Lumber Union Protectionists Incited SWAT Raid On My
Factory, Says Gibson Guitar CEO
“Henry. A SWAT team from Homeland Security just raided our
factory!”
“What? This must be a joke.”
“No this is really serious. We got
guys with guns, they put all our people out in the parking lot and won’t let us
go into the plant.”
“Whoa.”
“What is happening?” asks Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz
when he arrives at his Nashville
factory to question the officers. “We can’t tell you.” “What are you talking
about, you can’t tell me, you can’t just come in and …” “We have a warrant!”
Well, lemme see the warrant.” “We can’t show that to you because it’s sealed.”
While 30 men in SWAT attire
dispatched from Homeland Security and the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service cart away about half a million dollars of wood
and guitars, seven armed agents interrogate an employee without benefit of a
lawyer. The next day Juszkiewicz receives a letter warning that he cannot touch
any guitar left in the plant, under threat of being charged with a separate
federal offense for each “violation,” punishable by a jail term.
Up until that point Gibson had not
received so much as a postcard telling the company it might be doing something
wrong. Thus began a five-year saga, extensively covered by the press, with
reputation-destroying leaks and shady allegations that Gibson was illegally
importing wood from endangered tree species. In the end, formal charges were
never filed, but the disruption to Gibson’s business and the mounting legal
fees and threat of imprisonment induced Juszkiewicz to settle for $250,000—with
an additional $50,000 “donation” piled on to pay off an environmental activist
group.
What really happened at the Nashville plant?
Henry Juszkiewicz bought the
troubled Gibson Guitar company in 1986. With revenues having dropped to below
$10 million a year, the iconic 84-year old guitar maker was bleeding cash and
on its way to bankruptcy. Since then, Juszkiewicz turned Gibson around, making
it into an international powerhouse, growing at better than 20 percent a year
compounded, with current annual revenues rumored to be approaching $1 billion.
A great American success story?
Yes, but Gibson’s very success made it a fat target for federal prosecutors,
whom Juszkiewicz alleges were operating at the behest of lumber unions and
environmental pressure groups seeking to kill the market for lumber imports.
“This case was not about conservation,” he says. “It was basically protectionism.”
Two months before the raid,
lobbyists slipped some arcane supply-chain reporting provisions into an
extension of the Lacey Act of 1900 that changed the technical definition of “fingerboard
blanks,” which are legal to import.
With no clear legal standards, a
sealed warrant the company has not been allowed to see too this day, no formal
charges filed, and the threat of a prison term hanging over any executive who
does not take “due care” to abide by this absurdly vague law, Gibson settled.
“You’re fighting a very well organized political machine in the unions,”
Juszkiewicz concluded. “And the conservation guys have sort of gone along.”
Hey, what’s not to like about $50,000?
And this isn’t an isolated
incident. Just ask Harvey Silverglate, Boston
lawyer, activist, civil liberties advocate, and author of Three
Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. As he explains, the Feds routinely take advantage of the
vagueness of many of our laws by starting from the target and working
backwards, selectively prosecuting people they want to go after by charging
them with crimes they often don’t even know exist.
“We are in terrible trouble as a
nation under law,” he says. “When you have a system predicated on
jurisdictional interests rather than on specific, identifiable, understandable,
definable violations of law, there is a great opportunity for tyranny.” As a
result, just about any businessperson, especially in highly regulated
industries, can be construed by a prosecutor to have committed three or four
arguable felonies a day. “If for some reason the authorities are eyeing you and
they look closely enough at your daily activities, they can find something.
That makes us all very vulnerable.”
Worse, 95 percent of federal cases
never go to trial, because “Justice Department prosecutors have engineered the
system to make it too risky to go to trial,” often railroading people who are
innocent. “They have built a conviction machine, not a system of justice.”
Federal criminal law is not bound
by the accepted rules of common law. Congress, the courts, and prosecutors can
criminalize everyday conduct without having to prove that the accused intended
to violate a known legal duty. That intent used to be fundamental to the mens rea required for
criminal liability. It no longer is, and this is a direct result of the
mushrooming administrative state in which we live. The convoluted content of
many laws implemented through regulation aren’t even clear until after there’s
a guilty plea or conviction, essentially giving prosecutors a blank check.
Throw unchecked prosecutorial discretion into the mix and you have a recipe for
legal nightmares straight out of Kafka. “This is the great flaw in the federal
criminal justice system. We didn’t really see the flaw in all its dangerous,
florid iteration until the mid 1980s, when federal prosecutors began to take
advantage of this gigantic hole.”
This is neither a Democratic
problem nor a Republican problem. Abuse of justice by federal prosecutors has
ballooned under both parties. Until the American people wake up to the threat
and demand change, things will only get worse.
Henry Juszkiewicz and Harvey
Silverglate are my guests on this week’s RealClear Radio Hour. Listen
to them tell their stories in their own words here.
U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service
U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Note: Sally Jewell is the
secretary for the U.S. Department of the
Interior, and the chair for the National
Park Foundation.
Jonathan B.
Jarvis is a director at the National
Park Foundation, and a director at the National
Park Service.
National
Park Service is a division of the U.S.
Department of the Interior.
One Million Vets To March On DC 10-13-2013 (Past Research
on the National Park Service)
Sunday, October 6, 2013
One million Veterans are planning
a walk on Washington DC
to protest against this incredibly corrupt administration and how they are
treating American vets since the US
government shutdown began and what is happening to America. While Barack Obama has come out on the attack against US
War Veterans, Americans are getting angry and getting organized. A going viral
facebook page has been set up for the march, which coincidentally will be held
on October 13th, 2013, the last day of a truckers shutdown America protest in DC as well.
Bryan Traubert
is a director at the National Park
Foundation, and married to Penny S.
Pritzker.
Penny S. Pritzker
is married to Bryan Traubert, a
member of the Commercial Club of Chicago,
the secretary of the U.S. Department of
Commerce, was a national finance
chair, fundraiser for the 2008 Barack
Obama presidential campaign, a co-chair for the 2009 Barack Obama inaugural committee, a fundraiser, national
co-chair for the 2012 Barack Obama
presidential campaign, a contributor for the 2013 Barack Obama inaugural committee, the host for the Barack Obama fund-raising dinner, 7/2/2008,
and Craig M. Robinson’s basketball
coach for the children's team.
Ellen S. Alberding
is a director at the National Park
Foundation, and the president of the Joyce
Foundation.
Valerie B. Jarrett
was a director at the Joyce Foundation,
her father was James E. Bowmanm, is the
senior adviser for the Barack Obama
administration, a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and Vernon E. Jordan
Jr’s great niece.
James E. Bowman
was Valerie B. Jarrett’s father, and
a professor emeritus at the University
of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.
R.
Eden Martin is the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP
Michelle
Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin
LLP, and Craig M. Robinson’s
sister.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP, and Obamacare is his signature policy initiative.
CGI Group Inc.
was the Obamacare contractor that
developed Healthcare.gov web site.
Donna
S. Morea was the EVP for the CGI
Group Inc., and a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Committee for Economic Development, the Aspen Institute (think
tank), the Brookings Institution (think tank), the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank), and the Urban Institute (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Judith H. Hamilton
is a trustee at the Committee for
Economic Development, and was a director at the National Park Foundation.
Newton
N. Minow is a senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Commercial Club of Chicago,
Members Directory A-Z (Past Research)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
James S.
Crown is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and a trustee
at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Lester Crown
is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and was a lifetime
trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Robert
H. Malott was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and a director at the National Park
Foundation.
Ken
Salazar was the chairman for the National
Park Foundation, the secretary at the U.S.
Department of the Interior for the Barack
Obama administration, and is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.
U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Cameron F. Kerry
was an associate at Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale and Dorr, the general counsel; acting secretary for the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a
fellow at the Brookings Institution (think
tank), and John F. Kerry’s
brother.
John
F. Kerry is Cameron F. Kerry’s
brother, the secretary at the U.S.
Department of State for the Barack
Obama administration, and married to Teresa
Heinz Kerry.
Penny S. Pritzker
is the secretary at the U.S. Department
of Commerce, a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and married
to Bryan Traubert.
Bryan Traubert
is married to Penny S. Pritzker, and
a director at the National Park
Foundation.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews was an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), is the president of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank), a director
at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg
conference participant (think tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with
Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace uncovered the plans for population
control by involving the United
States in war)
Teresa Heinz Kerry
is an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), married to John
F. Kerry, a trustee at the Carnegie
Museums of Pittsburgh, and a life trustee at the Carnegie Mellon University.
Andrew Carnegie
was the founder of the Carnegie Museums
of Pittsburgh, the endowed predecessor schools for the Carnegie Mellon University, and the founder of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank).
Alger Hiss
was the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank), a director, Office of Special Political Affairs for the U.S.
Department of State, and attended the Yalta Conference with FDR.
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss, (born
November 11, 1904, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died November 15, 1996, New York,
New York), former U.S. State Department
official who was convicted in January 1950 of perjury concerning his dealings
with Whittaker Chambers, who accused him of membership in a communist
espionage ring.
History Channel's 'World Wars'
Ad Says WWII Made Stalin a Tyrant (Past Research on the Yalta Conference)
Jamie S. Gorelick
was a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank),
a director at the National Park
Foundation, is a partner at Wilmer
Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and a trustee at the Urban Institute (think tank).
Ellen S. Alberding
is a director at the National Park
Foundation, and the president of the Joyce
Foundation.
Valerie B. Jarrett
was a director at the Joyce Foundation,
is the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and Vernon E.
Jordan Jr’s great niece.
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. is an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), Valerie B. Jarrett’s great uncle, a director at the American
Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), a life trustee at the Urban Institute (think tank), was a
member of the Iraq Study Group, and
a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Lee
H. Hamilton is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think
tank), a member of the Homeland
Security Advisory Council, and was a co-chair for the Iraq Study Group.
Jamie S. Gorelick
is a trustee at the Urban Institute
(think tank), a partner at Wilmer
Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, was a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace (think tank), and a director at the National Park Foundation.
Cameron F. Kerry
was an associate at Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale and Dorr, the general counsel; acting secretary for the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a
fellow at the Brookings Institution (think
tank), and John F. Kerry’s
brother.
Penny S. Pritzker
is the secretary at the U.S. Department
of Commerce, a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and married
to Bryan Traubert.
Bryan Traubert
is married to Penny S. Pritzker, and
a director at the National Park
Foundation.
Jonathan B.
Jarvis is a director at the National
Park Foundation, and a director at the National
Park Service.
National
Park Service is a division of the U.S.
Department of the Interior.
Sally
Jewell is the secretary for the U.S.
Department of the Interior, and the chair for the National Park Foundation.
U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Bureau
of Land Management is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Endangered Species Act a federal land grab? (Past Research
on the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management & the U.S. Department
of the Interior)
Sunday, April 13, 2014
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