I knew the name sounded familiar. Last September, we wrote about how John Anthony Castro promised to unleash “legal hell” upon Donald Trump, vowing to remove his name from the 2024 ballot. He filed at least 20 challenges in court, claiming Trump’s candidacy personally injured him and that the former president’s speech incited an insurrection against the United States. Castro is a tax attorney, which provided a rather ironic twist since he’s been slapped with federal tax charges (via NYT):
A long-shot Republican presidential candidate who has repeatedly, and so far unsuccessfully, tried to have Donald J. Trump thrown off the primary ballot was arrested this week on federal charges of preparing false tax returns for clients.
The candidate, John Anthony Castro, faces 33 felony counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation and presentation of a false and fraudulent return. Each count carries a sentence of up to three years in prison if he is convicted.
Court records show that prosecutors filed an indictment of Mr. Castro under seal on Jan. 3. That same day, Mr. Castro represented himself in a New Hampshire courtroom, appearing without a lawyer to contest Mr. Trump’s eligibility.
The records in the criminal case against Mr. Castro, which are now public, show that he was arrested by federal agents on Tuesday and was released after making an initial appearance in federal court in Fort Worth.
Mr. Castro graduated from law school but has never been licensed to practice law in any state. His bare-bones presidential campaign had raised $678 as of September, and he has not emerged as a serious challenger to the leading Republican candidates.
Even so, Mr. Castro has made headlines for a fire hose of litigation in at least 27 states, asserting that Mr. Trump is barred from the presidency by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which excludes from office any federal or state official who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
So, a fugazi tax attorney got charged with tax fraud. I guess the one thing Castro and Trump have in common in their respective presidential bids—Castro is running as a write-in candidate—is that both men face legal troubles. The man sounded like a looney toon then, and now it’s confirmed.
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