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SOVEREIGN CITIZENS MOVEMENT

Sovereign citizens believe they are not under the jurisdiction of the federal government and
consider themselves exempt from U.S. law. They use a variety of conspiracy theories and
falsehoods to justify their beliefs and their activities, some of which are illegal and violent.

TOP TAKEAWAYS
The sovereign citizen movement continued to see membership growth in 2022.
The QAnon conspiracy theory that initially brought new people into the
movement has remained a gateway into sovereign citizenship. A new group,
which calls itself Life Force Network, is a fusion of Q-centric conspiracy theories,
science fiction and fake alternative governments and courts called sovereign
citizen “assemblies.” The organization’s main villain is “The Order,” which they
describe as an international group that has “dominion over the governments”
and is made up of regular antigovernment bogeymen such as the Rockefellers,
the Rothchilds and seemingly fictional characters such as the Annuanake, and
Dragon Families.

In the Life Force Network document titled, New Declaration of Independence

the organization claims to have successfully fought “The Order” for global
control of the world’s finances and over “every military, intelligence agency and
law enforcement structure in the world that currently exists or will exist in the
future.” The group is run by New Yorker Steffen Rowe is active in 17 states.
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The proliferation of conspiracies and grievances about public health measures

during the Covid-19 pandemic brought new followers into the sovereign citizen
movement. The two largest rival sovereign citizen organizations in the U.S., the
American States Assembly and National Assembly, were able to maintain or
increase their membership numbers in 2022.

Two groups held common law court hearings that were accessible to the public
The Oregon Statewide Jural Assembly held theirs in a city park while the Reign
of the Heavens Society conducted theirs online. These fake courts based on the
old British legal system usually involve individual grievances or grievances
against the government brought forth by ”plaintiffs,” and most often the court’s
grand jury “assigns” guilt and punishment. The Oregon Statewide Jural
Assembly brought the Oregon Department of Education up on charges in its
fictitious court. Reign of the Heavens Society charged a Satanic Temple leader
with war crimes, stating that the punishment could be up to and including
death.

Two new organizations utilized the seminar and product sales model that has
been a hallmark of the sovereign citizen movement and perfected by sovereign
citizen Winston Shrout. The American Meeting Group is run by sovereign
citizens David Straight and co-founder Robert William. The American States
Nationals Study Guide & University is also run by David Straight along with
Bobby Lawrence, who campaigned to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate
in 2018 on an America First MAGA platform. Straight and Lawrence crisscrossed
the country in 2022, speaking to groups in the hundreds at $100 a ticket.

Another sovereign citizen subgroup, the Moorish sovereigns were quieter in

2022 then 2021. The groups within this movement claim to be indigenous to
certain areas of the US as well as the African country of Morocco and believe
their indigenous status and a US Moroccan treaty from 1786 gives them the right
to run their own territories outside the confines of US law

In 2021 multiple Moorish sovereign groups were in the news. One of those
groups was the Al Moroccan Empire at New Jersey State Republic whose leader
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Jaleel-Hu who goes by the title Consul General took possession of (squatted) in a
home he did not own, which is a known sovereign citizen tactic. The other group
was Rise of the Moors who were in a standoff with law enforcement on July 10,
2021 that shut down a Massachusetts Highway. Members who were arrested at
the end of the standoff initially claimed the court had no jurisdiction over them,
ere indicted and continued their legal fight in 2022.

Members of the United States of America Republic Government (USAR) used

signage to label their headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, which they call their
Capitol building and parked cars in the front of the building, which they
procured and fashioned into their own USAR law enforcement vehicles.

The Al Moroccan Empire at New Jersey State Republic saw an onslaught of new
members in 2022, all of whom publicly declared their sovereignty on the group’s
website.

Criminality in the movement also remained a problem. On June 2, 2022, second

in command of the American States Assembly Teri Sahm was arrested by a swat
team at her Washington home after refusing to leave the property post-eviction.
People’s Rights Nevada leader and sovereign citizen Josh Martinez was fitted
with ankle monitors, one each from the state of Nevada and one from U.S.
District Attorney’s in the federal government, which was dropped by the court to
one monitor. Martinez was indicted Feb 24, 2021, for allegedly threatening the
life of a law enforcement officer.

Georgia sovereign citizen Quinae Shamyra Stephens was arrested in Latta, South
Carolina in 2021for running a fraud ring involving credit card and identity theft
instructional material on the dark web was found guilty by a jury and sentenced
to 19 years in federal prison by a US District Court Judge. Marquet Mattox, also
of Georgia, was sentenced to over 2019 years in the United States District Court
Middle District of Georgia for using fake trusts to file fraudulent tax returns in
an attempt to steal over $117 million from taxpayers. Notably, multiple Jan. 6
insurrectionists, Howard Berton Adams, Pauline Bauer and Bruno Jospeh Cua
used sovereign citizen defenses that insofar have not worked in their favor since
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no judge has dripped their case based on the defendants sovereign citizen
arguments.

During the midterm elections, a 2022 North Carolina sheriffs candidate was
given funding by a local sovereign citizens group to attend a sheriff candidate
training for the extremist law enforcement group Constitutional Sheriffs and
Peace Officers Association.

KEY MOMENTS
The most notable moments for the sovereign citizen movement in 2022 involved
legal interactions where adherents' beliefs came head to head with the justice
system. Sovereign citizen Darrell Brooks was tried and sentenced to six life
sentences for his attack on a Christmas Parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 2021.
And, in December of 2022, some 50 sovereign citizens, calling themselves State
Nationals responded to a call to action from the group American States
Assembly, protested outside of the U.S District courthouse in Orlando, Florida,
in support of Jan. 6 insurrectionist and sovereign citizen Howard Berton Adams,
who was arrested after he refused to appear in court twice on charges relating to
Jan 6. Adams previously wrote a letter to the trial judge he was assigned, Judge
Emmett B. Sullivan on Aug. 14, claiming, “The Most High God created I, Howard
Berton Adams, Jr., a sovereign man, living as the flesh and blood testifies, I am
not a dead entity, I am not a ward of the state. I am not a pauper.”

WHAT’S AHEAD
While the movement is plagued with rivalries, infighting, and conspiracies that
often lead to the disbanding and recreation of groups, unprecedented growth in
this movement is expected to continue. Growing online instructional methods
for becoming sovereign citizens have created a groundswell of adherents from a
variety of communities and backgrounds. Membership in this movement will
continue to increase without significant intervention by law enforcement,

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government policies that prevent sovereign activities and societal recognitional

of the threat from the groups and individuals involved.

Rivalries in the sovereign citizen movement will persist. Anna von Reitz, the
leader of American States Assembly (ASA) is currently on the outs with National
Assembly’s leader Destry Payne,and Reign of the Heaven’s Societies leader,
Harold Fulks. She is also in conflict with ASA’s former California headquarters
which is now the autonomous sovereign organization called “California
Assembly, California,” which now operates as the “California Assembly.” David
Straight’s groups are also winnowing off her members, which may lead to
turmoil between the two group leaders in 2023.

Developing assemblies and common law courts will remain popular activities for
sovereign citizen groups since these practices have grown every year since 2020.

Some sovereign citizens will also continue to participate in criminal activities.

Although one individual’s criminality rarely affects the movement at large it,
does affect the individual members who pursue it.

BACKGROUND
Sovereign Citizens often abuse the court system with indecipherable filings and,
when cornered, many of them lash out, retaliating through acts of paper
terrorism and, in the most extreme cases, acts of deadly violence – usually
directed against government officials. In May 2010, for example, a father-son
team of sovereigns were filmed killing two police officers with an assault rifle
when they were pulled over on the interstate while traveling through West
Memphis, Arkansas.

The roots of the movement are racist and antisemitic. It was founded by William
Potter Gale in 1971, former member of the John Birch Society. Gale formed a
group of antigovernment Christian Identity adherents who mistrusted state and
federal officials. They believed that non-white people were not human, and that
Jews possessed a satanic plot to take over the world. They identified themselves
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as “Posse Comitatus,” which is Latin for “power of the county” and centers on
the idea that county sheriffs are the highest governmental authority.

Posse Comitatus is based on the Sheriffs Act of 1887, which allowed sheriffs to
form a posse that would assist them in hunting down and arresting criminals.
Potter’s posse believed they served under common law (laws based on their
interpretation of the Bible), rather than civil law (legitimate laws formed by the
American legal system).

The activities of Potter’s Posse, many of them crimes, included refusal to pay
taxes, filing property liens and committing violence against public officials.
These actions, which were established by Gale’s group, have become customary
in today’s sovereign citizens movement. What has changed since the
movement’s inception is the white supremacist ideology that initially dominated
it. Contemporary sovereign citizens hold varying racial ideologies and include a
variety of people.

THE SOVEREIGN BELIEF SYSTEM

The contemporary sovereign belief system is based on a decades-old conspiracy
theory. Sovereigns believe that the American government set up by the
Founding Fathers under a common-law legal system was secretly replaced. They
think the replacement government swapped common law for admiralty law,
which is the law of the sea and international commerce.

Some sovereigns believe this perfidious change occurred during the Civil War,
while others blame the events of 1933, when the U.S. abandoned the gold
standard. Either way, sovereigns who hold this view stake their lives and
livelihoods on the idea that U.S. judges and lawyers, whom they believe are
foreign agents, know about this hidden government takeover but argue against
it, denying the sovereigns’ legal motions and filings out of treasonous loyalty to
hidden and malevolent government forces.

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Most sovereign citizens base their actions on a bogus U.S. history lesson.
Claiming that since 1933 when the U.S. dollar was no longer backed not by gold
but by the “full faith and credit” of the federal government, the government has
pledged its citizenry as collateral by selling their future earning capabilities to
foreign investors, effectively enslaving all Americans. This sale, sovereign
citizens claim, takes place at birth with the issuance of a birth certificate and the
hospital advice to apply for a Social Security number for the baby. Sovereigns say
that the government then uses that birth certificate to set up a corporate trust in
the baby’s name – a secret U.S. Treasury account – that it funds with amounts
ranging from $600,000 to $20 million, depending on the particular variant of the
sovereign belief system.

Sovereign citizens believe that by setting up this Treasury Direct Account (TDA),
every newborn’s rights are split between those held by the flesh-and-blood baby
and the ones assigned to his or her corporate shell account, evidenced, they
claim, by the fact that most certificates use all capital letters to spell out a baby’s
name, JOHN DOE, for example. They falsely attribute this all-capital version to
the actual the name of the corporate shell identity, also called a “straw man,”
while “John Doe” without all caps is the baby’s “real,” flesh-and-blood name.
The bogus belief continues that as the child grows older, most of his legal
documents will utilize capital letters, which means that his state-issued driver's
license, marriage license, car registration, criminal court records, cable TV bill
and correspondence from the IRS all will pertain to his corporate shell identity,
not his real, sovereign identity.

To separate from their corporate shells, sovereign citizens use a series of

convoluted steps, such as filing documentation with their secretaries of state
office declaring themselves sovereign, signing it with red blood or ink
thumbprints, and then having their new sovereign identity published in a
newspaper.

To tap into the secret Treasury account that they believe exists, they file a series
of complex, legal-sounding documents. For decades, sovereigns have attempted

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to perfect the process by packaging and promoting different combinations of

forms and paperwork. The only touted success stories are from sovereigns who
were in fact committing fraud against the government or private companies by
creating counterfeit or fraudulent and fictitious documents. These sovereigns
are often prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

There is no central leadership for the movement, however a rotating group of

nationwide figures and local leaders with individualized views on sovereign
citizen ideology and techniques. Their recommendations often include tax
evasion, adverse possession (squatting on a property that does not belong to
them) or ignoring laws regarding driver’s licenses, vehicle registration or license
plate possession. They base these activities on their belief that “free” men and
women, as they call themselves, are not bound by the relevant laws. As part of
their belief system, sovereigns assert they are traveling, not driving, since they
are not transporting commercial goods or paying passengers. Those who are
attracted to this subculture typically attend a seminar or two or visit one of the
thousands of websites and online videos on the subject and choose how to act
on what they have learned.

PAPER TERRORISM
The weapon of choice for sovereign citizens is paper. A simple traffic violation or
pet-licensing case can end up provoking dozens of court filings containing
hundreds of pages of pseudo-legal sovereign arguments. For example, Donna
Lee Wray – the common-law wife of Jerry Kane, who was half of a duo that was
recorded killing two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, before he was
killed by police, in 2010 – was involved in a protracted legal battle in 2010 over
having to pay a dog-licensing fee. She filed 10 sovereign documents in court over
a two-month period and then declared victory when the harried prosecutor
decided to drop the case.

Similarly, when sovereigns are angry with government officials, their revenge
most often takes the form of “paper terrorism.” Sovereigns file retaliatory, bogus

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property liens that may not be discovered by their targets until they attempt to
sell or mortgage their property or take out a loan. Historically, these liens can be
for millions, billions or even quadrillions of dollars. These extremists bury courts
in endlessly large paper filings filled with language developed by their
movement, trying to find the right combination of words, punctuation, paper,
ink color and timing, to get out of following the law.

Sovereign citizens have also perpetrated a number of illegal housing-related,

money-making schemes, fraudulently occupying and deeding empty homes to
themselves and convincing homeowners in foreclosure into quit claiming their
property deeds to them. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development has recovered tens of millions of dollars from these sorts of
sovereign citizen scammers prosecuted for their crimes.

Sovereign citizens often file fake tax forms that are designed to ruin an enemy’s
credit rating and cause them to be audited by the IRS. Starting in the mid-1990s,
states began to pass laws specifically aimed at these paper-terrorism tactics.

In April 2017, the state of Colorado cracked down heavily on sovereign citizen
activity by charging the “Colorado Eight,” with racketeering after they ran their
own common law courts targeting state and municipal court judges, prosecutors,
sheriffs and other public officials. Members of the Colorado Eight were known
for holding faux trials in Burns, Oregon, that put public officials on trial related
to the antigovernment Bundy family’s organized occupation of the Malheur
Wildlife Refuge. Members Bruce Doucette, Stephen Nalty and Steven Byfield
were sentenced to 22 to 38 years in prison.

On July 31, 2021, sovereign citizen Shawna Cox was arrested in Kane County,
Utah, for failing to appear in court over traffic infractions. At her court hearing,
Cox attempted to plead the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Amendments and claimed
her case was currently being heard and subject to the common-law courts. Her
supporters, including antigovernment activist Cliven Bundy, stood outside the
courthouse protesting her arrest. At one appearance Cox accused the court,
judge and Kane County officers of criminal acts, obstruction of justice, fraud and
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extortion. Cox was aided by the sovereign citizen group Statewide Common Law
Grand Jury who filed 24 total objections to what they called an “unlawful status
hearing.”

2022 SOVEREIGN CITIZENS GROUPS

*Asterisk denotes headquarters​

Al Moroccan Empire at New Jersey state republic

New Jersey

American Common Law Academy

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

American Meeting Group

Austin, Texas*

American Meeting Group

Wisconsin

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American States Assembly

Los Angeles, California
Mendocino County, California
Monterey, California
Nevada County, California
Orange County, California
Santa Cruz, California
Stanislaus County, California
Ventura, California
Jefferson County, Colorado
Hamden, Connecticut
Atlantic Beach, Florida
Florida
Lithonia, Georgia
Indiana
Maine
Massachusetts
Clearwater, Minnesota
Minnesota
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
Alamogordo, New Mexico
New York, New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Texas
Utah

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Washington
Wisconsin

America's Remedy
Charlotte, North Carolina

ASN Study Guide & University (American State Nationals)

California
New Jersey
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Wisconsin

California Assembly, The

San Francisco, California

Colorado Jural Assembly

Arapahoe County, Colorado
Colorado*

Constitutional Law Group

San Antonio, Texas

Embassy of Heaven
Stayton, Oregon

Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah

Richwood, Louisiana

The Foundation
Walnut, California

Freedom Bound International

Emery, South Dakota

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Freedom From Government

Gabbs, Nevada

Freedom School
Austin, Texas

Freedom Yell
Ozark, Alabama

HISAdvocates.org
Costa Mesa, California

Life Force Network

Arizona

March to Exodus
Elkton, Maryland

Moorish Science Temple of America 1928

Lithonia, Georgia

National Assembly
Fairbanks, Alaska*
Arizona
Riverside, California
Florida
Georgia
Honolulu, Hawaii
Idaho
Kentucky
Michigan
Missouri
Montana
Cherokee County, North Carolina
North Carolina
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North Dakota
Utah
Virginia

National Liberty Alliance

Hyde Park, New York
Natural Law Hawaii
Hawaii

Occupied Forces Hawaii Army

Hawaii

Oregon Statewide Jural Assembly

Beaverton, Oregon

People's Bureau of Investigation

Oswego, Illinois

R.V. Bey Publications

Pleasantville. New Jersey

Reign of the Heavens Society

Ontario, California
Florida*
Indiana
Iowa

Republic for the united States of America

Dothan, Alabama
Fullerton, California
Republic of Texas
Texas

Rise of the Moors

Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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Sovereign Filing Solutions

Morrow, Georgia

Sovereignty Education and Defense Ministry

San Diego, California

Statewide Common Law Grand Jury

Arcadia, Florida

Team Law
Grand Junction, Colorado

United States of America Republic Government

Chicago, Illinois*
Merrillville, Indiana
New Jersey

We the People for Constitutional Sheriffs

Iowa

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James Timothy Turner
Ozark, Ala.

ASSOCIATED EXTREMIST GROUPS* * *

National Liberty Alliance
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Hyde Park, New York

***

Moorish Sovereign Citizens

***

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