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Lawyer who beat IRS sues agents
Seeks damages for alleged 'smear and fear' campaign

A lawyer who was acquitted by a federal court trial jury of Internal Revenue Service accusations he failed to filed income tax returns for two years now is suing several IRS agents over their alleged improper disclosure of his personal information in the case.

A spokeswoman in the office of lawyer Tom Cryer told WND the case was assembled and filed by Cryer between Christmas Day and the end of 2007 and is expected to be placed on the docket in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Last summer in federal court a jury voted 12-0 to find Cryer, of Shreveport, not guilty of the IRS allegations. He had been indicted on 2006 on government claims he failed to pay $73,000 to the IRS in 2000 and 2001.

His successful defense was based on a challenge to the IRS to prove a constitutional foundation for the nation's income tax.

Now his claim against the government's agents, according to a report in the Shreveport Times, explains four IRS criminal investigation division workers tried to destroy his reputation during the course of their investigation in the case.

The lawsuit alleges IRS agents Jimmy H. Sandefur, Darrin A. Heusel and Judge Armand, and a trainee, Patrick Potter "entered into a smear and fear campaign to destroy Plaintiff's good reputation and law practice."

Cryer alleges the federal workers repeatedly violated federal laws that restrict the disclosure of tax information, release of information about an investigation and publicizing information about a grand jury investigation.

The report said Cryer's lawsuit alleges the agents continually raised those issues in telephone calls, during personal visits and in letters exchanged with Cryer's clients during their investigation.

The action seeks $1,000 in damages for each incident in which a federal agent compromised Cryer's confidential information.

Cryer also has submitted a request to the U.S. attorney's office, seeking an investigation of the agents, but neither the federal prosecutor nor the IRS could be reached for comment on the cases, the report said.

"I think now people are beginning to realize that this has got to be the largest fraud, backed up by intimidation and extortion and by the sheer force of taking peoples' property and hard-earned money without any lawful authorization whatsoever," Cryer said after his acquittal.

He said he is dedicated to the truth, and has launched a new Truth Attack website that is intended to build on his victory, and create a coalition of resources to defeat – ultimately – the income tax in the United States.

Cryer told WND the issue is not that complicated. Essentially, he argued that income is not necessarily any money that comes to a person, but rather categories such as profit and interest.

He said the free exchange of labor for compensation has been upheld as a right by the Supreme Court, but that doesn't necessarily make the compensation income.

"The Founding Fathers intentionally restricted the taxing powers of the new federal government as a measure of restraint on its size. By exceeding that limited taxing authority the federal government has been able to obtain resources beyond its intended reach, and that money has enabled the federal government to exceed its authority," he said.

For example, he said, the Constitution does not empower the federal government to regulate education, or employment, and agriculture, yet it does so.

"There are three points that are important," he said at the time. "There's no law making the average working man liable [for income taxes], there's no law or regulation that allows the IRS to contend that earnings are 100 percent profit received in exchange for nothing, and the right to earn a living through any lawful occupation is a constitutionally protected fundamental right, and it is exempt from taxation."

Spokesman Robert Marvin in Washington's IRS office then told WND the Internal Revenue Code provides for taxation on salaries or wages, but when pressed for a specific citation, or constitutional provision, he said, "I can't comment."

Cryer's encounter with tax law began more than a decade ago when a friend told him the income tax was sham. Cryer started researching, hoping to keep his friend out of trouble. But his conclusions, after years of research, were exactly what his friend told him.

His acquittal, he said, was a precedent because it means "people can see and recognize the truth."

He said multiple Supreme Court opinions have affirmed an individual's ownership of his or her own labor, and "exercising your fundamental rights" is not taxable. "It is definitely a trade. What most people receive in the form of wages, salaries or in my case fees that they personally earned for their labor is not received in exchange for nothing."

He said there might be a profit that should be taxable, but there might not.

"The IRS lets Wal-Mart sell a trillion dollars worth of goods, but they can back out their cost of goods [before being taxed,]" he said. "The IRS considers, in the case of a Wal-Mart wage earner, 100 percent of what he takes in is profit."

"But he's using his life, energy and work lifespan, and depleting it as he goes," Cryer told WND. "[Working] is a God-given fundamental right that is protected under the Constitution and can't be taxed any more than exercising freedom of speech."