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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello again, dear listeners, this is your host, Molly Conger,

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Speaker 2: once again bringing you a rerun. I'm so sorry. I

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Speaker 2: promise I will be back next week with a brand

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Speaker 2: new Weird Little Guy for you. This pair of episodes

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Speaker 2: originally aired back in November of twenty twenty four. It's

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Speaker 2: one of the more lighthearted story arcs we've had on

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Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys. It tells the story of a half

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Speaker 2: baked plot to take over a small town in Tennessee

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Speaker 2: so a conspiracy theory blogger and a militia chaplin could

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Speaker 2: prove once and for all that Barack Obama was born

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Speaker 2: in Kenya. He wasn't, obviously, and they didn't succeed. It's

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Speaker 2: just a silly little story about a lesser known chapter

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Speaker 2: in the history of right wing extremists refusing to accept

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Speaker 2: election results. If you missed it last time around, I

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Speaker 2: hope you will enjoy one of the only stories I've

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Speaker 2: told so far where nobody really got hurt except me.

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Speaker 2: It did cause me some agony to dig up and

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Speaker 2: listen to hours of old episodes of g Gordon Liddy's

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Speaker 2: talk radio show so that I could find the exact

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Speaker 2: moment in history when a conspiracy theorist called the guy

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Speaker 2: who did Watergate to tell him about the armed standoff

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Speaker 2: he and his friends were going to have after breakfast,

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Speaker 2: but it was worth it. It's a fun episode. On

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Speaker 2: April first, twenty ten, retired Navy Lieutenant Commander Walter Francis

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Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick the Third walked into the Monroe County Courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee.

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Speaker 2: That was no surprise to anyone in Madisonville. Fitzpatrick had

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Speaker 2: become a frequent visitor to this courthouse in a small

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Speaker 2: town in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. A

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Speaker 2: year earlier, in March of two thousand nine, he asked

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Speaker 2: a Monroe County grand jury to indict President Barack Obama

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Speaker 2: on charges of treason. The grand jury declined to do so.

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Speaker 2: In the year that followed, he had been a regular

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Speaker 2: fixture in the County court Clerk's office, demanding information about

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Speaker 2: the county's jury selection process. After the grand jury's refusal

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Speaker 2: to accept his presentation of evidence against Barack Obama, he

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Speaker 2: could only conclude that the process itself was deeply corrupt

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Speaker 2: and sinister forces were conspiring against him to suppress the

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Speaker 2: truth that Barack Houssain Obama was not the rightful president

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Speaker 2: of the United States, that he was born in Kenya,

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Speaker 2: that he had rigged the two thousand eight election, and

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Speaker 2: he was guilty of high treason. Walter Fitzpatrick was more

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Speaker 2: than prepared to put Barack Obama on trial, but now

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Speaker 2: he believed the whole Damn's system was guilty and he

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Speaker 2: wasn't going to let them get away with it. He

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Speaker 2: just needed some backup. I'm Molly Konger, and this is

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Speaker 2: where the little guys as in writing this. It's a

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Speaker 2: few days after the twenty twenty four presidential election. Every

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Speaker 2: election has winners and losers, and not everybody is happy

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Speaker 2: with the results. It's probably no surprise to you that

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Speaker 2: I count myself among those of us who aren't thrilled

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Speaker 2: with the results this time around. But sometimes disappointment, dread,

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Speaker 2: and dissatisfaction aren't enough. For some people, an undesirable election

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Speaker 2: outcome is simply unacceptable. Literally, they can't accept it, it

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Speaker 2: can't be true, and it can't be allowed to stand.

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Speaker 2: As with my Halloween episode, I'm a little behind the

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Speaker 2: curve here in terms of seasonal content. At this rate,

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Speaker 2: I'll be doing a Christmas special on Groundhog's Day. But

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Speaker 2: elections and weird little guys go together like peanut butter

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Speaker 2: and jelly. Well, no, no, that's not true. You do

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Speaker 2: find them together often, but they don't usually mix well.

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Speaker 2: So maybe it's more like oil and water. Neither of

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Speaker 2: those analogies are really giving me what I want in

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Speaker 2: my personal experience. Right wing extremists and election results go

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Speaker 2: together like blue gatorade and raw onions. When I covered

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Speaker 2: the January sixth ride at the Capitol in twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 2: those were the two things I saw people pulling out

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Speaker 2: of their backpacks the most. Think. Some right wing influencer

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Speaker 2: convinced a lot of people who'd never been to a

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Speaker 2: riot before that you should carry a raw white onion

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Speaker 2: cut in half in a ziploc baggie because rubbing it

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Speaker 2: on your face is a homeopathic remedy for tear gas.

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Speaker 2: Just a heads up, that is not true. Do not

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Speaker 2: do that. Do not rub a raw onion on your

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Speaker 2: eyeballs at any time, and definitely don't do it after

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Speaker 2: exposure to a chemical irritant. And if you can only

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Speaker 2: pack one thing to drink in a situation like that,

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Speaker 2: make it water. Or else you'll be washing pepper spray

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Speaker 2: and onion juice out of your eyes with gatorade, which

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Speaker 2: doctors do not recommend. That's just some free advice for you,

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Speaker 2: but I thought it would make perfect sense to do

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Speaker 2: some kind of election themed weird little guy. And to

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Speaker 2: be honest, I'm bored of January sixth stories. I'm sure

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Speaker 2: I'll get to some of them on this show eventually.

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Speaker 2: And there were some guys there who were very strange

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Speaker 2: guys even before they were trying to stop the steal.

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Speaker 2: And if the guy they were fighting for that day

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Speaker 2: follows through on his promise to pardon them all, some

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Speaker 2: of them will make their way back into the news

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Speaker 2: one way or another, whether that's running for office or

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Speaker 2: building a bomb. But right now today, I'm sick of

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Speaker 2: thinking about the twenty twenty election results because I'm sick

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Speaker 2: of thinking about the twenty twenty four election results. And

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Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election was not the first time right

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Speaker 2: wing extremists couldn't accept the results. So come with me

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Speaker 2: to the distant past. Two thousand and eight. I voted

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Speaker 2: for president for the first time that year, making me

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Speaker 2: one of nearly seventy million Americans who cast a ballot

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Speaker 2: for Barack Obama. He won handle it, beating John McCain

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Speaker 2: by more than seven percent in the popular vote and

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Speaker 2: pulling in three hundred and sixty five electoral votes to

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Speaker 2: McCain's one hundred and seventy three. Barack Obama was promising hope, change,

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Speaker 2: and healthcare. John McCain was burdened by George W. Bush's

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Speaker 2: rock bottom approval ratings and his support for Bush's now

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Speaker 2: increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. It seemed like a new

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Speaker 2: day had dawned. We were all going to get healthcare,

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Speaker 2: and we had finally elected our first black president. Of course,

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Speaker 2: not everyone was on board. We'd had more than two

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Speaker 2: centuries of white men named James, John, William, and George. Literally,

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Speaker 2: of the forty two presidents before Obama, eighteen of them

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Speaker 2: were named James, John William, or George. About forty percent

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Speaker 2: of the total presidential time until two thousand and eight

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Speaker 2: was under a guy with one of those four names.

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Speaker 2: We elected two two different guys named Franklin. We hadn't

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Speaker 2: really been getting a lot of variety. Conspiracy theories about

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Speaker 2: Barack Obama's race, religion, and place of birth are creatures

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Speaker 2: of racism, pure and simple. There's no talking your way

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Speaker 2: around that fact. He has a foreign sounding name and

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Speaker 2: he is not white. There was a lot of anxiety

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Speaker 2: that someone who didn't look like the American presidents we'd

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Speaker 2: had before couldn't possibly have the same American values. During

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Speaker 2: the primary, Mark Penn, a senior campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton,

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Speaker 2: wrote a memo suggesting that they should highlight the fact

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Speaker 2: that Obama spent some of his childhood in Indonesia while

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Speaker 2: emphasizing Clinton's Midwest roots, writing, his.

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Speaker 3: Roots and basic American values and culture are at best limited.

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Speaker 3: I cannot imagine electing a president during a time of

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Speaker 3: war who was not at his center fun mentally American

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Speaker 3: in his thinking and in his values.

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Speaker 2: The Clinton campaign didn't end up going with this strategy,

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Speaker 2: but the memo got out, and this idea that Barack

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Speaker 2: Obama was an American bled into a conspiracy theory that

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Speaker 2: he was not American at all and had in fact

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Speaker 2: been born in Kenya. During the two thousand and eight

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Speaker 2: election season, surveys showed that as many as a third

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Speaker 2: of Republican voters believe there may be some truth to

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Speaker 2: the idea that Barack Obama was born outside of the

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Speaker 2: United States. An analysis published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity,

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Speaker 2: and Politics in twenty nineteen acknowledged that, yes, the best

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Speaker 2: predictor of believing in any conspiracy theory is a pre

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Speaker 2: existing belief in any other conspiracy theory. People who are

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Speaker 2: prone to believing unsubstantiated claims often believe many of them.

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Speaker 2: But while there are certainly people of all political orientations

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Speaker 2: who are willing to entertain the theory, the study found

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Speaker 2: that belief in this particular conspiracy theory was uniquely correlated

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Speaker 2: to the believer's own race, party affiliation, and most importantly,

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Speaker 2: their level of racial resentment toward African Americans. So to

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Speaker 2: be clear, there are multiple studies published in journals across

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Speaker 2: a range of disciplines over the course of nearly twenty

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Speaker 2: years that have found measurable correlations. Here, the people who

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Speaker 2: trafficked in Birtherism were white Republicans with a measurable level

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Speaker 2: of racial animus. This was never about getting to the truth.

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Speaker 2: It was an intense fear of a black president. In

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Speaker 2: June of two thousand and eight, just days after Hillary

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Speaker 2: Clinton conceded the primary and Obama was the presumptive nominee.

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Speaker 2: His campaign released a copy of his birth certificate showing

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Speaker 2: he had in fact been born in Hawaii. But you

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Speaker 2: can't kill a conspiracy with facts that's never worked. And

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Speaker 2: confronted with what should have been the final answer to

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Speaker 2: the question, Berthers just doubled down the birth certificate was

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Speaker 2: simply fake. This only fueled the fire, and in August

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Speaker 2: of two thousand and eight, the first of countless lawsuits

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Speaker 2: was filed. And oddly enough, we've already talked about this

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Speaker 2: particular lawsuit on this show in the first episode about

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Speaker 2: the Pennsylvania clansman Berry Black. Philip Burg's lawsuit alleged that

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Speaker 2: Obama had been born in Kenya, and this relied on

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Speaker 2: a sworn affidavit written by Ron McCrae about a phone

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Speaker 2: call that he had had with Barack Obama's father's stepmother

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Speaker 2: through a translator. Ron McCrae was the homophobic street preacher

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Speaker 2: who spent years harassing the owners of the Costanova Lounge,

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Speaker 2: a gay bar in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It was located

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Speaker 2: across the street from a farm owned by some clansmen.

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Speaker 2: Berg's lawsuit was dismissed and the judge called it frivolous

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Speaker 2: and not worthy of discussion, which is true, but that

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Speaker 2: became the playbook. Berthers around the country filed frivolous and

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Speaker 2: baffling lawsuits. They filed them in federal court houses, county

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Speaker 2: circuit courts, state supreme courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals,

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Speaker 2: state boards of election, state administrative courts. They filed complaints

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Speaker 2: and requests for injunctions and petitions anywhere they could find

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Speaker 2: a bureaucrat sitting in a desk. For just the years

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Speaker 2: two thousand and eight through twenty twelve, I found over

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Speaker 2: two hundred complaints in various forms, filed with every kind

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Speaker 2: of court you can imagine, and some kinds of courts

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Speaker 2: I've never heard of, and they lost every single one.

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Speaker 2: They seemed convinced that they could find the right collection

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Speaker 2: of words, the right legal incantation, that, if presented to

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Speaker 2: the right judge and the right jury, would wake America

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Speaker 2: from this national nightmare of an Obama presidency. But the

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Speaker 2: lawsuits weren't working. Judge after judge sent them packing. In

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Speaker 2: most cases they didn't even get a hearing. They were

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Speaker 2: submitting complaints that had absolutely no legal basis to proceed,

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Speaker 2: No basis in reality even and in the cases that

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Speaker 2: did get a foot in the door, they were submitting

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Speaker 2: forged documents and relying on already debunked claims. Lawyers were sanctioned,

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Speaker 2: fines were levied, and suit after suit was dismissed. But undeterred,

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Speaker 2: the Birthers found a new way forward. If they couldn't

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Speaker 2: get justice through civil suits, they would simply have to

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Speaker 2: have the President of the United States arrested. In June

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Speaker 2: of two thousand and nine, one hundred and seventy two

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Speaker 2: extremely devoted conspiracy theorists convened. They called themselves the Super

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Speaker 2: American grand Jury. Now that's not a real thing. Grand

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Speaker 2: juries are real. Of course, we don't need to get

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Speaker 2: bogged down in the specifics because they vary from state

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Speaker 2: to state. But generally speaking, a grand jury is a

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Speaker 2: group of citizens convened by a court and tasked with

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Speaker 2: issuing indictments. So a prosecutor will briefly summarize a case.

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Speaker 2: They'll put on a little bit of evidence, maybe some witnesses,

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Speaker 2: and the grand jurors will just if there's probable cause

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Speaker 2: to believe a crime has been committed by the individual.

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Speaker 2: The prosecutor is seeking to indict. They aren't deciding if

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Speaker 2: anyone is innocent or guilty. They're not trying the case.

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Speaker 2: It's a much lower standard here. They're just deciding is

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Speaker 2: this something that should proceed as a case at all.

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Speaker 2: You've probably heard the saying you can get a grand

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Speaker 2: jury to indict a ham sandwich. It's a pretty low

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Speaker 2: bar to clear at this stage. But we're not here

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Speaker 2: to talk about real grand juries because that barely factors

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Speaker 2: into the story at all. I just want to be

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Speaker 2: clear that grand juries are real, they do exist, and

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Speaker 2: this was not one. A grand jury is made up

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Speaker 2: of grand jurors who have received an official summons from

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Speaker 2: a real court, and they are presented real potential cases

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Speaker 2: by a real prosecutor, and they make real determinations about

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Speaker 2: which cases get an indictments. There are six states that

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Speaker 2: allow citizen initiated grand juries in Oklahoma, Nevada, Kansas, Nebraska,

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Speaker 2: New Mexico, and North Dakota. There is a process through

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Speaker 2: which you can collect enough signatures on a petition to

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Speaker 2: force a judge to convene a grand jury to investigate

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Speaker 2: an alleged crime. That's not what this was either. They

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Speaker 2: didn't have a petition they submitted to a court. They

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Speaker 2: didn't do it in any of those states. I'm just saying.

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Speaker 2: Avenues do exist. And in some states like California, you

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Speaker 2: can submit a written complaint to request a grand jury

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Speaker 2: investigation into a criminal allegation, but they're under no obligation

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Speaker 2: to follow up. And in Tennessee, the fact that is

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Speaker 2: about to become very relevant. State law allows any citizen

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Speaker 2: to apply to testify before a county grand jury about

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Speaker 2: an alleged offense that is prosecutable in that county. But

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Speaker 2: the idea of a citizens grand jury like the super

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Speaker 2: American grand jury, is not something these particular extremists invented

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Speaker 2: in their modern iteration. Most of these citizens grand jury

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Speaker 2: groups were trying to arrest Barack Obama for various invented crimes,

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Speaker 2: but they also popped up in the early two thousands

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Speaker 2: among nine to eleven truthers who wanted to arrest George

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Speaker 2: Bush during the Malheir National Wildlife Refuge occupation. A few

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Speaker 2: years back, militia members who supported the Bundy family convened

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Speaker 2: fake grand juries to indict local officials and even some

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Speaker 2: reporters whose coverage they found lacking. Conspiracy theory. Frequent flier

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Speaker 2: Larry Clayman has not only indicted Joe Biden with a

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Speaker 2: fake grand jury, he even convicted him. But according to

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Speaker 2: Daniel Levatas the author of The Terrorist next Door, a

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Speaker 2: two thousand and four book on the American militia movement,

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Speaker 2: these citizen grand juries actually date back to the nineteen

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Speaker 2: seventies with Christian identity extremists. Christian identity has come up before.

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Speaker 2: We talked about it briefly in the episode about Christopher Hassen,

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Speaker 2: the Coastguard lieutenant who was stockpiling guns and planning to

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Speaker 2: assassinate the Supreme Court, but was too addicted to opiates

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Speaker 2: to make much progress. He'd spend some time researching Christian

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Speaker 2: identity online before writing to a longtime white nationalist leader

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Speaker 2: named Harold Covington about his plans to make changes to

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Speaker 2: society with quote a little focused violence and Christian identity

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Speaker 2: kind of sounds like it might mean someone whose identity

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Speaker 2: is Christian. Right, It's just someone who considers themselves to

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Speaker 2: be a Christian. But that's not what it means at all.

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Speaker 2: It refers to a specific set of extremist beliefs that

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Speaker 2: white Europeans are God's true chosen people. It is a

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Speaker 2: deeply anti Semitic belief system, and one whose followers are

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Speaker 2: often very willing to age and violence. The earliest example

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Speaker 2: levatas sites of a written threat to bring a citizen's

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Speaker 2: grand jury indictment is a tax protester in Michigan in

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two who threatened to indict local authorities trying

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Speaker 2: to enforce a core order. And in nineteen seventy five,

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Speaker 2: Richard Butler, another weird little Guy's recurring character, led a

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Speaker 2: group of fifty followers to try to arrest a policeman

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Speaker 2: in Kurdalene, Idaho before the officer could testify against a

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Speaker 2: member of the group who'd been charged with assault with

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Speaker 2: a deadly weapon. Richard Butler wasn't leading the Aryan Nations

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Speaker 2: yet at that point, but he was already a prominent

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Speaker 2: figure within Christian identity. So the super American Grand j

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Speaker 2: had deep roots in dark places, and it was not

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Speaker 2: so super and not a grand jury at all. It

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Speaker 2: was just a collection of conspiracists who wrote their own

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Speaker 2: indictment against the president, and then they went to a

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Speaker 2: federal courthouse in Washington, d c. And filed it Judge

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Speaker 2: Royce Lamberth promptly dismissed them. I guess maybe dismiss is

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Speaker 2: a tricky word to use here, because a real indictment

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Speaker 2: can be dismissed by a judge, and that's not what

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Speaker 2: happened here, because this was not a real indictment. What

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Speaker 2: Judge Lamberth actually did was issue in order denying them

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Speaker 2: permission to have even filed it at all. Writing, any

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Speaker 2: self styled indictment or presentment issued by such a group

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Speaker 2: has no force under the Constitution or laws of the

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Speaker 2: United States. Judge Lamberth took senior status in twenty thirteen.

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Speaker 2: He's kind of retired but still working, so he is

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Speaker 2: actually still a federal judge in DC today and has

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Speaker 2: presided over quite a few of the January sixth cases,

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Speaker 2: most notably the trial of the QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley

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Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, fourteen years after he kicked those

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Speaker 2: Birthers out of his court for trying to arrest the President.

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Speaker 2: He was dismayed to see Republican politicians trafficking in rhetoric

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Speaker 2: that downplayed the events of January sixth, writing in a

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Speaker 2: court filing in one of those cases.

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Speaker 3: The Court is accustomed to defendants who refuse to accept

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Speaker 3: that they did anything wrong. But in my thirty seven

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Speaker 3: years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when

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Speaker 3: such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream. I

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Speaker 3: have been dismayed to see distortions in outright falsehoods seep

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Speaker 3: into the public consciousness. I've been shocked to watch some

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Speaker 3: public figures try to rewrite history. Clement rioters behaved in

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Speaker 3: an orderly fashion like ordinary tourists. I'm mortalizing convicted January

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Speaker 3: sixth defendants as political prisoners or even incredibly hostages. That

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Speaker 3: is all preposterous. The Court fears that such destructive, misguided

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Speaker 3: rhetoric could pressage further danger to our country.

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Speaker 2: So the Super American grand Jury's first indictment didn't work,

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Speaker 2: But that didn't stop them. That's sort of a theme here.

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Speaker 2: Nothing really seems to deter them. One of those Super

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Speaker 2: American grandeurors was a Georgia man named Carl Swenson. Swinson

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Speaker 2: is a very special kind of conspiracy theorist called a

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Speaker 2: sovereign citizen. It's a strange and complicated set of beliefs

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Speaker 2: that I can't really do justice in the time we

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Speaker 2: have for this story. But it's a kind of legal

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Speaker 2: magical thinking. There's a lot of crossover between sovereign citizens

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Speaker 2: and other kinds of conspiratorial belief, and a not insignificant

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Speaker 2: amount of sovereign citizen belief within the militia movement, and

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Speaker 2: sovereign citizens generally believe that there are certain secret procedural

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Speaker 2: loopholes that they can use to avoid being subject to

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Speaker 2: the law, anything from traffic stops to income taxes. To

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Speaker 2: be honest, it's almost always traffic stops and income taxes.

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Speaker 2: You've probably heard jokes about a guy in a courtroom

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Speaker 2: proclaiming that the judge has no authority over him because

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Speaker 2: there's gold fringe on the flag in the courtroom and

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Speaker 2: that means that admiralty law is in effect. Or maybe

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Speaker 2: you've heard of someone being pulled over and refusing to

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Speaker 2: produce a driver's license, arguing with the cop that they

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Speaker 2: don't need a driver's license because they're not driving, they're traveling,

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Speaker 2: and it's different. I've only seen one in court in

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Speaker 2: real life, and it was a young woman appealing a

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Speaker 2: conviction for driving without a license. She just kept yelling

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Speaker 2: at the judge. I do not contract with the Department

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Speaker 2: of mone Vehicles. It did not work. She was unsuccessful

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Speaker 2: in that appeal. A month after Judge Lamberth told the

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Speaker 2: Super American Grand Jury that they couldn't just make their

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Speaker 2: own grand jury, Carl Swenson and a few of the

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Speaker 2: others submitted a new case to the court. If they

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Speaker 2: couldn't be their own grand jury, then the court should

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Speaker 2: convene one for them. Judge Lamberth once again declined, explaining

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Speaker 2: that a general grievance about the government doesn't give them

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Speaker 2: standing to file this complaint. There was some kind of

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Speaker 2: procedural mishap in the court clerk's office, though, and the

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Speaker 2: docket was left open by accident. This normally wouldn't matter

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Speaker 2: at all, no lawyer would keep filing motions at a

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Speaker 2: closed case. But they did not have lawyers, and one

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Speaker 2: of Swinson's co petitioners, Penny Kelso, filed a buzz There

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Speaker 2: are seven page document four years later, demanding that the

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Speaker 2: judge take action. It has a lot of prayers in

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Speaker 2: it and links to blogs and random excerpts from the Constitution,

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Speaker 2: And the last page is just illegible handwritten notes, and

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Speaker 2: I can kind of make out something about Benghazi, and

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Speaker 2: she signed this whole thing Penny Kelso DVM, which is

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Speaker 2: technically true. Penny Kelso does have a doctorate of veterinary medicine,

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Speaker 2: but the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners has suspended

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Speaker 2: her license half a dozen times for things like watching

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Speaker 2: a C section on someone's dog, duct taping bandages to

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Speaker 2: animals in a way that caused harm, improperly confining animals

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Speaker 2: in a kennel, and falsifying records related to mandatory continuing

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Speaker 2: the education hours. Penny doesn't actually come up again in

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Speaker 2: this story. She's not really relevant here. I just wanted

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Speaker 2: to make sure you know that at least one person

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Speaker 2: involved in this whole situation has killed a puppy. So

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Speaker 2: they couldn't sue the president, they couldn't issue their own

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Speaker 2: federal indictment, they couldn't make a judge convene a federal

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Speaker 2: grand jury. But they had incontrovertible proof that Barack Obama

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Speaker 2: could not be the president, and it was their duty

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Speaker 2: as Americans to have him arrested. If this false president's

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Speaker 2: collaborators in Washington, d C. Wouldn't heed their demands, maybe

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Speaker 2: a grand jury. Foreman in a small town in rural

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Speaker 2: Tennessee would Sweetwater, Tennessee is a small town straddling the

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Speaker 2: line between McMinn and Monroe counties of geography, that explains

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Speaker 2: why Sweetwater resident Walter Fitzpatrick would eventually go to jail

380
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Speaker 2: for trying to perform citizens' arrests on courthouse employees in

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Speaker 2: both counties. In March of two thousand and nine, he

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Speaker 2: drafted his own indictment against Barack Obama. He went down

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Speaker 2: to the county courthouse and notarized the following letter.

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Speaker 3: I have observed and extensively recorded treacherous attacks by military

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Speaker 3: political aristocrats against the United States Constitution for twenty years now,

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Speaker 3: and yet another betrayal, you have broken in and entered

387
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Speaker 3: the White House by force of contrivance, concealment, conceit, dissembling,

388
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Speaker 3: and deceit, posing as an imposter president and commander in

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Speaker 3: chief who has stripped civilian command and control over the

390
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Speaker 3: military establishment. Known military criminal actors command racketeers are now

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Speaker 3: free in the exercise of military government, intent upon destruction

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00:27:55,280 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 3: of America's constitutional government, free from constitutional restraint and following

393
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:04,879
Speaker 3: your criminal example, military commanders deployed US Army active duty

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Speaker 3: combat troops into the small civilian community of Samson, Alabama,

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00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 3: last week, in a demonstration of their newly received despotic

396
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 3: domestic police power. We come now to this reckoning. I

397
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:21,360
Speaker 3: accuse you and your military political criminal assistance of treason.

398
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Speaker 3: I name you and your military criminal associates as traitors.

399
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Speaker 3: Your criminal ascension manifests this clear and present danger. You

400
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:34,199
Speaker 3: fundamentally changed our form of government. The Constitution no longer works.

401
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 3: Confident holding your silent agreement and admission, I identify you

402
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 3: as a foreign born domestic enemy. My sworn duty, mister Obama,

403
00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 3: is to stand against what you stand for. You're not

404
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:49,040
Speaker 3: my president, you're not my commander in chief. Obedient to

405
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 3: the Constitution and submission of this criminal accusation, I remain

406
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 3: steadfast and born fighting. Walter Francis Fitzpatrick the Third.

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Speaker 2: There's a lot going on there. You probably have some

408
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 2: questions about Walter's claims. Will take him one at a time.

409
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 2: The twenty years of experience fighting the treacherous attacks on

410
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 2: the Constitution by the military political aristocrats, well that's about

411
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 2: how long he's been writing a blog. He started his

412
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Speaker 2: blog jag Hunters, after he was pushed out of the Navy.

413
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick was allowed to serve out his nineteen and a

414
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 2: half years, rounding up to twenty so he could receive

415
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 2: his pension, but his last four years in the Navy

416
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 2: were humiliating. He was convicted in a court martial in

417
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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety for improperly accounting for the morale, welfare and

418
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:50,239
Speaker 2: recreation funds for the sailors aboard the USS Mars, of

419
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 2: which he was the executive officer at the time. He

420
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 2: was found not guilty on charges of stealing twenty eight

421
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Speaker 2: hundred dollars, misappropriate another ten four hundred dollars, and improper

422
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 2: use of a government vehicle, and his only sentence was

423
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 2: a reprimand all things considered, it could have been worse.

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Speaker 2: He was basically convicted of bad record keeping and given

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Speaker 2: a talking to. He didn't have to go to the

426
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Speaker 2: brig He didn't get kicked out or demoted, or lose

427
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 2: his pension or any of his access to veterans' benefits.

428
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Speaker 2: He served out his twenty years and retired and collected

429
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Speaker 2: a pension, but he spent four years sitting at a desk.

430
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 2: He was passed over for promotions. He was humiliated and

431
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 2: angry and he stayed angry at the government for a

432
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 2: very long time. Sometimes I get a little lost in

433
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 2: the weeds. When I started writing this week's episode, it

434
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 2: was supposed to be about a guy we haven't gotten

435
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:06,959
Speaker 2: to yet and aren't really going to get to today.

436
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 2: But when you start pulling the narrative threads and looking

437
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 2: for the beginning of the story, there's always more beginnings

438
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 2: than you think. It's probably more than enough backstory on

439
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 2: Walter Fitzpatrick to say that his distrust of the government

440
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 2: comes from his decades long, deeply held belief that he

441
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 2: was a victim of a grave injustice at this nineteen

442
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:32,360
Speaker 2: ninety court martial. But as I spend more and more

443
00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 2: time really getting to know each of these weird little guys,

444
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 2: patterns start to emerge, and I think Walter Fitzpatrick fits

445
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 2: into the Frank Sweeney archetype. I did two episodes a

446
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 2: while back about a lifelong con man named Frank Sweeney.

447
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,760
Speaker 2: He got into all sorts of hijinks and cross paths

448
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 2: with all kinds of people, going to federal prison half

449
00:31:56,320 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 2: a dozen times for various frauds and threats. But the

450
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 2: one thing that connected everything in Frank's life was an

451
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:11,640
Speaker 2: overwhelming sense of personal grievance. He had been wronged. He

452
00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 2: had been wronged, and the only way to make it

453
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 2: right was to make that lust for vengeance the sole

454
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 2: focus of his life, no matter where that path took

455
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 2: him until he felt satisfied. For Frank, that meant spending

456
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 2: several years writing threatening postcards to a stranger who made

457
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 2: a passing comment about where he was parked at the

458
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 2: post office, and I see echoes of that same mindset here.

459
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:43,960
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety four, Fitzpatrick had successfully recruited his Congressman

460
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 2: Norm Dix as an advocate on his behalf, and Congressman

461
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 2: Dix wrote several letters to the Navy advocating for a

462
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:55,360
Speaker 2: new trial for Fitzpatrick. He did his best as an

463
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 2: elective representative to help a constituent seek redress through the

464
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 2: proper channels, and he was ultimately unsuccessful. Fitzpatrick continued communicating

465
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 2: with Norm Dix and later Congressman Adam Smith throughout the

466
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 2: nineties and early two thousands, badgering their staff regularly and

467
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 2: demanding his decade old case be revisited. There wasn't really

468
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 2: much anyone could do, but both representatives met with him

469
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:28,600
Speaker 2: and heard his complaints and did what they could. In

470
00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, Fitzpatrick was banned from Congressman Smith's

471
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 2: to Koma offices. It's unclear what led to the ban,

472
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:38,959
Speaker 2: but a letter filed with the court said that they

473
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 2: would continue to serve him as a constituent, but he

474
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 2: was only allowed to communicate with the Congressman or his

475
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 2: staff by letter. And in two thousand and three, two

476
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 2: female staffers in Norm Dix's office got restraining orders against Fitzpatrick.

477
00:33:55,920 --> 00:34:00,880
Speaker 2: In her petition to the court, one of those staffers wrote,

478
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 2: over the past year, I have become increasingly aware that

479
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 2: mister Fitzpatrick's rage was building. He had difficulty looking me

480
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 2: in the eye, and he was so angry he often

481
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,840
Speaker 2: paced in our lobby. He has no respect for the

482
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 2: work we've done for him over the years. The last

483
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:22,560
Speaker 2: straw was an incident in October of two thousand and

484
00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:26,280
Speaker 2: three when Fitzpatrick refused to leave the office and physically

485
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 2: prevented the employee from leaving by blocking the door, forcing

486
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:35,840
Speaker 2: her to call the police. Police reports show multiple violations

487
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 2: of these restraining orders and several complaints, though no prosecutions

488
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 2: for trespass, harassment, and domestic violence. He was angry he

489
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 2: had been wronged and their inability to help him was unforgivable.

490
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick was coming into regular contact with the police in

491
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 2: Kitsap County, Washington until moved to Tennessee in two thousand

492
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:08,440
Speaker 2: and seven. But back to Fitzpatrick's trees and allegations, you

493
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 2: probably noticed that he only barely mentioned the president's citizenship.

494
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:16,239
Speaker 2: I mean, it's in there, don't get me wrong. He

495
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:20,760
Speaker 2: does call Obama a foreign born enemy, but that's pretty

496
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:26,320
Speaker 2: secondary here. This indictment for treason isn't really about that.

497
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 2: This is a brand new tactic. He's accusing the president

498
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 2: of having violated the Posse Comatatis Act, and that did

499
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 2: actually kind of happen, not in the way he's claiming. Obviously,

500
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 2: Barack Obama did not violate the Posse Commatatus Act, but

501
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:52,440
Speaker 2: it's not a wholly fabricated allegation. The Posse Commatatus Act

502
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 2: dates back to the end of reconstruction after the Civil War,

503
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:58,480
Speaker 2: and it prohibits the use of the US military in

504
00:35:58,560 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 2: civilian policing. It doesn't apply to the National Guard under

505
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 2: the direction of a state governor, and there are exceptions

506
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 2: Federal troops can be deployed domestically in certain situations, like

507
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 2: if the President invokes the Insurrection Act, or if there

508
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 2: is some kind of emergency involving nuclear materials or significant

509
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:22,480
Speaker 2: amounts of explosive ordinance that can't be safely dealt with otherwise.

510
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 2: But generally speaking, the United States military cannot engage in

511
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 2: domestic civilian policing. It's not something that comes up very

512
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 2: often for normal people. Under normal circumstances, You're probably never

513
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 2: having conversations about the Posse Commatatus Act. But it's a

514
00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 2: big boogeyman in anti government movements, and the allegation Fitzpatrick

515
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 2: is making in this letter alludes to an actual incident.

516
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 2: On March tenth, two thousand and nine, Michael McClendon carried

517
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,080
Speaker 2: out what is still the deadliest mass shooting in the

518
00:36:59,120 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 2: history of Alabama, killing ten people, injuring six others, and

519
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 2: ultimately taking his own life. It wasn't political or ideological,

520
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:15,240
Speaker 2: it wasn't racially motivated. It's just a terrible, sad story

521
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 2: about gun violence in America. He was an angry young

522
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,400
Speaker 2: man with a gun, and he made his problems everybody

523
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 2: else's but Clendon. First drove to his mother's house in Kinston, Alabama,

524
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:30,839
Speaker 2: where he shot and killed her and then burnt her

525
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 2: house down. Then he drove to his uncle's house and

526
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:38,759
Speaker 2: nearby Samson, Alabama, and shot his uncle, two cousins, and

527
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:42,799
Speaker 2: several of their neighbors. Then he went to his grandmother's

528
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 2: house and shot and killed her. And as he fled

529
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 2: the third crime scene, he was firing at random from

530
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 2: his car window, shooting bystanders. He killed a gas station attendant,

531
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 2: passing motorists and injured several pedestrians. When sheriff's deputies tried

532
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 2: to run him off the road, he shot one of

533
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 2: them too. With more than a dozen people shot across

534
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 2: three towns spanning two counties, law enforcement was stretched pretty thin.

535
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 2: There were multiple crime scenes, ten dead bodies, half a

536
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 2: dozen seriously injured survivors, including an infant, and the shooter

537
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 2: was on the move, and so someone at the Geneva

538
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:29,439
Speaker 2: County Sheriff's office made a phone call to nearby Fort

539
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:35,320
Speaker 2: Rucker to ask for help. The army officer who responded

540
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 2: to the request later said that he believed at the

541
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 2: time that what he was doing was lawful, citing his

542
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 2: own experience assisting in disaster response after Hurricane Katrina. His

543
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 2: intention was only to be what he called a good neighbor,

544
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 2: and for a period of about five hours that afternoon,

545
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:57,839
Speaker 2: several soldiers from Fort Rucker assisted local law enforcement at

546
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 2: traffic checkpoints near the crime scenes and stood guard at

547
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,800
Speaker 2: the makeshift morgue that they'd set up to store the bodies.

548
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:10,440
Speaker 2: And this was in fact a violation of the Posse

549
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:14,800
Speaker 2: Comma Tatis Act. Soldiers from the United States Army should

550
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 2: not have been participating in traffic checkpoints. That is against

551
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 2: the law, and the officer who made that call was disciplined.

552
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,799
Speaker 2: But it was a local mistake. This wasn't something that

553
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 2: was run up the chain of command all the way

554
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:31,040
Speaker 2: to the president. This didn't go through the Pentagon. They

555
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 2: didn't convene the Joint chiefs of Staff. It was just

556
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:37,400
Speaker 2: someone from the sheriff's office made a phone call to

557
00:39:37,480 --> 00:39:40,440
Speaker 2: a guy he knew at the army base, and they

558
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 2: did something they didn't realize was wrong. I won't claim

559
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 2: to be familiar with the details of military chain of

560
00:39:47,160 --> 00:39:51,600
Speaker 2: command or military law or anything, but I'm not sure

561
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 2: the commander in chief can be charged with treason because

562
00:39:55,120 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 2: one guy in Alabama accidentally broke the law. This actual

563
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 2: violation of the Possecomatatis Act was enough to send a

564
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 2: certain kind of guy into hysterics. I mean, look, I'm

565
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 2: not making excuses for it. Any kind of precedent for

566
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 2: that sort of thing should be avoided. The potential for

567
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:22,640
Speaker 2: abuse is extreme and terrifying. But anti government activists could

568
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 2: finally point to a real thing that happened as proof

569
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:31,640
Speaker 2: that Barack Obama was about to institute martial law. Federal

570
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:35,239
Speaker 2: troops really were setting up checkpoints. It happened. It's not

571
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 2: a drill. For someone like Walter Fitzpatrick. This was all

572
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 2: the evidence he needed to have the President hanged for treason.

573
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 2: And that gets us back to where we started this

574
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 2: long journey, back to the beginning of the story. Walter

575
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick accused the president of treason in March two thousand

576
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 2: and nine. He took his complaint down to the courthouse

577
00:40:59,160 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 2: and he got it noted. He applied to present it

578
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 2: to a Monroe County grand jury, and they chose not

579
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 2: to indict the president, probably mostly because even if there

580
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 2: was probable cause here, which there wasn't. The Monroe County,

581
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 2: Tennessee Circuit Court does not have jurisdiction in a case

582
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 2: involving the President of the United States committing treason, unfortunately,

583
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 2: but that's not how Fitzpatrick saw it. In his mind,

584
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 2: this could only mean that there is corruption afoot. Again

585
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 2: and again, Walter Fitzpatrick made the trip to the county courthouse.

586
00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 2: He harassed the court clerk. He tried forcing his way

587
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:01,280
Speaker 2: into the grand jury proceedings to make his presentation again,

588
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 2: and they did hear him out once more. They allowed

589
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 2: him to present the grand jury. In December of two

590
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 2: thousand and nine. That grand jury again declined to indict

591
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:16,600
Speaker 2: President Barack Obama for treason, and at this point they

592
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 2: were done humoring him. Hearing this evidence again wasn't going

593
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 2: to change anything. He was on several occasions refused entrance

594
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:29,680
Speaker 2: into the courtroom while the grand jury was hearing real cases.

595
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 2: And just like those years, he spent getting angrier and

596
00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:39,719
Speaker 2: angrier at his congressman's office staff. These people were as

597
00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 2: helpful as they were required to be. They were doing

598
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:46,319
Speaker 2: their jobs, but there wasn't really anything they could do

599
00:42:46,840 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 2: that would satisfy him because his requests weren't reasonable. They

600
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 2: couldn't give him what he wanted, But in his mind

601
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:59,359
Speaker 2: this inability to assist him could only mean that they

602
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:04,680
Speaker 2: were active fighting against him, and so they too became

603
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 2: subjects of his investigations. They were all guilty now of

604
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 2: obstruction of justice, and they too must be arrested. In

605
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 2: March of twenty ten, a year after he first charged

606
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 2: the President with treason, Walter Fitzpatrick sent a letter to

607
00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:26,919
Speaker 2: the police chief in Madisonville, Tennessee. If no one else

608
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:28,920
Speaker 2: was interested in justice, he was just going to have

609
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:29,800
Speaker 2: to do it himself.

610
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 3: Chief Breeden, please accept this notice of the necessity, authority,

611
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:39,240
Speaker 3: and intent to conduct a series of imminent citizens arrests

612
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:42,480
Speaker 3: throughout Monroe County, Tennessee. The first arrest plan must be

613
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 3: constructed and crafted in cooperation with the Madisonville Police Department.

614
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 3: Wisdom dictates the first arrest plan be one that is

615
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 3: acceptable to your police chief colleagues throughout Monroe County. An

616
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:55,239
Speaker 3: arrest plan that can be used again and again time

617
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:59,320
Speaker 3: is not a friend. Planning must begin immediately. Contact information

618
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:04,920
Speaker 3: is provided separately. Fair Wins following sees Walter Francis Fitzpatrick third.

619
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:12,759
Speaker 2: Notice that he's not asking for permission and he's not

620
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:18,319
Speaker 2: making a threat. He's letting him know he feels like

621
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:20,880
Speaker 2: he and the police chief have the same level of

622
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:24,959
Speaker 2: authority here. They're both absolutely empowered to make these kinds

623
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:27,479
Speaker 2: of arrests, and he just thinks it would be best

624
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 2: if they collaborated on this plan. He's not threatening to

625
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 2: break the law, because he doesn't think he is. He's

626
00:44:36,080 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 2: inviting the police chief to participate in what he believes

627
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:45,480
Speaker 2: is a perfectly rational and legal course of action. It's

628
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 2: not clear if the police chief wrote him back. I'm

629
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:53,040
Speaker 2: sure they had some conversations about this plan that didn't

630
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:56,720
Speaker 2: go how Fitzpatrick had hoped, but there was no talking

631
00:44:56,760 --> 00:44:59,279
Speaker 2: him out of it. He was going to arrest the

632
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 2: people who were staying ending in his way, with or

633
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 2: without their help, and on April first, twenty ten, he

634
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:12,320
Speaker 2: tried it. Lad the room, tired arguing with official pressures.

635
00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:13,879
Speaker 4: Play lead the room.

636
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 5: You were under ARRESTA placing you under arrest, mister Petway,

637
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 5: you are.

638
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:23,479
Speaker 6: Under citizens or whatever around around, I'm placing you under

639
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 6: I asked you to be her room less.

640
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:28,800
Speaker 7: Now I ask you the room US coort this Gilman

641
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:29,399
Speaker 7: out of the room.

642
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:31,440
Speaker 8: Mister Petway is under citizens.

643
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 2: Walter Fitzpatrick entered the courtroom and approached Grand jury Foreman

644
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 2: Gary Petway, a man he'd already spent months unsuccessfully trying

645
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 2: to indict. And Petway doesn't look excited to see Fitzpatrick,

646
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:52,640
Speaker 2: but he looks more exasperated than anything else. He doesn't

647
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 2: look afraid of the old man lurching towards him, saying

648
00:45:56,160 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 2: over and over again, I'm placing you under arrest. Pet

649
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 2: Way is just sort of backing away from him and

650
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 2: repeating please leave, please leave the room, and pointing towards

651
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 2: the door. And the video we have of this incident

652
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:16,000
Speaker 2: is not police bodycam footage, but you'd be forgiven for

653
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:19,919
Speaker 2: assuming that's where it came from. It was recorded on

654
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:24,440
Speaker 2: someone's cell phone, a Motorola droid to be precise. If

655
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 2: you remember those by Carl Swenson, the sovereign citizen who

656
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 2: had been agitating for people all over the country to

657
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:35,839
Speaker 2: take this kind of action in their local courts ever

658
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 2: since Judge Lamberth denied his petition in federal court the

659
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:40,360
Speaker 2: year before.

660
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 9: He did this for us.

661
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 10: What do you intend to do for him and for

662
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 10: this country if we don't come to his assistance, if

663
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:52,880
Speaker 10: we don't get to the courthouse If we don't call him,

664
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:55,360
Speaker 10: if we don't walk and march on that courthouse and

665
00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 10: that Sheriff's department, we don't deserve the freedoms we have.

666
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 9: I must do. I plan on marching on that courthouse.

667
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 2: Carl Swinson was one of several supporters who showed up

668
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 2: at the courthouse with Fitzpatrick that day. Swenson recorded the

669
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:17,799
Speaker 2: incident and posted it online, exhorting his followers to show

670
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 2: up at the next hearing. The website he was running

671
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:26,160
Speaker 2: at the time, rise Upfoamerica dot com is gone now.

672
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 2: That url does still go to a real website, but

673
00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:35,359
Speaker 2: it belongs to some kind of construction consortium now, and

674
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:38,479
Speaker 2: the homepage is a six year old blog post about

675
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 2: the pros and cons of different kinds of carpet tiles.

676
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:46,840
Speaker 2: One of the other supporters who witnessed Fitzpatrick's arrest that

677
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:51,359
Speaker 2: day was a man named Darren Huff. Like Swenson, Huff

678
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:54,080
Speaker 2: had made the drive to Madisonville from his home in Georgia.

679
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:57,360
Speaker 2: He was a member of the Oath Keepers and was

680
00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:00,120
Speaker 2: also the chaplain of a separate militia group that was

681
00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:05,640
Speaker 2: just called the Georgia Militia. When Fitzpatrick was granted bond.

682
00:48:05,640 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 2: A few days after his arrest, Darren Huff made the

683
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 2: drive back up to Tennessee to meet with him. They

684
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 2: weren't going to suffer this indignity in silence. They made

685
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,920
Speaker 2: a plan, and two weeks later, when Fitzpatrick was due

686
00:48:19,960 --> 00:48:23,319
Speaker 2: back in court, Darren Huff was outside the courthouse with

687
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:26,520
Speaker 2: a crowd of supporters, prepared to take over the whole

688
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 2: damn town by force if they had to. And Darren

689
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 2: Huff was the weird little guy I had in mind

690
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 2: when I sat down to start this week's episode. I

691
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 2: was thinking about guys who did something weird because they

692
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 2: were mad about an election, and I had a vague

693
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:46,360
Speaker 2: recollection of some research I did on the oath Keepers

694
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:50,200
Speaker 2: back in twenty nineteen when Oathkeeper's founder Stuart Rhodes was

695
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 2: front row center, right behind the podium at a Trump

696
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 2: campaign rally, and I did a little more digging around

697
00:48:57,160 --> 00:48:59,799
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, when the Oathkeepers were starting to make

698
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 2: no about what would eventually become the January sixth insurrection.

699
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:08,279
Speaker 2: I'd collected a few odds and ends about Oathkeepers who

700
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:11,400
Speaker 2: got arrested for a variety of crimes over the years

701
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:16,720
Speaker 2: trying to convince people that this could be a serious problem.

702
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 2: And there are plenty of strange little stories in there,

703
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:24,279
Speaker 2: like an oathkeeper in Ohio who was being investigated for

704
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 2: mortgage fraud back in twenty ten and the investigators completely

705
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 2: accidentally discovered that he was making napalm in his garage,

706
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:38,640
Speaker 2: Or how Oathkeepers leaders Stuart Rhodes advised members to take

707
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:41,720
Speaker 2: it upon themselves to prevent voter fraud in the twenty

708
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:46,280
Speaker 2: sixteen election in a plan that definitely was not meant

709
00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 2: to function as voter intimidation. And there's the story of

710
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:53,440
Speaker 2: that car load of Oathkeepers who were arrested in Florida

711
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen. They were charged with violating the curfew

712
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:59,359
Speaker 2: order put in place during the state of emergency after

713
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:04,799
Speaker 2: Hurricane Mit. The militia members were driving around dressed as

714
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 2: police officers, cruising around town in the dark with a

715
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:15,440
Speaker 2: car full of rifles, dressed as cops patrolling for looters.

716
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:21,239
Speaker 2: And obviously there's the entire saga of the Oathkeeper's role

717
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 2: in January sixth, But like I said, right now, I'm

718
00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 2: tired of that story. But then I remembered Darren Huff

719
00:50:31,680 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 2: and his plans to citizens arrest a whole county courthouse

720
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:37,760
Speaker 2: because he didn't think Barack Obama was the real president.

721
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 2: It was sort of a micro January sixth an hour

722
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 2: south of Knoxville, but eleven years too soon. At this

723
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 2: point in the run of this show, I think I

724
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 2: have to stop apologizing for writing so much preamble that

725
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:56,040
Speaker 2: the actual story I'm getting to is in part two.

726
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:59,000
Speaker 2: I should just admit to myself that I'm doing that

727
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:03,160
Speaker 2: on purpose. Sure, I could launch right into a story

728
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 2: about Darren showing up at the courthouse with a gun.

729
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:09,799
Speaker 2: That would still be an interesting weird little guy. But

730
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 2: Darren and his gun outside of a courthouse three hours

731
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 2: away from his home across state lines, trying to arrest

732
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 2: a grand jury foreman in a small town that he

733
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 2: has no connection to, just doesn't make any sense, does it.

734
00:51:23,280 --> 00:51:26,240
Speaker 2: Trying to explain that a retired Navy vette was convinced

735
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,440
Speaker 2: his county court could arrest the president sounds like a

736
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:33,239
Speaker 2: silly little joke without the context that this was a

737
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:39,400
Speaker 2: nationwide movement motivated by a racist conspiracy theory. These aren't

738
00:51:39,440 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 2: just stories about one weird little guy at a time.

739
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 2: It's a whole network None of this happens in a vacuum,

740
00:51:47,880 --> 00:51:50,880
Speaker 2: which is why the same stories keep playing out with

741
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 2: different characters, and the same characters keep showing up in

742
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:59,440
Speaker 2: each other's stories. An oathkeeper tried to arrest the president

743
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:03,480
Speaker 2: in two thousand. The oath keepers tried to overturn the

744
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 2: twenty twenty election. The woman whose blog chronicled Walter Fitzpatrick's

745
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:12,680
Speaker 2: efforts fueling the conspiracy and driving more supporters to show

746
00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:16,520
Speaker 2: up in Madisonville tried to obtain government records in twenty

747
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:22,399
Speaker 2: twenty two related to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's families, immigration, and naturalization,

748
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:26,839
Speaker 2: and the same woman was a central figure in the

749
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 2: brief frenzy of birther conspiracies about Kamala Harris in twenty

750
00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:36,800
Speaker 2: twenty four. When Jared Taylor, America's leading purveyor of pseudo

751
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:40,560
Speaker 2: academic eugenicist polemics, had to go to court in twenty

752
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 2: eighteen over a permit for his annual race science conference,

753
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,799
Speaker 2: he sought help from Birther lawyer Van Erian, the same

754
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,879
Speaker 2: lawyer who worked on Karl Swenson's lawsuits to keep Barack

755
00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 2: Obama off the ballot in twenty twelve, cutting straight to

756
00:52:56,480 --> 00:52:59,640
Speaker 2: the chase and getting to Darren's story wouldn't just be

757
00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:03,400
Speaker 2: miss the forest for the trees, it would be ignoring

758
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 2: a whole thriving white supremacist ecosystem, because when you turn

759
00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 2: over a big rock, there's more than one weird bug

760
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 2: under there. And to be honest, I really just wanted

761
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:21,879
Speaker 2: to have plenty of room to explore Darren Huff's fascinating

762
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:27,760
Speaker 2: legal strategy because not to spoil it, but he does

763
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:31,359
Speaker 2: end up in federal prison for a little bit. It's

764
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 2: such a rare treat to have so much incredible source material,

765
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:39,120
Speaker 2: and I really don't want to have to cut the

766
00:53:39,160 --> 00:53:42,359
Speaker 2: audio of a man who got pulled over on his

767
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,400
Speaker 2: way to commit a federal crime and used that opportunity

768
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:51,920
Speaker 2: to try to recruit a state trooper into his militia.

769
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:57,000
Speaker 2: So until next week, don't be rude to your court clerk,

770
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 2: and please, for the love of God, do not put

771
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:34,560
Speaker 2: gatorade in your eyes. When we left off last week,

772
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:39,840
Speaker 2: Walter Francis Fitzpatrick had been taken into custody outside the

773
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 2: Monroe County Courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee, on April first, twenty ten.

774
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick barged into a closed grand jury proceeding and attempted

775
00:54:49,000 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 2: to place Monroe County grand Jury Foreman Gary Petway under

776
00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:56,760
Speaker 2: citizen's arrest. Fitzpatrick had written up his own arrest warrant,

777
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 2: charging Petway with obstruction of justice for his refusal to

778
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:06,120
Speaker 2: issue an indictment against Barack Obama for treason. Walter Fitzpatrick

779
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:09,080
Speaker 2: did not have the authority to draw up his own

780
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:11,839
Speaker 2: arrest warrants any more than a county court in hour

781
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:14,760
Speaker 2: south of Knoxville had the authority to indict the president

782
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:19,160
Speaker 2: on a federal crime. But none of that really mattered

783
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 2: to the small crowd of supporters outside, who were sure

784
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:26,240
Speaker 2: that they were closer than ever to arresting the president.

785
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:31,319
Speaker 2: Darren Huff, an oathkeeper from Georgia, was among those supporters.

786
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 2: He was standing by with his video camera, hoping to

787
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:39,800
Speaker 2: capture Fitzpatrick's victory against the corrupt county grand jury.

788
00:55:40,160 --> 00:55:42,359
Speaker 8: You have been notified, You've been told mister Petway has

789
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 8: just been placed under citizen's arrest.

790
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:46,839
Speaker 5: My name is Walter Fitzpatrick.

791
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:50,760
Speaker 8: I have just placed mister Petway under citizen's arrest.

792
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 2: But when the doors opened again, it was not Gary

793
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 2: Petway who was being escorted out by the Sheriff's deputies.

794
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:01,600
Speaker 2: It was Walter Fitzpatrick.

795
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:05,279
Speaker 11: They're leaving or why?

796
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:09,319
Speaker 5: Because you just interrupted a court proceeding. The rest of

797
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:11,440
Speaker 5: us would get arrested for that. However, all of you

798
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:14,839
Speaker 5: think you're special. So now we're leaving the courthouse, and

799
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,800
Speaker 5: then why then you free to go? Otherwise you're gonna

800
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:19,360
Speaker 5: get arrested to afraid to come.

801
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 2: Back in, No, sir, and he could have just left,

802
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:29,760
Speaker 2: As the deputy points out, he's kind of being treated

803
00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:34,280
Speaker 2: with kid gloves here. He's already broken the law, but

804
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:37,040
Speaker 2: nobody really wants to deal with this old crank and

805
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:43,680
Speaker 2: his fan club. But instead of leaving, Fitzpatrick pivoted. Now

806
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 2: he's placing the sheriff himself under arrest. In the audio recording,

807
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 2: you can hear the deputy sigh dramatically as Fitzpatrick begins

808
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 2: reading the officers their rights and they realize that the

809
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 2: only way Fitzpatrick is leaving the building is in handcuffs.

810
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:08,600
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick was charged with interfering with a grand jury, resisting arrest,

811
00:57:08,760 --> 00:57:12,439
Speaker 2: and inciting a riot. He was held in the county

812
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 2: jail over the weekend, during which time he reportedly refused

813
00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 2: to eat or drink, and was offered a fifteen hundred

814
00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:22,360
Speaker 2: dollars bond on the condition that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

815
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:27,760
Speaker 2: On April seventh, twenty ten, the day after Fitzpatrick was released,

816
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 2: Darren Huff made the drive from his home in Georgia

817
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 2: back up to Madisonville. In a text message Huff sent

818
00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:38,160
Speaker 2: a friend on his way home that night, he said

819
00:57:38,160 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 2: he'd spent the day meeting with Fitzpatrick going over the plan.

820
00:57:43,120 --> 00:57:45,600
Speaker 2: They were coordinating with multiple groups to show up for

821
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 2: what Huff called Phase two. When Walter Fitzpatrick appeared for

822
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:54,560
Speaker 2: his court date on April twentieth, he wasn't going to

823
00:57:54,600 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 2: be alone.

824
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conger. This is where the guys.

825
00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:22,800
Speaker 2: This episode is about Darren Huff. I mean, the last

826
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:25,840
Speaker 2: episode was supposed to be about Darren Huff. That was

827
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:28,240
Speaker 2: the story I sat down to write in the first place.

828
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:32,640
Speaker 2: But my vague recollection of the story of some oathkeeper

829
00:58:32,680 --> 00:58:35,479
Speaker 2: with a hair brain scheme to citizens' arrest and entire

830
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:40,120
Speaker 2: county court turned up something a little more complicated that

831
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:44,480
Speaker 2: keeps happening. It turns out history is always a little messy.

832
00:58:45,560 --> 00:58:49,120
Speaker 2: No one is really the sole protagonist in their own story.

833
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:53,000
Speaker 2: Life doesn't really work that way. But if you listened

834
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:56,160
Speaker 2: to last week's episode, now you have some contexts for

835
00:58:56,320 --> 00:59:01,080
Speaker 2: the baffling confidence Walter Fitzpatrick and Aaron Huff seemed to

836
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:04,960
Speaker 2: have in their plan. They'd both been completely swept up

837
00:59:05,040 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 2: in this nationwide right wing mania of Birtherism, the conspiracy

838
00:59:09,920 --> 00:59:12,840
Speaker 2: theory that Barack Obama was ineligible to serve as the

839
00:59:12,840 --> 00:59:15,440
Speaker 2: president of the United States because he had been born

840
00:59:15,600 --> 00:59:21,600
Speaker 2: in Kenya. Walter Fitzpatrick as bizarre and disconnected from reality

841
00:59:21,640 --> 00:59:24,840
Speaker 2: as his ideas sound. Was far from the only American

842
00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:27,240
Speaker 2: who was barging into a court clerk's office every week

843
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:31,120
Speaker 2: to demand something be done about the president's acts of treason.

844
00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 2: It was everywhere. Everyone from Chuck Norris to Donald Trump

845
00:59:37,520 --> 00:59:41,880
Speaker 2: was asking is Barack Obama a natural born citizen of

846
00:59:41,920 --> 00:59:46,880
Speaker 2: the United States. Politicians like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and

847
00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:51,400
Speaker 2: Newt Gingrich flirted with the idea, walking right up to

848
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 2: the line and then claiming they'd misspoken or been misunderstood.

849
00:59:57,600 --> 01:00:01,640
Speaker 2: Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said she would proudly produce her

850
01:00:01,680 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 2: own birth certificate. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby denied that he'd

851
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:10,920
Speaker 2: told a newspaper that he'd like to see Barack Obama's

852
01:00:10,920 --> 01:00:15,200
Speaker 2: birth certificate. Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt said he'd been taken

853
01:00:15,200 --> 01:00:18,120
Speaker 2: out of context after telling a reporter that there was

854
01:00:18,160 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 2: no legitimate reason for the president not to produce his

855
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:25,440
Speaker 2: birth certificate. This wasn't something that existed only at the

856
01:00:25,520 --> 01:00:31,560
Speaker 2: lunatic fringe of political discourse. Mainstream politicians and celebrities were

857
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:36,040
Speaker 2: just asking questions, never mind the kinds of things their

858
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 2: supporters might do to try to get answers. So, after

859
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:45,280
Speaker 2: an entire year of unsuccessfully petitioning his local county grand

860
01:00:45,360 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 2: jury to bring charges against Barack Obama, Walter Fitzpatrick was frustrated,

861
01:00:51,760 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 2: and when he barged into that courtroom on April first,

862
01:00:54,160 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 2: twenty ten, both Keeper Darren Huff and sovereign Citizen Carl

863
01:00:58,360 --> 01:01:03,680
Speaker 2: Swinson were among those waiting just outside. And after the

864
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:07,560
Speaker 2: tables were turned that day, with this citizen's arrest turning

865
01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:13,040
Speaker 2: into just a citizen getting arrested, Darren Hoffen Carl Swinson

866
01:01:13,120 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 2: vowed to return not just to support their friend at

867
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:21,200
Speaker 2: his next court date, but to carry out a bigger, better,

868
01:01:21,360 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 2: version of the plan.

869
01:01:25,720 --> 01:01:28,040
Speaker 9: You who have been on the fence must get off

870
01:01:28,040 --> 01:01:32,200
Speaker 9: of that fence. Please go to the courthouse en mass

871
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:36,800
Speaker 9: demand justice. He is honoring his oath.

872
01:01:37,440 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 12: To all of you out there who have taken that oath,

873
01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 12: I ask you right now to honor yours. Get down there,

874
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 12: get him out of jail, and make sure that justice

875
01:01:47,400 --> 01:01:47,840
Speaker 12: is served.

876
01:01:48,640 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 9: My name is CARLS. Winston.

877
01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:55,360
Speaker 2: The call was put out. If you believe in the cause,

878
01:01:55,880 --> 01:02:00,040
Speaker 2: if you believe in the constitution, you must stand with

879
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 2: Walter Fitzpatrick against the Monroe County courts. He was scheduled

880
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:07,360
Speaker 2: to appear on April twentieth, and true patriots had an

881
01:02:07,400 --> 01:02:12,120
Speaker 2: obligation to be there. Between Fitzpatrick's release on the sixth

882
01:02:12,120 --> 01:02:14,920
Speaker 2: and his court date on the twentieth, they had just

883
01:02:14,960 --> 01:02:19,919
Speaker 2: two weeks to prepare, according to the court records. Darren

884
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:23,160
Speaker 2: Huff appeared in several videos about the events in Madisonville

885
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:28,480
Speaker 2: that were posted on Carl Swinson's website Rise Upfroamerica dot com.

886
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:32,440
Speaker 2: Archived pages of that site do still exist, and I

887
01:02:32,480 --> 01:02:35,720
Speaker 2: can read the text on those pages, but the videos

888
01:02:35,720 --> 01:02:39,200
Speaker 2: were all embedded with flash player, so Darren's calls to

889
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:43,560
Speaker 2: action maybe lost to the sands of time. But we

890
01:02:43,640 --> 01:02:46,720
Speaker 2: have some pretty solid sources that can give us an

891
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 2: idea of what was on Darren's mind during those two weeks,

892
01:02:51,440 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 2: because Darren Huff has never, once in his life shut

893
01:02:56,120 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 2: his goddamn mouth. On April fifteenth, Darren Huff stopped at

894
01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:05,160
Speaker 2: the Chase Bank in Hiram, Georgia. He ran a small

895
01:03:05,200 --> 01:03:08,400
Speaker 2: business doing outdoor lighting, so he stopped by often to

896
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 2: deposit checks. According to Erica, the bank teller who testified

897
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:16,880
Speaker 2: at his trial, most of the employees at the branch

898
01:03:17,200 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 2: knew him well enough to make friendly conversation, but if

899
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:23,040
Speaker 2: she was working, he would wait in her line even

900
01:03:23,080 --> 01:03:27,479
Speaker 2: if another teller was free. But that evening he wasn't

901
01:03:27,520 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 2: making his usual jokes. He was deadly serious. Erica testified

902
01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 2: that Huff just launched right into telling her about Walter

903
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:40,920
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick and his upcoming trial in Madisonville, Tennessee, a situation

904
01:03:41,080 --> 01:03:45,720
Speaker 2: she had no context for. She'd never heard of Walter Fitzpatrick,

905
01:03:45,800 --> 01:03:49,960
Speaker 2: and she'd never been to Madisonville, Tennessee. She was the

906
01:03:49,960 --> 01:03:52,640
Speaker 2: only teller at the counter, the bank was about to

907
01:03:52,640 --> 01:03:57,280
Speaker 2: close for the night, and suddenly this normally friendly customer

908
01:03:57,680 --> 01:04:00,160
Speaker 2: is leaning over the counter, telling her that he was

909
01:04:00,200 --> 01:04:03,160
Speaker 2: going to be spending this weekend mounting an anti aircraft

910
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:06,320
Speaker 2: gun to the back of his pickup truck because he

911
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:08,920
Speaker 2: and his militia were going to take over a small

912
01:04:08,960 --> 01:04:13,880
Speaker 2: town in Tennessee on Tuesday. A conversation got so intense

913
01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:16,680
Speaker 2: that another employee went to go get the manager, Shane.

914
01:04:18,040 --> 01:04:21,000
Speaker 2: In his testimony at trial, Shane too said that Huff

915
01:04:21,000 --> 01:04:22,920
Speaker 2: was a regular customer at the bank, and over the

916
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:26,360
Speaker 2: years he'd gotten to know him a bit. Sometime in

917
01:04:26,360 --> 01:04:30,920
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, Huff got really political, and when

918
01:04:30,920 --> 01:04:33,160
Speaker 2: he made small talk with the bank tellers, it was

919
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 2: usually about his anti government beliefs and various conspiracy theories.

920
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:41,720
Speaker 2: So when another employee came to get him that night

921
01:04:41,800 --> 01:04:46,400
Speaker 2: because Huff was making Erica uncomfortable, he probably wasn't surprised.

922
01:04:47,800 --> 01:04:51,840
Speaker 2: He tried guiding the conversation back to safer territory, asking

923
01:04:51,920 --> 01:04:54,560
Speaker 2: Huff if he'd be taking his video camera with him

924
01:04:54,600 --> 01:04:58,360
Speaker 2: again on this trip, but the response was an alarming one.

925
01:04:59,520 --> 01:05:02,400
Speaker 2: Huff told it would be kind of hard to hold

926
01:05:02,440 --> 01:05:06,040
Speaker 2: the camera because he planned to be quote on the

927
01:05:06,120 --> 01:05:10,840
Speaker 2: front line with two Ak forty sevens. He told the

928
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:13,600
Speaker 2: bank employees that they'd probably see him on the news

929
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:18,280
Speaker 2: next week, and as he was leaving, he told Erica,

930
01:05:19,160 --> 01:05:22,040
Speaker 2: it was nice knowing you. If I never see you again.

931
01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 2: Not to get ahead of myself, but I do want

932
01:05:25,840 --> 01:05:29,120
Speaker 2: to jump ahead here and say. Darren Huff would later

933
01:05:29,200 --> 01:05:33,880
Speaker 2: accuse those two bank employees of lying under oath. Obviously,

934
01:05:33,920 --> 01:05:37,000
Speaker 2: there's no proving what was or wasn't said at the

935
01:05:37,040 --> 01:05:41,520
Speaker 2: bank that evening, But within hours of that interaction, Erica

936
01:05:41,560 --> 01:05:44,920
Speaker 2: was on the phone with Madisonville, Tennessee, Police Chief Greg Breeden,

937
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:48,920
Speaker 2: and he recorded that phone call, so we have a

938
01:05:48,920 --> 01:05:53,880
Speaker 2: fairly contemporaneous recollection of what was said. She related to

939
01:05:53,920 --> 01:05:57,080
Speaker 2: Chief Breden that Huff told her that he was intending

940
01:05:57,080 --> 01:06:01,160
Speaker 2: to travel to Madisonville, Tennessee, on April twenty for Walter

941
01:06:01,200 --> 01:06:04,640
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick's court hearing, that he would be armed with AK

942
01:06:04,760 --> 01:06:08,560
Speaker 2: forty seven's and an anti aircraft gun, that he would

943
01:06:08,600 --> 01:06:11,360
Speaker 2: be with other militia members, and that the group intended

944
01:06:11,400 --> 01:06:15,440
Speaker 2: to carry out citizens arrests of various local officials and

945
01:06:15,560 --> 01:06:20,280
Speaker 2: seize control of the courthouse. And Darren Huff was found

946
01:06:20,280 --> 01:06:23,200
Speaker 2: to be in possession of printed copies of those citizens

947
01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:27,120
Speaker 2: arrest warrants, and he would later admit under oath that

948
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:30,160
Speaker 2: at that time he was in possession of an anti

949
01:06:30,240 --> 01:06:33,880
Speaker 2: aircraft gun and a pedestal mount that could be installed

950
01:06:33,880 --> 01:06:37,200
Speaker 2: in the bed of his truck. She would have had

951
01:06:37,480 --> 01:06:39,880
Speaker 2: no way of knowing any of that at the time

952
01:06:39,960 --> 01:06:43,760
Speaker 2: if he hadn't told her himself, and she's on tape

953
01:06:43,800 --> 01:06:46,240
Speaker 2: reporting it to the police long before she could have

954
01:06:46,280 --> 01:06:49,440
Speaker 2: read anything in the news or been coached by an

955
01:06:49,520 --> 01:06:54,600
Speaker 2: FBI agent to say these things. Both Shane and Erica

956
01:06:54,640 --> 01:07:00,919
Speaker 2: were understandably deeply unsettled by that interaction. Imediately after leaving

957
01:07:00,920 --> 01:07:03,680
Speaker 2: work that evening, Erica called a friend who worked in

958
01:07:03,720 --> 01:07:06,280
Speaker 2: local government, who helped her find the phone number for

959
01:07:06,360 --> 01:07:10,560
Speaker 2: the Madisonville, Tennessee Police Department. Jane's wife urged him to

960
01:07:10,560 --> 01:07:14,160
Speaker 2: call their own sheriff in Paulding County, Georgia, and by

961
01:07:14,160 --> 01:07:16,680
Speaker 2: the end of the night, both bank employees had shared

962
01:07:16,680 --> 01:07:20,720
Speaker 2: their concerns with the police, and by Monday they'd met

963
01:07:20,720 --> 01:07:25,120
Speaker 2: with FBI agents. And it was on Monday, April nineteenth,

964
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:29,520
Speaker 2: the day before the planned occupation of Madisonville, Tennessee, that

965
01:07:29,600 --> 01:07:35,160
Speaker 2: an FBI agent knocked on Darren Huff's front door Supervisory

966
01:07:35,200 --> 01:07:38,440
Speaker 2: Special Agent Charles Reed, accompanied by a couple of deputies

967
01:07:38,440 --> 01:07:41,480
Speaker 2: from the Paulding County Sheriff's Office, just wanted to have

968
01:07:41,520 --> 01:07:45,720
Speaker 2: a word with him. Then Darren Huff voluntarily stepped out

969
01:07:45,720 --> 01:07:48,520
Speaker 2: onto his front porch and he chatted with the agent

970
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:50,200
Speaker 2: for about as long as it took him to finish

971
01:07:50,240 --> 01:07:55,960
Speaker 2: a cigarette. It was a brief conversation. Agent Reid recalls

972
01:07:56,000 --> 01:07:59,200
Speaker 2: that Huff was pretty open about his plan to drive

973
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:02,280
Speaker 2: to Tennessee in the morning. He said he'd have his

974
01:08:02,360 --> 01:08:04,800
Speaker 2: CULT forty five on his hip and his AK forty

975
01:08:04,840 --> 01:08:08,280
Speaker 2: seven was in the truck. He freely volunteered to the

976
01:08:08,280 --> 01:08:10,360
Speaker 2: agent that he was a member of both the Oath

977
01:08:10,440 --> 01:08:14,280
Speaker 2: Keepers and the Georgia Militia. He said that the plan

978
01:08:14,360 --> 01:08:19,759
Speaker 2: was to execute citizens, arrest warrants, and quote take back Madisonville,

979
01:08:20,280 --> 01:08:24,120
Speaker 2: but that the group would not resort to violence unless

980
01:08:24,120 --> 01:08:28,599
Speaker 2: they were provoked. When Darren Huff took the stand at

981
01:08:28,600 --> 01:08:31,880
Speaker 2: his own trial, he recalled telling agent read that evening

982
01:08:31,920 --> 01:08:34,840
Speaker 2: that he'd love it if the FBI would be there

983
01:08:35,120 --> 01:08:40,679
Speaker 2: in Madisonville again. Remember last week that letter that Walter

984
01:08:40,720 --> 01:08:44,920
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick sent the police chief of Madisonville before all of

985
01:08:44,960 --> 01:08:51,880
Speaker 2: this got started. He wasn't making threats. He was inviting

986
01:08:51,920 --> 01:08:55,639
Speaker 2: the police to be part of his plan. And that's

987
01:08:55,680 --> 01:08:59,640
Speaker 2: the same mindset Darren has here. He even gave the

988
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:04,000
Speaker 2: FBI agent his business card. I had to double check

989
01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:07,400
Speaker 2: here because Darren's business cards do come up again later,

990
01:09:08,280 --> 01:09:10,679
Speaker 2: but it sounds like the business card he gave Agent

991
01:09:10,760 --> 01:09:13,960
Speaker 2: Reed the night before the big day was just a

992
01:09:14,040 --> 01:09:18,080
Speaker 2: normal business card, a real one for his outdoor lighting business.

993
01:09:18,880 --> 01:09:22,040
Speaker 2: It wasn't until after he was arrested that he got

994
01:09:22,120 --> 01:09:26,599
Speaker 2: new business cards printed that said Darren Huff, right wing

995
01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:32,440
Speaker 2: extremist and potential domestic terrorist. But when he finished his cigarette,

996
01:09:32,920 --> 01:09:37,280
Speaker 2: the conversation was over. Agent Reid had no reason to

997
01:09:37,360 --> 01:09:42,080
Speaker 2: arrest him. Huff had expressed to him a plan to

998
01:09:42,160 --> 01:09:45,200
Speaker 2: commit a federal crime, the one he would eventually be

999
01:09:45,280 --> 01:09:50,479
Speaker 2: arrested for, but he hadn't actually done it yet. There

1000
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:54,080
Speaker 2: was no federal crime here until Darren Huff put his

1001
01:09:54,160 --> 01:09:57,639
Speaker 2: guns in the truck and drove across the state line

1002
01:09:57,680 --> 01:10:02,439
Speaker 2: from Georgia into Tennessee with the intent to engage in

1003
01:10:02,439 --> 01:10:08,280
Speaker 2: a little civil disorder. So Agent Reid left, but another

1004
01:10:08,320 --> 01:10:15,639
Speaker 2: agent stayed nearby all night, watching and waiting for the truck.

1005
01:10:15,680 --> 01:10:19,599
Speaker 2: To pull out of the driveway. Darren Huff was under

1006
01:10:19,640 --> 01:10:22,160
Speaker 2: FBI surveillance when he hit the road just before dawn

1007
01:10:22,439 --> 01:10:26,479
Speaker 2: on April twentieth, twenty ten. At six fifteen am, he

1008
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:30,599
Speaker 2: was observed crossing the state line, and just after seven am,

1009
01:10:30,960 --> 01:10:34,160
Speaker 2: Tennessee State Trooper Michael Wilson followed Huff's truck as he

1010
01:10:34,200 --> 01:10:39,439
Speaker 2: took Exit sixty off I seventy five towards Madisonville. Whether

1011
01:10:39,520 --> 01:10:41,479
Speaker 2: or not Huff rolled through the stop sign at the

1012
01:10:41,479 --> 01:10:44,679
Speaker 2: bottom of the exit ramp is a matter of some debate,

1013
01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:48,920
Speaker 2: but Trooper Wilson flashed his blue lights and pulled him over.

1014
01:10:50,680 --> 01:10:53,439
Speaker 2: This traffic stop ends up being central to Huff's case

1015
01:10:53,479 --> 01:10:57,360
Speaker 2: on appeal, but it isn't where he got arrested. He

1016
01:10:57,400 --> 01:11:01,240
Speaker 2: actually didn't even get a ticket, but Trooper Wilson and

1017
01:11:01,280 --> 01:11:04,320
Speaker 2: Darren Huff spent over an hour together there on the

1018
01:11:04,320 --> 01:11:08,800
Speaker 2: shoulder of Tennessee Highway sixty eight. When Huff was asked

1019
01:11:08,800 --> 01:11:10,519
Speaker 2: to step out of the vehicle, he had his CULT

1020
01:11:10,560 --> 01:11:14,559
Speaker 2: forty five on his hip. The officer unholstered the weapon,

1021
01:11:14,840 --> 01:11:18,439
Speaker 2: removed the magazine, checked the chamber, and put the weapon

1022
01:11:18,479 --> 01:11:22,679
Speaker 2: in his patrol car for safe keeping. Darren Huff produced

1023
01:11:22,680 --> 01:11:26,040
Speaker 2: a valid Georgia driver's license, but he didn't have his

1024
01:11:26,040 --> 01:11:30,080
Speaker 2: truck's registration on him. He assured the officer that the

1025
01:11:30,120 --> 01:11:32,719
Speaker 2: gun was legal and handed him a piece of paper

1026
01:11:32,760 --> 01:11:37,320
Speaker 2: that he said was a gun carry permit. In his testimony,

1027
01:11:37,760 --> 01:11:42,519
Speaker 2: the trooper said the document looked quote, very unprofessional, and

1028
01:11:42,640 --> 01:11:47,040
Speaker 2: he was concerned it might not be real. He spent

1029
01:11:47,080 --> 01:11:50,000
Speaker 2: an hour going back and forth with Dispatch about this

1030
01:11:50,479 --> 01:11:54,799
Speaker 2: strange document and was never able to verify whether Huff

1031
01:11:54,960 --> 01:11:59,439
Speaker 2: actually had a valid carry permit for that gun. And

1032
01:11:59,520 --> 01:12:02,200
Speaker 2: during that while they were trying to sort it out,

1033
01:12:03,280 --> 01:12:07,599
Speaker 2: Darren Huff talked. He talked a lot, He ran his

1034
01:12:07,720 --> 01:12:12,640
Speaker 2: mouth the entire time, and the entire conversation was recorded

1035
01:12:12,760 --> 01:12:15,680
Speaker 2: on the officer's dash cam, which was connected to a

1036
01:12:15,720 --> 01:12:21,480
Speaker 2: microphone on his uniform. And in their conversation, Darren explained

1037
01:12:22,040 --> 01:12:25,400
Speaker 2: his whole plan. They had arrest warrants for the grand

1038
01:12:25,439 --> 01:12:30,360
Speaker 2: jury foreman, the district attorney, the sheriff, the judge, Nancy Pelosi, etc.

1039
01:12:31,920 --> 01:12:35,160
Speaker 2: He recommended some YouTube videos the officers should watch to

1040
01:12:35,240 --> 01:12:38,720
Speaker 2: learn more about Barack Obama's crimes, and he told them

1041
01:12:38,760 --> 01:12:42,800
Speaker 2: they needed to be reading Walter Fitzpatrick's blog In the

1042
01:12:42,840 --> 01:12:45,839
Speaker 2: portions of this audio that I could find, the officers

1043
01:12:45,840 --> 01:12:49,000
Speaker 2: seemed to be playing along. They're mostly just letting him

1044
01:12:49,000 --> 01:12:53,400
Speaker 2: talk without interruption, but occasionally they asked some questions about

1045
01:12:54,000 --> 01:12:58,679
Speaker 2: how exactly the plan is going to work, and Darren's

1046
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:02,280
Speaker 2: happy to explain because he's actually going to need their help.

1047
01:13:04,400 --> 01:13:05,880
Speaker 13: And then at that point they would be placed in

1048
01:13:05,960 --> 01:13:07,840
Speaker 13: the custody and you know, turn this man over you.

1049
01:13:08,120 --> 01:13:10,679
Speaker 13: I don't have handcuffs, you know, somebody we would need

1050
01:13:10,680 --> 01:13:13,920
Speaker 13: somebody like you guys there, And I can't tell you

1051
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:15,839
Speaker 13: how much I appreciate you guys listening.

1052
01:13:18,439 --> 01:13:21,920
Speaker 2: Again, this is exactly like Fitzpatrick's letter to the police chief.

1053
01:13:23,000 --> 01:13:25,720
Speaker 2: He's telling the cops what they plan to do and

1054
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:27,639
Speaker 2: trying to get them to be a part of it.

1055
01:13:29,000 --> 01:13:31,920
Speaker 2: The audio is a little fuzzy because they're standing on

1056
01:13:31,960 --> 01:13:34,559
Speaker 2: the side of the highway in the rain, but he

1057
01:13:34,640 --> 01:13:38,559
Speaker 2: wants the officers to agree to receive these prisoners once

1058
01:13:38,600 --> 01:13:43,800
Speaker 2: they've been citizens arrested. But that wasn't all. He was

1059
01:13:43,840 --> 01:13:46,479
Speaker 2: worried about a lot more than just the corrupt government

1060
01:13:46,479 --> 01:13:50,599
Speaker 2: in Monroe County, Tennessee. He shared his concerns about the

1061
01:13:50,640 --> 01:13:53,280
Speaker 2: Affordable Care Act, which had just been signed into law

1062
01:13:53,320 --> 01:13:57,479
Speaker 2: a few weeks earlier. Of course, he was upset that

1063
01:13:57,840 --> 01:14:03,439
Speaker 2: this was communism, obviously, but more importantly, he was very

1064
01:14:03,520 --> 01:14:07,480
Speaker 2: worried because this law requires that all Americans be implanted

1065
01:14:07,479 --> 01:14:12,120
Speaker 2: with the mark of the Beast, as foretold in Revelations.

1066
01:14:12,600 --> 01:14:15,880
Speaker 13: Luke ten eighteen, Jesus says, and I beheld Satan as

1067
01:14:15,960 --> 01:14:21,280
Speaker 13: lightning fall from heaven. The Greek translation for lightning is barack.

1068
01:14:21,920 --> 01:14:24,160
Speaker 13: Now Jesus didn't speak Greek. He spoke Hebrews, so you

1069
01:14:24,160 --> 01:14:27,880
Speaker 13: can look it up into Hebrew. It's still barack and

1070
01:14:28,040 --> 01:14:32,559
Speaker 13: from heaven transplaced from Hebrew. Who or oh bomba?

1071
01:14:33,280 --> 01:14:36,479
Speaker 8: So Jesus said, out of his own list, I saw

1072
01:14:36,560 --> 01:14:38,360
Speaker 8: Satan as bomba.

1073
01:14:41,400 --> 01:14:44,240
Speaker 2: He went on to explain that he was opposed to

1074
01:14:44,280 --> 01:14:46,680
Speaker 2: the war in the Middle East, though he notes that

1075
01:14:46,720 --> 01:14:52,479
Speaker 2: he does think quote Muslims suck end quote, but also

1076
01:14:52,560 --> 01:14:55,840
Speaker 2: nine to eleven was an inside job. He tells the

1077
01:14:55,880 --> 01:14:59,479
Speaker 2: officers that they, who are all white men, are God's

1078
01:14:59,479 --> 01:15:04,200
Speaker 2: true chose people, that Caucasians are the real Israelites, and

1079
01:15:04,360 --> 01:15:09,400
Speaker 2: biblical prophecy foretold the re establishment of Israel in seventeen

1080
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:14,800
Speaker 2: seventy six. Remember last week when we touched briefly on

1081
01:15:14,920 --> 01:15:19,800
Speaker 2: Christian identity. That's what this is. Darren Huff is a

1082
01:15:19,960 --> 01:15:25,400
Speaker 2: self proclaimed pastor in the Christian Identity movement. He's standing

1083
01:15:25,400 --> 01:15:28,080
Speaker 2: there on the side of the highway, surrounded by cops,

1084
01:15:28,880 --> 01:15:33,360
Speaker 2: reaching Christian identity and trying to recruit them to the Oathkeepers.

1085
01:15:34,960 --> 01:15:39,040
Speaker 2: It remains very unclear to me why the trooper gave

1086
01:15:39,120 --> 01:15:44,440
Speaker 2: Huff his gun back, but he did. At eight thirteen am.

1087
01:15:44,640 --> 01:15:48,240
Speaker 2: He handed Darren Huff a written warning, returned his CULT

1088
01:15:48,320 --> 01:15:50,960
Speaker 2: forty five, and told him he was free to go.

1089
01:15:52,360 --> 01:15:55,720
Speaker 2: The men shook hands, and Huff thanked the officer and

1090
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:58,000
Speaker 2: he took a few steps back toward his truck before

1091
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:04,600
Speaker 2: he stopped, turned around and said, let me pre warn you.

1092
01:16:05,600 --> 01:16:08,320
Speaker 2: If enough of us show up today, we are going

1093
01:16:08,360 --> 01:16:12,200
Speaker 2: to proceed forward in this citizen's arrest. That's why I

1094
01:16:12,240 --> 01:16:16,600
Speaker 2: have my forty five. Ain't no government official going peacefully.

1095
01:16:18,280 --> 01:16:20,280
Speaker 2: And then he slid his COLT forty five back into

1096
01:16:20,360 --> 01:16:24,000
Speaker 2: his holster, climbed into his pickup truck that said oath

1097
01:16:24,080 --> 01:16:28,240
Speaker 2: Keepers all down one side, and drove the last few

1098
01:16:28,280 --> 01:16:47,000
Speaker 2: miles into Madisonville, Tennessee. At five o'clock that morning, more

1099
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:50,599
Speaker 2: than fifty police officers from multiple jurisdictions in and around

1100
01:16:50,680 --> 01:16:55,799
Speaker 2: Monroe County, Tennessee, gathered for a briefing. There were FBI

1101
01:16:55,880 --> 01:16:58,479
Speaker 2: agents from the Joint Terraces and Task Force, and at

1102
01:16:58,600 --> 01:17:02,880
Speaker 2: least one representative from the Department of Homeland Security. They'd

1103
01:17:02,920 --> 01:17:05,880
Speaker 2: been monitoring the online chatter about Walter Fitzpatrick's hearing at

1104
01:17:05,880 --> 01:17:10,280
Speaker 2: the courthouse at nine am, and they were worried. The

1105
01:17:10,320 --> 01:17:13,879
Speaker 2: intelligence they had was that as many as six hundred

1106
01:17:13,920 --> 01:17:18,680
Speaker 2: people might be on their way to Madisonville, Tennessee. They

1107
01:17:18,720 --> 01:17:22,640
Speaker 2: had undercovers stationed in nearby businesses and snipers on rooftops.

1108
01:17:24,280 --> 01:17:27,559
Speaker 2: One of those undercover officers was Mike Hall, the director

1109
01:17:27,600 --> 01:17:31,680
Speaker 2: of a regional violent crime task Force in Tennessee. In

1110
01:17:31,760 --> 01:17:35,240
Speaker 2: plain clothes, he got a table at Donna's in Cafe,

1111
01:17:35,360 --> 01:17:38,120
Speaker 2: a block from City Hall, where Fitzpatrick's supporters would be

1112
01:17:38,120 --> 01:17:42,040
Speaker 2: meeting for breakfast. And maybe the police should have known

1113
01:17:42,160 --> 01:17:47,320
Speaker 2: that they probably weren't expecting six hundred armed militiamen if

1114
01:17:47,320 --> 01:17:49,759
Speaker 2: they knew that they had booked tables at Donna's Cafe.

1115
01:17:50,680 --> 01:17:53,960
Speaker 2: But that's neither here nor there, and by the time

1116
01:17:54,000 --> 01:17:59,640
Speaker 2: breakfast was over, barely twenty supporters were packed into the

1117
01:17:59,680 --> 01:18:03,679
Speaker 2: dining room, finishing their biscuits and coffee as Darren Huff

1118
01:18:03,720 --> 01:18:06,760
Speaker 2: gave a rousing speech about taking his AK forty seven

1119
01:18:06,840 --> 01:18:12,520
Speaker 2: down to the courthouse. Carl Swinson's dead website isn't exactly

1120
01:18:12,600 --> 01:18:16,240
Speaker 2: easy to navigate, so maybe the whole speech was there

1121
01:18:16,800 --> 01:18:19,760
Speaker 2: at some point, but I was only able to dig

1122
01:18:19,840 --> 01:18:22,559
Speaker 2: up an audio file of the first six minutes or so,

1123
01:18:23,640 --> 01:18:25,879
Speaker 2: and it's pretty inspiring stuff.

1124
01:18:28,400 --> 01:18:31,799
Speaker 8: So as a Christians, as lieutenant commander said, I'm Chaplin

1125
01:18:31,840 --> 01:18:33,519
Speaker 8: for the Georgia Militia, so I look at things a

1126
01:18:33,560 --> 01:18:36,240
Speaker 8: little bit differently, and I look at them basically, and

1127
01:18:36,320 --> 01:18:38,840
Speaker 8: I told these guys, and I tell everybody, I'm not

1128
01:18:38,960 --> 01:18:41,559
Speaker 8: a very smart guy. In fact, the only thing that

1129
01:18:41,600 --> 01:18:44,240
Speaker 8: I know about the Constitution are the first few amendments.

1130
01:18:44,439 --> 01:18:46,000
Speaker 8: Those leave me the hell alone ones.

1131
01:18:46,640 --> 01:18:47,400
Speaker 9: That's what I know.

1132
01:18:47,520 --> 01:18:50,000
Speaker 8: And I know them well enough to say you're wrong.

1133
01:18:50,320 --> 01:18:51,200
Speaker 13: You can't do this.

1134
01:18:54,360 --> 01:18:57,960
Speaker 2: Over the sound of clinking forks on plates, the Christian

1135
01:18:58,000 --> 01:19:03,080
Speaker 2: Identity Militia, Chaplin explained that they are preparing for spiritual war,

1136
01:19:04,200 --> 01:19:06,599
Speaker 2: that we are already in the end times, as we're

1137
01:19:06,600 --> 01:19:11,200
Speaker 2: told in revelations. See the founding of the United States

1138
01:19:11,320 --> 01:19:16,360
Speaker 2: was biblical prophecy God knew that in seventeen seventy six

1139
01:19:16,520 --> 01:19:19,479
Speaker 2: the thirteen Tribes of Israel would be called back together

1140
01:19:19,560 --> 01:19:26,000
Speaker 2: as the thirteen Colonies. Yes, at thirteen, I know it's twelve,

1141
01:19:26,200 --> 01:19:30,040
Speaker 2: twelve tribes of Israel. You know it's twelve. But Darren

1142
01:19:30,120 --> 01:19:35,360
Speaker 2: is counting Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manassa separately. That's why

1143
01:19:35,360 --> 01:19:37,800
Speaker 2: he thinks it's thirteen. And I know that because he

1144
01:19:37,920 --> 01:19:42,839
Speaker 2: mentions Joseph's sons specifically, because otherwise I might have assumed

1145
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:46,439
Speaker 2: he was talking about something different. We don't need to

1146
01:19:46,479 --> 01:19:50,240
Speaker 2: get into the specifics here. But adherents of Christian identity

1147
01:19:50,320 --> 01:19:54,639
Speaker 2: believe that they are the real Israelites, so they have

1148
01:19:54,720 --> 01:19:59,240
Speaker 2: to explain the existence of actual Jews some other way,

1149
01:20:00,280 --> 01:20:03,440
Speaker 2: and that usually boils down to a theory that Ashkenazi

1150
01:20:03,520 --> 01:20:07,520
Speaker 2: Jews are actually descended from a Turkic race called the Kasars.

1151
01:20:08,760 --> 01:20:13,240
Speaker 2: Christian identity guys really love this book from the seventies

1152
01:20:13,320 --> 01:20:19,200
Speaker 2: called The Thirteenth Tribe, which makes the case for this theory. Honestly,

1153
01:20:19,840 --> 01:20:23,639
Speaker 2: please don't make me explain the Kasar hypothesis every time

1154
01:20:23,680 --> 01:20:26,880
Speaker 2: I see a guy posting about Kasars. I'm just not

1155
01:20:26,920 --> 01:20:32,000
Speaker 2: having a good time. But what Darren was saying might

1156
01:20:32,040 --> 01:20:33,080
Speaker 2: actually be weirder.

1157
01:20:36,000 --> 01:20:40,679
Speaker 6: Jacob went like this, he blessed them the way God

1158
01:20:40,720 --> 01:20:44,759
Speaker 6: intended him to bless them. That crossing of the arms

1159
01:20:46,280 --> 01:20:49,599
Speaker 6: is on that flag. That's where that cross comes from.

1160
01:20:49,880 --> 01:20:53,000
Speaker 6: It has nothing to do with rednecks. It has nothing

1161
01:20:53,040 --> 01:20:55,720
Speaker 6: to do with the Confederacy. It has everything to do

1162
01:20:56,240 --> 01:20:57,880
Speaker 6: with God's shows people.

1163
01:21:01,280 --> 01:21:04,000
Speaker 2: Now this was a new one for me. I've never

1164
01:21:04,040 --> 01:21:07,599
Speaker 2: heard this one before. What he's saying here is that

1165
01:21:07,680 --> 01:21:16,439
Speaker 2: the Confederate flag symbolizes Jacob's blessing of Joseph's sons. I

1166
01:21:16,479 --> 01:21:19,400
Speaker 2: don't know what the aid to be to see here is,

1167
01:21:20,479 --> 01:21:28,080
Speaker 2: but I guess the Confederacy was the thirteenth tribe of Israel. Honestly,

1168
01:21:28,120 --> 01:21:30,000
Speaker 2: I don't want to know. I don't want to know.

1169
01:21:30,160 --> 01:21:34,920
Speaker 2: That way lies madness. So after his big speech, Darren

1170
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:40,479
Speaker 2: Huff steps outside. Mike Hall, our undercover officer, testified that

1171
01:21:40,520 --> 01:21:44,719
Speaker 2: he overheard Huff's conversation with a man that he doesn't name,

1172
01:21:45,360 --> 01:21:50,120
Speaker 2: but who, like Huff, was visibly armed, and Huff laments

1173
01:21:50,160 --> 01:21:52,920
Speaker 2: to this man that he wishes they had more people,

1174
01:21:53,960 --> 01:21:57,120
Speaker 2: saying quote, today would be a good day to do it.

1175
01:21:58,000 --> 01:22:00,439
Speaker 2: Because it's raining and the police wouldn't expect them to

1176
01:22:00,479 --> 01:22:04,280
Speaker 2: make a move in the rain. And Darren Hoff wasn't

1177
01:22:04,320 --> 01:22:07,120
Speaker 2: the only one who excused himself from the table after

1178
01:22:07,200 --> 01:22:12,160
Speaker 2: this speech. Carl Swinson, our sovereign citizen and the primary

1179
01:22:12,200 --> 01:22:16,840
Speaker 2: instigator of the online uproar calling people to Madisonville, got

1180
01:22:16,840 --> 01:22:18,120
Speaker 2: a phone call to make.

1181
01:22:20,479 --> 01:22:23,280
Speaker 4: All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here with my special

1182
01:22:23,280 --> 01:22:25,879
Speaker 4: guest with a ton of Colonel Terry Laken and his attorney,

1183
01:22:25,920 --> 01:22:31,400
Speaker 4: Paul Jensen. Colonel Laken is the Army officer who has

1184
01:22:31,520 --> 01:22:35,679
Speaker 4: challenged the legitimacy of Barack Obama to act as commander

1185
01:22:35,720 --> 01:22:39,360
Speaker 4: in chief. Also with me is doctor Jerome Corsy and

1186
01:22:39,840 --> 01:22:40,880
Speaker 4: going to Tennessee.

1187
01:22:41,080 --> 01:22:42,360
Speaker 2: And Carl, Carl.

1188
01:22:42,120 --> 01:22:42,680
Speaker 4: You're on the air.

1189
01:22:45,400 --> 01:22:49,479
Speaker 2: That's right, It's Carl and Tennessee. And he was live

1190
01:22:49,600 --> 01:22:55,240
Speaker 2: on air with g Gordon Liddy and Jerome Corcy. I

1191
01:22:55,280 --> 01:22:57,439
Speaker 2: have to admit I spent the better part of an

1192
01:22:57,479 --> 01:23:02,280
Speaker 2: afternoon chasing down this fifteen year old episode of morning

1193
01:23:02,320 --> 01:23:05,080
Speaker 2: Talk radio, so I am going to tell you about it.

1194
01:23:06,760 --> 01:23:11,280
Speaker 2: On April twelfth, twenty ten, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Terry

1195
01:23:11,360 --> 01:23:16,879
Speaker 2: Laken did not report for duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Instead,

1196
01:23:17,560 --> 01:23:20,320
Speaker 2: he drove to the Pentagon in Washington, d C. Where

1197
01:23:20,360 --> 01:23:22,960
Speaker 2: he was read his rights by his commanding officer, Colonel

1198
01:23:22,960 --> 01:23:27,559
Speaker 2: Gordon Ray Roberts. Lincoln's unit deployed to Afghanistan that week

1199
01:23:27,600 --> 01:23:32,320
Speaker 2: without him. The eighteen year veteran wasn't afraid to return

1200
01:23:32,360 --> 01:23:35,120
Speaker 2: to Afghanistan. This deployment would have been the seventh of

1201
01:23:35,160 --> 01:23:39,439
Speaker 2: his career and his second to Afghanistan. In two thousand

1202
01:23:39,439 --> 01:23:42,040
Speaker 2: and four, he was the Army's Flight surgeon of the year.

1203
01:23:43,160 --> 01:23:46,519
Speaker 2: He'd been awarded a Meritorious Service Medal and a Bronze Star.

1204
01:23:47,800 --> 01:23:49,880
Speaker 2: He was on track to be promoted to full colonel

1205
01:23:49,880 --> 01:23:53,439
Speaker 2: within the next year. But he had come to realize

1206
01:23:53,479 --> 01:23:58,679
Speaker 2: that his deployment orders were unlawful, not on ideological grounds.

1207
01:23:58,720 --> 01:24:02,599
Speaker 2: He wasn't pro testing the war. He hadn't suddenly become

1208
01:24:02,640 --> 01:24:07,240
Speaker 2: a peace activist after seeing the horrors of war firsthand. No. No,

1209
01:24:08,000 --> 01:24:11,759
Speaker 2: the doctor was refusing to deploy unless he could see

1210
01:24:11,760 --> 01:24:14,240
Speaker 2: the president's birth certificate.

1211
01:24:17,160 --> 01:24:19,280
Speaker 7: I will disobey my orders to deploy it because I

1212
01:24:19,720 --> 01:24:22,519
Speaker 7: and I believe all servicemen and women and the American

1213
01:24:22,520 --> 01:24:27,200
Speaker 7: people deserve the truth about President Obama's constitutional eligibility to

1214
01:24:27,280 --> 01:24:30,320
Speaker 7: the office of the Presidency and the Commander in Chief.

1215
01:24:33,000 --> 01:24:35,960
Speaker 2: A week after disobeying his orders, Lieutenant Colonel Laken appeared

1216
01:24:35,960 --> 01:24:38,960
Speaker 2: as a guest on The G. Gordon Liddy Show. Decades

1217
01:24:39,000 --> 01:24:42,559
Speaker 2: after dabbling it being an FBI agent doing dirty tricks

1218
01:24:42,560 --> 01:24:45,280
Speaker 2: for Richard Dixon and spending a little time in prison

1219
01:24:45,360 --> 01:24:48,720
Speaker 2: for his role in the Watergate scandal, Lyddy really hit

1220
01:24:48,720 --> 01:24:53,080
Speaker 2: his stride as an extremely right wing talk radio host

1221
01:24:53,640 --> 01:24:57,759
Speaker 2: who regularly encouraged listeners to do things like shoot federal

1222
01:24:57,800 --> 01:25:02,480
Speaker 2: agents in the head. Robert Evans put out a taggering

1223
01:25:02,720 --> 01:25:05,439
Speaker 2: six part series of episodes on G. Gordon Liddy on

1224
01:25:05,560 --> 01:25:08,920
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards last year, So if you're interested in

1225
01:25:08,960 --> 01:25:13,720
Speaker 2: hearing some outrageously racist clips of Liddy's radio show, I

1226
01:25:13,760 --> 01:25:18,320
Speaker 2: believe those are in part six. But today we're just

1227
01:25:18,360 --> 01:25:21,679
Speaker 2: talking about one episode of The G. Gordon Liddy Show,

1228
01:25:22,080 --> 01:25:25,960
Speaker 2: the one that aired on April twentieth, twenty ten, because

1229
01:25:25,960 --> 01:25:29,200
Speaker 2: that's the episode Carl Swinson called into during the second hour.

1230
01:25:30,520 --> 01:25:33,280
Speaker 2: In the first hour of the show, Lyddy interviewed Colonel

1231
01:25:33,360 --> 01:25:36,920
Speaker 2: Laken and Lacln's attorney, a California personal injury lawyer named

1232
01:25:36,920 --> 01:25:41,360
Speaker 2: Paul Jensen. You might be wondering why an army officer

1233
01:25:41,439 --> 01:25:45,719
Speaker 2: facing a court martial would hire a civilian personal injury lawyer,

1234
01:25:46,680 --> 01:25:52,559
Speaker 2: And that's a great question. The answer is unclear. In

1235
01:25:52,600 --> 01:25:56,320
Speaker 2: my experience, conspiracy theorists and extremists tend to hire attorneys

1236
01:25:56,360 --> 01:26:00,639
Speaker 2: who share their beliefs rather than ones who have, say,

1237
01:26:01,479 --> 01:26:06,080
Speaker 2: relevant experience in a particular area of law. But in

1238
01:26:06,080 --> 01:26:10,240
Speaker 2: this case, it seems very worth mentioning that Paul Jensen

1239
01:26:10,479 --> 01:26:16,080
Speaker 2: was a longtime associate of friend to and occasional attorney

1240
01:26:16,120 --> 01:26:21,200
Speaker 2: for Roger Stone. In two thousand and seven, it was

1241
01:26:21,200 --> 01:26:24,920
Speaker 2: Paul Jensen, acting as Stone's attorney, who publicly released a

1242
01:26:24,960 --> 01:26:27,280
Speaker 2: copy of a letter the pair claimed they had sent

1243
01:26:27,320 --> 01:26:32,040
Speaker 2: to the FBI about Elliot Spitzer's alleged habit of wearing

1244
01:26:32,120 --> 01:26:37,080
Speaker 2: nothing but long black socks during his liaisons with sex workers.

1245
01:26:38,240 --> 01:26:41,240
Speaker 2: And Jensen represented Stone in twenty sixteen when he was

1246
01:26:41,280 --> 01:26:44,920
Speaker 2: sued over allegations that he'd been involved in a coordinated

1247
01:26:44,960 --> 01:26:49,320
Speaker 2: campaign of voter intimidation. It was Jensen who drafted the

1248
01:26:49,320 --> 01:26:54,640
Speaker 2: paperwork to incorporate Stop the Steel in twenty sixteen. So

1249
01:26:54,720 --> 01:26:58,120
Speaker 2: after this interview, G. Gordon Liddy opened the phones to

1250
01:26:58,160 --> 01:27:01,440
Speaker 2: hear from listeners on the subject of Barack Obama's birth certificate.

1251
01:27:02,560 --> 01:27:06,400
Speaker 2: Caller after caller thanked Colonel Laken for his courage and

1252
01:27:06,439 --> 01:27:08,720
Speaker 2: shared their own theories about how they could finally get

1253
01:27:08,720 --> 01:27:13,760
Speaker 2: to the truth of Barack Obama's birth, and then, after

1254
01:27:13,800 --> 01:27:18,519
Speaker 2: an advertisement for gold coins, another birther called into the show,

1255
01:27:20,000 --> 01:27:22,960
Speaker 2: but this one wasn't just sitting idly by while Barack

1256
01:27:23,000 --> 01:27:24,839
Speaker 2: Obama pretended to be the president.

1257
01:27:28,080 --> 01:27:30,559
Speaker 11: Lieutenant Colonel, I want to thank you for everything you're doing,

1258
01:27:30,560 --> 01:27:33,400
Speaker 11: and I want to give you some encouragement here. I'm

1259
01:27:33,439 --> 01:27:36,519
Speaker 11: in the city of Madisonville, Tennessee, right now in Monroe County,

1260
01:27:36,520 --> 01:27:42,080
Speaker 11: where they've had this area on lockdown with FBI, TDI,

1261
01:27:42,800 --> 01:27:47,240
Speaker 11: local police and troopers all because of Lieutenant Commander Walter

1262
01:27:47,280 --> 01:27:51,679
Speaker 11: Fitzpatrick and his attempts to affect arrest using a criminal

1263
01:27:51,680 --> 01:27:57,599
Speaker 11: complaint against Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and in this case,

1264
01:27:58,040 --> 01:28:02,600
Speaker 11: the grand jury members here and the town of Madison senysuits.

1265
01:28:03,000 --> 01:28:08,400
Speaker 11: People are gathering now, but it is a tenuous situation

1266
01:28:08,520 --> 01:28:08,960
Speaker 11: at best.

1267
01:28:12,400 --> 01:28:15,360
Speaker 2: Carl closed the call by saying things were getting pretty

1268
01:28:15,400 --> 01:28:19,240
Speaker 2: heated out there in Tennessee and everything they were doing

1269
01:28:19,400 --> 01:28:23,360
Speaker 2: was quote indirect support of the message being pushed by

1270
01:28:23,360 --> 01:28:27,200
Speaker 2: Colonel Laken and Lyddy himself. G Gordon Lydy asked Carl

1271
01:28:27,280 --> 01:28:29,920
Speaker 2: to email the show's producer the video of Darren Huff's

1272
01:28:29,920 --> 01:28:31,640
Speaker 2: traffic stop so they could get that up on the

1273
01:28:31,640 --> 01:28:36,320
Speaker 2: website within the hour. The next caller, Julian Texas, was

1274
01:28:36,439 --> 01:28:39,360
Speaker 2: very worried about her sons. They were active duty soldiers

1275
01:28:39,400 --> 01:28:44,120
Speaker 2: deployed overseas. She wasn't worried about them being in the war.

1276
01:28:44,280 --> 01:28:47,720
Speaker 2: She was worried that because their deployment orders had been

1277
01:28:47,760 --> 01:28:51,240
Speaker 2: issued by a false president, that they could ultimately be

1278
01:28:51,320 --> 01:28:55,080
Speaker 2: liable for war crimes. I didn't listen to the rest

1279
01:28:55,080 --> 01:28:57,360
Speaker 2: of the episode. I don't know if they resolved that,

1280
01:28:59,280 --> 01:29:02,479
Speaker 2: but after darren rousing speech to the assembled supporters and

1281
01:29:02,640 --> 01:29:06,599
Speaker 2: Carl's bold statements on a national radio show, they both

1282
01:29:06,640 --> 01:29:10,920
Speaker 2: had to admit that nothing was going to happen that day.

1283
01:29:11,000 --> 01:29:14,000
Speaker 2: Their little crowd of twenty was outnumbered three to one

1284
01:29:14,160 --> 01:29:18,040
Speaker 2: by a very visible police presence, and according to Walter

1285
01:29:18,080 --> 01:29:21,639
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick's blog, a fair number of those supporters who turned

1286
01:29:21,720 --> 01:29:25,519
Speaker 2: up were middle aged women, one of whom brought several

1287
01:29:25,560 --> 01:29:29,240
Speaker 2: minor children with her. Darren had a truck full of

1288
01:29:29,280 --> 01:29:32,000
Speaker 2: guns and was bragging about how he had four hundred

1289
01:29:32,080 --> 01:29:35,080
Speaker 2: rounds for his AK forty seven, but they just didn't

1290
01:29:35,120 --> 01:29:38,439
Speaker 2: have the numbers to do anything that day. The only

1291
01:29:38,479 --> 01:29:41,320
Speaker 2: time anybody actually got close to the courthouse was when

1292
01:29:41,400 --> 01:29:43,800
Speaker 2: Darren Huff took a bag of biscuits over to a

1293
01:29:43,840 --> 01:29:48,320
Speaker 2: detective on the courthouse steps. By the time Fitzpatrick's hearing

1294
01:29:48,400 --> 01:29:52,880
Speaker 2: was over, Darren was bored, he was tired, and he's

1295
01:29:52,920 --> 01:29:57,799
Speaker 2: ready to go home. So everybody just left. Nothing happened,

1296
01:29:58,640 --> 01:30:06,920
Speaker 2: nobody got arrested. That night, Oathkeeper's founder Stuart Rhodes saw

1297
01:30:06,960 --> 01:30:10,280
Speaker 2: the video Carl Swinson posted online of Darren getting pulled

1298
01:30:10,320 --> 01:30:14,799
Speaker 2: over on his way to Madisonville. The truck says oath Keepers,

1299
01:30:15,080 --> 01:30:18,320
Speaker 2: all down one side and huge letters. You really can't

1300
01:30:18,360 --> 01:30:22,800
Speaker 2: miss it. It's the official logo of the Oathkeepers, and

1301
01:30:22,880 --> 01:30:27,160
Speaker 2: Rhodes called Swenson immediately and demanded he take the video down.

1302
01:30:28,080 --> 01:30:33,280
Speaker 2: It was embarrassing, and within days Rhodes himself showed up

1303
01:30:33,920 --> 01:30:38,000
Speaker 2: to speak with Darren Huff in person. He was furious.

1304
01:30:39,200 --> 01:30:41,920
Speaker 2: He demanded to know why Huff was so intent on

1305
01:30:42,040 --> 01:30:46,920
Speaker 2: making Madisonville the flash point. Now, Rhodes isn't the kind

1306
01:30:46,920 --> 01:30:51,080
Speaker 2: of guy who's actually concerned about there being a flash point.

1307
01:30:51,600 --> 01:30:54,439
Speaker 2: He wants one. That's the whole idea, right. Eventually the

1308
01:30:54,479 --> 01:30:59,000
Speaker 2: militia will come into some kind of conflict, But this

1309
01:30:59,160 --> 01:31:02,920
Speaker 2: wasn't the one he wanted because he thought Darren's ideas

1310
01:31:02,960 --> 01:31:08,440
Speaker 2: were foolish and embarrassing, and he revoked Darren's oathkeepers membership

1311
01:31:09,840 --> 01:31:13,920
Speaker 2: undeterred though Darren Huff returned to Tennessee a week later.

1312
01:31:14,920 --> 01:31:17,320
Speaker 2: He had a paper map of the state of Tennessee,

1313
01:31:18,040 --> 01:31:21,559
Speaker 2: and he'd circled the location of the sheriff's offices in

1314
01:31:21,680 --> 01:31:26,280
Speaker 2: every county within a two hour drive of Madisonville. It's

1315
01:31:26,320 --> 01:31:29,080
Speaker 2: not clear how many sheriffs he actually managed to speak with,

1316
01:31:29,800 --> 01:31:31,439
Speaker 2: but when he pulled into a parking lot at a

1317
01:31:31,439 --> 01:31:35,040
Speaker 2: county office building in Lenore City, Tennessee, he happened to

1318
01:31:35,080 --> 01:31:39,040
Speaker 2: come across Loudon County Sheriff Tim Geider and Cumberland County

1319
01:31:39,040 --> 01:31:42,040
Speaker 2: Sheriff Butch Burgess as they were getting out of their cars.

1320
01:31:43,640 --> 01:31:46,719
Speaker 2: They relate for a meeting, so this conversation was short.

1321
01:31:47,960 --> 01:31:51,040
Speaker 2: But Huff asked Sheriff Geiter if he'd be willing to

1322
01:31:51,200 --> 01:31:57,439
Speaker 2: arrest a fellow sheriff. At trial, Sheriff Geiter couldn't really

1323
01:31:57,479 --> 01:32:01,040
Speaker 2: remember much about this brief interaction, but he said he

1324
01:32:01,280 --> 01:32:04,880
Speaker 2: probably told this stranger in a parking lot that he'd

1325
01:32:04,920 --> 01:32:07,200
Speaker 2: need to know more about a situation like that in

1326
01:32:07,320 --> 01:32:12,280
Speaker 2: order to make a determination. But yes, hypothetically he did

1327
01:32:12,360 --> 01:32:17,400
Speaker 2: have the authority to arrest another sheriff. Darren Huff was

1328
01:32:17,439 --> 01:32:21,400
Speaker 2: trying to recruit law enforcement officers to assist with the plan.

1329
01:32:22,600 --> 01:32:26,080
Speaker 2: He wasn't giving up, but he was running off time.

1330
01:32:27,400 --> 01:32:31,800
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick's next hearing was scheduled for May fourth, and he

1331
01:32:31,880 --> 01:32:34,800
Speaker 2: needed to find a sheriff who would be there to

1332
01:32:34,920 --> 01:32:38,920
Speaker 2: take his prisoners into custody. He must not have had

1333
01:32:39,000 --> 01:32:41,840
Speaker 2: much success on the twenty eighth, though, because two days later,

1334
01:32:41,960 --> 01:32:45,719
Speaker 2: on April thirtieth, he was back at it, driving around

1335
01:32:45,720 --> 01:32:51,240
Speaker 2: Tennessee looking for sheriffs who believed in the constitution. He

1336
01:32:51,320 --> 01:32:55,120
Speaker 2: was up near Knoxville when he got pulled over. This

1337
01:32:55,240 --> 01:32:58,680
Speaker 2: time around, there's no debate about whether or not he

1338
01:32:58,760 --> 01:33:03,760
Speaker 2: ran a stop sign. This wasn't a traffic stop. There

1339
01:33:03,840 --> 01:33:19,040
Speaker 2: is a federal warrant for his arrest. Darren Huff was

1340
01:33:19,120 --> 01:33:22,960
Speaker 2: charged with violating Title eighteen, Section two thirty one sub

1341
01:33:23,080 --> 01:33:29,519
Speaker 2: section A two, and that's interesting. You probably don't believe me,

1342
01:33:29,600 --> 01:33:33,640
Speaker 2: but hang on. A second. Section two thirty one is

1343
01:33:34,280 --> 01:33:38,760
Speaker 2: civil disorders, and it covers three separate crimes that don't

1344
01:33:38,800 --> 01:33:42,960
Speaker 2: really go together. A one makes it a crime to

1345
01:33:43,000 --> 01:33:45,880
Speaker 2: teach someone else how to make or use a gun

1346
01:33:46,000 --> 01:33:48,600
Speaker 2: or a bomb if you know or have reason to

1347
01:33:48,680 --> 01:33:51,760
Speaker 2: know that they'll use that information in furtherance of a

1348
01:33:51,800 --> 01:33:57,120
Speaker 2: civil disorder. A two, which was Darren's crime, makes it

1349
01:33:57,160 --> 01:34:00,240
Speaker 2: illegal to transport a firearm or a bomb across eight

1350
01:34:00,320 --> 01:34:03,519
Speaker 2: lines if you know or have reason to know that

1351
01:34:03,560 --> 01:34:06,160
Speaker 2: the gun or explosive device is going to be used

1352
01:34:06,560 --> 01:34:11,439
Speaker 2: in a civil disorder. And A three makes it illegal

1353
01:34:11,520 --> 01:34:14,800
Speaker 2: to be in a cops way during a civil disorder,

1354
01:34:15,800 --> 01:34:18,760
Speaker 2: So that one doesn't really belong right. The first two

1355
01:34:18,760 --> 01:34:22,559
Speaker 2: are about guns and bombs, and the third one is

1356
01:34:22,600 --> 01:34:26,080
Speaker 2: just about being annoying. But that's the one that's really

1357
01:34:26,120 --> 01:34:28,040
Speaker 2: gotten to work out in the last couple of years

1358
01:34:28,120 --> 01:34:31,599
Speaker 2: because it was used in hundreds of January sixth cases.

1359
01:34:33,120 --> 01:34:38,280
Speaker 2: But eighteen USC. Two thirty one A two is uncommon.

1360
01:34:39,520 --> 01:34:42,679
Speaker 2: I mean, people get charged for doing this kind of thing,

1361
01:34:42,960 --> 01:34:48,120
Speaker 2: but usually they get charged with conspiracy to do whatever

1362
01:34:48,320 --> 01:34:49,920
Speaker 2: it was. They were going to do when they got

1363
01:34:49,920 --> 01:34:52,640
Speaker 2: where they were going, and then maybe they'll tack on

1364
01:34:52,680 --> 01:34:57,800
Speaker 2: some kind of gun crime, and Subsection A one just

1365
01:34:57,800 --> 01:35:00,439
Speaker 2: doesn't make any sense at all. There's are a whole

1366
01:35:00,479 --> 01:35:03,120
Speaker 2: separate law that makes it a crime to distribute information

1367
01:35:03,160 --> 01:35:06,679
Speaker 2: about bomb making, and that one has a harsher penalty

1368
01:35:06,720 --> 01:35:08,600
Speaker 2: than this, So I don't know why we need this

1369
01:35:08,640 --> 01:35:11,920
Speaker 2: one at all. So I was confused by this choice

1370
01:35:11,920 --> 01:35:14,680
Speaker 2: of statute, and I couldn't think of any place I'd

1371
01:35:14,680 --> 01:35:17,840
Speaker 2: ever seen this statute before. And it turns out that's

1372
01:35:17,840 --> 01:35:22,240
Speaker 2: because I hadn't seen it before, and I still haven't

1373
01:35:23,040 --> 01:35:28,920
Speaker 2: even after looking pretty hard. When Darren Huff appealed his conviction,

1374
01:35:29,320 --> 01:35:32,680
Speaker 2: it was noted in the appellate record that this particular

1375
01:35:32,760 --> 01:35:36,799
Speaker 2: statute had actually never been construed by an appellate court before,

1376
01:35:36,920 --> 01:35:39,560
Speaker 2: so this was the first time a court of appeals

1377
01:35:39,680 --> 01:35:44,439
Speaker 2: was examining this statute. But just because people don't get

1378
01:35:44,520 --> 01:35:47,759
Speaker 2: charged with this very often doesn't make it any less

1379
01:35:47,960 --> 01:35:52,240
Speaker 2: of a real law. And it does pretty well describe

1380
01:35:52,280 --> 01:35:59,240
Speaker 2: what he did, because he didn't really do anything, did he?

1381
01:36:00,680 --> 01:36:04,400
Speaker 2: But they were really worried that he might, or at

1382
01:36:04,520 --> 01:36:06,799
Speaker 2: least they were worried that he would continue to create

1383
01:36:06,880 --> 01:36:12,360
Speaker 2: situations where someone else might because if you get enough

1384
01:36:12,439 --> 01:36:17,360
Speaker 2: anxious people with guns together enough times, eventually something is

1385
01:36:17,400 --> 01:36:20,240
Speaker 2: going to go wrong in a way that escalates pretty quickly.

1386
01:36:21,800 --> 01:36:27,200
Speaker 2: So some federal agent or prosecutor got creative and they

1387
01:36:27,240 --> 01:36:32,600
Speaker 2: found a crime because technically, yeah, he put guns in

1388
01:36:32,680 --> 01:36:36,280
Speaker 2: his truck and he drove to another state. And when

1389
01:36:36,320 --> 01:36:38,720
Speaker 2: he was doing it, the plan that he had in

1390
01:36:38,720 --> 01:36:41,080
Speaker 2: his mind was that he was going to have that

1391
01:36:41,160 --> 01:36:45,320
Speaker 2: gun around in case the county judge didn't appreciate him

1392
01:36:45,360 --> 01:36:50,240
Speaker 2: barging into her courtroom. So the intent is pretty clear.

1393
01:36:51,400 --> 01:36:55,760
Speaker 2: He told anyone within earshot for two weeks what he

1394
01:36:55,880 --> 01:36:59,280
Speaker 2: was going to do. He wanted to lead an armed

1395
01:36:59,320 --> 01:37:02,519
Speaker 2: mom on to the courthouse. He made videos about it,

1396
01:37:02,640 --> 01:37:04,760
Speaker 2: he told his bank teller, he told a bunch of

1397
01:37:04,800 --> 01:37:08,679
Speaker 2: state troopers, he gave a speech. And you don't actually

1398
01:37:08,680 --> 01:37:11,960
Speaker 2: have to end up carrying out the plan to be

1399
01:37:12,000 --> 01:37:16,600
Speaker 2: guilty of showing up to the plan with a gun.

1400
01:37:16,880 --> 01:37:20,240
Speaker 2: And in the end, a jury agreed. They found Darren

1401
01:37:20,320 --> 01:37:24,000
Speaker 2: Huff guilty of interstate transportation of a firearm with the

1402
01:37:24,000 --> 01:37:27,160
Speaker 2: intention to use it unlawfully in furtherance of a civil disorder.

1403
01:37:28,280 --> 01:37:31,599
Speaker 2: The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, and

1404
01:37:31,680 --> 01:37:34,200
Speaker 2: Darren had already completed his four year sentence by the

1405
01:37:34,240 --> 01:37:36,840
Speaker 2: time the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in

1406
01:37:36,880 --> 01:37:40,840
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. Now, normally that's all I would really have

1407
01:37:40,920 --> 01:37:44,120
Speaker 2: to say about a criminal case. We already talked all

1408
01:37:44,160 --> 01:37:47,360
Speaker 2: the way through the actual timeline of events, so you

1409
01:37:47,400 --> 01:37:50,320
Speaker 2: already know what happened, and I just told you how

1410
01:37:50,360 --> 01:37:54,320
Speaker 2: the trial ended. He was convicted by a jury, appealed unsuccessfully,

1411
01:37:54,840 --> 01:37:59,000
Speaker 2: and served a sentence. But this trial is really just

1412
01:38:00,000 --> 01:38:03,799
Speaker 2: oh special. I mean, first of all, it went to trial.

1413
01:38:03,920 --> 01:38:09,000
Speaker 2: That's pretty rare. In twenty twenty two, just two point

1414
01:38:09,120 --> 01:38:13,720
Speaker 2: three percent of people charged with federal crimes actually went

1415
01:38:13,760 --> 01:38:18,160
Speaker 2: to trial. But it's so much more than that. Darren

1416
01:38:18,240 --> 01:38:22,200
Speaker 2: Huff really really wanted to be in the driver's seat

1417
01:38:22,280 --> 01:38:26,439
Speaker 2: when it came to his criminal defense. One thing you

1418
01:38:26,479 --> 01:38:29,240
Speaker 2: have to remember about Darren Huff is that he's got

1419
01:38:29,280 --> 01:38:33,720
Speaker 2: a little sovereign citizen in him. He seems at times

1420
01:38:33,760 --> 01:38:37,000
Speaker 2: to take issue with that label. But when he was

1421
01:38:37,040 --> 01:38:39,080
Speaker 2: asked how he felt about the gold fringe on the

1422
01:38:39,080 --> 01:38:44,080
Speaker 2: flag at his trial, he was very evasive, and in

1423
01:38:44,120 --> 01:38:47,040
Speaker 2: the year and a half between his arrest and his trial,

1424
01:38:48,200 --> 01:38:51,599
Speaker 2: he kept insisting that his public defenders file motions based

1425
01:38:51,680 --> 01:38:56,320
Speaker 2: on legal arguments that he had invented, and when they

1426
01:38:56,320 --> 01:38:59,200
Speaker 2: refused to file some of the more bizarre ones, he

1427
01:38:59,280 --> 01:39:04,719
Speaker 2: fired them releast you tried to. In March of twenty eleven,

1428
01:39:04,880 --> 01:39:08,720
Speaker 2: his public defender was begging him to consider the plea

1429
01:39:08,800 --> 01:39:12,439
Speaker 2: deal they were being offered, explaining over and over again

1430
01:39:12,479 --> 01:39:14,360
Speaker 2: that it was the best deal he was going to get,

1431
01:39:14,400 --> 01:39:16,720
Speaker 2: and the motions he was drafting on his own just

1432
01:39:17,479 --> 01:39:19,639
Speaker 2: don't have any basis in the law, and they have

1433
01:39:20,120 --> 01:39:23,479
Speaker 2: no legal merit, and they really seem to be trying

1434
01:39:23,479 --> 01:39:26,439
Speaker 2: to explain to him that you can't just file how

1435
01:39:26,479 --> 01:39:29,400
Speaker 2: you feel. There has to be case law. It has

1436
01:39:29,439 --> 01:39:33,960
Speaker 2: to be based in something. And after months of bitter

1437
01:39:34,080 --> 01:39:37,840
Speaker 2: emails back and forth about you know, we can't file

1438
01:39:37,920 --> 01:39:41,400
Speaker 2: stuff that you made up, and Darren's accusing them of

1439
01:39:41,439 --> 01:39:45,640
Speaker 2: working against him, and the original public defenders file a

1440
01:39:45,680 --> 01:39:50,120
Speaker 2: motion to withdraw, saying that the relationship has soured irreparably

1441
01:39:50,280 --> 01:39:54,439
Speaker 2: and they can't continue. And during this brief period of

1442
01:39:54,479 --> 01:39:58,559
Speaker 2: time before a new public defender could be appointed, Darren

1443
01:39:58,600 --> 01:40:01,479
Speaker 2: files some of those motions he want wanted the ones

1444
01:40:02,240 --> 01:40:07,839
Speaker 2: he wrote, including one that just reads comes the defendant

1445
01:40:07,920 --> 01:40:11,599
Speaker 2: in the above entitled action, Darren Wesley huff And moves

1446
01:40:11,600 --> 01:40:14,360
Speaker 2: the court to clarify its position on the Second Amendment

1447
01:40:14,960 --> 01:40:19,559
Speaker 2: US Constitution. And when his second public defender was assigned,

1448
01:40:19,560 --> 01:40:22,760
Speaker 2: a man named Scott Green, there were just three months

1449
01:40:22,840 --> 01:40:27,000
Speaker 2: to go before trial, and in those three months he

1450
01:40:27,080 --> 01:40:30,639
Speaker 2: did his job. He filed motions to suppress the statements

1451
01:40:30,720 --> 01:40:33,360
Speaker 2: Darren made during the traffic stop, motions to prevent the

1452
01:40:33,400 --> 01:40:37,120
Speaker 2: prosecution from bringing up his extremist beliefs, the kinds of

1453
01:40:37,120 --> 01:40:40,240
Speaker 2: things you'd expect to see. And he seemed to be

1454
01:40:40,320 --> 01:40:43,200
Speaker 2: humoring his client when it came to some of his

1455
01:40:43,600 --> 01:40:48,320
Speaker 2: unique ideas about the law. But like the attorneys before him,

1456
01:40:48,800 --> 01:40:53,320
Speaker 2: he wasn't willing to put his name on nonsense. And

1457
01:40:53,400 --> 01:40:56,280
Speaker 2: after another round of these emails back and forth, where

1458
01:40:56,280 --> 01:40:59,080
Speaker 2: this exasperated attorney is trying to explain to him that

1459
01:40:59,439 --> 01:41:03,799
Speaker 2: motions have to be based on the law, Darren threatened

1460
01:41:03,800 --> 01:41:07,120
Speaker 2: to fire him, writing if you do not have the

1461
01:41:07,160 --> 01:41:11,040
Speaker 2: courage or kahunahs necessary to represent me, then please let

1462
01:41:11,080 --> 01:41:15,519
Speaker 2: me know. I think that's supposed to say kahones, but

1463
01:41:16,160 --> 01:41:22,080
Speaker 2: it says kah u and as cohunas maybe that's a

1464
01:41:22,120 --> 01:41:27,760
Speaker 2: regional variation. He mets balls and then email is included

1465
01:41:27,840 --> 01:41:31,760
Speaker 2: in this bizarre fifteen page document that he submitted to

1466
01:41:31,800 --> 01:41:35,839
Speaker 2: the court complaining about and trying to fire his lawyer.

1467
01:41:36,800 --> 01:41:40,080
Speaker 2: But he ends the document by saying, quote, is the

1468
01:41:40,120 --> 01:41:41,960
Speaker 2: Second Amendment part of the Constitution?

1469
01:41:42,400 --> 01:41:42,599
Speaker 9: Yes?

1470
01:41:42,840 --> 01:41:46,840
Speaker 2: Or no? Wherefore Darren Wesley Huff moves this court to

1471
01:41:46,920 --> 01:41:51,639
Speaker 2: dismiss the indictment against him. I don't really know where

1472
01:41:51,680 --> 01:41:54,920
Speaker 2: to start with. That's that's really not how it works.

1473
01:41:56,760 --> 01:41:59,200
Speaker 2: And this lawyer tried to withdraw from the case, saying,

1474
01:41:59,240 --> 01:42:01,360
Speaker 2: you know, he doesn't want me to be his lawyer anymore.

1475
01:42:01,600 --> 01:42:05,080
Speaker 2: This is not working out. He can't do this, and

1476
01:42:05,120 --> 01:42:08,920
Speaker 2: the judge said no, they were too close to trial.

1477
01:42:09,080 --> 01:42:11,840
Speaker 2: They would just have to work it out because they

1478
01:42:11,960 --> 01:42:16,400
Speaker 2: want a trial together. And Green really does seem to

1479
01:42:16,400 --> 01:42:20,080
Speaker 2: have done his best here. On the eve of the trial,

1480
01:42:20,160 --> 01:42:25,360
Speaker 2: he filed five separate documents, each one called mister Huff's

1481
01:42:25,400 --> 01:42:31,200
Speaker 2: Special Request, and they were sort of fanciful jury instructions.

1482
01:42:32,760 --> 01:42:35,760
Speaker 2: It probably will not surprise you that mister Green declined

1483
01:42:36,000 --> 01:42:40,320
Speaker 2: to continue working with Darren on his appeal and Darren's

1484
01:42:40,320 --> 01:42:43,400
Speaker 2: attitude did not improve once he was in federal prison.

1485
01:42:44,479 --> 01:42:47,160
Speaker 2: One email he sent his new lawyer mister Gully during

1486
01:42:47,200 --> 01:42:51,080
Speaker 2: the appeal starts off by accusing Gully of withholding the

1487
01:42:51,120 --> 01:42:55,280
Speaker 2: trial transcripts, but they just hadn't been made yet. It

1488
01:42:55,360 --> 01:42:58,840
Speaker 2: takes a long time to produce those, But he writes

1489
01:42:58,840 --> 01:43:02,040
Speaker 2: to his lawyer, I am thus left to wonder whether

1490
01:43:02,120 --> 01:43:05,120
Speaker 2: you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or

1491
01:43:05,160 --> 01:43:08,879
Speaker 2: if you possibly received your degree from a remedial online school,

1492
01:43:09,400 --> 01:43:12,519
Speaker 2: or that you simply take me for a fool. You, sir,

1493
01:43:12,640 --> 01:43:15,000
Speaker 2: have made a mockery of the system that purports to

1494
01:43:15,040 --> 01:43:19,360
Speaker 2: provide me with effective assistance of counsel. Later, in the

1495
01:43:19,400 --> 01:43:22,919
Speaker 2: same email, he explains to his lawyer that the government

1496
01:43:23,479 --> 01:43:26,560
Speaker 2: can't charge him with a gun crime because he exists

1497
01:43:26,600 --> 01:43:31,400
Speaker 2: outside of the federal government's jurisdiction on such matters, and

1498
01:43:31,439 --> 01:43:36,120
Speaker 2: then he threatens to have his attorney indicted, disbarred, and institutionalized.

1499
01:43:37,720 --> 01:43:41,040
Speaker 2: Mister Gully's response to this letter doesn't seem to be

1500
01:43:41,200 --> 01:43:44,400
Speaker 2: in the appellate record, but from what I can see,

1501
01:43:44,640 --> 01:43:46,960
Speaker 2: he did the best he could with a losing case.

1502
01:43:49,439 --> 01:43:53,160
Speaker 2: We'd be doing episodes about Walter Fitzpatrick and his entourage

1503
01:43:53,240 --> 01:43:57,280
Speaker 2: for weeks if I told you every weird thing that

1504
01:43:57,360 --> 01:44:00,599
Speaker 2: I found, But I can't resist. Just a few more,

1505
01:44:00,720 --> 01:44:05,240
Speaker 2: if you'll indulge me. When Fitzpatrick finally did get arraigned

1506
01:44:05,240 --> 01:44:08,559
Speaker 2: in Monroe County for that original April first attempt to

1507
01:44:08,840 --> 01:44:12,800
Speaker 2: arrest the grand jury foreman, it did not go well.

1508
01:44:13,880 --> 01:44:17,800
Speaker 2: The judge that he'd accused of treason was presiding, and

1509
01:44:17,840 --> 01:44:20,720
Speaker 2: as she's flipping through the exhibits, sort of glancing over

1510
01:44:20,800 --> 01:44:25,280
Speaker 2: the paperwork and the citizens arrest warrants, she noted that

1511
01:44:25,320 --> 01:44:29,599
Speaker 2: the court clerk, miss Cook, was accused by Fitzpatrick of

1512
01:44:29,680 --> 01:44:33,960
Speaker 2: some pretty serious crimes. And so the judge turns to

1513
01:44:34,000 --> 01:44:37,639
Speaker 2: the clerk who's there in the courtroom and says, miss Cook,

1514
01:44:38,479 --> 01:44:42,880
Speaker 2: have you been levying war against the United States? And

1515
01:44:42,920 --> 01:44:47,680
Speaker 2: the clerk says, I don't think so, your honor. And

1516
01:44:47,760 --> 01:44:50,559
Speaker 2: I wish that I had an audio recording of this.

1517
01:44:50,760 --> 01:44:54,400
Speaker 2: I just have the transcript. But Fitzpatrick is having a

1518
01:44:54,400 --> 01:44:57,559
Speaker 2: lot of outbursts during this hearing, and at this point

1519
01:44:57,600 --> 01:45:00,680
Speaker 2: he says, are you making fun of me? Is that

1520
01:45:00,760 --> 01:45:05,120
Speaker 2: what's going on here? Am I being mocked? And they

1521
01:45:05,240 --> 01:45:10,280
Speaker 2: just ignored him and continue the proceeding. I would have

1522
01:45:10,360 --> 01:45:13,960
Speaker 2: loved to have seen it, and I wish the officer

1523
01:45:13,960 --> 01:45:18,479
Speaker 2: who testified at Huff's trial had been more specific about

1524
01:45:18,520 --> 01:45:21,559
Speaker 2: exactly who it was that he overheard Darren Huff talking to.

1525
01:45:21,640 --> 01:45:26,200
Speaker 2: In the morning of April twentieth, outside Donna's Cafe, Huff

1526
01:45:26,240 --> 01:45:30,400
Speaker 2: had a quiet conversation with someone about calling off the

1527
01:45:30,439 --> 01:45:35,240
Speaker 2: operation that day. The officer did mention that Huff was

1528
01:45:35,240 --> 01:45:37,519
Speaker 2: speaking to a man with a revolver on his hip,

1529
01:45:38,160 --> 01:45:39,760
Speaker 2: and that the man had gotten out of a PT

1530
01:45:39,960 --> 01:45:44,800
Speaker 2: cruiser with Georgia license plates. Carl Swenson's from Georgia. But

1531
01:45:45,640 --> 01:45:47,920
Speaker 2: I know Carl Swenson was driving a two thousand and

1532
01:45:48,000 --> 01:45:51,479
Speaker 2: nine Honda Civic Hybrid that day, trust me, I checked.

1533
01:45:51,600 --> 01:45:53,720
Speaker 2: I have got a state trooper on tape calling in

1534
01:45:53,800 --> 01:45:57,120
Speaker 2: his plates when they saw him on the highway. And

1535
01:45:57,200 --> 01:46:01,160
Speaker 2: in his blog, Walter Fitzpatrick thanked my name most of

1536
01:46:01,200 --> 01:46:04,040
Speaker 2: the people who showed up there that day, and most

1537
01:46:04,080 --> 01:46:07,160
Speaker 2: of them were women, and very few of them were

1538
01:46:07,160 --> 01:46:13,479
Speaker 2: from Georgia. But we do know for sure that Bill Luhman,

1539
01:46:14,080 --> 01:46:18,360
Speaker 2: a Marine Corps veteran and crane operator from Waco, Georgia,

1540
01:46:18,400 --> 01:46:21,400
Speaker 2: was there that day. And you'd be a fool to

1541
01:46:21,479 --> 01:46:23,639
Speaker 2: believe Bill Lowman would walk as far as his own

1542
01:46:23,640 --> 01:46:27,200
Speaker 2: mailbox without a gun, so if I had to put

1543
01:46:27,240 --> 01:46:30,120
Speaker 2: money on it, I think the person Darren Huff was

1544
01:46:30,160 --> 01:46:34,680
Speaker 2: making tactical decisions with was the same man who'd accompanied

1545
01:46:34,720 --> 01:46:38,880
Speaker 2: him to Walter's house two weeks earlier when they put

1546
01:46:38,920 --> 01:46:43,000
Speaker 2: this whole plan together, a fellow member of the Georgia

1547
01:46:43,040 --> 01:46:49,920
Speaker 2: Militia and the Oathkeepers. Now my main wheelhouse is not

1548
01:46:50,400 --> 01:46:54,240
Speaker 2: the Militia movement, so I can't say I'm surprised. I'd

1549
01:46:54,280 --> 01:46:56,840
Speaker 2: never heard of Bill Luhman before, and I didn't have

1550
01:46:56,880 --> 01:47:01,280
Speaker 2: any real prior knowledge about the Georgia Militia. But in

1551
01:47:01,320 --> 01:47:04,080
Speaker 2: some old blog posts, Luhman is referred to as a

1552
01:47:04,200 --> 01:47:07,439
Speaker 2: leader in the Georgia Militia. That may have just been

1553
01:47:07,520 --> 01:47:10,200
Speaker 2: his local chapter. There were at least a dozen units

1554
01:47:10,240 --> 01:47:13,320
Speaker 2: around the state of this larger group calling itself the

1555
01:47:13,320 --> 01:47:17,920
Speaker 2: Georgia Militia, and his name does not appear in the

1556
01:47:17,960 --> 01:47:21,719
Speaker 2: court record for the four members of the Georgia Militia

1557
01:47:22,240 --> 01:47:25,600
Speaker 2: who were arrested in twenty eleven for a plot that

1558
01:47:25,720 --> 01:47:29,200
Speaker 2: included plans to blow up the Federal building in Atlanta

1559
01:47:29,920 --> 01:47:33,680
Speaker 2: and maybe murder government officials with risin.

1560
01:47:35,040 --> 01:47:35,120
Speaker 9: In.

1561
01:47:35,280 --> 01:47:38,240
Speaker 2: Just a side note, if you do try to google

1562
01:47:38,720 --> 01:47:43,559
Speaker 2: Georgia white supremacist rice In attack, the more recent result

1563
01:47:43,600 --> 01:47:47,840
Speaker 2: you'll get is for an unrelated white supremacist plot to

1564
01:47:47,880 --> 01:47:51,720
Speaker 2: carry out a biological terrorist attack. In that case, in

1565
01:47:51,800 --> 01:47:56,559
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, a neo Nazi had actually successfully created the

1566
01:47:56,640 --> 01:48:01,320
Speaker 2: deadly poison, but he accidentally exposed himself to it, so

1567
01:48:01,360 --> 01:48:04,120
Speaker 2: he showed up at the emergency room before he could

1568
01:48:04,120 --> 01:48:07,600
Speaker 2: actually hurt anybody else. But this is not that one.

1569
01:48:07,760 --> 01:48:11,840
Speaker 2: This is the one from twenty eleven. But again, Bill

1570
01:48:11,920 --> 01:48:15,000
Speaker 2: Luhman nothing to do with the rice In attacks, just

1571
01:48:15,080 --> 01:48:19,439
Speaker 2: the same militia. And I found an old event for

1572
01:48:19,560 --> 01:48:23,000
Speaker 2: a tea party picnic in North Carolina in twenty thirteen.

1573
01:48:23,560 --> 01:48:26,800
Speaker 2: That list Lumen is a speaker and his title in

1574
01:48:26,840 --> 01:48:33,000
Speaker 2: the program is Constitutionalist icon from Georgia, and he appeared

1575
01:48:33,000 --> 01:48:35,800
Speaker 2: on stage with such heroes of the Patriot movement as

1576
01:48:35,960 --> 01:48:40,439
Speaker 2: James Renwick. Manship. That name is not familiar to you,

1577
01:48:40,479 --> 01:48:43,960
Speaker 2: I'm sure, but you might remember the photo of the

1578
01:48:44,000 --> 01:48:48,680
Speaker 2: guy in the George Washington costume wading into the reflecting

1579
01:48:48,800 --> 01:48:51,760
Speaker 2: pool at the Capitol during the January sixth riot as

1580
01:48:51,760 --> 01:48:56,880
Speaker 2: a sort of symbolic crossing the Delaware moment. But my

1581
01:48:57,080 --> 01:48:59,599
Speaker 2: favorite manship moment is the time he showed up at

1582
01:48:59,600 --> 01:49:04,080
Speaker 2: my local library dressed as Thomas Jefferson and refused to

1583
01:49:04,200 --> 01:49:08,120
Speaker 2: break character as he ranted in the first person about

1584
01:49:08,160 --> 01:49:15,000
Speaker 2: how he never had sexual relations with enslaved women. And

1585
01:49:15,080 --> 01:49:18,880
Speaker 2: Bill Luman is very much still around and active in

1586
01:49:18,920 --> 01:49:23,640
Speaker 2: the same kinds of conspiracy spaces. He posts, give or

1587
01:49:23,680 --> 01:49:27,560
Speaker 2: take one hundred times a day every day on Trump's

1588
01:49:27,640 --> 01:49:31,639
Speaker 2: Truth social platform, and all of his posts are in

1589
01:49:32,280 --> 01:49:38,320
Speaker 2: all caps. He starts every day by posting this message,

1590
01:49:38,360 --> 01:49:41,519
Speaker 2: Good morning patriots and grassroots warriors that are standing up

1591
01:49:41,520 --> 01:49:44,559
Speaker 2: for our constitution and precious way of life. Good morning

1592
01:49:44,560 --> 01:49:48,240
Speaker 2: to all veterans that serve honorably sempify my fellow Marines.

1593
01:49:48,640 --> 01:49:51,679
Speaker 2: May America bless God again into our nation, our homes,

1594
01:49:51,720 --> 01:49:58,439
Speaker 2: and our heart's heart emoji. Seriously, he posts that every morning.

1595
01:49:58,680 --> 01:50:02,640
Speaker 2: He's very committed, and he still thinks Barack Obama is

1596
01:50:02,680 --> 01:50:06,840
Speaker 2: a Kenyan born Muslim. He still posts a lot about

1597
01:50:06,880 --> 01:50:12,000
Speaker 2: hanging people for treason, but the reasons have shifted, you know, COVID,

1598
01:50:12,320 --> 01:50:18,719
Speaker 2: Ukraine election fraud, whatever. As I'm writing this right now,

1599
01:50:19,000 --> 01:50:22,439
Speaker 2: he's still posting. He posted a picture of a marine

1600
01:50:22,479 --> 01:50:25,320
Speaker 2: shaking hands with a dog, And there was a post

1601
01:50:25,520 --> 01:50:29,200
Speaker 2: this evening that was a screenshot from Braveheart with the

1602
01:50:29,240 --> 01:50:34,160
Speaker 2: text confirm Matt Gates or else written over mel Gibson's face.

1603
01:50:35,520 --> 01:50:38,600
Speaker 2: His last post was a thread documenting the progress of

1604
01:50:38,640 --> 01:50:42,320
Speaker 2: his homemade banana nutbread. At the time of recording, I

1605
01:50:42,400 --> 01:50:45,160
Speaker 2: can report that he added cream cheese icing to it

1606
01:50:45,280 --> 01:50:50,519
Speaker 2: and it was quote stellar. He's pretty popular over their

1607
01:50:50,560 --> 01:50:53,519
Speaker 2: own truth social he was even retruthed last year by

1608
01:50:53,520 --> 01:50:58,080
Speaker 2: Donald Trump himself after posting some incoherent theory about stolen

1609
01:50:58,200 --> 01:51:02,360
Speaker 2: votes from the twenty twenty election. Well, he wasn't retruthed,

1610
01:51:02,439 --> 01:51:06,680
Speaker 2: he was quote truthed, whatever the truth social equivalent of

1611
01:51:06,680 --> 01:51:10,240
Speaker 2: a quote tweet is. Lumann had suggested that the people

1612
01:51:10,280 --> 01:51:14,000
Speaker 2: responsible for the dominion voting machines should be tried for treason,

1613
01:51:14,840 --> 01:51:18,000
Speaker 2: and Trump quoted the post, adding a lot has been

1614
01:51:18,000 --> 01:51:21,920
Speaker 2: made of this lately, what do you think? And that

1615
01:51:22,000 --> 01:51:24,120
Speaker 2: must have been a huge day for Bill. The post

1616
01:51:24,200 --> 01:51:30,120
Speaker 2: went pretty viral, a lot of the keyboard warriors out

1617
01:51:30,160 --> 01:51:33,919
Speaker 2: here posting seventeen memes a day about January sixth. Political

1618
01:51:33,960 --> 01:51:39,439
Speaker 2: prisoners absolutely still believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya,

1619
01:51:39,760 --> 01:51:42,919
Speaker 2: and Walter Fitzpatrick went on to try his whole citizens

1620
01:51:43,000 --> 01:51:47,400
Speaker 2: arrest thing in neighboring McMinn County too. He was eventually

1621
01:51:47,400 --> 01:51:51,320
Speaker 2: convicted of perjury and extortion there, as well as getting

1622
01:51:51,360 --> 01:51:54,800
Speaker 2: some more charges in Monroe County after he stole the

1623
01:51:54,920 --> 01:51:59,320
Speaker 2: grand jury rolls. Those stolen documents were located by the

1624
01:51:59,439 --> 01:52:04,040
Speaker 2: FBI in the Connecticut home of Sharon Rondeau, the conspiracy

1625
01:52:04,080 --> 01:52:07,800
Speaker 2: theory blogger whose commitment to questioning the citizenship of politicians

1626
01:52:07,840 --> 01:52:13,080
Speaker 2: has remained strong over the years. She is still asking

1627
01:52:13,160 --> 01:52:19,120
Speaker 2: questions about Ilhan Omar and Kamala Harris. Fitzpatrick published a

1628
01:52:19,160 --> 01:52:22,080
Speaker 2: memoir last year about his quest for justice in his

1629
01:52:22,200 --> 01:52:26,080
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety court martial. I didn't read it. It's like

1630
01:52:26,120 --> 01:52:30,200
Speaker 2: four hundred pages long. He's in his seventies now and

1631
01:52:30,280 --> 01:52:35,280
Speaker 2: he still occasionally updates his blog, jag Hunters. The most

1632
01:52:35,280 --> 01:52:38,280
Speaker 2: recent post is just a link to someone else's video,

1633
01:52:39,320 --> 01:52:43,760
Speaker 2: and it's just like a mind numbing thirty minute mashup

1634
01:52:43,800 --> 01:52:48,400
Speaker 2: of clips. I can't even really explain it. It's like

1635
01:52:48,520 --> 01:52:52,640
Speaker 2: actual footage of Trump rallies mixed in with like mypolo commercials.

1636
01:52:52,720 --> 01:52:56,000
Speaker 2: A TikTok video of someone doing the macarena, but the

1637
01:52:56,080 --> 01:52:59,880
Speaker 2: lyrics have been changed to be about Donald Trump. I

1638
01:53:00,120 --> 01:53:02,000
Speaker 2: don't know. I tapped out when it got to a

1639
01:53:02,000 --> 01:53:07,400
Speaker 2: clip of Russell Brand praying with Tucker Carlson. I guess

1640
01:53:07,439 --> 01:53:11,839
Speaker 2: what I'm getting at here is these guys don't go away.

1641
01:53:11,960 --> 01:53:17,640
Speaker 2: The cause of the day changes, whether it's nine to eleven, truth, eartherism, COVID, denial, QAnon,

1642
01:53:17,800 --> 01:53:20,719
Speaker 2: stop the steal. But it's a lot of the same

1643
01:53:20,840 --> 01:53:25,280
Speaker 2: core ideas and honestly, it's a lot of the same

1644
01:53:25,439 --> 01:53:31,280
Speaker 2: individual guys. In one newspaper photo of Walter Fitzpatrick outside

1645
01:53:31,280 --> 01:53:34,120
Speaker 2: of the courthouse after a hearing in McMinn County in

1646
01:53:34,160 --> 01:53:39,640
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, the man standing next to him is Field McConnell.

1647
01:53:40,920 --> 01:53:44,040
Speaker 2: And Field McConnell is a former commercial airline pilot who

1648
01:53:44,080 --> 01:53:47,679
Speaker 2: retired in two thousand and six after refusing to submit

1649
01:53:47,760 --> 01:53:51,680
Speaker 2: to a neurological exam. He had become obsessed with the

1650
01:53:51,720 --> 01:53:54,080
Speaker 2: idea that nine to eleven was an inside job and

1651
01:53:54,720 --> 01:53:57,839
Speaker 2: was convinced that Boeing had rigged all of their planes

1652
01:53:57,880 --> 01:54:00,800
Speaker 2: with explosives and they were planning an upcoming nine to

1653
01:54:00,840 --> 01:54:05,959
Speaker 2: eleven style attack. In twenty nineteen, he got really into QAnon.

1654
01:54:06,840 --> 01:54:09,320
Speaker 2: An attorney in Florida who represents the family of a

1655
01:54:09,360 --> 01:54:12,559
Speaker 2: missing child had to get a restraining order against him

1656
01:54:12,720 --> 01:54:15,920
Speaker 2: after he made a series of YouTube videos threatening to

1657
01:54:16,000 --> 01:54:19,960
Speaker 2: kill her and accusing her of having trafficked the missing child.

1658
01:54:20,960 --> 01:54:23,400
Speaker 2: The day I'm recording this, he was a guest on

1659
01:54:23,479 --> 01:54:28,080
Speaker 2: a podcast hosted by a small scale QAnon influencer. I

1660
01:54:28,360 --> 01:54:31,360
Speaker 2: would tell you what they talked about, but it kind

1661
01:54:31,360 --> 01:54:33,320
Speaker 2: of sounded like he was calling in from the bottom

1662
01:54:33,360 --> 01:54:39,480
Speaker 2: of the ocean. This episode took me days longer to

1663
01:54:39,560 --> 01:54:42,680
Speaker 2: write than it should have, because every new name I

1664
01:54:42,760 --> 01:54:45,240
Speaker 2: turned up in the comments on a fifteen year old

1665
01:54:45,240 --> 01:54:49,520
Speaker 2: blog post took me on some long, strange path that

1666
01:54:50,000 --> 01:54:52,320
Speaker 2: some character in this story had taken in the year.

1667
01:54:52,440 --> 01:54:57,360
Speaker 2: Since there are no lone wolves, no one is self

1668
01:54:57,440 --> 01:55:01,240
Speaker 2: radicalizing in a vacuum. People don't just wake up one

1669
01:55:01,280 --> 01:55:03,760
Speaker 2: day and drive three hours with a camcorder and a

1670
01:55:03,760 --> 01:55:07,720
Speaker 2: truck full of guns for no reason at all. And

1671
01:55:07,760 --> 01:55:11,520
Speaker 2: with each passing week, as I immerse myself in the archives,

1672
01:55:11,880 --> 01:55:15,280
Speaker 2: piecing together one weird little guy's story at a time,

1673
01:55:16,200 --> 01:55:21,800
Speaker 2: the clearer the connective tissue between them becomes. But for

1674
01:55:21,880 --> 01:55:25,040
Speaker 2: all the weird twists and turns in this strange tale

1675
01:55:25,040 --> 01:55:27,400
Speaker 2: of the Birther militia trying to take over a small

1676
01:55:27,440 --> 01:55:31,600
Speaker 2: town in Tennessee. The best thing I found buried in

1677
01:55:31,640 --> 01:55:34,680
Speaker 2: all of these documents was this moment from the trial

1678
01:55:35,200 --> 01:55:39,920
Speaker 2: when Darren Huff took the stand himself. The prosecutor had

1679
01:55:39,920 --> 01:55:43,160
Speaker 2: asked him about some business cards that he made after

1680
01:55:43,160 --> 01:55:48,120
Speaker 2: his arrest. On the front, it said Darren Huff, right

1681
01:55:48,160 --> 01:55:52,480
Speaker 2: wing extremist and potential domestic terrorist, and on the back

1682
01:55:52,960 --> 01:55:57,200
Speaker 2: there was a picture of a gun. So on cross examination,

1683
01:55:57,560 --> 01:56:01,560
Speaker 2: Huff's defense attorney was trying to testimony that would show

1684
01:56:01,640 --> 01:56:05,080
Speaker 2: the jury that those business cards were obviously a joke,

1685
01:56:05,600 --> 01:56:09,080
Speaker 2: that this was just his sense of humor. So he

1686
01:56:09,120 --> 01:56:14,960
Speaker 2: asked Darren about some shirts, and Darren gave the following answer.

1687
01:56:16,600 --> 01:56:18,360
Speaker 2: I had a friend who had a T shirt shop,

1688
01:56:18,640 --> 01:56:20,560
Speaker 2: and I said, can you make me a couple of

1689
01:56:20,640 --> 01:56:25,480
Speaker 2: shirts because apparently this government wants to label me. The

1690
01:56:25,480 --> 01:56:27,880
Speaker 2: first one that he had made me said, I am

1691
01:56:27,920 --> 01:56:30,920
Speaker 2: the god fearing gun toting, flag waving right wing extremists

1692
01:56:30,920 --> 01:56:34,360
Speaker 2: the government warned you about. And the other one said

1693
01:56:35,320 --> 01:56:39,080
Speaker 2: I finally made Homeland Securities Potential Domestic Terrorists watch list

1694
01:56:39,120 --> 01:56:43,560
Speaker 2: and all I got was this lousy T shirt. Obviously,

1695
01:56:43,560 --> 01:56:45,960
Speaker 2: the point behind them was for humor, and they have

1696
01:56:46,040 --> 01:56:49,360
Speaker 2: been received as such. Another one that was one of

1697
01:56:49,360 --> 01:56:54,360
Speaker 2: my initial shirts said patriotism is not a spectator sport.

1698
01:56:56,280 --> 01:56:59,640
Speaker 2: And then there's something that I have never seen in

1699
01:56:59,680 --> 01:57:05,120
Speaker 2: a federal court transcript before, as this big bearded militia

1700
01:57:05,200 --> 01:57:09,440
Speaker 2: man is describing his funny terrorism shirts. The court reporter

1701
01:57:09,560 --> 01:57:15,920
Speaker 2: types in parentheses, witness crying should put it on the

1702
01:57:15,920 --> 01:57:28,720
Speaker 2: record that he cried. Weird Little Guys as a production

1703
01:57:28,800 --> 01:57:32,480
Speaker 2: of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and

1704
01:57:32,520 --> 01:57:36,720
Speaker 2: recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie

1705
01:57:36,720 --> 01:57:40,160
Speaker 2: Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the

1706
01:57:40,280 --> 01:57:43,880
Speaker 2: wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by

1707
01:57:43,880 --> 01:57:47,080
Speaker 2: Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird Little Guys

1708
01:57:47,120 --> 01:57:50,600
Speaker 2: podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,

1709
01:57:51,000 --> 01:57:54,440
Speaker 2: but I almost certainly will not answer it. You can

1710
01:57:54,480 --> 01:57:57,160
Speaker 2: exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on

1711
01:57:57,280 --> 01:58:01,280
Speaker 2: the Weird Little Guy's subreddit. Don't post anything that's going

1712
01:58:01,320 --> 01:58:02,800
Speaker 2: to make you one of my weird Blue Guys