Why Would the FBI be Calling on Me to Ask if I Know Anyone Who is Organizing Independent Common Law Grand Juries?

Why Would the FBI be Calling on Me to Ask if I Know Anyone Who is Organizing Independent Common Law Grand Juries?

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By David Schied, M.A., Education; co-founder, The (Roger) ShermanInstitute

This past Thursday, February 16 (2014), the FBI came calling to my doorstep. This is a home that I have been leasing for less than two years, where I have few visitors and never answer to unexpected knocks at the door, and at where I get no important mail since I have used a post office box for numerous years. When I looked out of the window, I caught an angle on two huge guys at my front door. Just five minutes earlier I had just finished a phone confirmation that I would be leaving soon for a meeting with someone for further media planning on exposing government corruption throughout Michigan. Since my son was home from school with a head cold, I asked him to talk through the door to find out who the men were and what they wanted. It was FBI Agent John Brand, and he asked that I call him back at his Detroit area office phone number.

About 10 minutes after these FBI agents left my driveway, I left for my meeting with a prospective media sponsor from the northern section of the state, who is a man with resources and a commitment using them to support a newly organizing media network of alternative Internet print, podcast radio, and digital television designed to expose Michigan government corruption.  He lives not far from former Michigan Supreme Court “Chief” Justice – turned-whistle-blower – Elizabeth Weaver.  She had resigned from the Michigan Supreme Court in 2010 with a press conference announcing an exceedingly level of corruption at Michigan’s highest levels of judicial administration. 

I have had many hours of phone conferencing with Justice Weaver, and she is truly engaged in advocacy for judicial reforms. Last year in 2013, she published her memoirs – including notes on secretly recorded closed meetings and behind-the-scenes actions of the Michigan Supreme Court covering a couple of decades of political maneuvering and high-profile decision-making between judicial and executive branches – exposing extraordinary levels of government corruption and what amounts to treason against the People of Michigan by judges of the Michigan Supreme Court, and by those employed as the State Court Administrator, by the Michigan Attorney General and his staff, and by the Michigan Governor. The 2-inch thick book with 765 pages is being sold by Justice Weaver at no profit for less than $20 in a mere attempt to expose the corruption to the public. Her book is titled, Judicial Deceit: Tyranny and Unnecessary Secrecy at the Michigan Supreme Court.

My personal introduction to Justice Weaver came through former University of Michigan aerospace engineering professor-turned-whistle-blower Dr. William Kauffman, who took early retirement from UM after the university retaliated against him for exposing the inherent “national security” problem of university administration and Michigan’s current Governor, Rick Snyder, sharing the latest research in “dual-use” weapons technology with China.  Like me and my media sponsor in northern Michigan, Justice Weaver and Professor Kauffman both see the “sellout of America” by the government elite and corporate conglomerate. So we have united our voices with others, from the top of the social hierarchy to the grassroots, to raise a royal “stink” about all this going on in Michigan.

 So what did FBI Agent John Brand want to talk with me about? I telephoned Agent Brand upon my return home from a very productive media planning meeting. In short time, he revealed his awareness of the suicide six months ago of my dear friend and one of Michigan’s most dedicated activists, Trish Kraus, who he claimed had networked connections to others that had caught the attention of the FBI that might be associated with the formation of grand juries that were “unauthorized by the courts.” Agent Brand also admitted that it was Trish Kraus’ estranged former husband who, in retaliation for her announcing her separation and divorce from him, had (falsely) report to the FBI that Trish and I were somehow involved in a “domestic terrorist” organization called Lawless America.

Lawless America Michigan got started by Trish’s and my participatory assistance to a man named Bill Windsor, who uncovered criminal government corruption in the federal judiciary of the Atlanta, Georgia district and properly reported his findings to other government authorities, who then did nothing about his reports of “crimes committed from the bench” by judges. Frustrated by that repeated occurrence, Mr. Windsor found legitimate access to his local grand jury and had received the grand jury’s invitation to come back after he had taken the opportunity to briefly report to them the surmounting evidence he had of these judicial crimes occurring in their greater community. When he returned however, he was barred by threat of assault and arrest by building security, prosecutors and others of the executive branch feloniously interfering with these grand jury proceedings. About that same time, judges were responding to his repeated petitions for redress by also barring him from filing any further grievances against his government adversaries, under threat of heavy sanctioning.

Bill Windsor’s solution was to turn to the “court of public opinion.” He thus sought to establish an interactive Internet talk-show, and later to produce a movie documentary by the same name of “Lawless America” by which he would travel around the nation gathering testimonies from each state demonstrating that judicial and other government corruption is institutionalized and systemically abundant in every state. My and Trish Kraus’ involvement occurred by our use of a local Public Access television studio to host two solid days of capturing individual testimonials from people who had experienced judicial and other corruption. These were individuals who had trustingly turned to government officials for intervention and with the expectation that they would honor their solemn Oaths and execute their Duties of offices, only to find instead the dereliction of those duties and the cover-up of the government crimes about which these individuals were reporting. (See the “Lawless America Channel” on YouTube.)  

In clarifying the types of people he was seeking, FBI Agent said he is disregarding Bill Windsor. What he wanted to talk about were “sovereigns,” and most particularly the ones he believed were residing in greater Detroit. Specifically, he associated them with “Republic of Michigan” and the “Wayne County Assembly.” These were people supposedly consisting of “Moors,” as people of color, who claim an indigenous status that exempts them from having to conform with or be subject to the jurisdiction of state or federal laws. Mr. Brand elaborated further to characterize these types of people as those who see no problem in using unauthorized papers as substitutions for driver’s licenses, who defraud the U.S. Treasury with unauthorized bonds, promissory notes, or whatever; and who are engaged in get-out-of-mortgage schemes by taking money from others so to teach them how to do the same. His ultimate concern was that these so-called sovereigns are also willing to financially harm the de facto government and otherwise causing innocent “sheep”, “slaves”, “citizens” to lose their homes to lawyers and their corporations when taking part in these types of illegal schemes. He was looking for people who believed so strongly in their so-called “sovereignty” that they would physically harm those in government who are merely doing their jobs, such as by fighting back against or shooting police officers making traffic stops of these types of individuals. Brand’s concern was that grand jury members may also seek to enforce their indictments on government officials through other private means.

I pardoned myself early in this hour-and-a-quarter conversation so to question if Agent Brand or the FBI had taken consideration of the number of innocent drivers who have been needlessly stopped, harassed, or victimized by police brutality in comparison to the number of those who have actually fought back or killed police officers making such types of traffic stops. He declined to reflect upon my statement any further than to reply that it would be an interesting comparison if we had the statistics.

I doubt that Agent Brand was taking notes, though he was likely recording our conversation as he further elaborated upon his characterization of the classic sovereign by his definition. He described the person as one who locates a single code or statute and uses it to justify one’s own exemption from being subjugated to the chain of other written laws. This is the person who propagates wrongful information while relying upon just that one statute and a limited interpretation of the law, even though such an interpretation might be entirely correct. His concern was the disregarding of the greater context of other laws, either leading up to or encompassing the one being referenced by the sovereign; and that they were encouraging others to join in on relying upon such a limited interpretation of the law while breaking other laws. In regard to those who are undermining and circumventing the laws to form their own grand juries, Agent Brand insinuated that some of those involved in this movement appear to be people who might have fought numerous court battles and emerged as “disgruntled litigants” (like Bill Windsor) who simply did not like the results of the judicial rulings against them.

I began my reply by stating that I was indeed familiar with the words he referenced with such interest and concern, such as republic, sovereign, and grand juries. The Pledge of Allegiance still refers to the Republic for which the flag is supposed to symbolize. I told him that my past year and a half of doctoral research into American History has included changes in state and federal sovereignty relationships, common law constitutionalism, judicial and other government corruption, private prosecutions, and the history of common law grand juries. I asked Agent Brand if he had ever heard of the U.S. v. Williams ruling by the United States Supreme Court, as delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia. He replied that he had not. So I referred him to the website of the National Liberty Alliance in New York as having a site chock full of educational material for people like him that are not well-informed about the functional independence of grand juries being free to operate as a “fourth branch of government” outside of the control or influence of any of the other legislative, judicial and executive branches. (This is in contrast to the systematic institutionalization of the “silent partnership of the traditional (mainstream) media,” or the “administrative state,” or the communist/socialist undercurrent of the government of China as the alternative choices of de facto corporations in defining the “fourth branch.”)

I chuckled at Agent Brand talking about people being disgruntled by their experiences in the courts. When I told him that I had been repeatedly and publicly mischaracterized by my government defendants, and by state and federal judges issuing rulings that I was a “vexatious litigant” merely because I had met each criminal obstruction of justice by government with the exercise of my First Amendment right to a civil redress of grievances, FBI agent Brand confessed that he had researched some of my court cases and had already found that out about me prior to calling on me.

I had to tell this FBI agent that I had spent considerable time myself in researching, and that the scholarly findings of others confirmed that the self-regulating system for checks and balances on judicial misconduct is too often “mis-regulated.” I tried to explain that while common law grand juries have long been rendered impotent, their historical significance and independence of purpose in exposing and indicting government criminals is still a rightful fixture in American jurisprudence. It was only the adoption in 1946 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure made “runaway” grand juries obsolete by doing away with presentments, even though the word “presentment” remains in the Constitution. (See Roger Roots’ article in the Creighton Law Review, 1999-2000.) Both research and common sense shows that when Equity courts replaced Common Law courts, the administrative changeover to those new Rules was an unconstitutional violation of the rights of the People to act independently of governmental power; and because the ideology and ramifications of this action conflicts with the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution, it needs to be “redressed” and reversed.

Thus, I told Agent Brand that his characterization of sovereigns appeared prejudicially stereotypical, with a view of otherwise very patriotic people as being similarly rendered through a very limited interpretation and outside of the greater context of the actual facts. I added that, even if what he were stating about sovereigns were true, these people might not be behaving any differently than from others in government, that I had witnessed for years by firsthand experience in the state and federal courts, who seek to fraudulently “litigate,” to publicly publish their judicial rulings with gross omissions, misapplication of the laws, or misstatements of facts, and who refuse to see the larger “chain” of actions that demonstrate the “meeting of the minds” of a true “conspiracy” by government.

I told FBI Agent Brand how I had repeatedly found that my named government defendants, including the Michigan Attorney General and U.S. Attorney as well as judges, had written their court “briefs” and abbreviated rulings, decisions, judgments, orders, opinions, and memorandums in such way that deliberately cherry-picked from the plethora of unconstitutional laws that were on the books while disregarding the mounds of solid evidence I had otherwise presented along with other more relevant laws. I told him that it was clear that these “officers of the court” were conducting themselves in such a deceptive fashion, in order to fraudulently justify their reasons for continually dismissing my persistent claims about government corruption. I told him that even now while we have a former Michigan Supreme Court justice-turned-whistle-blower who is reaffirming what I have been crying out for years from the grassroots as a so-called “disgruntled” or “vexatious” litigant, nobody from government is doing anything about these TREASONOUS crimes. This would arguably include Agent Brand himself, who has seemingly approached me under his own purported sworn Oath of duty under the Constitution while upholding a biased agenda and a prejudicial objective when inquiring into these so-called sovereign behaviors and other citizen reactions.

I told Agent Brand that what I have found – and have discussed with the full admission of a Michigan lawyer who has watched me when not representing me in many of these court battles against government – is that judges repeatedly ignore common sense, relevant laws, the state and federal constitutions that are designed to restrict and guide their actions, and the evidence to focus upon color of law and their interpretation of whatever case law they select – so to “litigate” just a minutia of the actual facts and disregard the so many other more relevant laws. I could not count for this FBI agent the number of times I had presented a mountain of facts along with a plethora of supporting evidence that was entirely ignored by judges, just so they could determine “no government wrongdoing;” or so to deliver the award of immunity in the event there is any remote possibility of an inadvertent wrongdoing on government’s part.

Put simply, I told the FBI agent that there is a “revolving door” between the judicial and executive branches of state and federal government operating in Michigan, with both branches committing an overabundance of crimes and nobody in command holding their peer group of cronies accountable for their criminal actions. I also cited two key examples such corrupt government officials: The first being Michigan Court of Appeals judge Richard Bandstra moving from the judiciary to become the “lead counsel” for the Michigan Attorney General, whose DUTY it is to investigate and remove corrupt judges from office; and second, being U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy who denied investigating my complaint into judicial corruption and declined to allow me access to a grand jury just prior to his slipping through the revolving door to become a U.S. District Court judge. I asked, how can “checks and balances” ever be properly applied with this type of thing going on at the state AND at the federal level within the very same regional district? The “sovereignty” is neither at the state level NOR at the federal level in such cases when ALL of the individuals being referenced here are members of the very SAME State BAR of Michigan?  It rests at the individual level with both the executive and judicial branches awarding “governmental immunity” to one another for their criminal enterprise!

In addressing Agent Brand’s concern about independent grand juries springing up in Michigan without the authorization of these very same (corrupt) judges (and their counterparts in the executive branch), I reasoned that I and others across Michigan and the United States have enough evidence to show that We The People have no other means of accessing any other state or federal grand juries for reporting these government crimes. As case-in-point, I referred to my own numerous case demands to both the judicial and executive branches of both state and federal government for access to the real government of “the People,” by way of either petit or grand juries, and as both a civil “plaintiff” and as a bona fide “crime victim.” I also described how I have thereafter been repeatedly denied such access to anyone outside of government (i.e., “the People” of a petit or grand jury) by both the courts and the prosecutors. I pointed out that I have had so many denials of grand juries by the judicial branch that the latest responses to my demands, at both the state and federal levels, have been to threaten me with sanctions if I file such a court action again clarifying and redressing my demand of this all-important recognition that government crimes are being committed…in spades.

I told FBI Agent John Brand that similar obstructions of the rights of others have long been generated by both state and federal prosecutors as the “gatekeepers” to accessing grand juries. I stated that I had personally collected complaints from numerous proclaimed government crime victims, as submitted by these victims directly to the U.S. Attorneys operating in districts at both sides of Michigan. I told Agent Brand that these victims had all deliberately cited 18 U.S.C. § 3332 in demand that their reports of crimes be related to the federal special grand jury; and I told him that I have also collected the written responses returned to these government crime victims by these same U.S. Attorneys, all DENYING those requests. I suggested that this particular evidence was extremely significant given the purposeful wording of 18 U.S.C. § 3332.

When I asked Agent Brand if he knew anything about 18 U.S.C. § 3332, he confessed that he did not. He was compelled to look it up for himself while I continued with my discussion about the significance of my evidence reflecting a “pattern of corruption” by multiple district offices of the U.S. Attorney in Michigan.  I suggested that the range of criminal complaints against government is too broad for such a pattern of denial to be a pattern characterizing the complainants. Except for the likelihood that a common complaint exists about a particular judge or about the Michigan Attorney General (or in the case of University of Michigan, the university president Sue Coleman and the governing Board of Regents), the only thing these diversified cases have in common are their purposeful reference to 18 U.S.C. § 3332 as a statutory requirement for the U.S. Attorney to perform their duty to present these reports of crimes to the special grand juries which, as an antecedent, have the DUTY to “inquire about” crimes being reported within their respective federal districts. Agent Brand read back to me over the phone from 18 U.S.C. § 3332 (“Powers and Duties” of the Special Grand Jury) as follows:

“(a) It shall be the duty of each such grand jury impaneled within any judicial district to inquire into offenses against the criminal laws of the United States alleged to have been committed within that district. Such alleged offenses may be brought to the attention of the grand jury by the court or by any attorney appearing on behalf of the United States for the presentation of evidence. Any such attorney receiving information concerning such an alleged offense from any other person shall, if requested by such other person, inform the grand jury of such alleged offense, the identity of such other person, and such attorney’s action or recommendation.”

The cover letters of Camille McMillan, Sally Borghese, Teresa Goin, and Karen Stephens, as well as their corresponding answers from the U.S. Attorneys speak for themselves, as does my cover letter to the U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade for the Eastern District of Michigan where I live, and her “agent’s” answer. I told Agent Brand that the First Amendment of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights maintains that “We (the People)” not only have the right to assemble and to discuss or investigate a “redress” of government corruption based upon our own incriminating testimonies and evidence, “We (the People)” also have the right to freely publish our findings in the form of a presentment or indictment. In fact, as found in both Michigan legislation (of MCL 750.10) and in the federal jury handbook (i.e., see p.8 of 24), an indictment is merely a formal proclamation of a criminal charge, whether issued by an individual or a group of individuals.  [The caveat is that the government will simply not act on it unless someone deemed as being one of their own, such as a government prosecutor, signs off on it; however, the research into challenges to prosecutorial inaction and private prosecutions at the state level by those not employed in government is a significant consideration for Private Attorney(s) General(s).] In regard to his concern about people taking private measures to enforce grand jury findings, I am sure that Agent Brand is already aware that common people have always had the right, if not also the duty, to conduct private citizen’s arrests under state laws.

Altogether, the videos recorded for the Lawless America documentary testimonials throughout 2012 and into 2013 demonstrate the broad spectrum of complaints and the wide range of means by which government can perpetrate their crimes upon the unsuspecting public in their course of their jobs and in the empty name of “the People.”  Though each case of criminal accusation against government official(s) needs to be adjudicated independently, what is common about these thousands of individual testimonials is that the cases were all “resolved” by government administrators and never brought before the real government of “the people of the jury,” whether it be a petit jury or a grand jury. The government wants it that way, and that is why we are seeing a revival and an enhancement of what took place a century and a half ago with the Reconstruction Acts. “[T]he Civil Rights Act, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Ku Klux Klan Act [as] major acts of Reconstruction were informed by and grounded in distrust of state action against private citizens and against state institutions’ ability to protect private citizens’ from harm...As such, every [federal government] step to protect individual rights was coupled with measures to vest protection of those rights in some federal institution, or at the very least, to ensure federal oversight.” (McKinley, 2011)

That time, following the end of the Civil War, was when common law practices, jury nullification, and state sovereignty were lost to federal sovereignty. This time, individual rights are being “assured” by the oversight of government institutions that simply do not operate constitutionally, and judicial reviews for these departmental and agency actions just give award priority to the fact that these iconic institutions of our society are believed to something of a necessary evil. Thus, cases involving public administrators are being ruled on in such way as to reflect what legal analysts see as the dichotomy between “liberal” social values (i.e., ideological values of representative government, separation of powers, and due process) and “progressive” social values (i.e., making government more scientifically and bureaucratically efficient through delegation of decision-making authority to unelected administrators) that is inherent in administrative law. As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s inability to “implement principles that place administrative government into a constitutional framework” (p.395) – and aside from the outright corruption of the judiciary – many people today have lost confidence in both the administrative process and the judiciary. (Shapiro & Levy, 1987) Meanwhile, government gets bigger as new industries and methods of regulating are introduced, and regulatory administration of public services and the executive office of the President gets stronger as administrative law grows today to also encompass international regulations.

Many know that the constitutional battle is dauntingly overwhelming. Simply put, the government believes itself too big to fail. If you can believe it, FBI Agent Brand suggested that despite the surmounting number of constitutional violations by government officials not actually constituting crimes of “treason” against the People, that in light of what we could agree on as being an overwhelming number of crimes taking place against individuals and against families in the American populace, it would appear that even more government is needed to remedy the problem.

I was adamant that more government was not the solution. Instead, I said that more of “We (the People)” like those stepping up to the plate from the grassroots, willing to volunteer and donate their time to the construction of common law grand juries are what we need. I suggested that Agent Brand imagine the possibility that, police and prosecutors might not have to be so overwhelmed by surmounting crimes, leading them to necessarily ignore many others (i.e., those committed by governments against the People as their sovereign Creators having the right to abolish government that does not actually work for them constitutionally by guaranteeing at MINIMUM all rights covered by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights). I stated that any perceived animosity of the People toward government is the likely result of the people seeing police and prosecutors dealing mostly with those cases being simply perceived as against government and for which there is actually no harmed party, such as with traffic and property ordinance citations (or by Agent Brand’s own time spent researching me and driving from Detroit with another agent from Detroit all the way to my home in the suburbs unannounced), instead of helping to mediate between disagreeing parties of people (i.e., rather than between people and corporations with both being treated as “persons” under definition of the 14^th Amendment, and with the administration of weighted “justice” issued accordingly in favor of “what is in the best interest of the majority,” which is always viewed in EQUITY COURTS rather than COMMON LAW courts under the limited scope as the larger corporation rather than the American populace).  

I asked Agent Brand to imagine prosecutors working with grand jury volunteers to ease their investigative workloads. How nice it would be if prosecutors would then stand up for the People against tyrannical government instead of being a part of it. If they did the People would certainly have their backs.    

As it pertains to the assertions of private individuals that judges are committing crimes from the bench, the FBI knows very well how to investigate these types of matters by the agency’s federal probe of court corruption in the early 1980’s of Chicago, with Operation Greylord resulting in the indictments of 17 judges,  48 lawyers, 8 policemen, 10 deputy sheriffs, 8 court officials, and one state legislator.  So again I ask again, “Why would the FBI be calling me to ask if I know anyone that is organizing independent common law grand juries?” It is evident that the FBI should otherwise have its hands full in looking into these other matters of helping the federal administration of the United States government to at least distinguish between those judges who are in it for politics, the power and the greed, such as those spotlighted by former Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver has written about, and those who are simply struggling to put a square peg in a round hole by not properly adjudicating constitutional violations of the rights of individuals by administrative forms of government. Must “We (the People)” do everything ourselves to get it right? I say a resounding, “yes” and we need more of us to be involved, because in all of the cases above the judges are acting as an unconstitutional form of government; and that is TREASON against (the) US.

* Please direct all correspondence to the host for this article.

David Schied is a former Hollywood stuntman, victims’ rights activist, and professional educator. A partial list of his film and television stunt, acting, and crew credits is listed with the Internet Movie Database. His credits also include a season on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, various nonunion stunt contracts, co-producing an independent national commercial, numerous university internships as production crew, and innumerable independent roles in film, television, and live stunt performances. He also studied and taught briefly as a substitute teacher at the UCLA Theatre Department under Tom Orth.       

From the mid-to-late 1980’s David served as a founding advisory board member alongside Doris Tate, mother of the Manson-murdered actress Sharon Tate. Her Coalition On Victims’ Equal Rights (C.O.V.E.R.) petitioned nationally for the victims’ rights legislation that is now found in many state constitutions. From near that time until the present, Mr. Schied also taught self-defense, protections against dating violence, rape avoidance, and children’s safety and fitness. After spending a year of study of university study in Nagoya, Japan where he also competed in Judo, Mr. Schied went on to graduate USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. He authored two self-published books on home and personal protection, and developed an interactive learning DVD for women and adolescents. For the past decade, Mr. Schied has been a court-watcher and plaintiff activist, submitting a multitude of cases chock full of evidence and naming numerous government officials at all levels of power for their high crimes and misdemeanors. In 2009, David was one of three elected Michigan delegates at the Continental Congress 2009, which drafted the Articles of Freedom. His last nearly two years has been spent in doctoral research on American History (i.e. that which is not typically taught in public schools), common law constitutionalism, private prosecutions, judicial corruption, and common law grand juries.

As a professional educator, Mr. Schied holds a Master’s in Education and currently holds four (4) Michigan special education teaching endorsements (CI, LD, EI, and OHI) and one Educational Technology teaching endorsement. In 2010, Mr. Schied co-founded The (Roger) Sherman Institute, a private association of instructors seeking to provide a broad, liberal arts curriculum based on the classical standard, and a theology program centered on scripture.