Everybody’s favorite sandwich perv made a Hail Mary at attempting to get out of his 12-year federal sentence on child pornography charges. The Washington Post reports Jared Fogle, currently residing at the Englewood Federal Correctional Institution, filed a motion to dismiss his case because he argued he is “sovereign citizen,” and the court had no authority over him.

If you’ve never heard of the Sovereign Citizen Movement, then I’m about to provide you with some pretty amusing information that won’t win you any games of trivia, but it will make you the most interesting person at the parties this weekend.

What you need to know about the Sovereign Citizen movement

Well, you don’t ‘need’ to know these things. However, they are interesting.

They’re a movement, not a gang

Sovereign citizens are more of a movement than an organized gang. They believe they are individual people who are not subject to the rules of any type of government or nation. So, they don’t believe they can be arrested for anything they do. If they do something you don’t like, you’re supposed to take it up with them personally. Sovereign citizens might call themselves other names, such as ‘freeman’ or ‘constitutionalists’.

They don’t believe in laws, government, or even Santa Claus

While Sovereign Citizens don’t believe in laws, they do believe in money.

Several of them travel the country presenting seminars on how to ignore the government. You know, for people who can’t figure that out for themselves. Yeah, some of them charge money for the seminars. And, sadly, some people pay it.

They do love using the courts of a government they don’t respect

Not to confuse the issue (but it does), Sovereign Citizens may feel they are above the law but they have no problem using the courts to fleece people of their money.

According to an FBI bulletin, Sovereign Citizens love to file frivolous lawsuits and liens against people. They use the courts for that, the same ones they claim have no jurisdiction over them.

Redemption Theory is not a cool Bob Marley song

Sovereign Citizens believe in something called the Redemption Theory. Redemption Theory proposes the US government went bankrupt when it went off the gold standard in 1933 (you remember that, right?).

Since then the government has been using US citizens as collateral in international trade agreements. I’m going to let that one sink in, and then maybe you can draw the lines.

Hey, You wanna buy a passport?

Sovereign Citizens love to sell things to each other and to their new converts. Wait, did I say “sell?” My mistake, I meant ‘defraud.’ One of their most common scams is to print fake driver’s licenses, passports, license plates, and other documents and tell the people they are legal and the US government will accept them.

By the way, they charge real US dollars for those items. And never underestimate the financial power of stupid people, some of these scams have netted millions of dollars.

All kidding aside, they are no joke

The Sovereign Citizen movement is dangerous. Sovereign Citizens are responsible for the murders of 6 law enforcement officers. Obviously, these are the kinds of people who believe in the unregulated possession of guns, bombs, and just about any other weapon. Their activities prompted the FBI to label them as a “domestic terrorist movement.” But, you know, some things you just can’t avoid.

What’s amazing is that even intelligent people can buy into the Sovereign Citizen lunacy. Look at Jared Fogle, he was smart enough to get into college, smart enough to create a job for himself at a major corporation, and he made a lot of money. Yet, somehow, he was sucked into their fantasy land.
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