Some QAnon followers are borrowing discredited arguments from sovereign citizens

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text:Travis View
@travis_view
·
Jan 24, 2021
Some QAnon followers are borrowing discredited arguments from sovereign citizens in order to yet again move the goalposts. They're absurdly claiming Trump will be inaugurated on March 4, because the U.S. was "incorporated" in 1871 and all Amendments passed after that are invalid.



Travis View
@travis_view
This fixation on 1871 is tied to the Sovereign Citizens' hatred for the 14th Amendment.

This amendment, not coincidentally, guaranteed citizenship for former slaves and led to landmark civil rights cases. @intelwire explains here: https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/downloads/JMB%20Sovereign%20Citizens.pdf…

[soothsayer]

1. Hoo boy

[Nevilledog]

2. I was advisory counsel to a couple different sovereign citizens.

They are total whackjobs and I can see how this crap would appeal to QAnoners.

[Ms. Toad]

7. I had to draft opinions on their cases for my judge.

I have assumed from the beginning that they were pretty much synonymous.

The same kind of gish-gallop thinking in a legal (rather than journalistic) context. Just enough connection to real law to make "this is nuts" an inadequate response. It was a very time consuming exercise, in the same way that discrediting any statement by KellyAnne Conway would be for a journalist.

So were you advisory counsel over their objections? I can't imagine any of them hiring (or voluntarily being represented by) a real attorney.

[Nevilledog]

8. A real attorney?

Wow. Yeah.

I was a private attorney who also did some appointed cases.

[Ms. Toad]

12. "advisory counsel" suggested to me that they might have chosen

not to be represented by counsel, but that you were appointed to advise them to protect them from their own stupidity. It happens sometimes in criminal cases - especially when the consequences might be death or life imprisonment.

ETA: Every one I've encountered in a legal setting has been a pro se litigant.

[Nevilledog]

14. The part I took exception to was the suggestion that people who were appointed weren't real lawyers

Some of the best attorneys I dealt with were public defenders. Many did that type of work because they believed everyone was deserving of counsel who would fight for them. Some of the worst attorneys I dealt with were fellow "real" attorneys, only in it for the money.

[Ms. Toad]

15. Sorry - I wasn't suggesting that at all.

and I had no idea what you were offended by.

I have just never met any "sovereign citizens" who were willingly represented by counsel. I have, on the other hand, encountered them with counsel foisted on them to protect them from themselves.

Real attorney = anyone licensed to practice law, as opposed to pro se sovereign citizens pretending to practice law on their own behalf.

Of course public defenders are real attorneys. It would never have crossed my mind to think otherwise.

[GulfCoast66]

16. I think you might have miss-interpreted his meaning

I took it to mean these nut jobs don’t normally want representation. And you were appointed by the court against their will.

[SWBTATTReg]

3. The dumb leading the dumber...an match made in heaven, eh?

Thank god we have saner people in our justice system / judges who don't screw around and listen to such nonsense, such as the filing of over 60+ lawsuits to dismiss part of or all of the Nov. 2020 election results, thus invalidating possibly millions of votes.

[Nevilledog]

5. We should make a bet on how long it takes QAnon to start bitching about flag fringe.

[musette_sf]

4. On a new episode of CourtCam

(a guilty pleasure) that aired last week, they had TWO “sovereign citizens” being arraigned. They were in front of the same judge, who must be really used to these nuts in his jurisdiction. He humors them and then tells them how it’s gonna be.

[Takket]

6. as long as it keeps them busy and not murdering americans, i'm fine with

whatever bullshit they want to believe.

[dutch777]

10. Exactly! And let them break tax, property ownership or any law...just keep arresting them.

Anything that ties them up and locks them away works for me.

[spinbaby]

11. I don't want them tying up our court system

I sat on a jury once for a sovereign citizen who was representing himself and offered some bullshit explanation about why laws didn’t apply to him. He wasted the time of probably two dozen people for two days. Took us longer to select a jury foreman than it did for us to find him guilty of assaulting the officers arresting him for drunken driving.

[jmowreader]

19. Drunken traveling, you mean

Have you seen this little piece of insanity?

https://wearechange.org/u-s-supreme-court-says-no-license-necessary-to-drive-automobile-on-public-highwaysstreets/

Two humorous comments:

Sovereign citizens love to quote a Virginia Supreme Court case from the 1930s, Thompson v. Smith, as "proof" you don't need a license to drive a car. There are, as you would suspect, a few problems with using this case for that...key among them being that the paragraph after the one they quote very specifically says requiring what the case called "permits" was totally fine and appropriate. Oh...and Thompson was actually trying to get his license back after the chief of police yanked it on a whim.

This list, or one just like it, is found all over the Internet. The list of cases was written by Rodney Skurdal, a hired hand in a junkyard and one of the Montana Freemen - a very early sovereign citizen group. The most important "right to travel" case out there is State v. Skurdal, in which he attempted to get out of his own driving-without-a-license ticket and got the dogshit slapped out of him by the Montana Supreme Court. As they said in their case, "the notion that freedom of travel encompasses unrestrained use of the highway is wrong."

[Progressive Jones]

9. The more the Q Flakes spew insanity, the better. We need to ID them as much as possible.

These creeps move freely among us. We need to know who they are.

[Quixote1818]

13. What will they come up with after March 4th? Jesus fucking Christ. The stupidity and detachment from

reality is mind numbing.

[GulfCoast66]

17. I think our grandkids will know them. The are as much a religious group as anything.

The 7th Day Adventist formed out of disappointed people who were part of the hundred thousands or so who expected Christ to return on a specific day in the mid 1800’s. Most realized they had been played for fools. But a hard core adapted their nutty beliefs to become the still nutty 7th Day folks. I won’t be shocked if in 30 years their is a religious cult that has trump in their theology. They are that crazy.

I’ve said for years that a country where 30% of the people believe that 6000 years ago god had some dude build a big boat and put every animal on earth on it to escape the world wide flood is a power keg waiting to go off. They will believe anything that confirms their bias.

[BGBD]

18. That whole gold fringed flag

Maritime court shit has definitely made its way into Qanon.

Every conspiracy is in Qanon now.

[Straw Man]

20. They have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of "society."

The seem to think that they can enjoy its benefits without obeying its laws. They can't.

[niyad]

21. I know someone who fell for that "sovereign citizen" nonsense. Funny, now she is using the law

to legitimately deal with a very nasty landlord situation.