If it’s not trigger-happy cops or door-kicking FBI men, it’s corrupt courts that fail to restore and protect liberty. Remember retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Walter Fitzpatrick III? He got nowhere in a Knoxville, Tenn., federal court last year in his attempt to expose Barack Obama’s alleged foreign birth. So, he was forced to resort to his local grand jury. But he was thwarted again while discovering more corruption at the county level.
For example, Gary Pettway had been sitting as grand jury foreman—appointed by the court year after year, for two decades—in breach of Tennessee law. Then, Fitzpatrick tried to take matters into his own hands by attempting to arrest Pettway. But it was Fitzpatrick who went to jail for a few days while the good-ol’-boy system decided what to do with him. Meanwhile, friend Darren Huff of Georgia, while traveling to a Fitzpatrick court hearing in his pickup truck—proudly bearing an “Oathkeepers” sticker—was stopped and interrogated by area police outside of Madisonville, Tenn. The stop concerned his weapons.
When he showed his permit to legally carry them, he was finally released after 90 minutes without charges, for the time being.
Ten days later, Huff was federally charged with crossing a state line with “intent” to incite a riot and illegal trafficking in firearms. He later faced trumped-up charges in Monroe County, Tenn. In that same county, Fitzpatrick must defend counts of: 1) participating in a riot; 2) disrupting a meeting; 3) causing an annoyance in a public place by an act that served no legitimate purpose; 4) obstructing a law enforcement officer attempting to make an arrest; 5) threatening to harm grand jury foreman Gary Pettway by an unlawful act; and finally, 6) intentionally coercing and intimidating Mr. Pettway.
