Rand Paul introduces the most sweeping reform of civil asset forfeiture law...

Thanks Rand! Civil Asset forfeiture needs to be addressed...

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“The federal government has made it far too easy for government agencies to take and profit from the property of those who have not been convicted of a crime,” Paul’s statement read. “The FAIR Act will protect Americans’ Fifth Amendment rights from being infringed upon by ensuring that government agencies no longer profit from taking the property of U.S. citizens without due process.”

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http://rare.us/rare-politics/populis...aw-in-decades/

but wait..what's that...Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! :eek: :eek: :eek:!

Look at the name of the act.

FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act

Is this the way for Congress to wrest back control from the Clowns in Gowns and their "interpretations" of the Constitution? Or am I making more out of it than I should?

Doubt it goes anywhere, and more than likely trump will veto it is congress passes it.

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Originally Posted by phill4paul

Look at the name of the act.

FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act

Is this the way for Congress to wrest back control from the Clowns in Gowns and their "interpretations" of the Constitution? Or am I making more out of it than I should?

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Pretty sure there's some congressional bylaw that requires acronyms to be the OPPOSITE of an act's intent.
Like the Patriot act.

Interesting timing. Hmm....

Maybe brilliant timing! I don't have enough info to judge, and Rand does, he's there with these jokers all the time.

I could see it getting some good traction! Good job, Rand.

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Originally Posted by klamath

Doubt it goes anywhere, and more than likely trump will veto it is congress passes it.

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What a beacon of hope.

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Originally Posted by helmuth_hubener

Interesting timing. Hmm....

Maybe brilliant timing! I don't have enough info to judge, and Rand does, he's there with these jokers all the time.

I could see it getting some good traction! Good job, Rand.

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The article says he floated this back in '14 but there wasn't as much interest in reform then as there is now.

Hopefully this gets passed and President Donald signs it into law instead of ruining Rand's career.

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Originally Posted by CPUd

Hopefully this gets passed and President Donald signs it into law instead of ruining Rand's career.

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Trump? More like John McCain.

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Originally Posted by donnay

Trump? More like John McCain.

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https://twitter.com/SteveKopack/stat...07910277636097

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Originally Posted by donnay

What a beacon of hope.

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Care to post all the anti police state comments Trump has made? Wasn't it trump that said he would help destroy a congressmen that was trying to stop civil forfeiture.

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Originally Posted by donnay

Trump? More like John McCain.

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McCain's position is this is obviously a Russian plot. Rand is just being a tool for Putin who is trying to impose actual freedom on American citizens.

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Originally Posted by AZJoe

McCain's position is this is obviously a Russian plot. Rand is just being a tool for Putin who is trying to impose actual freedom on American citizens.

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LOL! Exactly. Even though McCain takes his marching orders from China.

Rand Paul on Police Piracy Civil Forfeiture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffyyi6p-jsQ
https://i1.wp.com/www.copblock.org/w...d-Pirates.jpeg http://www.informationliberation.com...-great-one.jpg

Trump is a cop sucker.. he'd never sign it

Current co-sponsors:
-Lee (R)
-Crapo (R)
-King (I)
-Udall (D)
-Heinrich (D)

Not a bad start, nicely bipartisan.

Would this effect local and state government as well or only federal? If so isn't this federal over reach?

This will be an interesting bill to follow since if it passes it will have much wider implications than just asset forfeitures. The current system is based on the principle that all assets are owned by the bankers as collateral against all debt issued through their private monetary system. That is why they can legally take anything they want. They "own" it. The people are only allowed to "use" it.

From the Rutherford Institute: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/03/...icial-robbery/

Motorists have been particularly vulnerable to this modern-day form of highway robbery.

For instance, police stole $201,000 in cash from Lisa Leonard because the money—which Leonard planned to use to buy a house for her son—was being transported on a public highway also used by drug traffickers. Despite the fact that Leonard was innocent of wrongdoing, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the theft on a technicality.

Police stole $50,000 in cash from Amanee Busbee—which she planned to use to complete the purchase of a restaurant—and threatened to hand her child over to CPS if she resisted. She’s one of the few to win most of her money back in court.

Police stole $22,000 in cash from Jerome Chennault—which he planned to use as the down payment on a home—simply because a drug dog had alerted police to its presence in his car. After challenging the seizure in court, Chennault eventually succeeded in having most of his money returned, although the state refused to compensate him for his legal and travel expenses.

Police stole $8,500 in cash and jewelry from Roderick Daniels—which he planned to use to purchase a new car—and threatened him with jail and money-laundering charges if he didn’t sign a waiver forfeiting his property.

Police stole $6,000 in cash from Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson and threatened to turn their young children over to Child Protective Services if they resisted.
Tenaha, Texas, is a particular hotbed of highway forfeiture activity, so much so that police officer keep pre-signed, pre-notarized documents on hand so they can fill in what property they are seizing. ...

Police in some jurisdictions have run forfeiture operations that would be difficult to distinguish from criminal shakedowns. Police can pull motorists over, find some amount of cash or other property of value, claim some vague connection to illegal drug activity and then present the motorists with a choice: If they hand over the property, they can be on their way. Otherwise, they face arrest, seizure of property, a drug charge, a probable night in jail, the hassle of multiple return trips to the state or city where they were pulled over, and the cost of hiring a lawyer to fight both the seizure and the criminal charge. It isn’t hard to see why even an innocent motorist would opt to simply hand over the cash and move on. ...

Any American unwise enough to travel with significant amounts of cash is fair game for the government pickpockets. ...

the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been colluding with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and local police departments to seize a small fortune in cash from American travelers using the very tools—scanners, spies and surveillance devices—they claimed were necessary to catch terrorists. ... TSA agents already have a reputation for stealing from travelers, but clearly, the government is not concerned about protecting the citizenry from its own wolfish tendencies. ...

although DEA agents have seized more than $203 million in cash in airports alone since 2006, they almost never make arrests or build criminal cases in connection to the seized cash. ...

DEA agents at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport stole $11,000 in cash from college student Charles Clarke—his entire life savings, in fact—simply because they claimed his checked suitcase smelled like marijuana. Apart from the sniff test, no drugs or evidence of criminal activity were found.

Christelle Tillerson was waiting to board a flight from Detroit to Chicago when DEA agents stole $25,000 in cash from her suitcase, money she planned to use to buy a truck. Tillerson was never arrested or charged

Joseph Rivers was traveling on an Amtrak train from Michigan to Los Angeles when police stole $16,000 in cash in a bank envelope—money the 22-year-old had saved up to produce a music when he arrived in Hollywood—based solely on their groundless suspicions that the money could have been associated with drugs. ...

Through surveillance of Americans’ domestic travel records, by profiling train and airport passengers, and by relying on a “network of travel-industry informants that extends from ticket counters to back offices.” In one instance, the DEA actually promised to give a TSA security screener a reward for identifying luggage with large sums of cash: the more cash found, the bigger the reward. ...


First, the government claims it needs more powers and more weapons in order to fight crime and terrorism: the power to spy on Americans’ communications and travel; the ability to carry out virtual and actual strip searches of Americans’ luggage, persons and property; the authority to stop and interrogate travelers for any reason in the name of national security. Then, when government agents have been given enough powers and weapons to transform them into mini-tyrants, they’re unleashed on an unsuspecting citizenry with few resources to be able to defend themselves or protect their property. ...

For example, the federal government attempted to confiscate Russell Caswell’s family-owned Tewksbury, Massachusetts, motel, insisting that because a small percentage of the motel’s guests had been arrested for drug crimes—15 out of 200,000 visitors in a 14-year span—the motel was a dangerous property. ... This cruel surprise was engineered by Vincent Kelley, a forfeiture specialist at the Drug Enforcement Administration who read about the Motel Caswell in a news report and found that the property, which the Caswells own free and clear, had an assessed value of $1.3 million. So Kelley approached the Tewksbury Police Department with an “equitable sharing” deal: The feds would seize the property and sell it, and the cops would get up to 80 percent of the proceeds. ...

Gerald and Royetta Ostipow had their Michigan farm and property seized, including a classic muscle car, and then sold by the local sheriff’s office. As USA Today reports: The Ostipows were required to provide a $150,000 cash bond before they could begin the legal proceedings to contest the forfeiture ... But they couldn’t afford to. ... Eventually, an appeals court found that the property was wrongly forfeited. But it was too later to recover the car. With the odometer mysteriously bearing an additional 56,000 miles, police had already sold the car and spent the proceeds. ...

https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...e3&oe=5C3C070D

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Originally Posted by AZJoe

https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...e3&oe=5C3C070D

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It should be impounded and destroyed as contraband.

I watched a bit of cable news at lunch today. I heard several mentions that the Trump admin is considering tapping CAF funds to build a border wall. Pandora's box...

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Hawaiian vacation. Margarita machine. Sparkles the Clown. Are we going to add Trump’s border wall to the list of “ridiculous things” that civil asset forfeiture funds have been spent on?

It seems so if left up to this administration.

On Friday, two congressional Republicans told the Associated Press that the administration had been looking at civil asset forfeiture funds to finance the border wall’s construction. And it’s easy to see why. The federal government’s forfeiture fund currently has $3.7 billion in cash, but over $7.6 billion in assets. For the Trump administration, what could be more tempting than liquidating this slush fund to build the wall it wants a new influx of $5.7 billion for?

This scheme exemplifies all that is wrong with civil asset forfeiture, which occurs when law enforcement takes property away from someone based on the mere suspicion it is connected to a crime. To be clear — because people can’t believe this is a thing — you do not have to be arrested or convicted of a crime to have your property seized and taken under civil asset forfeiture.

And once forfeited, local law enforcement in many places can use this money for almost anything it wants. This is how civil forfeiture has earned the nickname “policing for profit.” And this is why the Trump administration thinks forfeiture funds are on the table for a border wall.

That assumption at the federal level, however, is mistaken.

Building a wall with federal forfeiture funds is no slam dunk. Federal law limits the use of such funds to certain law enforcement purposes. “Border wall” is not one of them. And it doesn’t look like Congress would take action to change the law so that “border wall” is a permissible expense. Even though we’ve heard a member of Congress suggest that a wall should be built with forfeiture funds, most federal officials are strongly opposed to civil forfeiture.

On Tuesday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a civil forfeiture reformer, questioned Attorney General nominee William Barr on the practice. Lee got Barr to concede that you “have to strike the right balance” on civil forfeiture. In 1991, Barr said that civil asset forfeiture could give law enforcement a “speed-trap mentality” where agencies pursue forfeitures to line their own coffers.

And last week, Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) kicked off the 116th Congress by participating in a briefing on civil asset forfeiture reform, with Walberg sharing his plan to again reintroduce the FAIR Act, a comprehensive reform bill on the subject. Last Congress, the U.S. House adopted bipartisan amendments to a spending bill that would have prohibited the Justice Department from using federal dollars to increase forfeiture practices, but those amendments were not included in the final package.

When 84 percent of constituents oppose civil asset forfeiture, and 76 percent of voters are more likely to support candidates who back forfeiture reform, elected officials better listen. And this administration should listen to those who are saying building a wall with forfeiture “might be the worst idea yet.”

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https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-l...set-forfeiture