Arrested Democracy, Pt. 2

indictment against Barack Obama for treason. Walter Fitzpatrick did not have the authority to draw up his own arrest warrants any more than a county court in hour south of Knoxville had the authority to indict the president on a federal crime. But none of that really mattered to the small crowd of supporters outside, who were sure that they were closer than ever to arresting the president. Darren Huff,

an oathkeeper from Georgia, was among those supporters. He was standing by with his video camera, hoping to capture Fitzpatrick's victory against the corrupt county grand jury.

to Madisonville. In a text message Huff sent a friend on his way home that night, he said he'd spent the day meeting with Fitzpatrick going over the plan. They were coordinating with multiple groups to show up for what Huff called Phase two. When Walter Fitzpatrick appeared for his court date on April twentieth, he wasn't going to be alone. I'm Molly Conger and this is weird, little guys. This episode is about Darren Huff. I mean, the last episode

was supposed to be about Darren Huff. Was the story I sat down to write in the first place, But my vague recollection of the story of some oathkeeper with a hair brain scheme to citizens arrest and entire county court turned up something a little more complicated that keeps happening. It turns out history is always a little messy. No one is really the sole protagonist in their own story.

Life doesn't really work that way. But if you listened to last week's episode, now you have some contexts for the baffling confidence Walter Fitzpatrick and Darren Huff seemed to have in their plan. They'd both been completely swept up in this nationwide right wing mania of Birtherism, the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was ineligible to serve as the president of the United States because he had been born in Kenya. Walter Fitzpatrick as bizarre and disconnected from reality

as his ideas sound. Was far from the only American who was barging in to a court clerk's office every week to demand something be done about the president's acts of treason.

that he'd like to see Barack Obama's birth certificate. Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt said he'd been taken out of context after telling a reporter that there was no legitimate reason for the president not to produce his birth certificate. This wasn't something that existed only at the nic fringe of political discourse. Mainstream politicians and celebrities were just asking questions, never mind the kinds of things their supporters might do

to try to get answers. So, after an entire year of unsuccessfully petitioning his local county grand jury to bring charges against Barack Obama, Walter Fitzpatrick was frustrated, and when he barged into that courtroom on April first, twenty ten, both Keeper Darren Huff and Sovereign Citizen Carl Swenson were among those waiting just outside, and after the tables were turned that day with this citizen's arrest turning into just

a citizen getting arrested. Darren Huff and Carl Swenson vowed to return not just to support their friend at his next court date, but to carry out a bigger, better version of the plan.

Swinson's website Rise Upfroamerica dot com. Archived pages of that site do still exist, and I can read the text on those pages, but the videos were all embedded with flash Player. So Darren's calls to action maybe lost to the sands of time. But we have some pretty solid sources that can give us an idea of what was on Darren's mind during those two weeks, because Darren Huff has never once in his life shut his goddamn mouth.

On April fifteenth, Darren Huff stopped at the Chase Bank in Hiram, Georgia.

She was the only teller at the counter. The bank was about to close for the night, and suddenly this normally friendly customer is leaning over the counter telling her that he was going to be spending this weekend mounting an anti aircraft gun to the back of his pickup truck because he and his militia were going to take over a small town in Tennessee.

beliefs and various conspiracy theories. So when another employee came to get him that night because Huff was making Erica uncomfortable, he probably wasn't surprised. He tried guiding the conversation back to safer territory, asking Huff if he'd be taking his video camera with him again on this trip, but the response was an alarming one. Huff told him it would be kind of hard to hold the camera because he planned to be quote on the front line with two

Ak forty sevens. He told the bank employees that they'd probably see him on the news next week, and as he was leaving, he told Erica, it was nice knowing you. If I never see you again. Not to get ahead of myself, but do you want to jump ahead here and say Darren Huff would later accuse those two bank

employees of lying under oath. Obviously, there's no proving what was or wasn't said at the bank that evening, But within hours of that interaction, Erica was on the phone with Madisonville, Tennessee, Police Chief Greg Breeden, and he recorded that phone call, so we have a fairly contemporaneous recollection

of what was said. She related to Chief Breeden that Huff told her that he was intending to travel to Madisonville, Tennessee, on April twentieth for Walter Fitzpatrick's court hearing, that he would be armed with AK forty seven's and an anti aircraft gun, that he would be with other militia members, and that the group intended to carry out citizens arrests of various local officials and seize control of the courthouse.

And Darren Huff was found to be in possession of printed copies of those citizens arrest warrants, and he would later admit under oath that at that time he was in possession of an anti aircraft gun and a pedestal mount that could be installed in the bed of his truck.

Police Department. Jane's wife urged him to call their own sheriff in Paulding County, Georgia, and by the end of the night, both bank employees had shared their concerns with the police and by Monday they'd met with FBI agents. And it was on Monday, April nineteenth, the day before the planned occupation of Madisonville, Tennessee, that an FBI agent

knocked on Darren Huff's front door. Supervisory Special Agent Charles Reid, accompanied by a couple of deputies from the Paulding County Sheriff's Office, just wanted to have a word with him, and Darren Huff voluntarily stepped out onto his front porch and he chatted with the agent for about as long as it took him to finish a cigarette. It was a brief conversation. Agent Reid recalls that Huff was pretty open about his plan to drive to Tennessee in the morning.

He said he'd have his CULT forty five on his hip and his AK forty seven was in the truck. He freely volunteered to the agent that he was a member of both the Oath Keepers and the Georgia Militia. He said that the plan was to execute citizens, arrest warrants, and quote take back Madisonville, but that the group would not resort to violence unless they were provoked. When Darren Huff took the stand at his own trial. He recalled, telling Agent Read that evening that he'd love it if

the FBI would be there in Madisonville. Again, remember last week that letter that Walter Fitzpatrick sent the police chief of Madisonville before all of this got started. He wasn't making threats. He was inviting the police to be part of his plan. And that's the same mindset Darren has here.

He even gave the FBI agent his business card. I had to double check here because Darren's business cards do come up again later, but it sounds like the business card he gave Agent Read the night before the big day was just a normal business card, a real one for his outdoor lighting business. It wasn't until after he was arrested that he got new business cards printed that said Darren Huff, right wing extremist and potential domestic terrorist.

But when he finished his cigarette, the conversation was over. Agent Reid had no reason to arrest him. Huff had expressed to him a plan to commit a federal crime, the one he would eventually be arrested for, but he hadn't actually done it yet. There was no federal crime here until Darren Huff put his guns in the truck and drove across the state line from Georgia into Tennessee with the intent to engage in a little civil disorder.

So Agent Reid left, but another agent stayed nearby all night, watching and waiting for the truck to pull out of the driveway. Darren Huff was under FBI surveillance when he hit the road just before dawn on April twentieth, twenty ten, fifteen am, he was observed crossing the state line, and just after seven am, Tennessee State Trooper Michael Wilson followed Huff's truck as he took Exit sixty off I seventy

five towards Madisonville. Whether or not Huff rolled through the stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp is a matter of some debate, but Trooper Wilson flashed his blue lights and pulled him over. This traffic stop ends up being central to Huff's case on appeal, but it isn't where he got arrested. He actually didn't even get a ticket, but Trooper Wilson and Darren Huff spent over an hour together there on the shoulder of Tennessee Highway sixty eight. When Huff was asked to step out of

the vehicle. He had his CULT forty five on his hip. The officer unholstered the weapon, removed the magazine, checked the chamber, and put the weapon in his patrol car for safekeeping. Darren Huff produced a valid Georgia driver's license, but he didn't have his truck's registration on him. He assured the officer that the gun was legal and handed him a piece of paper that he said was a gun carry permit.

In his testimony, the troopers said the document looked quote, very unprofessional, and he was concerned it might not be real. He spent an hour going back and forth with Dispatch about this strange document and was never able to verify whether Huff actually had a valid carry permit for that gun. And during that hour, while they were trying to sort

it out, Darren Huff talked. He talked a lot, He ran his mouth the entire time, and the entire conversation was recorded on the officer's dash cam, which was connected to a microphone on his uniform. And in their conversation, Darren explained his whole plan. They had arrest warrants for the Grand jury reforman the district attorney, the sheriff, the judge,

Nancy Pelosi, et cetera. He recommended some YouTube videos the officers should watch to learn more about Barack Obama's crimes, and he told them they needed to be reading Walter Fitzpatrick's blog. In the portions of this audio that I

could find, the officers seem to be playing along. They're mostly just letting him talk without interruption, but occasionally they asked some questions about how exactly the plan is going to work, and Darren's happy to explain because he's actually going to need their help.

in Monroe County, Tennessee. He shared his concerns about the Affordable Care Act, which had just been signed into law.

That's what this is. Darren Huff is a self proclaimed pastor in the Christian identity movement. He's standing there on the side of the highway, surrounded by cops, preaching Christian identity and trying to recruit them to.

have my forty five. Ain't no government official going peacefully? And then he slid his Colt forty five back into his holster, climbed into his pickup truck that said oath keepers all down one side, and drove the last few miles into Madisonville, Tennessee. At five o'clock that morning, more than fifty police officers from multiple jurisdictions in and around Monroe County, Tennessee, gathered for a briefing. There were FBI agents from the Joint Terrace and Task Force and at

least one representative from the Department of Homeland Security. They'd been monitoring the online chatter about Walter Fitzpatrick's hearing at the courthouse at nine am, and they were worried. The intelligence they had was that as many as six hundred people might be on their way to Madisonville, Tennessee. They had undercovers stationed in nearby businesses and snipers on rooftops. One of those undercover officers was Mike Hall, the director

of a regional violent crime task force in Tennessee. In plain clothes, he got a table at Donna's in Cafe, a block from City Hall, where Fitzpatrick's supporters would be meeting for breakfast. And maybe the police should have known that They probably weren't expecting six hundred armed militiamen if they knew that they had booked tables at Donna's cafe.

But that's neither here nor there, And by the time breakfast was over, barely twenty supporters were packed into the dining room, finishing their biscuits and coffee as Darren Huff gave a rousing speech about taking his AK forty seven down to the courthouse. Carl Swinson's dead website isn't exactly easy to navigate, so maybe the whole speech was there at some point, but I was only able to dig up an audio file of the first six minutes or so, and it's pretty inspiring stuff.

don't need to get into the specifics here. But adherents of Christian identity believe that they are the real Israelites, so they have to explain the existence of actual Jews some other way, and that usually boils down to a theory that Ashkenazi Jews are actually descended from a Turkic race called the Kasars. Christian identity guys really love this book from the seventies called The Thirteenth Tribe, which makes

the case for this theory. Honestly, please don't make me explain the Kazar hypothesis every time I see a guy posting about Kasar's I'm just.

That way lies madness. So after his big speech, Darren Huff steps outside Mike Hall, our undercover officer testified that he overheard Huff's conversation with a man that he doesn't name, but who, like Huff, was visibly armed, and Huff laments to this man that he wishes they had more people, saying quote, today would be a good day to do it because it's raining and the police wouldn't expect them to make a move in the rain. And Darren Huff wasn't the only one who excused himself from the table

after this speech. Carl Swenson, our sovereign citizen and the primary instigator of the online uproar calling people to Madisonville, got a phone call to make.

Laken did not report for duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Instead, he drove to the Pentagon in Washington, d C. Where he was read his rights by his commanding officer, Colonel Gordon Ray.

deployment orders were unlawful, not on ideological grounds. He wasn't protesting the war. He hadn't suddenly become a peace activist after seeing the horrors of war firsthand.

agents in the head. Robert Evans put out a taggering six part series of episodes on G. Gordon Liddy on Behind the Bastards last year. So if you're interested in hearing some outrageously racist clips of Liddy's radio show, I believe those are in part six. But today we're just talking about one episode of The G. Gordon Liddy Show, the one that aired on April twentieth, twenty ten, because that's the episode Carl Swenson called into during the second hour.

In the first hour of the show, Lyddy interviewed Colonel Laken and Lacln's attorney, a California personal injury lawyer named Paul Jensen. You might be wondering why an army officer facing a court martial would hire a civilian personal injury lawyer, And that's a great question. The answer is unclear. In my experience, conspiracy theorists and extremists tend to hire attorneys who share their beliefs rather than ones who have, say,

relevant experience in a particular area of law. But in this case, it seems very worth mentioning that Paul Jensen was a longtime associate of friend to and occasional attorney for Roger Stone. In two thousand and seven, it was Paul Jensen, acting as Stone's attorney, who publicly released a copy of a left the pair claimed they had sent to the FBI about Elliot Spitzer's alleged habit of wearing nothing but long black socks during his liaisons with sex workers.

complaint against Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. And in this case, the grand jury members here in the town of Madison, Tennessee. People are gathering now, but it is a tenuous situation at best.

deployd overseas. She wasn't worried about them being in the war. She was worried that because their deployment orders had been issued by a false president, that they could ultimately be liable for war crimes. I didn't listen to the rest of the episode. I don't know if they resolved that, but after Darren's rousing speech to the assembled supporters and Carl's bold statements on a national radio show, they both had to admit that nothing was going to happen that day.

Their little crowd of twenty was outnumbered three to one by a very visible police presence, and according to Walter Fitzpatrick's blog, a fair number of those supporters who turned up were middle aged women, one of whom brought several mo her children with her. Darren had a truck full of guns and was bragging about how he had four hundred rounds for his AK forty seven, but they just

didn't have the numbers to do anything that day. The only time anybody actually got close to the courthouse was when Darren huffed took a bag of biscuits over to a detective on the courthouse steps. By the time Fitzpatrick's hearing was over, Darren was bored, he was tired, and he's ready to go home. So everybody just left. Nothing happened, Nobody got arrested.

two hour drive of Madisonville. It's not clear how many sheriffs he actually managed to speak with, but when he pulled into a parking lot at a county office building in Lenore City, Tennessee, he happened to come across Louden County Sheriff Tim Geider and Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess as they were getting out of their cars. They relate for a meeting, so this conversation was short. But Huff asked Sheriff Geiter if he'd be willing to arrest a fellow sheriff.

in the constitution. He was up near Knoxville, when he got pulled over. This time around, there's no debate about whether or not he ran a stop sign.

use that information in furtherance of a civil disorder. A two, which was Darren's crime, makes it illegal to transport a firearm or a bomb across state lines if you know or have reason to know that the gun or explosive device is going to be used in a civil disorder. And A three makes it illegal to be in a cops way during a civil disorder. So that one doesn't really belong right. The first two are about guns and bombs,

and the third one is just about annoying. But that's the one that's really gotten to work out in the last couple of years because it was used in hundreds of January six cases. But eighteen USC. Two thirty one A two is uncommon. I mean, people get charged for doing this kind of thing, but usually they get charged with conspiracy to do whatever it was they were going to do when they got where they were going, and then maybe they'll tack on some kind of gun crime.

And Subsection A one just doesn't make any sense at all. There's already a whole separate law that makes it a crime to distribute information about bombmaking, and that one has a harsher penalty than this, So I don't know why we need this one at all. So I was confused by this choice of statute, and I couldn't think of any place I'd ever seen this statute before. And it turns out that's because I hadn't seen it before, and

I still haven't even after looking pretty hard. When Darren Huff appealed his conviction, it was noted in the appellate record that this particular statute had actually never been construed by an appellate court before, so this was the first time a court of appeals was examining this statute. But Just because people don't get charged with this very often doesn't make it any less.

wrong in a way that escalates pretty quickly. So some federal agent or prosecutor got creative and they found a crime because technically, yeah, he put guns in his truck and he drove to another state. And when he was doing it, the plan that he had in his mind was that he was going to have that gun around in case the county judge didn't appreciate him barging into her courtroom. So the intent is pretty clear. He told anyone within earshot for two weeks what he was going

to do. He wanted to lead an armed mom onto the courthouse. He made videos about it, He told his bank teller, he told a bunch of state troopers, he gave a speech, And you don't actually have to end up carrying out the plan. To be guilty of showing up to the plan with a gun, and in the end, a jury agreed. They found Darren Huff guilty of interstate transportation of a firearm with the intention to use it

unlawfully in furtherance of a civil disorder. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, and Darren had already completed his four year sentence by the time the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in twenty sixteen. Now, normally that's all I would really have to say about a criminal case. We already talked all the way through the actual timeline of events, so you already know what happened,

and I just told you how the trial ended. He was convicted by a jury, appealed unsuccessfully, and served a sentence. But this trial is really just so special. I mean, first of all, it went to trial. That's pretty rare. In twenty twenty two, just two point three percent of people charged with federal crimes actually went to trial.

times to take issue with that label. But when he was asked how he felt about the gold fringe on the flag at his trial, he was very evasive, And in the year and a half between his arrest and his trial, he kept insisting that his public defenders file motions based on legal arguments that he had invented, and when they refused to file some of the more bizarre ones,

he fired them releast he tried to. In March of twenty eleven, his public defender was begging him to consider the plea deal they were being offered, explaining over and over again that it was the best deal he was going to get, and the motions he was drafting on his own just don't have any basis in the law, and they have no legal merit, and they really seemed to trying to explain to him that you can't just file how you feel. There has to be case law,

It has to be based in something. And after months of bitter emails back and forth about you know, we can't file stuff that you made up, and Darren's accusing them of working against him, and the original public defenders file a motion to withdraw, saying that the relationship has

soured irreparably and they can't continue. And during this brief period of time before a new public defender could be appointed, Darren files some of those motions he wanted, the ones he wrote, including one that just reads comes the defendant in the above entitled action, Darren Wesley huff And moves the court to clarify its position on the Second Amendment

US Constitution. And when his second public defender was assigned, a man named Scott Green, there were just three months to go before trial, and in those three months he did his job. He filed motions to suppress the statements Darren made during the traffic stop, motions to prevent the prosecution from bringing up his extremist beliefs, the kinds of things you'd expect to see. And he seemed to be humoring his client when it came to some of his

unique ideas about the law. But like the attorneys before him, he wasn't willing to put his name on nonsense. And after another round of these emails back and forth, where this exasperated attorney is trying to explain to him, that motions have to be based on the law. Darren threatened to fire him, writing if you do not have the courage or kahunahs necessary to represent me, then please let me know. I think that's supposed to say kahones, but

it says kah u ANDAs cohunas. Maybe that's a regional variation.

done his best here. On the eve of the trial, he filed five separate documents, each one called mister Huff's special request, and they were sort of fanciful jury instructions. It probably will not surprise you that mister Green declined to continue working with Darren on his appeal, and Darren's attitude did not improve once he was in federal prison. One email he sent his new lawyer, mister Gully during the appeal starts off by accusing Gully of withholding the

trial transcripts. But they just hadn't been made yet. It takes a long time to produce those, but he writes to his lawyer, I am thus left to wonder whether you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or if you possibly received your degree from a remedial online school, or that you simply take me for a fool. You, sir, have made a mockery of the system that purports to

provide me with effective assistance of counsel. Later, in the same email, he explains to his lawyer that the government can't charge him with a gun crime because he exists outside of the federal government's jurisdiction on such matters, and then he threatens to have his attorney indicted, disbarred, and institutionalized. Mister Gully's response to this letter doesn't seem to be in the appellate record, but from what I can see, he did the best he could with a losing case.

We'd be doing episodes about Walter Fitzpatrick and his entourage for weeks if I told you every weird thing that I found. But I can't resist just a few more, if you'll indulge me. When Fitzpatrick finally did get arraigned in Monroe County for that original April first attempt to arrest the grand jury foreman, it did not go well.

The judge that he'd accused of treason was presiding, and as she's flipping through the exhibits, sort of glancing over the paperwork and the citizens erect Warrens, she noted that the court clerk, miss Cook, was accused by Fitzpatrick of some pretty serious crimes. And so the judge turns to the clerk who's there in the courtroom, and says, miss Cook,

have you been levying war against the United States? And the clerk says, I don't think so, your honor, And I wish that I had an audio recording of this. I just have the transcript but Fitzpatrick is having a lot of outbursts during this hearing, and at this point he says, are you making fun of me? Is that what's going on here? Am I being mocked? And they

just ignore him and continue the proceeding. I would have loved to have seen it, and I wish the officer who testified at a Huff's trial had been more specific about exactly who it was that he overheard Darren Huff talking to. In the morning of April twentieth, outside Donna's Cafe, Huff had a quiet conversation with someone about calling off

the operation that day. The officer did mention that Huff was speaking to a man with a revolver on his hip, and that the man had gotten out of a pt cruiser with Georgia license plates.

was there that day. And you'd be a fool to believe Bill Lowman would walk as far as his own mailbox without a gun. So if I had to put money on it, I think the person Darren Huff was making tactical decisions with was the same man who'd accompanied him to Walter's house two weeks earlier when they put this whole plan together, a fellow member of the Georgia Militia and the Oathkeepers. Now, my main wheelhouse is not

the Militia movement, so I can't say I'm surprised. I'd never heard of Bill Luhman before, and I didn't have any real prior knowledge about the Georgia Militia. But in some old blog posts Luhman is referred to as a leader in the Georgia Militia. That may have just been

his local chapter. There were at least a dozen units around the state of this larger group calling itself the Georgia Militia, and his name does not appear in the court record for the four members of the Georgia Militia who were arrested in twenty eleven for a plot that included plans to blow up the Federal building in Atlanta

and maybe murder government officials with Risin. And just a side note, if you do try to google Georgia white supremacist rice In attack, the more recent result you'll get is for an unrelated white supremacist plot to carry out a biological terrorist attack. In that case, in twenty seventeen, a neo Nazi had actually successfully created the deadly poison, but he accidentally exposed himself to it, so he showed up at the emergency room before he could actually hurt

anybody else. But this is not that one. This is the one from twenty eleven. But again, Bill Luhman nothing to do with the rice In attacks, just the same militia. And I found an old event for a tea party picnic in North Carolina in twenty thirteen that list. Luman is a speaker and his title in the program is Constitutionalist icon from Georgia, and he appeared on stage with

such heroes of the patriot movement as James Renwick. Manship that name is not familiar to you, I'm sure, but you might remember the photo of the guy in the George Washington costume wading into the reflecting pool at the Capitol during the January sixth riot as a sort of symbolic crossing the Delaware moment. But my favorite Manship moment is the time he showed up at my local library dressed as Thomas Jefferson and refused to break character as he ranted in the first person about how he never

had sexual relations with enslaved women. And Bill Luman is very much still around and active in the same kinds of conspiracy spaces. He posts, give or take one hundred times a day every day on Trump's Truth social platform, and all of his posts are in all caps. He starts every day by posting this message, good morning patriots and grassroots warriors that are standing up for our constitution and precious way of life. Good morning to all veterans

that serve honorably sempify my fellow marines. May America bless God again into our nation, our homes, and our heart's heart emoji. Seriously, he posts that every morning. He's very committed and he still thinks Barack Obama is a Kenyan born Muslim. He still posts a lot about hanging people for treason, but the reasons have shifted, you know, COVID, Ukraine, election fraud whatever. As I'm writing this right now, he's

still posting. He posted a picture of a marine shaking hands with the dog, and there was a post this evening that was a screenshot from Braveheart with the text confirm Matt Gates or else written over mel Gibson's face. His last post was a thread documenting the progress of his homemade banana upbread. At the time of recording, I can report that he added cream cheese icing to it

and it was quote stellar. He's pretty popular over their own truth social He was even retruthed last year by Donald Trump himself after posting some incoherent theory about stolen votes from the twenty twenty election. Well, he wasn't retruthed, he was quote truthed.

grand jury roles. Those stolen documents were located by the FBI in the Connecticut home of Sharon Rondeau, the conspiracy theory blogger whose commitment to questioning the citizenship of politicians has remained strong over the years. She is still asking questions about Ilhan Omar and Kamala Harris. Fitzpatrick published a memoir last year about his quest for justice in his nineteen ninety four Marshall. I didn't read it. It's like four hundred pages long. He's in his seventies now and

he still occasionally updates his blog, jag Hunters. The most recent post is just a link to someone else's video and it's just like a mind numbing thirty minute mashup of clips.

the man standing next to him is Field McConnell. And Field McConnell is a former commercial airline pilot who retired in two thousand and six after refusing to submit to a neurological exam. He had become obsessed with the idea that nine to eleven was an inside job, and was convinced that Boeing had rigged all of their planes with explosives and they were planning an upcoming nine to eleven style attack. In twenty nineteen, he got really into QAnon.

An attorney in Florida who represents the family of a missing child had to get a restraining order against him after he made a series of YouTube videos threatening to kill her and accusing her of having trafficked the missing child. The day I'm recording this, he was a guest on a podcast hosted by a small scale QAnon influencer. I would tell you what they talked about, but it kind of sounded like he was calling in from the bottom of the ocean.

at all. And with each passing week, as I immerse myself in the archives, piecing together one weird little guy's story at a time, the clearer the connective tissue between them becomes. But for all the weird twists, and in this strange tale of the Birther militia trying to take over a small town in Tennessee, the best thing I found buried in all of these documents was this moment from the trial when Darren Huff took the stand himself. The prosecutor had asked him about some business cards that

he made after his arrest. On the front, it said Darren Huff, right wing extremist and potential domestic terrorist, and on the back there was a picture of a gun. So on cross examination, Huff's defense attorney was trying to elicit testimony that would show the jury that those business cards were obviously a joke, that this was just his sense of humor. So he asked Darren about some shirts,

and Darren gave the following answer. I had a friend who had a T shirt shop, and I said, can you make me a couple of shirts, because apparently this government wants to label me. The first one that he had made me said, I am the god fearing, gun toting, flag waving right wing extremists the government warned you about. And the other one said, I finally made homeland Securities potential domestic terrorists, watched list, and all I got was this lousy T shirt. Obviously the point behind them was

for humor, and they have been received as such. Another one that was one of my initial shirts said, patriotism is not a spectator sport. And then there's something that I have never seen an official federal court transcript before, as this big bearded militia man is describing his funny terrorism shirts. The court reporter types in parentheses witness crying.

not answer it. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going to make you one of my Weird Little Guys