Image created by Grok not a real photo.
One of the most tragic unrequited bromances in history has to be the one way relationship between Kent Hovind and Donald Trump. Kent Hovind has been pleading for recognition and help from Trump for years. In his just released 3rd Open Letter to Donald Trump, Hovind, perhaps wiser, gets transactional. He points to his large following and offers to use his influence to support the President’s initiatives. In general, though Kent is repeating the same things he said in his last open letter in February 2025.
The Repetition
As I was starting to draft this piece in my head, I looked back at what I wrote about the previous letter and realized I was going to repeat my previous post. So I turned to Grok for help. I asked Grok to count the repetitions in the latest appeal. I didn’t have the patience to double check the result, but it is consistent with my impression.
The Justice Department was weaponized against Hovind as it was against Trump and Trump should get somebody to investigate Hovind’s case came up eight times. Judge Margaret Casey Rodgers saying Kent’s crimes were worse than rape came up five times. Also five times we hear that he broke no law and that the government broke many laws to convict him. We hear four times that he served nine years in prison, that he is not a tax protester and that he has paid every tax he owed. Three times we hear that eight people signed affidavits that they heard the “worse than rape” statement and that the line was missing from the transcript, which was held back for sixteen months.
Hovind has honed the narrative and repeated it many times over the years. I heard it when I interviewed him in 2015, when still imprisoned, he was facing trial for actions he took to frustrate seizure of the Dinosaur Adventure Land property in Pensacola. In 2019, my son, William, and I spent the day at Dinosaur Adventurel Land as regular visitors. We took the “Real Tour” as opposed to the “Grandma Tour” on “the mule” with Kent driving. I used my senior citizen status to get the shotgun seat. A young couple rode with us. The male half was training to be a Marine Corps aviator at Pensacola. The female half was blond, making her the butt of one of Hovind’s jokes. At any rate, the final events of the day were dinner and bible study which we had to pass on. Here is how the visit closed for us:
“We were invited to dinner and the bible study, which I would have loved to do, but William and I had a lot of driving ahead of us. As we were getting ready to go, William reminded me to get my copy of The Kennel autographed. I hunted around and found where they were eating, pausing respectfully as Kent finished grace. He was sitting with the military couple when I came up to him for the autograph. He told them that he was in prison for nine years for nothing, They were just trying to shut him up. Have you ever heard of structuring?”
At any rate, I have at one time or other deconstructed many of Kent claims and thought this might be a good time to look at them again.
Tax Protester
I will tackle “Tax Protester” first, because Kent was kind enough to feature my 2014 “Is Kent Hovind A Tax Protester?” from Forbes.com in his open letter. Here is a link to the article without a paywall. Attorney Daniel B. Evans prepared a catalog of tax protester arguments, which remains a really good resource particularly for the period around Kent’s first trial in 2006, but even up to this day. He defines “tax protesters” as:
“People who refuse to pay taxes or file tax returns out of a mistaken belief that the federal income tax is unconstitutional, invalid, voluntary, or otherwise does not apply to them under one of a number of bizarre arguments, most of which are described in this FAQ.”
Kent’s claim that he has never been a tax protester is patently false. Check out CSE 103 Class 6 Topic “income tax”. Starting at 2:09 he says:
“My philosophy is that everybody should obey the law including the government. All right. Real Simple. I have not filed any income tax in 28 years. If there is a law that requires me to file some, I would like to see it.”
He then starts in on classic tax protester arguments. I don’t believe Kent has ever said what was in this video was wrong. He just moved on to other things that he considers more important. The ministry had been sending out material to help people follow in his non-filing footsteps, but they stopped doing that as noted in the opening of the video. It strikes me that this activity more than his teaching on creationism that got him in the sights of IRS CI. I suspect that when they were tearing his place apart looking for tapes, this is the one that they were looking for.
The tax protester theme came up one more time in 2015. Part of Kent’s broken record then were three letters that he had gotten from tax professionals that said everything he was doing was OK. Somehow the letters surfaced on the internet and were sent to me by Robert Baty. I sent them to Rudy Davis, who was then the chief Hovindicator, who sent them to Kent in jail. Kent and Rudy were talking every day in the runup to the trial. Kent confirmed that they were the letters. I then wrote a rather lengthy piece explaining why Kent’s reliance on those particular letters actually prove that he was in fact a tax protester.
My Is Kent Hovind A Tax Protester? piece was written in 2014 before I received the letters. I don’t know when I first saw the video the income tax video, but it was probably after that. I picked up the Hovind story in 2012 from a Tax Court opinion. It was far advanced by that point and I only filled in the background gradually. The Hovind story was one of the first that encouraged me to more than report and comment on opinions. In the 2014 piece I concluded that Hovind was not a tax protester because he had shifted to arguments that relied on his status as minister and Creation Science Evangelism being a separate entity rather than arguing that the income tax was generally inapplicable.
Paid Every Tax He Ever Owed
This one is really kind of silly. If the IRS assesses a tax and you appeal to Tax Court and lose and appeal to circuit court of appeals and lose then you owe the money. Here is the table approved by the Tax Court that was sustained by the Eleventh Circuit. It is $1,666,531 in tax which is nearly doubled by penalties. It is for the years 1998 to 2006. Hovind probably no longer owes this thanks to the statute of limitations on collections and may have paid some of it off after his release, but I doubt that he could have even kept up with the accumulating interest.
Broke No Laws
Structuring actually is a crime and when Hovind talks about what happened he describes himself committing the crime. The crime of structuring is arranging your deposits and withdrawals with the intent of avoiding the bank reporting. I have a lot of sympathy for him on this one, because I think he was blindsided. He was prepared with the letters to defend himself on failure to file and avoidance, but structuring came out of left field. I did invest a bit of time in the innocence videos that Kent flashed, one of which was by autodidact legal researcher Brady Byrum. Here is my major takeaway:
“I have to confess that I have not listened to all 12 hours. I’m more of a reader, but I think I have extracted a key piece from the first video at 26:13. It is the list of cases that Mr. Byrum will use to build his argument.
US v Reinis – 1986
US v Espriella 1986
US v Varbel 1986
US v Anzalone 1985
US v Richter 1985
US v $200,000 1984
California Bankers Association v Shultz 1974What I find interesting is that the statute that the Hovinds were proved to have violated 31 USC 5324 – Structuring transactions to evade reporting requirement. was added in 1986. So none of that case law relates to that statute directly.
There is quite a bit of post-1986 case law that is actually about the statute that the Hovinds were convicted under. In some instances there were acquittals based on lack of willfulness, but the statute has been upheld. US v MacPherson, for example, was decided in 2005.
Byrum’s apparent lack of discussion of case law after the statute in question was passed, at least in my mind, greatly weakens his argument. Frankly arguing that a judge is criminal for not overturning a statute that has been upheld is kind of preposterous.”
Worse Than Rape
I never thought the “worse than rape” allegation was that important because it is alleged that Judge Rodgers said it during sentencing, so it would not have affected the jury. As it happens, though, Jonathan Schwartz investigated it and found a witness who challenged it. Here is Jonathan’s interview of Jen Fishburne
It didn’t convince the Hovindicators.
An Odd Pair Or Not?
At first blush it would seem that Kent, who bragged about not kissing his first wife before they were married, would not think highly of a man who bragged about grabbing women by the you know because he could get away with it as a star, but they do have things in common. There is similarity in their felony convictions. Like with Kent’s structuring I had to do some digging to figure out how it was that “falsifying business records” was a crime. They both believe that they were prosecuted for reasons other than what they were charged with. They both built businesses around a persona. They both have institutional distrust as worldview.
I would be surprised if Trump ever notices and has kind words for Kent Hovind, but I would not be shocked.
