NBC's Pete Williams reporting there are some indications Sovereign Citizens may be involved .....

[LeftyMom]

34. Amazingly enough, yes.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/%E2%80%98sovereigns%E2%80%99-black

What may be even stranger about Gaines and his black Fort Wayne cohorts is that the “sovereign citizens” ideology to which they adhere — a conspiratorial belief system that argues that most Americans are not subject to most tax and criminal laws promulgated by the government — was originally thoroughly anti-black. But its racist roots have been virtually forgotten by increasing numbers of black Americans who have melded it with selective interpretations of the teachings of pioneer black nationalist Noble Drew Ali, who founded the exclusively black Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) almost 100 years ago.

The core ideas of the sovereign citizens movement originated in the racist and anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus group, which roiled the Midwest in the 1970s and 1980s and believed that the county sheriff is the highest legitimate law enforcement authority. Posse ideologues argued, in effect, that God gave America to the white man and therefore the government cannot abridge most rights of whites unless they submit to a “contract” with that government. But black people were only made citizens by the 14th Amendment, they argued, meaning that they have permanently contracted with the government and therefore must obey all its dictates.

The movement of sovereign citizens — most of whom are clearly unaware of the ideology’s racist roots — has grown extremely rapidly in the last two or three years. And, while black Americans remain a relatively small fraction of the estimated 300,000 sovereign citizens nationwide, it seems clear that their numbers are growing. In the last year, more and more black sovereigns, including several arrested in Georgia and elsewhere for using bogus documents to try to steal houses, have been implementing the movement’s basic ideas and techniques, which have spread into a number of radical black nationalist groups.

That convergence may not be entirely surprising, given that the MSTA’s Noble Drew Ali taught that black “Moors” were America’s original inhabitants and are therefore entitled to self-governing, nation-within-a-nation status. (Many American black nationalist groups refer mistakenly to the people of northern Africa as black; in fact, the Moors were a mix of Arabs, Berbers and black people.) Today, black nationalists who see themselves as Moors and white sovereign citizens both believe they have key rights that pre-date by eons the present government.