Douglas Bruce, the author of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, has been ordered to appear Friday morning in Denver’s Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse for a hearing about possible violations of his probation on a tax-evasion conviction.
“I think they want to put something on the record saying I violated my probation and then reinstate it,” Bruce said in a telephone interview Thursday night. “But there are no violations as far as I know. … There’s nothing wrong going on on my end.”
Officials at the state attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
Bruce in 2012 of attempting to influence a public servant, tax evasion and filing a false tax return in connection with interest earned on $2 million that Bruce put into a charity he founded in 2001.
He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and six years of probation.
Bruce said the attorney general’s office provided him with a list of “a number” of potential violations, including the December sale of his late mother’s townhouse in Colorado Springs.
“It makes no sense to me — and there are four or five other things like that on their list that are easily explained,” he said.
At the time of his conviction three years ago, Bruce called himself a political prisoner. the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center after serving 104 days of his sentence, the former state legislator threatened to sue the city jail over what he considered deplorable conditions.
On Thursday, Bruce seemed more annoyed that his request to hold Friday’s court appearance at 10 a.m. was denied, leaving him to fight traffic from Colorado Springs to make his 8:30 a.m. hearing.
“I just don’t think … well, I’ll be quiet — I don’t want to upset the judge,” Bruce said.
