There’s a good example of that, along with just Making Stuff Up As You Go Along. Daniel McGough (yes, pronounced like you think - Magoo) in Michigan has been a guest of the courts in Washtenaw County, MI on several occasions, creating his own mountains out of molehills. He seems to have some familiarity with a script, but he also just says nonsensical stuff on the fly.
He hasn’t watched enough video. The trick is to ask a question that has been answered multiple times.
How do people think this is going to work? There of thousands of videos showing these tactics not working and often making events worse, and zero evidence of it ever working.
I don’t have first hand experience with Sovereign Citizen folks, but thirty years ago one of my close friends went down the tax protestor rabbit hole.
Despite her life being wrecked by this nonsense, she was convinced for years that she was winning.
This was before social media existed and even before widespread use of the World Wide Web. She got into it from Usenet groups, and people mailing her hard copy “manuals” for getting you into a “voluntary” tax system. People would be relating stories of their financial and personal lives being destroyed, but in their interpretation they were all winning.
We are just not seeing things through their lens. She was always just one step away from finding the government official who will pull back the curtain and reveal that she was right all along and all the liens, contempt orders, garnishments, etc would all go away.
Exactly. They claim exemption from the law, which somehow means that the Evil Gummint that’s fraudulently and consistently trying to scam them is going to…follow those same laws?!
I would understand (not defend, but understand) a cop who listened to the Sovcit’s screed and then said, “Ok, I agree with you. The law does not apply to you.” And then shoots the moron dead.
My theory:
Because there seem to be an equal amount of “bad cop” videos where a person says, “I do not consent to a search.” or “I am not answering your questions.” and the cop either lets them go after a lot of threats or violates their rights and arrests them anyways and after the fact, the victim wins a huge lawsuit. Then the SovCit says if I do the same thing but with the magic words of “I am not driving, I’m traveling.” or “I am not in your jurisdiction.” they think the same thing will happen to them. They will be let go despite the cops bluster OR they will get their fee schedule paid.
OK, I tried that. I didn’t find anything of the sort. All I found was non-sovcits talking about them. None of their own stuff.
Yeah sorry, I got confused on the terminology.
It’s a belief system similar to that of people having faith in worthless alternative medicine remedies.
Those other folks died/went to jail because they did it wrong. You on the other hand will follow the protocol perfectly and succeed. 
That’s a very common one that these idiots trot out at virtually every traffic stop. It seems to come from the misconception that since certain Constitutional rights as well as case law can be inferred as guaranteeing the right to travel, the government cannot require them to have a driver’s license, and by the same token, cannot require vehicle licensing or registration or insurance, except when vehicles are engaged in commerce. That many of them genuinely believe this is evidenced by the fact they’ll openly carry fake license plates reading something like “PRIVATE” and “Not for Hire” and are genuinely surprised when they get pulled over. Another tactic is claiming to be “Moorish citizens” and not under the jurisdication of any federal or state government. Or they just simply recite some babble about being “a free and living person” and therefore immune from any government-imposed law. The commonalities suggest at least some common origins for the nonsense, or a lot of copycats parroting each other.
Some of them hold these beliefs so strongly that they demand to speak to a supervisor who they firmly believe will support their craziness.because the lower-ranking cops just don’t understand the law. Many of them seem genuinely surprised when they get their car window smashed and get forcibly pulled from their car and put into cuffs. Some, still undeterred, represent themselves in court and try to make the same arguments there. One of the favourite tactics in court is arguing that neither the judge nor his stupid court has any jurisdiction over them and demanding that the judge prove that he does, which tends to test the patience of even the most forgiving judge and will sometimes earn these geniuses a contempt charge on top of their other charges.
And yes, in addition to paying for all the sov-cit “training material”, there are also self-styled “gurus” who offer real-time “legal advice” over the phone (for a fee, of course) during a traffic stop, which is exactly as successful as you might expect. It generally results in the officer eventually running out of patience and telling them to get off the phone and cooperate or get arrested. In one such video, the dedicated guru actually shows up in person, and gets arrested herself for interfering in a traffic stop!
There’s a thread in the Pit with a fine collection of videos. Some of these nutters are so delusional that it’s almost unbelievable. It’s like a cult of lunatics.
Yeah this a good point. There are “cheatcodes” in the American legal system like “I am not answering any questions without my lawyer present”. Lots of people don’t use them, despite widely available online materials (including SDMB) imploringly them to do so, and end up paying the price.
Why should all this SovCit stuff be different? Other than it clearly being completely insane, of course
Or waiting until the judge leaves the courtroom, then shouting “ABANDON SHIP!” and declaring that you hereby seize jurisdiction and dismiss the proceedings.
But because these folks aren’t very bright, they’re clueless about what legal rights they have and don’t have, or how to go about asserting them. When an officer asks for a driver’s license, registration, and insurance, you have a legal requirement to produce them. When given a lawful order to get out of the vehicle, you have to comply. The right response is not to roll up your window and lock the door. The right to not answer questions doesn’t give these lunatics the right to do anything they want. Besides all that, there’s usually no downside to polite cooperation such as answering reasonable questions like “where are you coming from?”
“Where are you coming from” may be reasonable, but not lawful. In some state a person doesn’t even have to identify themselves (albeit this is only for pedestrians)
Not shown: within 100 miles of an international border. Oh: an airport open 24 hours is considered an international border
Of course, not playing nice with the police may get you what they call the “asshole tax,” like a citation for something wrong with your car (like lack of a bag for trash, or a dangling air freshener).
What is a “Stop and Identify” statute?
I know that, in a lot of states, a person must provide their name, address, and/or date of birth (if asked) if a cop has a reasonable articulable suspicion (RAS) the person has, is, or is about to commit a crime. Is that what this is referring to?
(Again - for pedestrians on public property, not vehicle operators) the police have the right to initiate a voluntary contact, and ask whatever they want. The person has the right to break off unless there’s RAS. Exception is in the map above where they have to give their name.
The rub with RAS is when the police, in a version of the asshole tax, insist that you “match the description” of someone they’re looking for. Black male between age 14-45 covers a lot of ground
Along with the videos of cops and judges not accepting SovCit nonsense, there’s vids of cops responding to invocations of the 4th, 5 & 6 Amendment rights with “so you wanna go down that route?”
Yep. All these various flavours are like magicians doing card tricks. They all mostly know the same kinds of sleight of hand, but each one dresses it up in their own patter, to make the act their own. But the underlying fundamentals are all very similar.
Right, because presumably drivers are required in all states to produce a valid driver’s license. And I believe “stop and identify” statutes only apply if there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been, or is about to be, committed and the person is technically under detention but not under arrest. Questions like “where are you coming from?” or “where are you headed” directed to a driver are in the category of consensual or “conversational” questions. It’s a bit of a stretch to call them “not lawful”, it’s more that you’re not legally required to answer them, but refusal to engage in a conversational interaction would likely be perceived as hostile. This is the path that sov-cits frequently go down.
Unless you’re the guy who answers that you came back from Burger King, and whether or not you got breakfast or lunch becomes a whole thing that requires backup to be called. Seriously, just say “I’m not answering any questions without an attorney present” and be done with it. I’ve done it more times than I can count and, other than the cop looking slightly butthurt a time or two, it works perfectly every time.
An oddity I did find was an academic paper with some strange pretzel logic. ‘Sovereign Citizen Gets Roasted’: On the Nomophilia of Sovereign Citizens and Their Settler-Colonial Critics
It wants to shame those of us who are entertained by sovcits hilariously getting themselves into trouble. The justification for this is that the sovcits form a resistance movement against the settler-colonial state. The author is for anything that will do that. He even spins it as a resistance movement of “indigenous” peoples. The author is also forced to conclude that the sovcits hold the same “nomophilic” (law-loving) mindset held by the state that he hates, then handwaves that away.