The "sovereign citizens" movement

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Today, we look at a third threat—the “sovereign citizen” extremist movement. Sovereign citizens are anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or “sovereign” from the United States. As a result, they believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement.

This causes all kinds of problems—and crimes. For example, many sovereign citizens don’t pay their taxes. They hold illegal courts that issue warrants for judges and police officers. They clog up the court system with frivolous lawsuits and liens against public officials to harass them. And they use fake money orders, personal checks, and the like at government agencies, banks, and businesses.

That’s just the beginning. Not every action taken in the name of the sovereign citizen ideology is a crime, but the list of illegal actions committed by these groups, cells, and individuals is extensive (and puts them squarely on our radar). In addition to the above, sovereign citizens:

- Commit murder and physical assault;
- Threaten judges, law enforcement professionals, and government personnel;
- Impersonate police officers and diplomats;
- Use fake currency, passports, license plates, and driver’s licenses; and
- Engineer various white-collar scams, including mortgage fraud and so-called “redemption” schemes.

Sovereign citizens are often confused with extremists from the militia movement. But while sovereign citizens sometimes use or buy illegal weapons, guns are secondary to their anti-government, anti-tax beliefs. On the other hand, guns and paramilitary training are paramount to militia groups.

[...]

You can help. First, “be crime smart”—don’t fall for the bogus claims and scams of sovereign citizens. And second, if you have information on any suspicious activities or crimes, please contact us.

The strange subculture of the "sovereign citizens" movement has been growing at a fast pace since the late 2000s.

Sovereigns hold truly bizarre, complex, antigovernment beliefs that are rooted in racism and anti-Semitism.

They believe they get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don't think they should have to pay taxes. They participate in protests against governments or use "paper terrorism" - filing bogus lawsuits and fake liens on properties - to carry out their mission of disorder. Sometimes, they get violent.

Here are our resources on the “sovereign citizens” movement:

- Extremist Profile: Sovereign Citizens Movement
- Law Enforcement video: Sovereign Citizens
- Intelligence Report: What is a Sovereign Citizen?
- Intelligence Report Special Edition: Sovereign Citizens​
- Hatewatch blogs on “sovereign citizens”

Sovereign citizens believe they are not under the jurisdiction of the federal government and consider themselves exempt from U.S. law. They use a variety of conspiracy theories and falsehoods to justify their beliefs and their activities, some of which are illegal and violent.

Top takeaways

The sovereign citizen movement continued to see membership growth in 2022. The QAnon conspiracy theory that initially brought new people into the movement has remained a gateway into sovereign citizenship. A new group, which calls itself Life Force Network, is a fusion of Q-centric conspiracy theories, science fiction and fake alternative governments and courts called sovereign citizen “assemblies.” The organization’s main villain is “The Order,” which they describe as an international group that has “dominion over the governments” and is made up of regular antigovernment bogeymen such as the Rockefellers, the Rothchilds and seemingly fictional characters such as the Annuanake, and Dragon Families.

In the Life Force Network document titled, New Declaration of Independence the organization claims to have successfully fought “The Order” for global control of the world’s finances and over “every military, intelligence agency and law enforcement structure in the world that currently exists or will exist in the future.” The group is run by New Yorker Steffen Rowe is active in 17 states.

The proliferation of conspiracies and grievances about public health measures during the Covid-19 pandemic brought new followers into the sovereign citizen movement. The two largest rival sovereign citizen organizations in the U.S., the American States Assembly and National Assembly, were able to maintain or increase their membership numbers in 2022.

Two groups held common law court hearings that were accessible to the public. The Oregon Statewide Jural Assembly held theirs in a city park while the Reign of the Heavens Society conducted theirs online. These fake courts based on the old British legal system usually involve individual grievances or grievances against the government brought forth by ”plaintiffs,” and most often the court’s grand jury “assigns” guilt and punishment. The Oregon Statewide Jural Assembly brought the Oregon Department of Education up on charges in its fictitious court. Reign of the Heavens Society charged a Satanic Temple leader with war crimes, stating that the punishment could be up to and including death.

The man suspected of being Trump's third would-be assassin is said to have been involved in the extreme right wing "sovereign citizens" movement.

"Is said", but by whom?  Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff is a known supporter of Trump, and will likely say whatever Trump tells him to say.

The only other person saying this seems to be you.

Have you any links to the alleged assassin's own statements to support this claim?

Armed ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Arrested Outside Trump Rally: I’m Innocent

Vem Miller, 49, contradicted a local sheriff who said he was there to kill the former president, calling the charges “bulls---” while claiming he is a staunch supporter of Trump.

[...]

Vem Miller, a 49-year-old resident of Las Vegas, told a reporter with the Southern California News Group that he was invited personally to Trump’s Coachella Valley rally by the head of Clark County’s Republican Party.

[...]

“These accusations are complete bull—t,” Miller said. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

At a press conference following the arrest on Sunday, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said Miller passed an initial outer perimeter, but was stopped when a deputy noticed an “obviously fake license plate” as he tried to pass a second checkpoint. The sheriff also said it appeared likely that Miller was a “sovereign citizen”—part of a loosely organized anti-government movement.

[...]

Miller’s license plate was “one that is homemade and indicative of a group of individuals that claim to be sovereign citizens,” Bianco said. The sheriff said the deputies noticed several other “irregularities” with Miller’s car—the interior was in “disarray,” and he was in possession of “multiple” fake passports and fake drivers’ licenses displaying other names.

Miller claimed to be a journalist with VIP access to the rally, Bianco said, but his press pass “didn’t necessarily materialize.”

Bianco also said that Miller’s car wasn’t registered, as sovereign citizens often don’t believe in registering their cars. “We had to go through VIN number,” the sheriff said. “It actually did belong to him, it just was not ever registered.”

Miller was also in possession of several unregistered firearms, including a shotgun and a loaded handgun, as well as a high caliber magazine, the sheriff’s office said. He was booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center and released on his own recognizance.

I'll review some other news stories in upcoming posts.

If there is a history of personal conflict between Vem Miller and Sheriff Chad Bianco, it may throw further suspicion on any or all of the claims made by the sheriff.

Are you aware of any such history, or any reason to suspect same?

I am not.  However, I find it odd that the only source of this "Sovereign Citizen" claim is the sheriff himself -- no independent news reports, no "manifesto" by Vem Miller, and no other witnesses to his alleged involvement in the Sovereign Citizen movement.

The message at the seminar was enticing: If you filed documents using peculiar language—invoking, for example, the jurisdictions of the air and water—you didn’t have to wear masks on planes. You could get pulled over for speeding and not show your driver’s license. You could squat in a building and legally own it in just a few months. In fact, many U.S. laws simply didn’t apply to you at all.

“The ultimate goal is to be free, to be the king,” said David Straight, a white-bearded man with a bald eagle on his belt buckle. An audience of 20 sat rapt and took notes as Straight spoke. The cost of attendance was $200. “When the bailiff says, ‘All rise,’” he continued, “I lean back in my chair and put my feet up. I’m the boss.”

Straight is part of a political underground known for unusual courtroom antics. They’re called Sovereign Citizens by the judges and attorneys they antagonize, but they call themselves many names: free men on the land, Natural Persons, or, in Straight’s case, American State Nationals. The gist is that a secret body of laws has been hidden from the people. Harnessing it—typically in strangely worded legal filings but sometimes also in armed confrontations with anyone perceived as a threat—can set you free.

The movement is as decentralized as you’d expect from a group that hates being subject to any government. Some sovereigns are tax protesters, others obsess over capital letters and hyphens in laws. Some sovereigns sport DIY license plates, others peddle get-out-of-debt hacks. There are both white nationalist sovereigns and Black nationalist sovereigns. Recently, a band of the latter, who pledged allegiance to a Moroccan state, engaged the police in an armed, nine-hour standoff on the I-95 in Massachusetts.

These groups are often associated with scams and what those within conventional legal circles call “paper terrorism”—for example, filing liens on their enemies’ properties that can take months to untangle.

But Straight is one of a handful of gurus with a new specialty: exposing the corruption they see within a particular agency of government, Child Protective Services (CPS). Or as Straight likes to call them, “traffickers.” He fuses QAnon, anti-vax, and anti-government ideas into a mega conspiracy, convincing desperate parents they can get their kids back no matter what—and that an evil deep state, rather than lowly bureaucrats and child welfare laws, are responsible for their journey into foster care.

“Satanic rituals are performed in this country using children,” Straight said, stern-faced, in an interview after the seminar, which took place in Phoenix in June. He had spent the eight-hour day chugging energy drinks and talking nonstop. “We have the forensic evidence to back it up. We know where the underground tunnels are. We’ve rescued children and women who are breeders out from under those tunnels.”

VICE News asked Straight to send us the “forensic evidence,” but he never did. He also didn’t respond to follow-up questions about his resumé. In his seminars, he claims to be a Navy SEAL and boasts of dramatic escapades in Ronald Reagan’s drug war in Panama. But the Navy SEAL Museum holds no record of him, unlike every SEAL after World War II, according to a spokesperson.

Straight also claims hundreds of victories in court—reuniting families and getting the convicted out of jail, in addition to personally suing the FDA. But a search of state and federal court records via PACER and Westlaw reveals his name as a party only in a handful of business disputes, linked to a ranch in Bend, Oregon.

“We need a NATIONWIDE movement to destroy—yes, destroy—every CPS and DFS and APS and whatever other alphabet soup agency in the entire USA.”

Ranchers may have been where Straight got his start. His website lists him as a member of Ammon Bundy’s defense team. Bundy was one of a family of ranchers who, along with militia members, led an armed standoff against the Bureau of Land Management in 2014. When reached by VICE News, Bundy denied that Straight served on his legal team. Bundy is now a candidate for Idaho governor, running against all things related to the federal government—in particular, taxes and vaccines.

Tax evasion is more-typical sovereign citizen fare. But the movement is evolving along with the conservative fringe.

“Sovereign citizens have always been antagonistic towards Child Protective Services because it is an example of the government literally intruding into their own homes—a government they believe is illegitimate in the first place,” said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League. What’s changing is sovereign citizen ideas are becoming more diffuse, mingling with QAnon and the anti-vaccine movement, he added.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mark Grenon, best known for selling the toxic bleach “Miracle Mineral Solution” as a bogus religious sacrament and coronavirus cure, has consulted Straight as part of his legal defense. In 2020, while in prison in Columbia, Grenon asked his followers to donate to Straight’s PayPal. At his seminar in Phoenix, Straight referenced the Great Awakening and prophesied that former President Donald Trump would once again take office. Straight also predicted that vaccinated Americans would soon die off in droves.

“Fauci, Obama, Biden, et al. are going down,” Straight wrote in a post on Facebook in June. “They are witnessing their demise as I write this. Q told us on several occasions: ‘PANIC IN D.C.’”

As these ideas take off, people who follow them are ending up in bad shape.

Since 2020, four parents—from Colorado, Utah, Kentucky, and even France—have been charged with kidnapping or attempting to kidnap their biological children out of foster care, after getting involved with online conspiracy groups. These kidnappings were widely reported as the result of QAnon, but they were also linked to sovereign ideas.

how do you get right wing, it seems left wing, or no wing at all, dumb people generally

However, I find it odd that the only source of this "Sovereign Citizen" claim is the sheriff himself -- no independent news reports, no "manifesto" by Vem Miller, and no other witnesses to his alleged involvement in the Sovereign Citizen movement.

We have a few Sovereign Citizens here in Oz. They make appearances in the news every now and then.