Title:Three Felonies A Day with Harvey Silverglate
Introduction:
In today’s Creating Wealth intro, Jason invites his real estate counselor, Sarah, on the show. Sarah is excited about the Chicago real estate market. She is seeing some movement there as well as client interest. She also gives a friendly reminder to the Creating Wealth audience to make sure you do your due diligence with your income property to avoid any hassles and headaches.
Jason gets right into the show today with his guest, Harvey Silverglate. Harvey Silverglate is an attorney, writer, and advocate for civil liberties. Harvey talks about US laws that are not clearly defined on purpose, he shares his personal story about the FBI investigating him several times, and he also talks about his book, Three Felonies a Day, on today’s Creating Wealth show.
Key Takeaways:
1:50 – Jason talks to Sarah about how she did last month.
2:30 – Sarah is willing to send you individual property listings that haven’t hit the website yet. Just contact her!
3:40 – People talk about how Chicago is so dangerous, but Chicago is not as crime ridden as many people might think.
5:11 – Sarah encourages first-time investors to visit properties and get a feel for it.
8:08 – Don’t forget to do your homework and your due diligence!
9:20 – Jason introduces his guest, Harvey Silverglate.
14:20 – The federal law is very general and unclear by what ‘fraud’ really means.
17:55 – The feds are able to look at the daily activity of any citizen and they will be able to find something misleading.
21:50 – On three occasions Harvey has been investigated by the FBI.
25:30 – Civil fraud and federal fraud are two different things.
31:00 – How do we protect ourselves? Harvey explains.
34:20 – Harvey talks about the Gibson Guitar case and how ridiculous it was.
38:15 – Final thoughts? Harvey says be careful.
Tweetables:
“In other words, the law becomes a trap rather than a legitimate statement of societies expectations.”
Mentioned In This Episode:
http://www.harveysilverglate.com/
Three Felonies a Day by Harvey A. Silverglate
Transcript
Jason Hartman:
Welcome to the Creating Wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, this is episode 472 and our guest today will be Harvey Silverglate. He is an attorney who wrote a book entitled Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent even though this is not super on topic about real estate, I think it is a very, very important topic and I wanted to bring it to you, but for the intro portion of the show today, I’ve got our investor counselor Sarah here with me and, Sarah, you are talking to people right now in 164 countries. So, no pressure, how are you?
Sarah:
I’m great. Thanks for having me.
Jason:
Good, good. It’s good to have you. I always have to twist your arm to get you on the show. You’re so busy out there helping clients and handling investment counseling. Boy, last month, you had not a record month, but almost a record month, huh? Business is good.
Sarah:
Yeah, it was pretty busy. You know, we had our Meet the Masters event. We had a lot of clients excited off of the event and really working on strengthening their investment portfolios, so I had some clients email me this week saying where’s your inventory? The website looks quiet. So, not to worry. There’s a lot of inventory it’s just sometimes that, you know, we get properties and they may sell the same week, so, definitely contact us. We can really help you fine tune your search and send you individual listings that may have not hit the website yet or maybe they’re hidden and you just don’t see them.
Jason:
So, Sarah, one of the things I mentioned on the last episode on Monday’s episode when we had Jim Norman who is the author of The Oil Card. I don’t know about the listeners, but I sure thought that guy was pretty fascinating and I don’t know where the price of oil is going to go, but that’s a whole another discussion that you can hear on the last episode. One of the things I said, I said it did look like some better news in Atlanta. We’ve had a real inventory shortage there for quite a while. One of the things we really haven’t talked about, but I did mentioned this because I’m doing a 1031 exchange right now, South Chicago, I mean, I’ve been kind of reluctant to do that market. For years I’ve been pitched on it. You having some clients buy there, right, and a lot of interest in that market?
Sarah:
Yeah, actually I have a client out there today looking at properties, which is pretty exciting. I would love to do a tour there when it warms up a little bit, because I’d like to see the market myself, but yeah, you know, when you hear Chicago you think of some of the high crime rates in the inner cities, but you forget Chicago is a big metro area. There’s a lot of suburbs. That’s like saying, well, I don’t wanna invest in LA, because there’s so many gangs in LA, well, technically I guess I live in a suburb of LA in a really nice area.
So, there are pockets within these bigger metro areas that pop up every once in a while. I’m pretty excited about this one. We’ve got a couple of providers in that market. One of them does an awesome guarantee on their renovation work that they do and also their tenant placement. They do a 1 year guarantee on both of those items. It’s just really exciting to have somebody that goes in and completely gets the property and then guarantees that work.
Jason:
It’s kind of rare, by the way, I’ve always said that I think about maybe 3-5% our clients actually visit markets before they buy properties there, but you actually got someone out there now doing a tour in Chicago area, right? That’s kind of surprising.
Sarah:
Yeah, well, every once in a while a client will say, gosh, it’s just an hour drive, you know, I can get there and back in day, so they’ll squeeze it in and make the trip. You know, I always encourage investors, especially if they’re brand new to investing out of state, if this is like their first property, I would encourage them to go out and look at the market and then I think once they get, you know, one or two properties through us and they start to realize that a lot of the markets are, you know, similar, and there’s also ways to look at the different areas by price and explain to investors, hey, we’ve got an A area, B area, C area, depending on your risk tolerance and your immunity, you may want to go, you know, with an A area. So, they might want to go out and see what an A area and then they can kind of gauge the rest of their portfolio and research on that market that they visited.
Jason:
That’s a good idea, so once the investor develops a comfort level with us and our offerings, they’ll usually be more than happy to just invest remotely. I think that’s a great idea, you know, we encourage people to go and visit markets and that’s why we have property tours. We are working on our next property tour now and deciding where we want to do that tour, so look for more announcements of that on an upcoming episode.
One of the other things I want to address real quickly is we, we had our members call and by the way that was a little late in getting it posted that is either up now or it’ll be up in just a day or two, I’m pretty sure. We talked a lot about property management and some of the different options there and so forth of how you could manage properties, how you could work your deal with your property manager and so forth. So, members look for that in the Jason Hartman university section. If you weren’t able to attend the call live, of course, we always have the recordings in the archive.
I also wanted to mention to listeners, a lot of people asked since I announced it and I’ve not even talked about this on the show at all, about the mastermind group that we’re starting. It’s called the Venture Alliance and we very tentatively, a few people have approached me and said they’re really interested, we don’t have a lot of details on this yet. We don’t have a website up for it or anything like that. We did plan a tentative date for the first retreat, so if you wanna just pencil this in, as the saying goes, pencil it in, that’ll be the weekend of June 13th. June 13th and it’ll be somewhere on the west coast or in the western United States, so keep that in mind and more information to follow on that.
Sarah, any other information you want to share with investors before we get to our guest today about markets, about best practices, or just, you know, general sentiment out there, whatever it is.
Sarah:
You know, just a reminder on due diligence, be sure to cross check your rent. If you need some contacts in terms of property managers in the market, you know, we may be recommending a property with a specific property manager attached, but that doesn’t mean you can’t call a couple of others. We can give you some contacts or you can look up your own, but we’re heavy on due diligence. We want to interview other property managers, cross check the rents, cross check the property taxes. Call and get your own insurance quotes and if you have any questions on things you should be doing as part of your due diligence, you know, you can contact us and we’re glad to help you with that, but I guess as far as best practices, do your homework.
Jason:
Well, good, that reminds me, Sarah, of an old commercial and you’re probably too young to remember this, I think it was for Holiday Inn, the hotel chain, and I think their motto was, the best surprise is no surprise.
Sarah:
Oh, I love it.
Jason:
So, that definitely applies to investors and investing in income properties and building your portfolio nation wide, so the best surprise is no surprise and how can you avoid being surprised? And that is to become educated, do your due diligence, and couple of simple things you can do definitely within our network and outside of our network so you can get independent opinions as well.
You know, we can give you a little bit of guidance on that. Talk to Sarah and our other investment counselors about that and we’ll be happy to help you. Thank you so much for listening today. Sarah, thanks for coming on for the intro portion with me and now let’s go to our guest, Harvey Silverglate.
It’s my pleasure to welcome Harvey Silverglate to the show. He is co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of the Foundation for Individual Rates in Education other wise known as FIRE and he is author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. I had heard about Heavy’s work and his book, Three Felonies a Day from a few of my other show guests and I really want to dive into this concept more as you know I’ve had John Stossel on the show recently. He did a great exposé on how there are so many laws no body can possibly know all of the laws.
I, as I mentioned before, was brought up hearing my mother say, Jason, ignorance of the law is no excuse, but what it seems that the government has done is that they’ve made so many laws that especially if you’re in business nowadays, you’re constantly breaking laws that you don’t even know exist. So, it’s a great opportunity to have Harvey talk to us today. Harvey, welcome, how are you?
Harvey Silverglate:
I think I am okay as long as we’re not under indictment I suppose we have to say we’re okay.
Jason:
There you go, there you go. Well, tell us about Three Felonies a Day and how you came to write it.
Harvey:
First of all, I wanted to clarify the concept of Three Felonies a Day. John Stossel I know talks a lot about the proliferation of laws and regulations so that no human being can possibly know everything that can get you into a felony, but what I’ve written about goes a step beyond mere proliferation of laws, statutes, and regulations. It goes into the vagueness of so many federal statues so that no human being know even if you know of the existence of that law, you do not know what conduct prohibits and what conduct it allows. For example, mail fraud. It means using the mail in order to engage fraudulent conduct, but there is no way of determining what conduct would be considered fraudulent until you are charged and that’s the phenomenon that I have focused on on Three Felonies a Day.
Jason:
That’s really interesting, because I recently did a show and, forgive me, I can’t remember what this concept, this law is called, but I had an expert on and maybe they mentioned your book, I can’t remember, and they were talking about how there’s this new, I think it’s a Federal Trade Commission that enforces it or the consumer CF something like that. You’ll know what it is probably, but it basically says if they can’t find an area of the law that you’re actually violating, they can basically just say they don’t like what you’re doing and throw you in jail.
Harvey:
That’s because they have general catch-all anti-fraud statutes and regulations, so that if there isn’t anything specifically describing your conduct, they then get you under the general and that is violation, really, of ancient, very old English common law doctrines that transferred to the American colonies and then to the American justice system, except not the federal system. Our states generally are what we call common law jurisdictions.
They had adhered to the old English concept of in order to be a criminal, in order to be convicted of a crime, you have to have two elements, you have to know that you did the act and, crucially, you have to know that the act was against some law. That it is illegal and that is what was missing in the federal system.
This latter concept that the law has to be significantly clear so that you were on notice if you were going to be charge with a crime and convict and put in prison, at least, you have to know that you did something illegal and that means the law has to be clear enough so that you do know it.
Jason:
I mean, it’s good that the law wants to protect consumer, but it’s awfully scary when laws are so vague that you get some bureaucrat, some prosecutor, or a bureaucrat with some agency some where. There’s so many agencies nowadays, you don’t know what the heck to thing, that might just want to further their career or get some publicity for themselves or maybe they just don’t like the way you comb your hair.
Harvey:
I’ll tell you something which I had mentioned in Three Felonies a Day that’s probably, to me, the most shocking example of how this came about. There were hearings in the House of Representatives, hearings about making illegal insider trading as a form of stock fraud and there was debate over whether they, the house bill, should try to define insider trading, and I think it was representative Emanuel Celler of New York said, well, wait a minute. We don’t really want to have this too clearly defined, because it means that a lot of stock fraud or what I’d consider a stock fraud won’t be prosecutable because it will not have been specifically set out in this statute.
He actually said that. In other words, translate what representative Celler said was that if we make the law too clear and people know what it is that’s a crime, they’re liable not to do that, but do something else, which we would considered to be bad, but we can’t get them. In other words, the law becomes a trap rather than a legitimate statement of societies expectations.
Jason:
Yeah, very, very interesting and scary at the same time. So, Three Felonies a Day, are there a specific three felonies a day you were thinking of when you wrote that? I mean, what are we really all guilty of every single day of our lives?
Harvey:
Well, the title is slightly facetious, but actually more accurate than you would think. Here’s an example, federal mail fraud and wire fraud statutes, this makes it a federal felony to use the facilities of interstate commerce or communication; telephone, email, for example, or the US mails; in order to commit a fraud, but fraud is not defined.
So, you’ve got a statute that basically defines the means of transmitting of the fraudulent information or statement or whatever, but it doesn’t define what it is that is fraud. So, if you think about it, you think about all the phone calls you engage in over the course of a typical day, especially if you were a busy business person and all the emails you send, you think the number of times that you don’t disclose absolutely everything that you put things in more broader or vaguely than you otherwise might, because you don’t want to say everything that’s on your mind. A quite human undertaking.
Every day we speak and email with people that don’t want to tell absolutely everything, but arguably a federal prosecutor who focuses on you rather than on any particular activity that he suspects is a fraud, focuses on you, wants to get you for some reason, can go over your email over the course of that day or phone conversation, they’re recorded, and can find something that’s quote misleading or incomplete. Of course, an email is incomplete. We would be at an email all day long, 24 hours a day, if we had to put everything in it.
We naturally select what we’re going to say to somebody, so if you’re engaging in a business deal, you put in what you think you have to, but not more than you think you have to. Some said, look at that, and said, ack! You didn’t disclose some detail that I, the fed, thinks is material or important and what I’m saying to you is that the feds are able to look at the daily activities of any citizen and confined something, arguably misleading, incomplete, not specific enough, and can go after you.
Jason:
Now, does that mean you’d have to be in your own business or could you be a corporate employee of some other company.
Harvey:
You could be a corporate employee, you could be a husband or a wife who is involved in a divorced dispute in which the fed can say you mislead the court. You misled our spouse with regard to how much you have in terms of assets. Any area of life or business or commerce can be the subject of the fed looking at what you’ve done that day and what I’m telling you is that said, can come up with three arguable felonies if they really want to get you.
Now, mind you, typically they are looking at the person rather than the act. That is, they’ve decided somebody who is a bad actor, they wanna get him, and they then do a very thorough study of what you have done, your communications, what contracts you’ve entered into and they go over your daily affairs closely enough, they will find something that they can base an indictment one. With every human being in this country, they are able to find something in that category. That is the comment on the federal law rather than the honest of the American people.
Jason:
Yeah, and that is really, really very scary, but my question is though, Harvey, how would they find this? Say you’re just living your daily life, you’re not in a court room, you’re not going through a divorce or litigation of any type, would they be using the NSA’s wire taping? I’m kind of wondering if and when and I know it’s a matter of when, not if unfortunately; when suddenly the NSA’s anti-terrorism activities are going to be used for little crimes or any kind of crimes that is non-terrorist related. When are they going to start using that for other things and basically we’re all being tapped a 100% of the time. It’s not really for national security, it’s to stop you from robbing a liquor store extensively, of course, or buying a bag of pot.
Harvey:
Well, the ways in which an FBI agent or a prosecutor can use the federal criminal code.. really it starts out with you come to attention of the authorities for some reason. It could be any reason. It could be you’ve expressed a view that they don’t like. It could be you’ve criticized something the federal government has done. It could be that you’re running for office and you’re threatening the status quo. In my case, I had been publicly critical of the FBI and the Department of Justice for just about my entire career. I understand, I know for a fact that I have been investigated on several occasions.
They haven’t tried anything with me, because they understand it’s going to be a very hard case if they go after me and they better have something pretty good and I make sure that, you know, a little paranoia goes along way. I make sure that whatever I do I dot my Is and I cross my Ts, because I know that I’m looked at, but you don’t have to be…
Jason:
How do you know that though? How do you know that?
Harvey:
Well, I happen to know because on three occasions I had been tipped of that I had been investigated as a result of highly controversial cases that I’ve taken that have gotten the government quite upset. So, I actually know in three instances. I know that in at least one instance the FBI sent a wired informant into my office in hoping that I was going to draft a false affidavit or an arguably false affidavit for a witness where I didn’t have any idea that what the witness was saying was false, because the government sent the witness into my office, wired, but hoping that he could convince me to let him sign an affidavit.
So, we drafted the affidavit and at the very end as he has his pen in his hand, he said, by the way, you know this is not true? At that point, I realized he was wired and I threw him out of my office. I found out years later that in fact it was the FBI. They did wire him. Well, I’ve been targeted. There’s no reason in a free country that a citizen should be targeted for these kinds of prosecutions because he engages in a professional or activity that the government doesn’t like or threaten by and doesn’t approve of.
Jason:
Or even worse, because he’s a member of the tea party.
Harvey:
Right. Exactly and I am not a member of the tea party, but it doesn’t matter. I was a lawyer..
Jason:
That’s another Lois Lerner case. I just thought I’d throw it in, yeah.
Harvey:
What I’m saying to you is, because the federal laws are so vague and so broad that you an be targeted even when you’re not involved with something you wouldn’t consider to be a high risk activity. I considered it high risk when I am bringing somebody into my office to execute an affidavit in a criminal case.
That’s something you’d know they’d be watching, but a lot of things are not high risk. A lot of things you do everyday where you don’t give the full story to somebody. You know, you rarely give full story to anybody and sometimes I suppose you give the full story to your spouse or to your psychiatrist, but other than that, by enlarge people don’t tell the whole story, even in a commercial transaction.
Well, the feds can make an argument by leaving out some important detail you have engaged in fraud, because again, the definition of fraud is so vague and so broad that you probably commit several frauds a day if you were a busy professional.
Jason:
Okay, so let me ask you about fraud for a moment. I have felt that I have been defrauded in business deals and I go whiny to my attorney and I say, hey, sue this guy for fraud and he says, oh, you gotta plead fraud very specifically. You can’t just generally walk into the court and say some guy has defrauded you. Is it different in criminal proceedings and, I mean, is it really easily for them to plead that, because it’s not easy in a civil case from what I understand.
Harvey:
Correct. That’s the irony. The irony is that theoretically it should be harder to conflict somebody of fraud then it is to sue them civilly for fraud, but when you suing somebody civilly, you actually have to plead much more specifically and concretely than a federal prosecutor has to plead in a criminal case. It is completely backwards.
Jason:
So, it’s much easier for the government to take advantage of the citizens and exploit the citizens then it is for a citizen to assert fraud against another citizen.
Harvey:
Correct.
Jason:
Now, isn’t that interesting. If it was truly a consumer protection law to keep consumer from getting defrauded, they should let the system, the consumers, out there on a level playing field handle a lot of this for them instead the government wants to have more power then a consumer can have in a civil case where the stakes are not as high for the person being accused. It’s just money versus loss of freedom.
Harvey:
Right, the system of federal laws more and more has been oriented toward government control of the citizen and that’s way it is so dangerous for liberty.
Jason:
Very interesting, very concerning for sure. Okay, what else can you tell us about the Three Felonies a Day. I mean, any other examples of things that people are just all doing and then, most important, what action steps can concern citizens take, because this is the kind of thing, Harvey, that no body really cares much about until it happens to them.
Harvey:
Until they get indictment, then when you’re independent..I’ve had clients, I mean, this is my business, I’ve had clients say, what? I’ve been charged with doing that? How can that be a crime? I have to sit down and explain that ordinary people would not assume that what they’ve done is a crime, but given the vagueness of federal law, some prosecutors have been able to get you indictment, because he’s interpreted what you’ve done in a nefarious manner and this happens all the time. The are ways to cure it and there are many of us out there who are fighting for legislation to cure it.
I can give you an example of one of the most important pieces of legislation that we try to get enacted. We’re trying to get enacted a what’s called a mens rea provision in all federal criminal statutes. Mens rea is an ancient common law doctrine, it started in England, which most states follow, but the federal government general does not unless it is specifically inserted into a statute. Mens rea means that in order to get convicted, you have to be shown beyond the reasonable doubt, you have to be shown to have intended the act that you have admittedly committed, intended it, to violate a known legal obligation and in most states you can’t be convicted unless the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of that.
Jason:
So, the government is going to say, well, that’s just too high a standard. We’ll never catch anybody.
Harvey:
Yep and the Department of Justice in fact resists this kind of legislation all the time routinely and congress just has to have the guts to enact mens rea provision in every federal criminal statute and regulation and unless they do that even they are going to be vulnerable. You know, you have a lot of members of congress who were indictment, not all of them have engaged in actions that most of us would consider truly corrupt and this is a very dangerous country to be in right now for everybody unless you happen to be the prosecutor. You know, you’re the one who pulls the trigger.
Jason:
Or if you’re part of the coalition of companies and people who have basically bought the government through their lobbyists and PR firms and the rest of their infrastructure and that’s the too big to fail group. You know, this group, it’s amazing that we have this financial crisis a few years back that almost wiped out the entire global economy right and no body went to jail! I can’t believe it. It’s shocking.
Harvey:
It shouldn’t be too shocking. There are, after all, the ones who have financed the people and make the laws. They are pretty well protected, but most of us are not well protected.
Jason:
Any advise we can do to protect ourselves? Okay, so, so there’s the mens rea thing, so what do we do? What’s the action step?
Harvey:
Well, I think that, I’m not trying to get your listeners to be too paranoid, but I do think that when you are engaged in a transaction, the best thing to do is to disclose as much as you can and you’ve gotta go to a lawyer and you’ve got to say you’re concerned that this transaction not be later interpreted as misleading and you want to have a lawyer look at it. You specifically want to make sure that lawyer understands that a little paranoia can be a good thing and you want the lawyer to bless it and do so in writing so you can at least argue if you get in trouble that you sought, in good faith, you sought legal advice.
Now, I know this sounds like a kind of full employment program for lawyers and in many ways it is, I think it’s very unfortunate in this society that so much of what you do has to be blessed by a lawyer, but that happens to be the case. The other thing that you can also do is when you are discussing some kind of business field with somebody, you might want to have a discussion, you might want to record it, but record it with the knowledge of the other side just so that you have evidence of what it is the other side understood the deal to be and what you understand the deal to be. This is something which is useful for commercial transactions, but of course, in ordinary day-to-day life it doesn’t occur to you to record things. It would be a terrible society to be in where everything had to be recorded.
Jason:
Yeah, welcome to the Soviet Union, here.
Harvey:
Yeah, that’s what the Soviet Union was, so in fact, there really is not much you can do to protect yourself and that’s why legal reform is so important. If you want to have a normal life and a free society, you’ve gotta have laws that are not traps to the unwary.
Jason:
It seems like that’s what’s going on. It’s like the government always has its thumb on anybody now where if they want to get you for something, it’s really easy for them to do something. Like you say, a little paranoia goes along way, I know that may sound paranoid, but you hear the stories and if you wanna mention any specifics, any specifics people that this has happened to just real quickly as we wrap up here.
Harvey:
Well, you know, there was a case a year or two ago in which the president of the Gibson Guitar company was..
Jason:
Oh, I remember that one. Yeah.
Harvey:
I wrote something about it in the Wall Street Journal and quite a few people wrote about this case. It was a case in which Gibson Guitar used for a particular small part of the guitar, I think it might have been the bridge for the guitar, wood that was on a list of endangered species in the company, I think it was Indonesian, where the particular tree was grown. The United States set a statute that you couldn’t import wood from endangered species, but in order to know the species was endangered you actually would have to know the regulations of the country in which it was grown, I think it was Indonesian. Well, that meant that you could be indicted in the United States under a federal statute, an environmental statute, you could be indicted for not having followed a regulation of Indonesian. How many of us would have known? Not even a lawyer would have known.
Jason:
Certainly Harvey, that’s a good reason to send the feds in there with machine guns and cause a PR nightmare for your company, right?
Harvey:
So, Gibson ultimately decided to plead guilty under a pre-bargain in order to avoid having the company completely destroyed. The truth of the matter is that Gibson Guitar was no more guilty of environmental crime then you or I! But, they had to plead guilty in order to save the company and you wanna know the crude grasp of the whole thing, in the plea bargain, I read the plea bargain agreement. In the plea bargain it said that the president of Gibson Guitar agreed that he would not, in public, say anything that contradicted the statement of facts stated in the plea agreement and the reason, of course, they had to do that was because this plea agreement was not true.
He had not engaged in fraud, he did not know that this wood was protected in the country that it was grown on. He couldn’t have because no human being would know what will be in American regulations much less the Indonesian regulations, but in order to get the plea bargain and not have the company destroyed, he had to agree that he would not tell the truth in public and for that my position is that the prosecutors who presented him with that plea bargain and the judge who approved it, they should be indicted, not the president of Gibson Guitar.
Jason:
And these prosecutors they pretty much have immunity, don’t they?
Harvey:
They sure do and they have immunity for a lot of reasons. One of which is they’re the ones who decided who is charged!
Jason:
They can selectively enforce the law, just like you were saying, we are all breaking a bunch of environmental laws, I’m sure, and that’s why the environmental movement scares the heck out of me, because there’s just these zillions of new laws is all they are..
Harvey:
Everybody is arguably breaking the law and that’s the point. The feds can make a case for the fact that you’re breaking a law every day three times a day, the title of my book, and if they finally focus on you; they did the president of Gibson Guitar, he didn’t do anything to bring attention on himself, but these guys were looking for something to do. You know, we have so many bureaucrats now, they really need something to do. They have to justify their existence and one of the ways they justify their existence is by finding people to charge and making it look like they’re upholding law and order.
Jason:
Wow. Wow, how did we get to this point, Harvey?
Harvey:
That’s a very good question. I’m not quite sure how we got that, I only know that we’ve gotten there. I believe that the trend really accelerated in the mid 1980s, but I don’t know exactly how and why the country got to that point.
Jason:
That’s really something. Give out your website if you would, tell people where they can learn more.
Harvey:
HarveySilverglate.com and you can find just about everything I’ve written and you could know about some of my cases. I try to give people an idea of what it is I do in the course of a day other than break the law three times.
Jason:
Exactly and in one week you did 21 times.
Harvey:
Even on Sunday is a great story.
Jason:
There you go, exactly. I just wanna clarity for the listeners that’s HarveySilverglate.com, not to be confused with gate. It’s glate. HarveySilverglate.com and Harvey, thank you so much any closing thought you have?
Harvey:
Be careful.
Jason:
Good advise. Thanks so much for joining us.
Harvey:
Righto!
