CZM Rewind: Arrested Democracy

Weird Little Guys. It tells the story of a half baked plot to take over a small town in Tennessee so a conspiracy theory blogger and a militia chaplin could prove once and for all that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. He wasn't, obviously, and they didn't succeed. It's just a silly little story about a lesser known chapter in the history of right wing extremists refusing to accept

election results. If you missed it last time around, I hope you will enjoy one of the only stories I've told so far where nobody really got hurt except me. It did cause me some agony to dig up and listen to hours of old episodes of g Gordon Liddy's talk radio show so that I could find the exact moment in history when a conspiracy theorist called the guy who did Watergate to tell him about the armed standoff he and his friends were going to have after breakfast,

but it was worth it. It's a fun episode. On April first, twenty ten, retired Navy Lieutenant Commander Walter Francis Fitzpatrick the Third walked into the Monroe County Courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee. That was no surprise to anyone in Madisonville. Fitzpatrick had become a frequent visitor to this courthouse in a small town in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. A year earlier, in March of two thousand nine, he asked a Monroe County grand jury to indict President Barack Obama

on charges of treason. The grand jury declined to do so. In the year that followed, he had been a regular fixture in the County court Clerk's office, demanding information about

the county's jury selection process. After the grand jury's refusal to accept his presentation of evidence against Barack Obama, he could only conclude that the process itself was deeply corrupt and sinister forces were conspiring against him to suppress the truth that Barack Houssain Obama was not the rightful president of the United States, that he was born in Kenya, that he had rigged the two thousand eight election, and

he was guilty of high treason. Walter Fitzpatrick was more than prepared to put Barack Obama on trial, but now he believed the whole Damn's system was guilty and he wasn't going to let them get away with it. He just needed some backup. I'm Molly Konger, and this is where the little guys as in writing this. It's a few days after the twenty twenty four presidential election. Every election has winners and losers, and not everybody is happy

with the results. It's probably no surprise to you that I count myself among those of us who aren't thrilled with the results this time around. But sometimes disappointment, dread, and dissatisfaction aren't enough. For some people, an undesirable election outcome is simply unacceptable. Literally, they can't accept it, it can't be true, and it can't be allowed to stand. As with my Halloween episode, I'm a little behind the curve here in terms of seasonal content. At this rate,

I'll be doing a Christmas special on Groundhog's Day. But elections and weird little guys go together like peanut butter and jelly. Well, no, no, that's not true. You do find them together often, but they don't usually mix well. So maybe it's more like oil and water. Neither of those analogies are really giving me what I want in my personal experience. Right wing extremists and election results go

together like blue gatorade and raw onions. When I covered the January sixth ride at the Capitol in twenty twenty one, those were the two things I saw people pulling out of their backpacks the most. Think. Some right wing influencer convinced a lot of people who'd never been to a riot before that you should carry a raw white onion cut in half in a ziploc baggie because rubbing it on your face is a homeopathic remedy for tear gas. Just a heads up, that is not true. Do not

do that. Do not rub a raw onion on your eyeballs at any time, and definitely don't do it after exposure to a chemical irritant. And if you can only pack one thing to drink in a situation like that, make it water. Or else you'll be washing pepper spray and onion juice out of your eyes with gatorade, which doctors do not recommend. That's just some free advice for you, but I thought it would make perfect sense to do some kind of election themed weird little guy. And to

be honest, I'm bored of January sixth stories. I'm sure I'll get to some of them on this show eventually. And there were some guys there who were very strange guys even before they were trying to stop the steal. And if the guy they were fighting for that day follows through on his promise to pardon them all, some of them will make their way back into the news one way or another, whether that's running for office or

building a bomb. But right now today, I'm sick of thinking about the twenty twenty election results because I'm sick of thinking about the twenty twenty four election results. And the twenty twenty election was not the first time right wing extremists couldn't accept the results. So come with me to the distant past. Two thousand and eight. I voted for president for the first time that year, making me one of nearly seventy million Americans who cast a ballot

for Barack Obama. He won handle it, beating John McCain by more than seven percent in the popular vote and pulling in three hundred and sixty five electoral votes to McCain's one hundred and seventy three. Barack Obama was promising hope, change, and healthcare. John McCain was burdened by George W. Bush's rock bottom approval ratings and his support for Bush's now increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. It seemed like a new day had dawned. We were all going to get healthcare,

and we had finally elected our first black president. Of course, not everyone was on board. We'd had more than two centuries of white men named James, John, William, and George. Literally, of the forty two presidents before Obama, eighteen of them were named James, John William, or George. About forty percent of the total presidential time until two thousand and eight was under a guy with one of those four names. We elected two two different guys named Franklin. We hadn't

really been getting a lot of variety. Conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's race, religion, and place of birth are creatures of racism, pure and simple. There's no talking your way around that fact. He has a foreign sounding name and he is not white. There was a lot of anxiety that someone who didn't look like the American presidents we'd

had before couldn't possibly have the same American values. During the primary, Mark Penn, a senior campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, wrote a memo suggesting that they should highlight the fact that Obama spent some of his childhood in Indonesia while emphasizing Clinton's Midwest roots, writing, his.

United States. An analysis published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics in twenty nineteen acknowledged that, yes, the best predictor of believing in any conspiracy theory is a pre existing belief in any other conspiracy theory. People who are prone to believing unsubstantiated claims often believe many of them.

But while there are certainly people of all political orientations who are willing to entertain the theory, the study found that belief in this particular conspiracy theory was uniquely correlated to the believer's own race, party affiliation, and most importantly, their level of racial resentment toward African Americans. So to be clear, there are multiple studies published in journals across a range of disciplines over the course of nearly twenty

years that have found measurable correlations. Here, the people who trafficked in Birtherism were white Republicans with a measurable level of racial animus. This was never about getting to the truth. It was an intense fear of a black president. In June of two thousand and eight, just days after Hillary Clinton conceded the primary and Obama was the presumptive nominee. His campaign released a copy of his birth certificate showing he had in fact been born in Hawaii. But you

can't kill a conspiracy with facts that's never worked. And confronted with what should have been the final answer to the question, Berthers just doubled down the birth certificate was simply fake. This only fueled the fire, and in August of two thousand and eight, the first of countless lawsuits was filed. And oddly enough, we've already talked about this particular lawsuit on this show in the first episode about

the Pennsylvania clansman Berry Black. Philip Burg's lawsuit alleged that Obama had been born in Kenya, and this relied on a sworn affidavit written by Ron McCrae about a phone call that he had had with Barack Obama's father's stepmother through a translator. Ron McCrae was the homophobic street preacher who spent years harassing the owners of the Costanova Lounge, a gay bar in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It was located across the street from a farm owned by some clansmen.

Berg's lawsuit was dismissed and the judge called it frivolous and not worthy of discussion, which is true, but that became the playbook. Berthers around the country filed frivolous and baffling lawsuits. They filed them in federal court houses, county circuit courts, state supreme courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, state boards of election, state administrative courts. They filed complaints and requests for injunctions and petitions anywhere they could find

a bureaucrat sitting in a desk. For just the years two thousand and eight through twenty twelve, I found over two hundred complaints in various forms, filed with every kind of court you can imagine, and some kinds of courts I've never heard of, and they lost every single one. They seemed convinced that they could find the right collection of words, the right legal incantation, that, if presented to the right judge and the right jury, would wake America

from this national nightmare of an Obama presidency. But the lawsuits weren't working. Judge after judge sent them packing. In most cases they didn't even get a hearing. They were submitting complaints that had absolutely no legal basis to proceed, No basis in reality even and in the cases that did get a foot in the door, they were submitting forged documents and relying on already debunked claims. Lawyers were sanctioned, fines were levied, and suit after suit was dismissed. But undeterred,

the Birthers found a new way forward. If they couldn't get justice through civil suits, they would simply have to have the President of the United States arrested. In June of two thousand and nine, one hundred and seventy two extremely devoted conspiracy theorists convened. They called themselves the Super American grand Jury. Now that's not a real thing. Grand juries are real. Of course, we don't need to get bogged down in the specifics because they vary from state

to state. But generally speaking, a grand jury is a group of citizens convened by a court and tasked with issuing indictments. So a prosecutor will briefly summarize a case. They'll put on a little bit of evidence, maybe some witnesses, and the grand jurors will just if there's probable cause to believe a crime has been committed by the individual. The prosecutor is seeking to indict. They aren't deciding if anyone is innocent or guilty. They're not trying the case.

It's a much lower standard here. They're just deciding is this something that should proceed as a case at all. You've probably heard the saying you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It's a pretty low bar to clear at this stage. But we're not here to talk about real grand juries because that barely factors into the story at all. I just want to be clear that grand juries are real, they do exist, and

this was not one. A grand jury is made up of grand jurors who have received an official summons from a real court, and they are presented real potential cases by a real prosecutor, and they make real determinations about which cases get an indictments. There are six states that allow citizen initiated grand juries in Oklahoma, Nevada, Kansas, Nebraska,

New Mexico, and North Dakota. There is a process through which you can collect enough signatures on a petition to force a judge to convene a grand jury to investigate an alleged crime. That's not what this was either. They didn't have a petition they submitted to a court. They didn't do it in any of those states. I'm just saying.

Avenues do exist. And in some states like California, you can submit a written complaint to request a grand jury investigation into a criminal allegation, but they're under no obligation to follow up. And in Tennessee, the fact that is about to become very relevant. State law allows any citizen to apply to testify before a county grand jury about

an alleged offense that is prosecutable in that county. But the idea of a citizens grand jury like the super American grand jury, is not something these particular extremists invented in their modern iteration. Most of these citizens grand jury groups were trying to arrest Barack Obama for various invented crimes, but they also popped up in the early two thousands among nine to eleven truthers who wanted to arrest George

Bush during the Malheir National Wildlife Refuge occupation. A few years back, militia members who supported the Bundy family convened fake grand juries to indict local officials and even some reporters whose coverage they found lacking. Conspiracy theory. Frequent flier Larry Clayman has not only indicted Joe Biden with a

fake grand jury, he even convicted him. But according to Daniel Levatas the author of The Terrorist next Door, a two thousand and four book on the American militia movement, these citizen grand juries actually date back to the nineteen seventies with Christian identity extremists. Christian identity has come up before.

We talked about it briefly in the episode about Christopher Hassen, the Coastguard lieutenant who was stockpiling guns and planning to assassinate the Supreme Court, but was too addicted to opiates

to make much progress. He'd spend some time researching Christian identity online before writing to a longtime white nationalist leader named Harold Covington about his plans to make changes to society with quote a little focused violence and Christian identity kind of sounds like it might mean someone whose identity is Christian. Right, It's just someone who considers themselves to be a Christian. But that's not what it means at all. It refers to a specific set of extremist beliefs that

white Europeans are God's true chosen people. It is a deeply anti Semitic belief system, and one whose followers are often very willing to age and violence. The earliest example levatas sites of a written threat to bring a citizen's grand jury indictment is a tax protester in Michigan in nineteen seventy two who threatened to indict local authorities trying

to enforce a core order. And in nineteen seventy five, Richard Butler, another weird little Guy's recurring character, led a group of fifty followers to try to arrest a policeman in Kurdalene, Idaho before the officer could testify against a member of the group who'd been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Richard Butler wasn't leading the Aryan Nations yet at that point, but he was already a prominent

figure within Christian identity. So the super American Grand j had deep roots in dark places, and it was not so super and not a grand jury at all. It was just a collection of conspiracists who wrote their own indictment against the president, and then they went to a federal courthouse in Washington, d c. And filed it Judge Royce Lamberth promptly dismissed them. I guess maybe dismiss is a tricky word to use here, because a real indictment can be dismissed by a judge, and that's not what

happened here, because this was not a real indictment. What Judge Lamberth actually did was issue in order denying them permission to have even filed it at all. Writing, any self styled indictment or presentment issued by such a group has no force under the Constitution or laws of the United States. Judge Lamberth took senior status in twenty thirteen.

He's kind of retired but still working, so he is actually still a federal judge in DC today and has presided over quite a few of the January sixth cases, most notably the trial of the QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley in twenty twenty three, fourteen years after he kicked those Birthers out of his court for trying to arrest the President. He was dismayed to see Republican politicians trafficking in rhetoric that downplayed the events of January sixth, writing in a court filing in one of those cases.

an orderly fashion like ordinary tourists. I'm mortalizing convicted January sixth defendants as political prisoners or even incredibly hostages. That is all preposterous. The Court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could pressage further danger to our country.

magical thinking. There's a lot of crossover between sovereign citizens and other kinds of conspiratorial belief, and a not insignificant amount of sovereign citizen belief within the militia movement, and sovereign citizens generally believe that there are certain secret procedural loopholes that they can use to avoid being subject to the law, anything from traffic stops to income taxes. To be honest, it's almost always traffic stops and income taxes.

You've probably heard jokes about a guy in a courtroom proclaiming that the judge has no authority over him because there's gold fringe on the flag in the courtroom and that means that admiralty law is in effect. Or maybe you've heard of someone being pulled over and refusing to produce a driver's license, arguing with the cop that they don't need a driver's license because they're not driving, they're traveling,

and it's different. I've only seen one in court in real life, and it was a young woman appealing a conviction for driving without a license. She just kept yelling at the judge. I do not contract with the Department of mone Vehicles. It did not work. She was unsuccessful in that appeal. A month after Judge Lamberth told the Super American Grand Jury that they couldn't just make their own grand jury, Carl Swenson and a few of the

others submitted a new case to the court. If they couldn't be their own grand jury, then the court should convene one for them. Judge Lamberth once again declined, explaining that a general grievance about the government doesn't give them standing to file this complaint. There was some kind of procedural mishap in the court clerk's office, though, and the docket was left open by accident. This normally wouldn't matter at all, no lawyer would keep filing motions at a

closed case. But they did not have lawyers, and one of Swinson's co petitioners, Penny Kelso, filed a buzz There are seven page document four years later, demanding that the judge take action. It has a lot of prayers in it and links to blogs and random excerpts from the Constitution, And the last page is just illegible handwritten notes, and I can kind of make out something about Benghazi, and she signed this whole thing Penny Kelso DVM, which is

technically true. Penny Kelso does have a doctorate of veterinary medicine, but the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners has suspended her license half a dozen times for things like watching a C section on someone's dog, duct taping bandages to animals in a way that caused harm, improperly confining animals in a kennel, and falsifying records related to mandatory continuing the education hours. Penny doesn't actually come up again in

this story. She's not really relevant here. I just wanted to make sure you know that at least one person involved in this whole situation has killed a puppy. So they couldn't sue the president, they couldn't issue their own federal indictment, they couldn't make a judge convene a federal grand jury. But they had incontrovertible proof that Barack Obama could not be the president, and it was their duty

as Americans to have him arrested. If this false president's collaborators in Washington, d C. Wouldn't heed their demands, maybe a grand jury. Foreman in a small town in rural Tennessee would Sweetwater, Tennessee is a small town straddling the line between McMinn and Monroe counties of geography, that explains why Sweetwater resident Walter Fitzpatrick would eventually go to jail for trying to perform citizens' arrests on courthouse employees in

both counties. In March of two thousand and nine, he drafted his own indictment against Barack Obama. He went down to the county courthouse and notarized the following letter.

military establishment. Known military criminal actors command racketeers are now free in the exercise of military government, intent upon destruction of America's constitutional government, free from constitutional restraint and following your criminal example, military commanders deployed US Army active duty combat troops into the small civilian community of Samson, Alabama, last week, in a demonstration of their newly received despotic

domestic police power. We come now to this reckoning. I accuse you and your military political criminal assistance of treason. I name you and your military criminal associates as traitors. Your criminal ascension manifests this clear and present danger. You fundamentally changed our form of government. The Constitution no longer works. Confident holding your silent agreement and admission, I identify you as a foreign born domestic enemy. My sworn duty, mister Obama,

is to stand against what you stand for. You're not my president, you're not my commander in chief. Obedient to the Constitution and submission of this criminal accusation, I remain steadfast and born fighting. Walter Francis Fitzpatrick the Third.

Fitzpatrick was allowed to serve out his nineteen and a half years, rounding up to twenty so he could receive his pension, but his last four years in the Navy were humiliating. He was convicted in a court martial in nineteen ninety for improperly accounting for the morale, welfare and recreation funds for the sailors aboard the USS Mars, of

which he was the executive officer at the time. He was found not guilty on charges of stealing twenty eight hundred dollars, misappropriate another ten four hundred dollars, and improper use of a government vehicle, and his only sentence was a reprimand all things considered, it could have been worse. He was basically convicted of bad record keeping and given

a talking to. He didn't have to go to the brig He didn't get kicked out or demoted, or lose his pension or any of his access to veterans' benefits. He served out his twenty years and retired and collected a pension, but he spent four years sitting at a desk. He was passed over for promotions. He was humiliated and angry and he stayed angry at the government for a very long time. Sometimes I get a little lost in

the weeds. When I started writing this week's episode, it was supposed to be about a guy we haven't gotten to yet and aren't really going to get to today. But when you start pulling the narrative threads and looking for the beginning of the story, there's always more beginnings

than you think. It's probably more than enough backstory on Walter Fitzpatrick to say that his distrust of the government comes from his decades long, deeply held belief that he was a victim of a grave injustice at this nineteen ninety court martial. But as I spend more and more time really getting to know each of these weird little guys, patterns start to emerge, and I think Walter Fitzpatrick fits

into the Frank Sweeney archetype. I did two episodes a while back about a lifelong con man named Frank Sweeney. He got into all sorts of hijinks and cross paths with all kinds of people, going to federal prison half a dozen times for various frauds and threats. But the one thing that connected everything in Frank's life was an

overwhelming sense of personal grievance. He had been wronged. He had been wronged, and the only way to make it right was to make that lust for vengeance the sole focus of his life, no matter where that path took him until he felt satisfied. For Frank, that meant spending several years writing threatening postcards to a stranger who made a passing comment about where he was parked at the post office, and I see echoes of that same mindset here.

In nineteen ninety four, Fitzpatrick had successfully recruited his Congressman Norm Dix as an advocate on his behalf, and Congressman Dix wrote several letters to the Navy advocating for a new trial for Fitzpatrick. He did his best as an elective representative to help a constituent seek redress through the

proper channels, and he was ultimately unsuccessful. Fitzpatrick continued communicating with Norm Dix and later Congressman Adam Smith throughout the nineties and early two thousands, badgering their staff regularly and demanding his decade old case be revisited. There wasn't really much anyone could do, but both representatives met with him and heard his complaints and did what they could. In two thousand and two, Fitzpatrick was banned from Congressman Smith's

to Koma offices. It's unclear what led to the ban, but a letter filed with the court said that they would continue to serve him as a constituent, but he was only allowed to communicate with the Congressman or his staff by letter. And in two thousand and three, two female staffers in Norm Dix's office got restraining orders against Fitzpatrick. In her petition to the court, one of those staffers wrote, over the past year, I have become increasingly aware that

mister Fitzpatrick's rage was building. He had difficulty looking me in the eye, and he was so angry he often paced in our lobby. He has no respect for the work we've done for him over the years. The last straw was an incident in October of two thousand and three when Fitzpatrick refused to leave the office and physically prevented the employee from leaving by blocking the door, forcing

her to call the police. Police reports show multiple violations of these restraining orders and several complaints, though no prosecutions for trespass, harassment, and domestic violence. He was angry he had been wronged and their inability to help him was unforgivable. Fitzpatrick was coming into regular contact with the police in Kitsap County, Washington until moved to Tennessee in two thousand

and seven. But back to Fitzpatrick's trees and allegations, you probably noticed that he only barely mentioned the president's citizenship. I mean, it's in there, don't get me wrong. He does call Obama a foreign born enemy, but that's pretty secondary here. This indictment for treason isn't really about that. This is a brand new tactic. He's accusing the president of having violated the Posse Comatatis Act, and that did

actually kind of happen, not in the way he's claiming. Obviously, Barack Obama did not violate the Posse Commatatus Act, but it's not a wholly fabricated allegation. The Posse Commatatus Act dates back to the end of reconstruction after the Civil War, and it prohibits the use of the US military in

civilian policing. It doesn't apply to the National Guard under the direction of a state governor, and there are exceptions Federal troops can be deployed domestically in certain situations, like if the President invokes the Insurrection Act, or if there is some kind of emergency involving nuclear materials or significant amounts of explosive ordinance that can't be safely dealt with otherwise. But generally speaking, the United States military cannot engage in

domestic civilian policing. It's not something that comes up very often for normal people. Under normal circumstances, You're probably never having conversations about the Posse Commatatus Act. But it's a big boogeyman in anti government movements, and the allegation Fitzpatrick is making in this letter alludes to an actual incident.

On March tenth, two thousand and nine, Michael McClendon carried out what is still the deadliest mass shooting in the history of Alabama, killing ten people, injuring six others, and ultimately taking his own life. It wasn't political or ideological, it wasn't racially motivated. It's just a terrible, sad story about gun violence in America. He was an angry young man with a gun, and he made his problems everybody

else's but Clendon. First drove to his mother's house in Kinston, Alabama, where he shot and killed her and then burnt her house down. Then he drove to his uncle's house and nearby Samson, Alabama, and shot his uncle, two cousins, and several of their neighbors. Then he went to his grandmother's house and shot and killed her. And as he fled the third crime scene, he was firing at random from his car window, shooting bystanders. He killed a gas station attendant,

passing motorists and injured several pedestrians. When sheriff's deputies tried to run him off the road, he shot one of them too. With more than a dozen people shot across three towns spanning two counties, law enforcement was stretched pretty thin. There were multiple crime scenes, ten dead bodies, half a dozen seriously injured survivors, including an infant, and the shooter was on the move, and so someone at the Geneva County Sheriff's office made a phone call to nearby Fort

Rucker to ask for help. The army officer who responded to the request later said that he believed at the time that what he was doing was lawful, citing his

own experience assisting in disaster response after Hurricane Katrina. His intention was only to be what he called a good neighbor, and for a period of about five hours that afternoon, several soldiers from Fort Rucker assisted local law enforcement at traffic checkpoints near the crime scenes and stood guard at the makeshift morgue that they'd set up to store the bodies. And this was in fact a violation of the Posse Comma Tatis Act. Soldiers from the United States Army should

not have been participating in traffic checkpoints. That is against the law, and the officer who made that call was disciplined. But it was a local mistake. This wasn't something that was run up the chain of command all the way to the president. This didn't go through the Pentagon. They didn't convene the Joint chiefs of Staff. It was just someone from the sheriff's office made a phone call to a guy he knew at the army base, and they

did something they didn't realize was wrong. I won't claim to be familiar with the details of military chain of command or military law or anything, but I'm not sure the commander in chief can be charged with treason because one guy in Alabama accidentally broke the law. This actual violation of the Possecomatatis Act was enough to send a certain kind of guy into hysterics. I mean, look, I'm not making excuses for it. Any kind of precedent for

that sort of thing should be avoided. The potential for abuse is extreme and terrifying. But anti government activists could finally point to a real thing that happened as proof that Barack Obama was about to institute martial law. Federal troops really were setting up checkpoints. It happened. It's not a drill. For someone like Walter Fitzpatrick. This was all the evidence he needed to have the President hanged for treason. And that gets us back to where we started this

long journey, back to the beginning of the story. Walter Fitzpatrick accused the president of treason in March two thousand and nine. He took his complaint down to the courthouse and he got it noted. He applied to present it to a Monroe County grand jury, and they chose not to indict the president, probably mostly because even if there

was probable cause here, which there wasn't. The Monroe County, Tennessee Circuit Court does not have jurisdiction in a case involving the President of the United States committing treason, unfortunately, but that's not how Fitzpatrick saw it. In his mind, this could only mean that there is corruption afoot. Again and again, Walter Fitzpatrick made the trip to the county courthouse.

He harassed the court clerk. He tried forcing his way into the grand jury proceedings to make his presentation again, and they did hear him out once more. They allowed him to present the grand jury. In December of two thousand and nine. That grand jury again declined to indict President Barack Obama for treason, and at this point they were done humoring him. Hearing this evidence again wasn't going

to change anything. He was on several occasions refused entrance into the courtroom while the grand jury was hearing real cases. And just like those years, he spent getting angrier and angrier at his congressman's office staff. These people were as helpful as they were required to be. They were doing their jobs, but there wasn't really anything they could do

that would satisfy him because his requests weren't reasonable. They couldn't give him what he wanted, But in his mind this inability to assist him could only mean that they were active fighting against him, and so they too became subjects of his investigations. They were all guilty now of obstruction of justice, and they too must be arrested. In March of twenty ten, a year after he first charged the President with treason, Walter Fitzpatrick sent a letter to

the police chief in Madisonville, Tennessee. If no one else was interested in justice, he was just going to have to do it himself.

is not a friend. Planning must begin immediately. Contact information is provided separately. Fair Wins following sees Walter Francis Fitzpatrick third.

is a perfectly rational and legal course of action. It's not clear if the police chief wrote him back. I'm sure they had some conversations about this plan that didn't go how Fitzpatrick had hoped, but there was no talking him out of it. He was going to arrest the people who were staying ending in his way, with or without their help, and on April first, twenty ten, he tried it. Lad the room, tired arguing with official pressures.

the door. And the video we have of this incident is not police bodycam footage, but you'd be forgiven for assuming that's where it came from. It was recorded on someone's cell phone, a Motorola droid to be precise. If you remember those by Carl Swenson, the sovereign citizen who had been agitating for people all over the country to take this kind of action in their local courts ever since Judge Lamberth denied his petition in federal court the year before.

One of the other supporters who witnessed Fitzpatrick's arrest that day was a man named Darren Huff. Like Swenson, Huff had made the drive to Madisonville from his home in Georgia. He was a member of the Oath Keepers and was also the chaplain of a separate militia group that was just called the Georgia Militia. When Fitzpatrick was granted bond. A few days after his arrest, Darren Huff made the drive back up to Tennessee to meet with him. They

weren't going to suffer this indignity in silence. They made a plan, and two weeks later, when Fitzpatrick was due back in court, Darren Huff was outside the courthouse with a crowd of supporters, prepared to take over the whole damn town by force if they had to. And Darren Huff was the weird little guy I had in mind

when I sat down to start this week's episode. I was thinking about guys who did something weird because they were mad about an election, and I had a vague recollection of some research I did on the oath Keepers back in twenty nineteen when Oathkeeper's founder Stuart Rhodes was front row center, right behind the podium at a Trump campaign rally, and I did a little more digging around in twenty twenty, when the Oathkeepers were starting to make

no about what would eventually become the January sixth insurrection. I'd collected a few odds and ends about Oathkeepers who got arrested for a variety of crimes over the years trying to convince people that this could be a serious problem.

And there are plenty of strange little stories in there, like an oathkeeper in Ohio who was being investigated for mortgage fraud back in twenty ten and the investigators completely accidentally discovered that he was making napalm in his garage, Or how Oathkeepers leaders Stuart Rhodes advised members to take it upon themselves to prevent voter fraud in the twenty sixteen election in a plan that definitely was not meant

to function as voter intimidation. And there's the story of that car load of Oathkeepers who were arrested in Florida in twenty nineteen. They were charged with violating the curfew order put in place during the state of emergency after Hurricane Mit. The militia members were driving around dressed as police officers, cruising around town in the dark with a car full of rifles, dressed as cops patrolling for looters.

And obviously there's the entire saga of the Oathkeeper's role in January sixth, But like I said, right now, I'm tired of that story. But then I remembered Darren Huff and his plans to citizens arrest a whole county courthouse because he didn't think Barack Obama was the real president. It was sort of a micro January sixth an hour

south of Knoxville, but eleven years too soon. At this point in the run of this show, I think I have to stop apologizing for writing so much preamble that the actual story I'm getting to is in part two. I should just admit to myself that I'm doing that on purpose. Sure, I could launch right into a story about Darren showing up at the courthouse with a gun.

That would still be an interesting weird little guy. But Darren and his gun outside of a courthouse three hours away from his home across state lines, trying to arrest a grand jury foreman in a small town that he has no connection to, just doesn't make any sense, does it. Trying to explain that a retired Navy vette was convinced his county court could arrest the president sounds like a silly little joke without the context that this was a

nationwide movement motivated by a racist conspiracy theory. These aren't just stories about one weird little guy at a time. It's a whole network None of this happens in a vacuum, which is why the same stories keep playing out with different characters, and the same characters keep showing up in each other's stories. An oathkeeper tried to arrest the president in two thousand. The oath keepers tried to overturn the

twenty twenty election. The woman whose blog chronicled Walter Fitzpatrick's efforts fueling the conspiracy and driving more supporters to show up in Madisonville tried to obtain government records in twenty twenty two related to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's families, immigration, and naturalization, and the same woman was a central figure in the brief frenzy of birther conspiracies about Kamala Harris in twenty

twenty four. When Jared Taylor, America's leading purveyor of pseudo academic eugenicist polemics, had to go to court in twenty eighteen over a permit for his annual race science conference, he sought help from Birther lawyer Van Erian, the same lawyer who worked on Karl Swenson's lawsuits to keep Barack Obama off the ballot in twenty twelve, cutting straight to the chase and getting to Darren's story wouldn't just be miss the forest for the trees, it would be ignoring

a whole thriving white supremacist ecosystem, because when you turn over a big rock, there's more than one weird bug under there. And to be honest, I really just wanted to have plenty of room to explore Darren Huff's fascinating legal strategy because not to spoil it, but he does

end up in federal prison for a little bit. It's such a rare treat to have so much incredible source material, and I really don't want to have to cut the audio of a man who got pulled over on his way to commit a federal crime and used that opportunity to try to recruit a state trooper into his militia. So until next week, don't be rude to your court clerk, and please, for the love of God, do not put

gatorade in your eyes. When we left off last week, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick had been taken into custody outside the Monroe County Courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee, on April first, twenty ten. Fitzpatrick barged into a closed grand jury proceeding and attempted to place Monroe County grand Jury Foreman Gary Petway under citizen's arrest. Fitzpatrick had written up his own arrest warrant, charging Petway with obstruction of justice for his refusal to

issue an 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.

he's placing the sheriff himself under arrest. In the audio recording, you can hear the deputy sigh dramatically as Fitzpatrick begins reading the officers their rights and they realize that the only way Fitzpatrick is leaving the building is in handcuffs. Fitzpatrick was charged with interfering with a grand jury, resisting arrest,

and inciting a riot. He was held in the county jail over the weekend, during which time he reportedly refused to eat or drink, and was offered a fifteen hundred dollars bond on the condition that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation. On April seventh, twenty ten, the day after Fitzpatrick was released, Darren Huff made the drive from his home in Georgia

back up 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.

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 Aaron 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 into a court clerk's office every week to demand something be done about the president's acts of treason. It was everywhere. Everyone from Chuck Norris to Donald Trump was asking is Barack Obama a natural born citizen of the United States. Politicians like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich flirted with the idea, walking right up to the line and then claiming they'd misspoken or been misunderstood.

Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said she would proudly produce her own birth certificate. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby denied that he'd told a newspaper 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

lunatic 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

Swinson 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 Hoffen Carl Swinson 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.

two weeks to prepare, according to the court records. Darren Huff appeared in several videos about the events in Madisonville that were posted on Carl 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. He ran a small business doing outdoor lighting, so he stopped by often to

deposit checks. According to Erica, the bank teller who testified at his trial, most of the employees at the branch knew him well enough to make friendly conversation, but if she was working, he would wait in her line even if another teller was free. But that evening he wasn't making his usual jokes. He was deadly serious. Erica testified that Huff just launched right into telling her about Walter Fitzpatrick and his upcoming trial in Madisonville, Tennessee, a situation

she had no context for. She'd never heard of Walter Fitzpatrick, and she'd never been to Madisonville, Tennessee. 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 on Tuesday. A conversation got so intense that another employee went to go get the manager, Shane. In his testimony at trial, Shane too said that Huff was a regular customer at the bank, and over the years he'd gotten to know him a bit. Sometime in two thousand and nine, Huff got really political, and when he made small talk with the bank tellers, it was usually about his anti government 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 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 I do 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 Breden that Huff told her that he was intending to travel to Madisonville, Tennessee, on April twenty 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. She would have had no way of knowing any of that at the time if he hadn't told her himself, and she's on tape reporting it to the police long before she could have read anything in the news or been coached by an FBI agent to say these things. Both Shane and Erica were understandably deeply unsettled by that interaction. Imediately after leaving work that evening, Erica called a friend who worked in local government, who helped her find the phone number for

the Madisonville, Tennessee 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 Reed, accompanied by a couple of deputies from the Paulding County Sheriff's Office, just wanted to have a word with him. Then 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 Reed 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. At six 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 safe keeping. 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 trooper 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 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 foreman, the district attorney, the sheriff, the judge, Nancy Pelosi, etc. 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

seemed 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 a few weeks earlier. Of course, he was upset that this was communism, obviously, but more importantly, he was very worried because this law requires that all Americans be implanted with the mark of the Beast, as foretold in Revelations.

self proclaimed pastor in the Christian Identity movement. He's standing there on the side of the highway, surrounded by cops, reaching Christian identity and trying to recruit them to the Oathkeepers. It remains very unclear to me why the trooper gave Huff his gun back, but he did. At eight thirteen am. He handed Darren Huff a written warning, returned his CULT forty five, and told him he was free to go.

The men shook hands, and Huff thanked the officer and he took a few steps back toward his truck before he stopped, turned around and said, let me pre warn you. If enough of us show up today, we are going to proceed forward in this citizen's arrest. That's why I 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 Terraces 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.

is counting Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manassa separately. That's why he thinks it's thirteen. And I know that because he mentions Joseph's sons specifically, because otherwise I might have assumed he was talking about something different. We 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 Kasar hypothesis every time

I see a guy posting about Kasars. I'm just not having a good time. But what Darren was saying might actually be weirder.

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 Hoff wasn't the only one who excused himself from the table after

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

Gordon Ray Roberts. Lincoln's unit deployed to Afghanistan that week without him. The eighteen year veteran wasn't afraid to return to Afghanistan. This deployment would have been the seventh of his career and his second to Afghanistan. In two thousand and four, he was the Army's Flight surgeon of the year. He'd been awarded a Meritorious Service Medal and a Bronze Star. He was on track to be promoted to full colonel

within the next year. But he had come to realize that his deployment orders were unlawful, not on ideological grounds. He wasn't pro testing the war. He hadn't suddenly become a peace activist after seeing the horrors of war firsthand. No. No, the doctor was refusing to deploy unless he could see the president's birth certificate.

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 Swinson 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 letter 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.

And Jensen represented Stone in twenty sixteen when he was sued over allegations that he'd been involved in a coordinated campaign of voter intimidation. It was Jensen who drafted the paperwork to incorporate Stop the Steel in twenty sixteen. So after this interview, G. Gordon Liddy opened the phones to hear from listeners on the subject of Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Caller after caller thanked Colonel Laken for his courage and shared their own theories about how they could finally get to the truth of Barack Obama's birth, and then, after an advertisement for gold coins, another birther called into the show, but this one wasn't just sitting idly by while Barack Obama pretended to be the president.

and I want to give you some encouragement here. I'm in the city of Madisonville, Tennessee, right now in Monroe County, where they've had this area on lockdown with FBI, TDI, local police and troopers all because of Lieutenant Commander Walter Fitzpatrick and his attempts to affect arrest using a criminal complaint against Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and in this case, the grand jury members here and the town of Madison senysuits. People are gathering now, but it is a tenuous situation at best.

deployed 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 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 minor 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 Huff 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. That night, Oathkeeper's founder Stuart Rhodes saw the video Carl Swinson posted online of Darren getting pulled

over on his way to Madisonville. The truck says oath Keepers, all down one side and huge letters. You really can't miss it. It's the official logo of the Oathkeepers, and Rhodes called Swenson immediately and demanded he take the video down. It was embarrassing, and within days Rhodes himself showed up to speak with Darren Huff in person. He was furious. He demanded to know why Huff was so intent on

making Madisonville the flash point. Now, Rhodes isn't the kind of guy who's actually concerned about there being a flash point. He wants one. That's the whole idea, right. Eventually the militia will come into some kind of conflict, But this wasn't the one he wanted because he thought Darren's ideas were foolish and embarrassing, and he revoked Darren's oathkeepers membership undeterred though Darren Huff returned to Tennessee a week later.

He had a paper map of the state of Tennessee, and he'd circled the location of the sheriff's offices in every county within a 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 Loudon 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. At trial, Sheriff Geiter couldn't really remember much about this brief interaction, but he said he probably told this stranger in a parking lot that he'd need to know more about a situation like that in order to make a determination. But yes, hypothetically he did

have the authority to arrest another sheriff. Darren Huff was trying to recruit law enforcement officers to assist with the plan. He wasn't giving up, but he was running off time. Fitzpatrick's next hearing was scheduled for May fourth, and he needed to find a sheriff who would be there to take his prisoners into custody. He must not have had much success on the twenty eighth, though, because two days later, on April thirtieth, he was back at it, driving around

Tennessee looking for sheriffs who believed 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. This wasn't a traffic stop. There is a federal warrant for his arrest. Darren Huff was charged with violating Title eighteen, Section two thirty one sub section A two, and that's interesting. You probably don't believe me,

but hang on. A second. Section two thirty one is civil disorders, and it covers three separate crimes that don't really go together. A one makes it a crime to teach someone else how to make or use a gun or a bomb if you know or have reason to know that they'll 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 eight 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 being 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 sixth 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 are a whole separate law that makes it a crime to distribute information about bomb making, 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 of a real law. And it does pretty well describe what he did, because he didn't really do anything, did he?

But they were really worried that he might, or at least they were worried that he would continue to create situations where someone else might because if you get enough anxious people with guns together enough times, eventually something is going to go 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 on to 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 oh 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. But it's so much more than that. Darren Huff really really wanted to be in the driver's seat when it came to his criminal defense. One thing you have to remember about Darren Huff is that he's got a little sovereign citizen in him. He seems at 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 you 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 seem to be 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 want 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 and as cohunas maybe that's a

regional variation. He mets balls and then email is included in this bizarre fifteen page document that he submitted to the court complaining about and trying to fire his lawyer. But he ends the document by saying, quote, is the Second Amendment part of the Constitution?

have 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 arrest warrants, 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 ignored him and continue the proceeding. I would have loved to have seen it, and I wish the officer who testified at 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. Carl Swenson's from Georgia. But I know Carl Swenson was driving a two thousand and nine Honda Civic Hybrid that day, trust me, I checked. I have got a state trooper on tape calling in his plates when they saw him on the highway. And in his blog, Walter Fitzpatrick thanked my name most of the people who showed up there that day, and most of them were women, and very few of them were

from Georgia. But we do know for sure that Bill Luhman, a Marine Corps veteran and crane operator from Waco, Georgia, 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.

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 Lumen 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 a 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 nutbread. 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, whatever the truth social equivalent of a quote tweet is. Lumann had suggested that the people responsible for the dominion voting machines should be tried for treason, and Trump quoted the post, adding a lot has been

made of this lately, what do you think? And that must have been a huge day for Bill. The post went pretty viral, a lot of the keyboard warriors out here posting seventeen memes a day about January sixth. Political prisoners absolutely still believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and Walter Fitzpatrick went on to try his whole citizens

arrest thing in neighboring McMinn County too. He was eventually convicted of perjury and extortion there, as well as getting some more charges in Monroe County after he stole the grand jury rolls. 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 court martial. 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. I can't even really explain it. It's like actual footage of Trump rallies mixed in with like mypolo commercials. A TikTok video of someone doing the macarena, but the lyrics have been changed to be about Donald Trump. I don't know. I tapped out when it got to a clip of Russell Brand praying with Tucker Carlson. I guess what I'm getting at here is these guys don't go away. The cause of the day changes, whether it's nine to eleven, truth, eartherism, COVID, denial, QAnon,

stop the steal. But it's a lot of the same core ideas and honestly, it's a lot of the same individual guys. In one newspaper photo of Walter Fitzpatrick outside of the courthouse after a hearing in McMinn County in twenty fourteen, 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. This episode took me days longer to write than it should have, because every new name I turned up in the comments on a fifteen year old blog post took me on some long, strange path that some character in this story had taken in the year. Since there are no lone wolves, no one is self radicalizing in a vacuum. People don't just wake up one day and drive three hours with a camcorder and a

truck full of guns for no reason 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 turns 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 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 watch 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 in a federal court transcript before, as this big bearded militia man is describing his funny terrorism shirts. The court reporter types in parentheses, witness crying should put it on the

record that he cried. Weird Little Guys as a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,

but I almost certainly will not answer it. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guy's subreddit. Don't post anything that's going to make you one of my weird Blue Guys