Colorado Public Radio – by Allison Sherry
With the sentencing of Bruce Doucette, one of the most prominent “sovereign citizens” in the country, Colorado prosecutors say they are sending a message nationally that threatening local government officials will not be tolerated.
The state attorney general’s office is in the midst of taking to court nine people, including Doucette, who papered the offices of state judges, district attorneys, sheriffs and even Gov. John Hickenlooper with false legal documents. They’re charged with racketeering, conspiracy and other felony counts.
“I can’t get into their mind as to whether they thought we would ever hold them accountable,” said Robert Shapiro, first assistant attorney general and lead prosecutor on the cases.
The defendants, led by Doucette, Stephen Nalty and Steven Byfield, consider themselves sovereigns; they reject all local and state laws because they are not in the U.S. Constitution.
Doucette gave himself the title “superior court judge” and traveled around the state trying to organize groups to fight with local governments. Those targeted included sheriffs, judges, county officials who enforce code violations and district attorneys who prosecuted people the sovereigns deemed sympathetic.
One of their victims included former Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett. In 2015, Garnett started receiving phony arrest warrants and documents that claimed Garnett owed money to the sovereigns for collecting his government salary. They were often signed with a bloody fingerprint.
“Some of the documents claimed to be warrants for my arrest. Some of the documents claimed to be essentially garnishments that would take property from my bank accounts,” he said.
The movement nationally doesn’t stop at what prosecutors call “paper terrorism.” Sovereign nationals have grown so dangerous that the FBI has deemed them the top domestic terrorist threat facing the United States. Sovereigns are blamed for the deaths of more than a dozen police officers over the years.
The Bundy family, which engaged in a multi-day stand-off with federal officials in Oregon over cattle grazing on public lands, identified with sovereign philosophies, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Doucette gave legal advice to the Bundys, investigators said.
“It’s turned into a significant problem. Sovereign citizens often feel like they operate outside of the law or above the law,” said Ryan Lenz, an investigative reporter at the Law Center. “And they often get very angry and indignant and principled when a law enforcement officer might challenge them on their fictitious standing.”
Lenz said it would be a mistake to dismiss the paper terrorism as harmless.
“It’s not simply a matter of men and women running around filing fake financial documents and fake legal documents causing headaches for people,” he said. “If someone files a lien on your home it radically affects your ability to conduct the business of your family.”
Shapiro read several victim statements ahead of Doucette’s sentencing. One of them, Gilpin County Treasurer Aynn Huffman, said she put in safeguards to protect her staff after receiving threats from Doucette.
“It’s that type of stress that this defendant took joy and glee causing to ensure that his ideology would dictate and be of influence … against these people,” Shapiro said. But now, there has been a leveling off in reports of sovereign movements with the Colorado criminal trials are underway.
Still, Shapiro doesn’t expect the movement to die with the ringleaders going to state prison — Doucette was sentenced to 38 years in state prison this week. Nalty and Byfield were sentenced to 22 and 36 years, respectively, earlier this year.
“We expect in due course that the next generation of leaders will rise up and try to become the next Bruce Doucette,” he said.
I think we are past the paper war
Yes, a paper war with the likes of shapiro and huffman in their maritime courts is ludicrous!! I don’t think they truly grasp how in it up to our eyeballs we REALLY are.
it would be something if people would order Henry’s CD “Bill of Rights/Common Law Explained’ and gift it to their local ‘government officials’ ……I bet there isn’t one in a hundred that can explain the articles
Both copies you sent me are currently loaned out. 🙂
you want more?
Nailed it!!
“And they often get very angry and indignant and principled when a law enforcement officer might challenge them on their fictitious standing.”
The current de facto system of “law” and “government” is actually the one with fictitious standing. The Sovereign American National is part of the real or de jure government vested in them by the LORD God.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
And I will say this story made me sad. I saw these guys as trying, in their own imperfect way to stand up to the oppressor, to reclaim what is theirs. They really took their first stumbling steps for all of us. Hope those sentences are drastically commuted. Sad indeed.
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“One of their victims included former Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett. In 2015, Garnett started receiving phony arrest warrants and documents that claimed Garnett owed money to the sovereigns for collecting his government salary. They were often signed with a bloody fingerprint.”
That is NOT how one goes about exposing the treason.
idiots
Its not gonna get solved that way……bloody fingerprint?….who’s blood?……it sure wasnt the D.a.’s.
Piss on em. I’ll threaten who I want. And mean it!!!
Time to hang these ” prosecutor’s” to make an example of them…..
Shapiro eh???
Oy vey!!!!
of course
Not a word about the Bill of Rights that sovereign citizens base their claims on — they’re just branded a bunch of lunatics who think they’re above the law.
Doucette was sentenced to 38 years in state prison this week. Nalty and Byfield were sentenced to 22 and 36 years, respectively, earlier this year.
VS
Jeffrey Epstein
A former employee told the police that Epstein would receive massages three times a day. Eventually the FBI received accounts from about 40 girls whose allegations of molestation by Epstein included overlapping details.In June 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He served 13 months before being released.
why did they even go to court?? where does sovereignty and compliance intersect??
Great point, Jim. An almost life-sentence for exposing corruption, and a slap on the wrist for multiple child rapes. What we get when evil’s at the helm.
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This is the real war above all else. To protect and defend what’s really in The Bill of Rights and our living constitution.
“Sovereign nationals have grown so dangerous that the FBI has deemed them the top domestic terrorist threat facing the United States.”
No, sorry, that distinct title goes to the gestapo thugs, the police.
I do think truly informed sovereigns are THE most dangerous force on the planet, dangerous to the very system that enslaves them. The FBI knows that if the sovereign movement expands, there ain’t a chance in hell for the gov-facade to continue, so for that reason they deem it “most dangerous,” attempting to paint it as immoral and “fictitious,” when to be a supreme ruler of one’s self, one destiny, is the highest law of the land. I feel for those guys in jail. A sovereign in jail paints the saddest of pictures.
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ps: Thanks, Henry, for expanding on the “sovereign” issue in the broadcast. I guess I just was so pleased that any would take on the behemoth that I missed the end doesn’t always justify means point. Well, learning as I go. But who are these guys, these so-called sovereigns? Scammers? CIA? Is anyone going to jail? Confusing. But maybe confusion was the intention all along.
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