Sovereign Citizens: free speech or domestic terrorism?

One of the chief duties of the FBI in its Salt Lake City Division and beyond is to investigate the threat of domestic terrorism, preventing attacks when possible and prosecuting those responsible when not. Supervisory Special Agent Juan Garcia walks host Sheryl Worsley through what domestic terrorism investigations entail, with special focus on the emerging threat known as sovereign citizens . A sovereign citizen is someone who believes the laws of the United States do not apply to them. Agent Garcia explains that you have the right to believe what you choose, but when your beliefs lead to a threat against other people, that's when it crosses the line into breaking the law. In a stunning video, Agent Garcia demonstrates a case in point of when sovereign citizenship becomes something more dangerous: a traffic stop in West Memphis, Arkansas, that resulted in the deaths of two police officers and ultimately, the two sovereigns, Joe and Jerry Kane, during a gun battle with authorities who pursued them. It's not an isolated case. For example, one of the Oklahoma City bombers, Terry Nichols, was a sovereign citizen. So were a man and woman, Jerad and Amanda Miller, who ambushed two police officers inside a Las Vegas pizzeria. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are 300,000 sovereign citizens in the United States. Most exercise their beliefs through paperwork, challenging the government's ability to do things like levy taxes by filing lawsuits; it's believed only a small percentage like the examples cited above actually become violent.

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Sovereign Citizens: free speech or domestic terrorism? is an episode from FBI Confidential by KSL Newsradio.

This episode is 21:36 long.

This episode was published on Jun 21, 2018.

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