November 21, 2024 • 63 mins
When Oath Keeper Darren Huff returned to Madisonville, Tennessee on April 20, 2010, he was planning to take control of the courthouse. It didn't quite work out that way. He didn't even see the inside of a courthouse until his own arrest a week later.
Sources:
https://www.politico.com/story/2010/04/army-birther-under-investigation-035823
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/army-birther-lakin-released-from-leavenworth/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/roger-stone-kristin-davis-robert-mueller/
https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/gan/press/2011/11-01-11.html
https://time.com/archive/6597707/the-secret-world-of-extreme-militias/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vaxxers-charge-followers-to-join-fake-anthony-fauci-grand-jury/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4382623/fitzpatrick-v-bivins/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/5092131/united-states-v-huff-tv1/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Call Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
When we left off last week, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick I
had been taken into custody outside the Monroe County Courthouse
in Madisonville, Tennessee, on April first, twenty ten. Fitzpatrick barged
into a closed grand jury proceeding and attempted to place
Monroe County grand Jury Foreman Gary Petway under citizen's arrest.
(00:28):
Fitzpatrick had written up his own arrest warrant, charging Petway
with obstruction of justice for his refusal to issue an
indictment against Barack Obama for treason. Walter Fitzpatrick did not
have the authority to draw up his own arrest warrants
any more than a county court in hour south of
Knoxville had the authority to indict the president on a
(00:49):
federal crime. But none of that really mattered to the
small crowd of supporters outside, who were sure that they
were closer than ever to arresting the president. Darren Huff,
an oathkeeper from Georgia, was among those supporters. He was
standing by with his video camera, hoping to capture Fitzpatrick's
(01:10):
victory against the corrupt county grand jury.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
You have been notified you've been told mister Petway has
just been placed under citizens arrest.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
My name is Walter Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I have just placed mister Petway under citizens arrest.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
But when the doors opened again, it was not Gary
Petway who was being escorted out by the Sheriff's deputies.
It was Walter Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
They were leaving those or why because you just interrupted
a court proceeding.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
The rest of us would get arrested for that. However,
all of you, thank you're special.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
So now we're leaving the courthouse and then what then
you're free to go Otherwise you're going to get arrested
to afree to come back in No.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Sir, and he could have just left.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
As the deputy points out, he's kind of being treated
with kid gloves here. He's already broken the law, but
nobody really wants to deal with this old crank and
his fan club.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But instead of leaving, Fitzpatrick pivoted.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Now he's placing the sheriff himself under arrest. In the
audio recording, you can hear the deputy sigh dramatically as
Fitzpatrick begins reading the officers their rights and they realize
that the only way Fitzpatrick is leaving the building is
in handcuffs.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Fitzpatrick was charged.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
With interfering with a grand jury, resisting arrest, and inciting
a riot. He was held in the county jail over
the weekend, during which time he reportedly refused to eat
or drink, and was offered a fifteen hundred dollars bond
on the condition that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation. On
April seven, the day after Fitzpatrick was released, Darren Huff
(03:03):
made the drive from his home in Georgia back up
to Madisonville. In a text message Huff sent a friend
on his way home that night, he said he'd spent
the day meeting with Fitzpatrick going over the plan. They
were coordinating with multiple groups to show up for what
Huff called Phase two. When Walter Fitzpatrick appeared for his
(03:25):
court date on April twentieth, he wasn't going to be alone.
I'm Molly Conger and this is weird, little guys. This
(03:52):
episode is about Darren Huff. I mean, the last episode
was supposed to be about Darren Huff. Was the story
I sat down to write in the first place, But
my vague recollection of the story of some oathkeeper with
a hair brain scheme to citizens arrest and entire county
court turned up something a little more complicated that keeps happening.
(04:16):
It turns out history is always a little messy. No
one is really the sole protagonist in their own story.
Life doesn't really work that way. But if you listened
to last week's episode, now you have some contexts for
the baffling confidence Walter Fitzpatrick and Darren Huff seemed to
have in their plan. They'd both been completely swept up
(04:39):
in this nationwide right wing mania of Birtherism, the conspiracy
theory that Barack Obama was ineligible to serve as the
president of the United States because he had been born
in Kenya. Walter Fitzpatrick as bizarre and disconnected from reality
as his ideas sound. Was far from the only American
who was barging in to a court clerk's office every
(05:01):
week to demand something be done about the president's acts
of treason.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It was everywhere.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Everyone from Chuck Norris to Donald Trump was asking is
Barack Obama a natural born citizen of.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
The United States.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Politicians like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich flirted
with the idea, walking right up to the line and
then claiming they'd misspoken or been misunderstood. Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle
Bachmann said she would proudly produce her own birth certificate.
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby denied that he'd told a newspaper
(05:42):
that he'd like to see Barack Obama's birth certificate. Missouri
Congressman Roy Blunt said he'd been taken out of context
after telling a reporter that there was no legitimate reason
for the president not to produce his birth certificate. This
wasn't something that existed only at the nic fringe of
political discourse. Mainstream politicians and celebrities were just asking questions,
(06:08):
never mind the kinds of things their supporters might do
to try to get answers. So, after an entire year
of unsuccessfully petitioning his local county grand jury to bring
charges against Barack Obama, Walter Fitzpatrick was frustrated, and when
he barged into that courtroom on April first, twenty ten,
(06:29):
both Keeper Darren Huff and Sovereign Citizen Carl Swenson were
among those waiting just outside, and after the tables were
turned that day with this citizen's arrest turning into just
a citizen getting arrested. Darren Huff and Carl Swenson vowed
to return not just to support their friend at his
(06:51):
next court date, but to carry out a bigger, better
version of the plan.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
You who have been on the fence must get off
of that fence. Please go to the courthouse in mass
and demand justice. 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
(07:21):
has served. My name is CARLS. Winston.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
The call was put out.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
If you believe in the cause, if you believe in
the constitution, you must stand with Walter Fitzpatrick against the
Monroe County courts. He was scheduled to appear on April twentieth,
and true patriots had an obligation to be there. Between
Fitzpatrick's release on the sixth and his court date on
the twentieth, they had just two weeks to prepare, according
(07:52):
to the court records. Darren Huff appeared in several videos
about the events in Madisonville that were posted on Carl
Swinson's website Rise Upfroamerica dot com. Archived pages of that
site do still exist, and I can read the text
on those pages, but the videos were all embedded with
flash Player. So Darren's calls to action maybe lost to
(08:15):
the sands of time. But we have some pretty solid
sources that can give us an idea of what was
on Darren's mind during those two weeks, because Darren Huff
has never once in his life shut his goddamn mouth.
On April fifteenth, Darren Huff stopped at the Chase Bank
(08:36):
in Hiram, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
He ran a.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Small business doing outdoor lighting, so he stopped by often
to deposit checks. According to Erica, the bank teller who
testified at his trial, most of the employees at the
branch knew him well enough to make friendly conversation, but
if she was working, he would wait in her line
even if another teller was free. But that evening he
(09:01):
wasn't making his usual jokes.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
He was deadly serious.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Erica testified that Huff just launched right into telling her
about Walter Fitzpatrick and his upcoming trial in Madisonville, Tennessee,
a situation she had no context, for she'd never heard
of Walter Fitzpatrick, and she'd never been to Madisonville, Tennessee.
She was the only teller at the counter. The bank
was about to close for the night, and suddenly this
(09:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
On Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
A conversation got so intense that another employee went to
go get the manager, Shane. In his testimony at trial,
Shane too said that Huff was a regular customer at
the bank, and over the years he'd gotten to know
him a bit. Sometime in two thousand and nine, Huff
got really political, and when he made small talk with
the bank tellers, it was usually about his anti government
(10:10):
beliefs and various conspiracy theories. So when another employee came
to get him that night because Huff was making Erica uncomfortable,
he probably wasn't surprised. He tried guiding the conversation back
to safer territory, asking Huff if he'd be taking his
video camera with him again on this trip, but the
(10:31):
response was an alarming one. Huff told him it would
be kind of hard to hold the camera because he
planned to be quote on the front line with two
Ak forty sevens. He told the bank employees that they'd
probably see him on the news next week, and as
he was leaving, he told Erica, it was nice knowing you.
(10:55):
If I never see you again. Not to get ahead
of myself, but do you want to jump ahead here
and say Darren Huff would later accuse those two bank
employees of lying under oath. Obviously, there's no proving what
was or wasn't said at the bank that evening, But
within hours of that interaction, Erica was on the phone
(11:16):
with Madisonville, Tennessee, Police Chief Greg Breeden, and he recorded
that phone call, so we have a fairly contemporaneous recollection
of what was said. She related to Chief Breeden that
Huff told her that he was intending to travel to Madisonville, Tennessee,
on April twentieth for Walter Fitzpatrick's court hearing, that he
(11:37):
would be armed with AK forty seven's and an anti
aircraft gun, that he would be with other militia members,
and that the group intended to carry out citizens arrests
of various local officials and seize control of the courthouse.
And Darren Huff was found to be in possession of
printed copies of those citizens arrest warrants, and he would
(12:00):
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 1 (12:10):
She would have had no way.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Of knowing any of that at the time if he
hadn't told her himself, and she's on tape reporting it
to the police long before she could have read anything
in the news or been coached by an FBI agent
to say these things. Both Shane and Erica were understandably
deeply unsettled by that interaction. Immediately after leaving work that evening,
(12:36):
Erica called a friend who worked in local government, who
helped her find the phone number for the Madisonville, Tennessee
Police Department. Jane's wife urged him to call their own
sheriff in Paulding County, Georgia, and by the end of
the night, both bank employees had shared their concerns with
the police and by Monday they'd met with FBI agents.
(12:57):
And it was on Monday, April nineteenth, the day before
the planned occupation of Madisonville, Tennessee, that an FBI agent
knocked on Darren Huff's front door. Supervisory Special Agent Charles Reid,
accompanied by a couple of deputies from the Paulding County
Sheriff's Office, just wanted to have a word with him,
(13:18):
and Darren Huff voluntarily stepped out onto his front porch
and he chatted with the agent for about as long
as it took him to finish a cigarette. It was
a brief conversation. Agent Reid recalls that Huff was pretty
open about his plan to drive to Tennessee in the morning.
He said he'd have his CULT forty five on his
hip and his AK forty seven was in the truck.
(13:41):
He freely volunteered to the agent that he was a
member of both the Oath Keepers and the Georgia Militia.
He said that the plan was to execute citizens, arrest warrants,
and quote take back Madisonville, but that the group would
not resort to violence unless they were provoked. When Darren
(14:02):
Huff took the stand at his own trial. He recalled,
telling Agent Read that evening that he'd love it if
the FBI would be there in Madisonville. Again, remember last
week that letter that Walter Fitzpatrick sent the police chief
of Madisonville before all of this got started. He wasn't
(14:22):
making threats. He was inviting the police to be part
of his plan. And that's the same mindset Darren has here.
He even gave the FBI agent his business card. I
had to double check here because Darren's business cards do
come up again later, but it sounds like the business
(14:44):
card he gave Agent Read the night before the big
day was just a normal business card, a real one
for his outdoor lighting business. It wasn't until after he
was arrested that he got new business cards printed that
said Darren Huff, right wing extremist and potential domestic terrorist.
(15:05):
But when he finished his cigarette, the conversation was over.
Agent Reid had no reason to arrest him. Huff had
expressed to him a plan to commit a federal crime,
the one he would eventually be arrested for, but he
hadn't actually done it yet. There was no federal crime
(15:26):
here until Darren Huff put his guns in the truck
and drove across the state line from Georgia into Tennessee
with the intent to engage in a little civil disorder.
So Agent Reid left, but another agent stayed nearby all night,
(15:46):
watching and waiting for the truck to pull out of
the driveway. Darren Huff was under FBI surveillance when he
hit the road just before dawn on April twentieth, twenty ten,
fifteen am, he was observed crossing the state line, and
just after seven am, Tennessee State Trooper Michael Wilson followed
(16:07):
Huff's truck as he took Exit sixty off I seventy
five towards Madisonville. Whether or not Huff rolled through the
stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp is
a matter of some debate, but Trooper Wilson flashed his
blue lights and pulled him over. This traffic stop ends
up being central to Huff's case on appeal, but it
(16:29):
isn't where he got arrested. He actually didn't even get
a ticket, but Trooper Wilson and Darren Huff spent over
an hour together there on the shoulder of Tennessee Highway
sixty eight. When Huff was asked to step out of
the vehicle. He had his CULT forty five on his hip.
The officer unholstered the weapon, removed the magazine, checked the chamber,
(16:51):
and put the weapon in his patrol car for safekeeping.
Darren Huff produced a valid Georgia driver's license, but he
didn't have his truck's registration on him. He assured the
officer that the gun was legal and handed him a
piece of paper that he said was a gun carry permit.
In his testimony, the troopers said the document looked quote,
(17:14):
very unprofessional, and he was concerned it might not be real.
He spent an hour going back and forth with Dispatch
about this strange document and was never able to verify
whether Huff actually had a valid carry permit for that gun.
And during that hour, while they were trying to sort
(17:36):
it out, Darren Huff talked. He talked a lot, He
ran his mouth the entire time, and the entire conversation
was recorded on the officer's dash cam, which was connected
to a microphone on his uniform. And in their conversation,
Darren explained his whole plan. They had arrest warrants for
(17:59):
the Grand jury reforman the district attorney, the sheriff, the judge,
Nancy Pelosi, et cetera. He recommended some YouTube videos the
officers should watch to learn more about Barack Obama's crimes,
and he told them they needed to be reading Walter
Fitzpatrick's blog. In the portions of this audio that I
could find, the officers seem to be playing along. They're
(18:22):
mostly just letting him talk without interruption, but occasionally they
asked some questions about how exactly the plan is going
to work, and Darren's happy to explain because he's actually
going to need their help.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
And then at that point they would be placed in
the custody and you know, turn this man over you.
I don't have handcuffs, right, you know, somebody we would
need somebody like you guys there. And I can't tell
you how much I appreciate you guys listening.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
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.
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
(19:13):
they've been citizens arrested. But that wasn't all. He was
worried about a lot more than just the corrupt government
in Monroe County, Tennessee. He shared his concerns about the
Affordable Care Act, which had just been signed into law.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
A few weeks earlier.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Of course, he was upset that this was communism, obviously,
but more importantly, he was very worried because this law
requires that all Americans be implanted with the mark of
the Beast. As foretold in Revelations.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Liek.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Ten eighteen, Jesus said, and I beheld Satan as lightning
fall from heaven. The Greek translation from lightning is barock.
Now jess didn't speak Greek. He spoke Hebrew, so you
can look it up into Hebrew. Still barack lat and
heaven translates from Hebrew. Who or oh bomber? So Jesus said,
(20:08):
out of his own lips, I saw Satan as work bomb.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
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, but also
nine to eleven was an inside job. 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
(20:39):
prophecy foretold the re establishment of Israel in seventeen seventy six.
Remember last week when we touched briefly on Christian identity,
That's what this is. Darren Huff is a self proclaimed
pastor in the Christian identity movement. He's standing there on
(21:00):
the side of the highway, surrounded by cops, preaching Christian
identity and trying to recruit them to.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
The oath Keepers.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It remains very unclear to me why the trooper gave
Huff his gun back, but he did. At eight thirteen am.
He handed Darren Huff a written warning, returned his COLT
forty five, and told him he was free to go.
The men shook hands and Huff thanked the officer and
(21:30):
he took a few steps back toward his truck before
he stopped turned around and said, let me pre warn you,
if enough of us show up today, we are going
to proceed forward in this citizen's arrest. That's why I
have my forty five. Ain't no government official going peacefully?
(21:52):
And then he slid his Colt forty five back into
his holster, climbed into his pickup truck that said oath
keepers all down one side, and drove the last few
miles into Madisonville, Tennessee. At five o'clock that morning, more
(22:21):
than fifty police officers from multiple jurisdictions in and around
Monroe County, Tennessee, gathered for a briefing. There were FBI
agents from the Joint Terrace and Task Force and at
least one representative from the Department of Homeland Security. They'd
been monitoring the online chatter about Walter Fitzpatrick's hearing at
the courthouse at nine am, and they were worried. The
(22:44):
intelligence they had was that as many as six hundred
people might be on their way to Madisonville, Tennessee. They
had undercovers stationed in nearby businesses and snipers on rooftops.
One of those undercover officers was Mike Hall, the director
of a regional violent crime task force in Tennessee. In
(23:06):
plain clothes, he got a table at Donna's in Cafe,
a block from City Hall, where Fitzpatrick's supporters would be
meeting for breakfast. And maybe the police should have known
that They probably weren't expecting six hundred armed militiamen if
they knew that they had booked tables at Donna's cafe.
But that's neither here nor there, And by the time
(23:28):
breakfast was over, barely twenty supporters were packed into the
dining room, finishing their biscuits and coffee as Darren Huff
gave a rousing speech about taking his AK forty seven
down to the courthouse. Carl Swinson's dead website isn't exactly
easy to navigate, so maybe the whole speech was there
(23:51):
at some point, but I was only able to dig
up an audio file of the first six minutes or so,
and it's pretty inspiring stuff.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
So as a Christians, 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, And
I told these guys, and I tell everybody, I'm not
a very smart guy. In fact, the only thing that
I know about the Constitution are the first few amendments.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Those leave me the hell alone ones.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
That's what I know, and I know them well enough
to say you're wrong.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
You can't do this.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Over the sound of clinking forks on plates the Christian
Identity militia. Chaplin explains that they are preparing for spiritual war,
that we were already in the end times, as we're
told in Revelations see the founding of the United States
was biblical prophecy. God knew that in seventeen seventy six
(24:50):
the thirteen tribes of Israel would be called back together
as the thirteen Colonies.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yes, at thirteen, I know.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It's twelve, twelve tribes of Israel.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
You know it's twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
But Darren is counting Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manassa separately,
and that's why he thinks it's thirteen. And I know
that because he mentions Joseph's sons specifically, because otherwise I
might have assumed he was talking about something different. We
don't need to get into the specifics here. But adherents
of Christian identity believe that they are the real Israelites,
(25:28):
so they have to explain the existence of actual Jews
some other way, and that usually boils down to a
theory that Ashkenazi Jews are actually descended from a Turkic
race called the Kasars. Christian identity guys really love this
book from the seventies called The Thirteenth Tribe, which makes
(25:50):
the case for this theory. Honestly, please don't make me
explain the Kazar hypothesis every time I see a guy
posting about Kasar's I'm just.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Not having a good time.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
But what Darren was saying might actually be weirder.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
Jacob went like this, he blessed them the way God
intended him to bless them. That crossing of the arms.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Is on that flag.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
That's where that.
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Cross comes from.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
It has nothing to do with rednecks. It has nothing
to do with the Confederacy.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
It has everything to do with God's shows people.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Now this was a new one for me. I've never
heard this one before. What he's saying here is that
the Confederate flag symbolizes Jacob's blessing of Joseph's sons. I
don't know what the aid to be to see here is,
but I guess the Confederacy was the thirteenth Tribe of Israel. Honestly,
(27:02):
I don't want to know. I don't want to know.
That way lies madness. So after his big speech, Darren
Huff steps outside Mike Hall, our undercover officer testified that
he overheard Huff's conversation with a man that he doesn't name,
but who, like Huff, was visibly armed, and Huff laments
(27:24):
to this man that he wishes they had more people,
saying quote, today would be a good day to do
it because it's raining and the police wouldn't expect them
to make a move in the rain. And Darren Huff
wasn't the only one who excused himself from the table
after this speech. Carl Swenson, our sovereign citizen and the
(27:46):
primary instigator of the online uproar calling people to Madisonville,
got a phone call to make.
Speaker 8 (27:54):
All right, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here with my special
guest lieuten of Colonel Terry Lagan and his toorney Paul Jensen.
Colonel Lincoln is the army officer who has challenged the
legitimacy of Barack Obama to act as commander in chief.
Also with me is doctor Jerome Corsy and going to
Tennessee and Carl, Carl, you're on the air.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
That's right, It's Carl and Tennessee And he was live
on air with g. Gordon Liddy and Jerome Corcy. I
have to admit I spent the better part of an
afternoon chasing down this fifteen year old episode of morning
Talk radio, so I am going to tell you about it.
(28:41):
On April twelfth, twenty ten, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Terry
Laken did not report for duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Instead,
he drove to the Pentagon in Washington, d C. Where
he was read his rights by his commanding officer, Colonel
Gordon Ray.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Roberts.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Unit deployed to Afghanistan that week without him. The eighteen
year veteran wasn't afraid to return to Afghanistan. This deployment
would have been the seventh of his career and his
second to Afghanistan. In two thousand and four, he was
the Army's Flight Surgeon of the year. He'd been awarded
a Meritorious Service Medal and a Bronze Star. He was
(29:22):
on track to be promoted to full colonel within the
next year. But he had come to realize that his
deployment orders were unlawful, not on ideological grounds. He wasn't
protesting the war. He hadn't suddenly become a peace activist
after seeing the horrors of war firsthand.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
No no, the doctor.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Was refusing to deploy unless he could see the president's
birth certificate.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
I will disobey my orders to deploy it because I
and I believe all servicemen and women and the American
people deserve the truth about President Obama's cont pituitional eligibility
to the Office of the Presidency and the commander in Chief.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
A week after disobeying his orders, Lieutenant Colonel Laken appeared
as a guest on The G. Gordon Liddy Show. Decades
after dabbling it being an FBI agent doing dirty tricks
for Richard Dixon and spending a little time in prison
for his role in the Watergate scandal, Lyddy really hit
his stride as an extremely right wing talk radio host
(30:28):
who regularly encouraged listeners to do things like shoot federal
agents in the head. Robert Evans put out a taggering
six part series of episodes on G. Gordon Liddy on
Behind the Bastards last year. So if you're interested in
hearing some outrageously racist clips of Liddy's radio show, I
(30:48):
believe those are in part six. But today we're just
talking about one episode of The G. Gordon Liddy Show,
the one that aired on April twentieth, twenty ten, because
that's the episode Carl Swenson called into during the second hour.
In the first hour of the show, Lyddy interviewed Colonel
Laken and Lacln's attorney, a California personal injury lawyer named
(31:11):
Paul Jensen. You might be wondering why an army officer
facing a court martial would hire a civilian personal injury lawyer,
And that's a great question. The answer is unclear. In
my experience, conspiracy theorists and extremists tend to hire attorneys
who share their beliefs rather than ones who have, say,
(31:35):
relevant experience in a particular area of law. But in
this case, it seems very worth mentioning that Paul Jensen
was a longtime associate of friend to and occasional attorney
for Roger Stone. In two thousand and seven, it was
Paul Jensen, acting as Stone's attorney, who publicly released a
(31:59):
copy of a left the pair claimed they had sent
to the FBI about Elliot Spitzer's alleged habit of wearing
nothing but long black socks during his liaisons with sex workers.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
And Jensen represented.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Stone in twenty sixteen when he was sued over allegations
that he had been involved in a coordinated campaign of
voter intimidation. It was Jensen who drafted the paperwork to
incorporate Stop the Steel in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So after this interview, G.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Gordon Liddy opened the phones to hear from listeners on
the subject of Barack Obama's birth certificate. Caller after caller
thanked Colonel Laken for his courage and shared their own
theories about how they could finally get to the truth
of Barack Obama's birth. And then, after an advertisement for
gold coins, another berther called into the show, but this
(32:54):
one wasn't just sitting idly by while Barack Obama pretended
to be the president.
Speaker 7 (33:02):
Lieutenant Colonel, I want to thank you for everything you're
doing and I want to give you some encouragement. Here.
I'm in the city of Madisonville, Tennessee right now in
Monroe County, where they've had this area on lockdown with FBI, TDI,
local police and troopers all because of Lieutenant Commander Walter
Fitzpatrick and his attempts to affect arrest using a criminal
(33:26):
complaint against Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. And in this case,
the grand jury members here in the town of Madison, Tennessee.
People are gathering now, but it is a tenuous situation
at best.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Carl closed the call by saying things were getting pretty
heated out there in Tennessee, and everything they were doing
was quote indirect support of the message being pushed by
Colonel Laken and Lyddy himself. G Gordon lyly 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. The next caller, Julian Texas, was
(34:10):
very worried about her sons. They were active duty soldiers
deployd overseas. She wasn't worried about them being in the war.
She was worried that because their deployment orders had been
issued by a false president, that they could ultimately be
liable for war crimes. I didn't listen to the rest
of the episode. I don't know if they resolved that,
(34:33):
but after Darren's rousing speech to the assembled supporters and
Carl's bold statements on a national radio show, they both
had to admit that nothing was going to happen that day.
Their little crowd of twenty was outnumbered three to one
by a very visible police presence, and according to Walter
Fitzpatrick's blog, a fair number of those supporters who turned
(34:56):
up were middle aged women, one of whom brought several
mo her children with her. Darren had a truck full
of guns and was bragging about how he had four
hundred rounds for his AK forty seven, but they just
didn't have the numbers to do anything that day. The
only time anybody actually got close to the courthouse was
when Darren huffed took a bag of biscuits over to
(35:18):
a detective on the courthouse steps. By the time Fitzpatrick's
hearing was over, Darren was bored, he was tired, and
he's ready to go home. So everybody just left. Nothing happened,
Nobody got arrested.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
That night.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes saw the video Carl Swinson
posted online of Darren getting pulled over on his way
to Madisonville. The truck says oath Keepers all down one
side and huge letters. You really can't miss it. It's
the official logo of the Oath Keepers, and Rhodes called
Swinson immediately and demand did he take the video down.
(36:02):
It was embarrassing, and within days Rhodes himself showed up
to speak with Darren Huff in person.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
He was furious.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
He demanded to know why Huff was so intent on
making Madisonville the flash point. Now, Rhodes isn't the kind
of guy who's actually concerned about their.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Being a flash point. He wants one.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
That's the whole idea, right, Eventually the militia will come
into some kind of conflict. But this wasn't the one
he wanted because he thought Darren's ideas were foolish and embarrassing,
and he revoked Darren's Oathkeeper's membership undeterred though Darren Huff
returned to Tennessee a week later. He had a paper
(36:50):
map of the state of Tennessee, and he'd circled the
location of the sheriff's offices in every county within a
two hour drive of Madisonville. It's not clear how many
sheriffs he actually managed to speak with, but when he
pulled into a parking lot at a county office building
in Lenore City, Tennessee, he happened to come across Louden
(37:10):
County Sheriff Tim Geider and Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess
as they were getting out of their cars. They relate
for a meeting, so this conversation was short. But Huff
asked Sheriff Geiter if he'd be willing to arrest a
fellow sheriff.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
At trial.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Sheriff Guiter couldn't really remember much about this brief interaction,
but he said he probably told this stranger in a
parking lot that he'd need to know more about a
situation like that in order to make a determination. But yes,
hypothetically he did have the authority to arrest another sheriff.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Darren.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Huff was trying to recruit law enforcement officers to assist
with the plan. He wasn't giving up, but he was
running out of time. Fitzpatrick's next hearing was scheduled for
May fourth, and he needed to find a sheriff who
would be there to take his prisoners into custody. He
(38:12):
must not have had much success on the twenty eighth, though,
because two days later, on April thirtieth, he was back
at it, driving around Tennessee looking for sheriffs who believed
in the constitution. He was up near Knoxville, when he
got pulled over. This time around, there's no debate about
whether or not he ran a stop sign.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
This wasn't a traffic stop. There was a federal.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Warrant for his arrest. Darren Huff was charged with violating
Title eighteen, Section two thirty one sub section A two.
(39:02):
And that's interesting. You probably don't believe me, but hang
on a second. Section two thirty one is civil disorders,
and it covers three separate crimes that don't really go together.
A one makes it a crime to teach someone else
how to make or use a gun or a bomb
(39:23):
if you know or have reason to know that they'll
use that information in furtherance of a civil disorder. A two,
which was Darren's crime, makes it illegal to transport a
firearm or a bomb across 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.
(39:45):
And A three makes it illegal to be in a
cops way during a civil disorder. So that one doesn't
really belong right. The first two are about guns and bombs,
and the third one is just about annoying. But that's
the one that's really gotten to work out in the
last couple of years because it was used in hundreds
(40:07):
of January six cases. But eighteen USC. Two thirty one
A two is uncommon. I mean, people get charged for
doing this kind of thing, but usually they get charged
with conspiracy to do whatever it was they were going
to do when they got where they were going, and
(40:28):
then maybe they'll tack on some kind of gun crime.
And Subsection A one just doesn't make any sense at all.
There's already a whole separate law that makes it a
crime to distribute information about bombmaking, and that one has
a harsher penalty than this, So I don't know why
we need this one at all. So I was confused
by this choice of statute, and I couldn't think of
(40:51):
any place I'd ever seen this statute before. And it
turns out that's because I hadn't seen it before, and
I still haven't even after looking pretty hard. When Darren
Huff appealed his conviction, it was noted in the appellate
record that this particular statute had actually never been construed
(41:12):
by an appellate court before, so this was the first
time a court of appeals was examining this statute. But
Just because people don't get charged with this very often
doesn't make it any less.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Of a real law.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
And it does pretty well describe what he did because
he didn't really do anything, did he, But they were
really worried that he might, or at least they were
worried that he would continue to create situations where someone
else might because if you get enough anxious people with
(41:50):
guns together enough times, eventually something is going to go
wrong in a way that escalates pretty quickly. So some
federal agent or prosecutor got creative and they found a
crime because technically, yeah, he put guns in his truck
(42:10):
and he drove to another state. And when he was
doing it, the plan that he had in his mind
was that he was going to have that gun around
in case the county judge didn't appreciate him barging into
her courtroom. So the intent is pretty clear. He told
anyone within earshot for two weeks what he was going
(42:33):
to do. He wanted to lead an armed mom onto
the courthouse. He made videos about it, He told his
bank teller, he told a bunch of state troopers, he
gave a speech, And you don't actually have to end
up carrying out the plan. To be guilty of showing
up to the plan with a gun, and in the end,
(42:54):
a jury agreed. They found Darren Huff guilty of interstate
transportation of a firearm with the intention to use it
unlawfully in furtherance of a civil disorder. The Sixth Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, and Darren had already
completed his four year sentence by the time the Supreme
Court declined to hear the case in twenty sixteen. Now,
(43:16):
normally that's all I would really have to say about
a criminal case. We already talked all the way through
the actual timeline of events, so you already know what happened,
and I just told you how the trial ended. He
was convicted by a jury, appealed unsuccessfully, and served a sentence.
But this trial is really just so special. I mean,
(43:38):
first of all, it went to trial. That's pretty rare.
In twenty twenty two, just two point three percent of
people charged with federal crimes actually went to trial.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
But it's so much more than that.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Darren Huff really really wanted to be in the driver's
seat when it came to his criminal defense. One thing
you have to remember about Darren huff is that he's
got a little sovereign citizen in him. He seems at
times to take issue with that label. But when he
was asked how he felt about the gold fringe on
(44:15):
the flag at his trial, he was very evasive, And
in the year and a half between his arrest and
his trial, he kept insisting that his public defenders file
motions based on legal arguments that he had invented, and
when they refused to file some of the more bizarre ones,
(44:36):
he fired them releast he tried to. In March of
twenty eleven, his public defender was begging him to consider
the plea deal they were being offered, explaining over and
over again that it was the best deal he was
going to get, and the motions he was drafting on
his own just don't have any basis in the law,
and they have no legal merit, and they really seemed
(44:59):
to trying to explain to him that you can't just
file how you feel. There has to be case law,
It has to be based in something. And after months
of bitter emails back and forth about you know, we
can't file stuff that you made up, and Darren's accusing
them of working against him, and the original public defenders
(45:22):
file a motion to withdraw, saying that the relationship has
soured irreparably and they can't continue. And during this brief
period of time before a new public defender could be appointed,
Darren files some of those motions he wanted, the ones
he wrote, including one that just reads comes the defendant
(45:44):
in the above entitled action, Darren Wesley huff And moves
the court to clarify its position on the Second Amendment
US Constitution. And when his second public defender was assigned,
a man named Scott Green, there were just three months
to go before trial, and in those three months he
did his job. He filed motions to suppress the statements
(46:07):
Darren made during the traffic stop, motions to prevent the
prosecution from bringing up his extremist beliefs, the kinds of
things you'd expect to see. And he seemed to be
humoring his client when it came to some of his
unique ideas about the law. But like the attorneys before him,
he wasn't willing to put his name on nonsense. And
(46:30):
after another round of these emails back and forth, where
this exasperated attorney is trying to explain to him, that
motions have to be based on the law. Darren threatened
to fire him, writing if you do not have the
courage or kahunahs necessary to represent me, then please let
me know. I think that's supposed to say kahones, but
(46:53):
it says kah u ANDAs cohunas. Maybe that's a regional variation.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
He meets balls.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And then email is included in this bizarre fifteen page
document that he submitted to the court complaining about and
trying to fire his lawyer. But he ends the document
by saying, quote, is the Second Amendment part of the Constitution?
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yes or no?
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Wherefore Darren Wesley Huff moves this court to dismiss the
indictment against him. I don't really know where to start
with that. That's really not how it works. 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. He can't do this, and the
(47:42):
judge said no, they were too close to trial. They
would just have to work it out because they're going
to trial together. And Green really does seem to have
done his best here. On the eve of the trial,
he filed five separate documents, each one called mister Huff's
(48:02):
special request, and they were sort of fanciful jury instructions.
It probably will not surprise you that mister Green declined
to continue working with Darren on his appeal, and Darren's
attitude did not improve once he was in federal prison.
One email he sent his new lawyer, mister Gully during
(48:24):
the appeal starts off by accusing Gully of withholding the
trial transcripts. But they just hadn't been made yet. It
takes a long time to produce those, but he writes
to his lawyer, I am thus left to wonder whether
you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or
if you possibly received your degree from a remedial online school,
(48:46):
or that you simply take me for a fool. You, sir,
have made a mockery of the system that purports to
provide me with effective assistance of counsel. Later, in the
same email, he explains to his lawyer that the government
can't charge him with a gun crime because he exists
outside of the federal government's jurisdiction on such matters, and
(49:08):
then he threatens to have his attorney indicted, disbarred, and institutionalized.
Mister Gully's response to this letter doesn't seem to be
in the appellate record, but from what I can see,
he did the best he could with a losing case.
We'd be doing episodes about Walter Fitzpatrick and his entourage
(49:30):
for weeks if I told you every weird thing that
I found. But I can't resist just a few more,
if you'll indulge me. When Fitzpatrick finally did get arraigned
in Monroe County for that original April first attempt to
arrest the grand jury foreman, it did not go well.
(49:50):
The judge that he'd accused of treason was presiding, and
as she's flipping through the exhibits, sort of glancing over
the paperwork and the citizens erect Warrens, she noted that
the court clerk, miss Cook, was accused by Fitzpatrick of
some pretty serious crimes. And so the judge turns to
(50:10):
the clerk who's there in the courtroom, and says, miss Cook,
have you been levying war against the United States? And
the clerk says, I don't think so, your honor, And
I wish that I had an audio recording of this.
I just have the transcript but Fitzpatrick is having a
(50:31):
lot of outbursts during this hearing, and at this point
he says, are you making fun of me? Is that
what's going on here? Am I being mocked? And they
just ignore him and continue the proceeding. I would have
loved to have seen it, and I wish the officer
who testified at a Huff's trial had been more specific
(50:55):
about exactly who it was that he overheard Darren Huff
talking to. In the morning of April twentieth, outside Donna's Cafe,
Huff had a quiet conversation with someone about calling off
the operation that day. The officer did mention that Huff
was speaking to a man with a revolver on his hip,
and that the man had gotten out of a pt
(51:16):
cruiser with Georgia license plates.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
Carl Swenson's from Georgia.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
But I know Carl Swenson was driving a two thousand
and nine Honda Civic Hybrid that day, trust me, I checked.
I have got a state trooper on tape calling in
his plates when they saw him on the highway. And
in his blog, Walter Fitzpatrick thanked by name most of
the people who showed up there that day and most
of them were women, and very few of them were
(51:44):
from Georgia. But we do know for sure that Bill Luhman,
a Marine Corps veteran and crane operator from Waco, Georgia,
was there that day. And you'd be a fool to
believe Bill Lowman would walk as far as his own
mailbox without a gun. So if I had to put
(52:04):
money on it, I think the person Darren Huff was
making tactical decisions with was the same man who'd accompanied
him to Walter's house two weeks earlier when they put
this whole plan together, a fellow member of the Georgia
Militia and the Oathkeepers. Now, my main wheelhouse is not
(52:27):
the Militia movement, so I can't say I'm surprised. I'd
never heard of Bill Luhman before, and I didn't have
any real prior knowledge about the Georgia Militia. But in
some old blog posts Luhman is referred to as a
leader in the Georgia Militia. That may have just been
his local chapter. There were at least a dozen units
around the state of this larger group calling itself the
(52:50):
Georgia Militia, and his name does not appear in the
court record for the four members of the Georgia Militia
who were arrested in twenty eleven for a plot that
included plans to blow up the Federal building in Atlanta
and maybe murder government officials with Risin. And just a
(53:12):
side note, if you do try to google Georgia white
supremacist rice In attack, the more recent result you'll get
is for an unrelated white supremacist plot to carry out
a biological terrorist attack. In that case, in twenty seventeen,
a neo Nazi had actually successfully created the deadly poison,
(53:35):
but he accidentally exposed himself to it, so he showed
up at the emergency room before he could actually hurt
anybody else. But this is not that one. This is
the one from twenty eleven. But again, Bill Luhman nothing
to do with the rice In attacks, just the same militia.
And I found an old event for a tea party
(53:57):
picnic in North Carolina in twenty thirteen that list. Luman
is a speaker and his title in the program is
Constitutionalist icon from Georgia, and he appeared on stage with
such heroes of the patriot movement as James Renwick. Manship
that name is not familiar to you, I'm sure, but
(54:18):
you might remember the photo of the guy in the
George Washington costume wading into the reflecting pool at the
Capitol during the January sixth riot as a sort of
symbolic crossing the Delaware moment. But my favorite Manship moment
is the time he showed up at my local library
dressed as Thomas Jefferson and refused to break character as
(54:42):
he ranted in the first person about how he never
had sexual relations with enslaved women. And Bill Luman is
very much still around and active in the same kinds
of conspiracy spaces. He posts, give or take one hundred
times a day every day on Trump's Truth social platform,
(55:06):
and all of his posts are in all caps. He
starts every day by posting this message, good morning patriots
and grassroots warriors that are standing up for our constitution
and precious way of life. Good morning to all veterans
that serve honorably sempify my fellow marines. May America bless
God again into our nation, our homes, and our heart's
(55:30):
heart emoji. Seriously, he posts that every morning. He's very
committed and he still thinks Barack Obama is a Kenyan
born Muslim. He still posts a lot about hanging people
for treason, but the reasons have shifted, you know, COVID, Ukraine,
election fraud whatever. As I'm writing this right now, he's
(55:56):
still posting. He posted a picture of a marine shaking
hands with the dog, and there was a post this
evening that was a screenshot from Braveheart with the text
confirm Matt Gates or else written over mel Gibson's face.
His last post was a thread documenting the progress of
his homemade banana upbread. At the time of recording, I
(56:19):
can report that he added cream cheese icing to it
and it was quote stellar. He's pretty popular over their
own truth social He was even retruthed last year by
Donald Trump himself after posting some incoherent theory about stolen
votes from the twenty twenty election. Well, he wasn't retruthed,
(56:39):
he was quote truthed.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Whatever.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
The truth social equivalent of a quote tweet is Lumann
had suggested that the people responsible for the dominion voting
machines should be tried for treason, and Trump quoted the post,
adding a lot has been made of this lately.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
What do you think.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
And that must have been a huge day for Bill.
The post went pretty viral, a lot of the keyboard
warriors out here posting seventeen memes a day about January six.
Political prisoners absolutely still believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya,
and Walter Fitzpatrick went on to try his whole citizens
(57:19):
arrest thing in neighboring McMinn County too. He was eventually
convicted of perjury and extortion there, as well as getting
some more charges in Monroe County after he stole the
grand jury roles. Those stolen documents were located by the
FBI in the Connecticut home of Sharon Rondeau, the conspiracy
(57:41):
theory blogger whose commitment to questioning the citizenship of politicians
has remained strong over the years. She is still asking
questions about Ilhan Omar and Kamala Harris. Fitzpatrick published a
memoir last year about his quest for justice in his
nineteen ninety four Marshall. I didn't read it. It's like
(58:03):
four hundred pages long. He's in his seventies now and
he still occasionally updates his blog, jag Hunters. The most
recent post is just a link to someone else's video
and it's just like a mind numbing thirty minute mashup
of clips.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I can't even really explain it.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
It's like actual footage of Trump rallies mixed in with
like myplow commercials, a TikTok video of someone doing the macarena,
but the lyrics have been changed to be about Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (58:36):
I don't know. I tapped out when it got.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
To a clip of Russell Brand praying with Tucker Carlson.
I guess what I'm getting at here is these guys
don't go away. The cause of the day changes, whether
it's nine to eleven truth, eartherism, COVID, denial, q Andon,
stop the Steal. But it's a lot of the same
core ideas, and it's a lot of the same individual guise.
(59:05):
In one newspaper photo of Walter Fitzpatrick outside of the
courthouse after a hearing in McMinn County in twenty fourteen,
the man standing next to him is Field McConnell. And
Field McConnell is a former commercial airline pilot who retired
in two thousand and six after refusing to submit to
a neurological exam. He had become obsessed with the idea
(59:29):
that nine to eleven was an inside job, and was
convinced that Boeing had rigged all of their planes with
explosives and they were planning an upcoming nine to eleven
style attack. In twenty nineteen, he got really into QAnon.
An attorney in Florida who represents the family of a
missing child had to get a restraining order against him
(59:49):
after he made a series of YouTube videos threatening to
kill her and accusing her of having trafficked the missing child.
The day I'm recording this, he was a guest on
a podcast hosted by a small scale QAnon influencer. I
would tell you what they talked about, but it kind
of sounded like he was calling in from the bottom
(01:00:10):
of the ocean.
Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
This episode took.
Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Me days longer to write than it should have, because
every new name I turned up in the comments on
a fifteen year old blog post took me on some long,
strange path that some character in this story had taken
in the year. Since there are no lone wolves, no
one is self radicalizing in a vacuum. People don't just
(01:00:37):
wake up one day and drive three hours with a
camcorder and a truck full of guns for no reason
at all. And with each passing week, as I immerse
myself in the archives, piecing together one weird little guy's
story at a time, the clearer the connective tissue between
them becomes. But for all the weird twists, and in
(01:01:00):
this strange tale of the Birther militia trying to take
over a small town in Tennessee, the best thing I
found buried in all of these documents was this moment
from the trial when Darren Huff took the stand himself.
The prosecutor had asked him about some business cards that
he made after his arrest. On the front, it said
(01:01:23):
Darren Huff, right wing extremist and potential domestic terrorist, and
on the back there was a picture of a gun.
So on cross examination, Huff's defense attorney was trying to
elicit testimony that would show the jury that those business
cards were obviously a joke, that this was just his
(01:01:43):
sense of humor. So he asked Darren about some shirts,
and Darren gave the following answer. I had a friend
who had a T shirt shop, and I said, can
you make me a couple of shirts, because apparently this
government wants to label me. The first one that he
had made me said, I am the god fearing, gun toting,
(01:02:06):
flag waving right wing extremists the government warned you about.
And the other one said, I finally made homeland Securities
potential domestic terrorists, watched list, and all I got was
this lousy T shirt. Obviously the point behind them was
for humor, and they have been received as such. Another
one that was one of my initial shirts said, patriotism
(01:02:29):
is not a spectator sport. And then there's something that
I have never seen an official federal court transcript before,
as this big bearded militia man is describing his funny
terrorism shirts. The court reporter types in parentheses witness crying.
Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
She put it on the record that he cried.
Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
me at Weird Little Guys Podcast at gmail dot com.
(01:03:26):
I will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will
not answer it. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
of my Weird Little Guys
Call Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
When we left off last week, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick I
had been taken into custody outside the Monroe County Courthouse
in Madisonville, Tennessee, on April first, twenty ten. Fitzpatrick barged
into a closed grand jury proceeding and attempted to place
Monroe County grand Jury Foreman Gary Petway under citizen's arrest.
(00:28):
Fitzpatrick had written up his own arrest warrant, charging Petway
with obstruction of justice for his refusal to issue an
indictment against Barack Obama for treason. Walter Fitzpatrick did not
have the authority to draw up his own arrest warrants
any more than a county court in hour south of
Knoxville had the authority to indict the president on a
(00:49):
federal crime. But none of that really mattered to the
small crowd of supporters outside, who were sure that they
were closer than ever to arresting the president. Darren Huff,
an oathkeeper from Georgia, was among those supporters. He was
standing by with his video camera, hoping to capture Fitzpatrick's
(01:10):
victory against the corrupt county grand jury.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
You have been notified you've been told mister Petway has
just been placed under citizens arrest.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
My name is Walter Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I have just placed mister Petway under citizens arrest.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
But when the doors opened again, it was not Gary
Petway who was being escorted out by the Sheriff's deputies.
It was Walter Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
They were leaving those or why because you just interrupted
a court proceeding.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
The rest of us would get arrested for that. However,
all of you, thank you're special.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
So now we're leaving the courthouse and then what then
you're free to go Otherwise you're going to get arrested
to afree to come back in No.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Sir, and he could have just left.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
As the deputy points out, he's kind of being treated
with kid gloves here. He's already broken the law, but
nobody really wants to deal with this old crank and
his fan club.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But instead of leaving, Fitzpatrick pivoted.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Now he's placing the sheriff himself under arrest. In the
audio recording, you can hear the deputy sigh dramatically as
Fitzpatrick begins reading the officers their rights and they realize
that the only way Fitzpatrick is leaving the building is
in handcuffs.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Fitzpatrick was charged.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
With interfering with a grand jury, resisting arrest, and inciting
a riot. He was held in the county jail over
the weekend, during which time he reportedly refused to eat
or drink, and was offered a fifteen hundred dollars bond
on the condition that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation. On
April seven, the day after Fitzpatrick was released, Darren Huff
(03:03):
made the drive from his home in Georgia back up
to Madisonville. In a text message Huff sent a friend
on his way home that night, he said he'd spent
the day meeting with Fitzpatrick going over the plan. They
were coordinating with multiple groups to show up for what
Huff called Phase two. When Walter Fitzpatrick appeared for his
(03:25):
court date on April twentieth, he wasn't going to be alone.
I'm Molly Conger and this is weird, little guys. This
(03:52):
episode is about Darren Huff. I mean, the last episode
was supposed to be about Darren Huff. Was the story
I sat down to write in the first place, But
my vague recollection of the story of some oathkeeper with
a hair brain scheme to citizens arrest and entire county
court turned up something a little more complicated that keeps happening.
(04:16):
It turns out history is always a little messy. No
one is really the sole protagonist in their own story.
Life doesn't really work that way. But if you listened
to last week's episode, now you have some contexts for
the baffling confidence Walter Fitzpatrick and Darren Huff seemed to
have in their plan. They'd both been completely swept up
(04:39):
in this nationwide right wing mania of Birtherism, the conspiracy
theory that Barack Obama was ineligible to serve as the
president of the United States because he had been born
in Kenya. Walter Fitzpatrick as bizarre and disconnected from reality
as his ideas sound. Was far from the only American
who was barging in to a court clerk's office every
(05:01):
week to demand something be done about the president's acts
of treason.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It was everywhere.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Everyone from Chuck Norris to Donald Trump was asking is
Barack Obama a natural born citizen of.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
The United States.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Politicians like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich flirted
with the idea, walking right up to the line and
then claiming they'd misspoken or been misunderstood. Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle
Bachmann said she would proudly produce her own birth certificate.
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby denied that he'd told a newspaper
(05:42):
that he'd like to see Barack Obama's birth certificate. Missouri
Congressman Roy Blunt said he'd been taken out of context
after telling a reporter that there was no legitimate reason
for the president not to produce his birth certificate. This
wasn't something that existed only at the nic fringe of
political discourse. Mainstream politicians and celebrities were just asking questions,
(06:08):
never mind the kinds of things their supporters might do
to try to get answers. So, after an entire year
of unsuccessfully petitioning his local county grand jury to bring
charges against Barack Obama, Walter Fitzpatrick was frustrated, and when
he barged into that courtroom on April first, twenty ten,
(06:29):
both Keeper Darren Huff and Sovereign Citizen Carl Swenson were
among those waiting just outside, and after the tables were
turned that day with this citizen's arrest turning into just
a citizen getting arrested. Darren Huff and Carl Swenson vowed
to return not just to support their friend at his
(06:51):
next court date, but to carry out a bigger, better
version of the plan.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
You who have been on the fence must get off
of that fence. Please go to the courthouse in mass
and demand justice. 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
(07:21):
has served. My name is CARLS. Winston.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
The call was put out.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
If you believe in the cause, if you believe in
the constitution, you must stand with Walter Fitzpatrick against the
Monroe County courts. He was scheduled to appear on April twentieth,
and true patriots had an obligation to be there. Between
Fitzpatrick's release on the sixth and his court date on
the twentieth, they had just two weeks to prepare, according
(07:52):
to the court records. Darren Huff appeared in several videos
about the events in Madisonville that were posted on Carl
Swinson's website Rise Upfroamerica dot com. Archived pages of that
site do still exist, and I can read the text
on those pages, but the videos were all embedded with
flash Player. So Darren's calls to action maybe lost to
(08:15):
the sands of time. But we have some pretty solid
sources that can give us an idea of what was
on Darren's mind during those two weeks, because Darren Huff
has never once in his life shut his goddamn mouth.
On April fifteenth, Darren Huff stopped at the Chase Bank
(08:36):
in Hiram, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
He ran a.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Small business doing outdoor lighting, so he stopped by often
to deposit checks. According to Erica, the bank teller who
testified at his trial, most of the employees at the
branch knew him well enough to make friendly conversation, but
if she was working, he would wait in her line
even if another teller was free. But that evening he
(09:01):
wasn't making his usual jokes.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
He was deadly serious.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Erica testified that Huff just launched right into telling her
about Walter Fitzpatrick and his upcoming trial in Madisonville, Tennessee,
a situation she had no context, for she'd never heard
of Walter Fitzpatrick, and she'd never been to Madisonville, Tennessee.
She was the only teller at the counter. The bank
was about to close for the night, and suddenly this
(09:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
On Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
A conversation got so intense that another employee went to
go get the manager, Shane. In his testimony at trial,
Shane too said that Huff was a regular customer at
the bank, and over the years he'd gotten to know
him a bit. Sometime in two thousand and nine, Huff
got really political, and when he made small talk with
the bank tellers, it was usually about his anti government
(10:10):
beliefs and various conspiracy theories. So when another employee came
to get him that night because Huff was making Erica uncomfortable,
he probably wasn't surprised. He tried guiding the conversation back
to safer territory, asking Huff if he'd be taking his
video camera with him again on this trip, but the
(10:31):
response was an alarming one. Huff told him it would
be kind of hard to hold the camera because he
planned to be quote on the front line with two
Ak forty sevens. He told the bank employees that they'd
probably see him on the news next week, and as
he was leaving, he told Erica, it was nice knowing you.
(10:55):
If I never see you again. Not to get ahead
of myself, but do you want to jump ahead here
and say Darren Huff would later accuse those two bank
employees of lying under oath. Obviously, there's no proving what
was or wasn't said at the bank that evening, But
within hours of that interaction, Erica was on the phone
(11:16):
with Madisonville, Tennessee, Police Chief Greg Breeden, and he recorded
that phone call, so we have a fairly contemporaneous recollection
of what was said. She related to Chief Breeden that
Huff told her that he was intending to travel to Madisonville, Tennessee,
on April twentieth for Walter Fitzpatrick's court hearing, that he
(11:37):
would be armed with AK forty seven's and an anti
aircraft gun, that he would be with other militia members,
and that the group intended to carry out citizens arrests
of various local officials and seize control of the courthouse.
And Darren Huff was found to be in possession of
printed copies of those citizens arrest warrants, and he would
(12:00):
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 1 (12:10):
She would have had no way.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Of knowing any of that at the time if he
hadn't told her himself, and she's on tape reporting it
to the police long before she could have read anything
in the news or been coached by an FBI agent
to say these things. Both Shane and Erica were understandably
deeply unsettled by that interaction. Immediately after leaving work that evening,
(12:36):
Erica called a friend who worked in local government, who
helped her find the phone number for the Madisonville, Tennessee
Police Department. Jane's wife urged him to call their own
sheriff in Paulding County, Georgia, and by the end of
the night, both bank employees had shared their concerns with
the police and by Monday they'd met with FBI agents.
(12:57):
And it was on Monday, April nineteenth, the day before
the planned occupation of Madisonville, Tennessee, that an FBI agent
knocked on Darren Huff's front door. Supervisory Special Agent Charles Reid,
accompanied by a couple of deputies from the Paulding County
Sheriff's Office, just wanted to have a word with him,
(13:18):
and Darren Huff voluntarily stepped out onto his front porch
and he chatted with the agent for about as long
as it took him to finish a cigarette. It was
a brief conversation. Agent Reid recalls that Huff was pretty
open about his plan to drive to Tennessee in the morning.
He said he'd have his CULT forty five on his
hip and his AK forty seven was in the truck.
(13:41):
He freely volunteered to the agent that he was a
member of both the Oath Keepers and the Georgia Militia.
He said that the plan was to execute citizens, arrest warrants,
and quote take back Madisonville, but that the group would
not resort to violence unless they were provoked. When Darren
(14:02):
Huff took the stand at his own trial. He recalled,
telling Agent Read that evening that he'd love it if
the FBI would be there in Madisonville. Again, remember last
week that letter that Walter Fitzpatrick sent the police chief
of Madisonville before all of this got started. He wasn't
(14:22):
making threats. He was inviting the police to be part
of his plan. And that's the same mindset Darren has here.
He even gave the FBI agent his business card. I
had to double check here because Darren's business cards do
come up again later, but it sounds like the business
(14:44):
card he gave Agent Read the night before the big
day was just a normal business card, a real one
for his outdoor lighting business. It wasn't until after he
was arrested that he got new business cards printed that
said Darren Huff, right wing extremist and potential domestic terrorist.
(15:05):
But when he finished his cigarette, the conversation was over.
Agent Reid had no reason to arrest him. Huff had
expressed to him a plan to commit a federal crime,
the one he would eventually be arrested for, but he
hadn't actually done it yet. There was no federal crime
(15:26):
here until Darren Huff put his guns in the truck
and drove across the state line from Georgia into Tennessee
with the intent to engage in a little civil disorder.
So Agent Reid left, but another agent stayed nearby all night,
(15:46):
watching and waiting for the truck to pull out of
the driveway. Darren Huff was under FBI surveillance when he
hit the road just before dawn on April twentieth, twenty ten,
fifteen am, he was observed crossing the state line, and
just after seven am, Tennessee State Trooper Michael Wilson followed
(16:07):
Huff's truck as he took Exit sixty off I seventy
five towards Madisonville. Whether or not Huff rolled through the
stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp is
a matter of some debate, but Trooper Wilson flashed his
blue lights and pulled him over. This traffic stop ends
up being central to Huff's case on appeal, but it
(16:29):
isn't where he got arrested. He actually didn't even get
a ticket, but Trooper Wilson and Darren Huff spent over
an hour together there on the shoulder of Tennessee Highway
sixty eight. When Huff was asked to step out of
the vehicle. He had his CULT forty five on his hip.
The officer unholstered the weapon, removed the magazine, checked the chamber,
(16:51):
and put the weapon in his patrol car for safekeeping.
Darren Huff produced a valid Georgia driver's license, but he
didn't have his truck's registration on him. He assured the
officer that the gun was legal and handed him a
piece of paper that he said was a gun carry permit.
In his testimony, the troopers said the document looked quote,
(17:14):
very unprofessional, and he was concerned it might not be real.
He spent an hour going back and forth with Dispatch
about this strange document and was never able to verify
whether Huff actually had a valid carry permit for that gun.
And during that hour, while they were trying to sort
(17:36):
it out, Darren Huff talked. He talked a lot, He
ran his mouth the entire time, and the entire conversation
was recorded on the officer's dash cam, which was connected
to a microphone on his uniform. And in their conversation,
Darren explained his whole plan. They had arrest warrants for
(17:59):
the Grand jury reforman the district attorney, the sheriff, the judge,
Nancy Pelosi, et cetera. He recommended some YouTube videos the
officers should watch to learn more about Barack Obama's crimes,
and he told them they needed to be reading Walter
Fitzpatrick's blog. In the portions of this audio that I
could find, the officers seem to be playing along. They're
(18:22):
mostly just letting him talk without interruption, but occasionally they
asked some questions about how exactly the plan is going
to work, and Darren's happy to explain because he's actually
going to need their help.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
And then at that point they would be placed in
the custody and you know, turn this man over you.
I don't have handcuffs, right, you know, somebody we would
need somebody like you guys there. And I can't tell
you how much I appreciate you guys listening.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
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.
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
(19:13):
they've been citizens arrested. But that wasn't all. He was
worried about a lot more than just the corrupt government
in Monroe County, Tennessee. He shared his concerns about the
Affordable Care Act, which had just been signed into law.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
A few weeks earlier.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Of course, he was upset that this was communism, obviously,
but more importantly, he was very worried because this law
requires that all Americans be implanted with the mark of
the Beast. As foretold in Revelations.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Liek.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Ten eighteen, Jesus said, and I beheld Satan as lightning
fall from heaven. The Greek translation from lightning is barock.
Now jess didn't speak Greek. He spoke Hebrew, so you
can look it up into Hebrew. Still barack lat and
heaven translates from Hebrew. Who or oh bomber? So Jesus said,
(20:08):
out of his own lips, I saw Satan as work bomb.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
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, but also
nine to eleven was an inside job. 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
(20:39):
prophecy foretold the re establishment of Israel in seventeen seventy six.
Remember last week when we touched briefly on Christian identity,
That's what this is. Darren Huff is a self proclaimed
pastor in the Christian identity movement. He's standing there on
(21:00):
the side of the highway, surrounded by cops, preaching Christian
identity and trying to recruit them to.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
The oath Keepers.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It remains very unclear to me why the trooper gave
Huff his gun back, but he did. At eight thirteen am.
He handed Darren Huff a written warning, returned his COLT
forty five, and told him he was free to go.
The men shook hands and Huff thanked the officer and
(21:30):
he took a few steps back toward his truck before
he stopped turned around and said, let me pre warn you,
if enough of us show up today, we are going
to proceed forward in this citizen's arrest. That's why I
have my forty five. Ain't no government official going peacefully?
(21:52):
And then he slid his Colt forty five back into
his holster, climbed into his pickup truck that said oath
keepers all down one side, and drove the last few
miles into Madisonville, Tennessee. At five o'clock that morning, more
(22:21):
than fifty police officers from multiple jurisdictions in and around
Monroe County, Tennessee, gathered for a briefing. There were FBI
agents from the Joint Terrace and Task Force and at
least one representative from the Department of Homeland Security. They'd
been monitoring the online chatter about Walter Fitzpatrick's hearing at
the courthouse at nine am, and they were worried. The
(22:44):
intelligence they had was that as many as six hundred
people might be on their way to Madisonville, Tennessee. They
had undercovers stationed in nearby businesses and snipers on rooftops.
One of those undercover officers was Mike Hall, the director
of a regional violent crime task force in Tennessee. In
(23:06):
plain clothes, he got a table at Donna's in Cafe,
a block from City Hall, where Fitzpatrick's supporters would be
meeting for breakfast. And maybe the police should have known
that They probably weren't expecting six hundred armed militiamen if
they knew that they had booked tables at Donna's cafe.
But that's neither here nor there, And by the time
(23:28):
breakfast was over, barely twenty supporters were packed into the
dining room, finishing their biscuits and coffee as Darren Huff
gave a rousing speech about taking his AK forty seven
down to the courthouse. Carl Swinson's dead website isn't exactly
easy to navigate, so maybe the whole speech was there
(23:51):
at some point, but I was only able to dig
up an audio file of the first six minutes or so,
and it's pretty inspiring stuff.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
So as a Christians, 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, And
I told these guys, and I tell everybody, I'm not
a very smart guy. In fact, the only thing that
I know about the Constitution are the first few amendments.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Those leave me the hell alone ones.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
That's what I know, and I know them well enough
to say you're wrong.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
You can't do this.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Over the sound of clinking forks on plates the Christian
Identity militia. Chaplin explains that they are preparing for spiritual war,
that we were already in the end times, as we're
told in Revelations see the founding of the United States
was biblical prophecy. God knew that in seventeen seventy six
(24:50):
the thirteen tribes of Israel would be called back together
as the thirteen Colonies.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yes, at thirteen, I know.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It's twelve, twelve tribes of Israel.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
You know it's twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
But Darren is counting Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manassa separately,
and that's why he thinks it's thirteen. And I know
that because he mentions Joseph's sons specifically, because otherwise I
might have assumed he was talking about something different. We
don't need to get into the specifics here. But adherents
of Christian identity believe that they are the real Israelites,
(25:28):
so they have to explain the existence of actual Jews
some other way, and that usually boils down to a
theory that Ashkenazi Jews are actually descended from a Turkic
race called the Kasars. Christian identity guys really love this
book from the seventies called The Thirteenth Tribe, which makes
(25:50):
the case for this theory. Honestly, please don't make me
explain the Kazar hypothesis every time I see a guy
posting about Kasar's I'm just.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Not having a good time.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
But what Darren was saying might actually be weirder.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
Jacob went like this, he blessed them the way God
intended him to bless them. That crossing of the arms.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Is on that flag.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
That's where that.
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Cross comes from.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
It has nothing to do with rednecks. It has nothing
to do with the Confederacy.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
It has everything to do with God's shows people.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Now this was a new one for me. I've never
heard this one before. What he's saying here is that
the Confederate flag symbolizes Jacob's blessing of Joseph's sons. I
don't know what the aid to be to see here is,
but I guess the Confederacy was the thirteenth Tribe of Israel. Honestly,
(27:02):
I don't want to know. I don't want to know.
That way lies madness. So after his big speech, Darren
Huff steps outside Mike Hall, our undercover officer testified that
he overheard Huff's conversation with a man that he doesn't name,
but who, like Huff, was visibly armed, and Huff laments
(27:24):
to this man that he wishes they had more people,
saying quote, today would be a good day to do
it because it's raining and the police wouldn't expect them
to make a move in the rain. And Darren Huff
wasn't the only one who excused himself from the table
after this speech. Carl Swenson, our sovereign citizen and the
(27:46):
primary instigator of the online uproar calling people to Madisonville,
got a phone call to make.
Speaker 8 (27:54):
All right, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here with my special
guest lieuten of Colonel Terry Lagan and his toorney Paul Jensen.
Colonel Lincoln is the army officer who has challenged the
legitimacy of Barack Obama to act as commander in chief.
Also with me is doctor Jerome Corsy and going to
Tennessee and Carl, Carl, you're on the air.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
That's right, It's Carl and Tennessee And he was live
on air with g. Gordon Liddy and Jerome Corcy. I
have to admit I spent the better part of an
afternoon chasing down this fifteen year old episode of morning
Talk radio, so I am going to tell you about it.
(28:41):
On April twelfth, twenty ten, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Terry
Laken did not report for duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Instead,
he drove to the Pentagon in Washington, d C. Where
he was read his rights by his commanding officer, Colonel
Gordon Ray.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Roberts.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Unit deployed to Afghanistan that week without him. The eighteen
year veteran wasn't afraid to return to Afghanistan. This deployment
would have been the seventh of his career and his
second to Afghanistan. In two thousand and four, he was
the Army's Flight Surgeon of the year. He'd been awarded
a Meritorious Service Medal and a Bronze Star. He was
(29:22):
on track to be promoted to full colonel within the
next year. But he had come to realize that his
deployment orders were unlawful, not on ideological grounds. He wasn't
protesting the war. He hadn't suddenly become a peace activist
after seeing the horrors of war firsthand.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
No no, the doctor.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Was refusing to deploy unless he could see the president's
birth certificate.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
I will disobey my orders to deploy it because I
and I believe all servicemen and women and the American
people deserve the truth about President Obama's cont pituitional eligibility
to the Office of the Presidency and the commander in Chief.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
A week after disobeying his orders, Lieutenant Colonel Laken appeared
as a guest on The G. Gordon Liddy Show. Decades
after dabbling it being an FBI agent doing dirty tricks
for Richard Dixon and spending a little time in prison
for his role in the Watergate scandal, Lyddy really hit
his stride as an extremely right wing talk radio host
(30:28):
who regularly encouraged listeners to do things like shoot federal
agents in the head. Robert Evans put out a taggering
six part series of episodes on G. Gordon Liddy on
Behind the Bastards last year. So if you're interested in
hearing some outrageously racist clips of Liddy's radio show, I
(30:48):
believe those are in part six. But today we're just
talking about one episode of The G. Gordon Liddy Show,
the one that aired on April twentieth, twenty ten, because
that's the episode Carl Swenson called into during the second hour.
In the first hour of the show, Lyddy interviewed Colonel
Laken and Lacln's attorney, a California personal injury lawyer named
(31:11):
Paul Jensen. You might be wondering why an army officer
facing a court martial would hire a civilian personal injury lawyer,
And that's a great question. The answer is unclear. In
my experience, conspiracy theorists and extremists tend to hire attorneys
who share their beliefs rather than ones who have, say,
(31:35):
relevant experience in a particular area of law. But in
this case, it seems very worth mentioning that Paul Jensen
was a longtime associate of friend to and occasional attorney
for Roger Stone. In two thousand and seven, it was
Paul Jensen, acting as Stone's attorney, who publicly released a
(31:59):
copy of a left the pair claimed they had sent
to the FBI about Elliot Spitzer's alleged habit of wearing
nothing but long black socks during his liaisons with sex workers.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
And Jensen represented.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Stone in twenty sixteen when he was sued over allegations
that he had been involved in a coordinated campaign of
voter intimidation. It was Jensen who drafted the paperwork to
incorporate Stop the Steel in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So after this interview, G.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Gordon Liddy opened the phones to hear from listeners on
the subject of Barack Obama's birth certificate. Caller after caller
thanked Colonel Laken for his courage and shared their own
theories about how they could finally get to the truth
of Barack Obama's birth. And then, after an advertisement for
gold coins, another berther called into the show, but this
(32:54):
one wasn't just sitting idly by while Barack Obama pretended
to be the president.
Speaker 7 (33:02):
Lieutenant Colonel, I want to thank you for everything you're
doing and I want to give you some encouragement. Here.
I'm in the city of Madisonville, Tennessee right now in
Monroe County, where they've had this area on lockdown with FBI, TDI,
local police and troopers all because of Lieutenant Commander Walter
Fitzpatrick and his attempts to affect arrest using a criminal
(33:26):
complaint against Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. And in this case,
the grand jury members here in the town of Madison, Tennessee.
People are gathering now, but it is a tenuous situation
at best.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Carl closed the call by saying things were getting pretty
heated out there in Tennessee, and everything they were doing
was quote indirect support of the message being pushed by
Colonel Laken and Lyddy himself. G Gordon lyly 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. The next caller, Julian Texas, was
(34:10):
very worried about her sons. They were active duty soldiers
deployd overseas. She wasn't worried about them being in the war.
She was worried that because their deployment orders had been
issued by a false president, that they could ultimately be
liable for war crimes. I didn't listen to the rest
of the episode. I don't know if they resolved that,
(34:33):
but after Darren's rousing speech to the assembled supporters and
Carl's bold statements on a national radio show, they both
had to admit that nothing was going to happen that day.
Their little crowd of twenty was outnumbered three to one
by a very visible police presence, and according to Walter
Fitzpatrick's blog, a fair number of those supporters who turned
(34:56):
up were middle aged women, one of whom brought several
mo her children with her. Darren had a truck full
of guns and was bragging about how he had four
hundred rounds for his AK forty seven, but they just
didn't have the numbers to do anything that day. The
only time anybody actually got close to the courthouse was
when Darren huffed took a bag of biscuits over to
(35:18):
a detective on the courthouse steps. By the time Fitzpatrick's
hearing was over, Darren was bored, he was tired, and
he's ready to go home. So everybody just left. Nothing happened,
Nobody got arrested.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
That night.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes saw the video Carl Swinson
posted online of Darren getting pulled over on his way
to Madisonville. The truck says oath Keepers all down one
side and huge letters. You really can't miss it. It's
the official logo of the Oath Keepers, and Rhodes called
Swinson immediately and demand did he take the video down.
(36:02):
It was embarrassing, and within days Rhodes himself showed up
to speak with Darren Huff in person.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
He was furious.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
He demanded to know why Huff was so intent on
making Madisonville the flash point. Now, Rhodes isn't the kind
of guy who's actually concerned about their.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Being a flash point. He wants one.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
That's the whole idea, right, Eventually the militia will come
into some kind of conflict. But this wasn't the one
he wanted because he thought Darren's ideas were foolish and embarrassing,
and he revoked Darren's Oathkeeper's membership undeterred though Darren Huff
returned to Tennessee a week later. He had a paper
(36:50):
map of the state of Tennessee, and he'd circled the
location of the sheriff's offices in every county within a
two hour drive of Madisonville. It's not clear how many
sheriffs he actually managed to speak with, but when he
pulled into a parking lot at a county office building
in Lenore City, Tennessee, he happened to come across Louden
(37:10):
County Sheriff Tim Geider and Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess
as they were getting out of their cars. They relate
for a meeting, so this conversation was short. But Huff
asked Sheriff Geiter if he'd be willing to arrest a
fellow sheriff.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
At trial.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Sheriff Guiter couldn't really remember much about this brief interaction,
but he said he probably told this stranger in a
parking lot that he'd need to know more about a
situation like that in order to make a determination. But yes,
hypothetically he did have the authority to arrest another sheriff.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Darren.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Huff was trying to recruit law enforcement officers to assist
with the plan. He wasn't giving up, but he was
running out of time. Fitzpatrick's next hearing was scheduled for
May fourth, and he needed to find a sheriff who
would be there to take his prisoners into custody. He
(38:12):
must not have had much success on the twenty eighth, though,
because two days later, on April thirtieth, he was back
at it, driving around Tennessee looking for sheriffs who believed
in the constitution. He was up near Knoxville, when he
got pulled over. This time around, there's no debate about
whether or not he ran a stop sign.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
This wasn't a traffic stop. There was a federal.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Warrant for his arrest. Darren Huff was charged with violating
Title eighteen, Section two thirty one sub section A two.
(39:02):
And that's interesting. You probably don't believe me, but hang
on a second. Section two thirty one is civil disorders,
and it covers three separate crimes that don't really go together.
A one makes it a crime to teach someone else
how to make or use a gun or a bomb
(39:23):
if you know or have reason to know that they'll
use that information in furtherance of a civil disorder. A two,
which was Darren's crime, makes it illegal to transport a
firearm or a bomb across 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.
(39:45):
And A three makes it illegal to be in a
cops way during a civil disorder. So that one doesn't
really belong right. The first two are about guns and bombs,
and the third one is just about annoying. But that's
the one that's really gotten to work out in the
last couple of years because it was used in hundreds
(40:07):
of January six cases. But eighteen USC. Two thirty one
A two is uncommon. I mean, people get charged for
doing this kind of thing, but usually they get charged
with conspiracy to do whatever it was they were going
to do when they got where they were going, and
(40:28):
then maybe they'll tack on some kind of gun crime.
And Subsection A one just doesn't make any sense at all.
There's already a whole separate law that makes it a
crime to distribute information about bombmaking, and that one has
a harsher penalty than this, So I don't know why
we need this one at all. So I was confused
by this choice of statute, and I couldn't think of
(40:51):
any place I'd ever seen this statute before. And it
turns out that's because I hadn't seen it before, and
I still haven't even after looking pretty hard. When Darren
Huff appealed his conviction, it was noted in the appellate
record that this particular statute had actually never been construed
(41:12):
by an appellate court before, so this was the first
time a court of appeals was examining this statute. But
Just because people don't get charged with this very often
doesn't make it any less.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Of a real law.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
And it does pretty well describe what he did because
he didn't really do anything, did he, But they were
really worried that he might, or at least they were
worried that he would continue to create situations where someone
else might because if you get enough anxious people with
(41:50):
guns together enough times, eventually something is going to go
wrong in a way that escalates pretty quickly. So some
federal agent or prosecutor got creative and they found a
crime because technically, yeah, he put guns in his truck
(42:10):
and he drove to another state. And when he was
doing it, the plan that he had in his mind
was that he was going to have that gun around
in case the county judge didn't appreciate him barging into
her courtroom. So the intent is pretty clear. He told
anyone within earshot for two weeks what he was going
(42:33):
to do. He wanted to lead an armed mom onto
the courthouse. He made videos about it, He told his
bank teller, he told a bunch of state troopers, he
gave a speech, And you don't actually have to end
up carrying out the plan. To be guilty of showing
up to the plan with a gun, and in the end,
(42:54):
a jury agreed. They found Darren Huff guilty of interstate
transportation of a firearm with the intention to use it
unlawfully in furtherance of a civil disorder. The Sixth Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, and Darren had already
completed his four year sentence by the time the Supreme
Court declined to hear the case in twenty sixteen. Now,
(43:16):
normally that's all I would really have to say about
a criminal case. We already talked all the way through
the actual timeline of events, so you already know what happened,
and I just told you how the trial ended. He
was convicted by a jury, appealed unsuccessfully, and served a sentence.
But this trial is really just so special. I mean,
(43:38):
first of all, it went to trial. That's pretty rare.
In twenty twenty two, just two point three percent of
people charged with federal crimes actually went to trial.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
But it's so much more than that.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Darren Huff really really wanted to be in the driver's
seat when it came to his criminal defense. One thing
you have to remember about Darren huff is that he's
got a little sovereign citizen in him. He seems at
times to take issue with that label. But when he
was asked how he felt about the gold fringe on
(44:15):
the flag at his trial, he was very evasive, And
in the year and a half between his arrest and
his trial, he kept insisting that his public defenders file
motions based on legal arguments that he had invented, and
when they refused to file some of the more bizarre ones,
(44:36):
he fired them releast he tried to. In March of
twenty eleven, his public defender was begging him to consider
the plea deal they were being offered, explaining over and
over again that it was the best deal he was
going to get, and the motions he was drafting on
his own just don't have any basis in the law,
and they have no legal merit, and they really seemed
(44:59):
to trying to explain to him that you can't just
file how you feel. There has to be case law,
It has to be based in something. And after months
of bitter emails back and forth about you know, we
can't file stuff that you made up, and Darren's accusing
them of working against him, and the original public defenders
(45:22):
file a motion to withdraw, saying that the relationship has
soured irreparably and they can't continue. And during this brief
period of time before a new public defender could be appointed,
Darren files some of those motions he wanted, the ones
he wrote, including one that just reads comes the defendant
(45:44):
in the above entitled action, Darren Wesley huff And moves
the court to clarify its position on the Second Amendment
US Constitution. And when his second public defender was assigned,
a man named Scott Green, there were just three months
to go before trial, and in those three months he
did his job. He filed motions to suppress the statements
(46:07):
Darren made during the traffic stop, motions to prevent the
prosecution from bringing up his extremist beliefs, the kinds of
things you'd expect to see. And he seemed to be
humoring his client when it came to some of his
unique ideas about the law. But like the attorneys before him,
he wasn't willing to put his name on nonsense. And
(46:30):
after another round of these emails back and forth, where
this exasperated attorney is trying to explain to him, that
motions have to be based on the law. Darren threatened
to fire him, writing if you do not have the
courage or kahunahs necessary to represent me, then please let
me know. I think that's supposed to say kahones, but
(46:53):
it says kah u ANDAs cohunas. Maybe that's a regional variation.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
He meets balls.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And then email is included in this bizarre fifteen page
document that he submitted to the court complaining about and
trying to fire his lawyer. But he ends the document
by saying, quote, is the Second Amendment part of the Constitution?
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yes or no?
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Wherefore Darren Wesley Huff moves this court to dismiss the
indictment against him. I don't really know where to start
with that. That's really not how it works. 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. He can't do this, and the
(47:42):
judge said no, they were too close to trial. They
would just have to work it out because they're going
to trial together. And Green really does seem to have
done his best here. On the eve of the trial,
he filed five separate documents, each one called mister Huff's
(48:02):
special request, and they were sort of fanciful jury instructions.
It probably will not surprise you that mister Green declined
to continue working with Darren on his appeal, and Darren's
attitude did not improve once he was in federal prison.
One email he sent his new lawyer, mister Gully during
(48:24):
the appeal starts off by accusing Gully of withholding the
trial transcripts. But they just hadn't been made yet. It
takes a long time to produce those, but he writes
to his lawyer, I am thus left to wonder whether
you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or
if you possibly received your degree from a remedial online school,
(48:46):
or that you simply take me for a fool. You, sir,
have made a mockery of the system that purports to
provide me with effective assistance of counsel. Later, in the
same email, he explains to his lawyer that the government
can't charge him with a gun crime because he exists
outside of the federal government's jurisdiction on such matters, and
(49:08):
then he threatens to have his attorney indicted, disbarred, and institutionalized.
Mister Gully's response to this letter doesn't seem to be
in the appellate record, but from what I can see,
he did the best he could with a losing case.
We'd be doing episodes about Walter Fitzpatrick and his entourage
(49:30):
for weeks if I told you every weird thing that
I found. But I can't resist just a few more,
if you'll indulge me. When Fitzpatrick finally did get arraigned
in Monroe County for that original April first attempt to
arrest the grand jury foreman, it did not go well.
(49:50):
The judge that he'd accused of treason was presiding, and
as she's flipping through the exhibits, sort of glancing over
the paperwork and the citizens erect Warrens, she noted that
the court clerk, miss Cook, was accused by Fitzpatrick of
some pretty serious crimes. And so the judge turns to
(50:10):
the clerk who's there in the courtroom, and says, miss Cook,
have you been levying war against the United States? And
the clerk says, I don't think so, your honor, And
I wish that I had an audio recording of this.
I just have the transcript but Fitzpatrick is having a
(50:31):
lot of outbursts during this hearing, and at this point
he says, are you making fun of me? Is that
what's going on here? Am I being mocked? And they
just ignore him and continue the proceeding. I would have
loved to have seen it, and I wish the officer
who testified at a Huff's trial had been more specific
(50:55):
about exactly who it was that he overheard Darren Huff
talking to. In the morning of April twentieth, outside Donna's Cafe,
Huff had a quiet conversation with someone about calling off
the operation that day. The officer did mention that Huff
was speaking to a man with a revolver on his hip,
and that the man had gotten out of a pt
(51:16):
cruiser with Georgia license plates.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
Carl Swenson's from Georgia.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
But I know Carl Swenson was driving a two thousand
and nine Honda Civic Hybrid that day, trust me, I checked.
I have got a state trooper on tape calling in
his plates when they saw him on the highway. And
in his blog, Walter Fitzpatrick thanked by name most of
the people who showed up there that day and most
of them were women, and very few of them were
(51:44):
from Georgia. But we do know for sure that Bill Luhman,
a Marine Corps veteran and crane operator from Waco, Georgia,
was there that day. And you'd be a fool to
believe Bill Lowman would walk as far as his own
mailbox without a gun. So if I had to put
(52:04):
money on it, I think the person Darren Huff was
making tactical decisions with was the same man who'd accompanied
him to Walter's house two weeks earlier when they put
this whole plan together, a fellow member of the Georgia
Militia and the Oathkeepers. Now, my main wheelhouse is not
(52:27):
the Militia movement, so I can't say I'm surprised. I'd
never heard of Bill Luhman before, and I didn't have
any real prior knowledge about the Georgia Militia. But in
some old blog posts Luhman is referred to as a
leader in the Georgia Militia. That may have just been
his local chapter. There were at least a dozen units
around the state of this larger group calling itself the
(52:50):
Georgia Militia, and his name does not appear in the
court record for the four members of the Georgia Militia
who were arrested in twenty eleven for a plot that
included plans to blow up the Federal building in Atlanta
and maybe murder government officials with Risin. And just a
(53:12):
side note, if you do try to google Georgia white
supremacist rice In attack, the more recent result you'll get
is for an unrelated white supremacist plot to carry out
a biological terrorist attack. In that case, in twenty seventeen,
a neo Nazi had actually successfully created the deadly poison,
(53:35):
but he accidentally exposed himself to it, so he showed
up at the emergency room before he could actually hurt
anybody else. But this is not that one. This is
the one from twenty eleven. But again, Bill Luhman nothing
to do with the rice In attacks, just the same militia.
And I found an old event for a tea party
(53:57):
picnic in North Carolina in twenty thirteen that list. Luman
is a speaker and his title in the program is
Constitutionalist icon from Georgia, and he appeared on stage with
such heroes of the patriot movement as James Renwick. Manship
that name is not familiar to you, I'm sure, but
(54:18):
you might remember the photo of the guy in the
George Washington costume wading into the reflecting pool at the
Capitol during the January sixth riot as a sort of
symbolic crossing the Delaware moment. But my favorite Manship moment
is the time he showed up at my local library
dressed as Thomas Jefferson and refused to break character as
(54:42):
he ranted in the first person about how he never
had sexual relations with enslaved women. And Bill Luman is
very much still around and active in the same kinds
of conspiracy spaces. He posts, give or take one hundred
times a day every day on Trump's Truth social platform,
(55:06):
and all of his posts are in all caps. He
starts every day by posting this message, good morning patriots
and grassroots warriors that are standing up for our constitution
and precious way of life. Good morning to all veterans
that serve honorably sempify my fellow marines. May America bless
God again into our nation, our homes, and our heart's
(55:30):
heart emoji. Seriously, he posts that every morning. He's very
committed and he still thinks Barack Obama is a Kenyan
born Muslim. He still posts a lot about hanging people
for treason, but the reasons have shifted, you know, COVID, Ukraine,
election fraud whatever. As I'm writing this right now, he's
(55:56):
still posting. He posted a picture of a marine shaking
hands with the dog, and there was a post this
evening that was a screenshot from Braveheart with the text
confirm Matt Gates or else written over mel Gibson's face.
His last post was a thread documenting the progress of
his homemade banana upbread. At the time of recording, I
(56:19):
can report that he added cream cheese icing to it
and it was quote stellar. He's pretty popular over their
own truth social He was even retruthed last year by
Donald Trump himself after posting some incoherent theory about stolen
votes from the twenty twenty election. Well, he wasn't retruthed,
(56:39):
he was quote truthed.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Whatever.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
The truth social equivalent of a quote tweet is Lumann
had suggested that the people responsible for the dominion voting
machines should be tried for treason, and Trump quoted the post,
adding a lot has been made of this lately.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
What do you think.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
And that must have been a huge day for Bill.
The post went pretty viral, a lot of the keyboard
warriors out here posting seventeen memes a day about January six.
Political prisoners absolutely still believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya,
and Walter Fitzpatrick went on to try his whole citizens
(57:19):
arrest thing in neighboring McMinn County too. He was eventually
convicted of perjury and extortion there, as well as getting
some more charges in Monroe County after he stole the
grand jury roles. Those stolen documents were located by the
FBI in the Connecticut home of Sharon Rondeau, the conspiracy
(57:41):
theory blogger whose commitment to questioning the citizenship of politicians
has remained strong over the years. She is still asking
questions about Ilhan Omar and Kamala Harris. Fitzpatrick published a
memoir last year about his quest for justice in his
nineteen ninety four Marshall. I didn't read it. It's like
(58:03):
four hundred pages long. He's in his seventies now and
he still occasionally updates his blog, jag Hunters. The most
recent post is just a link to someone else's video
and it's just like a mind numbing thirty minute mashup
of clips.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I can't even really explain it.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
It's like actual footage of Trump rallies mixed in with
like myplow commercials, a TikTok video of someone doing the macarena,
but the lyrics have been changed to be about Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (58:36):
I don't know. I tapped out when it got.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
To a clip of Russell Brand praying with Tucker Carlson.
I guess what I'm getting at here is these guys
don't go away. The cause of the day changes, whether
it's nine to eleven truth, eartherism, COVID, denial, q Andon,
stop the Steal. But it's a lot of the same
core ideas, and it's a lot of the same individual guise.
(59:05):
In one newspaper photo of Walter Fitzpatrick outside of the
courthouse after a hearing in McMinn County in twenty fourteen,
the man standing next to him is Field McConnell. And
Field McConnell is a former commercial airline pilot who retired
in two thousand and six after refusing to submit to
a neurological exam. He had become obsessed with the idea
(59:29):
that nine to eleven was an inside job, and was
convinced that Boeing had rigged all of their planes with
explosives and they were planning an upcoming nine to eleven
style attack. In twenty nineteen, he got really into QAnon.
An attorney in Florida who represents the family of a
missing child had to get a restraining order against him
(59:49):
after he made a series of YouTube videos threatening to
kill her and accusing her of having trafficked the missing child.
The day I'm recording this, he was a guest on
a podcast hosted by a small scale QAnon influencer. I
would tell you what they talked about, but it kind
of sounded like he was calling in from the bottom
(01:00:10):
of the ocean.
Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
This episode took.
Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Me days longer to write than it should have, because
every new name I turned up in the comments on
a fifteen year old blog post took me on some long,
strange path that some character in this story had taken
in the year. Since there are no lone wolves, no
one is self radicalizing in a vacuum. People don't just
(01:00:37):
wake up one day and drive three hours with a
camcorder and a truck full of guns for no reason
at all. And with each passing week, as I immerse
myself in the archives, piecing together one weird little guy's
story at a time, the clearer the connective tissue between
them becomes. But for all the weird twists, and in
(01:01:00):
this strange tale of the Birther militia trying to take
over a small town in Tennessee, the best thing I
found buried in all of these documents was this moment
from the trial when Darren Huff took the stand himself.
The prosecutor had asked him about some business cards that
he made after his arrest. On the front, it said
(01:01:23):
Darren Huff, right wing extremist and potential domestic terrorist, and
on the back there was a picture of a gun.
So on cross examination, Huff's defense attorney was trying to
elicit testimony that would show the jury that those business
cards were obviously a joke, that this was just his
(01:01:43):
sense of humor. So he asked Darren about some shirts,
and Darren gave the following answer. I had a friend
who had a T shirt shop, and I said, can
you make me a couple of shirts, because apparently this
government wants to label me. The first one that he
had made me said, I am the god fearing, gun toting,
(01:02:06):
flag waving right wing extremists the government warned you about.
And the other one said, I finally made homeland Securities
potential domestic terrorists, watched list, and all I got was
this lousy T shirt. Obviously the point behind them was
for humor, and they have been received as such. Another
one that was one of my initial shirts said, patriotism
(01:02:29):
is not a spectator sport. And then there's something that
I have never seen an official federal court transcript before,
as this big bearded militia man is describing his funny
terrorism shirts. The court reporter types in parentheses witness crying.
Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
She put it on the record that he cried.
Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
me at Weird Little Guys Podcast at gmail dot com.
(01:03:26):
I will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will
not answer it. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
of my Weird Little Guys
Host
Molly Conger