Ed and Elaine Brown on Trial | Bombs, Taxes, and Red Crayons.
My friend JJ MacNab has a great blog she calls Bombs, Taxes, and Red Crayons, in which she covers various tax protester trials.
If you want to know more about tax protesters, what they believe, and why they believe it, and especially if you like to point and laugh at weird people, I recommend the tax forums on Quatloos. Here’s the description of that forum:
Have a stupid theory why you shouldn’t have to pay taxes? 861? Non-Filer? Sovereign Citizen? Believe that the federal courts are actually admiralty courts or that the only real citizens of the USA live in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the District of Columbia, then this forum is for you. Also considers Pure Trusts in all of its scam forms, including Constitutional Trusts, Patriot Trusts, Unincorporated Business Organizations, COLATOS, as well as the Corporation Sole scam, and “Make Yourself into a Church” in all variants.
JJ is currently covering the case of Ed and Elaine Brown at the main link above. Ed and Elaine are currently charged with crimes related to a nine-month-long armed standoff against the federal government.
Here are a few quick excerpts from JJ’s blog on the Ed and Elaine trial:
Here’s a quick and dirty review for those of you who don’t know or remember the Browns. Elaine is a rich, well-educated, and successful dentist who married Ed, a high school drop-out, retired cockroach exterminator with a violent criminal history. While Elaine financially supported the family, Ed ran a militia group called the US Constitution Rangers and generally made a name for himself (granted, it was “asshole”) among the angry, gun-guy clique.
Supporters brought guns, Ed built bombs, and Ed and Elaine made dozens of explicit threats against two judges, a federal prosecutor, the US Marshal, an IRS employee, the Plainfield Chief of Police , and anyone else they thought they could blame for their predicament. It was ugly.
When the judge came in, Ed’s lawyer announced his withdrawal from the case, and Ed gave a lengthy monologue complaining about his lawyer, his and Elaine’s inability to formulate an appeal in their prior case (he doesn’t seem to understand that the deadline for that passed two years ago), the prosecutors, the judicial system, the press, and even the jury. By Ed’s estimate, 80% of the jurors have already made up their minds about his guilt.
According to Ed, the court simply can’t understand the “commercial remedy process” (and boy, is that an understatement – judges don’t speak gibberish) and that everything he’s done up to today has been for a reason.
Ed: “No one can re-present me. This all started because I made statements exposing the criminal elements of this government. Remember, I am a member of an organization called the US Constitution Rangers.”
The judge denied the attorney’s request to leave the case, told Ed to “Be quiet,” and the jury was brought in.
“Re-present” is not a typo, by the way. That’s actually a word to Ed, since he is a self-described “sovereign citizen“, as are many tax protesters. Sovereign citizens are not at all unusual in the militia movement, either.
