In a scathing expose in the Washington Post, George Will examines the IRS’s use of secret warrants and civil asset forfeiture to steal the bank accounts of innocent American citizens.

In 2010 and 2012, IRS agents visited the store and examined Terry’s and Sandy’s conduct. In 2012, the IRS notified them that it identified “no violations” of banking laws. But on Jan. 22, 2013, Terry and Sandy discovered that the IRS had obtained a secret warrant and emptied the store’s bank account. Sandy says that if the IRS had acted “the day before, there would have been only about $2,000 in the account.” Should we trust that today’s IRS was just lucky in its timing?

The IRS used “civil forfeiture,” the power to seize property suspected of being produced by, or involved with, crime. The IRS could have dispelled its suspicions of Terry and Sandy, if it actually had any, by simply asking them about the reasons — prudence, and the insurance limit — for their banking practices. It had, however, a reason not to ask obvious questions before proceeding.

The civil forfeiture law — if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law — is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.

This is chilling stuff that everyone should know about. The power to confiscate personal property without due process is totally antithetical to every founding principle of this nation. Everything that makes our nation unique and exceptional in the world hinges on our government exercising the restraint to operate within the confines of the Constitution. When the government exceeds the limits of the Constitution, particularly on matters as basic as due process, there is no limit to what other infringements the government will be willing to make.

The executive branch of government should be ashamed of itself for these infringements. The legislative branch should be ashamed of itself for playing along with the executive and not putting a stop to it. If we let this go unchecked, if we accept the legitimacy secret warrants and allow governmental theft of private property….we will have well and truly cooked ourselves in our own juices and our civil liberties will be no more than a fading fragment of memory. 

Read the whole thing here. After you’re done reading George Will, read this article to to find out just how bad Texas is on civil asset forfeiture. Spoiler alert, our state is among the worst on this issue. 

Posted May 01, 2014 by Nathanael Ferguson