In the early 1980s I was introduced to a variety of alternative news media which detailed how a number of special interest groups had subverted the governance of many nations (including that of the United States) and were dictating how those nations were to conduct their affairs so as to serve those groups’ own self interests. (That information was directly contrary to the information being provided by the mainstream media [MSM])
One of those groups was known as “The Bilderberg Group.” Another of those groups was comprised of wealthy and powerful Jews who controlled much of the oversight of the world’s news and entertainment conglomerates. I followed that alternative news reporting for many years.
By the mid-1990s I was angry that powerful special interests had subverted the form of government that our forefathers and foremothers fought and died to institute, but I never really did anything about it aside from writing letters-to-the-editor of my local newspaper. Then in 1995, I met a man who was running for the office of President of the United States as a candidate for the Libertarian Party nomination in the upcoming 1996 election. That man considered himself to be the leading authority on the history, constitutionality, and misimplementation of the federal income tax. His name was Irwin Schiff.
Schiff had determined that, contrary to popular belief, there was no law making the federal income tax mandatory because, if it were mandatory, it would be unconstitutional. He also determined that anyone could legally stop paying federal income taxes. Over the years he had convinced many thousands of Americans to do so. And most of them had not suffered any major negative repercussions from the I.R.S.
After I met Schiff, I bought his books and audio-taped updates to them and I studied them. Everything that he was espousing also made sense to me. So I too stopped paying my federal income taxes. (For the previous few years, I had been busy attempting to build up my small real estate agency in Auburn, New Hampshire.)
After I informed the I.R.S. that I did not believe that I owed federal income taxes and that I was no longer going to pay them, it did not take long for them to seize my bank accounts and inform my real estate clients not to pay me if I sold their properties for them. Rather, they were to forward my commission money to the I.R.S.!
In hindsight, I probably should have capitulated to the I.R.S. and saved the real estate business that I had worked so hard to establish. However, I was so convinced that the Government was illegally imposing and collecting income taxes and that it was my patriotic duty to expose those illegal activities that I decided to try to disseminate Schiff’s revelations to as many other people as I could.
I Began Disseminating Schiff’s Information to Others
I spent almost the next five years doing everything that I could think of to try to disseminate Schiff’s information to others. I conducted my own 3-hour income tax seminars seminars at a local hotel; I was interviewed on television, radio, newspapers, and magazines; I set up my own website at zeroincometax.com disseminating Schiff’s information and selling videotapes of my seminars; I erected a large sign in front of my home/office on a very busy road advertising that anyone could legally stop paying income taxes; I had many letters-to-the-editor and opinion pieces published; I advertised my seminars; I assisted Schiff in conducting his seminars whenever he was in the New England area; I assisted individuals in filing Schiff-style tax returns with the latest attachments explaining to the I.R.S. why they believed that they did not owe income taxes; etc.
Schiff did not believe that anyone was even required to file a federal income tax return with the I.R.S., but he knew that many people had been convicted of not filing them. So he devised what he called a Zero Income Tax Return (Zero Return). It stated that the filer had zero “income” and a zero “income tax liability” based upon the legal definitions of those terms, according to Schiff’s research.
Appended to the Zero Return was a 2-3 page attachment which delineated the legal reasons why the filer believed that he or she did not owe federal income taxes. (Schiff made additions and revisions to the attachment periodically.)
Many thousands of individuals had been filing Schiff’s Zero Returns with the I.R.S. (some of them for up to six [6] years by the time that I got involved with Schiff). And none of them had encountered any major negative repercussions from the I.R.S. or the Justice Department! In fact, some of them had even received tax refunds after filing a Zero Return! These are a couple of the many reasons that led me to believe that Schiff’s research was accurate in the first place.
At the conclusion of each of the seminars that I conducted, I gave any interested attendees the option of either purchasing Schiff’s books and the audiotape updates to them and learning how to prepare and file Schiff’s Zero Income Tax Returns themselves or hiring me to prepare a Zero Income Tax Return with the latest attachment for them. Since I only charged $100 to prepare the return and attachment, most people hired me to prepare it for them.
September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks
On September 11, 2001, major terrorist attacks against the United States occurred. At the time, the Zionists had been receiving a lot of negative press because of a number of actions in which they had been engaged, so my first thought was that they had orchestrated the attacks in order to deflect attention away from themselves. Then I realized that the Zionists (both those within the U.S. government and Israeli ones) had probably orchestrated the attacks and blamed them on their enemies in the Middle East in order to dupe the United States into invading some of the Zionist’s enemies there and also greatly expanding its military presence there. No country benefited more than Israel from the U.S.’ response to 9/11!
From September through December, I authored many emails, letters-to-the-editor, etc. as to my beliefs, as well as detailing other information which was extremely detrimental to the Zionists. I sent my emails to hundreds of media commentators, news reporters, news publications and outlets, radio talk show hosts, elected officials, etc. I was especially active at the end of December of 2001. Approximately ten days later, fifteen to 20 armed, I.R.S. Special Agents were at my home/office with a search warrant and a letter from the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Hampshire informing me that I was the target of a federal criminal investigation into violations of the internal revenue laws!
I was indicted in March of 2003 of eighteen (18) felony violations of the internal revenue laws! (One tactic that the Justice Department uses is to charge individuals with as many crimes as they can in order to coerce them to pleading “guilty” rather than having to prove the charges in court.)
Seventeen (17) of those counts were for preparing and filing for myself and others tax returns “which I knew and believed to be false!” However, I did not believe that those tax returns were false! On the contrary, I had spent the previous almost five (5) years doing everything that I could think of to try to convince others that they were accurate and that Schiff’s research and conclusions were accurate! So I knew that I was not guilty of committing those crimes.
The eighteenth charge was for interfering with the Government’s collection of federal income taxes and I knew that I was not guilty of that charge either. That was because one of the elements of that charge was that I had willfully (knowingly) violated that law. However, I had not willfully violated it because I did not believe that the federal income tax was mandatory.
Evidence that I Was Not Targeted for My Income Tax Activities
There is a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence indicating that I was not targeted by the Justice Department because of of my income tax activities. That evidence includes the fact that I did everything that I could think of for almost five (5) years to try to disseminate Schiff’s information to others without encountering any negative repercussions from the I.R.S. or the Justice Department. Then just a few days after widely disseminating my beliefs about 9/11, as well as other information about Israeli Organized Crime activity within the United States and Israeli espionage against the U.S. Government, I got raided by the Justice Department and informed that I am the target of a federal criminal investigation!
More circumstantial evidence that I was not targeted because of my income tax activities was that I was the only one of Schiff’s many thousands of followers and promoters to be targeted and prosecuted! Usually when the Government decides to prosecute someone for a crime, they target a number of individuals involved in the same course of conduct and try to get them to testify against each other in return for a recommendation to the judge for a lighter sentence. However, I was the only one of Schiff’s many thousands of followers targeted!
Even Schiff himself was not targeted until a number of years after I was! Don’t you think that if the Government wanted to target an individual for espousing someone else’s income tax-related information, it would also target that individual? Of course it would!
And Schiff may only have been targeted at all because I complained so much about me being the only one of his followers targeted! After I was indicted, Schiff continued espousing his beliefs for a couple of years on his nightly national radio/satellite/Internet program; in interviews on television, radio, Internet, newspapers, magazines, etc.; on his Internet website; at his highly visible office in Las Vegas, Nevada; at his income tax seminars conducted all across the country; through the sale of his books and audio-tapes; etc.
I saw him conducting his activities as if nothing had happened and I asked myself, “why is the Government targeting me and not targeting Schiff?” So I complained about it. In hindsight, I wish that I had not complained. If Schiff had never been targeted, that would make my assertion that I was targeted because of the information that I had been widely disseminating even more plausible!
Even more circumstantial evidence was the fact that the brother of a high-ranking Zionist within the U.S. Department of Defense was the head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office that prosecuted me! Douglas Feith was the head of the Defense Department’s Office of Special Plans. He was instrumental in imploring President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and, if my assertions are correct, he was also involved in orchestrating 9/11! His brother, Donald Feith, was the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Hampshire, where I lived.
I can just imagine the conversation between the two of them. Douglas: “There is a guy in New Hampshire who is asserting a lot of things that I and my compatriots do not like. His name is Steven A. Swan.” Donald: “Him? He is a tax protester. He will be easy to silence. Consider it done!”
There is even more circumstantial evidence that I was not targeted by the Government because of my income tax activities, which can be found in my book, Railroaded or Not? Into Federal Prison for Alleging that Zionists Orchestrated 9/11 and More! (Details for ordering below.)
I Defended Myself at Trial!
So I went to court and defended myself against the Government’s contrived and inaccurate charges against me. Unfortunately, after a six-day trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire in February of 2004, I was convicted on all eighteen (18) counts! (It is very difficult to beat the federal Government within its own courts! Most federal criminal defense attorneys advise their clients to not even try, even if they are completely innocent, as I was!) But I was not about to plead “guilty” to charges for which I was innocent, even if it meant less incarceration time for me. I was subsequently sentenced to nine (9) years in federal prison!
If you would like to purchase a copy of my book and read all of the evidence for yourself, it is available from Amazon.com as a Kindle eBook or as a paperback book. You can read it and decide for yourself whether you believe that I was railroaded.
If anyone has any definitive factual evidence that I was deliberately targeted for criminal prosecution by U.S. Department of Justice officials because of what I widely disseminated about 9/11 and/or Israeli spying and Israeli criminal activity within the United States, please share it with me. I can be contacted by email, by clicking here.
Steven A. Swan
Copyright 2016