Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
I have to admit that I knew very little about the sovereign citizen movement before I read a New York times article a couple of days ago that opened my eyes to the movement and how some in that movement have attacked government officials and civil service workers. To fully understand how members of the sovereign citizens movement think, one must know a little about their beliefs.
“Sovereign citizens believe that in the 1800s, the federal government was gradually subverted and replaced by an illegitimate government. They create their own driver’s licenses and include their thumbprints on documents to distinguish their flesh and blood person from a “straw man” persona that they say has been created by the false government. When writing their names, they often add punctuation marks like colons or hyphens.” New York Times
In response to some legitimate concerns over mortgage foreclosure abuses and in response to some imagined governmental abuses, some sovereign citizens members have taken to filing liens against many government officials and these liens negatively impact the personal credit records of these officials and government workers.
One couple in Minnesota have filed over $250 Billion in liens in just a few years. “But as Sheriff Stanek soon learned, the liens, legal claims on property to secure the payment of a debt, were just the earliest salvos in a war of paper, waged by a couple who had lost their home to foreclosure in 2009 — a tactic that, with the spread of an anti-government ideology known as the “sovereign citizen” movement, is being employed more frequently as a way to retaliate against perceived injustices.
Over the next three years, the couple, Thomas and Lisa Eilertson, filed more than $250 billion in liens, demands for compensatory damages and other claims against more than a dozen people, including the sheriff, county attorneys, the Hennepin County registrar of titles and other court officials.” New York Times
How can one couple file $250 billion in liens? It may surprise you that in most states any party can file a lien. When a claim for a lien is filed and litigated, the facts and evidence will decide whether the lien is valid. However, how does one go about dealing with liens on your home in the billions? The time and effort to litigate and clean the title can cost the victims thousands in attorney fees and delay sales and refinances of real estate, not to mention the damage done to victim’s credit ratings.
The FBI has now gotten involved into the false lien filing business and considers the massive filings as a type of “paper terrorism”. This is one of the few times lately that I agree with the FBI. I find it hard to imagine receiving a title commitment for a sale of my home and reading that someone has filed millions of dollars of liens against the property. How would you react when you discover millions of dollars in unfounded liens have been placed against the title of your home?
This paper war seems to be increasing across the entire nation. “In Gadsden, Ala., three people were arrested in July for filing liens against victims including the local district attorney and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. And in Illinois this month, a woman who, like most sovereign citizens, chose to represent herself in court, confounded a federal judge by asking him to rule on a flurry of unintelligible motions.
“I hesitate to rank your statements in order of just how bizarre they are,” the judge told the woman, who was facing charges of filing billions of dollars in false liens.
“The convergence of the evidence strongly suggests a movement that is flourishing,” said Mark Pitcavage, the director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League. “It is present in every single state in the country.” New York Times
The Illinois case noted above is an especially enlightening case that involved some very high-profile victims of a similar lien filing attack. “Phillips faces charges that she targeted Fitzgerald, then-Chief Judge James Holderman and other federal judges, prosecutors and court officials by filing bogus liens on their homes in 2011 that sought tens of billions of dollars.
Prosecutors allege Phillips was retaliating after she was physically barred from the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse and forbidden from filing documents on behalf of her brother, Devon, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to drug conspiracy charges.
Her trial features a star-studded cast of witnesses — in legal circles, anyway — with Fitzgerald, Holderman and U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow potentially taking the stand. It was the murder of Lefkow’s husband and mother in 2005 by a crazed litigant that led to a greater sensitivity for the security of federal officials in Chicago.
Phillips, 43, who also goes by the name of River Tali El Bey, has professed in court that she doesn’t recognize the federal system. Her court filings reflect the ideology of sovereign citizens, a rapidly expanding anti-government movement whose adherents often file nonsensical, complex legal documents and refuse to accept or follow court rules.” Chicago Tribune
The Fitzgerald referred to in the Tribune quote was Patrick Fitzgerald, the former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. The sovereign citizen movement has been around since at least the 1990’s, but these paper attacks are a more recent tactic that has succeeded in clogging court dockets and harming the personal credit of many people. As the states start writing laws to toughen the penalties for filing false lien claims, the sovereign citizens are continuing to make life miserable for many, good intentioned government officials.
Do you agree with the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center that these tactics constitute paper terrorism? I think if you ask the victims, they might agree that they have been terrorized. What can be done to stop these attacks? Will education of the public about this alleged movement aid in preventing these kind of abusive filings?
In my opinion, I think states should be careful when they are rewriting laws to toughen the penalties for false filings, because if they do not enforce these same laws against the robo signing tactics of some banksters; these types of attacks may continue no matter how the States change or amend their criminal statutes. What do you think? I think I may have to do a title search of my home after this article!
nick spin 1, August 25, 2013 at 3:02 pm
The Posse Comitatus, which was big in Wi. back in the 70′s/80′s, used to do this horseshit.
=========================
If only the United States had not passed the Posse Comitatus law:
We would still have Big Brother protecting us.
Where for art thou Big Brother?
Us?
@grathuln:
Liens are only part of the problem. Liens are 99% governed by each state’s laws. They are creatures of statute. The sovcit avoid this by creating “common law” or even “federal common law” liens. There is no innocent error in this.
What would happen in your scheme, is that if a court or arbitrator threw out the lien, the sovict would just refile it in another jurisdiction, either a new county, or directly with a Secretary of State. They would file appeal and appeal and motion for reconsideration after motion for reconsideration and motion for new trial. None of this would be for any reason except to bog down the system. This is a separate tort in and of itself. You might want to google barratry and “champerty and maintenance” to get a feel for the history of this.
Judges do not automatically go into “vexatious litigant” mode, and usually try to give a plaintiff a few bites of the apple. But, when someone continues to file one nonsensical claim after another you have to do something. For example, the “two citizen parents” branch of the Birthers continues to operate in spite of multiple court decisions which flatly slap the whole theory down. Our laws are not based on a book by Emer de Vattel from 300+ years ago.
One lawyer in Tennessee tried the crap and was hit with $27,000 in fees pursuant to 28 USC § 1927. That lawyer quit birfing and found new work as a patent troll. Others, who haven’t been sanctioned continue to promote the silliness, along with a host of legal quacks. But, somebody has to waste their money defending the idiocy. This is one place where conservatives have sown the wind, and are reaping the whirlwind, because it will probably cost people like Ted Cruz from %3-%5 on the vote, IMHO.
The point being, getting tough from the onset is the best way to stop this silliness. Without that $27,000 assessment, that one guy would still be filing those stupid suits. In Texas, these folks get a few chances, then they have to put up security to continue. That gives them something to lose.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Not really new. The “posse comitatus” movement in the ’70’s and 80’s and the Montana Freemen in the ’90’s did the same thing, although, perhaps, not on the same scale.
@Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter.
Which is why I said perhaps the authorities should make it much easier and cheaper to get rid of these liens. The problem highlighted by these protests appears to be the difficulty with which such liens can be contested and the ease with which they can be raised. In some ways this is fair in a what’s good for the goose is good for the gander kind of way.
The sledgehammer of federal “terroristic” legislation is not necessary when they could redo the lien dispute system to make it harder to bring liens and simpler and more affordable to contest liens and so much less of a target for abuse all around.
One could say a lien can only be placed against property after a court has established the legitimacy of the debt and by extension the lien meaning the person bringing the lien needs to bring court action and costs would be distributed between both parties as the court saw fit. This would be in keeping with an innocent until proven guilty ideology.
One could also add imposed arbitration before a lien could go to court whereby both parties should attend arbitration, keeping out of expensive courts, during which bogus liens and the basics of the law could be established for both parties by experts so at least both parties knew where they stood in a court battle even if they didn’t accept the arbitration recommendations.
The arbitration could seek to refuse the lien, with appeal to the court, because the debt is bogus, allow the lien and work out reasonable payments or disallow the lien but work out payments for a legitimate debt not worthy of securing on property. In the event either party disagrees with arbitration the arbitration would submit a technical report to a judge or panel who would decide if the case warrants a court action or make a judgement themselves or it would serve as part of the court process.
The only fly in the ointment is jury trial right in the USA, not sure if this applies for civil cases but IANAL let alone a US lawyer. I expect some protesters may try for jury nullification and force a trial by jury for house foreclosures and liens. I would support anyone feeling hard done by the banks in such action and were I on a jury I would nullify the debt if I felt the banks had been negligent, which in quite a few cases they were.
The filing of liens that are not based in a true legal liability for a debt is anything but a form of legitimate protest. Unfortunately many states allow liens to be filed with precious little evidence of a bill or contract between the parties or a pending law suit for damages. The law must be strengthened and it must be enforced against each and every violator including big banks.
“Soverign citizens” who act out their beleifs present a clear and present danger to our democracy because they claim to be THE LAW! Republican politicians and others who encourage these individuals should be held liable and accountable for the damage they do. This is NOT A GAME; it is people’s lives.
@Justice Holmes. I respectfully disagree with some of your comments but I agree this is not a game.
As stated before I disagree with the politics of the “Sovereigns” BUT what they’re doing is (ab)using a system as a form of protest.
Yes it affects lives, I would not want to be the victim of it, but at the same time it’s no more denying life, liberty or freedom anymore than private industries do when they take action of the same kind against the citizens.
As stated the problem is not so much the sovereign’s actions rather the system. The system needs redone so it is not so readily abused by either side. I propose a balance between making it harder to raise liens and easier and cheaper to dispute them. I outline the beginnings of an idea for how to address this in a comment above.
Of course one could render it such that liens can only be raised by courts or by companies or some such unfairness. In which case as stated previously I would support forcing a jury trial and going for jury nullification as a last line of protest.
If operating legally through legal due process is wrong, then you amend the laws through Congress or a state legislature to fix the loophole.
The FBI needs probable cause or reasonable suspicion. This may be well intentioned but is a very dangerous legal rationale that is open-ended and an incentive for police abuse.
grathuln,
Many, if not most of these frivolous liens and lawsuits are against individuals, such as police officers, town employees, and officials. Personally.
Anyone with a filing fee can sue anyone else. Even the most frivolous lawsuit has to be defended. Lawsuits suck up time, energy, money and if they are not defended, then the plaintiff gets a default judgment. Imagine you are a police officer making an average salary, and you get hit with lawsuit after lawsuit. Filing a lien is not hard. Imagine you work on salary only to discover you have had liens placed against you, ruining your credit. Liens are reported to credit reporting agencies. Try to buy a car or get a mortgage? You can’t because some yahoo has filed a lien against everything you own.
This is not the same as a DNS attack against an agency or company. This is an ordinary person who happens to be a public employee….most of the time. You can become a victim of these attacks because you have written a letter to the editor of the local paper.
@gratuln:
The courtroom is not a place for narcissists to play out their various dramas. It cost money for Defendants to defend themselves from this crap, often not recoverable from the financially broke sovcit. If they want to protest, then they can make a sign and walk up and down the sidewalk, or do a boycott, or immolate themselves.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@nicks:
it is pretty much the same bunch. There was a lot of it in Texas. The best remedy in some jurisdictions is to talk a judge into making them seek judicial permission before filing any future lawsuit, on penalty of imprisonment for contempt of court. Another thing is to do as my BFF Fabia Sheen, Esq., an attorney, suggests and “give them something to lose.”
They are “vexatious litigants”, and they must be labeled and treated as such from the get go. Texas has remedies against them:
http://law.onecle.com/texas/civil/11.054.00.html
If you read the next few sections of the law, you will see they are given something to lose.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter, so what you suggest is being able to impose a handicap on a group or individual based on some kind of social norm?
I understand you do not agree with their politics, I don’t either, but that does warrant making them some kind of under class. Everyone should have the same access to the same rights or remedies by law regardless of anything else.
That some groups or individuals use the legal system in a manner disapproved of by society points at best points to some failing in the legal system that allows such use. I posit the system fails in situations when it makes bring in complaint either much more or less difficult than dismissing one; in this case it seems bringing a complaint is much easier than it is to dismiss.
Either way it does not mean one should hand out sanctions to so called vexatious litigants that mean they’re denied rights because such a definition is arbitrary; one may bring many complaints because one sees many injustices and this has happened in the past with other protests.
Please note I also protest the church of scientology and that organisation (one that I feel doesn’t warrant capital letters) is the biggest abuser of the legal system in the world.
I may not whole agree with the politics of the “Sovereigns” but I don’t feel their actions constitute terrorism. Indeed I feel their actions are a legitimate form of protest.
The authorities should make the removal of liens easier and cheaper for all rather than try to brand a group as terrorists just because they use a weapon traditionally used by private corporations and other authorities against those same entities.
I also believe Distributed Denial of Service DDoS attacks as used by various cyber activists are also not acts of terrorism merely acts of protests.
It sickens me when the state tries to overblow such actions in attempts to crush those who protests against them.
This is a growing problem that has been around for probably a decade or more. I saw a case locally where one of these types of sovereign citizens tried the lien route after he got in some trouble.
WA state has a civil procedure under Special Rights of Action and Special Immunities:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=4.24.350
RCW 4.24.350
Actions for damages that are false, unfounded, malicious, without probable cause, or part of conspiracy — Action, claim, or counterclaim by judicial officer, prosecuting authority, or law enforcement officer for malicious prosecution — Damages and costs — Attorneys’ fees — Definitions.
(1) In any action for damages, whether based on tort or contract or otherwise, a claim or counterclaim for damages may be litigated in the principal action for malicious prosecution on the ground that the action was instituted with knowledge that the same was false, and unfounded, malicious and without probable cause in the filing of such action, or that the same was filed as a part of a conspiracy to misuse judicial process by filing an action known to be false and unfounded.
(2) In any action, claim, or counterclaim brought by a judicial officer, prosecuting authority, or law enforcement officer for malicious prosecution arising out of the performance or purported performance of the public duty of such officer, an arrest or seizure of property need not be an element of the claim, nor do special damages need to be proved. A judicial officer, prosecuting authority, or law enforcement officer prevailing in such an action may be allowed an amount up to one thousand dollars as liquidated damages, together with a reasonable attorneys’ fee, and other costs of suit. A government entity which has provided legal services to the prevailing judicial officer, prosecuting authority, or law enforcement officer has reimbursement rights to any award for reasonable attorneys’ fees and other costs, but shall have no such rights to any liquidated damages allowed.
(3) No action may be brought against an attorney under this section solely because of that attorney’s representation of a party in a lawsuit.
(4) As used in this section:
(a) “Judicial officer” means a justice, judge, magistrate, or other judicial officer of the state or a city, town, or county.
(b) “Prosecuting authority” means any officer or employee of the state or a city, town, or county who is authorized by law to initiate a criminal or civil proceeding on behalf of the public.
(c) “Law enforcement officer” means a member of the state patrol, a sheriff or deputy sheriff, or a member of the police force of a city, town, university, state college, or port district, or a fish and wildlife officer or ex officio fish and wildlife officer as defined in RCW 77.08.010.
[2001 c 253 § 1; 1997 c 206 § 1; 1984 c 133 § 2; 1977 ex.s. c 158 § 1.]
Notes:
Legislative findings — 1984 c 133: “The legislature finds that a growing number of unfounded lawsuits, claims, and liens are filed against law enforcement officers, prosecuting authorities, and judges, and against their property, having the purpose and effect of deterring those officers in the exercise of their discretion and inhibiting the performance of their public duties.
The legislature also finds that the cost of defending against such unfounded suits, claims and liens is severely burdensome to such officers, and also to the state and the various cities and counties of the state. The purpose of section 2 of this 1984 act is to provide a remedy to those public officers and to the public.” [1984 c 133 § 1.]
The Posse Comitatus, which was big in Wi. back in the 70’s/80’s, used to do this horseshit.
“Do you agree with the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center that these tactics constitute paper terrorism?” – rafflaw
Not unless it leads to torture.
Like the incoherent legal gibberish of Yoo, Bybee, Bush II, and that ilk.
They were greatly rewarded for their legal gibberish.
There is holy gibberish and there is rabbit hole gibberish.
Less and less in between, and a fog of yellow brick road in between.
“Sovereign” does not mean what it once did:
(Washington Post). I mean, can you really blame Secretary of Defense Gates for throwing his leaves in his neighbors yard, since Gates was the boss?
Tresspass?
When ya gonna lose the indoctrination folks?
When ya gonna quit the McPropaganda?
And therein lies the hypocrisy of the SC movement, using the system they deny having any legitimacy, in an attempt to achieve their ends.
I am not surprised.This is just one of the early salvos of a fight that is going to get worse and more dangerous for our democracy, and thereby to the nation as a whole.
I was telling a friend yesterday that we have now reached the point where the Southern militias, the anti-government moderates, the libertarians, the tea party and republican affiliates, and the disappointed Obama liberals are all threading along the same ideological lines. What is the difference between this group and Anonymous?
We all now, have realized that it matters little who is at the helm, for he is a figurehead. The banks and corporations own it all and want more, and the regular citizen is feeling more and more that he has his back against the wall facing a financial onslaught that is aided and abetted by a government that tasks itself supporter of the rich and the powerful against the meek and the powerless.
Americans are inherently against injustice, for the idea of justice is inherently woven into the ideals of being Americans. Whether that same justice can simultaneously justify genocide and enslavement is another thing. But as a nation of immigrants, it is necessarily a nation of hope and ideals, because hope and ideals are what brought those immigrants here in the first place, and there are enough examples of such achievement to warrant keeping that hope and ideals alive.
Americans also romanticize the stand off, the guns drawn going out in a blaze of glory ending, where the lone individual(s) face off against the bad guys (brigands or government people), thus making a grand statement that while costing them their life, is insuring their immortality, their freedom. Our history is replete with such examples, whether they also features a religious bent or not.
Although I deplore what these people are doing, and the ignorance that underlines and sustains these movements, I cannot really blame them, for they are grabbing to what our forefathers hinted at, that a citizen has the option, if not the duty to stand against any injustice set against him, whether by a person or by the government, and right now, right now, as before and as tomorrow, there is a whole lot of injustice going on against us all, here, and against us, there, and it is certainly only getting worse.
I agree that there is no right to file liens that have no reasonable basis in fact or in law. Those who do so should be civilly liable to whoever they injure. However, I cannot begin to emphasize how disappointed that here, of all places, the word “terrorist” should be abused. There is no reasonable basis for claiming that filing liens is “terrorism.” This rhetorical overkill may be used to justify all of the extremes and injustices of the so-called “war on terrorism” being used against those whose sole wrong consists of the wrongful filing of liens. Theoretically, under the so-called “laws” against terrorism (as mis-interpreted by the executive branch), they could be indefinitely detained or even the subject of assassination as a result. Would you please be more careful in watching the words that you use, and be conscious of how others will abuse them. Additionally, the Southern Poverty Law Center seems to have a close association with law enforcement, and whatever they put out should be subject to critical scrutiny and verification, and not merely blindly accepted. (It should almost have to go without saying that the same goes for whatever the FBI says. “All governments lie”, as I. F. Stone used to say.
Sounds like an offshoot of the ever-morphing white supremacists.
Thanks for the heads-up
raff,
Good material and timely. Law enforcement officers are at risk when they encounter members of this movement. Some encounters have ended in gunfire. You cannot go into police and sheriff’s department training rooms without seeing all kinds of warning posters and handouts on what to look for, how to deal with them and the risks.
Actually, I have written about this several times in connection with the Birthers. The whole “two citizen parents” Birther nonsense is sovcit to the root. The whole “natural law” appeal they make is an end run around constitutional law. One really good link is:
http://archive.adl.org/mwd/suss1.asp
A good search term is “idiot legal arguments”. Some birthers are openly deep into it, like the one I call, The Sage of Swampy Acres” or “The Yukon Jerk” up in Alaska. His name is Gordon Epperly, and he filed a few ridiculous birther eligibility suits.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter