Arrested Democracy, Pt. 2

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Speaker 15 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

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Speaker 26 Coolzone Media.

Speaker 26 When we left off last week, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III had been taken into custody outside the Monroe County Courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee.

Speaker 26 On April 1st, 2010, Fitzpatrick barged into a closed grand jury proceeding and attempted to place Monroe County County grand jury foreman Gary Petway under citizens' arrest.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Walter Fitzpatrick did not have the authority to draw up his own arrest warrants any more than a county court an hour south of Knoxville had the authority to indict the president on a federal crime.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Darren Huff, an oath keeper 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.

Speaker 34 You have been notified, you have been told Mr. Petway has just been placed under citizens' arrest.

Speaker 34 My name is Walter Fitzpatrick. I have just placed Mr.
Petway under citizens' arrest.

Speaker 28 You're going to have to step outside.

Speaker 26 But when the doors opened again, it was not Gary Petway who was being escorted out by the sheriff's deputies.

Speaker 26 It was Walter Fitzpatrick.

Speaker 35 We're leaving now, sir. Why?

Speaker 36 Because you just interrupted a court proceeding.

Speaker 36 The rest of us would get arrested for that. However, all of you think you're special.

Speaker 36 So now we're leaving the courthouse. And then what? And then you're free to go.
Otherwise, you're going to get arrested today.

Speaker 34 I'm free to come back in.

Speaker 35 No, sir.

Speaker 26 And he could have just left.

Speaker 26 As the deputy points out, he's kind of being treated with kid gloves here.

Speaker 26 He's already broken the law, but nobody really wants to deal with this old crank and his fan club.

Speaker 26 But instead of leaving, Fitzpatrick pivoted.

Speaker 26 Now he's placing the sheriff himself under arrest.

Speaker 26 In the audio recording, you can hear the deputy sigh dramatically as Fitzpatrick begins reading the officers their rights.

Speaker 26 And they realize that the only way Fitzpatrick is leaving the building is in handcuffs.

Speaker 26 Fitzpatrick was charged with interfering with a grand jury, resisting arrest, and inciting a riot.

Speaker 26 He was held in the county jail over the weekend, during which time he reportedly refused to eat or drink, and was offered a $1,500 bond on the condition that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Speaker 26 On April 7th, 2010, the day after Fitzpatrick was released, Darren Huff made the drive from his home in Georgia back up to Madisonville.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 They were coordinating with multiple groups to show up for what Huff called phase two.

Speaker 26 When Walter Fitzpatrick appeared for his court date on April 20th, he wasn't going to be alone.

Speaker 26 I'm Molly Conger, and this is Weird Little Guys.

Speaker 26 This episode is about Darren Huff. I mean, the last episode was supposed to be about Darren Huff.
That was the story I sat down to write in the first place.

Speaker 26 But my vague recollection of the story of some oath keeper with a harebrain scheme to citizens arrest an entire county court turned up something a little more complicated. That keeps happening.

Speaker 26 It turns out history is always a little messy. No one is really the sole protagonist in their own story.
Life doesn't really work that way.

Speaker 26 But if you listen to last week's episode, now you have some context for the baffling confidence Walter Fitzpatrick and Darren Huff seemed to have in their plan.

Speaker 26 They'd both been completely swept up in this nationwide right-wing mania of birtherism.

Speaker 26 The conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was ineligible to serve as the president of the United States because he had been born in Kenya.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 It was everywhere. Everyone from Chuck Norris to Donald Trump was asking, is Barack Obama a natural-born citizen of the United States?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman said she would proudly produce her own birth certificate.

Speaker 26 Alabama Senator Richard Shelby denied that he'd told a newspaper that he'd like to see Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 This wasn't something that existed only at the lunatic fringe of political discourse. Mainstream politicians and celebrities were just asking questions,

Speaker 26 never mind the kinds of things their supporters might do to try to get answers.

Speaker 26 So after an entire year of unsuccessfully petitioning his local county grand jury to bring charges against Barack Obama, Walter Fitzpatrick was frustrated.

Speaker 26 And when he barged into that courtroom on April 1st, 2010, oathkeeper Darren Huff and sovereign citizen Carl Swenson were among those waiting just outside.

Speaker 26 And after the tables were turned that day with this citizen's arrest turning into just a citizen getting arrested, Darren Huff and Carl Swenson vowed to return.

Speaker 26 Not just to support their friend at his next court date, but to carry out a bigger, better version of the plan.

Speaker 37 You who have been on the fence must get off of that fence, please.

Speaker 37 Go to the courthouse en masse. Demand justice.

Speaker 37 He is honoring his oath. To all of you out there who have taken that oath, I ask you right now to honor yours.
Get down there. get him out of jail and make sure that justice is served.

Speaker 37 My name is Carl Swenson.

Speaker 26 The call was put out. If you believe in the cause, if you believe in the Constitution,

Speaker 26 you must stand with Walter Fitzpatrick against the Monroe County courts.

Speaker 26 He was scheduled to appear on April 20th, and true patriots had an obligation to be there.

Speaker 26 Between Fitzpatrick's release on the 6th and his court date on the 20th, they had just two weeks to prepare.

Speaker 26 According to the court records, Darren Huff appeared in several videos about the events in Madisonville that were posted on Carl Swenson's website, riseupforamerica.com.

Speaker 26 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 may be lost to the sands of time.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 On April 15th, 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 But that evening, he wasn't making his usual jokes. He was deadly serious.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 She'd never heard of Walter Fitzpatrick, and she'd never been to Madisonville, Tennessee.

Speaker 26 She was the only teller at the counter.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 The conversation got so intense that another employee went to go get the manager, Shane.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Sometime in 2009, 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.

Speaker 26 So when another employee came to get him that night because Huff was making Erica uncomfortable, He probably wasn't surprised.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Huff told him it would be kind of hard to hold the camera because he planned to be, quote, on the front line with two AK-47s.

Speaker 26 He told the bank employees that they'd probably see him on the news next week.

Speaker 26 And as he was leaving, he told Erica, it was nice knowing you if I never see you again.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 So we have a fairly contemporaneous recollection of what was said.

Speaker 26 She relayed to Chief Breeden that Huff had told her that he was intending to travel to Madisonville, Tennessee on April 20th for Walter Fitzpatrick's court hearing, that he would be armed with AK-47s 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.

Speaker 26 And Darren Huff was found to be in possession of printed copies of those citizens' arrest warrants.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 She would have had no way of knowing any of that at the time if he hadn't told her himself.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Both Shane and Erica were, understandably, deeply unsettled by that interaction.

Speaker 26 Immediately 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.

Speaker 26 Shane'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.

Speaker 26 And by Monday, they'd met with FBI agents.

Speaker 26 And it was on Monday, April 19th, the day before the planned occupation of Madisonville, Tennessee, that an FBI agent knocked on Darren Huff's front door.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And Darren Huff voluntarily stepped out onto his front porch, and he chatted with the agent for about as long as it took him to finish a cigarette. It was a brief conversation.

Speaker 26 Agent Reed recalls that Huff was pretty open about his plan to drive to Tennessee in the morning. He said he'd have his Colt 45 on his hip and his AK-47 was in the truck.

Speaker 26 He freely volunteered to the agent that he was a member of both the Oath Keepers and the Georgia militia.

Speaker 26 He said that the plan was to execute citizens' arrest warrants and, quote, take back Madisonville.

Speaker 26 But that the group would not resort to violence unless they were provoked.

Speaker 26 When Darren Huff took the stand at his own trial, he recalled telling Agent Reed that evening that he'd love it if the FBI would be there in Madisonville.

Speaker 26 Again, remember last week that letter that Walter Fitzpatrick sent the police chief of Madisonville before all of this got started.

Speaker 26 He wasn't making threats,

Speaker 26 He was inviting the police to be part of his plan.

Speaker 26 And that's the same mindset Darren has here.

Speaker 26 He even gave the FBI agent his business card.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 But when he finished his cigarette, the conversation was over.

Speaker 26 Agent Reed had no reason to arrest him.

Speaker 26 Huff had expressed to him a plan to commit a federal crime. the one he would eventually be arrested for.

Speaker 26 But he hadn't actually done it yet.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 So Agent Reed left.

Speaker 26 But another agent stayed nearby all night, watching and waiting. for the truck to pull out of the driveway.

Speaker 26 Darren Huff was under FBI surveillance when he hit the road just before dawn on April 20th, 2010.

Speaker 26 At 6.15 a.m., he was observed crossing the state line. And just after 7 a.m., Tennessee State Trooper Michael Wilson followed Huff's truck as he took exit 60 off I-75 towards Madisonville.

Speaker 26 Whether or not Huff rolled through the stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp is a matter of some debate.

Speaker 26 But Trooper Wilson flashed his blue lights and pulled him over.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 But Trooper Wilson and Darren Huff spent over an hour together there on the shoulder of Tennessee Highway 68.

Speaker 26 When Huff was asked to step out of the vehicle, he had his Colt 45 on his hip.

Speaker 26 The officer unholstered the weapon, removed the magazine, checked the chamber, and put the weapon in his patrol car for safekeeping.

Speaker 26 Darren Huff produced a valid Georgia driver's license, but he didn't have his truck's registration on him.

Speaker 26 He assured the officer the gun was legal and handed him a piece of paper that he said was a gun carry permit.

Speaker 26 In his testimony, the trooper said the document looked, quote, very unprofessional, and he was concerned it might not be real.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And during that hour, while they were trying to sort it out, Darren Huff talked.

Speaker 26 He talked a lot. He ran his mouth the entire time.

Speaker 26 And the entire conversation was recorded on the officer's dash cam. which was connected to a microphone on his uniform.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 But occasionally, they ask some questions about how exactly the plan is going to work.

Speaker 26 And Darren's happy to explain because he's actually going to need their help.

Speaker 35 And then at that point, they would be placed into custody and, you know, turn this man over to you.

Speaker 38 I don't have handcuffs, you know, so I mean, we would need somebody like you guys there. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate you guys listening.

Speaker 26 Again, this is exactly like Fitzpatrick's letter to the police chief. He's telling the cops what they plan to do and trying to get them to be a part of it.

Speaker 26 The audio is a little fuzzy because they're standing on the side of the highway in the rain, but he wants the officers to agree to receive these prisoners once they've been citizens arrested.

Speaker 26 But that wasn't all. He was worried about a lot more than just the corrupt government in Monroe County, Tennessee.

Speaker 26 He shared his concerns about the Affordable Care Act, which had just been signed into law a few weeks earlier.

Speaker 26 Of course, he was upset that this was communism, obviously.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 38 Luke 10, 18, Jesus says, and I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

Speaker 38 The Greek translation for lightning is Barak.

Speaker 38 Now Jesus didn't speak Greek, he spoke Hebrew, so you can look it up in the Hebrew.

Speaker 13 It's still Barak, flat.

Speaker 26 And from heaven translates from Hebrew, U or O Bam.

Speaker 38 So Jesus said out of his own lips, I saw Satan as Barak Bama.

Speaker 26 He went on to explain that he was opposed to the war in the Middle East, though he notes that he does think, quote, Muslims suck, end quote.

Speaker 26 But also, 9-11 was an inside job.

Speaker 26 He tells the officers that they, who are all white men, are God's true chosen people, that Caucasians are the real Israelites, and biblical prophecy foretold the reestablishment of Israel in 1776.

Speaker 26 Remember last week when we touched briefly on Christian identity?

Speaker 26 That's what this is. Darren Huff is a self-proclaimed pastor in the Christian identity movement.

Speaker 26 He's standing there on the side of the highway, surrounded by cops, preaching Christian identity and trying to recruit them to the oath keepers.

Speaker 26 It remains very unclear to me why the trooper gave Huff his gun back, but he did.

Speaker 26 At 8.13 a.m., He handed Darren Huff a written warning, returned his Colt 45,

Speaker 26 and told him he was free to go.

Speaker 26 The men shook hands, and Huff thanked the officer, and he took a few steps back toward his truck before he stopped, turned around,

Speaker 26 and said,

Speaker 26 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 45.

Speaker 26 Ain't no government official going peacefully.

Speaker 26 And then he slid his Colt 45 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.

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Speaker 13 I couldn't even believe it was real.

Speaker 15 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Speaker 19 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 20 Kennedy was killed.

Speaker 21 Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 22 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 24 Drew Pinske, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 26 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 26 At five o'clock that morning, more than 50 police officers from multiple jurisdictions in and around Monroe County, Tennessee gathered for a briefing.

Speaker 26 There were FBI agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force and at least one representative from the Department of Homeland Security.

Speaker 26 They'd been monitoring the online chatter about Walter Fitzpatrick's hearing at the courthouse at 9 a.m.,

Speaker 26 and they were worried. The intelligence they had was that as many as 600 people might be on their way to Madisonville, Tennessee.

Speaker 26 They had undercovers stationed in nearby businesses and snipers on rooftops.

Speaker 26 One of those undercover officers was Mike Hall, the director of a regional violent crime task force in Tennessee.

Speaker 26 In plain clothes, he got a table at Donna's, a cafe a block from City Hall, where Fitzpatrick's supporters would be meeting for breakfast.

Speaker 26 And maybe the police should have known that they probably weren't expecting 600 armed militiamen if they knew that they had booked tables at at Donna's cafe.

Speaker 26 But that's neither here nor there.

Speaker 26 And by the time breakfast was over, barely 20 supporters were packed into the dining room, finishing their biscuits and coffee, as Darren Huff gave a rousing speech about taking his AK-47 down to the courthouse.

Speaker 26 Carl Swenson's dead website isn't exactly easy to navigate, so maybe the whole speech was there at some point.

Speaker 26 But I was only able to dig up an audio file of the first six minutes or so.

Speaker 26 And it's pretty inspiring stuff.

Speaker 35 So as a Christian, as Lieutenant Commander said, I'm chaplain for the Georgia militia. So I look at things a little bit differently.
And I look at them basically.

Speaker 35 And I told these guys and I tell everybody, I'm not a very smart guy.

Speaker 39 In fact, the only thing that I know about the Constitution are the first few amendments, those leave me the hell alone ones.

Speaker 35 That's what I know. And I know them well enough to say, you're wrong.

Speaker 39 You can't do this.

Speaker 26 Over the sound of clinking forks on plates, the Christian Identity Militia chaplain explains that they are preparing for spiritual war, that we are already in the end times as foretold in Revelations.

Speaker 26 See, the founding of the United States was biblical prophecy. God knew that in 1776, the 13 tribes of Israel would be called called back together as the 13 colonies.

Speaker 26 Yes, 13.

Speaker 26 I know it's 12, 12 tribes of Israel. You know it's 12.
But Darren is counting Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, separately. That's why he thinks it's 13.

Speaker 26 And I know that because he mentions Joseph's sons specifically.

Speaker 26 Because otherwise I might have assumed he was talking about something different.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And that usually boils down to a theory that Ashkenazi Jews are actually descended from a Turkic race called the Khazars.

Speaker 26 Christian identity guys really love this book from the 70s called The 13th Tribe, which makes the case for this theory.

Speaker 26 Honestly, please don't make me explain the Khazar hypothesis. Every time I see a guy posting about Khazars, I'm just not having a good time.

Speaker 26 But what Darren was saying might actually be weirder.

Speaker 29 Jacob went like this,

Speaker 35 and he blessed them the way God intended him to bless them.

Speaker 35 That crossing of the arms

Speaker 35 is on that flag. That's where that cross cross comes from.

Speaker 39 It has nothing to do with rednecks.

Speaker 34 It has nothing to do with the Confederacy.

Speaker 35 It has everything to do with God's chosen people.

Speaker 26 Now, this was a new one for me. I've never heard this one before.

Speaker 26 What he's saying here is that the Confederate flag symbolizes Jacob's blessing of Joseph's sons.

Speaker 26 I don't know what the A to B to C here is,

Speaker 26 but I guess the Confederacy was the 13th tribe of Israel. Honestly, I don't want to know.
I don't want to know. That way lies madness.

Speaker 26 So after his big speech, Darren Huff steps outside.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And Huff laments to this man that he wishes they had more people,

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And Darren Huff wasn't the only one who excused himself from the table after this speech.

Speaker 26 Carl Swenson, our sovereign citizen and the primary instigator of the online uproar calling people to Madisonville, had a phone call to make.

Speaker 40 All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here with my special guest, Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin, and his attorney, Paul Jensen.

Speaker 40 Colonel Lakin is the Army officer who has challenged the legitimacy of Barack Obama to act as Commander-in-Chief. Also with me is Dr.
Jerome Corsi. And going to Tennessee and Carl.

Speaker 40 Carl, you're on the air.

Speaker 26 That's right. It's Carl in Tennessee.
And he he was live on air with G. Gordon Liddy and Jerome Corsi.

Speaker 26 I have to admit I spent the better part of an afternoon chasing down this 15-year-old episode of Morning Talk Radio, so I am going to tell you about it.

Speaker 26 On April 12th, 2010, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin did not report for duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Speaker 26 Instead, he drove to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., where he was read his rights by his commanding officer, Colonel Gordon Ray Roberts.

Speaker 26 Lincoln's unit deployed to Afghanistan that week without him. The 18-year veteran wasn't afraid to return to Afghanistan.

Speaker 26 This deployment would have been the seventh of his career and his second to Afghanistan. In 2004, he was the Army's Flight Surgeon of the Year.

Speaker 26 He'd been awarded a Meritorious Service Medal and a Bronze Star.

Speaker 26 He was on track to be promoted to full colonel within the next year.

Speaker 26 But he had come to realize that his deployment orders were unlawful.

Speaker 26 Not on ideological grounds. He wasn't protesting the war.
He hadn't suddenly become a peace activist after seeing the horrors of war firsthand. No, no.

Speaker 26 The doctor was refusing to deploy unless he could see the president's birth certificate.

Speaker 13 I will disobey my orders to deploy because I, and I believe all servicemen and women, and the American people, deserve the truth about President Obama's constitutional eligibility to the office of the presidency and the commander-in-chief.

Speaker 26 A week after disobeying his orders, Lieutenant Colonel Laken appeared as a guest on the G. Gordon Liddy Show.

Speaker 26 Decades after dabbling at being an FBI agent, doing dirty tricks for Richard Dixon, and spending a little time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Liddy really hit his stride as an extremely right-wing talk radio host who regularly encouraged listeners to do things like shoot federal agents in the head.

Speaker 26 Robert Evans put out a staggering six-part series of episodes on G. Gordon Liddy on Behind the Bastards last year.

Speaker 26 So if you're interested in hearing some outrageously racist clips of Liddy's radio show, I believe those are in part six.

Speaker 26 But today we're just talking about one episode of the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the one that aired on April 20th, 2010, because that's the episode Carl Swenson called into during the second hour.

Speaker 26 In the first hour of the show, Liddy interviewed Colonel Laken and Laken's attorney, a California personal injury lawyer named Paul Jensen.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 The answer is unclear.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 In 2007, 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.

Speaker 26 And Jensen represented Stone in 2016 when he was sued over allegations that he'd been involved in a coordinated campaign of voter intimidation.

Speaker 26 It was Jensen who drafted the paperwork to incorporate Stop the Steal in 2016.

Speaker 26 So after this interview, G. Gordon Liddy opened the phones to hear from listeners on the subject of Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Speaker 26 Caller after caller thanked Colonel Lakin for his courage and shared their own theories about how they could finally get to the truth of Barack Obama's birth.

Speaker 26 And then,

Speaker 26 After an advertisement for gold coins, another birther called into the show.

Speaker 26 But this one wasn't just sitting idly by while Barack Obama pretended to be the president.

Speaker 41 Lieutenant Colonel, I want to thank you for everything you're doing, and I want to give you some encouragement here.

Speaker 41 I'm in the city of Madisonville, Tennessee, right now, in Monroe County, where they've had this area on lockdown with FBI,

Speaker 41 TBI, local police, and troopers, all because of Lieutenant Commander Walter Fitzpatrick and his his attempts to effect arrest using a criminal complaint against barack obama and the uh um nancy pelosi and in this case uh the grand jury members here in the uh town of madison tennessee uh people are gathering now but uh it is a it is a tenuous situation at best

Speaker 26 Carl closed the call by saying things were getting pretty heated out there in Tennessee, and everything they were doing was, quote, in direct support of the message being pushed by Colonel Lakin and Liddy himself.

Speaker 26 G. Gordon Liddy asked Carl to email the show's producer the video of Darren Huff's traffic stop so they could get that up on the website within the hour.

Speaker 26 The next caller, Julie in Texas, was very worried about her sons. They were active duty soldiers deployed overseas.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 I didn't listen to the rest of the episode. I don't know if they resolved that.

Speaker 26 But after Darren's rousing speech to the assembled supporters and Carl's bold statements on a national radio show, they both had to admit that nothing was going to happen that day.

Speaker 26 Their little crowd of 20 was outnumbered three to one by a very visible police presence.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Darren had a truck full of guns and was bragging about how he had 400 rounds for his AK-47, but they just didn't have the numbers to do anything that day.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 By the time Fitzpatrick's hearing was over, Darren was bored, he was tired, and he was ready to go home. So everybody just left.

Speaker 26 Nothing happened. Nobody got arrested.

Speaker 26 That night, Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes saw the video Carl Swenson posted online of Darren getting pulled over on his way to Madisonville.

Speaker 26 The truck says Oath Keepers all down one side in huge letters. You really can't miss it.
It's the official logo of the Oath Keepers.

Speaker 26 And Rhodes called Swenson immediately and demanded he take the video down. It was embarrassing.

Speaker 26 And within days, Rhodes himself showed up to speak with Darren Huff in person.

Speaker 26 He was furious.

Speaker 26 He demanded to know why Huff was so intent on making Madisonville the flashpoint.

Speaker 26 Now, Rhodes isn't the kind of guy who's actually concerned about there being a flashpoint. He wants one.
That's the whole idea, right? Eventually the militia will come into some kind of conflict.

Speaker 26 But this wasn't the one he wanted

Speaker 26 because he thought Darren's ideas were foolish and embarrassing. And he revoked Darren's oathkeeper's membership.

Speaker 26 Undeterred, though, Darren Huff returned to Tennessee a week later.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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 Loudoun County Sheriff Tim Guider and Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess as they were getting out of their cars.

Speaker 26 They were late for a meeting, so this conversation was short.

Speaker 26 But Huff asked Sheriff Guider if he'd be willing to arrest a fellow sheriff.

Speaker 26 At trial, Sheriff Guider 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.

Speaker 26 But

Speaker 26 yes, hypothetically, he did have the authority to arrest another sheriff.

Speaker 26 Darren Huff was trying to recruit law enforcement officers to assist with the plan.

Speaker 26 He wasn't giving up,

Speaker 26 but he was running out of time.

Speaker 26 Fitzpatrick's next hearing was scheduled for May 4th, and he needed to find a sheriff who would be there to take his prisoners into custody.

Speaker 26 He must not have had much success on the 28th, though, because two days later, on April 30th, He was back at it, driving around Tennessee looking for sheriffs who believed in the Constitution.

Speaker 26 He was up near Knoxville when he got pulled over.

Speaker 26 This time around,

Speaker 26 there's no debate about whether or not he ran a stop sign.

Speaker 26 This wasn't a traffic stop.

Speaker 26 There was a federal warrant for his arrest.

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Speaker 26 Darren Huff was charged with violating Title 18, Section 231, Subsection A2.

Speaker 26 And that's interesting.

Speaker 26 You probably don't believe me, but hang on a second.

Speaker 26 Section 231 is civil disorders, and it covers three separate crimes that don't really go together.

Speaker 26 A1 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.

Speaker 26 A2, which was Darren's crime, makes it illegal to transport a firearm or a bomb across state lines if you know or have reason to know that the gun or explosive device is going to be used in a civil disorder.

Speaker 26 And A3 makes it illegal to be in a cop's 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.

Speaker 26 But that's the one that's really gotten a workout in the last couple of years because it was used in hundreds of January 6th cases.

Speaker 26 But 18 USC 231A2 is

Speaker 26 uncommon.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And then maybe they'll tack on some kind of gun crime.

Speaker 26 And subsection A1 just doesn't make any sense at all. There's already a whole separate law that makes it a crime to distribute information about bomb making.

Speaker 26 And that one has a harsher penalty than this. So I don't know why we need this one at all.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And I still haven't, even after looking pretty hard.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 So this was the first time a court of appeals was examining this statute.

Speaker 26 But just because people don't get charged with this very often doesn't make it any less of a real law.

Speaker 26 And it does pretty well describe what he did

Speaker 26 because

Speaker 26 he didn't really do

Speaker 26 anything, did he?

Speaker 26 But they were really worried that he might,

Speaker 26 or at least they were worried that he would continue to create situations where someone else might.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 So some federal agent or prosecutor got creative and they found a crime. Because technically, yeah,

Speaker 26 he put guns in his truck and he drove to another state.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 So the intent is pretty clear. He told anyone within earshot for two weeks what he was going to do.

Speaker 26 He wanted to lead an armed mob onto the courthouse. He made videos about it.
He told his bank teller. He told a bunch of state troopers.
He gave a speech.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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 2016.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And I just told you how the trial ended. He was convicted by a jury, appealed unsuccessfully, and served a sentence.

Speaker 26 But this trial is really just so special. I mean, first of all, it went to trial.
That's pretty rare.

Speaker 26 In 2022, just 2.3%

Speaker 26 of people charged with federal crimes actually went to trial.

Speaker 26 But it's so much more than that. Darren Huff really,

Speaker 26 really wanted to be in the driver's seat when it came to his criminal defense.

Speaker 26 One thing you have to remember about Darren Huff is that he's got a little sovereign citizen in him.

Speaker 26 He seems at times to take issue with that label.

Speaker 26 But when he was asked how he felt about the gold fringe on the flag at his trial, he was very evasive.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And when they refused to file some of the more bizarre ones, he fired them. Or at least he tried to.

Speaker 26 In March of 2011, his public defender was begging him to consider the plea deal they were being offered.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And after months of bitter emails back and forth about, you know, we can't file stuff that you made up.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And during this brief period of time before a new public defender could be appointed, Darren files some of those motions he wanted. The ones he wrote,

Speaker 26 including one that just reads,

Speaker 26 Comes the defendant in the above entitled action, Darren Wesley Huff, and moves the court to clarify its position on the Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution.

Speaker 26 And when his second public defender was assigned, a man named Scott Greene, there were just three months to go before trial. And in those three months, he did his job.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And he seemed to be humoring his client when it came to some of his unique ideas about the law.

Speaker 26 But, like the attorneys before him, he wasn't willing to put his name on nonsense.

Speaker 26 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,

Speaker 26 Darren threatened to fire him, writing,

Speaker 26 If you do not have the courage or kahunas necessary to represent me, then please let me know.

Speaker 26 I think that's supposed to say kahones, but it says K-A-H-U-N-A-S, kahunas.

Speaker 26 Maybe that's a regional variation. He means balls.

Speaker 26 And that email is included in this bizarre 15-page document that he submitted to the court complaining about and trying to fire his lawyer.

Speaker 26 But he ends the document by saying, quote, Is the Second Amendment part of the Constitution? Yes or no? Wherefore, Darren Wesley Huff moves this court to dismiss the indictment against him.

Speaker 26 I don't really know where to start with that. That's that's really not how it works.

Speaker 26 And this lawyer tried to withdraw from the case, saying, you know, he doesn't want me to be his lawyer anymore. This is not working out.
I can't do this.

Speaker 26 And the judge said, no.

Speaker 26 They were too close to trial. They would just have to work it out because they're going to trial together.

Speaker 26 And Green really does seem to have done his best here.

Speaker 26 On the eve of the trial, he filed five separate documents, each one called Mr. Huff's special request.

Speaker 26 And they were sort of fanciful jury instructions.

Speaker 26 It probably will not surprise you that Mr. Green declined to continue working with Darren on his appeal.
And Darren's attitude did not improve once he was in federal prison.

Speaker 26 One email he sent his new lawyer, Mr. Gully, during the appeal, starts off by accusing Gully of withholding the trial transcripts, but they just hadn't been made yet.

Speaker 26 It takes a long time to produce those.

Speaker 26 But he writes to his lawyer:

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 You, sir, have made a mockery of the system that purports to provide me with effective assistance of counsel.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And then he threatens to have his attorney indicted, disbarred, and institutionalized.

Speaker 26 Mr. 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 When Fitzpatrick finally did get arraigned in Monroe County for that original April 1st attempt to arrest the grand jury foreman,

Speaker 26 it did not go well.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And so the judge turns to the clerk who's there on the courtroom and says, Miss Cook, Have you been levying war against the United States?

Speaker 26 And the clerk says, I don't think so, Your Honor.

Speaker 26 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?

Speaker 26 Is that what's going on here? Am I being mocked?

Speaker 26 And they just ignore him and continue the proceeding.

Speaker 26 I would have loved to have seen it.

Speaker 26 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 on the morning of April 20th outside Donna's cafe.

Speaker 26 Huff had a quiet conversation with someone about calling off the operation that day.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Carl Swenson's from Georgia, but I know Carl Swenson was driving a 2009 Honda Civic hybrid that day. Trust me, I checked.

Speaker 26 I've got a state trooper on tape calling in his plates when they saw him on the highway.

Speaker 26 And in his blog, Walter Fitzpatrick thanked, by 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.

Speaker 26 But we do know for sure

Speaker 26 that Bill Luhman, a Marine Corps veteran and crane operator from Waco, Georgia, was there that day.

Speaker 26 And you'd be a fool to believe Bill Lohman would walk as far as his own mailbox without a gun.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 A fellow member of the Georgia militia and the Oath Keepers.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 There were at least a dozen units around the state of this larger group calling itself the Georgia Militia.

Speaker 26 And his name does not appear in the court record for the four members of the Georgia militia who were arrested in 2011 for a plot that included plans to blow up the federal building in Atlanta and maybe murder government officials with Ricin.

Speaker 26 And just a side note, if you do try to Google Georgia white supremacist Ricin attack, the more recent result you'll get is for an unrelated white supremacist plot to carry out a biological terrorist attack.

Speaker 26 In that case, in 2017, a neo-Nazi had actually successfully created the deadly poison, but he accidentally exposed himself to it, so he showed up at the emergency room before he could actually hurt anybody else.

Speaker 26 But this is not that one. This is the one from 2011.
But again, Bill Lumen, nothing to do with the Ricin attacks, just the same militia.

Speaker 26 And I found an old event for a tea party picnic in North Carolina in 2013 that lists Luhmann as a speaker, and his title in the program is Constitutionalist Icon from Georgia.

Speaker 26 And he appeared on stage with such heroes of the Patriot movement as James Renwick Manship.

Speaker 26 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 6th riot as a sort of symbolic crossing the Delaware moment.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And Bill Luhmann is very much still around and active in the same kinds of conspiracy spaces. He posts give or take a hundred times a day, every day, on Trump's Truth Social platform.

Speaker 26 And all of his posts are in all caps. He starts every day by posting this message.

Speaker 26 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.
Semperfield, my fellow Marines.

Speaker 26 May America bless God again into our nation, our homes, and our hearts, heart emoji.

Speaker 26 Seriously, he posts that every morning. He's very committed.

Speaker 26 And he still thinks Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim. He still posts a lot about hanging people for treason.

Speaker 26 But the reasons have shifted. You know, COVID, Ukraine, election fraud, whatever.

Speaker 26 As I'm writing this, right now, he's still posting.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 His last post was a thread documenting the progress of his homemade banana nut bread.

Speaker 26 At the time of recording, I can report that he added cream cheese icing to it and it was, quote, stellar.

Speaker 26 He's pretty popular over there on Truth Social. He was even re-truthed last year by Donald Trump himself after posting some incoherent theory about stolen votes from the 2020 election.

Speaker 26 Well, he wasn't re-truthed. He was quote-truthed? Whatever the Truth Social equivalent of a quote tweet is.

Speaker 26 Lumen 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?

Speaker 26 And that must have been a huge day for Bill. The post went pretty viral.

Speaker 26 A lot of the keyboard warriors out here posting 17 memes a day about January 6th political prisoners absolutely still believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

Speaker 26 And Walter Fitzpatrick went on to try his whole citizen's arrest thing in neighboring McMinn County, too.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 She is still asking questions about Ilhan O'Marr and Kamala Harris.

Speaker 26 Fitzpatrick published a memoir last year about his quest for justice in his 1990 court-martial.

Speaker 26 I didn't read it. It's like 400 pages long.

Speaker 26 He's in his 70s now, and he still occasionally updates his blog, Jag Hunters.

Speaker 26 The most recent post is just a link to someone else's video, and it's just like a mind-numbing 30-minute mashup of clips.

Speaker 26 I can't even really explain it.

Speaker 26 It's like actual footage of Trump rallies mixed in with like MyPillow commercials, a TikTok video of someone doing the macarena, but the lyrics have been changed to be about Donald Trump.

Speaker 26 I don't know. I tapped out when it got to a clip of Russell Brand praying with Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 26 I guess what I'm getting at here is These guys don't go away.

Speaker 26 The cause of the day changes, whether it's 9-11 truth, birtherism, COVID denial, QAnon, stop the steal,

Speaker 26 but it's a lot of the same core ideas. And honestly, it's a lot of the same individual guys.

Speaker 26 In one newspaper photo of Walter Fitzpatrick outside of the courthouse after a hearing in McMinn County in 2014,

Speaker 26 the man standing next to him is Field McConnell.

Speaker 26 And Field McConnell is a former commercial airline pilot who retired in 2006 after refusing to submit to a neurological exam.

Speaker 26 He had become obsessed with the idea that 9-11 was an inside job and was convinced that Boeing had rigged all of their planes with explosives and they were planning an upcoming 9-11 style attack.

Speaker 26 In 2019, he got really into QAnon.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 The day I'm recording this, he was a guest on a podcast hosted by a small-scale QAnon influencer.

Speaker 26 I would tell you what they talked about, but it kind of sounded like he was calling in from the bottom of the ocean.

Speaker 26 This episode took me days longer to write than it should have.

Speaker 26 Because every new name I turned up in the comments on a 15-year-old blog post took me on some long, strange path that some character in this story had taken in the years since.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And on the back, there was a picture of a gun.

Speaker 26 So on cross-examination, Huff's defense attorney was trying to elicit testimony that would show the jury that those business cards were obviously a joke, that this was just his sense of humor.

Speaker 26 So he asked Darren about some shirts.

Speaker 26 And Darren gave the following answer.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 The first one that he had made me said, I am the god-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving, right-wing extremist the government warned you about.

Speaker 26 And the other one said,

Speaker 26 I finally made Homeland Security's potential domestic terrorist watchlist, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Speaker 26 Obviously, the point behind them was for humor, and they have been received as such.

Speaker 26 Another one that was one of my initial shirts said: patriotism is not a spectator sport.

Speaker 26 And then there's something that I have never seen in an official federal court transcript before.

Speaker 26 As this big bearded militiaman is describing his funny terrorism shirts, the court reporter types in parentheses:

Speaker 26 witness crying.

Speaker 26 She put it on the record that he cried.

Speaker 26 Weird Little Guys is a production of CoolZone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written, and recorded by me, Molly Conger.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.

Speaker 26 The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
You can email me at weirdlittleguyspodcast at gmail.com.

Speaker 26 I will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will not answer it.

Speaker 26 You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.

Speaker 26 Just don't post anything that's going to make you one of my weird little guys.

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Speaker 17 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.