Word: freemen
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...flinching in Montana, just waiting for a grand jury in Billings to hand up federal indictments giving them legal authority to move against the fugitives, who otherwise faced only state-level charges. Whatever the reason for the long stalemate, it gave way last Monday when federal agents arrested two Freemen leaders, LeRoy Schweitzer, 57, and Daniel Petersen, 53. An undercover agent posing as a seminar attendee was said to have pulled a pistol after feigning car trouble near the Clark ranch...
...arrests came a day after a meeting at the Freemen's compound at which Schweitzer outlined a plan to kidnap local officials. It was captured on a videotape broadcast last week by abc's Prime Time Live. "We're going to have a standing order," said Schweitzer. "Anyone obstructing justice, the order is shoot to kill." The first attempt to arraign the two men at the Billings federal courthouse ended in chaos when they shouted demands for a "change of venue" to their own Justus Township court. Two days later, U.S. Magistrate Richard Anderson tried again, but had to enter...
...Federal Government, as well as the locals, can help it. Officials say that at least 10 Freemen, plus an unknown number of wives and children, remain at Justus Township. Those include Ralph Clark, 65, and his brother Emmett, 67, and Emmett's son Edwin, 45. On Saturday, Emmett's son Richard, 47, who had also been wanted by authoriteis but had not been involved in the standoff, turned himself...
Though the common-law-courts movement is loosely organized, with no strict hierarchy, the first arrests were big ones. Schweitzer became a leader of the Freemen after a tax dispute in the late 1970s. Using ideas common to the Posse Comitatus and other rightist fringe groups, they cobbled a doctrine out of bits and pieces of the Magna Carta, the Bible, the Constitution and other sources to argue that the Federal Government represents an illegal usurpation of the common-law power of localities. The ideas are now spread by groups under a variety of names--Freemen, We the People, People...
...Freemen-style seminars around the country, even listeners unmoved by the talk about Jews bringing blacks to America to destroy it could be hooked by the talk that their debts were a legal illusion. Some Garfield County ranchers and farmers discovered the Freemen idea in 1992, when they attended an invitation-only seminar in Great Falls, Montana. It was organized by Roy Schwasinger, founder of We the People, one of several organizations promoting Freemen-style ideologies and fraud schemes. Depending on his audience, Schwasinger told listeners that either the Federal Government or the U.S. banking system had lost a class...