After actor Terrence Howard allegedly threatened a Justice Department lawyer and said it's “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves," a federal judge ordered him to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

What's the background?

The Internal Revenue Service tried for more than a year to collect $578,000 in income taxes the agency said Howard — star of the hit TV show "Empire" — failed to pay between 2010 and 2019, the paper said.

After the Justice Department sued the 54-year-old actor in 2022, his sole response was a voicemail he allegedly left for the case's lead tax attorney in November, the paper said.

“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” Howard said in the message, the paper reported, citing a transcript of it. “Now, you have the gall to try and prosecute and charge taxes to the descendants of a broken people that you are responsible for causing the breakage.”

According to the paper, he added in a subsequent message, “In truth, the entire United States should, by default, become the property of the descendants of slaves. But since you do not have the ability [or] the courage to do it, let’s try this in court. … We’re gonna bring you down."

More from the Inquirer:

Despite that vow, Howard never formally responded to the lawsuit. And after a court hearing last week in Philadelphia, U.S. District Judge John F. Murphy granted the government’s request to enter a $903,115 default judgment against the actor, a ruling that was first reported by the legal news service Law360.

Efforts to reach Howard at a number he left on that voicemail and through a lawyer who at one point told Justice Department lawyers that he might represent the actor in the case were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Anything else?

Howard said in a 2019 red carpet interview that he was ready to spread truth, which included "the science that Pythagoras was searching for" and building the Milky Way "without gravity."

He noted, "I was able to open up the flower of life and find the real wave conjugations that we've been looking for for 10,000 years. Why would I continue walking on water for tips when I've got an entire generation to teach a whole new world?"

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