Darren Huff: Obama’s Political Prisoner pb

CONVICT OF “COURTHOUSE TAKEOVER” PLOT NOT WHERE GOVERNMENT SAID HE WAS

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 21, 2013) — For more than three years, The Post & Email has reported on corruption in eastern Tennessee as exposed by Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III, following his filing of a criminal complaint for treason against Barack Hussein Obama on March 17, 2009.

The accusation of treason stemmed from Obama’s approval of the dispatching of U.S. Army troops into Samson, AL to perform civilian police duties after a shooting, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.  The Army Inspector General affirmed several months later that the law had, in fact, been violated.

Fitzpatrick first took the complaint to the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC and then to his local grand jury in Monroe County, TN.  After several months of delay, the foreman refused to allow the grand jury to review it.  During that time, Fitzpatrick discovered that the foreman had occupied the post for nearly 28 years in violation of state law.

On April 1, 2010, after having approached every possible local, state and federal official about the foreman’s illegal occupation of the post to ask for assistance, Fitzpatrick attempted to carry out a citizen’s arrest of the foreman.  Instead, however, Judge Carroll Lee Ross ordered Fitzpatrick arrested, and he spent five days in jail.  Two months later, the Monroe County grand jury indicted Fitzpatrick on “riot,” “intimidation,” and other charges.  The acting grand jury foreman who signed the indictments had served a previous term on a Tennessee jury, which also violated the law.

The Tennessee General Assembly is aware of the entrenched grand jury foremen but has taken no definitive action to rein in the rogue judges who appoint them year after year, sometimes for decades.  The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department; detectives; local judiciary, including court personnel; and town officials have been known unequivocally to lie and break the law.

An assignment hearing for Fitzpatrick was scheduled for April 20, 2010.  After hearing of Fitzpatrick’s arrest the heavy-handed and corrupt practices of the local government, concerned citizens from several states, some from considerable distances, traveled to Madisonville to observe the hearing.  One of those was Darren Huff, who lived in Georgia.  As a matter of course, he brought his legally-owned firearms with him and traveled with a passenger that morning.

Most of those who arrived to observe the hearing were not allowed to enter the courtroom, having been turned away by sheriffs’ deputies armed with assault weapons at the door.  On that morning, more than 100 FBI and TBI agents, local police, county sheriffs’ deputies and Tennessee Highway Patrolmen were positioned at entrances and exits to Madisonville as well as around the courthouse, including a sniper team on the roof and a SWAT team with bomb-sniffing dogs.  The media and public were told that a “takeover” of the courthouse had been planned and thwarted by the presence of the lawmen, but in reality, no such plot had ever been formulated.

Huff had been visited on the evening of April 19 by the FBI and explained to them why he planned to travel to Madisonville the next day.  The agents did not tell Huff not to go.

William L. Bryan, founder of “The Fogbow,” an Obama-supporter site, said online that he was responsible for getting “more than 100 cops ready for Cdr. Walt Fitzpatrick, when he showed up on April 20 with a group of armed men who thought they’d take over the Monroe County courthouse.”  But there were no “armed men,” and the hearing lasted only a few minutes without incident.  There were journalists present in Madisonville that day, but their television footage did not indicate that anyone had been apprehended, arrested, or cited for carrying a firearm near the courthouse.  There were no arrests.

To date, the government has produced no video footage or photographs of anyone committing a crime in Madisonville on April 20, 2010, despite the presence of multiple pole cameras placed in strategic places by Monroe County jail inmates the day before.

A man identifying himself as a “White House attorney” was associated with The Fogbow in September 2010 and possibly much longer.  After the IRS’s targeting of “conservative” groups which had applied for non-profit status became public several weeks ago, ABC News reported that “there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS was doing, but authorized it.”

Significantly prior to the exposure of corruption within numerous departments run by the Executive Branch of the federal government this spring, Fitzpatrick had stated that the plan to frame Huff and him “goes right into the White House.”

The Post & Email submitted a FOIA request in March 2012 to obtain documentation from the FBI on the large officer deployment of April 20, 2010 in Madisonville but was refused after an initial search reportedly turned up no responsive documents.  Two subsequent appeals were denied on the basis of “privacy.”

On April 30, 2010 ten days after Fitzpatrick’s hearing in Madisonville, Darren Huff was arrested on two federal firearms charges stemming from an affidavit signed by FBI Special Agent Mark van Balen on April 26, 2010.  In the affidavit, Van Balen states, “On April 20, 2010, your affiant was present in a Command Post in Madisonville, TN, where he was informed by law enforcement officers who were reporting that HUFF and several individuals were in the possession of openly displayed and concealed firearms and were at the time present outside the Madison [sic] County General Sessions Court located in the Beecher Witt Government Building.  HUFF and numerous others had also been observed gathering at restaurants and other locations near the Madison [sic] County Courthouse.  Some of these persons gathered outside the Courthouse appeared to be conducting surveillance on law enforcement officers, their vehicles, and police observation posts, as well as the entrances to the court building.”

[Editor’s Note:  Madison County, TN is in western Tennessee, while Monroe County, in which Madisonville is located, is in southeastern Tennessee on the North Carolina border.]

However, according to eyewitness William R. Looman, who was in Darren Huff’s company from the time he entered Madisonville to the time they left together, Huff was never present at the R. Beecher Witt building.  Looman’s account that no civilian was seen carrying a gun, concealed or openly, agrees with sworn affidavits from other eyewitnesses that day and refutes Van Balen’s statement on page 8 which reads, “Your affiant knows that on April 20, 2010, there were over a dozen armed members of this loose knit group who had assembled with the stated intent to effect the citizens arrest warrants that had been issued by FITZPATRICK and/or take over the courthouse if it was deemed necessary.”

In August 2012, three of the officials who had testified against Huff were named by The Chattanooga Times Free Press as under investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), Tennessee Attorney General’s office, and the Office of the State Comptroller.  The Times Free Press ran a six-day series exposing allegations of misconduct on the part of Tenth Judicial District Attorney General R. Steven Bebb, which included accusations of grand jury influence by a prosecutor in Bebb’s office who also happened to pursue a charge against Fitzpatrick last year.

After the attorney general declared that Bebb’s and others’ conduct did not amount to criminal wrongdoing, members of the Tennessee legislature took up the probe upon the demand of citizens who were not satisfied with the state’s investigation.

Two eyewitnesses in Madisonville on April 20, 2010 told The Post & Email afterward that they observed officers taking photographs of the license plates of those who had traveled to attend the hearing.  One eyewitness said that when she stopped to refuel her car and purchase some coffee on the trip home from Madisonville, she believed she was being followed based on odd behavior and remarks exhibited by a stranger.  She also thought it unusual that she and her husband were audited by the IRS for the second time in several years and was told that “about half” of those who had attended Fitzpatrick’s hearing were also audited by the IRS afterward.

On June 6, The Washington Post began to publish information provided by former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, who revealed that the NSA under Obama conducts data-mining of virtually, if not all, American citizens when the NSA’s stated mission is to gather information from foreign countries to prevent attacks on the United States.

In October 2011, Huff was acquitted on one charge with a hung jury on the other, after which Judge Thomas Varlan ordered them to resume deliberations and “try again.”  A “guilty” finding was then produced on the charge of “transporting firearms across state lines with the intent to cause a civil disorder.”  Huff was sentenced in May of last year to four years in federal prison plus two years’ probation.

Despite Obama’s claimed public support of the Second Amendment, his regime has made considerable effort to change federal firearms practices by issuing “executive actions,” thereby circumventing Congress.

The office of U.S. Attorney William C. Killian of the Eastern District of Tennessee prosecuted Huff.  Killian was nominated by Obama in 2010 and was the keynote speaker at the opening of a controversial mosque in Chattanooga, TN last August.

On June 4, 2013, Killian spoke at an event focused on “civil rights” of Muslims in Manchester, TN after having told the press that anyone posting derogatory comments or photos about Islam could be “subject to federal jurisdiction.”  His presentation to the Muslim group was roundly criticized and heavily protested by local Tea Party members and blogger/author Pamela Geller, who has written extensively on what she perceives to be the dangers of Islam in America and to the world.  The Tea Partiers booed Killian and Knoxville FBI Director Kenneth Moore, who delivered their remarks haltingly between the protesters’ shouts of disapproval.

The event earlier this month is not the first time Killian has spoken about Muslims’ civil rights.

Following Huff’s sentencing, Killian’s website proclaimed:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, Darren Wesley Huff, 41, of Dallas, Georgia, was found guilty of transporting firearms across state lines with the intent to cause a civil disorder by taking over a Monroe County, Tenn., courthouse and executing “citizens arrest warrants.” Huff faces a maximum possible punishment of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. As a convicted felon Huff will also be prohibited from possessing a firearm. Sentencing is scheduled for February 29, 2012, before the Honorable Thomas Varlan, U.S. District Judge.

The “citizens arrest warrants” were directed at numerous local, state and federal public officials, including sheriffs, police chiefs and United States President Barack Obama. The “citizens arrest warrants” Huff attempted to execute listed the public officials as “Declared Domestic Enemies” and cited them for treason. Huff traveled from his residence in Dallas, Georgia, on April 20, 2010, to Madisonville, Tenn., with the stated intent of “taking over” the courthouse in Monroe County, and arresting the public officials for treason. The treasonous acts Huff alleged stemmed primarily from the refusal of the Monroe County grand jury to indict President Obama, who Huff claimed was not the legitimate President of the United States. On the day of the offense, Huff carried in his vehicle a .45 caliber handgun and an AK-47 with ammunition. During a traffic stop by at Tennessee State Trooper on his way to Madisonville, Huff told the trooper, “I’ve got my .45 because ain’t no government official gonna go peacefully.”

U.S. Attorney William C. Killian commended the verdict and said he hoped it would send a strong message to those who attempt to take the law into their own hands. “Under our federal Constitution and statutes Mr. Huff and others like him can talk or write about their anti-government views. They cannot arm themselves and make threats to arrest public officials and takeover government buildings. The core of our democratic system is to allow peaceful protest, but prohibit armed threats to those who serve our government. His conviction is a great achievement by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Theodore and Mackie and several local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Their cooperative efforts resulted in this conviction, ” said U.S. Attorney Bill Killian.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeff Theodore and Will Mackie represented the United States.

A week following Huff’s sentencing, an FBI agent stated on a radio program, “This case is monumental to the FBI because it will set precedent for case law in future domestic terrorism cases throughout the United States.”

Unbeknownst to the public, beginning in 2009, Obama’s FBI had been instructed to “target” military veterans by way of programs entitled “Operation Vigilant Eagle” and “Sovereign Citizen.”  Huff and Fitzpatrick were both identified as “Sovereign Citizens” in a law enforcement training program circulated nationally during the summer of 2011, just prior to Huff’s federal trial.  The FBI states on its website that “Sovereigns” could include those who quote from the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and U.S. Supreme Court cases.

In April, an Army trainer in Pennsylvania was found to be teaching his students that “Christians,” and “Catholics” could be considered “religious extremists.”  Christians in the military have been told they cannot discuss their faith with others under the threat of court-martial.  In Northern Ireland on Monday, Obama told an audience that “segregated” Catholic and Protestant schools have “discouraged cooperation” and caused division among people.  After promising the Catholic church that his health care bill would not force them to provide coverage for items they deemed immoral, Obama broke his pledge and is now attempting to force religious institutions to cover abortions and abortifacients or face hefty fines.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama made a statement about “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion” with “antipathy towards others” out of a feeling of “betrayal by government.”  Obama promised “an unprecedented level of openness in government” but has produced no documentation on himself except forgeries.  His regime is currently embroiled in numerous corruption “scandals” involving intimidation tactics and subpoenas of reporters’ phone call and email records without their knowledge.

On June 19, 2013, The Post & Email interviewed Bill Looman, a former Marine of ten years, who was with Huff on April 20, 2010 in Madisonville from the time he followed Huff into Madisonville through that evening, when both men traveled to Knoxville for an Oathkeepers event.

In late 2011, Looman was interviewed by a local television station, Channel 11, because of a sign he placed on the back of his truck which said, “Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”  At the time, Channel 11 reported that “someone, and he [Looman] thinks he knows who it was, reported him to the FBI as a threat to national security. He said the accusation filtered its way through the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and finally the Secret Service. Agents interviewed him.  The Secret Service left here, they were in a good mood and laughing,” Looman said. “I got the feeling they thought it was kind of ridiculous, and a waste of their time.”

Fitzpatrick also received a visit from the Secret Service after lodging the treason complaint with the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, F. Russell Dedrick, Killian’s predecessor, at the end of which one of the agents told Fitzpatrick privately, “We can’t arrest him [Obama], you know.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) considers WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah, Center for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney Jr., Pastor Chuck Baldwin, and “anti-government ‘Patriot’ groups” to be “extremists.”  The SPLC has been an adviser to the Obama regime, and specifically, the Department of Homeland Security, which in its Aprl 7, 2009 report stated that “returning veterans” could fall prey to “radicalization.”  The SPLC deplores those who it perceives are “anti-immigrant,” “Sovereign Citizens,” “extremist,” members of “hate groups,” and “domestic terrorists,” the majority of whom are law-abiding citizens.

The SPLC’s theme of “extremist” and the 2009 DHS report contain similar language in describing “right-wing domestic terrorists” being tied to “the election of an African-American president.”  The SPLC considers “anti-immigrant sentiment” to be “a hate crime.”

Looman told The Post & Email that he attended the hearing in Madisonville because he was acquainted with Huff, who had told him about the the citizen’s arrest on April 1.  “We weren’t close friends at the time, but when I saw the videos going viral, it caught my interest and I wanted to help Walt however I could,” Looman said.  “Neither Darren nor I knew Walt prior to the citizen’s arrest and the videos.”  Looman was not present at the citizen’s arrest on April 1, 2010 but followed Huff into Madisonville on April 20, 2010, spending the entire day and evening with him.

In Looman’s sworn affidavit, he stated that he was “always within eyesight of Darren Huff” and that they spent nearly the entire time in Madisonville at Donna’s Olde Town Cafe, not at the courthouse.  Therefore, Huff was not situated where the government placed him as the perpetrator of a crime.

On several occasions, Fitzpatrick has requested an opportunity to appear in front of a federal grand jury in Chattanooga or Knoxville to discuss the exculpatory evidence in Huff’s case but has been denied by U.S. Attorney William C. Killian, most recently on June 14, 2013.  “The grand jury is being used as a tool against us; it’s being used to destroy our republican form of government.  It’s the oversight function our founders gave us to stop tyrannical government,” Fitzpatrick said.  “The government was able to convict Darren Huff because agents of the government lied to the grand jury.  People who could report the truth to a grand jury are being prevented from doing so.  The grand jury no longer operates as it was supposed to by the Fifth Amendment.”

Our interview with Looman on the events of April 20, 2010 in Madisonville, Tennessee will immediately follow this report.