‘Sovereign’ President
Foust, apparently pumped up with fears of an evil government, certainly seems to have felt that he needed to use violence to resist the officers who responded to reports of a heated argument between him and his wife. And now, reacting to the “execution” of Foust, some members of RuSA are suggesting a response in kind, a notion that worries RuSA’s leader, who frequently denounces violence.
“Many feel angry and may want revenge,” James Timothy Turner, 55, told his followers three days after Foust’s killing this summer. “This is understandable, but this was an isolated incident and will not cause any problems.”
Turner has outlined a plan to “reinhabit” the U.S. government, which he says has been unlawful ever since the Civil War. He describes it as “a bold, achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war.” But in March 2010, RuSA sent letters to all 50 state governors demanding they step down immediately, causing at least one state to beef up security at the capitol, and there apparently are new plans to send similar letters to more than 5,000 sheriffs nationwide. That, plus the fact that sovereign citizens unrelated to RuSA have engaged in numerous crimes, including the murder of two Arkansas police officers in May 2010, has raised concerns.
RuSA, which has gotten the attention of authorities in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida and other states, teaches a whole panoply of practices typical of the sovereign citizens movement — the filing of fraudulent property liens against enemies, ways to halt the foreclosure process and cancel debts, and arcane methods that are intended to wrest millions of dollars from the federal government — all while claiming that the current United States government is utterly illegitimate. But some of what Turner has to say is far out even by the standards of the sovereigns.
“Get ready to hear things that sound absolutely impossible,” Turner’s chief spokesman, Kelby Smith, says regularly at the start of a weekly conference call to several hundred followers that was monitored by the Intelligence Report this spring over a period of several months. All of these impossible things come compliments of one man — a former commercial fisherman and devout evangelical Christian from Skipperville, Ala., who is known to his followers as “Mr. President.”