LaRouche criminal trials
Defense lawyers filed numerous unsuccessful appeals that challenged the conduct of the grand jury, the contempt fines, the execution of the search warrants and various trial procedures.
[3][4] Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lyndon LaRouche formed a variety of political organizations, including the U.S. Labor Party and the National Democratic Policy Committee.
[8] The movement's greatest electoral success came in 1986 when two supporters, Janice Hart and Mark J. Fairchild, won the Democratic Party nominations for Illinois Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor.
Edward Spannaus, a defendant in the trials, further notes that there was a memorandum written on January 12, 1983, by former FBI chief William Webster to Oliver "Buck" Revell, head of the Bureau's General Investigative Division.
In August 1982, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sent a memo to Webster requesting an investigation of the LaRouche movement due to their "increasingly obnoxious" harassment of him,[11] which was raised at a meeting that day of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by senior member David Abshire.
A federal grand jury reportedly began investigating "an extensive nationwide pattern of credit card fraud" by LaRouche organizations in November 1984.
[16] In January 1985, a grand jury in Boston subpoenaed documents from the National Democratic Policy Committee (NDPC) and three other LaRouche organizations: Caucus Distributors Inc., Fusion Energy Foundation, and Campaigner Publications Inc.
[19] Investigations by a separate federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, along with state agencies in New York, California, Minnesota, Illinois and Washington were also underway.
The Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax-exempt status of the Fusion Energy Foundation in September 1985, and a year later the State of New York sought to dissolve the corporation, alleging that it used "persistently fraudulent and illegal" means to solicit donations.
[32] In his 1987 autobiography, he wrote that the raid was ordered by Raisa Gorbachev, whom he described as outranking her husband in the nomenklatura due to her leadership of the Soviet Cultural Fund.
[33] On the same day as the Leesburg search, the Boston grand jury handed down a 117-count indictment that named ten LaRouche associates, two corporations, and three campaign committees.
[38] The U.S. Department of Justice filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition on April 20, 1987, to collect the debt from Caucus Distributors Inc., Fusion Energy Foundation, and Campaigner Publications Inc.
[39] Assistant U.S. Attorney S. David Schiller wrote in a brief that the debtors had a "pattern of transferring or commingling substantial corporate assets to their members and other insiders for little or no consideration and for non-business purposes".
[42] During the bankruptcy trial in September 1989, an FBI agent destroyed evidence (credit card receipts, cancelled checks, and FEC filings) immediately after he had promised the court he would preserve them.
[46] The LaRouche organization asserts that it has proof, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which shows that the purpose of the bankruptcy was simply to shut down the affected entities rather than to collect fines.
[50] In U.S. v. Frankhauser,[51] Frankhouser testified that he and LaRouche security employee Forrest Lee Fick had invented a connection to the CIA in order to justify his $700 a week salary.
[58] The prosecution argued that pressure to fill fund raising quotas had led to 2,000 instances of credit card fraud, and that organization members had sought to obstruct the investigation.
[88] Judge Bryan granted a prosecution motion in limine, ruling that the defense would not be permitted to discuss, or even allude to, the fact that the indebted entities had been placed in involuntary bankruptcy.
[70][89] Bryan wrote, "the court will not allow a delving into any details of alleged infiltration ... for the reason that ... this would divert the jury from the issues raised in the indictment.
"[70] The prosecution, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kent Robinson, presented evidence that LaRouche and his staff solicited US$34 million in loans since 1983 with false assurances to potential lenders and showed "reckless disregard for the truth".
The judge said that the claim of a vendetta was "arrant nonsense", and that, "the idea that this organization is a sufficient threat to anything that would warrant the government bringing a prosecution to silence them just defies human experience.
LaRouche's legal adviser and treasurer, Edward Spannaus, along with fund raising operatives Dennis Small, Paul Greenberg, Michael Billington, and Joyce Rubinstein, were convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
"[110] Notable submitters of amicus briefs included: James Robert Mann, Charles E. Rice, Jay Alan Sekulow and George P. Monaghan.
In order for the prosecutions to proceed, a decision by the State Corporation Commission (SCC) was needed verifying that the loans solicited by LaRouche organizations were securities.
[126] A trial in New York state courts on charges of scheming to defraud resulted in the conviction of Robert Primack, Marielle Kronberg and Lynne Speed.
LaRouche also alleged systematic government misconduct: The record shows, that for nearly thirty years, elements of the U.S. Department of Justice have been engaged in world-wide political targeting of me and my associates.
During the last ten years or so of that period, some U.S. officials, and others, have challenged the relevant agencies with some of the evidence which shows, that those prosecutions and correlated harassment of me and my associates, had been clearly fraudulent, politically motivated targeting.
[10] The New York Times reported, in its obituary for Train, that "he convened meetings at his home for journalists, law enforcement agents and others in government to raise awareness about research he had done into Mr.
Entitled "Officials Call for LaRouche's Exoneration", its signatories included Arturo Frondizi, former President of Argentina; figures from the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement such as Amelia Boynton Robinson (a leader of the Larouche-affiliated Schiller Institute), James Bevel (a Larouche movement participant) and Rosa Parks; former Minnesota Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Eugene McCarthy; Mervyn M. Dymally, who chaired the Congressional Black Caucus; and artists such as classical vocalist William Warfield and violinist Norbert Brainin, former 1st Violin of the Amadeus Quartet.
[139] LaRouche alleges that Kronberg perjured herself and colluded with the prosecutors to frame him in order to cover up a bad check issued in 1979 by her from a New Benjamin Franklin House Publishing Company account for royalties owed him.
