Ruby Ridge

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Hello and welcome.

Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, and that's how it works now.

I'm Eli Bosnik, and I'll be standing against the charge tonight, but I'll need some loyal followers.

First up, two men who would fit right in at any militia meeting, Ethan Cecil.

Okay, I look like a cop, yes, but so does everyone else at those meetings because, well, most of them are cops.

Yeah, probably

tricky for them to like sniff out throws, right?

I show up and I brought custard for everyone.

It's like sons of flanarchy.

And And also joining us tonight, a pot dealer and the undercover cop who is not fooling him even a little, Noah and Tom.

Yeah, well, it doesn't help when you start off asking how much it is for a lid.

And fun fact, I do have to tell them.

Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons.

Patrons, without you, this show would start without...

any sketchified shenanigans and senior pets would have to go back to working as the U.S.

envoy to Turkey.

If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show.

And with that out of the way, tell us, Cecil, what person, place, think, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today?

Today, we're going to be talking about Ruby Rich.

And Tom, this week you'd like us to sympathize with a man who locked himself inside his house and tried to commit suicide by cop.

At what point does a cry for help become a pantheon for help?

Always time.

So tell us, Tom, what was Ruby Ridge?

All right, sometimes the bad guys are right.

Like, mind you, they're still bad guys.

Sometimes they're very bad guys.

In the case of this story, they are spectacularly bad guys.

Horrible guys, actually, but still, they were right.

And that's not good because when the bad guys are right, it inspires you know, other bad guys.

And that's exactly what happened as a result of today's story.

This is the story of the Weaver family, better known also as the standoff at Ruby Ridge.

And it is the story of what happens when bad guys run up against the much, much worse guys running the ATF, FBI, and U.S.

Marshals in the early 1990s.

And subsequently, it has become the story that solidified for white nationalist militias, their founding mythology and rallying cry.

Am I being detained?

Or it's the story of the one time in American history that we treated white supremacists the way they deserve.

You decide, podcast listener.

It's kind of like choose your own way.

I think you're going to find that this is not an or situation.

All right, so our story begins in 1971 as a love story with the marriage of Vicki Jordison and Randall Weaver in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Vicki was working as a secretary for Sears, and Randall was a recently discharged Green Beret working a job at the John Deere tractor factory.

On paper, they were the perfect right-wing white trash power couple.

By 1976, the pair started to churn out the first of their several kids.

Everything was coming up roses for a minute until Vicki began to obsess over the meaning of the Israeli-Arab conflict raging across the Mideast, which she became convinced was a sign of the biblical end times.

What?

There has to be an unemployed all-red cow with really nice hair.

Fucking read a book.

Obviously, duh.

And I'm sorry, thinking thinking Israeli-Arab conflict as a marker of the apocalypse would be like if Muslims were waiting for the day the sun rose in the east.

Now, the question, of course, then is what to do if you believe the end times are approaching.

And thankfully for Vicky, she had recurring dreams to help her along.

Nice.

Now, in these dreams, which she took as omens because she was a credulous, religious wacko, the family lived in a house on a hill where they were safe to ride out the end of days.

And since Randall wanted to have sex with Vicki, he had to listen to her dreams.

And eventually, he too became convinced that the end was nigh, which meant they needed to move out of Iowa.

Well,

that's the end of the world, so I better change my position geographically.

That will save me.

Any excuse to move out of Iowa.

Yeah, no, that's fair.

That is fair.

See, I'm just picturing the horseman famine looking around at the people of Iowa being like, okay, this one's going to take some work.

Guys, go ahead.

I'm going to

dig in here.

A lot of corn.

And Iowa was glad to see them go.

So glad, in fact, that they were interviewed by the local paper where they declared their intentions to get out of Iowa and get somewhere where they could establish a compound with a 300-yard defensible kill zone.

And where better to be a crazy religious zealot hiding from the second coming of your own Lord and Savior than Idaho.

Nowhere is the answer because Idaho is America's mecca for militia morons.

So the Weavers bought some acreage in the Ruby Ridge area, which is just basically like the side of a mountain in the middle and nowhere.

And that was exactly what the weavers wanted.

The family set about building their defensible compound to wait out the coming Armageddon, and that meant building a two-story cabin out of plywood and scraps, along with the necessary outbuildings you might imagine would be necessary in a situation like this, such such as a shame shed for menstruating and unclean women to be banished to once a month.

Oh, and they'd had no running water.

They didn't build.

That is not my experience with the phrase shame shed.

That term is different in my childhood.

The family said about being the kind of roughing it, survivalist, loner-losers you might imagine.

growing vegetables and homeschooling their kids, which in the 1980s was not legal in Idaho, but which also didn't matter because no one in Idaho really cared much whether or not some transplanted Iowans were teaching their kids science and history and literature, which to be clear, they were not, or whether they were just a family of religious nuts swatting mosquitoes in the woods and carrying around their own water.

And to be very, very clear, the weavers didn't recognize the state's authority to govern them anyway, which in the case of Idaho, I guess I can kind of sympathize.

All right.

So these are lowercase weavers and they're going to use like maritime law in Idaho to claim their sovereign citizens.

I'm going to need some convincing to abandon team fbi in the 90s i need to be

i'm dressed as a cop and janet reno right now that's what i'm doing both of those things

all right enter here kevin harris now kevin was a teenager whose life at home was so bad that he actually preferred to spend time with the weavers who welcomed kevin into their home and sort of informally adopted him It sounds like they're doing a nice thing.

And I don't know, maybe it was.

But now we have to talk about their connection to the many Aryan white nationalist groups operating in that area.

Now, while the Weavers didn't officially join any of the groups, they would still occasionally attend their meetings, which means that they were not only racist, but like racists with commitment issues.

Right.

No, they were fucking racist that weren't paying the racism.

Look, I'm not a racist.

I just worked the Aryan bake sale.

You can donate anything but brownies.

Now, what the weavers thought of themselves as was a part of the Christian identity movement, and that held that Eve and the evil serpent from the Garden of Eden banged, and Eve bore children from that banging, and that's where the Jews sprang from.

And they were quite literally the actual spawn of actual Satan.

Weird group for their God to choose them.

Now, everyone on earth that wasn't white were, according to the Weavers and the Christian Identity Movement, mud people, while whites from Germanic or Celtic descents were descendants of the lost tribe of Israel and favorite of God.

So, like I said at the beginning, like the weavers are the bad guys in any room they walk into.

Really excited for Tom to turn this around with an improperly executed search warrant.

I'm going to do a real 180 here.

You better move hard with that search warrant.

Now, listen, America is full of virulent racists, and generally, no one bats an eye.

Oh, we let them have their own fucking president.

Especially in Idaho.

And it's very likely the Weavers would have been let alone to live and die in the indifferent obscurity of the Idahoan mountains if the feds hadn't gotten a call from a neighbor warning them that the weavers had designs on the life of Ronald Reagan.

Okay,

lowercase weavers, I'm listening.

I might be able to be wooed.

So in 1985, some feds showed up at the Weavers' door and they asked if they had any interest in, you know, murdering the president, which the Weavers did not appear to have.

And everyone just kind of figured that there was some beef then between the Weavers and their neighbors, and that the neighbors had tried to just fuck with them by reporting them.

And it's likely that that's because the Weaver kids were, you know, walking around with Nazi armbands, and the Weavers were known to shoot at the neighbors' houses sometimes.

They were shooting at us from their sniper's nest.

For the last time, it's a blood shack.

15 miles to the blood

shack.

chat.

Hey, podcast listener, you're not going to hear my audio for the rest of the episode.

It's because I'm loudly singing Blood Shack in the bathroom and Cecil has muted me.

So enjoy the show.

The feds were satisfied that the Weavers weren't aiming to kill Reagan, but they were also working hard to make inroads among the various white supremacist militia groups.

And Randy Weaver came back into their orbit when Randy met an undercover ATF agent at an Aryan nation meeting.

And here begins the first of several choose your own adventure moments.

According to the ATF guys, after several years of trying to make contact and build rapport with Randall, they succeeded.

And Randy offered to sell an undercover ATF agent named Gus a couple of sought-off shotguns.

Now, according to Randy, he was pretty much coerced, if not entrapped.

And I've actually listened to the audio from the wired car that Randy and Gus made their deal in.

It kind of feels like a little of both.

Very clearly, Randall needed some quick cash, but just as clearly, Gus is kind of pushing Randall to saw off the barrels of a couple of guns and sell them to him.

Now, regardless of the details, the pair settle on a deal to buy two modified shotguns for a total of $450.

Okay.

Hot take, or I don't know, reasonable take.

I think entrapment should be 100% legal.

Like, no,

not for like Reagan stuff, but for the stuff I care about.

Yes, thank you, Heath.

For example, Heath, will you sell me two sawed-off shotguns?

No.

Look at that.

My clever trap fell through.

Oh, my God.

It's the elaborate ruse.

Close one.

And hey, what's fair for middle-class white guys with no major financial issues is fair for all.

Elderly in the 90s taught us.

He said we could just use ourselves as stand-ins for all Americans.

$450.

That's it.

That's the whole crime that started the dominoes that will follow.

This is a deal worth less than $500 involving two, a couple of modified shotguns.

No matter our feelings here about the Weavers, there's just no arguing that there is some great criminal mastermind at work here or even like a lot of significant criminal intent.

It's like more like lazy criminal opportunism at the worst.

All right.

Well, sounds like Tom's about to explain to us that a home compound is basic safety.

So while we try to convince Tom that prepper white supremacists are as suspicious as medical science and computers that sound like people.

We'll take a quick break for some apropos of nothing.

I don't know that you made your side sound better there, young.

That's fair.

Randall Weaver.

Yeah.

Can I help you?

Sergeant Grayson Wilkins, FBI.

This is my junior junior agent, Craig Monders.

Yeah, hi.

I see.

Well, then, how can I help?

Oh, we got a call about some concerns.

Yeah, you mind if we come in?

If you must.

Wow.

Well, look at that fine painting.

Did you do that?

Yeah, sure did.

That is Adolf Hitler.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm a big fan.

Yeah.

Yikes.

I mean, I mean, nice.

Anyway, you had some plans to kill the president?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Nothing like that.

It won't be much president left over after the angels pour out the seven bowls in the apocalypse, anyway.

It's a waste of time.

Dude, what?

You know, I was just saying that to the wife the other day.

Yeah, listen, anyway, here's my gun room.

I got machine guns, rifles, handguns.

You know, everything you need to take down the mud races who rush my door hoping to take what's mine.

Come on.

Now, wait just a second.

Finally, thank you.

Did you saw down the barrel on this gun?

Oh, yeah, get out of the ground, you son of a bitch.

I feel like our standards are bad, right?

Not for your thing.

Give me one second, guys.

Let me use the bathroom.

Hey.

Dude, Eli, close the door.

Oh, so now we care about.

What are you talking about?

I saw your computer, Cecil.

You're not using ExpressVPN.

And if you're not using ExpressVPN, we might as well start shitting with the door open.

What do you mean?

Also, close the door, please.

No.

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All right.

Hey, man, thanks.

I'm going to leave, but just so you know, you're using the toilet wrong.

You're not supposed to be in the plow position?

No, you are not.

Honestly, the way you leave the place makes a lot of sense now.

Thank you.

That is not a compliment, by the way.

So what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic Valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

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And we're back.

When we left off, Tom Curry was a Fremen on the land or something.

What happened to those poor, innocent doomsday white supremacists next day, Tom?

All right, listen, Randall Weaver was in some trouble now with the feds, but I need to be very clear.

He was not in like a lot of trouble.

He was looking at a couple of gun charges, to be sure, but these were not like rot in prison for life kind of charges.

What the feds really wanted was for Randall to roll over on some of the top brass in these Aryan militia groups, but Randall wasn't having any of that.

Eating a couple of minor gun charges was not worth being a rat and catching a shiv for his troubles.

So Randall told the ATF guys to go fuck themselves, which they did not take kindly to.

He keeps telling them, I know nothing, nothing.

Which, given his kids' homeschooling curriculum, should have been an easy sell.

Now, Vicki was also unimpressed with the situation, and she promptly wrote a letter to a bunch of the Aryan Brotherhood types, warning them that the feds were onto them.

And then she filed an affidavit with the county clerk, basically saying that she believed they were going to need to arm themselves to defend their families from attacks by the U.S.

government on their own property, which would turn out to be exactly what happens.

Okay, whose side did she think the county clerk was going to be on this?

This lady is so weird.

So now Randy gets arrested.

He pleads not guilty and he's released on bond and on his own recognizance.

I mention this because it again shows that right now in this story, everyone understands something important.

These were not big charges.

This was not someone the government was like overly afraid of.

Randy returns home for his day in court and Vicki, Well, she gets busy writing a letter to the U.S.

Attorney for the state of Idaho, referring to them as the servant of the queen of of Babylon, and saying that we refuse to bow down to your evil commandments.

So she was being pretty chill about the whole thing.

I am the blood right to emissary to the queen of Babylon, and you shallest bow before me.

Love, Vicki, with an eye.

You kind of lose steam there at the end, Vicki.

All right, now remember I told you that Randy pissed off the ATF by not playing ball and rolling over on his Aryan brothers.

I'm not saying this next part is because of that anger, but I do find it

interesting.

A court date was set for February the 19th for Randall to appear to answer for his charges, but the letter that the court sent to Randall informing him of that date had the date of March 19th,

which is not the same day.

So unsurprisingly, February 19th rolls around and Randall isn't there at the courthouse, because of course he isn't.

But that triggers a bench warrant for Randall's immediate arrest.

I'm going to go ahead and assert that incompetence on the part of the county clerk in Boundary County, Idaho, county seat Bonners Ferry population 2,500

doesn't need a conspiracy to explain it.

Well, also, most people agree that all indications were that Randall was not planning on appearing in court.

even if he had known the date.

But I kind of think that's entirely beside the point because now the wheels of the crazy train were well and truly in motion.

The feds were intent on capturing Randall Weaver and bringing him to justice for failing to appear for a court date he wasn't notified of in order to answer to his minor league gun crimes.

But they also knew that he was living in a remote wilderness cabin with a 300-yard defensible kill zone leading up to the property.

Well, yeah, and apparently a sworn affidavit that just said, I'll kill a motherfucker love Vicki.

So the government, they had really here two choices.

They could chill out and just let things simmer down,

or

they could begin a many months-long, multi-million-dollar cross-agency surveillance and siege of the private property of a family, including children, in order to bring a man into justice who was recently released back into society on his own recognizance.

Okay, I feel like you're saying it's going to be the second thing.

And that's fucking crazy that he got released.

Why were they released?

Why did they release released him?

Man, the government sure does jump through a lot of hoops and they want to kill a white guy.

Let me tell you.

All right, so it is now the summer of 1991.

The feds were considering their choices.

Okay, well, so that he didn't go to the March court date either.

He did not.

No,

at first.

He was never going to go to that court date.

I want to be clear about that.

At first, they considered cutting off the Weaver family's water supply, but that's a war crime, so they decided not to do that.

It doesn't sound like our government to me.

He's a white guy.

He's a white guy.

Soft.

And they had then set up an elaborate series of cameras all around the property.

So they were watching the family and taking note of their habits and movements.

And the family knew they were being watched and that Randall was in real trouble.

So they were having all the food and supplies brought to them, and they rarely left the house and surrounding outbuildings.

I feel like if you're sieging a property, the first thing you do is stop the pizza guy, no?

Like, who's the pizza guy

one of those outbuildings was the shame shed for menstruating women and the feds figured that sarah the older sister would at some point end up taking her time in the shed at which point the other kids would have to bring her food and water and the like and the feds could then swoop in and nab the kids and use them to force the parents out of hiding the only trouble with that plan was that none of that was remotely legal none of it i don't think that's the only trouble with it

we can't just nab these kids what about a fishing pole with some candy on the end?

What do you think?

A box and a stick.

Here we are.

Here we are.

Haven't you even told us to

read that app that keeps track of this stuff so the government would know when to do their thing?

Now, the U.S.

Marshals, who have been running this portion of the operation today, they called in the FBI and the ATF.

The three agencies then told everyone working the case that Randall Weaver wasn't just a small-time seller of a pair of modified shotguns, but instead they insisted to everyone working the cases and the judges they were getting their warrants from that Randall was the number one gun trafficker in the United States.

Oh, wow.

Which we have to be very clear here.

He very much was not.

And they also told everyone he was wanted in a string of violent bank robberies, and he was not.

Nonetheless, the Secret Service then became involved.

Okay.

That's a lot of lying, but at least the arms dealer neo-Nazi got the due process of a court date.

It was the wrong one, but it was a court date.

That's a nice thing about the 90s as well.

Why?

And kidnapping children was illegal.

I'm feeling nostalgic.

Jesus.

Make America great again?

Jesus Christ.

You kids want some pogs.

Now, this now begins what amounts to the full-scale siege of the property.

This is a siege that Vicki did kind of foretell in her dreams.

The Weavers were very careful, sending the kids out anytime they needed to leave the house, armed, of course, to scout shit out since they knew the feds couldn't do shit to the kids.

Doesn't sound like anyone involved really cares about these kids much.

No, they don't.

Right?

Yeah, I guess the fucking homeschooling curriculum didn't include a definition of the term human shield.

Meanwhile, the task force overseeing capturing this guy with two gun charges, it involved helicopter surveillance, around-the-clock agents monitoring the property, and even wiretaps on the phone at the local general store since the Weavers didn't have their own phone.

Okay, sorry, just circling back, I'm not clear on how that scouting mission by the kids is helpful to the weavers the kids just like come back inside after scouting and they're like yeah this is a whole bunch of helicopters just they're holding newspapers but they're definitely government helicopters you can

you can go get milk now at the general store how how is that helpful i don't know

Now, this whole thing goes on for the better part of a year.

And now even Geraldo gets involved, flying around in a helicopter, taking pictures, fucking mustache blowing majestically in the wash of the helicopter blades.

He even claimed on live television that the helicopter he was in came under fire from the weavers, but it didn't.

And he was just being a drama llama liar because he's a giant piece of shit.

The siege lasted so long, in fact, that the weavers conceived and Vicki gave birth to a baby girl during the ordeal.

She gave birth, of course, in the birthing shed, which does, I guess, double duty with the shame shed.

Pretty much, this is a shed devoted to anytime someone might have to say the word vagina.

Okay, we're getting closer to the shame shed from my childhood.

I feel like Geraldo could milk this and, you know, maybe do a dramatically open the menstruation shanty on live television or something.

You know,

there's something in that.

The stage is now set.

The players know they're blocking.

And on August the 12th, 1992, the action really heats up.

Things start off as they had so many days days prior with federal marshals creeping about in the woods in the night on the weavers' property.

And at 4:30 a.m., a couple of agents must have made a little more noise than usual because the weavers' dogs heard them and started barking up a storm.

And of course, that means the weavers need to investigate.

The group splits up, and Kevin, the sort of adopted son, now in his 20s, and Sammy, the teenage boy, along with one of their dogs, heads toward the marshals who are now lying in wait in the woods.

Yeah, look, regardless of how deserved or undeserved any of this is, sneak around the property of a family clearly suffering from paranoid delusions sounds like a prank war-based strategy.

Yes!

All right, now, this is the second choose your own adventure moment, right?

So, one of two things happened next.

One account is that the federal agents announced themselves as federal marshals,

and the other account is that they did not do this, and instead they shot and killed the weaver's dog as it began to work its way toward the marshals.

Now, there's the cops I recognize.

Bomb Patrol.

Bomb Patrol.

This is correct.

Sammy, who again is a teenage boy, then fires toward the camouflaged Marshalls and is then himself shot, whereupon he turns to run and he is shot again, bravely in the back and killed.

Okay, now I found a third option.

I'm team dog.

who had to live with neonats.

It's not even a German Shepherd.

It's like they weren't in it to win it.

Kevin gets away, but not before he shoots and kills a federal marshal himself.

So the score is now tied one to one.

Sammy's 14-year-old kid body is left in the woods, which is terrorist kid body,

which is very upsetting for the Weaver family.

And the marshals later make up some nonsense about having been pinned down by sniper fire from the Weaver family for 12 hours.

Now, there is no evidence at all that this happened because that did not happen.

The FBI then sends out a hostage rescue team, but there's not really hostages.

What they do instead is they revise the rules of engagement.

Now, the rules of engagement for situations like this typically dictate that the government guys aren't allowed to shoot anyone unless they are in danger of being shot or hurt themselves.

Now, the new rewritten rules of engagement approved by the FBI meant that now the feds were allowed to shoot any adult that had a weapon regardless of the circumstances.

And one of the many snipers surrounding the Weaver compound gets wind of the new kill rules, and he is like very clearly into this.

This is Len Harucci.

And on Saturday, August the 22nd, he's looking down through the scope of his sniper rifle when he sees Randy, Kevin, and one of the daughters, Sarah, all leaving the compound to retrieve the body of the kid that was heroically shot in the back before.

The family gets the body and starts to head to the birthing shed to prepare it for burial when when Len takes his shot and hits Randy in the arm.

Yeah, the cops are shaking the kid's body back and forth in their teeth while the weavers are like, drop it.

She's like,

oh my God.

So everyone runs for cover and they try.

Everyone runs for cover.

They try to get back to the cabin.

Vicki is standing at the doorway holding her 10-month-old baby when a literal federal agent sharpshooter shoots Vicki in the head, supposedly by accident.

Though he also manages to hit Kevin, his intended target, when that same bullet exits Vicki's skull and punches into Kevin's chest.

It's called a twofer Tom.

God.

All right, so here I'm going to pause and tell the non-shooting audience how improbable this is.

200 yards for a sniper is an unbelievably short distance.

So like not only missing your target, but then hitting an entirely different person

and in the head, like, this is literally not a possible mistake for someone to have made.

That man straight up murdered a woman in the face as she held her baby in her arms.

And according to Antifa Tom over here, that makes them the bad guys.

Taxpayer bullets, it was important what they did.

I did not think anybody was going to be brave enough to step into the comedy retort portion of the notes that Tom left after the sentence that ends in like murdered a woman in the face while she held her baby.

And both Eli and Heath, I'm sorry, I doubted you.

Thank you.

Thanks,

you committed.

We chose our characters early before we read this part of the story.

Even more impossibly, the FBI claims they didn't know they killed Vicki.

Now, how could they have not known it?

She's going to be fine.

She's going to walk it off.

Rub some dirt on it, Vicki.

That's probably why she's laying on the ground.

She's probably rubbing some dirt,

taking a nap.

Now, how could they have not known this, you might wonder?

That's a good question.

They fucking knew.

Len shot her in the goddamn head with a sniper rifle, right?

But they claimed they didn't know they had killed her.

She said she had Jesus powers.

Maybe she has Jesus powers.

Give it three days.

These are the same people that also claimed that they didn't know that they had killed that kid before.

So there are now literally hundreds of cops of various stripes and varieties fucking everywhere.

And then they start smashing up all the outbuildings that lead up to the cabin in an effort to destabilize the famed 300-yard kill zone mentioned previously.

And they claim they only knew about the death of Sammy when they demolished the birthing shed and discovered his body.

But they are very clearly lying about that.

They fucking do.

Now, the hostage team is using loudspeakers to try to encourage the family to surrender.

But remember, the only one who has any charges here to surrender to, that's just Randall.

And he has a failure to appear and two minor gun charges.

Kevin is shot and in and out of consciousness.

Vicki is dead.

Sammy is dead.

Randy's been shot in the arm.

There's this goddamn dog dead.

And the birthing shed has been ruined.

And Tara's like, well, gonna menstruate in here.

Fuck you guys.

That's happening now.

Block eyes with me.

And then to add insult to injury, the negotiators start addressing their negotiations towards vicky who everyone is pretending not to know is fucking dead the swat team shows up with a whole new end times cultist crazy lady and try to replace her like a goldfish that dies on vacation

and again remember that the weavers don't even have a telephone and at this point they've been shot at like kind of a lot so how the hell are they even supposed to surrender or negotiate or communicate i i feel like you could at least try the white flags

Right.

Well, the FBI has a better idea, Noah.

What they do is they send in a robot with a telephone on it to make contact.

Except the robot they send in doesn't just have a telephone, but it is also outfitted with just like a big-ass machine gun on it.

Oh, God.

And as you might imagine, the Weavers decided against rushing out to grab the phone.

Stop doing 360 no scopes, Kyle.

They're not going to pick up the fucking phone and take the robot with the gun.

Oh, Randy agrees that he'll talk, but he wants wants to talk to this guy named bo grits oh real name that's not no lie no i love that bo grits with a z nonetheless

oh bo grits

Bo Gritz, like Randy, is also former Green Beret.

So Bo basically tells everyone that they've cornered him.

There it is.

They've quartered this guy who's highly trained, very resourceful very dangerous and so guys what the is your plan and the fbi and the rest of them basically just shrug and point at the robot with a machine gun on it and bow's not impressed but he agrees to help and he makes contact with randy okay

bow is allowed in the cabin and he sees

Bo Britz is allowed in the cabin and he sees the wounded Kevin, the dead mom,

clip-clock Tom, but an action hero, right?

That's what I'm picturing, and it's important that you picture it.

he brings the baby some infant formula since vicky is just like way too dead to breastfeed anymore and then he heads back out he tells the fbi guys about the dead mom and the injured 20 something and everyone pretends oh they're so surprised a big hole in her head just say well wow that could be anything really i guess

she have a cold kevin Kevin is in desperate shape.

He's been shot in the chest.

So he surrenders first and he's airlifted to a hospital.

They then allow Vicki's body to be taken and they release a few pet parakeets.

But Randy and his three daughters.

Fucking God.

Did I?

Jesus Christ.

But Randy and his three daughters are still hold up.

And it wasn't until a rather famous criminal lawyer made a public announcement that he would represent the family free of charge that Randall convinces his daughters, who, by the way, want to go down guns blazing in retaliation for their murdered mom and brother, convinces them to surrender peacefully uh randy and kevin end up catching all kinds of murder and conspiracy charges and there's a big giant trial trial and it lasts for months the jury deliberates for 20 days what and acquits kevin harris the guy who definitely did kill a federal agent of all charges randall weaver he was acquitted of all of the charges other than his failure to appear for the court date that he was summoned to on the wrong date wow so if you think about it he got off scot-free.

Exactly.

Lucky.

Square.

The Weaver family then turned around and sued the government because what the fuck?

And the government settled and the girls all got about a million dollars and Kevin got some money and so did Randall.

But most significantly, Ruby Ridge became the white Christian separatist and militia's Alamo.

It became a rallying cry that had echoes in Waco and motivated the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The Weaver family, at least the adults, are villains villains in life, to be sure.

But when the government violently goes after its own citizens, we accomplish nothing more than making more and bolder villains.

A lesson we are, it seems, itching to relearn.

And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, Tom, what would it be?

The business of martyr making is always booming.

And are you ready for the quiz?

I am indeed.

All right, Tom, what are the best-selling things allowed at the Aryan bake sale?

Oh, God.

A.

Swa sticky buns.

B.

Oh, no.

White sheetcake.

C.

Master Rice Pudding or D.

Blondies.

There it is.

It's got to be blondies.

You're correct.

Oh, amazing.

Amazing.

All right, Tom.

In defense of the ATF,

A, the whole idea of gun hoarding anti-government lunatics massing in flyover states states were still new and they hadn't figured out how much of sissies these people were when it came to actually doing anything about their convictions.

B,

some of us still believed we could have a world where those type of people weren't common enough to become a cliche.

C,

that lady could have used a baby as a weapon.

Jesus.

Or D,

the reveal in that movie based on this shit with Tim Roberts and Jeff Bridges makes no fucking sense if you think about it for more than no seconds.

Why would you assume he's going to drive to the garage?

And why would you be trying to like keep your fucking.

Oh, I don't even remember.

It's so dumb.

I don't even remember the name of the fucking movie.

You're doing a baby Bjorn.

It's obviously C.

That baby was C.

It is.

All right, Tom.

Weaponized baby.

All right, Tom.

I've learned a valuable lesson from today's story about government overreach and the costs of violence.

What is it?

A, don't leave any survivors and you get to keep your lie.

B, just like we did in Waco.

C, never mind.

We actually learned that lesson than we did in Waco.

Well, we did that Waco episode.

So obviously it is

B, like we did in Waco.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It is.

Nope, you're right.

Yeah, I'm supposed to be.

All right.

Tom, we all know God doesn't exist.

Except that.

Except when dogs die.

Yes, Yes, God does.

So that dog is in heaven.

Sure.

With that being established, what's the most common phrase heard by dogs from their sovereign citizen, neo-Nazi human?

Oh, God.

A,

sick, Semper Tyrannus.

B,

the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

They just say that a lot.

They say it a lot.

Just naturally, it's not a dog thing.

Or C.

Dog is peeing on a tree.

They say that every fucking time.

Possibly.

Or C,

who's a good proud boy?

C, who's a good proud boy?

That is correct.

Well done.

All right.

Well, Noah, you're the one who stumped Tom this week, which means you get to choose next week's essiest.

Sure, if you say so.

I would like a Cecil essay.

I've been too long.

All right.

All right.

Well, for Tom, Noah, Cecil, and Heath, I'm Eli Bosnik, thanking you for hanging out with us today.

We'll be back next week.

And by then, Cecil will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can listen to our podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you'd like to help keep the show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod

or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

How Jordan.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, don't do that.

Check out past episodes.

Connect with us on social media.

Don't do that.

Or check the show notes.

Be sure to check out citationpod.com.

You're going away for a long time, you piece of shit.

You're never gonna hurt anyone again.

Fed copper!

Finally, am I right?

Yeah,

turns out he had a bunch of unpaid parking tickets.

Sure.

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