Target: Traficant, The Untold Story

by Michael Collins Piper

The outrageous never-before-told inside story of how the Justice Department, Israel lobby and mass media conspired to set up and take down Ohio’s outspoken Congressman Jim Traficant . . .

. . . From the pen of AMERICAN FREE PRESS correspondent Michael Collins Piper—the only journalist Jim Traficant agreed to speak to from prison after being convicted on trumped-up corruption charges. Traficant wouldn’t even speak to The New York Times!

In Target: TRAFICANT, veteran author Piper—whom Jim Traficant has said was the only journalist to tell his story truthfully and correctly from the beginning—has assembled this eye-opening and disturbing overview of the campaign by high-level forces to set up and take down the no-nonsense populist congressman.

If you have ever had any doubts about Traficant’s integrity—doubts instilled by a long-standing media cacophony attacking Traficant—you’ll soon realize that the Traficant case represents one of the most outrageous and thoroughly illegal hit-and-run operations ever orchestrated in our “democracy.” It is perhaps all too representative of the high-level corruption for which the “Justice” Department has been found responsible time and time again.

Piper dissects the intrigues of the DoJ and the FBI (as well as the maneuvers by the federal judge who oversaw the Traficant trial) and demonstrates, beyond any doubt, that Traficant was absolutely innocent of all of the charges on which he was convicted . . .

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Introduction
The “Crimes” of Jim Traficant

Although there are probably dozens of members of Congress who could be indicted and convicted for major criminal offenses involving high-stakes bribery and influence peddling that is often quite open and never prosecuted, the Justice Department spent many years coming up with a handful of dubious charges against Rep. Jim Traficant.

Ask anyone who knows how it works in official Washington and they'll privately admit that the real reason Traficant was indicted on criminal charges was simply the fact that "the powers that be" didn't like Traficant: he was just too honest and too outspoken.

Right up front, let's lay it out. Here are some of Traficant's real "crimes" in the eyes of the elite who railroaded Jim Traficant into federal prison in 2002.

• Criticizing the IRS and calling for expanded protections for the rights of taxpayers under fire from IRS;

• Taking a hard-line stand against NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and so-called "free" trade and urging protectionist measures to preserve American jobs and defend domestic industry from predatory global speculators;

• Tackling not only corruption inside the FBI and the Justice Department, but also personally assailing the integrity of former Attorney General Janet Reno;

• Attacking Wall Street wheeling and dealing and raising questions about the enrichment of high-level financial interests through the lending practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund;

• Accusing then-Vice President Al Gore of “trying to steal the election” in the midst of the long-and-drawn-out post-election debacle in 2000;

• Calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from trouble-spots around the globe and questioning constant U.S. meddling in the affairs of other nations;

• Charging American policy-makers with treason for having given top-secret U.S. defense and nuclear technology to the butchers in Peking;

• Coming to the defense of Ukraine-born Cleveland autoworker John Demjanjuk who was falsely charged by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations of being a “Nazi war criminal,”—only to be cleared, ironically, by an Israeli court.
(Ultimately, with Traficant sidelined in his own federal trial, they went after Demjanjuk again on "new" charges and restarted the process of seeking to deport the beleaguered old man.)

• Demanding that U.S. troops be sent to guard the Mexican border and prevent continuing hordes of illegal
aliens—and potential terrorists—from entering into the United States; and—last but very far from least:

• Challenging one-sided U.S. aid and support for Israel, saying that the biased policy was to the detriment of
America’s security and Middle East interests.

Traficant was the only member of Congress—the day after the Sept. 11 tragedy—to point out that U.S. support for Israel and open borders were root problems leading to the tragedy.

While Traficant enunciated these truths, other members of Congress squirmed uneasily, sitting in silence, as Traficant spoke out—even in the face of his impending trial—never one to be cowed.

163 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

American political writer, talk radio host and regular contributor to the American Free Press.

Piper is a staunch opponent of Israel and their neoconservative supporters in America.

Piper also has doubts about the motives behind the Martin Luther King and JFK assassination. He claims that the mossad and the FBI were involved with those assassinations.

Critics like the ADL claim that Piper is a anti-semetic conspiracy theorist and islamophile.

Reviews

[John Geddes · Rating 4 out of 5]

“[my] trial is a microcosm of what’s happening in America.” - Jim Traficant as quoted on p.82

This book and My First Days in the White House are the only books by Michael Collins Piper that are not online in pdf. While I understand why 'First Days' is not, considering that it’s a fiction book, a very different genre from the rest of Piper’s books, I can not understand why that’s the case for this book, considering that it is probably the most clear-cut account of lawfare I have ever read.
Jim Traficant’s 2001 conviction has got to be the most blatant case of lawfare I have ever read about. The Deep State spent about 20 years trying to find crimes to pin on Traficant and all they could get was 10 felony counts of the most ridiculous kind. The counts included:
- Having members of his staff help scrape old paint off his boathouse.
- Helping a construction company from his district, owned by friends of his, get government contracts in exchange for the “bribe” of pouring concrete on his father’s farm. (It wasn’t even poured correctly)
- Taking $2,500 as a kickback from his employee, Allen Sinclair, that actually went into one of Sinclair’s five bank account and never went to Traficant
- Racketeering, the legal equivalent of “the crime of doing crimes” (yes, the legal definition of Racketeering is that thin)

Despite the fact that they no doubt had hours of Traficant on tape, they couldn’t produce any because the air conditioner in Traficant was too loud (yes, really)

The main book is very short, at 103 pages, with two appendixes making the book 163 pages in total. The first appendix is a selection of Traficant’s farsighted speeches in congress. The second appendix is a reprinting of Michael Collins Piper’s 1987 journalism in the spotlight exposing the lies that led Budd Dwyer’s death, saving it from the memory hole.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hardly a literary masterpiece, but this surprisingly cogent AFP publication does a good (albeit repetitive) job of defending Traficant against the trumped-up charges that cost him his congressional seat and saw him tossed into federal prison. The selection of “Jimbo’s” one-minute speeches in the appendix makes for some fine filler — they should’ve included more just to pad the book — and the unrelated reporting on the very public suicide of Budd Dwyer (making a fairly strong case for Dwyer’s innocence re the bribery charge that prompted his on-camera death) was actually quite interesting. Recommended if you’re someone who wants to get down in these hardy rust belt weeds