On a crusade against feds, Yonkers man wants Bush arrested

By BILL HUGHES
whughes@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS
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(Original publication: August 29, 2005)

YONKERS - Until last week, all Frank Langella wanted was his day in court, a chance to have a jury hear his case against the U.S. government, with President Bush named as the lead defendant.

Now the 73-year-old Yonkers man wants the president, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and an assortment of local federal employees arrested on perjury charges. He demanded that arrest warrants be issued in a motion he filed with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Aug 22, which included copies of the evidence he believes proves the alleged perjury.

What led Langella’s legal odyssey to this point boils down to two questions: Was he guilty of helping a Yonkers Planning Board member bribe a contractor in the mid-1990s? And did the Social Security Administration have the right to deny him payments while he served 14 months in federal prison after being convicted of extortion in 1994?

The latest motion is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, he has written himself and filed on his own behalf, or "pro se," in the past 10 years. According to court records, Langella now is appealing his ninth failed federal lawsuit, the fourth of which has gone to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

"This stopped being just about me a long time ago," said Langella, a high school dropout who can cite constitutional law, chapter and verse, like a man with a law degree. "This is about the federal government denying me my constitutional right to a trial by my peers over a legitimate grievance, and I’ll be damned before I ever give up."

His first five efforts were attempts to prove he was wrongly convicted of extortion, and the most recent four have involved his battle with the Social Security Administration, not that he has given up on proving he was innocent.

Langella said federal law prohibited the government from touching his Social Security; government lawyers repeatedly have argued that regulations allowed it.

The judicial system has sided with the government’s lawyers and dismissed his suits before trial, but he keeps coming back from different angles.

In addition, Langella swears that documents were forged to change dates, and he makes other allegations of malfeasance that he wants to present to a jury.

His latest allegation of perjury involves a recent filing, sworn to by an assistant U.S. attorney, claiming that Langella failed to serve the government with a brief by May 16 as required.

Langella has an original copy of the brief he submitted stamped "received" by the U.S. attorney’s White Plains office on that date.

Richard Zorza, a lawyer and legal expert, published an article last year in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics about judicial handling of pro se cases.

Zorza said Langella shares a common trait with most pro se litigants in that he just wants an opportunity to be heard, and added that Langella could have a valid argument on the perjury charge.

"Without commenting on the specifics of this case because I haven’t read it, I will say that if the (U.S. attorney) is filing knowingly inaccurate statements of fact, that’s no different from anyone else doing it," Zorza said. "That’s the definition of perjury."

Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is serving as Bush’s defense counsel, said the office had no comment on the allegations.

Langella said he had spent nearly $40,000 in typing, copying and filing fees to fight the garnishing of $9,577 in Social Security payments.

Kate Sampson, a spokeswoman for the American Judicature Society, which advocates for judicial changes, said Langella shares most pro se litigants’ quest for justice in their favor, but he is not a typical pro se filer.

"The majority are single women between 18 and 35 who are in Family Court on either custody or child-support issues," Sampson said.

"This man sounds more like someone on a mission, which accounts for a small percentage, but they’re certainly out there, and they are a determined bunch."

Langella has no problem with that characterization.

"Yeah, I’m on a mission. I’m on a double mission," he said. "I’m on a mission to clear my name, and I’m on a mission to put the small percentage of crooked government employees responsible for all this in jail."

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