On December 8, Randy Furst reported for the Star Tribune in Albert Lea bar owner goes on trial for resisting state COVID mandates:
Though Hanson sat alone at the defense table, she had support and encouragement during breaks from her husband, Vern, and consultant Keith Haskell, who said he was associated with an organization called the National Action Task Force in Washington, D.C.
We've been looking into the National Action Task Force. Last summer, we posted twice about actions by Minnesotans who've worn its shirts within the year in COVID vaccine stealing guy gets booted from Lisa Hanson's Dodge County Courthouse hearing and COVID vaccine stealing guy gets booted from Lisa Hanson's Dodge County Courthouse hearing.
The Minnesota branch of the NATF now is moving out Haskell's home base in southern Minnesota; witness the December 14 report by Theresa Bourke for the Brainerd Dispatch, School board stops meeting as speaker alleges rights violations.
While the group is indeed headquartered in Washington DC as Furst reported (whether a physical or virtual office is immaterial), its origins go back to a couple of other organizations connected--The Lighthouse Law Club and the Panama Christian Foundation LLC--to its leader/founder.
That would be Mark Emery Boswell, who goes by Mark Emery these days. Boswell--we'll call him Emery to humor him--has a long history working with conservative right groups going back to the era of Timothy McVeigh. the tale of Emery/Boswell/Freeman is a winding one, so keep with us. We'll be focusing on Emery/Boswell's career in this post.
The militia promoting days of Mark Emery Boswell
The National Action Task Force's founder, Mark Emery, was known as Mark Emery Boswell when he was active in Colorado.
In 2006, Panama News's editor Eric Jackson reported in “Patriot” militia radio personality to expat investment hustler; Changes name, still a scamster:
Remember the US “patriot” militia movement from which Oklahoma City federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh came? That confluence of racist, neo-fascist, survivalist, tax resistance, weapons obsessed, “Christian identity” and apocalyptic strains was shoved farther out into the margins of the political wilderness when McVeigh lived out one of their favorite fantasies and then the Bush administration carried out some of their other ones.
But for the most part, the people involved didn’t just go away. Some of them are grabbing headlines today in the guise of anti-immigrant militias.
However, for some people the patriot movement was good business. Take one Mark Boswell, for example. A law school dropout, he formed the “American Law Club” and hosted Denver meetings at which followers of the right-wing militia movement were instructed that they could become rich by filing “non-commercial judicial liens” against their least-favorite prosecutors, judges, elected officials or companies. In addition to a series of pricey “law seminars,” Boswell would sell his “Civil Rights Task Force” jackets, deliberately made to look like the FBI and ATF apparel, and genuine-looking fake law enforcement badges. Boswell urged his customers to buy the things, wear them to court when their favorite tax resister or weapons law violator was in the defendant’s dock, and warn judges and prosecutors that they were being watched.
That pattern is being replicated with the National Action Task Force. Emery/Boswell created another law club--the Lighthouse Law Club. In its turn, the NATF sprang from it on or around December 3, 2020, or so one might reasonably conclude fro, the NATF category page on the Lighthouse Law Club Exit Babylon webpages on the Lighthouse Law Club section of the New Human New Earth Communities site.
Here's a screenshot of a now-past fundraiser for the NATF:
These are the shirts NATF are wearing in court and at actions. The fundraising page notes:
NATF is for all freedom lovers in America and worldwide!
Support here is support for your unalienable rights and enforcement of the organic natural law which is protected by the constitution for the united States of America. Become an 'investigator' surveilling local activities for the purposes of enforcing your rights.
Note that that "all funds raised will be paid directly to PCF World Mission LLC for NATC." PCF stands for "Panama Christian Foundation," one of Emery/Boswell's gigs. We'll have more on that in a bit. For now, it's worth noting that the "Panama Christian Foundation" logo and conduit was used for crowdfunding for the Lighthouse Law Club:
According to the home page for PCF Crowdfunding:
PCF World Mission LLC publishes free digital books, webinars and other educational gifts as our way of saying thanks for your contributions which support the fundraising activities for Panama Christian Foundation (PCF).
Proceeds are used to assist and support PCF in its activities. PCF is making a difference in the lives of desperately poor and disadvantaged kids in the interior of Panama and now is providing desperately needed food and medicine to people who are literally dying for these supplies in Venezuela. Once your voluntary donation is made it is distributed to those in need and is non-refundable. We thank you so much for your contribution to humanity via PCF.
For more info on PCF, see: www.pcfpanama.org
And be sure to visit our YouTube Channel: PCF Panama
Join our Team and help make a difference! Select your donation option above to determine how you'd like to help and we WILL make this world a better place!
Okay then. The Liberty Law Club's website is here.
Boswell’s legal expertise only went so far. In 1995 he was one of the stars — along with other militia types and a couple of far-right Colorado Republican legislators — at a Canon City, Colorado “common law grand jury.” (This was not a judicial entity but rather a political gathering convened to discuss such theories as how the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t really have any legal basis for its existence.) When the assembly broke for lunch, police arrested Boswell on a fugitive warrant stemming from charges that he used fake ID when stopped for a traffic violation and that he used a bogus money order to buy a Mercedes. Colorado State Senator Charles Duke (R-Monument) lauded Boswell as a political prisoner.
Here's a screenshot of the charges and time Boswell faced in Colorado, via an image in the Wayback Machine's save of a Panama News post:
The patriot movement paraphernalia and seminar business was greatly assisted by Boswell’s weekly talk show on KHNC radio, a Denver station that was rebroadcast in other US locales and by shortwave all around the world.
But then on April 19, 1995 one Timothy McVeigh, a messed up former soldier with a reputation for killing surrendering Iraqi soldiers during the first Gulf War but who left the US Army after washing out in his attempt to join the Delta Force, lived out a neo-Nazi fantasy woven in a novel that was popular in right-wing militia circles and blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Ten days after the deadly blast Boswell went on the air with the tale of how a former CIA guy and another “witness” had heard and obtained affidavits from — the latter conveniently not produced — two unspecified Justice Department officials that a shadowy “Committee of 10” involving the Clinton White House, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the Secret Service (the latter both part of the Treasury Department rather than the Justice Department) were actually the ones who did the deed.
The general outlines and most salient details of the truth about the Oklahoma City bombing did, however, come to public attention. It was a big disaster for Mark Boswell’s radio career and patriot paraphernalia business. So what’s a more patriotic than thou American huckster to do after an embarrassment like that?
There's a summary of that radio show From the 'Lectric Law Library's Stacks Two Government Officials Confess To Oklahoma Bombing 12 May 1995.
Jackson next explains how Boswell transformed himself:
First, Mark Boswell assumed the name “Rex Freeman.” Then, as he described it on Roger Gallo’s Escape Artist website, he
…left the USA probably for many of the same reasons most do; the erosion of rights, the lawlessness of the courts, the intrusions of privacy, the omnipresence of big brother and the general mental decay of society. What once made America great, is now gone, or at best is quickly disappearing and I’d had enough. It was time to go.
My wife and I packed our things, put our little dog under the seat of the plane and headed south. Not being too sure of where we’d end up, our original idea was Panama. However, we made a stop over along the way in Costa Rica five years ago, and have never gone any further.
We are not wealthy retirees. I’m 46 and she’s, well, she still won’t say, but we had a very limited nestegg and the clock was ticking for us to find something to do to support ourselves. Neither of us spoke any Spanish (still don’t very well) and we’ve been living on tourist visas for 5 years. Not a very stable situation.
I have always been enamored by the idea of living the ‘PT’ lifestyle (Permanent Tourist – Previous Taxpayer – Perpetual Traveler) and now was my chance. It was very clear under this philosophy, that in order to sustain this without a substantial trust fund, that you must have a ‘portable business’ which allows you to operate from anywhere in the world.
I threw up a website and started offering financial privacy consulting services helping other ‘escapees’ protect their financial affairs….
Freeman (Boswell) wove a web of offshore Internet businesses, which, unfortunately for Panama, did get farther than Costa Rica. . . .
Read the list and the rest of the article at “Patriot” militia radio personality to expat investment hustler; Changes name, still a scamster.
"Rex Freeman" is the hero of Emery/Boswell's book, One Freeman's War. The book is discussed on the "Our Founder" page at the Liberty Law Club site. We were completely fascinated by Unpersuasive political fiction, the 2015 review of the tome by Kirkus Reviews:
Emery’s debut novel describes one man’s resistance toward the American government.
Unlikely revolutionary Rex Freeman grows up just like any other God-fearing, freedom-loving American: playing football, driving fast, and cheerfully challenging the status quo. Emory’s vision of this innocent America is evident in his description of Rex’s hometown, La Crescent, Minnesota: “This was a place where people worked hard to earn an honest living. They lived in decent homes, people raised their families, went to church….This is where life has its rewards. You put in a good work week and spent the weekend in the splendour in ‘God’s Country.’ Their lives were simple, of modest means and glorious.” After an unsatisfying career in corporate America, Freeman falls in with the Liberty Foundation, where he meets people victimized by the IRS. With his new friends, Freeman founds the American Law Club to keep citizens informed on ways to protect themselves against encroaching federal power. Digging ever deeper into America’s treasury of conspiracy theories, Freeman finds new ways to resist the government and spread his messages of liberty, poking at the sleeping federal giant and eventually incurring its wrath. Amid a cast of fringe revolutionaries of various stripes, Rex finds himself on the wrong side of the law and in danger of losing that which he holds dearest of all: his freedom. Emery claims several times that the novel is “based on actual experiences and events,” and the book certainly reads more like a memoir than a work of fiction, often with a tinge of self-mythologizing: “As Rex began to get a reputation in his local area he had the great pleasure of meeting another very prominent gladiator battling I.R.S. oppression.” The prose is riddled with tense shifts, unexpected British spellings, and a gross overuse of scare quotes employed with little sense of uniformity. As a narrative, the story oscillates between flat characterization and an aggressively simplistic worldview on one hand, and dry accounts of legal disputes and the tax system on the other. While Emery offers a few valid criticisms of America’s federal system, they are crowded in among so many instances of religiosity and paranoia as to render them nearly moot.
Unpersuasive political fiction.
Our sympathies to LaCrescent for being dragged into this.
Kirkus also reviewed his second book, How I beat Satan...and the I.R.S. Both are published by the PCF World Mission LLC.
The Panama Christian Foundation
In 2015, Okke Ornstein reported in the Bananama Republic article, Fugitive finance hustler Mark Boswell runs wacky Christian foundation:
Some people really don't know when it's time to give up, and Mark Boswell, a/k/a "Rex Freeman" is one of them. A gift that keeps on giving.
FRAUD AND GAMBLING CHEATERY
Boswell was first exposed as an online gambling cheat and financial con man by Eric Jackson of the Panama News. You can read the devastating story here. His career as a lunatic militia man in the US. His bizarre radio show. His financial swindles, most of them promoted on - where else - the Escape Artist website. Again, read all about it on The Panama News.
But it got better! Naturally, after being exposed as a fraud, he was immediately promoted to become a financial columnist on Don Winner's Panama Guide scam pimping website.
DEFEATED IN COURT - AGAIN
Then, Boswell filed criminal defamation charges against Eric Jackson. Boswell of course lost - he didn't show up for the hearing and the fact that a Costa Rican warrant for his arrest was published that same day in La Estrella de Panama didn't help much either. Wrote Jackson:
Boswell alias Freeman was not present for the case. He sent a ringer gringo couple to sit in the courtroom, and as no introductions were made it may have appeared to the judge that he was there. He was represented by two lawyers, attorney Alejandro Moncada Luna making the arguments on his behalf.
Moncada accused this writer of calling Boswell alias Freeman a "terrorist" in the article forming the basis of the case, which is not true, and then launched into a long argument about how, since the United States recently renewed his client's passport, he's obviously not a terrorist. He used this reporter's invocation (on lawyer's advice) against testifying at the indagatoria as "proof" that the article in question was libelous, and said that there was no evidence anywhere to back the claims in the story. (...)
Moncada accused this reporter of having something to do with Boswell alias Freeman having legal troubles in Costa Rica --- not mentioning that those troubles include a warrant for his client's arrest and not explaining how it is that this reporter could or did manipulate the Costa Rican government to obtain the same.
Yes, indeed, dear reader: Boswell's lawyer was none other than Alejandro Moncada Luna, currently incarcerated with Noriega in Gamboa for mega-corruption. Hahahaha!
BOSWELL STARTS A CHRISTIAN SECT WITH VIRUSES IN IT?
After his legal debacle, Boswell stayed quiet for a while. But then we received an email, signed by him, which he has sent to a list of undisclosed recipients. It starts like this:
Right to the point...Our community has a virus and it needs to be stopped.
It has come to my attention that there are one or more among us who apparently see fit to disparage one's character and feed the rumor mill with gossip at the expense of others. When people do this it has the effect of 'assasination'. When one's character is assasinated, is it any different than assasinating the body? Perhaps this is why the bible equates 'busybodies' with murderers...
* "Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or as a busybody." 1 Peter 4:15*
The fact that it's my character that some seek to assasinate is irrelevant. I'm not concerned about the opinions of people who don't have a relationship with me. I have only one relationship which is important to me and its not with anybody on this earth. But it makes for a good case study for us to reflect upon and since this is going on, it needs to be reflected upon for the good of the community. Thus, you are receiving this email because I find it likely that you have 'at least' been on the recieiving end of this activity and heard some of the gossip. If people hear of such gossip, when they don't challenge it and put a stop to it, they are just a guilty as the perpetrator. So it's important to us all. (...)
Has Boswell gone reli-nutters? Yes. The "community" he refers to is something called the Panama Christian Foundation. They have a website - which curiously doesn't mention Boswell anywhere at all - here. They do things with kids and soccer, a superficial glance learned us. Who would want to send his kids to a convicted fraudster, a wanted man in Costa Rica and an online gambling cheat who now builds a following with some bullshit Christian foundation? No, we neither. . . .
One such email is of course just a petty attempt to save his crap foundation from going under because people find out the truth about him. But Mark Emery Boswell goes further to establish himself as an entirely credible person in the parallel universe where people like him live: He wrote a book! It's called One Freeman's War, and self-published on Amazon under only half his name. Here's part of the description:
This story is an adventure of discovery. It involves an evolutionary metamorphosis of knowledge and the power it can bring. You will find political intrigue and a high stakes power chess game as one individual confronts the entire political and financial power structure of the USA. Through relentless study and inquisition, the character, Rex Freeman and others put the legal and financial system in America under the microscope with knowledge, history, and some amazing insights.
He also has a website for the book full of batshit crazy conspiracy gibberish. . . .
Both Jackson and Ornstein get pretty salty about Emery/Boswell. Boswell sued Jackson for criminal defamation and lost.
Emery and the National Action Task Force
We're not sure where Emery/Boswell is--physically--these days; it's fairly immaterial to the narrative. The background in this most recent video on the Lighthouse Law Club's YouTube channel, Exit Babylon, looks like a fuzzy Minneapolis, but who knows:
Here's another link to Emery and the NATF. Emery notes around the 40 second mark of this interview video that he created the National Action Task Force out of the Lighthouse Law Club:
How effective has Emery's organization been for Hanson and other causes its investigators have taken up in Minnesota? In April, the NATF issued a press release, National Action Task Force: Minnesota Restaurant Owner Defies Governor's Emergency Order, Turns The Tables And Sues Governor Walz And Multiple Others In Their Personal Capacity:
ALBERT LEA, Minn., April 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In this small southern Minnesota town, bistro owner 56-year-old Melissa Hanson continues to defy Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's November emergency powers Executive Order, which prohibited restaurants and bars from offering food and beverages indoors. In open defiance of what she says is clearly an illegal order, the state of Minnesota has unloaded a barrage of legal attacks against Hanson in an apparent attempt to make an example of her. The only problem is that, in the face of nine criminal charges, threatened suspension of business licenses, imposition of heavy fines and more, Hanson claims that the only criminals involved in this case are the state actors who have denied her due process every step of the way and she is setting the record in the court to prove it. When the court set a bail hearing in a criminal case brought forth by Albert Lea City Attorney Kelly Martinez, the court never issued a summons to appear and thus Hanson failed to appear which triggered a warrant being issued for her arrest. Hanson has offered to turn herself in conditional upon the Sheriff proving that the warrant is lawful and that the court has jurisdiction which has been challenged. Sheriff Freitag has not responded and Hanson remains at large. "I do not intend to submit myself to arrest on account of a fraudulent warrant," Hanson wrote the court last month. For the first time since the arrest warrant was issued, Melissa Hanson speaks out in this interview with National Action Task Force National Director Mark Emery LINK HERE.
Hanson is now going on the offensive to expose what she calls the corruption of the court and is suing the judge, Governor Walz, the city of Albert Lea, the city prosecutor Kelly Martinez, and others involved for their complicity in what she alleges as corrupt criminal activity and abuse of power, which are outlined in some detail in this interview.
Hanson says the matter is one of Constitutional rights and that she is fighting, not only for herself but for others across the nation. Hanson is seeking a sum total of monetary damages totaling nearly $200 million.
The interview is a heckova show, but we're not tech savvy enough to embed it, so click on the link for an unforgettable legal discussion by two people who aren't lawyers.
If we understand case records at available at MCRO, Melissa Lynn Hanson filed four lawsuits. All four were dismissed with prejudice. The National Action Task Force does not seem to have been a party in any of the filings.
There's another opportunity for NATF sympathizers. One can join the NATF Co-op, described here:
The NATF Co-op is a private, members based co-operative venture to provide funding for the restoration of America and Americans. This is an independent activity of the National Action Task Force.
Members of the co-op provide funding in the way of contributions to support the NATF
Those members then share a pro-rata benefit from any excess revenues generated by NATF which are over and above the general operating budget. These revenue sources include; merchandise sales, court ordered damage awards on cases that we share in, proceeds from the growth of the sinking fund and/or other funding results which exceed the budgetary requirements of operations.
That's a bit complicated for poor country bloggers such as ourselves. Like Emery, we don't have a law degree. Since we don't have the chutzpah to rattle on about a state constitution, we'd probably find someone rattling about a courthouse in Sisseton or western Minnesota should we need legal help.
Screenshot: Mark Emery Boswell, from this interview with Melissa "Lisa" Hanson.
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.
Or you can contribute via this link to paypal; use email [email protected] as recipient.
I'm on Venmo for those who prefer to use this service: @Sally-Sorensen-6
Comments