undefinedThere are some very serious questions that need to be answered regarding the question of what happened to all of the money that was donated by the public to the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se’s that was founded and owned by former federal court of appeals judge Richard Posner. In September 2017 Posner opened the Posner Center purporting to the public that he wanted to help pro se litigants —unrepresented litigants— with their court cases. In 2018, Posner heard that I had won a federal civil rights jury trial in March 2016 by representing myself without a lawyer and he contacted me and hired me to work for him as executive director of the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se’s and also as an advisor to him in his personal capacity. We agreed on a yearly salary of $120,000 with payment for my services to be paid on a deferred basis. However, when the time came for Posner to pay me for my work, he reneged on our agreement and wouldn’t pay me for my work.

I received a letter dated February 28, 2022, from a lawyer, Robert W. Kaufman, who was representing Posner stating to me “What you clearly do not know is that, soon after your conversations with Judge Posner in early 2018, he received a confirmed diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease”, and “As to the substance of your claim, we believe that medical evidence will show that the Judge did not have the legal capacity to enter into contracts in 2018.” which was absurd, because Posner was quite active in doing interviews, running the Posner Center, writing books, working as a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago law School, and even taking on a new job as an advisor to Legalist in 2019 and also participating in an amicus curiae brief filed in the Federal Circuit on January, 23, 2019. The letter went on to state “The Posner Center dissolved as of July 23, 2019 and, to our knowledge, the entity had no assets with which to pay its liabilities at such time.” The Posner Center received thousands of dollars of donations but there were no public disclosures of what happened to the money, and no audits or reports were released to the public. This begs the question what happened to the money? Was the money embezzled? Who received the money? Who had access to the money? Who cashed the checks? What did he/she do with the money? What do the banking records show? What do receipts show in terms of expenditures of the money? What was the money used for? Public policy and societal interests dictate that these questions must be answered. Since all of the money was inexplicably gone when the Posner Center closed, and there were no public disclosures of what happened to the money, and no audits or reports were released to the public, the donors deserve an explanation as to what happened to their money. Since the money was inexplicably all gone when the Posner Center closed with no audits and no reports were released to the public, there is a substantial question of embezzlement of the donated funds that needs to be investigated.

There are many questionable things that went on. After collecting thousands of dollars in donations, the Posner Center posted a “Notice of the Dissolution of the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se’s” on the Center’s website on July 23, 2019, stating: “The stated reason for the Posner Center's dissolution is that the Center was receiving many more requests for assistance from pro se litigants than it could handle. I was then contacted by Litigation Daily and I informed Litigation Daily that the Posner Center was less then truthful for its stated reason of closing down. The dissolution statement by the Posner Center was nonsense and self-serving. I explained that there were enough lawyers to handle the requests for help from the pro se’s, but the reality was that the lawyers involved in the project did not really want to help pro se litigants; they just wanted their name attached to the Posner Center to make themselves look good. I knew that to be the case because when I as executive director contacted member lawyers to help pro se’s with their cases, almost every one of the lawyers I contacted would give a ridiculous excuse to not provide help. The publicly stated reason that the Posner Center gave to the public was hogwash, plain and simple.

Because Posner conned me into working for him so he could get free labor from me, I filed a breach of contract lawsuit against him in the United States District Court in Hammond, Indiana. And some very nefarious things went on there with Judge Theresa L. Springmann and Magistrate Judge John E. Martin. Martin started things out by doing something almost unheard of, he departed from the normal way of doing discovery as almost without exception litigations involve two way discovery where both sides are able to conduct discovery, but Martin decided to disregard the norm and only allowed Posner to conduct discovery as to his defenses, but refused to allow me to conduct discovery as to my claims —and by doing so he ignored several decisions from the Northern District of Indiana courts by at least two federal judges who had previously denounced bifurcated discovery. And when I asked Martin to explain why he was not willing to follow the decisions from the district court judges who have denounced bifurcated discovery, Martin refused to provide an explanation. What he did was rotten to the core. And Springmann allowed it.

The case was so tainted that one of Posner’s lawyers, Justin M. Ellis, on March 8, 2024, wrote a letter directly to Magistrate Judge John E. Martin requesting “this Court’s assistance in discovery to help bring this case to a swift end.” And even after Martin had already accommodated Posner and his lawyers’ desire for one sided discovery where he allowed Posner to conduct discovery as to his defenses, but disallowed me from conducting discovery as to my claims against Posner, that apparently wasn’t enough as Posner’s lawyer, Justin M. Ellis, desired even more “help” and “assistance” from Martin, to put the case to a “swift end” because things were getting scorching hot for Posner and his lawyers which is why they felt the need to inappropriately ask Martin to accommodate them by providing his “help” and “assistance” because in addition to the embezzlement of donated funds issue, there are issues of Posner and his enablers submission of false and fraudulent information to the IRS. By disallowing me to conduct discovery as to my claims, Posner and his enablers would then be able to escape responsibility from their wrongful and unlawful actions of tax fraud and skirt any questions of possible embezzlement of the donated funds to the Posner Center. And after Martin did his part, Springmann then did her part in the scheme of things and quite nicely did exactly what the letter from Posner’s lawyer asked the court to do, she brought the case to a “swift end” just as the Posner lawyer’s letter asked. Springmann and Martin performed triple back somersaults to protect Posner. What Springmann and Martin served was a cocktail of judicial poison. It would be risible to even suggest that Springmann and Martin were operating on the up and up —they each surrendered their judicial integrity. The case is now pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. All eyes should be on the Seventh Circuit on this.

At this point there needs to be a state and/or federal investigation into what happened to the missing money that was donated to the Posner Center. There is a substantial question of public concern when a former federal judge opens up an organization and collects thousands of donated dollars and then closes the organization after a relatively short period of time and the donated money is all gone without any explanation as to what happened to the money —there were no public disclosures of what happened to the money, and no audits or reports were released to the public. And the whitewash by Judge Theresa L. Springmann and Magistrate Judge John E. Martin in forbidding discovery into the issue of potential embezzlement of donated funds is a red flag that the public should be very concerned with. Everybody knows that when lawyers gather around a suitcase full of money that the money is going to vanish —and the donated money indeed did vanish. Now, the question is, whose pockets did the donated money end up in? The fact that there were no public disclosures of what happened to the money, and no audits or reports were released to the public speaks volumes. Who is Springmann and Martin trying to protect? It is clear that there needs to be a very serious state and/or federal investigation into what happened to the inexplicably missing donated money!