Both the government attorney and Ronnie’s attorney filed motions in limine.  A “motion in limine” is one at the start of the preceding and these motions were filed asking the the court to prevent the opposing party from using particular witnesses or testimony.  The parties have until Friday to settle issues or file additional motions for a possible hearing next week on Wednesday.

Ronnie’s attorney filed the following motions:

• to disallow the IRS special agent who investigated the case to testify as a summary witness as she could actually testify as an expert witness, and furthermore to exclude her testimony as an expert witness on the technicality that the government did not identify her as such before the deadline.
• to prevent the government from using Ronnie’s unconventional and unusual religious views to impeach any witness’s testimony
• to prevent the government from using PKG members or other lay witnesses to identify expenditures made by Weinland

One of those PKG members who might be asked to testify is Johnny Harrell.  Rumor has it that the IRS is investigating Johnny’s and Myrtle’s taxes for the past several years.  And Johnny likely was the other signatory on Ronnie’s Swiss bank accounts which if so would mean that he would have been required to file an annual report on those accounts with the government.

The government also had motions:

• to exclude the expert testimony of a former IRS special agent pointing out that his knowledge was obsolete, having retired in 1999 following the filing of an EEOC complaint coincidentally filed by the case special agent against him as he was her supervisor at the time
• to exclude the testimony of an expert witness as to the fair market value of the church office space in Ronnie’s home on the golf course.  Seems Ronnie has already deducted the cost of his home as a parsonage and the the government is not going along with this attempt at double dipping
• to exclude the testimony of an expert witness as to the fair market value of Jeremy Weinland’s services to the church maintaining the church website
• to exclude the audio recording of the sermon Ronnie delivered in December of 2002 as evidence of the Swiss bank accounts were church and not personal accounts.

There were some gems inside the filings.  Such as this statement about Ronnie’s kids: “Financial documents demonstrate the Defendant paid for some of the living expenses of his adult children and was reimbursed by the church. Jeremy’s educational expenses, a luxury automobile, and other expenses were paid, in part, in this manner.” There was a mention of church members employed by the church: “In addition, the United States is aware of other persons who performed computer, website, and book related services. Those persons were volunteers, except for the W-2 church employees (Ronald Weinland, Steve Dalrymple, and Audra Little). In 2008, the church paid Gregg Chris as a contractor to provide information technology services.”  That would actually be Greg Chipps, although I thought he was a full-time employee with the princely salary of $36,000/year.  Seems Ronnie did a little creative maneuvering after the IRS opened its investigation:  “The church did issue Jeremy a 1099 that is dated in March 2009 for $16,835.00. This document, like the 1040 the Defendant filed in 2010 for the 2008 year and the 1040X the Defendant filed in 2011, may be evidence of the Defendant’s consciousness of guilt, but it has no bearing on the Defendant’s attempts to evade his tax liabilities in 2008. The 1099 issued to Jeremy was provided in reciprocal discovery. Jeremy, however, lives in Germany and there is no other reliable information that Jeremy was providing contract services to the church in 2008 or at any other time.”

The content of the motions was less significant than the nature of the response.  On January 14, Ronnie stated:

I know we believe that but sometimes people are put to the test as to whether they really believe it, because if you really believe it then you live by it, truly. Think of something I heard this past week that’s… I don’t know if there are very many, but in one particular case, some even ordained, making comment they’re saving certain funds aside in case Jesus Christ doesn’t return on May 27th. I am astounded at such a comment! I am dumbfounded by such a comment! And I think… “What are we holding back and why would we hold anything back? Do we believe this with all of our being, because if we don’t we need to bring ourselves into check and examine ourselves and go back to the sermon we heard at the end of the Feast!” How can you represent God’s way of life? How can you be a part of something so great, so awesome and have such mighty reservations in your mind?

So tell us Ronnie, how much did you hold back to pay your talented law firm to file all those motions for you?  How much did you hold back to pay your expert witnesses?  After all, your trial doesn’t start until June 4, well after you become a member of Elohim.  I am astounded that you would do that.  I am dumfounded that you would do that.

Update: Since making this posting, I see that the Cincinnati Enquirer has an article on the topic, similar to this one.  There ya go Bob and Dixon, you can quote that source so you don’t have to mention mine.

Ron took a minute to assure relatives of PKG members that he teaches against committing suicide.  While I don’t foresee a Jonestown-style mass suicide, I think that there may be some individual members who will not handle the non-return of Christ very well.  For a preview of possible reactions by PKG members, the article  A Year After the Non-Apocalypse (hat-tip to Gavin Rumney for finding this) suggests a range of responses based on what happened with the True Believers after the failure of Harold Camping’s prophecies just about a year ago.  My personal opinion is that most PKG members will continue to follow Ron into the next rabbit hole.

During his last sermon, he railed against his critics, and also took another swipe at people who litter.  He stated that the 7000 to die during the hour that Christ returns would be preachers, elders, and bloggers whose deaths would frighten the 63,000 survivors.  I’m wondering about the logistics of that, how the 63000 are going to be aware of this minor calamity relative to all the nukes going off as World War 3 breaks out.  He reflected on history, mentioning his breakup with UCG back in 1997.  How as a teen he wanted to be a general and a jet pilot so he could kill lots of people.  Instead, he’s become a pastor general and has damaged hundreds of lives. The 2 million books that have been sent out (which ends mid week), and all the ordaining he’s done for no purpose now until after Christ returns. The PKG website will survive World War 3 but all the other websites such as this one will be cleaned from the Internet.

Ron stated that if (if?) he doesn’t become a spirit being next weekend, he will realize that he will have more physical struggles and mocking to contend with. Somehow he recognizes this as a realistic “if” but doesn’t view it as reality.  Oooookaaaay.  Ron will repent but signals that he will continue preaching as he has the “truth” and would still believe that Christ is returning soon.  Gavin Rumney reposted an article from late in 2007 about how Ron might play his failures in 2008.  Actually, Ron has already exercised tactics 1 through 4 on Gavin’s list to some extent.  I view tactic #6 as a possibility.  Tactic #5, “I never actually said that, or, I’m not technically a prophet.”  is simply not in Ron’s play book.

A number of other blogs have added countdown timers to their sites.  Most of them count down to midnight on the 27th according to the clock in your PC.  The countdown timer that I’ve had on this website for the past several years counts down to the very minute of this non-event regardless of your timezone.  The “very minute” that Ron has scheduled his elder brother Jesus to appear is at sundown in Jerusalem on the eve of Pentecost.  Which happens to be 12:36 PM US Eastern Time next Saturday. This post is being published one week to the very minute prior.

A note about my countdown timer: it does not show fractions of a unit of time, so when the time remaining is 6 days and a fraction of a day it shows 6.  You may note that 0 months and 0 weeks remain.  But the counter also shows shorter units of time, down to seconds.

Further indications that Ron has decided to not plead to lesser criminal tax evasion charges.  There has been no filing for this and the deadline was Thursday.  Instead, there was a filing by the government to replace one of the two assistant US attorneys — if Ron were planning to plead out I doubt they would bother with a second attorney.  No withdrawal motions from Ron’s attorneys, suggesting that he’s continuing to pay them even though he believes he won’t need them.  Ronnie has a pre-trial conference with the judge on Monday morning and his trial is scheduled to begin on June 4.

Ron ended his last “live” sermon in this physical body with Psalm 116:17 and an admonition to his acolytes to be strong and of good courage, and then gave his own prayer.  I expect another “live” sermon from Ron, still in the same bald-headed physical body, no later than June 2,

In response to a comment about Ronnie’s legal woes and the charges of criminal tax fraud, JDElohim posted:

Read the claim of fraud, it is bogus and will not stand up in the court. It is steaming from the fact he has church tax status but doesn’t own a “building” called by the word “church”.

I have read the indictment, and it includes 5 charges for different tax years, which typically read like:

On or about April 15, 2008, in Boone County, in the Eastern District of Kentucky, RONALD E. WEINLAND did willfully attempt to evade and defeat the payment of a large part of the income tax due and owing by him to the United States of America for the calendar year 2007, in the amount of $118,375.82, by filing a false income tax return, by under reporting his income, and using COG contributions for personal use and not reporting the funds as income on his tax return, by failing to file a Report of Foreign Bank regarding an account in Switzerland, by failing to report the existence of that foreign account on the Schedule B of his income tax returns, and by failing to report any of the interest made on the foreign account as income, all in violation of 26 U.S.c. § 7201.

So these charges (a matter of official public record) have nothing to do with PKG not having a church building, which is typical for most of the other smaller splinter CoGs none of whom are led by Herblets who are under indictment for criminal tax evasion.  The issue of a church building would at most lead to loss of PKG’s tax-exempt status and tithes would not be tax deductible in the US (which they are not in other countries anyway).

While on the topic of the criminal trial, a pre-trial conference is scheduled for Monday morning at 11 AM in federal court in Covington, KY.  Today was the last day for Ronnie to have decided to plead to lesser charges and effect the filing of a motion for rearraignment on the lesser charges.  There has been no such filing, nor any other kind of filing since February.  So it looks like a go for trial on June 4 — unless of course Ronnie is out of the jurisdiction of the federal courts by becoming a member of Elohim or by other means.

JDElohim stated: All tithe revenue is indeed going into advertising, look at the top of any thread with “end days” key words in it and you will see an advertisment for the book. At the curent rate of advertising their will be no surplus of tithes after May 27, 2012.

Web traffic statistics from Alexa.com suggest that might actually be the case.

The graph to the left shows Alexa traffic statistics for web traffic to the-end.com for late 2007 and 2008 when Ronnie spent large amounts of his members’ life savings on Google Advertising.  The graph to the right shows equivalent statistics for the last few months, with traffic building in March and in the past couple of weeks well surpassing the heydeys of 2008.  This is likely the reason for the significant increase in Google referrals to my blog as well. But as to all tithes being spent on this campaign, a good part of it was spent on the recent global tour of the Two Witnesses.  And then we have the legal defense of Weinland.  I would say that he hasn’t cut them off as they did not file a motion to withdraw from the case because he wasn’t paying them.

JDElohim responded to challenges to Weinland’s failures by repeating Ronnie’s lame explanations.  As to what he would do if Christ doesn’t return on schedule:

As for your repeated desire to hear the answer to your hypothetical “what if” the answer is it depends on what God reveals to His people in the event your “what if” scenario transpires, but I will go where ever the truth of God is and where ever a congregation keeps the commandments of God, the weekly Sabbath and anual holy days, as THOSE are the “sign/mark” of God, forever and throughout your generations, and the unwillingnes to do those things is the “sign/mark” of the beast (mankinds civilization designed apart from the ways of God).

So JDElohim will buy whatever lame excuse Ron comes up with and continue drinking the Flavor Aid.  Then JDElohim went on to challenge back:

If however on May 26th (sunset May 27th in Jerusalem) Jesus Christ DOES return, what would YOU do?

I can’t speak for his challenger on the other forum, but I personally hope that Weinland’s god is not lying about the Lake of Fire the same way he has lied about everything else, because I wouldn’t want to be subject to a god like that and who also created evil.  In the meantime, I’m going to do a bit of prophesying of my own:

1. Christ will not return at the end of next week
2. Weinland will not admit to being a false prophet, truly repent, or stop preaching.

Instead, Weinland will spiritualize his failures and probably come with a modification, wearing out his copy of Strong’s Dictionary.  Maybe he’ll pull a page from Harold Camping’s playbook, who put in a 5-month delay after the failure of his May 21 prophecy for last year.  Weinland could change the duration of Christ’s return.  As in he begins to return on Pentecost but won’t fully return until the Feast of Trumpets, which is what Armstrong last claimed.  If not something like this, it will be something else.  The wonderful wacky Weinlandian adventure will continue somehow after Pentecost.

NO2HWA thinks that it’s “almost a given he will be imprisoned for tax evasion”.  While I think it more likely than not that Ron will be a guest of Club Fed, I don’t have any special insight into the government’s case against Weinland and am not willing to express any degree of certainty.  Regarding his desire that “they will imprison the Second Witness also”, I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen.  But the reality is that Laura is not under indictment and I have no indication that she is even under investigation.

NO2HWA goes on to ask if Ron is “prepping his group for his upcoming imprisonment?”  No, I don’t think so.  If he is, he’s doing a poor job of it.  So far, Ron indicates that he’s all-in for Christ’s return on Pentecost.  But if Ron really believes that, then he has cut off the funding for his legal defense team of Robert C. Webb and Jon Christopher Coffman at the Frost Brown Todd law firm.  Somehow, I have the feeling that Bob and Jon are still sorting through the 5000+ pages of discovery provided by the government and after tax season is over will be engaging an accountant to help out.

Referring to the title of his post NO2HWA goes on to ask “Or, does Weinerdude have something worse up his sleeve. It will only be a matter of time till Ron Weinland or some crazy splinter group leader flips out and hundreds will die.”

I myself think it highly unlikely that Weinland will pull a “Jim Jones”.  Although his actions make no sense, I doubt that a competent mental health professional will find that he’s crazy.  He’s more into the adoration of his followers, and will attempt to enjoy that as long as he can.  When it’s obvious to everyone that Christ isn’t returning, Weinland will pull out more signs and lying wonders to hang on to his followers.

But while I do not expect a Jonestown-style mass suicide, I do expect that lives will be ruined.  There will be ruined lives: financial and personal.  When the Tuesday after Memorial Day comes, there will be those with no funds, a heavy debt burden, and no job either.  Family relations will be ruined.  There will be PKG members who lose hope personally and suffer as a result.  And there may very well be individual suicides and that actually may have already happened.  But no, I’m not expecting a “Church of God Jonestown” here — what’s will happen is bad enough.

Rather, this is the third criminal trial timeline.  As previously mentioned, the outcome of the hearing in federal court last Friday is that the trial first set for January  31 and then delayed to March 20, is now set for June 4 by which time loyal PKG members expect him to have been converted to spirit being and a member of Elohim and out of the jurisdiction of the United States, which will have been destroyed by that time.  But Ron’s attorneys paid for by the church likely have enough on retainer to cover their fees.

Further details from the hearing.  There has been a change in the lineup of counsel.  Weinland is still represented by Jon Christopher Coffman and Robert C. Webb from the law firm of Frost Brown Todd.  However, on the government’s side, the lead attorney is now Laura Klein Voorhees  and Robert McBride remains assigned to the case as her assistant.  The pretrial conference has been rescheduled from March 12 to May 21 at 11 AM Eastern time.  If Ron decides to make a plea for a reduced sentence, the court will need to be notified no later than May 16.  The pretrial conference is approximately 36 hours before Ron and Laura’s scheduled death at the hands of the Beast Power in the streets of Jerusalem.  (Ron, is half a day exactly 12 hours?  Or will your death be an sun-up in Jerusalem on May 23rd?) It will be a bit tight, but Ron can probably catch a flight there after the hearing, if the court allows that.

Ron will shut down his legal defense now if he believes his statement in his sermon of Feb 11:

Let me ask another question – How long does it take for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Trumpets to do and cause what they’re going to cause? Do we not understand it’s because of those things that Europe does what it does? Do you not understand that it’s the very reason why Europe responds and makes a decision and a choice that it does, is because of what happens at that time? That someone has to step in and fill the gap – for whatever it is that’s behind all the thinking and those beings that move and motivate and distort the thoughts of leaders to make the choice they do. I’m telling you, that up to a week in advance these things could happen, of the end, of Jesus Christ returning – 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th Trumpets. Don’t think they can’t.

Feb 24 update:  The court has not published an order or opinion after today’s hearing.  Perhaps on Monday.  Or maybe Ron will discuss it in the sermon tomorrow, and pigs may fly.

Feb 25 update:  Pigs on the wing.  Ron did mention the court appearance at the beginning of the sermon, says the case is moved to June 4th.

From the motion, it appears that a plea agreement may be a possibility.  The tone of the motion is that the point of issue may be the amount of tax loss, which would follow from whether all the transactions in the government’s case would be classified as personal income or not.  A reduction in the amount of tax loss would result in less taxes due and possibly a reduced sentence.

The discovery provided to the defense is around 5200 pages of transactions involving a total of 24 bank accounts and 10500 transactions within 11 credit card accounts held by either Ronnie or the Church of God – PKG.  The motion includes this little gem: “For example, in 2008, the government characterized over $1.8 million of credit card transactions as legitimate church expenses.”  Most of that was probably Weinland spending his member’s life savings on Google advertising and printing up copies of his books.

Since the motion indicates that the government’s attorney does not object to an extension, I expect Judge Reeves will allocate more time when he gets around to considering the motion.

• March 3 — Georgia
• March 10 — Spokane
• March 17 — staying in Cincinnati

If Weinland is to plead to a lesser charge in exchange for a reduced sentence, the motion for that has to be filed by March 9.  March 12 is the date for the pre-trial conference, and March 20 is the start of trial.  I don’t know what the procedure is if he pleads out, perhaps the same trial date is used for the plea hearing.  If normally conducted earlier, then this itinerary with his remaining in Cincinnati the weekend before the trial may be an indicator that he won’t plead.

Seems to me that with over 5000 pages of discovery to sort through, that he would be helping his attorneys come up with a defense.

Now only 6 1/2 weeks before trial, given that the court gave him a 7-week continuance from the original date this past Tuesday.  Could this be the first day another march around Jericho?