The Ballweg Verdict and the Apparatus’s Revenge

The tax office ignores the ruling of the judiciary and wants Michael Ballweg to pay trade tax for the COVID protests. And the CDU wants to get rid of a member of parliament because he defended the Querdenken founder.

The Stuttgart Regional Court has issued its written judgment in the case of Michael Ballweg, announced by the court on July 31. The document is about 340 pages long. The “acquittal minus 19.53 euros” was not only a stinging slap in the face for the Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office, which wanted to see the COVID critic behind bars for three years. It also represented a major defeat for the COVID-era politicians and protagonists who had backed the case and wanted to make an example of the disobedient Querdenken founder.

After ten months of trial, the court acquitted the defendant of the accusation of more than nine thousand attempted counts of fraud and of various allegations of tax evasion. He was “convicted” only of two minor cases of tax evasion amounting to 11.42 euros and 8.11 euros and three attempted tax evasions totaling 2,072.85 euros. Because these “offenses” were so insignificant, Ballweg was technically not convicted but merely “warned” – an extremely unusual outcome. The court further ruled that Ballweg was entitled to compensation for 279 days of unjustified pretrial detention as well as for the house search. In addition, his seized assets must be released.

Finally, the court addressed a key element of the indictment: the Stuttgart tax office had pressured Ballweg, who organized numerous demonstrations and rallies against COVID policies beginning in 2020, to register a business, and then demanded trade tax for the gifted funds, supposedly payable to the City of Stuttgart. The court rejected this argument: organizing demonstrations, it held, is not a business but a fundamental right—and therefore not subject to taxation. It acquitted Ballweg of the allegation that he failed to pay trade tax.

So far so good. But anyone who assumes that the authorities would follow the ruling is mistaken. The public prosecutor’s office still insists that Ballweg is a criminal who allegedly siphoned off about 500,000 euros—the same funds that supporters had gifted him. Ballweg has not yet received compensation for his unjustified pretrial detention because both he and the prosecution filed for revision, which now must be decided by the Federal Court of Justice. The ruling is therefore not yet final.

The prosecution did release the frozen assets in August 2025. It stated that it had taken all “measures within its area of responsibility” to enable the return of the assets to Ballweg. Ballweg has since recovered money and a confiscated vehicle. However, a large portion remains subject to various garnishment orders from various tax offices. In other words, the executive branch does not share the judiciary’s interpretation.

The Stuttgart tax office maintains its position that Ballweg had established a company and registered a business to organize COVID protests. The gifted funds, it claims, constituted taxable business income, and trade tax was therefore owed to the City of Stuttgart. The office bases this on the roughly 500,000 euros that Ballweg supposedly kept as income after deducting costs—exactly as originally alleged in the indictment, which, after the trial, no longer holds.

In any case, two amounts—
a) €67,587.55 and
b) €50,389.02—
were paid out by the Stuttgart District Court, where Ballweg’s assets had been held, to the City of Stuttgart. According to Ballweg’s tax advisor, this included trade tax. The city refuses to comment on the amounts, citing data protection and tax secrecy.

Ballweg has filed suit before the Baden-Württemberg Tax Court. He cannot simply point to the Regional Court’s ruling.

Double Standards: The Executive Ignores the Court’s Decision

The executive machine keeps running. In the middle of the trial, in June 2025, the Stuttgart tax office imposed a late payment penalty of 2,300 euros relating to Ballweg’s income tax—and withdrew the money directly from his bank account. The same authority that is behind in issuing tax assessments simultaneously demands penalty payments.

The Regional Court essentially confirms this division, explaining that the criminal trial and acquittal concern one sphere, while the tax office is not bound by a criminal court’s decision when conducting tax assessments. These are two independent processes. In other words: the tax office can continue to claim that organizing protests is a business. If that view becomes precedent, all political initiatives could be at risk of being treated like Querdenken.

When the judiciary declares that demonstrations—protected as a fundamental right under Article 8 of the Basic Law—are not commercial activities subject to taxation, but the executive insists on the opposite and imposes taxes anyway, a form of dual legal system emerges. This creates a fundamental legitimacy problem and threatens legal peace. The executive simply asserts its own version of the law and can continue to punish someone who has been acquitted. That is not true separation of powers—because one branch refuses to respect the ruling of another.

Most of Ballweg’s other tax cases, for him personally and for his company, remain unresolved. The oldest open cases date back to the first COVID year, 2020. Although all requested tax returns were filed by Ballweg’s tax advisor, several tax assessments remain outstanding. Ballweg has filed suit over this as well, including for official inaction and the disputed trade tax. For the tax office, this is reason enough to wait until the legal proceedings conclude—while remaining inactive in the meantime.

Ballweg’s tax advisor no longer sees normal tax procedure at work, but rather a political process designed to make an example of him. The authorities, she argues, want to show that critics of government policy will be punished into submission. In doing so, she says, the Basic Law is being trampled on.

The overall Ballweg case—which still appears to carry the weight of a matter of state—has produced yet another story. This one concerns the CDU.

CDU Removes Ballweg’s Attorney from the State Parliament Candidate List Under Dubious Circumstances

One of Ballweg’s attorneys is Reinhard Löffler. A Stuttgart-based lawyer, he was appointed as court-assigned defense counsel for the then-imprisoned Ballweg in early 2023. When Ballweg was released from pretrial detention, Löffler immediately drove to Stuttgart-Stammheim Prison to pick up his client. The media response was significant. Löffler is also a CDU member and state legislator for the party.

Within the party, criticism soon emerged. Leading figures in the Stuttgart CDU district association asked their party colleague Löffler to attend a meeting. One could also say: they summoned him. The meeting took place in a side room of an Italian restaurant where the party officials had just finished dinner together. What followed, Löffler later described as a “Jacobin tribunal.” He was told that defending a “COVID denier” was not in the party’s interest, that he was damaging the CDU, and that he was a disgrace to the party. He was given an ultimatum: either drop Ballweg as a client or resign his seat in parliament. Whom he represented as an attorney was nobody’s business but his own, he replied. And, as he put it: “I would also represent Judas Iscariot at the Last Judgment.”

Indeed, the principles of the rule of law—such as the right to qualified legal defense—and the interests of a political party are two different things. Representing an accused individual does not mean adopting that person’s views. There is no violation of party loyalty in that. Conversely, a party that calls itself democratic should respect this distinction and defend the principles of the rule of law. If it places itself above those principles, it has failed to understand them. Or worse: it rejects them and reveals that the rule of law is ultimately irrelevant to it.

The tribunal against party member and defense attorney Löffler was only the beginning. In October 2024, the trial against Ballweg began—with Löffler as one of his attorneys. On March 9, 2025, the CDU held a nomination meeting for the 2026 Baden-Württemberg state elections, selecting the candidate for Stuttgart’s District III. That candidate had long been Reinhard Löffler, who had served a total of 15 years in the state parliament.

What exactly happened at or before the nomination meeting is disputed. What is certain is this: Löffler was voted out and replaced by challenger Shajeevan Thavakkumar. The result was so lopsided that Löffler now speaks of an “execution.” He had been “taken out,” as he puts it. Thavakkumar received 89 votes; Löffler received just 10.

A total of 102 party members attended—an unusually high number given that only 30 or 40 typically participated in the past. Remarkably, numerous new members had joined the party in that district beforehand, all of whom were eligible to vote. In addition, several existing members were reportedly called and urged not to vote for Löffler, but for his opponent.

What makes the matter explosive is this: an unfamiliar phone number was allegedly used for these calls. Several recipients saved the number, and it turned out to belong to an uninvolved private individual. Asked about it, he credibly stated that he had nothing to do with the CDU or any political party. He had owned the number for many years and had no idea how someone could have misused it. Candidate Thavakkumar denies having used an external number when contacting party members.

If it is confirmed that an outside phone number was hijacked to mask the caller’s identity—something requiring certain IT skills—the affair would take on criminal dimensions.

Löffler, the unseated incumbent, says he accepts being voted out as part of democracy, but the manner in which it happened amounted to “election manipulation.” The Stuttgart CDU district chairman, a former member of the Bundestag, dismissed this outright, declaring that no manipulation had occurred. Dr. Reinhard Löffler was “of course not denied another candidacy because of his professional activities.” The decision had been made by CDU members in District III. It is remarkable that he claims to know precisely what motivated—or did not motivate—each member’s vote.

Will this election have to be repeated? That question is currently being examined by the legal department of the CDU’s federal headquarters in the Adenauer House in Berlin, following a request from the Baden-Württemberg state association. They refuse to comment; inquiries go unanswered.

The CDU state chairman Manuel Hagel is also the head of the CDU parliamentary group in the state legislature—a colleague of Reinhard Löffler. Should the CDU win the state elections on March 8, 2026, which is possible, Hagel could become the next Minister-President. He is shielded by the party from press inquiries about the matter. A press officer responded to an email addressed to him, offering a conversation—“off the record.”

“Off the record” means that nothing from the conversation may be quoted. “Non-public”—that is how the Baden-Württemberg CDU intends to handle the issue. This at least shows that the party leadership is clearly aware of the explosive nature of the affair and seeks to contain it. A further email to the state chairman went unanswered.

What is also remarkable is the lingering power of the national COVID narrative, even years later. The COVID dogma has divided society so deeply that its supporters continue to be consumed by their own demonization of the so-called COVID deniers.

Thomas Moser is a freelance journalist and author who writes for the online magazine Overton as well as various ARD public broadcasting outlets. He advocates for the renewal and democratization of public-service media. As a political scientist, he has researched the NSU complex and published several books on the subject, including “End of Enlightenment: The Open Wound NSU.” He also reported on the parliamentary inquiry committees investigating the Berlin Breitscheidplatz attack and authored the book “The Amri Complex.”