April 28, 2008

The History of the Chaos of the FLDS Fiasco

 

I do not think we will get Rozita Swinton in an open court and learn the whole story. We may never find out who coached her to be the instigator of the chaos we now experience. She has been used and is now expendable. If the perpetrators of this fiasco are successful, everyone will forget she existed. When the Democratic Convention is held in Denver, nobody will miss her when it is time to vote for Obama. Nobody will remember how she got to be a delegate.

This is not about polygamy, child abuse or religion. It is all about dirty politics. The calls and raid were timed to reinforce negative PR for the selection of McCain’s VP and "NO MITT" advertising campaign against Mitt Romney.

Things have been been pretty much the same for the FLDS for over 100 years until 1953 when a group of Arizona law men decided to teach those polygamous people a lesson and launched a full military assault on the community of Short Creek on the Utah, Arizona border. There has never been a direct road to this community and permission had to be granted by Nevada and Utah to go through those states to capture and transport the people to Arizona.

Media photographs of mothers and children being separated from the men caused a great outcry in the country and the cultural genocide was halted and after a few years the captives were able to return to their remote homes on the border. The Governor of Arizona and Attorney General never held public office again. The people resumed their lifestyle until Warren Jeffs became the new leader in 2002 when he overthrew the leadership council who normally selected the next prophet and usurped the title when his father died. A few years earlier one of the prophets began the practice of selecting and assigning brides. It wasn’t until Warren took over that his assignments began to over rule the personal choice of wives and the practice of underage marriage was instituted. In addition to that he began to crack down on dissidents within the community and expelled men and young boys for reasons he would not enumerate. The expelled men were stripped of their families and wives were assigned to more righteous followers. This began to complicate the property which was held in common and the expelled men filed suite against the trust which held the property. Warren Jeffs began to dodge summons issued by the state and soon became impossible to find.

Warren began to buy property in Texas and South Dakota to establish remote communities. By 2005 he started construction on a temple in El Dorado, Texas whereupon Mark Shurtleff the Attorney General of Utah advised the Texas legislature in a special visit that the age of consent of 14 was an invitation for abuse by the FLDS. Overnight the age of consent was changed to 17 and the period of time for statutory rape was reduced to 3 years older than the victim.

By June of 2006 the two attorney generals of Arizona and Utah issued a joint document sponsored by a grant from the US Department of Justice which listed the problems, culture issues and goal to prosecute only child abuse situations and not polygamy, per se.

They called it The Primer, Helping Victims of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Polygamous Families. You can read the whole 56 page book here:

http://www.attorneygeneral.utah.gov/polygamy/The_Primer.pdf

And then it became known that Mitt Romney was a Mormon (LDS) who was going to run for President, strange things happened. I took an interest in this and set up a search filter on Google to watch press activity.

Strange Things

The FBI announced that Warren Jeffs was on the 10 Most Wanted List along with Osama bin Laden and several other terrorists and mass murderers. They issued a wanted poster, waited a few days and issued another with a $50,000 reward, waited a few days and issued another for $100,000 reward. It looked like a press stunt to maximize attention. His crime listed was evading arrest. The Feds did not want him.

I contacted Mohave County attorney's investigator Gary Engels, who helped build the criminal cases against Warren Jeffs and he had no idea how the FBI got involved or who authorized the reward money.

Within a couple of months Jeffs was stopped by a highway patrolman in Nevada for having Colorado paper plates improperly shown. He did not get the reward and it was a puzzle on what to do with him. Arizona had very little luck getting a conviction on any of the men they tried to convict. It seems the wife would not press charges and the men plead to lesser charges to get out of jail. It seems that habeas corpus does not work in Arizona and you can be held for as long as they think you can stand before letting you plead to another bogus crime. Most of the men gave up about three months out.

Utah had a brand new law they passed for Jeffs and wanted to try out called “Rape by Accomplice” which meant that a matchmaker or minister performing a marriage could get 5 years to life. Jeffs was held in Purgatory Prison in a solitary VIP cell for a year before he could face his accuser. It seems like habeas corpus doesn’t work so well in Utah either. He eventually got 10 years to life even after a trial where the jury had to be swapped out because a woman juror admitted that she had been raped after she was in deliberation. After sentencing Jeffs was bound over to Arizona for trial. The first two charges were dropped after witnesses refused to testify. At this date, he is still being held in Arizona. 

During the time Jeffs was held in Purgatory and during the trial he broke and tried to publicly renounce his authority in the FLDS church. He tried to hand a note to the judge which was photographed by an observant reporter and the reporter was held in contempt. The combination of ulcerated knees from praying and weight loss and unconsciousness from fasting it was a dramatic trial.

All this time Mitt Romney was having difficulties convincing the world he was a Christian and Mike Huckabee fell into the vacuum of the conservative Christian group.

What was curious was that newsworthy things about the FLDS happened in a strange rhythm, including the move from Utah to Arizona which was held up until just before February 5^th.  In the West Virginia caucus McCain gave all his votes to Huckabee even though he was leading in order to kill Mitt’s chances in a winner take all state. Mitt had to run an election like a tag team wrestling match against two opponents who would spell each other off. At the time Mitt quit the race he still had more delegates and individual votes than Huckabee.

Things got quiet with the FLDS for a while and then it was rumored that Mit was going to be the VP candidate. Some of the conspiracy players concocted a bomb called “NO MITT” which was a letter by the evangelist crowd saying they would torpedo McCain if he selected Mitt for VP. The bomb did not go off. The main player said he was tricked and did not sign the letter.

And Then…

A tearful voice on a phone from a 16 year old who was raped by a 50 year old guy triggered the biggest disaster in child welfare history. It is funny how 50 year old keeps repeating itself in the propaganda of the anti’s. It seems like 50 year old guys creep a lot of people out. We have all noticed that the men we see on TV from the compound are in their twenties and thirties. We know now that the 16 year old was really a 33 year old black woman from Colorado who was very skilled in hoaxing the help line community. She had fooled Flora Jessup  at her help desk in Arizona for about 40 hour before she figured out it was a hoax. Then she must have suggested that she call a Texas number to get someone to come to the ranch. Flora knew it was a hoax but the Texas people were sucked in immediately and called the local Sheriff who already had a plan. Nobody in Texas thought to record the call or check the caller id. It seemed to be just a sincere verbal communication that caused the Sheriff to jump at his opportunity for 15 minutes of fame.

The mysteries

We still don’t know why the FBI got so interested in Warren Jeffs and forced two attorney generals to do what they had vowed not to do in June, 2006.

We don’t know why there was a year delay for a simple trial that took only a few days while Jeffs was kept in solitary confinement. Why no habeas corpus? 

Who coached Rozita Swinton on the names and places for the FLDS hoax and how she was compensated. It is not likely that she did this alone. She does have connections with the 2008 election and has been awarded an important position in the process.

Who made Swinton’s bail and where is she now? Will she ever go to trial?

This is not about polygamy, child abuse or religion. It is all about dirty politics. The calls and raid were timed to reinforce negative PR for the selection of McCain’s VP and "NO MITT" advertising campaign against Mitt Romney.

Some time in the future I may make a list of suspects.