The Hutaree Case: Next Time, They'll Just Send In The Drones

Exonerated Hutaree defendants leave court: Future "seditionists" probably won't get a trial.

 

Next time the Regime identifies a group of people as “domesticterrorists,” the result might be summary execution, or imprisonment in militarycustody, rather than a trial. This is one very plausible result of thedismissal of “seditious conspiracy” charges against members of Michigan’s Hutareemilitia. 

Thanks to the legal environment created by the NDAA, theFeds won’t have to run the risk involved in submitting the next “domesticterrorism” case to the scrutiny of a court. Now that AttorneyGeneral Eric Hoder has helpfully clarified that “due process” and “judicialprocess” aren’t the same thing, it’s entirelypossible that the next group of American dissidents identified by the SPLC orother self-appointed political watchdog groups as “terrorists” could be targetedby a drone-fired missile or a presidential strike team. 

When asked by Rep. Thomas Graves (R-Georgia) if such "targeted assassinations" could be conducted domestically as well as overseas, FBI Commissar Robert Mueller pointedly refused to rule out the possibility. This was probably welcome news to Leslie Larsen, the FBI Agent who presided over the Hutaree case. 

 "We haven't worked a yearand a half on this investigation and risked [an undercover agent's] life towalk away from this with 3 arrests," groused the secret police investigator two years ago. Atthe time it appeared that the FBI wouldn’t be able to manufacture a criminalconspiracy out of a few trivial firearms violations and a surfeit ofanti-government rhetoric. 

During the past decade, false flag operations targeting disaffected Muslims have become the FBI’s métier. The Hutaree was the first non-Muslim “domestic extremist” groups to be cast as the lead in one of the Bureau’spost-911 Homeland Security Theater productions. U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts,who was able to see the plot holes in the FBI’s implausible script, had thecharacter and good sense to dismiss the case with prejudice.

 In her order granting thedefense motion for summary judgment, Roberts – who had previously expressedsevere skepticism regarding the supposed merits of the case – lambasted the Fedsfor repeatedly venturing beyond "inference to pure speculation” and “attemptingto formulate an alternative theory of criminal liability” when it became clearthat they couldn’t provide tangible evidence of intent to commit an overtcriminal act. This resulted in a theory of the case “based primarily on twoconversations … the first on August 13, 2009, and the second on February 20,2010.” 

Hutaree Crackdown: SWAT operators raid a church in Michigan.

 TheHutaree “militia” was a loosely organized group of obscurepeople united by their entirely commendable hostility toward the criminalclique calling itself the United States Government. They apparently shared aset of apocalyptic beliefs about the imminent rise of the Antichrist, and theyengaged in survivalist training in anticipation of the End Times, when theymight confront the necessity to use defensive force against government agents –whether foreign or domestic – in league with the enemy. 

Itwas in the context of this scenario that members of the Hutaree group supposedlyplotted to murder a law enforcement officer and then follow up withopportunistic attacks on other LEOs who would attend the funeral. Thisrepellent terrorist tactic should be familiar to the Feds who investigated the Hutareegroup; after all, the government that employs them has made extensive use ofit. Adetailed report compiled by British and Pakistani journalists hasdocumented that CIA drone-fired missile strikes have killed “dozens of civilians whohad gone to help rescue victims or [who] were attending funerals” thatresulted from earlier missile attacks.

Inorchestrating its phony domestic terrorist plots, the Regime tends to use ascript inspired by its own acts of state terrorism abroad. The Hutaree “plot”to assassinate a cop and then capitalize on the funeral may have been promptedby the federal informant who infiltrated the groupand – acting as a provocateur– thoughtfully offered to teach them how to make improvisedexplosive devices. It may have been stitched together in  post-production by the FBI impresario presidingover this little melodrama. What we know for certain is that it wasnot conceived by the Hutaree activists, nor did they take ownership of it.

Theoriginal indictment – which Judge Roberts eviscerated in a preliminary ruling –accused the Michigan dissidents of making material preparations to carry outspecific criminal acts. When it was shown that there was no evidence to supportthat charge, the Feds shifted their focus and charged them with “seditiousconspiracy,” which consisted of expressing opinions about government corruptionand making physical preparations to for self-defense against criminal violenceperpetrated by government authorities. 

Citinga Supreme Court precedent (Russell v. United States, 1962) holding that theprosecution isn’t “free to roam at large – to shift its theory of criminalityso as to take advantage of each passing vicissitude of the trial,” Robertsobserved that the Feds were not free to “say that the alleged plan set forth[in the original indictment] is irrelevant.” Yet that’s precisely what theyattempted to do.

 

Althoughthe supposed police assassination plot was central to the case against the Hutaree, “theGovernment did not provide sufficient proof of the existence of a conspiracy atall,” ruled Judge Roberts. “The Government says it is not certain whether theHutaree intended to initiate the conflict, or simply engage in it once it wasinitiated by others.” While Hutaree members frequently engaged in what were describedas “diatribes” against law enforcement, “all of this speech is protected by theFirst Amendment,” Roberts observed. Expressing hatred for the government’senforcement caste “is not the same as seditious conspiracy.”

Underthe Government’s theory of the case, Roberts noted, one could be charged with “sedition”simply through his or her “mere presence at the scene” when a Hutaree activist spokeabout “going to war and killing police.” 

One of the defendants, Tina Mae Stone,was described by the Feds as an “active, engaged and vocal member” of thepurported conspiracy because she overheard two conversations – one regarding aplanned trip to Kentucky by David Stone, Sr. and the federal informant, and a second that took place in an FBI-rented warehouse in which the provocateur “discussedexplosives” with Mr. Stone. 

Thelatter conversation touched on the subject of using coffee cans and winebottles to make improvised explosively formed projectiles (EFPs).  Ms. Stone joked that “she would take one forthe team and drink more wine, presumably so that the bottles could be used tomake explosives,” Roberts recounts. The Feds characterized that wisecrack asevidence that she had “played an active, unhesitant, and continuing role inobtaining materials to use in building EFPs” – despite the fact that she waspresent for only one meeting with the Hutaree co-defendants, and never provided themwith anything. 

Unchained: Michael Meeks hugs his aunt after being set free.

 Followingdismissal of the case, Hutaree defendant Michael Meeks, a 42-year-old formerMarine, saidthat the salient lesson taught by the case was the need for Americans to “watchwhat you say. Even the most innocent of statements can be used against you.” 

Actually,the lesson is that anything said in your presence can beused against you -- and if a sufficiently incriminating remark isn't forthcoming from you or your friends, the Feds can always pay somebody to perform on cue, and on camera.

While the Feds didn’t succeed in imprisoning the Hutareedefendants for life, they were able to steal more than two years of theirrespective lives through pre-trial incarceration. 

As a consolation prize, theFeds were able to extort guilty pleas from David Stone, Sr. and his son Joshua onweapons charges, which could result in prison terms. 

AlthoughU.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade – the Madam DeFarge behind this case – wasn’table to feed the defendants to the guillotine, she expressed a measure of vindictive satisfaction that the felony convictions mean “that these defendants will neverbe permitted to possess firearms again.” She also reiterated the Regime’s intentto continue “dismantling” militias and other dissident groups suspected ofimpermissible animosity toward their rulers. 

Once again, thanks to the NDAA –the Obama Regime’s “Law of Suspects” – the Feds will be able to useextra-judicial means to “dismantle” dissident groups in the future. 

 The original Law of Suspects was enacted by France’srevolutionary Jacobin government  on September17, 1793 (as it happened, the sixth birthday of the U.S. Constitution). Thedecree permitted the wholesale imprisonment of several classes of people deemedenemies of the State:

*Those considered “partisans of tyranny” or “enemies of liberty”-- which in the Jacobin lexicon referred to defenders of the monarchy andtraditional institutions;

*Individuals who had been denied “certificates of patriotism”issued by the revolutionary regime;

*Former “civil servants” who had been cashiered by the NationalConvention;

*Former nobles and emigres and their families, if they failed toprovide suitable displays of “devotion to the Revolution”;

*Those who emigrated from France between July 1, 1789 and April 8,1792.

 As David A. Bell of Johns Hopkins Universitypoints out in his study The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth ofWarfare as We Know It, the Law of Suspects -- the template for every modern totalitarian legal system, including the NDAA -- was the enabling actfor the revolutionary Reign of Terror. As is the case with a contemporary Americandeemed an “enemy combatant,” any French citizen branded a Suspect had no rightto appeal that designation. Protests of that kind were probably met with somevariation of the sentimentrecently expressed by Robespierre’s modern disciple, Sen. Lindsey Graham: “Shutup – you don’t get a lawyer!” 

The same concept was adopted by the Soviet Union’s Fundamental Principles of PenalLegislation, which identified the central mission of the state's lawenforcement apparatus (chiefly the Ckeha secret police, which would laterbecome the KGB) as that of identifying, andremoving the threat of, "socially dangerous persons." That missionwas enshrined in Article 58 of the Soviet penal code, which was the foundationof that government’s perpetual war of terror against dissent – and theantecedent to section1031 of the NDAA.

 The law dealing with "socially dangerous persons,"notes the authoritative Black Book of Communism, dealt with "anyactivity that, without directly aiming to overthrow or weaken the Soviet regime,was in itself `an attack on the political or economic achievements of therevolutionary proletariat.' The law thus not only punished intentionaltransgressions but also proscribedpossible or unintentional acts” (emphasis added).

Additionally, the expression "socially dangerous persons" itself wasbased on "extremely elastic categories" that permitted theimprisonment of people in the gulag "even in the absence of guilt."This is because what the Soviet rulers were pleased to call "the law"specified that incarceration, exile, or execution could be employed as means of"social protection" against "anyone classified as a danger tosociety, either for a specific crime thathas been committed or when, even if exonerated of a particular crime, theperson is still reckoned to pose a threat to society." (Emphasisadded.)

Soviet "law" discarded entirely with the idea of punishing overtacts, focusing instead on the supposed motivations of those deemed innatelythreatening to the regime. Note also that the Soviet system was rigged tonullify exculpatory verdicts. Soviet prosecutors, like Federal prosecutorstoday, considered themselves entitled to “shift the theory of criminality” asneeded in order to justify detention of political offenders.

Detention of “socially dangerous persons” was the primaryfunction of the Soviet penal apparatus. As Paul Gregory points out in his book Lenin's Brain,most of the prisoners consigned to the gulag were sent there not because of what they haddone, but because of what the state suspected they could do; they were beingisolated from the rest of society "because of actual or suspected oppositionto the Soviet state” – that is to say, that they had a “general plan” to “opposethe authority” of the government,” as the U.S. “Justice” Department saidof the Hutaree defendants. 

 During the Senate’s discussion of the NDAA’s martial lawprovisions, Sen. Graham warned that Americans suspected of terrorism –  another “elastic” category that can includepractically any kind of organized dissent – should “know what will come yourway – death; detention; prosecution.” 

Under the NDAA, the Regime has the luxury of ignoringthe third option listed by Graham when courts refuse to ratify every conspiracytheory concocted by the Cheka (or, as it’s now know, the FBI).  Or the Feds could simply avoid the messinessassociated with “judicial process” of any kind and implement the Obamaadministration’s policy of executive assassination.

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