Asymmetric Lawfare

www.americanthinker.com

The Left can be badly weakened — perhaps even broken. The process has a misleadingly dry name — civil asset forfeiture.

This legal procedure allows law enforcement officials — typically the Attorney General or a District Attorney — to seize property based solely on suspicion of criminal activity. No criminal charge, let alone conviction, is required. The justification rests on the extraordinary legal fiction that the property itself, rather than its owner, is the defendant. However implausible that premise may seem, it is firmly embedded in American law and has been repeatedly endorsed by the Supreme Court.

A common fiction is that it’s applied solely against organized crime. In reality it’s often against the innocent.

Between 2000 and 2021, 82 billion dollars, in the form of real estate, commercial businesses, cash, and financial instruments has been taken by forfeiture.

For the initial seizure of property, the government need only establish a reasonable basis to believe the asset contributed to criminal activity. In other words, there must be a plausible suspicion. If the owner challenges the seizure, the government then needs to meet only the low preponderance-of-the-evidence standard — that is, show that the forfeiture is more likely warranted than not (often described at “50 percent plus a feather”). The forfeiture is a civil, not a criminal case. But contesting the seizure can pose very serious problems for the party whose property was seized. Contesting exposes the claimant to broad discovery by the government, including interrogatories, requests for production, requests for admission, depositions and subpoenas for records held by third parties, any of which can lead to felony charges.

The government has further critical advantages. Under Rule 38 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, if the forfeiture is contested, the government can demand a jury trial. It will — because under Rule 48, the verdict against the government must be unanimous. Otherwise, a mistrial is declared, and the property stays with the government.

There is profound asymmetry here. Granted, there is the right to appeal after an unfavorable verdict arguing that the seizure was grossly disproportionate.

But to appeal requires a final judgement. A mistrial does not allow this option. Possession is 9/10th of the law.

The public thinks the most powerful tool law enforcement has against organized crime is the RICO Act. In RICO however, the initial petition for seizure will not be granted unless there is a pre-existing criminal conviction. This requires the beyond a reasonable doubt standard — an extremely difficult standard to reach.

Civil asset forfeiture is exponentially more practical than RICO.

There are enterprises with far more impact than drug cartels. Many of these are NGOs and non-profits. The public thinks these are charities, but these terms primarily mean that their profits are not dispersed as dividends. The stereotypical NGO is the Southern Poverty Law Center. It has an endowment of $822 million. In April 2026, the US Department of Justice indicted the SPLC on multiple counts. Prosecutors allege that from 2014–2023, the organization secretly funneled over 3 million dollars to individuals associated with or leaders in extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. If approached under forfeiture law, no criminal charge need be filed. Its assets can be seized. Criminality need only be suspected.

The forfeiture statute is 18 U.S.C. § 981. It states “any property, real or personal, involved in certain offenses, or traceable to such property, can be forfeited”. The subsequent wording includes cash, bank accounts, real estate, business assets, and assets titled in the name of a corporation or LLC. Those offences, however, must involve a specified unlawful activity e.g. federal program fraud.

If a non-profit, NGO, foundation, or institution draws from its wealth in facilitating a covered crime, that wealth can be seized.

The White House has disclosed NGOs funding ANTIFA and violence across the U.S. These include not only Soros and his Open Society Foundation, but the Arabella Funding Group and the Tides Foundation Network.

There is a far more significant argument for civil asset forfeiture.

The election of 2020 was likely fraudulent, but over 60 cases were tossed largely on standing and technicalities.

Fraudulent mail-in ballots are mail fraud, a specified unlawful activity under 18 U.S.C § 981. Bringing forfeiture action against the assets of any organization reasonably suspected of playing a role in vote fraud would have effectively bypassed the Court’s evasions and forced the alleged fraud to trial. If the party did not contest the seizure, it would have been an admission to the public of guilt. If it did contest the seizure, it would open the floodgates. The burden of proof the government would need would merely be that of “more likely than not.”

That train has left the station. There is a five-year statute of limitations for bringing civil or criminal charges.

Democrats, however, have shown the way around the statute.

E. Jean Carroll alleged in June 2019 that Trump assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid 1990s, while she was trying on lingerie. In May 2022, New York enacted the Adult Survivors Act, allowing adult sexual assault claims to be brought even if the civil statute of limitations had expired. Financed through an NGO by Reid Hoffman, Carroll filed suit in November 2022. She was awarded 5 million dollars for sexual abuse and 83.3 million dollars for defamation.

Just as legislation was crafted to circumvent the statute of limitations against Trump, legislation could be drafted to expand the statute of limitations for election fraud.

E. Jean Carroll’s case is significant not only for demonstrating how to circumvent the statute of limitations. It also effectively erased the lowest of standards for the burden of proof — more likely than not — and removed any pretense of proportionality in remedy.

What is proposed here will be anathema to small government/Libertarian Republicans. Libertarians approach the conflict with the Left as a competition — a contest in the free market of ideas. They operate on the assumption that we have a functioning legal and political system. We do, and it functions for the Left.

With Carroll, the Left has exposed their true colors as regards to law. With 2020, they exposed their true colors as regards to elections.

Much, if not most of the Left, is Zohran Mamdani and those who vote for him. They view America, like Israel, as a settler enterprise, to be decolonized.

We need clarity here — a need to face reality. This is not mere partisan rivalry with Democrats but an existential war with the Left.

Sowell teaches there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. The tradeoff here is already factored in.

Soros-financed District Attorneys now run multiple jurisdictions, including nearly all our largest cities.

They are certainly aware of the vast power of civil asset forfeiture. For them, its political use is not yet ripe. Once the Supreme Court is packed, it will be.

Pre-emptive is bad optics, but that’s the only downside.

This window of opportunity will not come again.

There may be other weapons to defeat the Left, but none come to mind.

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