WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: Arrested Democracy 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:08.400 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:13.440 Hello again, dear listeners, this is your host, Molly Conger, 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:18.759 once again bringing you a rerun. I'm so sorry. I 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:20.960 promise I will be back next week with a brand 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.640 new Weird Little Guy for you. This pair of episodes 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:28.520 originally aired back in November of twenty twenty four. It's 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:30.800 one of the more lighthearted story arcs we've had on 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:34.400 Weird Little Guys. It tells the story of a half 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.080 baked plot to take over a small town in Tennessee 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:40.560 so a conspiracy theory blogger and a militia chaplin could 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.040 prove once and for all that Barack Obama was born 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:51.160 in Kenya. He wasn't, obviously, and they didn't succeed. It's 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.000 just a silly little story about a lesser known chapter 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:57.440 in the history of right wing extremists refusing to accept 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.880 election results. If you missed it last time around, I 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:04.760 hope you will enjoy one of the only stories I've 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:09.160 told so far where nobody really got hurt except me. 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:12.880 It did cause me some agony to dig up and 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.600 listen to hours of old episodes of g Gordon Liddy's 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:20.640 talk radio show so that I could find the exact 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:24.960 moment in history when a conspiracy theorist called the guy 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:28.360 who did Watergate to tell him about the armed standoff 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:30.720 he and his friends were going to have after breakfast, 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:39.720 but it was worth it. It's a fun episode. On 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:44.920 April first, twenty ten, retired Navy Lieutenant Commander Walter Francis 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:50.000 Fitzpatrick the Third walked into the Monroe County Courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee. 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:55.040 That was no surprise to anyone in Madisonville. Fitzpatrick had 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:57.720 become a frequent visitor to this courthouse in a small 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.920 town in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. A 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.920 year earlier, in March of two thousand nine, he asked 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.200 a Monroe County grand jury to indict President Barack Obama 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:12.400 on charges of treason. The grand jury declined to do so. 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:16.000 In the year that followed, he had been a regular 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:19.840 fixture in the County court Clerk's office, demanding information about 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:24.320 the county's jury selection process. After the grand jury's refusal 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:28.160 to accept his presentation of evidence against Barack Obama, he 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:32.239 could only conclude that the process itself was deeply corrupt 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.520 and sinister forces were conspiring against him to suppress the 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:41.640 truth that Barack Houssain Obama was not the rightful president 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.760 of the United States, that he was born in Kenya, 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.200 that he had rigged the two thousand eight election, and 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:53.679 he was guilty of high treason. Walter Fitzpatrick was more 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:57.679 than prepared to put Barack Obama on trial, but now 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:01.040 he believed the whole Damn's system was guilty and he 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:03.799 wasn't going to let them get away with it. He 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:11.360 just needed some backup. I'm Molly Konger, and this is 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:30.960 where the little guys as in writing this. It's a 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:36.040 few days after the twenty twenty four presidential election. Every 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:40.240 election has winners and losers, and not everybody is happy 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:43.920 with the results. It's probably no surprise to you that 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.160 I count myself among those of us who aren't thrilled 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:53.200 with the results this time around. But sometimes disappointment, dread, 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:58.960 and dissatisfaction aren't enough. For some people, an undesirable election 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:05.320 outcome is simply unacceptable. Literally, they can't accept it, it 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:07.640 can't be true, and it can't be allowed to stand. 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.600 As with my Halloween episode, I'm a little behind the 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:17.000 curve here in terms of seasonal content. At this rate, 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.880 I'll be doing a Christmas special on Groundhog's Day. But 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.920 elections and weird little guys go together like peanut butter 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:29.720 and jelly. Well, no, no, that's not true. You do 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:34.000 find them together often, but they don't usually mix well. 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.800 So maybe it's more like oil and water. Neither of 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.800 those analogies are really giving me what I want in 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:47.080 my personal experience. Right wing extremists and election results go 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:51.560 together like blue gatorade and raw onions. When I covered 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.040 the January sixth ride at the Capitol in twenty twenty one, 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.040 those were the two things I saw people pulling out 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:02.000 of their backpacks the most. Think. Some right wing influencer 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.200 convinced a lot of people who'd never been to a 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:08.200 riot before that you should carry a raw white onion 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:12.599 cut in half in a ziploc baggie because rubbing it 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.640 on your face is a homeopathic remedy for tear gas. 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.440 Just a heads up, that is not true. Do not 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.520 do that. Do not rub a raw onion on your 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.360 eyeballs at any time, and definitely don't do it after 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.159 exposure to a chemical irritant. And if you can only 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.600 pack one thing to drink in a situation like that, 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:39.800 make it water. Or else you'll be washing pepper spray 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:43.280 and onion juice out of your eyes with gatorade, which 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.800 doctors do not recommend. That's just some free advice for you, 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:50.400 but I thought it would make perfect sense to do 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:55.000 some kind of election themed weird little guy. And to 0:05:55.040 --> 0:06:00.360 be honest, I'm bored of January sixth stories. I'm sure 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.240 I'll get to some of them on this show eventually. 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.359 And there were some guys there who were very strange 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:10.440 guys even before they were trying to stop the steal. 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:13.920 And if the guy they were fighting for that day 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:17.400 follows through on his promise to pardon them all, some 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.720 of them will make their way back into the news 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:24.159 one way or another, whether that's running for office or 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:29.839 building a bomb. But right now today, I'm sick of 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:32.760 thinking about the twenty twenty election results because I'm sick 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:36.680 of thinking about the twenty twenty four election results. And 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:40.360 the twenty twenty election was not the first time right 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:45.760 wing extremists couldn't accept the results. So come with me 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:51.760 to the distant past. Two thousand and eight. I voted 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.080 for president for the first time that year, making me 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.159 one of nearly seventy million Americans who cast a ballot 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:01.280 for Barack Obama. He won handle it, beating John McCain 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.120 by more than seven percent in the popular vote and 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.080 pulling in three hundred and sixty five electoral votes to 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:13.280 McCain's one hundred and seventy three. Barack Obama was promising hope, change, 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:17.920 and healthcare. John McCain was burdened by George W. Bush's 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:21.200 rock bottom approval ratings and his support for Bush's now 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:25.840 increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. It seemed like a new 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:28.960 day had dawned. We were all going to get healthcare, 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:33.960 and we had finally elected our first black president. Of course, 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:38.000 not everyone was on board. We'd had more than two 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:42.920 centuries of white men named James, John, William, and George. Literally, 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.920 of the forty two presidents before Obama, eighteen of them 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:51.720 were named James, John William, or George. About forty percent 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:55.040 of the total presidential time until two thousand and eight 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.400 was under a guy with one of those four names. 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:03.800 We elected two two different guys named Franklin. We hadn't 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:08.360 really been getting a lot of variety. Conspiracy theories about 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.680 Barack Obama's race, religion, and place of birth are creatures 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:17.440 of racism, pure and simple. There's no talking your way 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:21.400 around that fact. He has a foreign sounding name and 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:24.840 he is not white. There was a lot of anxiety 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:28.160 that someone who didn't look like the American presidents we'd 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:34.280 had before couldn't possibly have the same American values. During 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:38.360 the primary, Mark Penn, a senior campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.360 wrote a memo suggesting that they should highlight the fact 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.800 that Obama spent some of his childhood in Indonesia while 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:51.120 emphasizing Clinton's Midwest roots, writing, his. 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:54.880 Roots and basic American values and culture are at best limited. 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.080 I cannot imagine electing a president during a time of 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.080 war who was not at his center fun mentally American 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:02.920 in his thinking and in his values. 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:08.800 The Clinton campaign didn't end up going with this strategy, 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:13.000 but the memo got out, and this idea that Barack 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:18.000 Obama was an American bled into a conspiracy theory that 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:22.640 he was not American at all and had in fact 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:26.400 been born in Kenya. During the two thousand and eight 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:29.600 election season, surveys showed that as many as a third 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:33.560 of Republican voters believe there may be some truth to 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:36.160 the idea that Barack Obama was born outside of the 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:41.280 United States. An analysis published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:46.120 and Politics in twenty nineteen acknowledged that, yes, the best 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.920 predictor of believing in any conspiracy theory is a pre 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:54.400 existing belief in any other conspiracy theory. People who are 0:09:54.440 --> 0:10:00.840 prone to believing unsubstantiated claims often believe many of them. 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.040 But while there are certainly people of all political orientations 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:07.200 who are willing to entertain the theory, the study found 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:11.959 that belief in this particular conspiracy theory was uniquely correlated 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:17.320 to the believer's own race, party affiliation, and most importantly, 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:24.080 their level of racial resentment toward African Americans. So to 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.600 be clear, there are multiple studies published in journals across 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.440 a range of disciplines over the course of nearly twenty 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:35.600 years that have found measurable correlations. Here, the people who 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:40.800 trafficked in Birtherism were white Republicans with a measurable level 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:46.160 of racial animus. This was never about getting to the truth. 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:53.240 It was an intense fear of a black president. In 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:55.840 June of two thousand and eight, just days after Hillary 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:59.400 Clinton conceded the primary and Obama was the presumptive nominee. 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.800 His campaign released a copy of his birth certificate showing 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:08.160 he had in fact been born in Hawaii. But you 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:13.320 can't kill a conspiracy with facts that's never worked. And 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.680 confronted with what should have been the final answer to 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:21.760 the question, Berthers just doubled down the birth certificate was 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:26.880 simply fake. This only fueled the fire, and in August 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.920 of two thousand and eight, the first of countless lawsuits 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:36.640 was filed. And oddly enough, we've already talked about this 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:41.000 particular lawsuit on this show in the first episode about 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:46.520 the Pennsylvania clansman Berry Black. Philip Burg's lawsuit alleged that 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.760 Obama had been born in Kenya, and this relied on 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:52.560 a sworn affidavit written by Ron McCrae about a phone 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:57.360 call that he had had with Barack Obama's father's stepmother 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:03.280 through a translator. Ron McCrae was the homophobic street preacher 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.520 who spent years harassing the owners of the Costanova Lounge, 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.120 a gay bar in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It was located 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:12.720 across the street from a farm owned by some clansmen. 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.359 Berg's lawsuit was dismissed and the judge called it frivolous 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:24.000 and not worthy of discussion, which is true, but that 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:29.360 became the playbook. Berthers around the country filed frivolous and 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:35.080 baffling lawsuits. They filed them in federal court houses, county 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:39.200 circuit courts, state supreme courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.920 state boards of election, state administrative courts. They filed complaints 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:48.120 and requests for injunctions and petitions anywhere they could find 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:51.800 a bureaucrat sitting in a desk. For just the years 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.400 two thousand and eight through twenty twelve, I found over 0:12:55.559 --> 0:13:01.160 two hundred complaints in various forms, filed with every kind 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:05.080 of court you can imagine, and some kinds of courts 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:12.400 I've never heard of, and they lost every single one. 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.880 They seemed convinced that they could find the right collection 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:20.560 of words, the right legal incantation, that, if presented to 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:24.280 the right judge and the right jury, would wake America 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:29.559 from this national nightmare of an Obama presidency. But the 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:35.800 lawsuits weren't working. Judge after judge sent them packing. In 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.280 most cases they didn't even get a hearing. They were 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:43.600 submitting complaints that had absolutely no legal basis to proceed, 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:48.520 No basis in reality even and in the cases that 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:50.760 did get a foot in the door, they were submitting 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:57.520 forged documents and relying on already debunked claims. Lawyers were sanctioned, 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:04.640 fines were levied, and suit after suit was dismissed. But undeterred, 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:09.320 the Birthers found a new way forward. If they couldn't 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:13.080 get justice through civil suits, they would simply have to 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:19.960 have the President of the United States arrested. In June 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:22.240 of two thousand and nine, one hundred and seventy two 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:29.040 extremely devoted conspiracy theorists convened. They called themselves the Super 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:35.520 American grand Jury. Now that's not a real thing. Grand 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:39.560 juries are real. Of course, we don't need to get 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.520 bogged down in the specifics because they vary from state 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.960 to state. But generally speaking, a grand jury is a 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:50.000 group of citizens convened by a court and tasked with 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:55.280 issuing indictments. So a prosecutor will briefly summarize a case. 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.080 They'll put on a little bit of evidence, maybe some witnesses, 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:01.640 and the grand jurors will just if there's probable cause 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:05.000 to believe a crime has been committed by the individual. 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:09.040 The prosecutor is seeking to indict. They aren't deciding if 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.480 anyone is innocent or guilty. They're not trying the case. 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:17.000 It's a much lower standard here. They're just deciding is 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:20.000 this something that should proceed as a case at all. 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:23.880 You've probably heard the saying you can get a grand 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.040 jury to indict a ham sandwich. It's a pretty low 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:31.080 bar to clear at this stage. But we're not here 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:35.160 to talk about real grand juries because that barely factors 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:37.720 into the story at all. I just want to be 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:42.800 clear that grand juries are real, they do exist, and 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:47.520 this was not one. A grand jury is made up 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:51.160 of grand jurors who have received an official summons from 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:55.160 a real court, and they are presented real potential cases 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:59.160 by a real prosecutor, and they make real determinations about 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:03.280 which cases get an indictments. There are six states that 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:08.920 allow citizen initiated grand juries in Oklahoma, Nevada, Kansas, Nebraska, 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.360 New Mexico, and North Dakota. There is a process through 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.280 which you can collect enough signatures on a petition to 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.280 force a judge to convene a grand jury to investigate 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.160 an alleged crime. That's not what this was either. They 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.880 didn't have a petition they submitted to a court. They 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:27.960 didn't do it in any of those states. I'm just saying. 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:33.080 Avenues do exist. And in some states like California, you 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:36.720 can submit a written complaint to request a grand jury 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:40.600 investigation into a criminal allegation, but they're under no obligation 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:44.760 to follow up. And in Tennessee, the fact that is 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:49.080 about to become very relevant. State law allows any citizen 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:53.040 to apply to testify before a county grand jury about 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:58.520 an alleged offense that is prosecutable in that county. But 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.760 the idea of a citizens grand jury like the super 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:07.000 American grand jury, is not something these particular extremists invented 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.639 in their modern iteration. Most of these citizens grand jury 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:16.120 groups were trying to arrest Barack Obama for various invented crimes, 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.080 but they also popped up in the early two thousands 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.920 among nine to eleven truthers who wanted to arrest George 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:26.600 Bush during the Malheir National Wildlife Refuge occupation. A few 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:30.680 years back, militia members who supported the Bundy family convened 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.879 fake grand juries to indict local officials and even some 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:38.840 reporters whose coverage they found lacking. Conspiracy theory. Frequent flier 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.800 Larry Clayman has not only indicted Joe Biden with a 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:46.720 fake grand jury, he even convicted him. But according to 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:50.199 Daniel Levatas the author of The Terrorist next Door, a 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:52.720 two thousand and four book on the American militia movement, 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.080 these citizen grand juries actually date back to the nineteen 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:03.400 seventies with Christian identity extremists. Christian identity has come up before. 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:06.479 We talked about it briefly in the episode about Christopher Hassen, 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:10.040 the Coastguard lieutenant who was stockpiling guns and planning to 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.680 assassinate the Supreme Court, but was too addicted to opiates 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:17.720 to make much progress. He'd spend some time researching Christian 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:21.600 identity online before writing to a longtime white nationalist leader 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:25.879 named Harold Covington about his plans to make changes to 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:32.160 society with quote a little focused violence and Christian identity 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.720 kind of sounds like it might mean someone whose identity 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:40.480 is Christian. Right, It's just someone who considers themselves to 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:45.000 be a Christian. But that's not what it means at all. 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.040 It refers to a specific set of extremist beliefs that 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:53.719 white Europeans are God's true chosen people. It is a 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.600 deeply anti Semitic belief system, and one whose followers are 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:03.399 often very willing to age and violence. The earliest example 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.720 levatas sites of a written threat to bring a citizen's 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.920 grand jury indictment is a tax protester in Michigan in 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.680 nineteen seventy two who threatened to indict local authorities trying 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:18.800 to enforce a core order. And in nineteen seventy five, 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:22.919 Richard Butler, another weird little Guy's recurring character, led a 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:25.960 group of fifty followers to try to arrest a policeman 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:30.359 in Kurdalene, Idaho before the officer could testify against a 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:32.600 member of the group who'd been charged with assault with 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:37.440 a deadly weapon. Richard Butler wasn't leading the Aryan Nations 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.000 yet at that point, but he was already a prominent 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:59.879 figure within Christian identity. So the super American Grand j 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:05.600 had deep roots in dark places, and it was not 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:09.679 so super and not a grand jury at all. It 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.560 was just a collection of conspiracists who wrote their own 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.399 indictment against the president, and then they went to a 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:21.920 federal courthouse in Washington, d c. And filed it Judge 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:27.240 Royce Lamberth promptly dismissed them. I guess maybe dismiss is 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:31.000 a tricky word to use here, because a real indictment 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.560 can be dismissed by a judge, and that's not what 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:38.560 happened here, because this was not a real indictment. What 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:42.120 Judge Lamberth actually did was issue in order denying them 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:46.760 permission to have even filed it at all. Writing, any 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:50.840 self styled indictment or presentment issued by such a group 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:54.000 has no force under the Constitution or laws of the 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:59.600 United States. Judge Lamberth took senior status in twenty thirteen. 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.639 He's kind of retired but still working, so he is 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:07.080 actually still a federal judge in DC today and has 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:09.800 presided over quite a few of the January sixth cases, 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.720 most notably the trial of the QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:18.480 in twenty twenty three, fourteen years after he kicked those 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.080 Birthers out of his court for trying to arrest the President. 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.800 He was dismayed to see Republican politicians trafficking in rhetoric 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:29.199 that downplayed the events of January sixth, writing in a 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:30.920 court filing in one of those cases. 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.040 The Court is accustomed to defendants who refuse to accept 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:39.840 that they did anything wrong. But in my thirty seven 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:42.560 years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:47.119 such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream. I 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.440 have been dismayed to see distortions in outright falsehoods seep 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:53.520 into the public consciousness. I've been shocked to watch some 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:57.119 public figures try to rewrite history. Clement rioters behaved in 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:01.640 an orderly fashion like ordinary tourists. I'm mortalizing convicted January 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:07.359 sixth defendants as political prisoners or even incredibly hostages. That 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.639 is all preposterous. The Court fears that such destructive, misguided 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:17.639 rhetoric could pressage further danger to our country. 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.920 So the Super American grand Jury's first indictment didn't work, 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:26.080 But that didn't stop them. That's sort of a theme here. 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:31.240 Nothing really seems to deter them. One of those Super 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:37.080 American grandeurors was a Georgia man named Carl Swenson. Swinson 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:40.560 is a very special kind of conspiracy theorist called a 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:46.080 sovereign citizen. It's a strange and complicated set of beliefs 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:48.159 that I can't really do justice in the time we 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:51.280 have for this story. But it's a kind of legal 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:55.919 magical thinking. There's a lot of crossover between sovereign citizens 0:22:55.920 --> 0:23:00.000 and other kinds of conspiratorial belief, and a not insignificant 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:04.960 amount of sovereign citizen belief within the militia movement, and 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:10.040 sovereign citizens generally believe that there are certain secret procedural 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:13.240 loopholes that they can use to avoid being subject to 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:18.919 the law, anything from traffic stops to income taxes. To 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:23.160 be honest, it's almost always traffic stops and income taxes. 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:26.840 You've probably heard jokes about a guy in a courtroom 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:29.600 proclaiming that the judge has no authority over him because 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:31.960 there's gold fringe on the flag in the courtroom and 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:35.200 that means that admiralty law is in effect. Or maybe 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:37.879 you've heard of someone being pulled over and refusing to 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:41.119 produce a driver's license, arguing with the cop that they 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:45.399 don't need a driver's license because they're not driving, they're traveling, 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:50.080 and it's different. I've only seen one in court in 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:52.760 real life, and it was a young woman appealing a 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:57.080 conviction for driving without a license. She just kept yelling 0:23:57.160 --> 0:23:59.760 at the judge. I do not contract with the Department 0:23:59.760 --> 0:24:05.480 of mone Vehicles. It did not work. She was unsuccessful 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:10.919 in that appeal. A month after Judge Lamberth told the 0:24:11.040 --> 0:24:14.520 Super American Grand Jury that they couldn't just make their 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:17.760 own grand jury, Carl Swenson and a few of the 0:24:17.800 --> 0:24:21.720 others submitted a new case to the court. If they 0:24:21.800 --> 0:24:24.560 couldn't be their own grand jury, then the court should 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:30.760 convene one for them. Judge Lamberth once again declined, explaining 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:34.960 that a general grievance about the government doesn't give them 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:39.320 standing to file this complaint. There was some kind of 0:24:39.760 --> 0:24:43.199 procedural mishap in the court clerk's office, though, and the 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:47.600 docket was left open by accident. This normally wouldn't matter 0:24:47.720 --> 0:24:51.159 at all, no lawyer would keep filing motions at a 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:55.640 closed case. But they did not have lawyers, and one 0:24:55.640 --> 0:25:00.160 of Swinson's co petitioners, Penny Kelso, filed a buzz There 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:04.399 are seven page document four years later, demanding that the 0:25:04.480 --> 0:25:08.800 judge take action. It has a lot of prayers in 0:25:08.840 --> 0:25:14.160 it and links to blogs and random excerpts from the Constitution, 0:25:15.160 --> 0:25:19.760 And the last page is just illegible handwritten notes, and 0:25:19.800 --> 0:25:24.199 I can kind of make out something about Benghazi, and 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:32.040 she signed this whole thing Penny Kelso DVM, which is 0:25:32.480 --> 0:25:37.000 technically true. Penny Kelso does have a doctorate of veterinary medicine, 0:25:38.200 --> 0:25:42.000 but the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners has suspended 0:25:42.000 --> 0:25:46.119 her license half a dozen times for things like watching 0:25:46.200 --> 0:25:50.480 a C section on someone's dog, duct taping bandages to 0:25:50.560 --> 0:25:55.240 animals in a way that caused harm, improperly confining animals 0:25:55.280 --> 0:25:59.960 in a kennel, and falsifying records related to mandatory continuing 0:26:00.080 --> 0:26:05.000 the education hours. Penny doesn't actually come up again in 0:26:05.080 --> 0:26:09.320 this story. She's not really relevant here. I just wanted 0:26:09.320 --> 0:26:12.159 to make sure you know that at least one person 0:26:12.240 --> 0:26:19.720 involved in this whole situation has killed a puppy. So 0:26:19.800 --> 0:26:23.240 they couldn't sue the president, they couldn't issue their own 0:26:23.280 --> 0:26:27.320 federal indictment, they couldn't make a judge convene a federal 0:26:27.400 --> 0:26:33.160 grand jury. But they had incontrovertible proof that Barack Obama 0:26:33.240 --> 0:26:36.560 could not be the president, and it was their duty 0:26:36.640 --> 0:26:41.760 as Americans to have him arrested. If this false president's 0:26:41.800 --> 0:26:46.480 collaborators in Washington, d C. Wouldn't heed their demands, maybe 0:26:46.520 --> 0:26:49.760 a grand jury. Foreman in a small town in rural 0:26:49.840 --> 0:26:56.280 Tennessee would Sweetwater, Tennessee is a small town straddling the 0:26:56.320 --> 0:27:01.440 line between McMinn and Monroe counties of geography, that explains 0:27:01.440 --> 0:27:05.639 why Sweetwater resident Walter Fitzpatrick would eventually go to jail 0:27:05.720 --> 0:27:09.400 for trying to perform citizens' arrests on courthouse employees in 0:27:09.680 --> 0:27:13.480 both counties. In March of two thousand and nine, he 0:27:13.560 --> 0:27:17.920 drafted his own indictment against Barack Obama. He went down 0:27:17.920 --> 0:27:21.280 to the county courthouse and notarized the following letter. 0:27:24.200 --> 0:27:28.400 I have observed and extensively recorded treacherous attacks by military 0:27:28.440 --> 0:27:33.439 political aristocrats against the United States Constitution for twenty years now, 0:27:33.600 --> 0:27:36.440 and yet another betrayal, you have broken in and entered 0:27:36.440 --> 0:27:40.320 the White House by force of contrivance, concealment, conceit, dissembling, 0:27:40.320 --> 0:27:43.760 and deceit, posing as an imposter president and commander in 0:27:43.800 --> 0:27:46.320 chief who has stripped civilian command and control over the 0:27:46.359 --> 0:27:51.680 military establishment. Known military criminal actors command racketeers are now 0:27:51.760 --> 0:27:55.200 free in the exercise of military government, intent upon destruction 0:27:55.280 --> 0:28:00.280 of America's constitutional government, free from constitutional restraint and following 0:28:00.320 --> 0:28:04.879 your criminal example, military commanders deployed US Army active duty 0:28:04.920 --> 0:28:08.520 combat troops into the small civilian community of Samson, Alabama, 0:28:08.600 --> 0:28:12.160 last week, in a demonstration of their newly received despotic 0:28:12.359 --> 0:28:17.040 domestic police power. We come now to this reckoning. I 0:28:17.200 --> 0:28:21.360 accuse you and your military political criminal assistance of treason. 0:28:21.760 --> 0:28:25.520 I name you and your military criminal associates as traitors. 0:28:26.000 --> 0:28:30.000 Your criminal ascension manifests this clear and present danger. You 0:28:30.160 --> 0:28:34.199 fundamentally changed our form of government. The Constitution no longer works. 0:28:34.640 --> 0:28:38.400