False Prophet Ronald Weinland

US Federal Magistrate Judge Wehrman ruled today on the government’s motion as described in my last post to compel Audra Little to provide testimony to the IRS.  Prior to the court hearing, Audra filed an affidavit stating:

1. My name is Audra L. Little;

2. My father, Ronald E. Weinland, is the subject of a criminal investigation by [the IRS];

3. I am aware that [the IRS special agent] has contacted me, as well as other friends and family members, employees and/or acquaintances of my father.  Moreover, several of these individuals have advised me that [the IRS special agent] has referred to me as a “potential target” in her investigation.

Audra’s lawyer filed a response to the government’s motion stating that due to Fifth Amendment considerations:

Without a grant of immunity the Respondent (Audra) should not be compelled to testify herein.

In the opinion issued by the court, Audra does not have the right under the Fifth Amendment to refuse to to appear and testify before the IRS.  However, she is still able to assert her Fifth Amendment rights by refusing to answer specific questions that may incriminate her.  But questions that incriminate only Daddy must be answered.  The court issued an order compelling Audra to appear before the IRS special agent to testify in response to the IRS administrative summons.

Audra, Audra, Audra.  What’s the problem?  Your daddy teaches that one should pay their taxes to civil government.  And being a Christian, he wouldn’t have broken the ninth commandment when he filed his 1040, would he?  On second thought, filing a fraudulent tax return is not bearing false witness against one’s neighbor.  So lying is not sinning then, is it?  But how about the seventh commandment?  Or is that which is Caesar’s not really Caesar’s, but Daddy’s.  Because after all whatever he has is God’s.

My expectation is that today’s court ruling is not the end of the case.  Audra will probably appear before the IRS special agent in response to the summons as ordered by the court.   And then she’ll assert Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer each and every question asked of her, requiring further litigation.

As Daddy Ron would put it: “Delay, Delay, Delay.”  Delays and Audra’s daddy go hand-in-hand.  Delay of the Great Tribulation.  Delay of the fulfillment of the first phase of the Fifth Thunder that was to prove that Audra’s daddy is a true prophet of God (the deaths of 5 specific ministers).  And delay of my promised speedy death from the inside from the curse the Spokesman Witness issued against me nearly 48 weeks ago.

On August 10, 2009, an IRS special agent served COG-PKG’s bookkeeper with an administrative summons requiring her appearance before the IRS in Florence, KY on August 21, 2009 to give testimony to support the criminal investigation of False Prophet Ronald Weinland.  According to court filings associated with the summons, with direct quotes from the filings:

• The IRS is “conducting a criminal investigation as to whether Ronald E. Weinland (“Weinland”) committed any offense under the Internal Revenue Code by willfully failing to report income earned during tax years 2004 through 2008.”
• “Little is employed by the Church of God performing bookkeeping services and as a personal assistant to Weinland.”
• “The information sought from Little by the summons is necessary to properly investigate whether Weinland committed an offense under the Internal Revenue Code for tax years 2004 through 2008.”
• Restated: “The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether Weinland committed an offense under the Internal Revenue Code by willfully failing to report all of the income that he earned from the Church of God. [The IRS] is attempting to determine the amount of income Weinland earned from the records prepared by Little, who performs bookkeeping services for the Church of God.”

Before her September, 2008 marriage to Christopher Little, Audra Little was known as Audra Weinland since she is the daughter of the Two Witnesses.  Apparently she inherited her mother’s financial management abilities and is also a member of Team Weinland as the church bookkeeper.  The summons was served on Audra at 11:05 AM on a Monday morning while she was at daddy’s house, suggesting that she is not otherwise employed apart from as bookkeeper and personal assistant to the Spokesman Witness.  Yet she is able to afford to buy a nice home in a nice neighborhood several miles away from daddy’s house.

On August 20, an attorney informed the IRS that he represented Audra Little, who would not be appearing the following day to testify, asserting unspecified constitutional rights/protections.  In response, the Tax Division of the US Department of Justice filed a motion on October 14 in federal court seeking to enforce the summons issued to Audra Little.  Administrative summonses are not self-enforcing as are subpoenas. Audra has been ordered to appear in federal court in Covington, KY before Judge Wehrman at 9:30 on November 19 for a hearing to determine whether she should be compelled to comply with the summons.

From the court calendar (Audra, tomorrow you should bring a book to read or some knitting since there are 5 other cases scheduled for the same time in the same courtroom):

What constitutional right could Audra’s lawyer be talking about?  The only one I can think of is the fifth amendment right under the US Constitution against being compelled to be a witness against herself.  Which makes one wonder what criminal acts she could have committed. I believe that a fifth-amendment objection could be overcome if the DoJ decides to grant her immunity from prosecution. And a bit of Internet legal research suggests that assertion of fifth amendment rights may not apply under these circumstances anyway. But these legal theories or any other discussion on my blog should not be considered as legal advice since I am not a lawyer.  So maybe there’s another legal basis on which she could refuse to testify — anyone have any idea what that could be? But then again, maybe she’s just stalling the process to give the Great Tribulation time to materialize and shut down the IRS before it can finish its investigation.  Update: As described in my next post, my legal musings were pretty close.

The court filings from Weinland’s 2008 lawsuit against the government only revealed that Weinland was under criminal investigation for unspecified violations of the tax code. The latest court filings are more informative, confirming what I expected — that False Prophet Ronald Weinland is suspected of a legal-source tax crime, that of failing to report income legally earned (since being a false prophet and asking people to send you their life savings is unfortunately NOT illegal).  The court filings also show that the criminal investigation is continuing, and that the IRS has not dropped the investigation for lack of prosecution potential.  What really puzzles me is why tax year 2008 was added to the investigation.  Didn’t Ron realize that he could have gotten an extension for filing his 2008 taxes at least until October?  And that he couldn’t be investigated for tax year 2008 before he filed? Yet he must have filed his 2008 taxes by April 15 for tax year 2008 to appear on the summons issued in August.  Guess I shouldn’t expect too much logical thinking from Ron, given that he claims that he and his wife are the Two Witnesses and now also claims that he is an apostle.

Audra, since your daddy teaches that one should comply with the laws of civil government and render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, then you’ve complied with the law and properly reported the income that the Church of God paid your daddy — right?  So why not just yield to the process like your daddy says, and get it over with?  Or is Daddy’s admonition to pay your taxes in the same category with his death curse issued 47 weeks ago for me to quickly die from the inside?

Awhile back, False Prophet Ronald Weinland promoted senior elder Terry Wrozek to evangelist, and at the same time promoted Johnny Harrell to senior evangelist over the other evangelists Terry and Wayne and all the elders.  At the time, the promotion of Harrell seemed to me to be counter-productive — should Ronnie end up taking an extended vacation as a guest of Club Fed, Laura could maintain control by dividing up the equally ranked evangelists and playing them off against one another, having them take turns delivering the sermons.

Since then, I’ve heard a sermon that gave me a new perspective on the issue.  In the sermon, Ronnie is discussing how some husbands are overly controlling and their wives don’t even know what’s in their bank account, because they’re not a team.  Then as an aside, Ron states: “she does my finances, thank God.  I learned very early on, I don’t want that job.  I’m very glad she has it.  She has talent in that area, I don’t.  I mess things up — I just want an overview.  That’s all I want to know — I’m happy”. Audio Clip

The following is somewhat speculative and we may never know, since the IRS does not release the results of their investigations except as disclosed during a court trial or in court filings.  The IRS began its criminal investigation of Ronald Weinland last year, issuing administrative summonses during July of 2008 for financial records for Ron, Laura, and the Church of God.  According to court filings, at that time only Ron was a target of the investigation, so Laura would have been considered an “innocent spouse” who didn’t really know what was going on.  But who knows what the investigation has turned up?  Given that Laura handles Ron’s finances and is fully on his team, it may be that the target list of the investigation has expanded.

Maybe Laura wasn’t an investigation target then, or not understood by Weinland to be a target back in December when he ordained her as prophetess and placed just below him in authority over the rest of the Church of God – PKG.  And perhaps since then it has been recognized that she is a target, leading them to cook up Plan C which leaves Johnny in charge to keep things going and manage the millions of people who join PKG as the Great Tribulation develops while the Two Witnesses turn water into blood and call down plagues from their cells.   According to Ron, the decision to promote Johnny was agreed to by his other team member, prophetess and silent end-time witness Laura.

It’s now 16 months since the IRS issued administrative summonses for Weinland’s financial records.  With an average length for an IRS criminal investigation of 14 months, an end either way is likely in sight.  The Two Witnesses are planning to travel to Europe next week.  Likely they’ll be coming back to the US this time, but I’m beginning to wonder.  Lately, Ron has again mentioned plans to live in Germany.  Jeremy, how comfortable is your couch to sleep on?  You may be finding out soon.

On the second day of the Feast of Tabernacles in rainy Rotorua, False Prophet Ronald Weinland continued with the second part of his “Family” series.  Mostly boring and a repeat of part 1, but a few interesting tidbits were dropped.

It seems that back in the WCG heyday, Ron encountered strife between the Canadian and the US ministurds.  Brothers Ephraim Vs. Manasseh, continuing the battles of 1812 even in God’s church.

Ron took some time discussing the situation in Afghanistan and how opium production has increased since 2001.  Talked about the warlords:  “Just destroy it.  We wouldn’t dream of going in there and destroying their cash crops.  And that’s the first thing we should do.  Just go in there with the planes, with the bombs.  We have the bombs, just incinerate their poppies, ya know. Hypocrisy of people, hypocrisy of government.”  If Ron were president, our B-52 fleet would be working overtime carpet bombing the world.

He meandered to the story of the crucifixion of Christ.  Pilate didn’t want to kill Jesus, but his hand was forced by the Jews, who framed an innocent man.

“Here’s someone who’s innocent …. and they look for false witnesses.  They try to find people who would bear and give false witness.  We have that taking place today in the church.  Some who would like to find some to bear false witness against the church.  Because if they can find them they think they have a case, they can do something against the church, against me.  What a sick world we live in.  Mr. Armstrong had to put up with those things for a long time.  They don’t know who they’re messing around with.  They’re messing around with God.  But human beings don’t understand that.  And there are certain things that God allows in his plan.  That’s why I know full well exactly how it’s going to come down. And the only one that’s going to be given any power isn’t until the very end.  Ya know.  So God’s made it very clear — you’ve got a full open field, to say whatever you want to say, how strong you want to say it.  And you’re going to have some teeth to put into it.”

Feeling a bit uncomfortable with how close the IRS criminal investigation is getting, Ron?  Wrap yourself up with Jesus and Herbie to prepare the membership to rally behind you against the instrument of Satan. Get ready to spin like it’s 1979. Ron, if you know how it’s going to turn out, please share in detail so I can update my speculated timeline for the IRS criminal investigation of you.  And exactly when is God going to give your 41-week-old death curse against me some teeth? Oh, I see. It “isn’t until the very end.”

In Kirrily’s recent article hosted back on Don’t Drink the Flavor Aid, she stated:

I won’t speak for Mike, but I believe that if everything had indeed occurred as Ron said they would, that Mike would have believed that Ron was who he said he was!

I can speak for Mike, and here’s what I say:

Ron published his book “2008 — God’s Final Witness” in November of 2006. Let’s pretend that the following events had taken place between that publication date and early April of 2008 when I began this blog:

• A terrorist event here in the US exceeding that of September 11.
• Multiple earthquakes in the US exceeding those of the 1989 San Francsisco earthquake and the 1994 Los Angeles Northridge earthquake.
• Multiple weather events effecting the US each of which exceeded the damage of Hurricane Katrina.
• An economic problem exceeding that which later came to a head in September of 2008.
• The deaths of certain CoG ministers: Rod Meredith, Richard Ames, Gerald Flurry, David Pack, and John Ritenbaugh. (Yes, I’m aware of some of these individuals, and even played with Meredith’s son as a child.)
• A sustained death rate of celebrities and notables far exceeding those of late June and early July.
• A major pandemic exceeding the current swine flu pandemic and rivaling that of 1918/1919.
• The appearance of Ron and Laura on major TV news magazine shows such as “60 Minutes” and “20-20″, or at least a serious article in a magazine like Times or Newsweek.
• A noticeable religious movement rejecting the trinity doctrine and going further to reject Jesus as having eternally existed, reserving that status for Yahweh Elohim alone.

Let’s say all of the above had happened to fulfill Ronald Weinland’s Seven Thunders prophecies. Or that similar events of the same order of magnitude had occurred except that the 5 specific ministers had still died. In that case, I might have remained skeptical as to whether Ron and Laura were the Two Witnesses, but would not have started a blog mocking the False Prophet and False Prophetess. After all, my first post following the introductory post was to debunk his Second Thunder.

And let’s say the following occurred after April 17th, 2008:

• The Pope began making political overtures to nations of the United States of Europe, particularly Germany
• During the seven weeks following 4/17/08, vegetation in the US began a massive die-off for some reason, with concurrent animal deaths as their habitat was destroyed, to fullfil Ronnie’s First Trumpet prophecy as prophesied on Weinland’s blog.
• Bob Thiel of cogwriter.com and Gavin Rumney of Ambassador Watch announced the ending of their blogs due to health reasons, or even simply stopped updating them, indicating that Ron’s curses against his mockers were effective.

Then I would have had to admit the possibility that Ron and Laura were indeed the two witnesses, that their curses against their mockers were effective, and that their prophecies were true. And if these events had been followed up with specific weather events declared in advance by Ron and Laura and “nukular” detonations in US port cities by mid-July of last year, then I’d have had no choice but to admit that Ron and Laura were indeed the Two Witnesses of Revelation chapter 11. Perhaps I would include myself in the hordes joining their church and be a part of the tithe of the third of the US population or 10 million people to survive the remaining trumpets and live on into the new age.

But absolutely none of this happened. Not even close. Let’s say that world events had gone on exactly as they actually have, but that in Weinland-land some events were different. And that I had started my blog as I did in April of 2008.

Let’s say that on June 8, 2008 (Pentecost) Ron had honored his “If by Pentecost” declaration of March 29, 2008 and announced that, since the effects of the First Trumpet were not powerfully and abundantly clear, he was turning over that day’s church services to either of his evangelists Wayne Matthews or Johnny Harrell. Also that his replacement backed off from any prophetic declarations or characterizations of the Weinlands as the Witnesses.

And let’s say that by July 31, Ronald Weinland had declared that he was indeed a False Prophet, apologizing to the members of his church for misleading them, and announcing that he would be resigning as the head of “the Chuch of God, Inc.” by September 1, 2008 with his only official acts being those necessary to facilitate a smooth, legal transition to his successor.

If all of this alternative scenario had happened, I would still have started my blog in April of last year as I did. But my blogging would have tapered off in June of last year after he quit preaching. And by July I would have shut down my blog without publishing the photos of his $381,000 mansion on a golf course. Nor would I have publicized the existence of the IRS criminal investigation of Ronald Weinland. And if you think that’s “no big deal”, then google “IRS Criminal Investigation” and see how many other specific criminal investigations are mentioned at all, while Weinland’s is mentioned twice in the first 3 pages of results. Ron, you are truly a unique individual.

Ron, if your prophecies had been true, then I wouldn’t be blogging. Or if you had been true to your word, I wouldn’t be blogging either. Either way, Ron, it’s all your fault.