Government Attacks Activist - Lawyer Reacts

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It looks to me like they went after Ben because frankly, they didn't like him. They didn't like what he was saying. They didn't like what he stood for. And if they could harass him through some sort of legal or even for that matter, extra judicial means they were going to do it. Let's go ahead and get started. I wanted to do a, an update. Most of you that are here tonight know that last late last November, 2020, 2023, I had a, an illegal no knock a warrant served on me in my home. And I wanted to give you an update on things that are going on with that, what the progress is also to let you know, because you know, some of the, sometimes when things happen to you, people will say, you know, are you blowing it out of proportion?

What's the full story? And and so I wanted to, as a part of this tonight's announcement, I thought it was very important to bring to you a message from a third party that is knowledgeable in police matters and knowledgeable in on both sides and suing police and in actually representing police in court. And so that, and what they said, and so what I want to do first is kind of tell you about what led us to where we are today. So we have here, started off, we have my home, right? I've been somebody that has been outspoken and exposing the conspiracy and exposing corrupt individuals in, in, in local communities and in states and on the federal government and so on.

And so it started off with blocking my driveway with a DUI checkpoint, making it so that I could not leave my home. I could not come home if I was gone without going through this checkpoint, blocking my driveway. And then, um, about a year later, my, my home burns down completely. As you can see in those pictures, my children's, my whole home, my car, uh, children's playground burns to the ground, fire department shows up and they refuse to put out the fire. And then after the fire is put out, um, uh, they refuse to do an investigation to do any research on what actually happened, what caused the fire. Right.

And then, um, about a year or so later than that, um, my daughter is lifelighted to the hospital and is, they claimed that she had leukemia and I wanted to look into some alternative options. And so they immediately began a movement to kidnap my daughter and in fact made false claims against me that the, this individual at working for CPS, um, claimed even though he had never seen her, never met her, never talked to her, claimed that he had witnessed us firsthand starving our daughter. And, and giving and not giving her liquids and, uh, in an attempt to take her from us, we were able to expose him and, uh, put pressure to get him down. We went on the offense.

That's what we do is we go on the offense against him and he, uh, admitted that he lied and that, uh, they, they dropped the charges against us. And so, and then, uh, and then we have, as if you haven't seen the video, encourage you to go check out the video on, um, on the no knock rate in November, 2024. So going back to, and in fact, in this leading into, uh, this, uh, lawyer that I'm going to present to you as message to you about my case, um, it goes into that, that story where we're dealing with the CPS and the lies that they told to try and steal my daughter from me, um, when we went to the sheriff and we went to the County attorney, um, to press charges against him for, we had the, it was just, it was a cut and dry case that he, uh, committed perjury on official government documents.

And they said that he had qualified immunity. He was allowed to lie, to do his job. He was a lie. It was allowed. He's allowed to commit perjury to try and steal children. Okay. And so that leads us into what, uh, I'm going to be talking about now. And that is, uh, so we have this, uh, lawyer that, uh, reached out to me and he's going to tell him this story, but I wanted to share with you what, what, what he said, because it's very important because again, I tell the story, you can say, Hey, Ben's making it up.

Um, Ben is, um, you know, not giving the police side of the story. So I wanted to show you someone that had experience, someone that was not connected to me, doesn't know me. We've never met in person. Um, we've talked on the phone a couple of times, but only about this case. We have no personal connection to each other. So somebody that was not invested in this emotionally, someone that would look at it clinically and say, what is going on? What is going on? Again, why are they so afraid of us at the tree of Liberty society?

And then what do we do about it afterwards? So, um, with that, I want to, to share, um, what the, the lawyer said. So I'm going to go. Hey, my name is Randall Edwards. I am a lawyer with my office in Bountiful, Utah. I, uh, practice law in Utah, Nevada, California, and Arizona. That's where I'm licensed. Um, I've been practicing since 1982. So I've been at this now for, this will be my 42nd year of law practice. In my practice, I have both represented and sued numerous law enforcement people.

In fact, uh, I worked for the city attorney's office in Reno. I was chief deputy city attorney there for, uh, quite a while. And then also, uh, I was a assistant city attorney in the city of Salt Lake. In both of those cases, I represented police officers. So that's a little bit of my background. Now, what I can tell you about, um, the case that I was looking at for Ben McClintock, Ben had been the recipient of a visit from our police department in Utah County. And as I looked at what it is that he had written, it piqued my interest because those are the kinds of cases that I both brought and defended. I contacted Ben and, uh, we talked for a little bit and I said, well, I want you to send me a copy of the search warrant.

Because, um, as it turns out, the thing that was alleged against him was that he was running either A, a marijuana farm, B, a meth lab or C, a mushroom farm for psychedelic mushrooms. So he sent me a copy of the search warrants and, uh, it was pathetic. It was essentially, um, two pages and a quarter in which it didn't really give any basis for believing that there was any kind of cause, let alone probable cause to go into this thing. And then it said in the bottom that the affiant, who was the person who had written the affidavit, believed that the property and evidence was evidence of the crime of possession and operation of a lab, possession of precursor chemicals and cultivation of marijuana. So they were able to go any time of day or night and this was a no-knock warrant without requirement of knocking and announcing or giving prior notice of authority or purpose.

And I looked at that and thought, what on earth is going on? Because under the standards that we have under the state of Utah, in order to get a no-knock warrant, in fact, I'll look at the statute here. It says that a no-knock warrant, well, we have, it is in Utah code and it's in section 77-7-1 and then there are a whole bunch of them behind that. But 77-7-6 talks about forcible entry and a knock and announce warrant. And then it also has that there are exceptions for a knock and announce. And those exceptions are where there is probable cause to believe that exigent circumstances exist due to destruction of evidence. That's one of them.

There is reasonable suspicion to believe exigent circumstances exist due to the physical safety of an officer or an individual inside or near proximity to the building. And even under those circumstances, under 77-7-8, the officer is supposed to immediately announce who it is that he is. Well, there is another statute under Utah law and it is called the no-knock warrant statute. It is 77-7-8.1. And it defines a no-knock warrant as a lawful search warrant that authorizes entry into a building without notice. And then it says the affidavit will describe, number one, why the officer believes the suspect is unable to be detained or the resident searched using less invasive or less confrontational methods.

That's number one. Number two, investigational activities that have been undertaken to ensure the correct building is identified and the potential harm to innocent third parties, the building and officers may be minimized, or the presence or imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death to a person inside, outside, or in near proximity to the building. And it goes on to say that it can be served pretty much any time. So there's got to be really compelling exigent circumstances in order for you to get and justify a no-knock warrant. So I asked Ben, "Well, do you have a copy of the affidavit?" He said, "No, all they did was give me this two and a half page search warrant."

I said, "Well, okay, let's get a copy of that affidavit then." So he asked for a copy of the affidavit. Now it's been my experience that it's not atypical for different government offices when they are actually required to give the foundational justification for what it is they're doing. And it requires that there actually be something written. They're going to put you off as long as they can. You file what's known as a grandma request. They are required to give you a response within a certain number of days. I think it's 10 days.

In this case, they initially said, "Well, we think that there's an exception here because there's information in this affidavit that might be privileged or something like that." And then ultimately, they went ahead and gave it to him. Well, once I got a copy of this affidavit, I could see that there was a problem. But as you look at the affidavit, now remember what the criteria is. The affidavit has to show why the officer believes the suspect is unable to be detained or the resident search is less invasive or less confrontational methods. Why that couldn't be done. This affidavit said nothing about that. There was nothing in here that indicated that there was a suspect that he believed would be unable to be detained or that there was some reason that the resident searched couldn't be done with less invasive or less confrontational methods.

Nothing at all in this affidavit to that effect. Well, then you go down to the next one. The presence or imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death to a person inside, outside, in or in near proximity to the building. Nothing like that at all in this affidavit either. In fact, it's really basically a bunch of fluff. This is sort of atypical in my view. But then we have, interestingly enough, finally we get to the fact. And the facts that are justifying not just a no-knock warrant, but any kind of a warrant are pretty thin.

He says, I was contacted by patrol deputies regarding suspicious activity at a home. Didn't tell us what these specific suspicious activities were. But he says, the deputies described to me the activity at the home and provided me a photo of a device. Here again, we have no evidence at all, no description of what this so-called suspicious activity could be. I don't know what that means. There's no definition under laws to what suspicious activity might be. But we have here that he looked at the photo and it looked like, oh my gosh, a window had been removed.

There were holes in it and the hoses were exiting the home and pipe into a device that's partially concealed in a window. Does that look suspicious to you? That looks suspicious to me. But then he goes on to say, here's what it could be. Let me read. But he goes on to say the patrol deputies, now get this, this isn't even the guy who's making out the affidavit. He's relying on hearsay from patrol deputies. They believe the home was operating a meth lab.

So he did research on the renters of the home and he couldn't find any meth involvements. Although you'll notice that on the warrant, that was one of the specific things they were looking for, despite the fact that was no meth involved, that there was no history of that. Then I met other detectives and we decided we'd apply for a warrant. So then he got a warrant to obtain power bills and they showed that they were using 20 to $30 a month more than the home to the north. So what? Therefore, here's what he says. Look at the totality of the evidence, my training and experience, which includes taking down meth labs and numerous DAB labs.

I think that with the discovery of the device, the heat, the difference in the power bill, I think there's a THC lab or a marijuana grow or maybe a psilocybin lab. I'm not really sure. And I'm requesting the authority to enter the home and secure the evidence and destroy the lab properly before a catastrophic incident takes place. Now if you look at the statute here, there's nothing about catastrophic incidents. And of course, there's no definition in this affidavit as to what it is that he thought might take place. But is there an issue here as to why they just couldn't actually just knock on the door and say, can we come in?

We got a warrant. Is there a present or imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death to a person inside or outside? We have no idea because he doesn't say anything like that, which is required for the affidavit in order to get that kind of a search warrant. And then he says, I want a search warrant and it should be issued for the seizure of said items any time of day or night because there's reason to believe it's necessary to seize it, for it to be concealed, destroyed, damaged, or for other good reasons. What if you got a meth lab? Even knocking on the door, somebody's not going to be able to run downstairs and destroy the meth lab.

That's not the way meth labs work. They destroy a marijuana farm in the time that it takes between when a cop knocks on the door and says, I got a warrant and I want to go downstairs and see what's going on. Not very likely. But he goes ahead and says, I'm requesting that only if needed, detectives have the option to go at night under the cover of darkness. Well that's what it is that was the basis. I have represented cops and I've sued cops. Cops have pretty much a license to do whatever they want. We as a society give police officers the ability to lawfully shoot and kill someone.

And I have represented many cops who had that exact idea. I can do whatever I want and I can probably get some sort of legal cover for it. More than you'd suspect, often you will find that the situation is one in which they don't like either A, somebody's political beliefs or B, somebody who's calling them out. If you have a police officer or you have a police department that is abusing its authority, what's the best way to take care of that? Do an internal investigation and see if there's really a problem? No. Get rid of the bad cops? Oh no. The way we take care of this is we harass the guy who's making trouble for us to the point that he really has no choice but to shut up.

How do we do that? We raid his home. We pull him over. We get him out of the car. We put him on handcuffs. We tell him that we want him to do an alcohol test. We do whatever it takes and finally this guy is going to get the message. He's going to leave us alone. So after I looked down over, I called up Ben and I said, "Who did you make mad? What is going on here because this doesn't make any sense?"

And he explained to me that he's blown the whistle. He's blown the whistle on the cops. He's blown the whistle on the political system and it all made sense to me. So given all of that, the answer to the question, "What are they afraid of, Ben?" Well, I think they're afraid of the fact that you're a troublemaker and they want to shut you up. Because as I've looked this over, I don't see that there's any basis for it. Now what that does is it raises the question, "Well, how about filing a lawsuit against the cops? I mean, if they're bad, should I file a lawsuit?"

Here's the problem that we have. There are two problems. One of them is societal. One of them is legal. The legal problem is when you sue the cops, they have what's known as qualified immunity. The qualified immunity is going to make sure that that cop and the police department for that matter are basically going to win. The societal issue, especially in Utah, is this. We are in Utah in a situation in which the vast majority of people here are members of the LDS church.

Now what that means is that there is an overwhelming deference to authority. Officer friendly, he's the one who administers the DARE program. He's the guy who's keeping our streets safe. We're going to defer to him. When I represented police officers, I walked into court knowing that I had about an 85 to 90% chance of winning before my cop ever took the stand and opened his mouth. Why? Because if I could put him in a nice blue uniform, he'd walk in there and there was some poor citizen that was claiming that this officer had somehow defeated their rights, beat them up, hurt them, something.

Especially in good old Utah where it's like, "Hey, we're already living in too woke a world and to accuse a police officer of some sort of discrimination, I mean, that cuts against our grain." That's about as much as I can tell you. It looks to me like they went after Ben because frankly, they didn't like him. They didn't like what he was saying. They didn't like what he stood for. If they could harass him through some sort of legal or even for that matter, extrajudicial means they were going to do it. The answer to the question, what are they afraid of, Ben?

Well, I think they're afraid of the fact that you're a troublemaker and they want to shut you up. So that's key right there is the information that he put out at the end about why don't you do a lawsuit? Just like with the case of them attempting to kidnap my daughter, they have qualified immunity. So they're allowed to lie. They're allowed to violate the fourth amendment, allowed, in quotes, because they have the guns. They have the ability to enforce their will.

And the sheriff of course is signed off on the warrant. A judge signed off on the warrant. And so you had all of these individuals in places of power that signed off on, on the warrant. They are not going to rule against them. They're not going to say that all of these people combined together to violate the constitution against me. But clearly they did, right? We have this lawyer, no connection to me whatsoever saying that they want to shut me up. I am a threat to them.

And so they want to stop me and therefore they want to shut me up. Right? Why, why would they want to do that? It's, I think this is an important thing to talk about because what I'm doing, what we're doing at the tree of Liberty society, we're not just some, uh, in just another Liberty organization. We are completely different. Nobody does exactly what we do there. There is some overlap, but there are some key distinctions, right? We expose the false life, left, right paradigm.

We expose the conspiracy. There are, there are some other groups that expose the conspiracy, but we've been able to identify how to identify who the conspiracy is on the local level. No matter where you're at, we've been able to, you know, expose these get rich quick schemes thinking that if you just, um, stops, you know, if you just start using lowercase letters, this satanic conspiracy is going to leave you alone. They like those fake schemes to be able to get people, um, doing the wrong thing. We expose fake leaders in fake freedom organizations, fake freedom people in government. We expose how modern solutions, writing letters, rallies, voting, running for office are all used to get us out of the battle and to actually start to make things worse because we're legitimizing these people that are in office.

We bring about, you know, a lost understanding of what the founding fathers actually did to restore Liberty. We answer what a tyrant is and the moral response to tyrants and every single week members of the tree of Liberty society come together to receive additional training, to be able to hone their skills, to be able to improve and increase their knowledge of correct principles and what's really going on and what is really effective action, um, against the conspiracy. Um, and so what we've seen is this, what we, what the lawyer pointed out is that what happened to me is rare. Okay. It's not regular.

And so that we are substantially and substantively different. We're not just another freedom organization. We're not just a club. We're not a think tank. We are the foundations and beginning infrastructure of something that the conspiracy is truly afraid of. Okay. And it's not happening really in any other organization, um, out there. And so, um, if they, if they're afraid of me, if they want to silence me, that means we need to not just keep me going.

We need to keep the tree of Liberty society going. We need to amplify that voice. We need to grow that voice and make that voice bigger. Because if that's what the conspiracy fears, if that's what the, the people in power that are abusing the constitution are afraid of, we not only just want to keep that going, we want to be able to expand that. So more people see what's going on. More people take action, more people do something about it. And so, yes, thank you. Amazon warrior, please come back.

So, um, but I want to bring out some things that, that I'm asking for folks to, to be involved in. Um, here, what's, what's the action? Because as this lawyer pointed out is that, um, is that, uh, it's not the lawsuits, right? They have the dip, they have the immunity, they have the qualified immunity. They have a society that will let them go because we have to protect the police. And so with those things, two things combined together, lawsuits aren't going to work. We need to expand our voice. We need to make our voice bigger. And I need your help to be able to do that.

So if you go to the tree of Liberty society website right here, as you can see, um, I have on here, um, and you go to donate. So one time donation, I encourage you to become a member of the tree of Liberty society. But if you'd like to just help with this project, we have a couple of things that we're doing, um, is that we have before I get into that, um, whoops, um, is that there are, there's a net nationwide program that is friendly to us that would allow us to have a nationwide voice to blow the whistle off of what's going on on local and national government. And what's really behind it, what's really going on, what's the actual solution, what is the thing that we can do about it, um, that is offering us the ability to be able to get our, our message out there.

And so we need your help to be able to, um, to help us to advertise on this program that has listeners that already understand a little bit about what's going on and understand that there's something that, you know, we need to do something, but they don't, not sure what is something that conspiracy would actually be afraid of. And so we need to be able to reach that. Also, I've been invited to be a keynote speaker in a, a state convention for, for a political party. Um, I've been invited for a different political party to be a mate on their national political party to attend and speak at, um, on a major day of the event on a Saturday, which is when most of the delegates will be at the nationwide convention for this party.

And so, um, to be able at, at those events, to be able to reach those people and to get them the materials that are needed to help them, um, expand their effectiveness. Um, we need to be able to print more of our books, which lays out the plan that the conspiracy is so afraid of. And so we want to be able to get this advertising program. We want to be able to get this, uh, book distribution program, um, out there. And so, uh, to be able to do that on our website, if you go there to Tree of Liberty Society, click on donate, you can donate through Venmo or we have, um, a credit card, be able to use that, or you can give me a call and we want to be able to raise $7,000. So that's not a whole lot.

This is very doable. You can see, and we'll be keeping you updated and tracking, um, what exactly where we're at with the goal. But if you can help out with that, to reach that, we are going to be going on the offense. We're going to be able to grow exactly what we're doing. And as a part of that, you will get a free gift. I'm, I'm, we want to say thank you for your help. We don't want to just be like, Hey, you're doing, you're contributing to a good cause. You're part of something that's actually doing something and is getting the conspiracy afraid of what's going on.

Um, if you do that, you will get a copy of either the audio book for volume one, a digital ebook for volume one, or the digital ebook for volume two, um, of the game plan that the conspiracy is literally so afraid of. And so I encourage you to go right now to tree of liberty, society.com, either become a member, click on the donate page and grab one of those free gifts and help us to be able to not just maintain where we're at, because we need to be able to of course, maintain where we're at, but to grow. And so those are the, you know, the, the main thing that we're working on. We want to be able to reach this national audience. We want to be able to, that has millions of listeners and uh, an audience that is right for this message and then reach these people that are activists, people that are boots on the ground type of individuals, um, in, in a couple of different States and in different parties and these national and state conventions that I've invited to be a keynote, a keynote speaker that, and so your help to be able to do that will be one of those things that, you know what the conspiracy, you might have the courts controlled.

You might be able to get away, get away with what you did to try and attack my family and attack what we're doing at the tree of liberty society. And as the lawyer said, try to silence me. You're saying you're not, you might be able to get away with it in the courts, but you're not going to get away with silencing these individuals. Please do not let them silence us. Please help us reach this goal. Um, and share with others, share this video, encourage others to be a part of this. And um, if you have any questions, please let me know. We'll continue to work on this and um, make sure we have any questions.

Okay. No questions in the comments. Uh, but with that, I will, uh, we'll sign off, but please be a part of this, be a part of the solution. Um, do not allow them to silence us and actually help us to go even stronger on the offense. We'll see you next time. I'm Ben McClintock.