All right, now I'm happy to welcome Tom Edlum to the show.
He writes for the New American Magazine, and he's got this article, The Railroading of Walter Reddy, Patriots Legally Owned Guns Seized.
Welcome to the show, Tom.
How are you doing?
Thank you.
A little outraged, though, at the treatment of this guy, Walter Reddy, who could be seen as sort of a godfather to the Tea Party movement.
He was the guy who organized, arguably, the first Tea Party rally in Boston in December of 2007.
The one that really launched Rand Paul's political career, because it was his first real major speaking engagement.
This was on the actual anniversary of the Tea Party, the big Ron Paul Tea Party that raised all the millions of dollars on December 16th.
It was.
It was the same day that they had the money bomb, and I believe it was the same day as the money bomb.
Nonetheless, here's a guy who only has two guns, but they were both taken away by local police, in part, most likely because of a rumor given to local police by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And the case itself is one of those, huh, there's got to be more to it, but the more you look into it, there isn't more to it.
It's just the case of a judge who is not patient, is willing to take everything the prosecutors say at face value, and denies the defendant a chance to get a lawyer.
So the defendant is unable to represent himself.
Denies him the chance to get a lawyer, is that what he said?
Yes.
Now, keep in mind, this is a civil case, I mean, Walter Reddy was never charged with a crime, he has no criminal record, but the state of Connecticut ruled that they can keep his guns for up to a year, and they had a search warrant, they searched his place on Valentine's Day of this year, and on the 25th of February, they held a hearing.
Under Connecticut state law, they're required to hold a hearing on seizure of property within 14 days of the seizure, and so Reddy shows up, not knowing that this is going to be any sort of a formal hearing, he's not informed about anything, he has contacted a lawyer, but the lawyer he wants is in court for another client that day, so he arrives at the court and says, gee, can we postpone this?
Because my lawyer's not here.
And the judge says, no, no, we've got to hold it because of this law that Connecticut has.
But his current lawyer points out, and it's so true, the purpose of the law, the 14-day hearing, is to protect the property owner, so that the state just can't continually keep the property that's lawfully owned by a gun owner, or if it's any other kind of property, just keep it by postponing the court date.
So the judge should have simply said, hey, you know, go ahead, take as much time as you need, but we're going to keep the guns until, you know, you have your representation.
He didn't do that.
In fact, the thing he said first, right after they discussed lawyer, is, okay, I'm ready to rule, unless you have anything to say.
Now that's unusual, because Reddy, who, you know, he had a shotgun and an antique pistol that had been confiscated, he hadn't had a chance to say anything, to give any evidence, to question any witnesses, he hadn't had any witnesses, given the opportunity to present any witnesses or anything.
It was as if the judge was ready to rule even before, apparently, he got into the courtroom.
So and why would he be that way?
Well, he could believe ... why would the judge be like that?
Well, it could be that it was all based on this mostly hearsay evidence from the state attorney, or it could have been because of this designation by an FBI agent that he was a, quote, person of interest in a domestic terrorism case.
But there was never any detail about that given by the FBI to the police or presented at this hearing.
So, you know, on an anonymous tip, it appears that Reddy has his Second Amendment right taken away from him, without any evidence, really.
Yeah, you say here the judge ruled, the court finds that you are a risk of imminent personal injury to other individuals.
Did he not have to say based on what, or was there ... did the prosecution make any case at all?
I don't understand ... or not the prosecution, but the government being somehow not quite sued here?
Yeah.
The state attorney made a couple of cases, but it was more of a, let's throw some stuff up against the wall and see if anything sticks.
Like, for instance, one of the things that they'd said is that ... most of the case revolved around this one witness who was an acquaintance of Reddy's, a guy named Rand McNeil.
And it's difficult to say, you know, what his motivation was, but he apparently, after one of their meetings, Reddy had shown him his shotgun and said, I've got this really cool shotgun.
It's a Maverick 88, and it's legal.
It's got a pistol grip and a folding stock, and it looks semi-military, even though it's just a pump-action shotgun.
McNeil was all shocked that this happened.
He went to the police and said some vague things about, gee, he said he was under some sort of a foreclosure action, and they'd be ready if the bank came to inspect his property or if the cops came.
But he didn't testify to anything like that at the hearing.
You know, he was subpoenaed to the hearing, and he said, I don't remember anything that I said to the police.
I can't ... and it was probably a good thing, because McNeil had told the police that Reddy had a street sweeper gun, which is basically like a shotgun machine gun that's got this ... it almost looks like one of those old Tommy guns.
You know, it has the big round casing that's got shotgun shells in sort of revolver form.
And it's illegal for most people to hold unless you have a really special license, but that's not what Reddy had.
He didn't have a street sweeper, and ironically, they never brought the guns to court to show that it wasn't a street sweeper, and to Reddy, it wasn't a big deal to press.
I mean, he wasn't ... he's not a lawyer, so he didn't really make a big deal out of that.
So the judge at the end, he says, oh, well, you know, we've got these big threats, and we've got this street sweeper.
Assuming it was a street sweeper, we've got ... also, he had these joke hollowed out grenades you can get at an Army-Navy surplus store.
You know, you've seen them on a bunch of mostly jerk desks, you know, sort of, you know, complaint department, take a number, and the number one is on the pin of the grenade.
You know, it's sort of a novelty item, and the judge was like, oh, I can't believe you have that.
You know, you could make that into a weapon.
Well, yeah, I know, but you could make a toothpick into a weapon, too.
This was nothing, and the police knew that, but the prosecutor had this heavy inference throughout this informal trial, again, which ...
That was part of the case against the Branch Davidians, too, was they had hollowed out, you know, mock grenades for paperweights, and that, oh, yeah, see, they're going to invade downtown Waco and kill everyone, like Gaddafi in Benghazi.
Right, and so, anyway, what happens is the judge just rules, okay, well, you don't have a right to keep bare arms, we're going to keep your guns for another year.
I don't know if he's on a list, he's said that he's probably going to try a Freedom of Information Act request to see why he would be considered a person of interest in a domestic terrorism case.
He suspects it may be, he's ...
One of his latest actions as a political activist is to create this, oh, I'm trying to think of the name of it, I don't have the article in front of me, but an organization that would assist states in making gold and silver a measurable unit for transacting business, as an alternative to the dollar.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, we're going to have to hold that right there, because that's a whole other can of worms, and I think I know where you're going.
But we're going to have to hold it, we've got this break coming up here.
It's Tom Edlund from the New American Magazine.
We're talking about the state of Connecticut seizure of some legal firearms from a man named Walter Reddy, who never did anything, I don't think, except become a person of interest for some secret reason.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott, I'm talking with Tom Edlund from the New American Magazine, that's thenewamerican.com for the website there.
The railroading of Walter Reddy, Patriot's legally owned guns, seized.
Now, Tom, I'm going to ask you to bear with me while I try to rehearse what I think I understood what you said about this case.
You got this guy, he's a Tea Party leader type guy.
One of his so-called friends says to the local cops that he said some threatening thing that he would do if something happened hypothetically or something.
And then the feds told the cops that they have reason to believe that this guy's a person of interest, which I'm not sure if that term exists anywhere in the law or not, but that's neither here nor there in 2011, I guess.
And so based on the fact that there's a rumor from the feds that nobody knows even for sure what the rumor is, that this guy is a person of interest in a domestic terrorism case, and the fact that his buddy said that he said all these things about a street sweeper gun that he's going to use that he doesn't even own, has been used as an excuse by the judge in Connecticut, a judge in Connecticut, to, without the guy even having a chance to have a lawyer argue his case in the court at all, order that the man is a threat to unspecified people and that he cannot have his guns back for at least another year, and parentheses here perfectly legal weapons that he owned and is not accused of actually doing anything wrong with.
There's no indictment here.
There's no charges.
He never even was arrested in the first place, if I'm correct.
Do I have my head around this story, Tom?
With one exception.
Now, the witness, Rand McNeil, did go to the local police first, and the local police then sent the memorandum to the feds who sent back a memo, basically, or not a memo, but called back and said, hey, he's a person of interest.
But that's the basic fact.
Walter Reddy has no criminal record.
The witness, Rand McNeil, had, now, he may be perfectly honest in what he says, but when he was in the hearing, he was unable to recall what he had told police, but police said that he had told the police that Reddy was undergoing foreclosure on his house and that the judge said, oh, you're going to be very stressed with that, but that's hearsay evidence.
His lawyer today, I talked with his lawyer, Joseph Sicola, who's a local lawyer in the western Connecticut area, said all they had to do was go online and check to see if there was a foreclosure notice.
There wasn't.
There was much earlier, it had been stopped, there was no foreclosure action pending.
Also, as you mentioned, McNeil had apparently told the police that this guy has a street sweeper gun, but he didn't.
Street sweeper is this particular kind of shotgun that's used for crowd control and a few other things, and he just flat out didn't have it.
He had pretty much a straight-up pump-action shotgun, as many hunters do, but that's the basic thing.
And here's the scary part.
Here's a guy who has no criminal record.
I know a lot of people who like to collect guns.
They do fierce anarchy, like there was after Katrina in New Orleans, or if you're old enough like me to remember the mid-1990s and the riots in Los Angeles, they want to be prepared for it.
Just having those kind of weapons and saying, I'm prepared, which is what Reddy did say, I'm prepared for whatever happens, that can lead the government to come in in full SWAT gear, as they did.
They pulled up on Valentine's Day morning, full SWAT raid on him.
I mean, he's lucky to be alive, because he told me all the SWAT guys looked a little bit disappointed that there was no action, but I mean, they detained him in his driveway for a few hours, and they took the guns and his ammunition, and they just took his guns away.
And this isn't really the first instance that this has happened across America, where Greg, one of my friends and colleagues, former colleagues over at the New American, he's now independent, he's pointed out that right here in Massachusetts, where I live, it happened on the North Shore of Boston, a guy who just wanted to be prepared.
He was going through a stressful time of life, but he had no criminal record, there's no real indication that he was ever going to do anything, they took his guns away, and they called out a military arsenal and said, oh, well, he's going through a divorce, you know.
You never know what someone going through a divorce could have.
Well, people go through divorces all the time, and they don't go on shooting sprees, and they don't become mass murderers.
But the burden of proof for the state is basically zero.
If they have any doubt whatsoever that you are not a perfectly fine-tuned, have a perfectly fine-tuned mental attitude and mental equanimity, did I say that right?
If there's any possibility that you'll be stressed in the near future, don't just take your guns away.
That's what the courts do, even though the law says in Connecticut and in most other states that the burden of proof is on the state.
Even in a case like this where we're talking about civil, not forfeiture, but civil seizure of a person's privately-owned, legally-maintained guns, the burden legally is on the state, but the judges are basically not ruling that way.
And just the fact that you are a political activist and that you own a bunch of guns could put you at risk.
That's pretty scary.
Well, I guess two questions.
We've got to talk about the von Notthaus precedent here, which is important, but also I want to ask first, quickly, is there any more recourse?
Can he appeal to a higher court, and is that happening, or do you know?
He's got a good lawyer now, or what?
Yeah.
He called the Gun Owners of America, they're providing a legal fund for him.
He's got a good local lawyer who's on the case.
Seems like he's doing a good job, and already filed an appeal.
I have the text of the appeal, and he's outraged over the way he was treated.
It's as if that judge doesn't recognize, gee, you do have a right to an attorney to represent you at trial.
That's the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
They've long since apparently gotten rid of the Second Amendment, which is the right to keep and bear arms.
But there were a number of procedural issues with this particular case, and in many respects this is worse than the one in the north of Boston, and apparently there was another one in Utah as well.
It's kind of scary because there's a pattern emerging at the beginning of the Obama administration that came out with this report saying that, gee, there's this danger of this lone wolf terrorism from the right wing, this survivalist mentality, and the FBI apparently is profiling anyone who is a conservative who's interested in getting around the Federal Reserve or opposing the Federal Reserve Bank or anything related to the inflation of the U.S. dollar.
And Reddy happens to be one of those guys.
He put together this sovereign state depository incorporated company.
It's legally incorporated, but it's not really doing anything yet.
But he wanted to help a bunch of states who want to find a way to conduct commercial trade, transactions in units of gold and silver, because under the...
State governments, you mean?
State governments.
He wanted to be a consultant for state governments, for them to work with gold, basically, just like Charles Goyette was talking about in the last interview, in Article 1, Section 10 there.
That's right.
And under Article 1, Section 10, states can't mint their own coins, but the federal government already mints gold and silver coins.
You know, they're commemorative, but they already do, and then also you could use bullion as well.
And the states are allowed that under Article 1, Section 10, and there's about 10 to 12 states that have already passed resolutions calling for that, and what he wanted to do was find a way to make it happen, consult with states.
And that...
And that sounds like terrorism to the federal government?
Well, you mentioned Bernard Bernadotte House.
He was...
All he did was try to create silver as a means of exchange on a private level, which technically was unconstitutional, but they described that as domestic terrorism.
Right.
Because it was a threat to the dollar.
Well, we can't overstate the importance of that magic word, that they're willing...
I think Bernard Bernadotte House was a shyster, personally.
I think if you're going to make a silver currency type thing, you can't just put a face value on it and say that this coin is worth $20 when it's trading at $8.50 or whatever an ounce in the market.
I thought the whole thing should just say the weight on it and let people trade it like that, charge a little markup or whatever to sell them, but, you know, I never liked to do...
From the first time I interviewed him, he never could give me a reasonable explanation for putting a face value on those things the way he did, but that has nothing to do with blowing up the World Trade Center or something.
No, I agree, and ironically, although he was overselling it in terms of the price per troy ounce of silver at the time, now with silver at $45 plus an ounce...
Right, when I argued with him, it was about to hit $8.
No, I understand, I understand.
That's true, that's true.
Yeah, no, you're totally right, though, but yeah, I mean, the important point is that, you know, we're talking with Charles about this is our one and only solution, and this is...
They're calling it terrorism there in D.C. now, very important, and getting local cops to steal people's guns based on it.
All right, thanks very much, Tom.
That's Tom Edlum, everybody, from the New American Magazine.
See you tomorrow.
