Re: Jim de Bree, commentary, Jan. 5, “Trump’s Tax Returns Should Not Be Public.”
It’s simple, Jim.
Go ahead and do a search for “suspicion of resisting” at The Mighty Signal’s website. You will find that the mere act of resistance is enough for law enforcement to detain a citizen. Dozens or perhaps hundreds of such instances can be found.
Resistance is what precipitated the actions taken to gain access to and publish the tax returns. The behavior emulates that of our enforcement system’s normal actions with reticent citizens under probable cause. That’s not ad hominem politicization, is it?
In the absence of statute, and as you intone, policy is a weak mechanism for enforcement: Policy is quite easily resisted through legal delay, obfuscation, drip-fed motions, and appeals wrangling.
The IRS must remain fair, and well it should, but it is encumbered by understaffing and must deal with a level of competence differential that commercial professionals like yourself recognize.
I see you as an ethical man, but some may have little or no ethical remorse in their representation of clients. That kind of behavior, if pushed too far, is why RICO laws exist.
As you mention, some of the files remain unsolved even 10 years later.
Justice delayed is not very different from injustice.
That is the real problem: Attorneys have become agents of inflammation and arthritis in our corpus juris.
Ordinary citizens who cannot put an attorney between themselves and the enforcement system experience an entirely different system of justice from those who have resources to barricade themselves behind legions of legal representation.
Christopher Lucero
Saugus
