ADL Applauds 15-year Sentence Given to Extremist Larouche

Common criminality, not his political extremism, was the undoing of Lyndon LaRouche Jr., the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith commented Friday, following LaRouche’s sentencing to 15 years in prison for tax evasion and fraud.

The 66-year-old politician, who ran three times for president, was sentenced by Judge Albert Bryan of federal district court in Alexandria, Va., along with six co-defendants.

They were found guilty of scheming to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and deliberately defaulting on more than $30 million in loans from LaRouche supporters, many of them elderly.

“The sentencing sends a strong message that this anti-Semitic extremist cult leader cannot use his ‘political’ activities as a shield for criminal wrongdoing on a nationwide scale,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL.

“This case was not about politics; it was about crime. It was about defrauding the elderly of their savings and spending lavishly to maintain a high life style,” Foxman said.

LaRouche was the subject of a 54-page “ADL Special Report” released in 1986.

It focused on his bizarre world outlook, heavily laden with anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, denial of the Holocaust and allegations that the queen of England, among other things, headed a worldwide ring of drug traffickers.

LaRouche, who gave credence to the wildly anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” maintained that “Adolf Hitler was put into power largely on the initiative of the Rothschilds, Warburgs and Oppenheimers.”

LaRouche posed a danger because he cloaked his lunatic fringe notions by championing popular causes such as strong defense, and legitimate sounding fronts, for example, the “National Anti-Drug Coalition,” the ADL study pointed out.