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During the taking of his deposition by the Attorney General on April 3rd,
Mr. Rader and Church lawyers were shocked and outraged to learn that the
Attorney General has been
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covering up a theft of major proportions."
During his examination at the Attorney General's offices, Mr. Rader was
shown a 28-page document by the Attorney General which contained most
detailed financial information covering 27 years of past operations of
the Work of God.
Mr. Rader said that this document was prepared by the Church. "The irony
is that this document diseroves the very allegation that had been made
by the Attorney General in this case from the beginning," Mr. Rader
declared. "In addition, the information disclosing every single penny
received and every single penny spent completely and conclusively demon
strates that there never has been any pilfering or siphoning of church
assets by any defendant!"
But why was this document and others in the Attorney General's possession
not disclosed earlier to the court or to Mr. Rader? Why were they not
included in the court-ordered inventory of records originally taken by
the first receivership?
"First, it was stolen," explained Mr. Rader. "This accounting -- confi
dential and protected by the first amendment from disclosure to the state
-- was never produced by the Attorney General for examination. The
Attorney General was embarrassed to admit that he even had possession of
this stolen material. It came out inadvertently yesterday during my
deposition. What is more outrageous is that the Attorney General now
refuses to disclose the origin of these documents."
In addition, Mr. Rader felt that the purloined material in the possession
of the Attorney General would politically embarrass that office since
it disproves the grandiose and unsupported previous claims made to the
press by the Attorney General. "Cover-up and create confusion, rather
than admit the mistake," said Mr. Rader, "is the mentality of the Attorney
General."
Dissident Ex-Members Avoiding Compliance
Our ability to further discover how this invasion of the Church was per
petrated has been frustrated at this point since two of the six dissident
ex-members who are relaters in this case have fled the state and the
o!hers are avoiding being served court papers so that their oral depositions
/testimony of a witness taken under penalty of perjury, but not in court7
cannot be taken! Moreover, the Attorney General refuses to state that he
even represents the dissident members and refuses to accept the burden of
producing these people for examination. And so Mr. Rader has appeared
for his deposition, but the ex-members who started the lawsuit in con
junction with the state have refused to do so.
Once having been confronted with the theft of Church documents, the
Attorney General retaliated by advising Mr. Rader of his rights as in a
criminal proceeding instead of the civil proceeding that it is. "The
absurdity of this tactic is patent!" he exclaimed, "since the deposition
had already been in progress for more than one day without any such
warnings by the Attorney General. Clearly it was an attempt to retaliate
and intimidate me based upon a vindictive motive, having been caught con
cealing the stolen documents proving the innocence of everyone. This
outrageous conduct resulted in my leaving the deposition during the
second day of examination."