We met them at Rosa Mexicana, an excellent restaurant right across from the Verizon Center (home to the Wizards and Capitals). Over guacamole and enchiladas we discussed their careers and our experiences in Washington so far.

Kortan is the media guru for the FBI. He is in charge of all aspects of public affairs for the Bureau. Kortan handles everything from talking to movie directors who seek to portray the FBI in a film to overseeing the FBI.gov website. He told us great stories including how he worked closely with the directors of the hit movie “Breach” about FBI agent Robert Hanssen who was a mole for the Soviets. Kortan also told us about new electronic billboards that the FBI is employing to help track suspects, find missing persons, and issue terror alerts.

Johnson also had a slew of interesting tales to entertain us. He has worked for USA Today for more than 15 years and mainly covers crime and justice issues. Johnson covered the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and was one of a small pool of reporters at Timothy McVeigh’s execution. He said in an interview with McVeigh the first thing that McVeigh asked him was “How big is your circulation?” referring to how many people would read the story. Johnson said McVeigh was cold and made him feel uncomfortable.

Johnson also talked about his time in Iraq. He spent six weeks in the country in 2004, arriving after the murders of American contractors in Fallujah. He said that he assumed the identity of an Irish reporter in order to avoid violence from locals who hated America. Johnson talked about a time when he sat down with tribal leaders eating cookies and drinking Pepsi. He said that the leaders offered him a local woman as a gift and he declined saying “I think that my wife would be more dangerous than you guys if I accepted that.”

The dinner was an awesome experience and a great way to meet two real Washington insiders. Hopefully the next day and a half will be just as informative and fun.

The trial has been going on for the last couple of weeks and should last into the middle of next week. The men involved seem to truly believe that they were helping people by exposing laws they thought the IRS was improperly enforcing and finding ways to get around them. The men are all also devout Christians and saw their work as a ministry guided by God.

The tax schemes included denouncing citizenship from “The Corporate United States of America,” filing exemptions as members of an American Indian tribe, and drawing from closed treasury accounts, among other things.
Today the defense attorneys were working on building their case as they called several witnesses to the stand including four of defendant Danny True’s children and the pastor of the church the family attends. They sought to humanize the case as they marched out the model family. One of True’s daughters was pregnant.

The defense was also pleased when the prosecution made what seemed to be a basic error. When the defense attorneys were done questioning the pastor of the True’s family church, Clark Benson, the government attorneys chose to cross-examine him. Benson was a character witness who testified that True’s honesty could be described as “excellent without question, he is a truthful guy.”

When questioning witnesses, lawyers know that they shouldn’t ask a question if they don’t know the answer ahead of time. And they also know they walk a fine line between being liked and disliked by jurors. This seemed true as the prosecutor grilled Benson about some of True’s tax practices. The prosecutor came off as overly aggressive with the jovial Benson, repeatedly asking him if allegations against him changed his opinion of True. Benson forcefully replied that it did not because he knew True for several years to be an honest and good man.

Things were ramped up today as family and friends became involved in this case of white collar crime. The jury never seemed bored and both teams of lawyers worked furiously to win points for their side.

Fortunately Chief U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth lightened the mood. Referring to fake names that some employees at the tax scheme organization had on payroll sheets, the judge asked Seth True, Danny True’s son and a part-time employee of the organization, “If you could have a fake name what would it be?” True answered, “Probably Chuck Norris.”