Freemen Denounce U.S. As ‘Corporate Prostitute’ Handbill Reiterates Group’s Demand To Form Own Government, Courts And Currency
In a clear declaration of defiance in their 15-day standoff with the FBI, the freemen posted a handbill near their compound gate Monday branding the U.S. government a “corporate prostitute.”
In rambling legalese, the freemen disavowed allegiance to the federal government, reiterating their belief that they have the right to establish their own government, courts and currency.
The four-paragraph release supported comments made a day earlier by the local prosecutor that the freemen’s refusal to recognize the government’s authority continued to pose a key hurdle to a peaceful resolution.
Copies of the handbill were nailed to a post by a member of the group.
“Freemen are NOT a party to the de facto corporate prostitute, a/k/a the United States … but are in FACT the Posterity of We The People under God, affirming the Law of the land and standing for the republic for which it stands,” the statement said.
The group also claimed that those who “prostitute the republic” by substituting the “incorporated fictions” of government for “the Law of the land, are in TRUTH and FACT anti-government.”
“Perversion of the Truth does not in FACT change the Law, nor the Truth,” it said.
Authorities were reviewing the statement and issued no immediate comment.
Garfield County Attorney Nick Murnion said in Monday’s Denver Post that the freemen remained adamant that they had a right to establish a separate government, impose separate taxes and form their own grand jury.
“We’re hung up on the power issue,” said Murnion, on whose head the group has placed a $1 million bounty. He declined Monday to elaborate on those comments to The Associated Press.
Also Monday, white separatist Randy Weaver, whose wife and son were killed in a 1992 standoff with federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, lashed out at the media’s portrayal of the freemen, KRON-TV of San Francisco reported.
Weaver spoke at a gathering of a pro-militia, anti-government group this past weekend in Incline Village, Nev.
Reporters, photographers and television crews were turned away from the meeting. But KRON-TV used a hidden camera to record Weaver’s speech to the Jubilee Ministers’ conference.
“When I saw the first few news broadcasts about it, they were really negative, and those people and in the position they are in, they need some hope and they don’t need a bunch of garbage thrown at them or lies said about them,” Weaver said.
“I’m not going to help the feds negotiate with them or make anything peaceful at all if the media is there lambasting them.
“It is just going to make them harder-headed and stiffer-necked,” he added. “I know where they are coming from.”