-prison-challenging-governments-unlawful-actions/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes; original by Alex Newman of the New American:
Pastor Kent Hovind (shown), a powerful advocate of biblical creationism who has already served almost 100 months in federal prison as part of what his supporters say amounts to a ruthless government campaign of religious persecution, is now potentially facing up to 100 years behind bars. As federal prosecutors prepare to make their case for keeping Dr. Hovind incarcerated for the rest of his natural life, however, a growing grassroots campaign across America is demanding that he be set free — and that those responsible for allegedly railroading him be held accountable, including potentially the judge, who has developed a reputation among those following the case as having a strong anti-Christian bias.
With the IRS now embroiled in escalating scandal surrounding politically motivated attacks against conservatives and Tea Party groups, analysts say Hovind’s case is now especially important and ought to be probed by Congress. There are also a number of irregularities in every step of the process that resulted in the pastor landing behind bars, his supporters say. Meanwhile, a Justice Department attorney who helped secure Hovind’s original conviction was arrested for attempting to rape a child shortly after he won the case against the pastor. Critics of the prosecution cite that, and other facts, as further evidence that Hovind was targeted for his beliefs and his effectiveness in challenging the evolution theory and other key elements of the secular faith, rather than for actual tax violations.
Dr. Hovind’s original case, which resulted in the first 10-year prison sentence, had raised eyebrows nationwide long before the latest twist in the ordeal. After reportedly going through multiple grand juries to finally get to a trial, with a judge whom critics said displayed blatant hostility against Christians, Hovind was convicted of a number of “financial crimes.” Taxation-focused analyst Peter Reilly, following the case in Forbes, suggested Hovind may have followed bad advice from a “tax protester.” Hovind, though, has consistently maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal, and growing numbers of supporters across America agree with him. Even if he were in fact guilty of the charges, which Hovind and his supporters deny, critics of the prosecution and court case have been pointing out that the average jail time for those convicted of tax-related crimes in 2013 was 14 months. Many simply pay a fine.
Obama ally and race-monger Al Sharpton, for example, who still owes millions in back taxes, has visited the White House dozens of times in recent years. Timothy “TurboTax” Geithner, who failed to pay his taxes despite signing an agreement indicating that he needed to and understood that, was even selected to be Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Democrat Representative Charlie Rangel, who for years served as the chairman of the congressional committee in charge of writing the federal tax code, came under major fire after failing to pay taxes on rental income from a villa he owned in the Dominican Republic. As of September 2013, over 318,000 federal employees owed some $3.3 billion in back taxes. Not one of them is in prison for failure to pay.
However, Pastor Hovind, often referred to as “Dr. Dino” due to his passion for dinosaurs, has been behind bars in 20 different prisons for over eight years so far on seemingly far less serious charges — and could remain there until death if prosecutors and the judge get their way. The latest charges surround an effort Hovind made from prison to contest the liens that were allegedly improperly placed on his ministry’s property by the federal government. He is being accused of “contempt of court” and alleged “mail fraud” for using the prison mail system to fight back against having the ministry’s assets seized by filing what has been described as a notice that litigation on the property was ongoing. The upcoming case to determine Hovind’s fate was supposed to take place next week, but has again been postponed by officials, this time until March, due to “family issues.”
“We need bold Christians to make a statement,” said Rudy Davis, a friend of Pastor Hovind who speaks with him daily and is working to raise awareness of what he says is relentless government persecution against Dr. Dino. “Mainstream media is ignoring Dr. Kent’s case…. We desperately need to speak up now.” According to Davis, who describes himself as a Bible-believing follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spiritual answer for why Hovind is being persecuted boils down to this: “Kent was exposing Satan’s kingdom and Satan’s deceptions.” Numerous Hovind supporters, including popular firebrand Reverend James David Manning and Southern Baptist leader Reverend Wiley Drake, have expressed similar sentiments, indicating that Hovind is indeed being persecuted.
“I along with so many others are deeply grieved in our hearts when we hear that they are trying to keep Kent Hovind in prison for the remainder of his life as people were looking forward to him being released in 2015,” Davis, one of Hovind’s most passionate supporters, told The New American. “I truly believe this is an innocent man in prison and a POW (Prisoner of War) in the spiritual warfare of Good vs Evil. God will get the glory in Kent’s case no matter what. As you may know, Kent will not compromise with the devil and has maintained his innocence the entire 99 months that he has been incarcerated…. We are asking that you educate yourself and take whatever action God leads on behalf of our brother in the Lord, Kent Hovind.”
In an e-mail to The New American about why the federal government would persecute Hovind, Davis pointed to a video where the pastor explores some of the horrifying atrocities perpetrated under cover of the evolution theory. Hovind, a former science teacher, firmly rejects the theory as an attack on the Bible and the Christian faith. For years, he traveled the nation exposing flaws in school textbooks on the issue. In the introduction to the video, Pastor Hovind declares that the evolution theory is “not only dumb, it’s dangerous.” Prior to being thrown in prison, the pastor was among the nation’s leading advocates for creation science. His seminars and debates against evolutionists had been viewed countless times online by people around the world, and supporters say he was quickly changing hearts and minds.
Then, the federal government launched its campaign to lock him up on tax charges. The first 12 counts surrounded Hovind’s alleged failure to withhold taxes from employees of his Christian ministry. “First of all, we didn’t have any employees,” Hovind explained in a recorded interview posted on YouTube, adding that all the missionaries and volunteers were independent contractors responsible for their own tax filings. “Churches are not obligated to withhold anyway, and I showed all the laws in a 2005 affidavit.” He also said he asked the IRS what he should do. The agency never responded, until showing up to arrest him with a heavily armed SWAT team in what critics say was extreme overkill — to put it mildly, considering that his wife was dragged out of bed at gunpoint and not even allowed to get dressed. One video urging Hovind’s release cited 20 attacks on the pastor that “North Korea would welcome.”
The second set of charges involved “structuring,” which, as Hovind put it in the online interview, “I had never heard of,” just like the overwhelming majority of Americans. Essentially, the controversial statute in question — written primarily for drug dealers and organized crime syndicates, not churches or pastors — makes it a crime to take out over $10,000 per day from a bank account in multiple rounds, if the intent is to prevent the creation of federally mandated records used for spying on Americans’ financial activities in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Hovind says he did no such thing.
“After trial, the judge changed the jury instructions and told the jury ‘if you find out that the Hovinds took out less than $10,000, you have to find them guilty,’ which is not what the law says,” Hovind explained from prison, suggesting that the judge misled the jury. “The law says over $10,000. So the jury, of course, confused by all that, said, ‘yeah, they took out less than $10,000, that’s obvious.’” Then, using drug statutes, the Justice Department’s pedophile attorney on the case demanded that the church’s money be forfeited, and so sought to seize the ministry’s property under asset forfeiture schemes also designed for drug dealers and crime bosses.
Shortly after attempting to seize all of the ministry’s property, one of the U.S. government lawyers involved in prosecuting Pastor Hovind was arrested by the FBI in a sting operation in Detroit for trying to have sex with a five-year-old child. Assistant U.S. Attorney John David “Roy” Atchison, after being charged with “enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity using the Internet,” “aggravated sexual abuse,” and “traveling across state lines to have sex with someone under the age of 12,” ended up committing suicide by hanging himself in jail. The other assistant U.S. attorney on Hovind’s case, Michelle Heldmyer, was in the news in the early 1990s after her husband was reportedly found to be on the same mailing list for obscene pornography as a judge who killed himself after getting caught.
The final charge against Hovind, according to critics of the prosecution and the court, is also perhaps the most outlandish. According to prosecutors, Hovind allegedly “threatened” an IRS agent while the agent was doing his “duty.” The name of the agent and the nature of the threat have never been publicly revealed, but Hovind thinks he might know. “The only thing we could figure out, there was never anything on that, other than that I prayed for the guy on the radio after they raided the ministry,” Hovind said in the interview from jail posted on YouTube. “I was doing a radio program and I prayed for him, I said, ‘Lord, I’m your child, I want you to handle this’.” Hovind says he was essentially given three additional years in prison for praying on the radio.
While the prosecution was suspicious enough to critics, Hovind supporters also say U.S. District Judge Margaret Casey Rodgers improperly played a crucial role in helping the Justice Department lock Hovind away. Across the Internet, websites and videos dedicated to freeing Hovind declare the judge to have a strong “anti-Christian bias.” Among other evidence, they point to a 2009 case in which the judge threatened two school officials with prison time for saying a prayer before a meal at an athletic banquet. In Hovind’s trial, meanwhile, the judge was accused in multiple sworn affidavits by witnesses to have declared the pastor’s alleged crimes to be “worse than rape.” Even more troubling, perhaps, is that the transcripts were allegedly altered to remove the extreme biased-revealing statement, and the audio transcript has still not been released despite repeated requests, according to supporters. The same judge is scheduled to hear the upcoming trial, despite requests for a different judge.
Pastor Hovind, who still sounds upbeat and full of joy in phone interviews posted online, despite spending over eight years in federal prison, thinks a proper inquiry would be appropriate — and that a definite judgment will come eventually, even if it’s in the next life. “I welcome a full investigation before Congress,” said Hovind, who has always been open about his refusal to accept 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from the IRS because he believes it unconstitutionally interferes with his right to speak freely. “There will be a full investigation before God one of these days.”
With Hovind set to be back in court next month on charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life, supporters are encouraging Christians and all Americans to take action. Among other options, Hovind’s friend Davis urged people to pray, watch Hovind’s videos on YouTube, get educated about the case, sign petitions, donate to and support the Free Kent Hovind movement, write to or even visit Hovind in prison in the Florida panhandle, and educate others on the case. Other supporters are urging Americans to contact their elected representatives about the case and demand a thorough, impartial investigation. More information on the whole ordeal from Hovind supporters can be found at www.FreeKentHovind.com and www.2Peter3.com.
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Kent Hovind explains the false charges against him in 8 minutes:
Kent Hovind: Political Prisoner?
By Chuck Baldwin
February 19, 2015
Kent Hovind is a creation-science evangelist and Baptist minister who has already served eight years of a ten-year prison sentence for alleged tax evasion. Kent has a master’s degree in education. He founded and operated Creation Science Evangelism and has traveled extensively presenting creation-science lectures. He has debated evolutionists in over one hundred debates across the country. Kent also operated Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, Florida. This was a very popular creation-science museum/theme park. Kent also produced scores of videos on the subject of creation-science that have circled the globe and been translated in over thirty languages. Many people affectionately refer to Kent as “Dr. Dino.” He and his wife have three children; and all three of their children (all grown) worked alongside of him in the ministry.
Kent and I were college classmates for one year in Michigan. I was a sophomore when Kent transferred to the school from Illinois. I transferred colleges after that year. Kent stayed and graduated from the college in Michigan. After graduation in 1975, my wife and I moved to Pensacola, Florida, to begin our ministerial work. Some years later, Kent and his family also moved to Pensacola. So, I’ve known Kent a long time.
Kent considered his ministry a church and the people who worked for him as missionaries. He did not incorporate under the 501c3 non-profit organization status. Of course, the Internal Revenue Code states that churches are not required to do so; that, as a church, they automatically have tax-exempt status. Accordingly, Kent believed his ministry was tax-exempt.
Nevertheless, in 2004, IRS agents raided Kent’s home and ultimately brought multiple counts of tax-evasion-type charges, including “structuring,” against him. “Structuring” means deliberately making cash deposits or withdrawals of just under the supposed reporting level of ten thousand dollars. (Egad! God forbid that the IRS not know the details of our banking transactions.) In 2006, Kent went to trial and was convicted on all counts and sentenced to ten years in federal prison. He has been there ever since.
But now the story gets bizarre. Federal prosecutors are currently bringing charges of mail fraud against Kent for using the mail system from inside prison to challenge the lien that the IRS placed upon his property. And, are you ready for this? They want Kent to serve an additional twenty to one hundred years in prison. Obviously, even if he received twenty years, this amounts to a life sentence.
See this report:
By contrast, the Rev. Al Sharpton is reported to owe nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes and penalties from many years ago. But our federal government doesn’t put Mr. Sharpton in the Big House; it invites him to the White House instead.
See the report here:
Regardless of where one comes down on the whole tax-exempt status issue for churches and non-profit organizations, here is a very relevant fact: the average time spent behind bars for tax “crimes” is between two to five years. For instance, Pete Rose served five months; Chuck Berry served four months; Aldo Gucci served one year; Sun Myung Moon served eighteen months; and Leona Helmsley served four years. Kent has already served much more time than any of those people did.
To help put it in perspective even further, the infamous Chicago gangster, Al Capone, was released after eight years in prison. And, as everyone knows, the only reason the government put him prison for tax evasion was because they couldn’t obtain the evidence they needed to convict him of murder, racketeering, bribery, etc. Yet, our federal government wants to keep a Christian minister--who never committed an act of violence against anyone--in prison for the rest of his natural life. In truth, there are thousands of people who have been convicted of some form of homicide who have not spent as many years in prison as Kent has already.
Back in 2001, restaurant owner, fisherman, and ship builder, Frank Patti (also of Pensacola, Florida) was indicted on 24 counts of tax evasion of more than $12 million. He was sentenced to 79 months in prison and released after serving but 39 months. Kent has already served almost 100 months.
After witnessing the Frank Patti case, I wrote this in 2002: “The prospect of local businessman Frank Patti spending 8 years in federal prison for tax evasion causes me to once again reflect upon the justness of throwing people in jail for nonviolent crimes.
“I believe it is past time for America to examine its practice of locking people up for nonviolent crimes. Even though the United States is far from being the most populous country in the world, we incarcerate more people than any other nation. According to recent reports, there are more than two million people behind bars in U.S. jails and prisons [now the number exceeds six million]. Many of these people are there for crimes in which no one was physically injured or killed and, therefore, pose little or no threat to society.
“Furthermore, it seems that this infatuation with locking people up serves more the interests of ever-burgeoning government bureaucracies than the interests of justice. A breadwinner behind bars means more welfare, more food stamps, and more dependence upon government, not to mention more government jobs, of course.
“With the federal government increasingly encroaching into the area of crime and punishment and with an exploding number of new laws continually being created, more and more people are losing their freedom over crimes that have more to do with offending the powers of government than injuring the lives of innocent people. Such a system hardly promotes justice.”
These comments do not even take into account the question as to whether refusing to pay personal income taxes to Uncle Sam should even be regarded as a crime at all. The income tax was initially sold to the American people as being a “voluntary” tax, remember? Regardless, the federal government treats the income tax as obligatory and most jurors have the attitude, “If I have to pay taxes, so does this defendant,” which is why most juries never acquit folks charged with tax evasion.
In Kent’s case, the argument was that his ministry was a church and as such should have been automatically tax exempt.
What Kent’s case does show is that the IRS can make its own decisions as to who and what owes taxes, the 501c3 non-profit organization status for churches notwithstanding. Charges of tax evasion are very subjective to the whims of the IRS--as Al Sharpton proves. And let’s not forget the Lois Lerner version of selective tax enforcement that targeted conservative organizations. And there is nothing new about that. The federal government has been using the IRS to intimidate or silence individuals or groups it does not like for many, many years under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
While I will not elaborate on this issue here (I’ve done so many times already in this column), this is just another example of the danger of the 501c3 tax exempt status for churches. With the way the IRS can subjectively interpret and enforce the tax code with impunity, a church or so-called non-profit organization that accepts tax-exempt status, can literally be “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” It’s mostly to do with politics. Remember, it is the IRS--NOT THE CHURCH--that ultimately defines whether an organization is qualified to be tax-exempt. What the Internal Revenue Code stipulates about churches being automatically tax-exempt means NOTHING to the IRS. You must remember that!
In the case of Kent Hovind, one has to wonder if he is actually being treated as a political prisoner. A life sentence for tax evasion? Whoever heard of such a thing?
Then again, I am reminded of the way our government treated former Idaho Congressman George Hansen. His book “To Harass Our People” (about the IRS) should be regarded as a must-read for every lover of liberty. Then, after you read the book, find out how our federal government railroaded him into a prison sentence and how it mercilessly tortured him afterward. It will make your hair stand on end.
Then, after reading what our federal government did to one of its own congressmen, try to convince yourself that our federal government would NOT do almost anything to anyone. And if this is true for American citizens (and it is) imagine how our federal government (CIA, military Dark Ops, etc.) treats foreign governments--even those it once befriended. Come on, folks. Turn off FOX News long enough to start thinking for yourself a little bit.
If you would like to sound off regarding the obvious injustice being committed against Kent Hovind, there is a website set up for that purpose. See it here:
If enough people rally to Kent’s defense, the IRS might rethink its attempt to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. Like most dark forces, the IRS loves darkness and hates light. Whether you think Kent is guilty or not, eight years is enough! Please help spread a little light for Kent Hovind.
P.S. Once again, I am in touch with a group of patriot Christians near BRADENTON, FLORIDA, who very much desire to start a new non-501c3 fellowship. As soon as this group can grow a little more, I will take my team and conduct a Liberty Church Project conference for these folks. If you live in or near BRADENTON, FLORIDA, and would like to join this group, here is an email that you can use to connect with them. Hopefully, there will soon be enough people that we can see a brand new non-501c3 church established in BRADENTON, FLORIDA.
The email address is: libertyfellowshipflorida@
