Local ‘Freemen’ Follower Assails Judge in Taped Lecture

M. Elizabeth Broderick, the Palmdale woman whose anti-government courses on paying debts for free have come under federal scrutiny, lashed out Monday in a videotaped address at a judge who said that she may be committing bank and mail fraud.

“He will pay dearly for this,” fumed Broderick, a student of tax resister LeRoy Schweitzer, whose armed “freemen” group remains in a standoff with government agents in Montana.

Broderick’s statements at the end of the two-day “Quiet Title and Lien” seminar were the first since U.S. District Judge William Keller issued a temporary restraining order against her last week. The injunction barred Broderick and her associates from issuing or promoting her so-called “warrants”--checks that Broderick claims are backed by liens she has taken out against the federal government.

Broderick holds her seminars once every two weeks, instructing the roughly 500 attendees who shell out $125 for admission how to become “sovereign citizens” who need not pay taxes or obey established courts.

But Broderick and her aides heeded the restraining order on Monday, changing the seminar’s agenda to focus more on theoretical issues and less on the specifics of acquiring the checks. In her tape, Broderick, whose Palmdale home has been searched by the FBI, said she did not appear at the seminar in person because she feared for her safety.

“I regret at this time I will not be able to pass out our Sovereign American Handbook,” Broderick told the crowd, many of whom came to the Essex Convention Center from as far away as North Carolina, seeking a magic bullet to ease their crushing debts. Prosecutors say Broderick’s pupils have tried to spend more than $30 million worth of the checks, but few have been accepted by banks.

Broderick, a member of the so-called “patriot movement,” believes that the current U.S. government is illegitimate, with true authority resting only within common-law courts convened by small communities.

In “patriot” ideology, each individual is a “sovereign” with the power to lodge and argue legal charges. Thus, Broderick believes she is entitled to file multimillion-dollar liens against governmental and media agencies that she claims have injured her. In her taped remarks, she said she would file liens against Keller, the FBI and the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, and possibly bring Keller up on treason charges in her own common-law court.

“I am just appalled to think that a federal judge, someone who we’re supposed to admire and respect, is committing a fraud,” Broderick said.

She promised attendees that she would continue to teach after presenting a vigorous argument next Tuesday, when Keller is scheduled to hear motions to lift or extend the restraining order.

“I think they’re trying to silence me,” she said. “Lots of luck.”