The old sovereign citizen argument, which I’ve been hearing as a legal defense since I was a kid, rears its legal and incoherent head:
A Pennsylvania woman who allegedly stormed the Capitol and told a police officer to “bring Nancy Pelosi out here now… we want to hang that fucking bitch” has filed court documents claiming to be a divinely empowered entity immune from laws.
Pauline Bauer, a Pennsylvania pizzeria owner, is accused of multiple counts of violent entry, disruptive conduct, and obstruction of Congress after she allegedly broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6. Prosecutors allege that Bauer tried organizing buses to transport people to D.C. for a rally that preceded the riot, and that while in the Capitol rotunda she told police that she wanted to kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But in what experts describe as an inadvisable legal strategy, Bauer has demanded to represent herself in court, appeared to threaten a court clerk with prison time, and declared herself a “self-governed individual” with special legal privileges.
Bauer does not simply appear in court, she clarified during a June 11 proceeding via Zoom. “I am here by special divine appearance, a living soul,” she told a judge that day, while stating that she did not want an attorney. [The Daily Beast]
So if this pizzeria owner were to find her business had been burgled at some time, would she call the police, or would she do the cop thing herself? The article doesn’t say, but if her response is to call the cops, then the judge can add a charge of High Hypocrisy to the list.
But I have to admit to some faint feelings of amusement.
