Two men attempt to free Freemen leader
- By CLAIR JOHNSON
Of The Gazette Staff
Two men, including one from Ravalli, posed as Montana marshals last week and attempted to help Montana Freemen leader Leroy M. Schweitzer escape from federal prison in South Carolina, where he is serving a sentence for convictions in a massive bogus-check scheme.
The men, Ervin Elbert Hurlbert, 82, of Ravalli, and Donald Little, 55, of Tacoma, Wash., were arrested Friday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Edgefield, S.C., by the Edgefield County Sheriff's Department.
Hurlbert and Little appeared in federal court in Greenville, S.C., on Monday on a criminal complaint charging them with assisting in the attempted escape of Schweitzer. The maximum penalty if convicted is five years in prison. Hurlbert also was charged with impersonating an officer or employee of the United States. The maximum penalty for that charge is three years in prison.
One of the ways that In God's Country tries to explain the Patriot mindset is by likening it to an alternative universe, like in a Phil Dick novel. Events that occur in the rest of the world also occur in theirs, but they are suffused with entirely different meanings. An FBI investigation into criminal activity is, in their universe, a Satanic plot to enslave the last few free Americans on the planet.
Many of them really believe entirely in the alternative political system constructed by the Freemen, and believe that it is in fact the only legitimate authority. So these guys went marching into a prison believing they were fully entitled to carry out the operation under color of their version of "common law."
I'm having trouble locating my old Ravalli County files, but I'm pretty certain that Ervin Hurlbert was involved with Calvin Greenup's band of gun-waving Patriots.
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