• These are the most liberty-critical hearings for the week
• Click on the bill number to read the bill.
• Click on the committee name to email the committee your thoughts.

Of the 139 hearings in the House, we are recommending support of 24 and opposition of 25 with 8 being of interest.
Of the 50 hearings in the Senate, we are recommending support of 5 and opposition of 13 with 1 being of interest.

Position	Bill	Title	Committee	Day	Time	Room	State Analysis
Of Interest	HB1667	relative to establishing a department for children, youth, and families.	Children and Family Law	Tue 1/16	9:45 AM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill establishes the department for children, youth and families as a separate state agency responsible for the general supervision and enforcement of all programs and services for children and youths. The bill also transfers all former powers, duties and responsibilities of the department of health and human services, division for children, youth and families and the division of juvenile justice services to the newly established department.
Oppose	SB328	relative to deceptive ticket sale practices.	Commerce	Tue 1/16	9:00 AM	SH Room 100	This bill makes the resale of event tickets by a person who is not the venue or an authorized agent of the venue unlawful if it does not meet certain criteria.
Oppose	SB519	relative to evictions based on the owner’s intent to renovate the property.	Commerce	Tue 1/16	9:15 AM	SH Room 100	This bill adds evidentiary requirements to evictions based upon renovation and permits a discretionary stay of eviction for up to 6 months.
Oppose	SB518	relative to incentivizing landlords to accept housing choice vouchers.	Commerce	Tue 1/16	9:30 AM	SH Room 100	This bill establishes a landlord housing incentive program and fund. This bill makes an appropriation to implement the fund.
Oppose	SB366	relative to restricting the purchase of real property on or around military installations.	Commerce	Tue 1/16	9:45 AM	SH Room 100	This bill prohibits the purchase of real property by the People’s Republic of China on or within 10 miles of any military installations or critical infrastructure facilities.
Oppose	SB343	relative to school based health services.	Education	Tue 1/16	9:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill allows school districts to contract with a health care provider, health system, or community partner to establish a school based health center for the purpose of providing services to students beyond the scope of school nursing services.
Support	SB374	relative to the licensing of part-time teachers.	Education	Tue 1/16	9:15 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill defines “part-time teacher.”
Support	HB1402	establishing a procedure for a high school proficiency exam waiver of mandatory school attendance.	Education	Tue 1/16	10:00 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill allows for a student to take and pass a high school proficiency exam so that the student shall no longer be bound by the mandatory school attendance requirements.
Oppose	HB1212	relative to eligibility for free school meals.	Education	Tue 1/16	10:45 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill increases the eligibility for free school meals to household incomes up to 350 percent of federal poverty guidelines, and provides funding from the education trust fund for the additional costs.
Oppose	HB1153	relative to mandatory and elective public school curricula.	Education	Tue 1/16	1:45 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill requires mandatory “anti-communist” curricula and establishes elective curricula for public schools.
Oppose	SB380	relative to moving the state primary date.	Election Law and Municipal Affairs	Tue 1/16	9:15 AM	LOB Room 103	This bill moves the state primary date to June.
Oppose	SB445	establishing a voter-owned elections fund for eligible candidates to executive councilor and making an appropriation to the fund.	Election Law and Municipal Affairs	Tue 1/16	9:45 AM	LOB Room 103	This bill establishes a voter owned election fund for eligible candidates to executive councilor and makes an appropriation to the fund.
Support	SB446	allowing voters to vote for multiple candidates for an office.	Election Law and Municipal Affairs	Tue 1/16	10:00 AM	LOB Room 103	This bill allows voters to vote for multiple candidates for an office.
Of Interest	SB387	relative to a state parks pass pilot program for recovery centers and community health centers.	Energy and Natural Resources	Tue 1/16	9:30 AM	SH Room 103	This bill requires the establishment of a 3-year pilot program for state parks passes for recovery centers and community health centers registered with the department of health and human services.
Oppose	HB1184	relative to making an appropriation to the organic certification program.	Environment and Agriculture	Tue 1/16	10:00 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill makes an appropriation to the department of agriculture, markets and food for the staffing and funding of the organic certification program.
Oppose	HB1618	mandating a cooperative agreement with USDA for “organic” certification.	Environment and Agriculture	Tue 1/16	11:00 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill requires the commissioner to hire inspectors and enter into a USDA cooperative agreement.
Support	HB1578	relative to organic food certification and labeling.	Environment and Agriculture	Tue 1/16	11:30 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill repeals the certification program and the organic processors-handlers certification fund.
Oppose	HB1680	relative to prohibiting the sale of dogs and cats by retail pet shops.	Environment and Agriculture	Tue 1/16	2:00 PM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill prohibits the sale of dogs and cats by retail pet shops except in certain cases.
Oppose	SB348	relative to emergency crop relief.	Finance	Tue 1/16	1:00 PM	SH Room 103	This bill makes an appropriation to the department of agriculture, markets, and food to distribute emergency relief to farmers who suffered crop damage in the unseasonable cold and floods.
Oppose	SB494	relative to establishing a farmer assistance fund.	Finance	Tue 1/16	1:10 PM	SH Room 103	This bill establishes the farmer assistance for natural disasters fund and makes an appropriation therefor.
Support	HB1127	relative to the revocation and suspension of drivers’ licenses.	Transportation	Tue 1/16	11:20 AM	LOB Room 203	This bill allows individuals with suspended licenses to mow their lawns without penalty and eliminates the requirement that drivers with suspended licenses surrender their licenses to the department of motor vehicles.
Of Interest	HB1118	relative to the issuance of drivers’ licenses for aliens temporarily residing in New Hampshire.	Transportation	Tue 1/16	1:20 PM	LOB Room 203	This bill allows the director of motor vehicles to require nonresident aliens to submit various certifications for drivers license issuance.
Support	SB510	relative to sale of a vehicle to a Massachusetts resident.	Transportation	Tue 1/16	2:15 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill eliminates the requirement that a retail motor vehicle dealer submit a form notifying the New Hampshire department of motor vehicles of a sale of a vehicle to a Massachusetts resident.
Support	HB1422	relative to the rates of the business profits tax, business enterprise tax, communications service tax, and meals and rooms tax.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/16	10:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill reduces the rates of the business profits tax, business enterprise tax, and meals and rooms tax. It also reduces and subsequently repeals the communications services tax.
Oppose	HB1492	relative to the rate and exemptions of the interest and dividends tax.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/16	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill reimplements the interest and dividends tax.
Support	HB1533	relative to the safe harbor compensation amount under the business profits tax.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/16	11:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill increases the amount of the safe harbor provision for compensation under the business profits tax and provides for a biennial increase in future years based on the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index.
Support	HB1536	relative to increasing the amount of the expense deduction allowed against the business profits tax.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/16	12:00 PM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill increases the amount of the section 179 expense deduction permitted against the business profits tax.
Of Interest	HB1241	relative to regulation of money transmitters.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/17	10:00 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill revises the regulation and licensure of money transmitters by the banking department. This bill is a request of the banking department.
Of Interest	HB1559	repealing the chapter relative to cash dispensing machines.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/17	10:30 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill repeals RSA 399-F relative to cash dispensing machines. This is a request by the banking department.
Oppose	HB1538	relative to credit card late fees and interest.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/17	1:45 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill requires that the total of interest and other charges in a consumer credit transaction shall not exceed the consumer’s total original balance from the credit card sale or loan.
Support	HB1633	relative to the legalization and regulation of cannabis and making appropriations therefor.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/17	2:45 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill establishes procedures for the legalization, regulation, and taxation of cannabis; the licensing and regulation of cannabis establishments; and makes appropriations therefor.
Oppose	HB1678	establishing a New Hampshire farm to school local food incentive pilot program.	Education	Wed 1/17	10:00 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill establishes a New Hampshire farm to school local food incentive pilot program.
Support	HB1634	relative to universal eligibility for the education freedom account program.	Education	Wed 1/17	10:45 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill removes the household income criteria from eligibility requirements for the education freedom account program.
Support	HB1677	relative to participation in education freedom accounts based on school or school district proficiency scores.	Education	Wed 1/17	1:00 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill extends eligibility for the education freedom account program to students who participated in the program in the preceeding year, students whose enrollment transfer requests were denied, and to students in school districts which performed at 49 percent or below in statewide assessments.
Support	HB1665	relative to student eligibility for the education freedom accounts program.	Education	Wed 1/17	2:30 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill changes the annual household income limit to qualify for the education freedom account program.
Oppose	HB1112	relative to establishing a continuing education requirement regarding human trafficking for individuals licensed by the office of professional licensure and certification.	Executive Departments and Administration	Wed 1/17	10:45 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill requires the office of professional licensure and certification to audit compliance by licensees of continuing education requirements and further provides that all boards regulating health professionals shall require each licensee to complete continuing education in human trafficking each renewal cycle.
Support	HB1410	relative to certain professional licenses.	Executive Departments and Administration	Wed 1/17	11:30 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill repeals the chapter on the board of registration of medical technicians as well as the chapter on medical imaging and radiation therapy. This bill further makes changes to the nurse practice act, including amending the licensure of licensed nursing assistants to a registration process and making changes to the board of nursing.
Oppose	HB1394	relative to licensure and regulation of music therapists and making an appropriation therefor.	Executive Departments and Administration	Wed 1/17	2:00 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill establishes the licensure and regulation of music therapists under the office of professional licensure and certification. This bill further establishes a new program assistant II position at the office of professional licensure and certification and makes an appropriation to the office of professional licensure and certification.
Oppose	SB352	establishing an early detection cancer screening pilot program for active and retired firefighters.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/17	9:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes an early detection cancer screening pilot program in the department of safety, division of fire standards and training and emergency medical services, for retired and full-time active firefighters New Hampshire.
Oppose	SB495	relative to certification of alcohol and other drug use treatment facilities.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/17	9:15 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill provides for certification of substance use treatment programs by the department of health and human services and establishes an office of the behavioral health ombudsman in the department.
Oppose	SB500	establishing a primary care provider loan repayment program, and making an appropriation therefor.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/17	9:45 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes a primary care provider loan repayment program and fund in the department of health and human services and makes an appropriation to the department for this purpose.
Oppose	SB558	relative to insurance coverage for infertility treatments, protection from discrimination during IVF treatments, parental leave, and adoption.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/17	10:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill provides insurance coverage for infertility treatments, protection from discrimination during IVF treatments, parental leave, and adoption.
Oppose	HB1002	relative to fees for records under the right-to-know law.	Judiciary	Wed 1/17	9:00 AM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill establishes parameters for when a public body may charge a fee for records provided under RSA 91-A.
Support	HB1105	relative to application of a local tax cap.	Municipal and County Government	Wed 1/17	10:00 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill provides clarification that all recommended appropriations in the warrant are included when determining the estimated amount of local taxes to be raised for the fiscal year under the local tax cap.
Oppose	HB1544	relative to indemnification for municipalities adopting policies to address homelessness.	Municipal and County Government	Wed 1/17	11:10 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill allows public property to be used to aid and shelter the homeless and indemnifies the government units in charge.
Oppose	HB1641	relating to requiring large parking lots to have a solar power canopy.	Municipal and County Government	Wed 1/17	11:50 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill requires that large parking facilities, whether existing or new, utilize photovoltaic solar canopies over at least 50 percent of the open asphalt surface.
Of Interest	HB1124	relative to limiting conflicts of interest and excessive concentration of power for municipal board and committee members.	Municipal and County Government	Wed 1/17	1:30 PM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill limits conflicts of interest and excessive concentration of power for municipal board and committee members.
Support	HB1396	relative to prohibiting municipal inspections of owner-occupied units of multi-unit housing.	Municipal and County Government	Wed 1/17	3:15 PM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill prohibits municipal inspections of owner-occupied units within residential structures of 4 units or less.
Of Interest	HB1049	relative to the prohibition on overnight mooring of houseboats.	Resources, Recreation and Development	Wed 1/17	10:00 AM	LOB Room 305	This bill repeals a general prohibition for the overnight mooring of houseboats otherwise permitted under RSA 270-A.
Oppose	HB1103	relative to revising the penalties of the shoreland protection act.	Resources, Recreation and Development	Wed 1/17	1:00 PM	LOB Room 305	This bill revises the penalties of the shoreland protection act.
Oppose	HB1113	relative to shoreland septic systems.	Resources, Recreation and Development	Wed 1/17	2:00 PM	LOB Room 305	This bill modifies requirements for site assessment studies of shoreland septic systems.
Support	HB1121	relative to creating certain wetlands permit exemptions after a natural disaster or flooding event.	Resources, Recreation and Development	Wed 1/17	3:00 PM	LOB Room 305	This bill exempts certain land owners from requiring wetlands permits after a natural disaster or flooding event.
Support	SB514	relative to the timber tax.	Ways and Means	Wed 1/17	9:45 AM	SH Room 100	This bill increases the amount of wood or wood chips a landowner can use for personal use or for land conservation purposes without being subject to the timber tax.
Of Interest	HB1563	relative to the education property tax and the authority of political subdivisions.	Ways and Means	Wed 1/17	10:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill replaces the statewide education property tax with a property tax contribution from political subdivisions based on the state education property tax warrant issued for the tax year beginning April 1, 2024. The bill also restores statutory authority for the determination of education grants for municipalities that tuition students to other institutions.
Of Interest	HB1551	relative to distinguishing between C corporations and S corporations for purposes of calculating business profits taxes.	Ways and Means	Wed 1/17	12:00 PM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill directs the state to distinguish between C corporations and S corporations for purposes of calculating the business profits tax and to exclude flow through items on the Schedule K for S corporations from corporate income for purposes of calculating the tax.
Oppose	HB1571	relative to requiring insurance coverage for glucose monitoring devices for people with diabetes.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Thu 1/18	11:15 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill requires insurance coverage and Medicaid coverage for glucose monitoring devices for people with diabetes.
Oppose	HB1094	relative to insurance coverage for pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Thu 1/18	1:15 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill removes the prospective repeal of a reference to treatments for pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders in the requirement for insurance coverage of certain biologically-based mental illnesses.
Oppose	HB1296	relative to insurance coverage for diagnostic and supplemental breast examinations.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Thu 1/18	1:45 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill provides that certain insurers that provide diagnostic and supplemental breast examinations shall not impose co-payments, deductibles, or other cost-sharing requirements.
Support	HB1017	relative to duties of county sheriffs and the appointment of special deputy sheriffs.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Thu 1/18	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill requires county sheriff’s or deputies to have a presence at all federal law enforcement actions in the county. The bill also clarifies the appointment of special deputy sheriffs.
Support	HB1026	relative to resisting arrest.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Thu 1/18	11:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill establishes an affirmative defense to the crime of resisting arrest that the arrest was unlawful or constitutional.
Support	HB1372	relative to prohibiting torture.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Thu 1/18	11:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill establishes a criminal prohibition against torture, which is defined as an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering upon another person within the person’s custody or control, other than the pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions. This bill is intended to supplement the federal law located at 18 U.S.C. sections 2340, 2340A, and 2340B, which apply to torture committed outside of the United States.
Oppose	HB1570	relative to administration of school building aid funds by the department of education and making an appropriation therefor.	Education	Thu 1/18	10:45 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill transfers moneys from the education trust fund to a new building aid fund. It also directs the department of education to contract with a vendor to conduct a facility assessment of public schools and public chartered schools.
Support	HB1546	relative to government purchasing.	Executive Departments and Administration	Thu 1/18	11:30 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill prohibits any state, county, or local government entity from contracting with or purchasing goods or services from companies that discriminate in hiring, promotion, or job assignment on the basis of sex, race, sexuality, national origin, ethnicity, or ideology, including but not limited to permitting diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. This bill further provides an enforcement mechanism.
Oppose	HB1486	relative to proxy carbon pricing in state procurement.	Executive Departments and Administration	Thu 1/18	2:00 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill requires the department of administrative services to consider proxy carbon pricing in transportation costs and building project costs.
Support	HB1278	relative to qualifying medical conditions for purposes of therapeutic cannabis.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/18	9:30 AM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill adds debilitating or terminal medical conditions to the qualifying medical conditions for therapeutic cannabis if a health care provider certifies the potential benefit to the patient. The bill also removes certain limitations on a qualifying visiting patient’s access to cannabis.
Support	HB1240	relative to eating disorders as a qualifying condition for the therapeutic cannabis program.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/18	10:00 AM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill adds eating disorders as a qualifying medical condition for the use of therapeutic cannabis.
Support	HB1349	relative to generalized anxiety disorder as a qualifying condition for the therapeutic cannabis program.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/18	10:30 AM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill adds generalized anxiety disorder as a qualifying medical condition for the use of therapeutic cannabis.
Support	HB1350	relative to therapeutic cannabis possession limits.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/18	1:00 PM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill increases qualifying patients’ limit on possession of therapeutic cannabis from 2 to 4 ounces, and increases the amount they may obtain in a 10-day period from 2 to 4 ounces.
Support	HB1231	permitting qualifying patients and designated caregivers to cultivate cannabis for therapeutic use.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/18	2:00 PM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill permits qualifying patients and designated caregivers to cultivate cannabis for therapeutic use.
Support	SB356	relative to the return of property collected in the course of a police investigation.	Judiciary	Thu 1/18	1:00 PM	SH Room 100	This bill provides for the automatic return of seized property following certain dispositions of criminal cases, subject to certain exceptions.
Oppose	HB1072	relative to prohibiting employers from using polygraph testing.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Thu 1/18	10:15 AM	LOB Room 307	This bill prohibits employers from using polygraphs unless the employer is in law enforcement or meets other exceptions.
Oppose	HB1110	relative to requiring certain employers to use the federal E-Verify system of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Thu 1/18	11:00 AM	LOB Room 307	This bill requires employers with 25 or more employees to use the federal E-Verify system of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Oppose	HB1226	relative to employment protections for freelance employees.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Thu 1/18	1:30 PM	LOB Room 307	This bill provides comprehensive rights and responsibilities relative to freelance employees and hiring parties.
Support	HB1246	relative to allowing for payment of wages in gold or silver.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Thu 1/18	2:30 PM	LOB Room 307	This bill allows employers to pay the weekly or biweekly wages due to employees in gold or silver.
Oppose	HB1217	relative to an exception to allow the state or a municipality to use video monitoring to identify the cause of damage to historic covered bridges.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/19	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill allows the state or a municipality to use video monitoring to identify the cause of damage to historic covered bridges.
Oppose	HB1587	relative to the installation of video surveillance equipment in special education school buses.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/19	12:00 PM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill requires video surveillance equipment to be installed and operated on all vehicles provided through services related to a student’s IEP. The bill also requires school districts to develop a privacy policy for resulting recordings.

The post Bill Hearings for Week of January 15, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

• These are the most liberty-critical hearings for the week
• Click on the bill number to read the bill.
• Click on the committee name to email the committee your thoughts.

If you’ve ever wanted to testify in a public hearing or would like to improve your skills there is a great opportunity this week.

Representative Dan McGuire ( Merrimack – District 14)  has offered to host a training session on Wednesday morning in the

Legislative Office Building (LOB)
33 North State Street
Concord, NH 03301 . 

Following the training, you are invited to testify and/or watch other testify in front of the  Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services  committee ( LOB Room 206-208 ) where the NH Liberty Alliance political director Michael Granger will be among the members hearing your testimony.

If interested, please sign up here so that we can let you know the room number for the training and make you aware of any event disruption.

Of the 152 hearings in the House, we are recommending support of 21 and opposition of 22 with 18 being of interest.
Of the 57 hearings in the Senate, we are recommending support of 3 and opposition of 9 with 2 being of interest.

Position	Bill	Title	Committee	Day	Time	Room	State Analysis
Oppose	HB1014	relative to the registration of high school students to vote.	Education	Mon 1/8	10:00 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill requires school districts and private high schools to develop programs to inform high school students about registering to vote.
Oppose	HB1293	relative to prohibiting the use of certain fertilizers using phosphorus.	Environment and Agriculture	Mon 1/8	10:00 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill prohibits the use of certain fertilizers using phosphorus.
Of Interest	HB1294	relative to prohibiting the state of New Hampshire from enforcing the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency.	Environment and Agriculture	Mon 1/8	11:00 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill states that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has no constitutional validity in this state, and requires that the New Hampshire department of environmental services provide for all environmental protection in this state.
Oppose	CACR14	relating to the environment and natural resources. Providing that the state shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment for present and future generations.	Environment and Agriculture	Mon 1/8	1:00 PM	LOB Room 301-303	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution would require the state to maintain a clean and healthful environment and protect New Hampshire’s natural resources.
Of Interest	HB1398	relative to utility recovery of costs associated with net energy metering.	Science, Technology and Energy	Mon 1/8	2:00 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill requires that costs of net energy metering be assessed under a stranded cost recovery mechanism by electric distribution utilities.
Support	HB1425	relative to prohibiting the suspension of drivers’ licenses in child support enforcement matters.	Children and Family Law	Tue 1/9	10:45 AM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill prohibits the suspension, revocation, or denial of a driver’s license for failure to comply with a child support order, and allows for reinstatement for those whose driver’s license was suspended, revoked, or denied for such reason.
Of Interest	HB1598	relative to the department of health and human services management of social security payments and veterans benefits for children in foster care.	Children and Family Law	Tue 1/9	1:00 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill clarifies the obligation of the department of health and human services to ensure that social security payments and veterans benefits for children in the care of the department be held securely until the child has reach the age of majority or is no longer in the care of the department. The bill makes an appropriation to the department for this purpose.
Of Interest	HB1590	relative to training regarding child abuse and neglect for licensed physicians, advance practice nurses, and physician assistants.	Children and Family Law	Tue 1/9	1:30 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill sets training requirements for entities employing certain medical professionals caring for children under 18 years of age.
Of Interest	HB1183	relative to prohibiting the sale of agricultural land and land essential to critical industries to China.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Tue 1/9	10:00 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill provides that certain companies owned, in whole or in part, by the people’s republic of China or the Chinese communist party shall not own, lease, possess, or exercise any control over agricultural or farm lands and land essential to critical industries in this state.
Support	HB1232	prohibiting state or local governments from using central bank digital currency.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Tue 1/9	10:30 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill prohibits the state treasurer, state agencies, and political subdivisions from accepting a payment using central bank digital currency or participating in a test of central bank digital currency by any Federal Reserve branch.
Of Interest	HB1674	relative to establishing the New Hampshire legal tender act and establishing a state bullion depository.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Tue 1/9	11:00 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill creates the New Hampshire legal tender act; establishes gold and silver as legal tender; establishes a state depository; and enables digital use of gold and silver.
Support	HB1444	relative to local regulation of digital mining.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Tue 1/9	11:30 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill adds limits to the regulatory powers of political subdivisions over digital asset mining businesses.
Oppose	HB1207	relative to single-use disposable plastic foodware accessories.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Tue 1/9	1:15 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill prohibits certain food service facilities from having self serve/self-service disposable plastic foodware accessory dispensers, and from providing or offering disposable plastic foodware accessories to any customer, except upon request of that customer.
Oppose	HB1636	relative to creating the New Hampshire container deposit, refund, recycle, and reuse system.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Tue 1/9	1:45 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill creates a New Hampshire container deposit, refund, recycle and reuse system. It establishes a producer responsibility organization (PRO) to implement a beverage container recycling redemption refund program to issue redemption refunds to consumers for beverage containers. It contains labeling requirements, establishes performance targets for the PRO, contains reporting requirements, requires the PRO to establish an Operations Advisory Committee and an Equity and Access Advisory Committee and contains provisions concerning reimbursement, enforcement, administration and other provisions.
Oppose	SB379	relative to emergency action plans for sports related injuries.	Education	Tue 1/9	9:15 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes requirements for the placement and maintenance of automated external defibrillators (AED) and requires an individual trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation to supervise school sponsored sports activities.
Support	SB444	relative to the public posting of board of education agenda items and meeting materials.	Education	Tue 1/9	9:30 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill requires the board of education to post agenda items and meeting materials on its website at least 48 hours before each noticed meeting.
Support	HB1305	relative to freedom of speech and association at public institutions of higher education.	Education	Tue 1/9	10:15 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill establishes procedures governing freedom of speech and association at public institutions of higher education.
Support	HB1690	relative to hiring, promotion, graduation, or admission in higher education.	Education	Tue 1/9	2:15 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill prohibits any institution of higher education that discriminates in admission, hiring, promotion, graduation, or admission to any program on the basis of sex, race, sexuality, national origin, ethnicity, or ideology, including but not limited to permitting diversity, equity, and inclusion statements, from accepting funds from the state or any local government or any subdivision thereof. This bill further establishes procedures for enforcement of this prohibition.
Oppose	SB346	prohibiting the use of dogs while hunting coyotes.	Energy and Natural Resources	Tue 1/9	9:15 AM	SH Room 103	This bill prohibits the use of dogs while hunting coyotes.
Oppose	SB454	increasing the annual real estate transfer tax revenue contribution to the affordable housing fund.	Finance	Tue 1/9	1:00 PM	SH Room 103	This bill increases the amount of annual real estate transfer tax revenues which are transfered to the affordable housing fund.
Of Interest	SB322	relative to licenses to carry.	Judiciary	Tue 1/9	1:00 PM	SH Room 100	This bill requires a license authorizing an individual to carry a loaded pistol or revolver in this state to include the name, title, and signature of the person issuing the license.
Oppose	SB577	relative to imposing a waiting period between the purchase and delivery of a firearm.	Judiciary	Tue 1/9	1:35 PM	SH Room 100	This bill establishes a waiting period for the delivery of a firearm, subject to certain exceptions.
Oppose	SB571	relative to requiring a background check prior to any commercial firearm sale.	Judiciary	Tue 1/9	2:00 PM	SH Room 100	This bill requires commercial firearms sales or transfers in this state to be subject to a criminal background check and provides a criminal penalty for a violation. This bill further provides a process for a commercial sale of a firearm where neither party to the prospective transaction is a licensed firearms dealer.
Oppose	HB1258	relative to a waiver from property taxes for disabled veterans.	Municipal and County Government	Tue 1/9	11:30 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill increases the range of the optional tax credit for service-connected total disability.
Of Interest	HB1697	suspending New Hampshire’s participation in emissions reduction credit programs for a period of 2 years.	Science, Technology and Energy	Tue 1/9	9:30 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill suspends New Hampshire’s participation in emissions reduction credit programs administered by the department of environmental services for a period of 2 years.
Support	HB1031	relative to motor vehicle certificate of title exemptions.	Transportation	Tue 1/9	10:00 AM	LOB Room 203	This bill exempts motor vehicles older than 10 years from the title requirement.
Support	HB1032	relative to certificate of title exemptions for vehicles 20 or more years old.	Transportation	Tue 1/9	10:20 AM	LOB Room 203	This bill exempts vehicles 20 or more years old from having a certificate of title.
Of Interest	SB512	relative to the 10-year highway plan.	Transportation	Tue 1/9	1:45 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill adds a traffic-calming scheme on a portion of Route 101 to the New Hampshire 10-Year Transportation Improvement Plan.
Oppose	SB466	relative to allowing the department of transportation to erect sound barriers upon request of municipalities.	Transportation	Tue 1/9	2:00 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes 2 noise barrier programs and the noise barrier construction fund, and makes an appropriation to the fund.
Support	HB1391	allowing new vehicles purchased in the model year or before to be inspected in the second year after purchase.	Transportation	Tue 1/9	2:00 PM	LOB Room 203	This bill allows new vehicles purchased in the model year or before to be inspected in the second year after purchase.
Support	CACR15	relating to taxation. Providing that a 2/3 vote is required to pass legislation imposing new or increased taxes or license fees, or to authorize the issuance of state bonds and providing that the general court shall appropriate funds for payment of interest and installments of principle of all state bonds.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/9	10:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution provides that a 2/3 vote of the house of representatives and the senate shall be required to pass a new tax or license fee or to increase any tax or license fee that has been levied, or to authorize the issuance of state bonds.
Of Interest	CACR18	relating to the tax exempt status of churches. Providing that churches shall not be exempt from state taxes.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/9	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution adds an amendment specifying that churches, religious organizations, and houses of worship are subject to state and local taxes.
Oppose	HB1254	relative to an optional local public safety assessment on certain room occupancies.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/9	11:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill enables a municipality to collect a public safety assessment on hotel occupancies for the purpose of public safety associated with the increase in tourism and transient traffic.
Support	HB1515	relative to the meals and rooms tax rate.	Ways and Means	Tue 1/9	12:00 PM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill reduces the meals and rooms tax rate for taxable meals from 8.5 percent to 7.5 percent and sets a minimum amount of revenue apportioned to towns.
Oppose	HB1406	relative to gender-based pricing of goods and services.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/10	10:00 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill prohibits price discrimination based upon to whom goods or services are marketed and establishes a mechanism for enforcement.
Oppose	HB1071	relative to the right to repair certain educational technology.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/10	10:30 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill requires the manufacturer of certain educational technology to provide authorized independent repair providers with the necessary parts and equipment for repair. The failure to do so would be a violation of the consumer protection act.
Support	HB1624	relative to allowing the distillation of hobby liquors.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/10	11:00 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill allows the hobby distillation of liquors produced from beer or wine.
Oppose	HB1621	requiring the liquor commission to distribute certain information in liquor stores.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/10	1:45 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill requires the liquor commission to produce and distribute information about alcohol use disorder at liquor stores.
Support	HB1227	relative to extending the hours of alcoholic beverage sales for on-premises licensees.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 1/10	2:45 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill extends the hours of alcoholic beverage sales for on-premises licensees.
Of Interest	HB1021	relative to body-worn cameras and exculpatory evidence.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Wed 1/10	9:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill makes changes to which individuals are allowed access to police body-worn camera (BWC) footage by allowing criminal defendants greater access. This bill further repeals the requirements that officers only use BWCs while in uniform and that they not use the BWC to record communications with other police personnel.
Support	HB1022	relative to decriminalizing certain acts between consenting adults.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Wed 1/10	10:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill reduces the penalties under the prohibition against prostitution and related offenses, including decriminalizing certain conduct.
Support	HB1025	relative to disorderly conduct.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Wed 1/10	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill repeals the prohibition against directing at another person in a public place obscene, derisive, or offensive words which are likely to provoke a violent reaction on the part of an ordinary person.
Oppose	HB1583	relative to the per pupil cost of an opportunity for an adequate education.	Education	Wed 1/10	9:00 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill increases the base annual cost of providing an opportunity for an adequate education.
Oppose	HB1656	relative to increasing the adequacy grant for pupils receiving special education services.	Education	Wed 1/10	9:30 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill increases the annual cost of an adequate eduction for each pupil in ADMR receiving special education services.
Oppose	SB403	relative to health care workforce investments.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/10	9:30 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill: I. Extends the deadlines of the legislative commission on the interdisciplinary primary care workforce issues. II. Makes clarifying amendments to the home health care provider and nurse practice act statutes. III. Establishes the position of and regulation of community health workers. IV. Establishes various programs and provides appropriations therefor focused on community health and health care employment.
Support	SB351	relative to statewide work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents on food stamps.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/10	1:15 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill provides that the department of health and human services shall not seek any waiver or exemption of the work requirements for able bodied adults under the food stamp or SNAP program.
Oppose	SB456	relative to establishing a nurse retention school loan debt relief program.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/10	1:30 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes a nurse retention school loan debt relief program in the department of health and human services. The bill also establishes a dedicated fund and makes an appropriation to the fund for this purpose.
Oppose	HB1068	relative to establishing a blood lead level testing requirement for children entering day care and public schools.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Wed 1/10	9:45 AM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill establishes a blood lead level testing requirement for children entering day care and public schools.
Oppose	HB1593	relative to funding for developmental services community integration.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Wed 1/10	1:00 PM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill establishes a developmental services community integration fund in the department of health and human services to support individuals with developmental disabilities and makes an appropriation therefor.
Oppose	HB1520	establishing a family assistance car ownership pilot program in the department of health and human services.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Wed 1/10	1:45 PM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill establishes a car ownership pilot program for participants in the New Hampshire employment program and family assistance program. The bill makes an appropriation to the department of health and human services for this purpose.
Of Interest	CACR23	relating to the right to abortion. Providing that all persons shall have the right to abortion prior to 24 weeks.	Judiciary	Wed 1/10	10:00 AM	SH Room Reps Hall	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution establishes the right to abortion prior to 24 weeks.
Oppose	HB1007	relative to notice of terms and conditions of remote work arrangements.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Wed 1/10	9:45 AM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill requires an employer to provide the employee with notice of the terms and conditions of any remote work arrangement.
Oppose	HB1023	relative to requiring employers to provide notice of resources available to support veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Wed 1/10	10:30 AM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill requires employers to provide their employees with notice of resources available to support veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Oppose	HB1178	relative to an employee’s unused earned time.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Wed 1/10	11:15 AM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill requires an employer to pay an employee for unused earned time.
Oppose	HB1322	relative to the state minimum hourly rate.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Wed 1/10	1:00 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill increases the minimum hourly rate, increases the base rate for tipped employees, and adjusts both rates annually based on the most recent 12-month average of the Consumer Price Index.
Oppose	HB1668	relative to establishing a 4-day work week.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Wed 1/10	2:00 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill mandates a regular work week of 32 hours in 4 8-hour days.
Support	HB1377	relative to granting workers free choice to join or refrain from joining labor unions.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Wed 1/10	3:00 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill prohibits collective bargaining agreements that require employees to join or contribute to a labor union.
Of Interest	HB1495	making provisions for the prospective of all legislative acts on a sliding scale based on the vote count when passed by the house of representatives.	Legislative Administration	Wed 1/10	9:00 AM	LOB Room 203	This bill makes provisions for the prospective of all legislative acts on a sliding scale based on the vote count when passed by the house of representatives.
Of Interest	HB1367	relative to establishing immunity for certain testimony in public legislative hearings.	Legislative Administration	Wed 1/10	10:30 AM	LOB Room 203	This bill authorizes the granting of immunity to witnesses that appear before the legislature for testimony concerning potential criminal conduct related to the statute that is the subject of the hearing.
Oppose	HB1423	requiring the commissioner of the department of natural and cultural resources to identify all old growth and mature forests on public land in the state of New Hampshire.	Resources, Recreation and Development	Wed 1/10	11:20 AM	LOB Room 305	This bill requires the commissioner of the department of natural and cultural resources to identify all old growth and mature forests on public land in the state of New Hampshire.
Oppose	HB1477	relative to environmental surety bonds for businesses that pose a significant risk to the state’s natural resources.	Resources, Recreation and Development	Wed 1/10	2:00 PM	LOB Room 305	This bill directs the commissioner to develop a program requiring environmental surety bonds for businesses that pose a significant risk to the state’s natural resources.
Support	HB1334	relative to the sale of beer in refillable containers.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Thu 1/11	2:15 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill allows for the sale of beer in a refillable container.
Support	HB1035	relative to limitations on extradition.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Thu 1/11	9:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill prohibits the extradition of an individual charged solely with violating a firearm licensing regulation of another state.
Of Interest	HB1404	relative to criminal procedure and the right to a jury trial.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Thu 1/11	10:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill provides a right for a jury trial in any criminal offense or for a violation where there is a fine of $20 or more. This bill further provides new processes for appeals of circuit court verdicts to the superior court for jury trials. This bill also requires courts to allow criminal defendants to present any evidence to their proffered defense.
Support	HB1438	criminalizing interference with a whistleblower.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Thu 1/11	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill criminalizes interference with whistleblowers in certain circumstances.
Oppose	SB418	relative to THC concentrations for driving offenses.	Judiciary	Thu 1/11	1:00 PM	SH Room 100	This bill sets maximum THC concentration levels for various driving offenses.
Support	SB570	establishing a misdemeanor for first-offense controlled drug possession.	Judiciary	Thu 1/11	1:45 PM	SH Room 100	This bill amends the penalty for obtaining, purchasing, transporting, possessing, or having under a person’s control a controlled drug to a class A misdemeanor, and amends the penalty for a subsequent offense to a class B felony.
Support	HB1064	relative to penalties for violation of protective orders.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/12	9:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill repeals the provision directing peace officers to seize any firearms, ammunition, and certain deadly weapons subsequent to an arrest for a violation of a protective order issued under the chapter.
Of Interest	HB1073	relative to repealing the prohibition on placement of simulated explosives.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/12	10:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill repeals the prohibition on the placement of simulated explosives.
Of Interest	HB1599	relative to the use of artificial intelligence for personal defense.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/12	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill affirms that, under the second amendment to the United States Constitution, a person may use autonomous artificial intelligence for defense purposes, subject to specified limitations.
Support	HB1237	relative to the use of unmarked or stealth police vehicles for traffic enforcement.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/12	11:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill establishes a requirement that any police vehicle purchased after January 1, 2025 must be clearly marked and labeled as a police vehicle in order for it to be used in traffic law enforcement.
Support	HB1238	requiring all municipal police department vehicles to bear municipal police license plates.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/12	11:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill requires all municipal police departments to affix municipal police license plates to all department-owned vehicles.
Of Interest	CACR20	relating to declaring independence from the United States of America. Providing that if the national debt reaches $40 trillion, New Hampshire shall declare independence and proceed as a sovereign nation.	State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs	Fri 1/12	9:30 AM	LOB Room 206-208	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution amends the constitution to provide that if the US national debt reaches $40 trillion, New Hampshire shall secede from the union.
Of Interest	HB1338	relative to New Hampshire’s enforcement of the Military Selective Service Act.	State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs	Fri 1/12	1:30 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill prohibits state or local enforcement of the Military Selective Service Act except in times of foreign military invasion or declared war. This bill further repeals the state penalty provisions for lack of compliance with the Military Selective Service Act, and allows for the marking of “conscientious objector” when registering with the division of motor vehicles.
Of Interest	CACR13	relating to slavery and involuntary servitude. Providing that slavery and involuntary servitude shall be prohibited in the state of New Hampshire.	State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs	Fri 1/12	3:00 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution adds an article that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.

The post Bill Hearings for Week of January 08, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

Jeremy Kauffman, Founder Of The Decentralized Blockchain-Based Free Speech Platform LBRY

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking since my arrival at Fort Devens to serve my 18 months of government-mandated vacation, and one of my favorite things to remember is that final week of Porcfest, where I spent time with my liberty family a mere two days before starting my prison sentence. I have, of course, been aware of certain issues that developed after that year’s final Porcfest day–notably, after the Soapbox Idol event. After all, I was there as a judge, and I saw it all first-hand, with better-than-front-row seats, and I really only have one question:

Is this how we treat heroes of the liberty movement?

To call Jeremy Kauffman divisive is as much of an understatement as calling me controversial, but on one point there can be no division or dispute. Jeremy built LBRY, a real-life tool that is immune to government censorship as no other platform has ever been, and from that spawned Odysee, a web-based front-end to the protocol that brought much of this unrestricted content to the masses. What Ross Ulbricht did to make drug use safter, Jeremy did to help protect information from overbearing states (and what state isn’t overbearing?). If this was his only contribution to bettering the world for liberty, I would argue that it is more than enough, but he has not been content to merely hand over a widely used censorship-resistant video and file sharing protocol and platform, has he?

Jeremy has further run for office (unsuccessfully, but that’s really of little practical importance), helped others to do the same, promoted the Free State Project, served on FSP, Inc.’s, board, and, most importantly, stood against the SEC and all their might, when Kraken, Binance, and other much more powerful people and companies with significantly more resources and dozens of their own attorneys failed to. I must confess that I’ve never been investigated by the SEC (to my knowledge), but every libertarian worth their weight in Goldbacks knows by now how vicious, vitriolic, and vile the SEC and its chair, Gary Gensler, are. And while I don’t know what it feels like to battle the SEC, I spent nearly 15 months waiting on a promised superseding indictment that would (and did) bring more charges against me, and through that period I repeatedly turned down plea offers. I then spent an additional six months or so awaiting trial (before having my motion to dismiss denied, whereupon a plea deal seemed to me the most sensible route to take), and through all of this there was always an upcoming hearing, a next conference, threats of escalation, promises of destruction (made by the government and its agents), and unrelenting tension. After this was an additional six months awaiting sentencing, and an omnipresent Sword of Damocles whose devastation could not be divined in advance. 

It is impossible to convey what this does to the soul.

I can’t image that his battle with the SEC was any less horrific than my battle with the U.S. attorneys, and especially after the superseding indictment I became so strained that I was never far from a breaking point. I snapped at countless people who did not deserve it, and, while I was always quick to recognize my failing and apologize, one cannot un-snap at people. And let’s be honest–the man Jeremy snapped at during Soapbox Idol absolutely deserved it. I had a number of (admittedly, less harsh than Jeremy’s) responses myself, and was ready to eviscerate the man over his bigoted, anti-trans nonsense, but Jeremy was quicker to the draw. 

Is Jeremy Kaufman an alcoholic? I don’t know, and I don’t care. Many of the people who have alleged this have struggled with their own substance abuse disorders–what was that thing that Christ said about throwing stones? Even if it is true (and, again, I do not know or care), it would mean only that his battle with the SEC–the one that cost him countless dollars, immeasurable years of his life, as well as the company that he’d built over the course of many years–left him a “bitter and angry alcoholic.” Is this really how we treat our heroes? With all the love, compassion, and gratitude of the United States Government for its soldiers? “Thank you for your service, sorry about the PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and loss–lulz, and the substance abuse disorder. Our bad, but get lost. But TYFYS. Now kindly go drink yourself to death quietly somewhere so that you don’t tarnish our brand that’s more interested in restricting nudists who have never bothered anyone than in helping one of our heroes.”

I want to believe that we, as a community and a society, are better than that, but evidence seems to suggest otherwise. how many of our community have written Ian Freeman? How many have written Ross Ulbricht within the last 12 months? I ask because I can count on one hand the number of New Hampshire libertarians who have written me, and I wish I could believe the explanation that I am simply disliked; alas, though, I know in my heart the truth: out of sight, out of mind.. How quickly we forget Jeremy’s numerous and invaluable contributions to the world–and to our own community!

Is a history of service an everlasting excuse to be a jerk? Certainly not. But if we value someone and care about them, when they go astray we should react with kindness and with compassion, not scorn and condemnation. And besides, maybe a jovial “good times were hand by all!” rant competition at a liberty festival, where shrooms can be purchased within sight of the competition, isn’t the best venue to trot out one’s dead son like a macabre marionette, to dance around and shield the speaker from criticism, especially after misgendering him on a stage where it is known that a trans judge is eager to respond. 

But perhaps it’s best that I didn’t get the chance to speak, because in that moment I wouldn’t likely have shown that dude the same love, compassion, and understanding that I’m now asking the liberty community to manifest toward Jeremy Kauff

man. We’re no longer in that moment, though, and have the benefit of nearly six months to reflect on events while letting emotions cool, and I would ask the liberty community to do exactly that: to show love, compassion, and understanding toward someone who fought indescribable battles with the U.S. Government.

State Reps

The anti-independence loyalists to the US Empire thought it was over when the historic 2022 bill went down in flames in the state house. However, we were just getting started. Thanks to one brave state rep, the secession bill is back!

Rep. Jason Gerhard has filed CACR 20. Like its predecessor, it proposes to put the question of New Hampshire declaring independence on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. However, Gerhard added a trigger event: if the people pass the amendment, peaceful secession won’t happen until the US National Debt reaches $40 Trillion.

The trigger idea is interesting because it should get people thinking, “Where is my line in the sand?” How much federal tyranny do the people of NH need before they have had enough and are ready to do as their forefathers did and break up with their abuser? The founders seceeded from the king over much less than we face from the federal gang today. Today we have endless war, ridiculous taxes and regulations, prisons full of nonviolent people, inflation, and no one in DC is going to make it better. Gerhard’s bill should start a necessary conversation. Do we want to continue to suffer, yoked to the falling empire as it crashes and burns, or should we forge our own path of freedom?

Likely to give us as little time as possible to get the word out, the public hearing has been set for Friday, Jan 12th at 9:30am in rooms 206-208 of the Legislative Office Building at 33 North State st in Concord. If you care about independence, please attend and tell the committee how you feel. If you can’t attend in person, you can sign in favor of the bill – CACR 20 – and leave a comment.

There’s a second bill of interest that will be having its public hearing at 10:15, filed by Rep. Matt Santonastaso, HB1130, which would create a “study committee” to examine all the tough questions about NH Independence.

Please contact your state rep and ask them to support both bills, CACR 20 and HB1130. Remember, with CACR 20 you are asking the reps to simply allow the people to vote on the question. They can be against secession personally, but still vote for CACR 20, which only puts the question on the ballot for the people to decide. It would require 2/3rds to vote in favor to pass, so if they believe secession is unpopular, for what reason could they oppose putting it to a vote?

Hope you can attend the public hearing at 9:30am on 1/12. Please spread the word to all liberty-loving people!

State Reps 

The anti-independence loyalists to the US Empire thought it was over when the historic 2022 bill went down in flames in the state house. However, we were just getting started. Thanks to one brave state rep, the secession bill is back!

Rep. Jason Gerhard has filed CACR 20. Like its predecessor, it proposes to put the question of New Hampshire declaring independence on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. However, Gerhard added a trigger event: if the people pass the amendment, peaceful secession won’t happen until the US National Debt reaches $40 Trillion.

The trigger idea is interesting because it should get people thinking, “Where is my line in the sand?” How much federal tyranny do the people of NH need before they have had enough and are ready to do as their forefathers did and break up with their abuser? The founders seceeded from the king over much less than we face from the federal gang today. Today we have endless war, ridiculous taxes and regulations, prisons full of nonviolent people, inflation, and no one in DC is going to make it better. Gerhard’s bill should start a necessary conversation. Do we want to continue to suffer, yoked to the falling empire as it crashes and burns, or should we forge our own path of freedom?

Likely to give us as little time as possible to get the word out, the public hearing has been set for Friday, Jan 12th at 9:30am in rooms 206-208 of the Legislative Office Building at 33 North State st in Concord. If you care about independence, please attend and tell the committee how you feel. If you can’t attend in person, you can sign in favor of the bill – CACR 20 – and leave a comment.

There’s a second bill of interest that will be having its public hearing at 10:15, filed by Rep. Matt Santonastaso, HB1130, which would create a “study committee” to examine all the tough questions about NH Independence.

Please contact your state rep and ask them to support both bills, CACR 20 and HB1130. Remember, with CACR 20 you are asking the reps to simply allow the people to vote on the question. They can be against secession personally, but still vote for CACR 20, which only puts the question on the ballot for the people to decide. It would require 2/3rds to vote in favor to pass, so if they believe secession is unpopular, for what reason could they oppose putting it to a vote?

Hope you can attend the public hearing at 9:30am on 1/12. Please spread the word to all liberty-loving people!

I wanted to take the time to respond to the government propaganda department’s continued lies in regard to the Crypto6 case. The Crime3 podcast interviewed former government agents and I wanted to take the time to respond to Jenifer and Chris’s lies and manipulations regarding the case and what unfolded.

You can find the episode here:

My open letter to the scum of the universe:

What these so-called blockchain ‘experts’ leave out whom have a bias and agenda when they’re talking about traceability of cryptos like Bitcoin (due to the public nature of the block chain) is that the “evidence” they produce is not admissible at trial and they’re not experts in the subject matter within the trial context according to the courts. By getting on these podcasts they’re in a sense defrauding the public about their credentials and abilities. The prosecutors are building cases on unscientific and unreliable evidence. The blockchain ‘evidence’ does not meet the standards of scientific scrutiny needed for admission in the courts at the trial level. Let me clarify one other aspect that this is at least for the federal system as was evidenced in the Crypto6 case.

While the governments top ‘expert’ was allowed to testify she was not admitted as an expert in the courtroom, nor was the blockchain evidence she brought forth. Humorously she admitted that even the defense lawyer could re-produce her results using public websites. While it is correct that blockchain tracing can be be utilized at early stages of an investigation to try and figure who did what when and even obtain search warrants that’s a very different thing than utilizing blockchain tracing as evidence at trial. The standards of evidence to obtain a search warrant that might lead to actual evidence are much lower than the standards needed to introduce that evidence at trial. This is why a search is essential to a criminal investigation. The actual evidence is not the evidence that leads one to ‘suspect’ a crime has occurred. That’s merely an investigative tool. It’s like a hunch that something has occurred, but now you need to find actual evidence it occurred.

There are different aspects of the problem. One of them is that while you can easily trace an individual transaction it’s a very different thing and an impossible task to trace thousands of transactions without the help of specialized tools. Those specialized tools can’t be scrutinized by actual experts because of the companies behind those tools are withholding the source code. Therefore the methodology hasn’t withstood the necessary public scrutiny. What happened in the crypto6 case was that people were intimidated into taking plea deals, cases against individuals were dropped, and in the one trial that occurred a story was told based on lies and half-truths of which the evidence itself didn’t support. The jury appeared to have been unable to understand the evidence or its connection to the story being told. This or a combination of this combined with tactical attempts to make the man they were after: Ian Freeman. They tried to make him out to be a anti-government bad guy satanist who prayed on little old ladies. None of this could be farther from the truth. They used politics and a broken or rigged jury system to achieve the results they wanted. The one person in the jury pool for instance who had touched Bitcoin was thrown out as was anyone who might have had an understanding of what was occurring. He was then portrayed as an anti-government violent satanist by way of others. He hasn’t uttered a word of violence, made allegiances with Satan or worshiped Satan, or been any of the things the government has portrayed him as. They took words out of context, implied he knew about things at a time in which he did not, and worse. Being against taxation isn’t a crime, but if you can convince a jury of people pulled from only the most upstanding government worshiping citizens in society everyone is guilty regardless of any actual wrongdoing.

The ‘experts’ which spoke in the Crime3 podcast about the church of the invisible hand left out the primary tenants of I believe all of these churches twisting what they admitted to not even understanding. It’s peace: “It is our mission, inspired by God, Allah, the Universe, and the inner light – to foster peace”. You can lie about it and claim it’s anti-government, but that isn’t really an accurate portrayal of any of these churches here. The very nature of the belief system is one of peace and violence is only ever justified in defense thereof, not one of no government. It’s not a pacifist philosophy, but it’s close to it.

You can connect it to libertarianism, but if you don’t understand what that means in this context you’ll be dearly misinformed. Libertarian philosophy can be summed up as the non-aggression principle. It is the fundamental principle of morality that states that any person is permitted do everything with his property, except aggression. It’s being against the use of violence to achieve social and political objectives where those objectives aren’t defensive in nature to actual violence, theft, and coercion .

For example participants do not believe that there should be no laws. Rather they believe the only laws that should exist are ones that prohibit non-consensual violence. Violence in defense of oneself and others is completely acceptable. That’s not anti-government. No one as far as I’m aware is objecting to the prosecution of violent individuals. They’re objecting to prosecution of individuals for smoking weed, a sacrament of one of the churches in question by the way. The government here uses violence against peaceful people, not violent actors.

They present our community as one that existed as if they get to dictate our existence or that arresting a few people somehow makes it go away. In reality it’s a community of 10s of thousands in size that continues to grow every year. Both in terms of births and in terms of people migrating for peace, love, and liberty. We have significant representation in the statehouse making up as much as ¼ of the house. We even got our first state senator last year. Our churches don’t disappear just because the state or some federal agent doesn’t like us. This is at the heart of it a religious persecution and a battle over beliefs and ideas. Something that state schools give the impression was a tenant at the foundation of the nation, but for which in reality is a hypocritical modern day representation of the United States. The United Sates today is a country that has restricted religious beliefs and religious organization that do not conform or did not exist 50 years ago. Where some religious organizations are protected others are not. We aren’t allowed to setup new non-insurance based solution to health care for instance that other religious groups have had in place for over 50 years. There right to exist is enshrined in law. Ours are not. The difference is they had such organizations already which pre-date the 1950s era socialist dictate that legally changed how health care worked in the United States. We do not have freedom and we don’t have religious freedom outside specific dominant religions.

One of the messages that they keep bringing up is that there were many churches. This is a misleading representation of what was actually going on. The Shire Free Church is a church that was founded in 2010 around peace, love, and liberty. It is an interfaith church that welcomes all peaceful people whether you’re a Muslim, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, a Quaker, or something else entirely. In fact one of the board members is a Quaker. Ian, the primary political target in the Crypto6 case was just one of the people on the board of the Shire Free Church. The Shire Free Church is registered with the state of New Hampshire. Around 2017 the Shire Free Church setup a crypto outreach effort. A DBA was filed with the state to that end. This became one of these “many churches” when in reality that isn’t what a DBA is. A DBA is saying you’re representing yourself under multiple names. It does not mean you are setting up multiple entities. This made a lot of sense as the church was going to focus on spreading peace through cryptocurrency. If you don’t understand the history of money you won’t understand any of this and it can be twisted into some dubious money laundering scheme. This was the angle the government turned to when it became apparent no actual crime occurred. Lawyers were sought and advised the church how to legally sell Bitcoin long before the FBI’s investigation got off the ground.

Cryptocurrency is a non-state currency and has the potential to undermine state violence. The US government switched to a fiat currency to fund war efforts many decades ago. A fiat currency is effectively a currency that isn’t backed by anything. Previously currencies were backed by things like gold. You could go to the state or a non-government bank before that and get your gold out (the thing with real value). The government discontinued the ability of people holding dollars from getting the real money the government held on their behalf out (gold, silver, etc). This then allowed the government to print more dollars than they had gold. In turn the dollars people held become worth less and less each year and enabled and continues to enable the government to drop bombs on women and children overseas.

The churches didn’t help anyone evade income taxes. The IRS’s own website states that churches and their ministers aren’t required to file income taxes unless (unless they’re 5013c churches) except in circumstances where a minister has a side hustle at Mc Donalds more or less. Ian Freeman did not have any such side hustles where he personally brought in money. Any revenue from the sale Bitcoin went back into the coffers of the church. The federal government never showed where the money went in the case outside of the vast majority of it going back into purchasing Bitcoin. If anything their own evidence disproved this was the personal income of Ian Freeman. This all made sense too given the mission of the church was to foster peace and this particular outreach effort was to spread peace through the sale of cryptocurrency. I should point out the sale of cryptocurrency was one small part of the spreading of cryptocurrency. The church also helped businesses get setup with cryptocurrency and taught others how to use cryptocurrency. It was not about “investing” in cryptocurrency even if that is often why people buy it. What the market later turned into was not how crypto was started or why the church or our community support it. We’ve held meetups to teach people about cryptocurrency long before the sale of Bitcoin even. The church has other outreach efforts that also have nothing to do with cryptocurrency including building orphanages in Africa, helping the homeless, and even helping people and families with mental health issues. The church provided below market rate rents to numerous families struggling with addiction over the years as well as others with mental health related issues all long before it sold any cryptocurrency.

I think the framing of the feds saying that because a few people wrote donations on wire transfers to the church that the church was somehow engaging in criminal activity is just preposterous. The first donations to the church long preceded the accusations here too. Just because some people considered the proceeds from their purchases of Bitcoin donations does not make the transaction criminal. Remember the church was founded in 2010 … many years before any vending occurred. The first regular sales of Bitcoin didn’t occur until 2016-2017 which is the same time the FBI started investigating. The proceeds of cryptocurrency transactions can be donations too. If not then why haven’t you gone after eBay or sellers on eBay? eBay and a portion of it’s sellers contribute a portion of the profits from their sales to charities all the time too. It’s anywhere between 10% and 100% if my memory serves me correctly. This is a major fundraising effort. Why is it that just because this involved selling Bitcoin that those proceeds can’t also be donations?

They put forth this idea that the crypto6 are somehow tied to New Hampshire because of the 2008 financial collapse. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. These people are tied to New Hampshire through a set of beliefs and moves to the state as part of the Free State Project migration. The migration is a movement of folks who believe in promoting peace, liberty, and love for one another. It’s all about the non-aggression principle. While there is a connection between Bitcoin and the 2008 financial collapse in that Bitcoin was created in that context (to enable people to escape the government regulated banks of which many failed and whom had malicious intent) it has nothing to do with people moving to the state. It’s merely one avenue that people who have that belief system have to promote peace. This is not about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. It’s about peace. The same people who promote Bitcoin also promote the goldback and other systems of barter for the same reasons. It’s not about individuals profiting here even if it can be said that people outside libertarian circles have mostly gotten into cryptocurrency out of an interest in profiting from the swings. The reasons these people got into crypto differ from the schmucks promoting it for personal profit, scheming, or otherwise benefiting from it (not unlike they use the dollar too might I add) with ill intent. While the media would have us all believe Bitcoin is only used for laundering money and illicit drugs it actually only makes up a tiny percentage. Likely less than that of which is funneled through fiat or US dollars as a percentage and the entirely banking system as a whole for that matter.

They continue to disparage Ian’s name through lies. Ian believes these people despite the lies have every right to tell them. Ian wouldn’t do the same in return, that is lie about what the government is doing or them. He doesn’t have to either. Lets take the the claim that Ian is constantly advocating for sex with children. This is just absurd and propaganda the government probably created. In two decades of producing Free Talk Live you’d think they’d be able to come up with some audio or video of Ian actually saying this. No one has. At best they’ve twisted advocating freedom into some bizarre child-adult sex claim that is false. Then they backed it up through false affidavits and a raid in 2016. This was likely an attempt to take Ian and at least Free Talk Live out through disparagement of his name. The FBI raided Ian’s house in 2016 with the claim that child pornography would be found. No child porn was ever found, no arrests were ever made, and the FBI was sued for the return of what they stole. The vast majority of which has been returned. Why do they feel a need to twist a message advocating peace and freedom into one that is disgusting and more representative of their despicable behavior than Ians?

Ian Freeman didn’t create the Church Of The Invisible Hand. Rich Paul (aka Mr Nobody) has been talking about it and preaching his beliefs surrounding it for a decade whether or not I or anyone else agrees with his beliefs or the Church Of The Invisible Hand. The Church Of The Invisible Hand has a mailing list and members whether or not you like it or not. The ideas behind it existed long before Mr Nobody’s involvement with crypto sales too. These sales involving Nobody and Ian and the Shire Free Church only occurred in the last year of the FBI’s investigation. It’s not even clear how or where or if the Church Of The Invisible Hand is ‘connected’ to it all. They’ve literally just taken things people have said out of context and turned it into “all these churches”. I’m surprised they didn’t bring up Gun Church. Gun Church is not connected to crypto sales and is not even a church to the best of my knowledge. Though they do accept cryptocurrency donations. It’s an entity maybe, but not a religious one. It would be more akin to the Church Of Emacs probably. Which is a way of taking sides in a debate over which text editor is better in the Unix (operating systems) / Linux world. If you twist reality enough and the meaning enough than maybe… there were all these “churches” and because these people also had a connection to crypto well… we can ignore reality and somehow say these churches were all fronts to some fraudulent end.

Free Talk Live is an outreach effort of the Shire Free Church and has been around for decades. It’s where peaceful people come together and preach about peace and communicating our ideas to the world. It’s not some “New Hampshire” thing. It’s airing on ~200 some odd radio stations around the United States. It’s akin to any other TV ministry of which I’m sure just about everyone has heard of. They may take different forms, but the gist of it is someone gets on TV and preaches about their religious viewpoints. Free Talk Live continues to air on radio stations across the United States in spite of the FBI’s attempt to take Ian out. In spite of the FBI’s arrest of Aria, Nobody, and a few others. The FBI has repeatedly failed to take out Ian and the Shire Free Church. Free Talk Live lives on. You can listen to it online at https://www.freetalklive.com/

Aria DiMezzo did form the Reformed Satanic Church, did some outreach to raise money for kids with cancer, and was around only a very short while. The FBI made arrests shortly after it was formed and so it’s hard to judge something that barely existed. It barely had time to do anything or build a membership or preach anything. However Aria DiMezzo did do some of that none-the-less via her work with the Shire Free Church. The crypto-sales however were not tied to one another. I believe the connection as was explained at Ian Freeman’s trial was that Ian had referred customers to Aria on a few occasions where the Shire Free Church was overly burdened by it’s success in its own outreach efforts.

Renee and Andrew Spinella were threatened by the government and intimidated into taking plea deals. Andrew Spinella had little to no knowledge of anything as was evidenced in court and agreed to by basically everyone including judge, prosecutor, etc. There was a connection due to some bank account where his name was on the account. He had nothing to do with selling Bitcoin. It was probably in connection to Renee that the FBI arrested him. Renee was aware of the governments displeasure with the churches Bitcoin sales and basically haphazardly tripped into what was effectively a situation she wasn’t comfortable being in. She clearly didn’t get it and probably should not have gotten into any of it in the first place. Out of an abundance of caution she quit long before the FBI raided over crypto-sales. If anyone was guilty of anything it was probably Renee humorously, but mostly being unwitting to the morals, laws, legal advice, understanding, reasons, and so forth of it all. Her view on it was not representative of our communities and she did not seem to fully understand what she was doing. She did not move to New Hampshire as a libertarian for the Free State Project. She may have come along, been a significant other in years leading up to the FBI’s 2nd raid, but may not have understood what the rest of us were preaching. She did not know about or understand the legal advice, but she did understand the threat of the feds and appeared to not believe what she was doing herself even if it was completely legal.

No one changed their identities. People did change their names over a period of a decade or longer. It wasn’t to “escape justice” as is being presented by this warped government propaganda. Rich Paul changed his name to Nobody for political reasons. He wanted to give the people of New Hampshire the opportunity to vote Nobody for mayor and later governor. I do not know the reasons Ian changed his name from Ian Benard to Ian Freeman, but it was a very long time ago. It was not a secret. It was a well known fact anyone could do a search of the internet and discover. The last person who also changed their name (?) and this is a little unclear as to when… but was Aria. Aria as we’ve always known her escaped persecution in southern Mississippi for being trans only to end up in the northern state of New Hampshire to face it from the federal government. I don’t know if this name change was a legal name change. I believe she is currently caged under her legal name issued at birth which was a male name. For someone walking around in dresses is it really unreasonable that they’re going by a more feminine sounding name? None of these name changes or aliases were secret or to hide their real identity. In fact certain people still go by their former name. Now an alias to their legal name.

The government agent speaking in this Crime3 podcast is under the belief that the church promoted Bitcoin in order to have people to sell Bitcoin to. This just doesn’t match with reality or the unfolding of events. The Shire Free Church was promoting Bitcoin long before the churches first vending machine or crypto sale. The church didn’t promote the spending or usage of Bitcoin to give people a need for Bitcoin as was stated. This is an absurd given the time frames involved and what started happening when. The church was promoting Bitcoin many years before it started selling Bitcoin and the church had no need to sell Bitcoin from a financial standpoint. The church had received significant donations at its founding including a 100 BTC bar. That’s 4.3 million dollars at today’s prices not including the value derived from its uniqueness (very few remain that have not been redeemed pushing the price of this item up beyond the 100 BTC of Bitcoin the bar contains). Ian had no need for money and long ago took a vow of poverty. He does not drive a fancy car, own a fancy home, or waste money on frivolous things either. When the church did start selling Bitcoin there were far more people demanding it than the church could ever hope to supply short of turning it into an actual business. There were plenty of places to get Bitcoin in 2016. Spreading it and I’d argue particularly locally however was still valuable act from a spiritual sort of standpoint and one from a philosophical fight stand point. No one was under the guise that the government would not start a fight even if it was completely legal. There are people that Ian and our community have interacted with over the years who did get into selling Bitcoin for profit and financially benefiting from it. That was not what happened here. One person we knew had 80 vending machines for instance many years before the FBI raided. Another person we knew had at least 20-30 if my recollection is correct. The Shire Free Church started with a single vending machine early on and added about one vending machine a year. When it raided there were 4. Ian started referring people to Aria explicitly because there were too many people wanting to purchase Bitcoin from the Shire Free Church. The church couldn’t reasonably keep up with the demand. This idea that the church had to promote its usage to sell Bitcoin is ridicules as by the time the sales started Bitcoin had already exploded. The church didn’t need to sell Bitcoin. It was already well established and financially sound.

They claim that setting up a Bitcoin vending machine is legal, but only so long as you follow the rules that have been setup by government. The problem here is that the church sought legal advice and even got the laws in New Hampshire changed to ensure it was operating well within the law. To now claim that the church wasn’t operating within the rules despite the hoop jumping it did and we as a whole did is absurd. The government at no point came to the church and said “hey- we think you’re not operating legally”. At best they sent a letter to what appeared to be thousands of vending machine operators with a name that was NOT Ian, not the Shire Free Church, and of which didn’t say you are, but only you may be operating outside the bounds of the law. The lawyers however dissagreed.

If you look at other cases the government has gone after people in you’ll notice some interesting things. For instance the federal government says you have to register with the state government, but some states don’t have any registration requirement. They don’t care. It’s literally impossible to register. You can register with the federal system and when people did that the federal government didn’t care. They claimed these people were still breaking the law. How can you require someone to register with a state that doesn’t have registration in the first place? This isn’t an issue of “just follow the rules”. The government is fabricating criminals as they don’t like certain groups of people and this is a means of going after us. The Crypto6 case is explicitly a case of the government targeting activists for political and religious reasons and Bitcoin is almost barely noticeable. It’s just their means of targeting and had it not existed there would be no change here. The government would still be persecuting Ian Freeman for some other factious crime he didn’t actually violate. It’s not even the government as a whole who is after Ian here, but in this case one specific agent it would appear named Phil Christiana. Phil has been involved in 3 separate targeted “investigations” regarding one individual Ian Freeman, and one entity: The Shire Free Church and Free Talk Live. Though he’s “investigated” many other free staters.

The feds tried to get Rich Paul to entrap Ian in 2012, tried to disparage his name by making a false affidavit and raiding over non-existent child porn in 2016. When that failed in March of 2016 they immediately started an investigation into the Bitcoin vending. Then in March of 2021 the FBI raided a 2nd time with multiple tank-like vehicles that were former actual military vehicles used in war zones. They brought in about ~56 FBI agents and something closer to 100 law enforcement agents. This over the mere selling of Bitcoin? You’d have to be a fool to believe this was just a matter of the church failing to file paperwork. This was a politically motivated attack on libertarians and our beliefs in New Hampshire. Phil Christiana was targeting Free State Project movers before Ian Freeman ever arrived in New Hampshire. Ian just became Phil Christiana’s #1 target.

There were policies in place to protect their customer’s privacy just like any bank or company has. To suggest this somehow implicates the church in illegal activity is again absurd. The church was NOT required to register with FinCEN and the church maintains that position. The case is still being fought through the courts and no final decision exists to even contradict this. The state has no regulations on people or entities selling Bitcoin and so long as you are not doing it for profit the federal regulations don’t require you to register either. There are a number of different reasons the church was not required to register as a money transmitter, but this would be one of them. Remember that long before the FBI and dozens of other 3 letter agencies raided in 2021 the church had received advice on how to operate and did operate legally. Even if the church did have to register and didn’t we’re talking about a paperwork violation here. The church had procedures in place to hinder scammers. The church did more to stop people from becoming victims of scammers than any of the banks did in this case. Every one of the “victims” that got up on the stand stated clearly that Ian called them to verify that they understood what they were purchasing. None of the banks made any attempt to stop individual transactions and one of the governments own experts from a credit union stated that they didn’t have to stop individual transactions merely because they were suspicious anyway. This was the reason that she didn’t close the Shire Free Church’s account at that very credit union. She even stated in a letter replying to Ian that the churches operations may be completely legal. Ian had written to her stating that the churches lawyers disagreed with the banks stance and asked for reconsideration. There were no complaints regarding the account or victims and many transactions had occurred. Despite her gut feelings there was nothing she could point to evidencing a problem. It was merely suspicious activity and not criminal activity that resulted in the account being closed. The government is effectively protecting banks while saying everyone else needs to stop individual transactions based on gut feelings they don’t even have.

The government is claiming the church didn’t want to know about romance scams and yet Ian testified to the fact he asked customers if they were being put up to purchasing crypto by a lover. He even went so far as to ask people if they’d ever met their significant others. The problem here is that these scammers convince their “lovers” to lie so none of this really matters as far as stopping scams. It’s just a fools errand to think these regulations or this position has some positive impact on hampering scammers. Remember that the banks didn’t ask any of these “victims” any questions. They took zero steps to stop the individual transactions. There was one person who testified that the bank told him he was laundering money and he continued to do it. Unlike that situation the man KNEW he was laundering money for a scammer. Ian nor the church ever knew about any scams or laundering that occurred. The laundering was being done by third parties, not the church, not Ian, not the banks. To whatever degree this occurred it was not a result of any person in this case except for the one man who knew he was laundering money for scammers because a bank agent told him so when they closed his account. This transaction was not related to the purchasing of Bitcoin from the church and many if not all of these victims were purchasing Bitcoin from other parties. It’s unclear how many as often these people testimony was in error or clearly incorrect. One women read a letter stating she bought her crypto from a Florida vending machine yet the Shire Free Church had no vending machines in Florida. This letter differed from what she had previously testified to.

Lets talk willful blindness for a moment since the government is claiming the church was being willfully blind. The church wasn’t required to know what people were using their crypto for because it wasn’t required unless you had to register as a money transmitter in the first place. The registration is what made that relevant. However even when that is required it isn’t what you think. This is just what the government agents want you to believe. Despite that the church was not required to ask for ID it DID where it was relevant and important. This meant every “victim” that the government brought forth was called and questioned on the phone. These people knew they were buying Bitcoin. These “victims” were asked whether or not they were purchasing Bitcoin for a boyfriend / girlfriend / partner that they did not know in person. This list of questions was more thorough than any bank doing KYC or any KYC that might have been required. These people lied. They lied because the scammers told them to. Some people should not control or retain control of their savings because they’re unable to make rational decisions. Banks aren’t required to ask what you are spending your dollars on every time you make a withdrawal or conduct a transaction.

Imagine that for a moment. Have you ever went to a fiat (cash) ATM machine to withdraw money and been asked what or who you were going to spend it with/on? I’ve NEVER had a bank ATM ask me where I was going to spend my fiat currency. This ‘not asking’ standard is clearly not willful blindness. One only thing about it for a moment to realize that. There was a sign on the vending machines that listed rules including that the wallet you were sending the crypto to was your own. This should if people obeyed it ensure that no third party scammer could get ones crypto. AKA this is KYC as KYC isn’t a specific list of things banks or money transmitters must do, but rather a bank /  money transmitter must have a KYC policy with things in it to try and thwart various criminal activity. The one rule that may have stated don’t tell us what you are doing with the crypto (this may not be accurate description of the rule as I’m taking it from what the government agent said in the podcast rather than checking it was accurate myself) was explicitly because that would complicate things for non-employees (staff here aren’t actual staff of the church, but employees of other businesses where the vending machine is setup). There were no employees of the church at these vending machines. To whom would the sign refer if not people who might be confused as employees of the church? Ian is the person who took care of technical support, not anyone else. A cashier at a bar/restaurant in which the vending machine happened to be placed would in theory all of a sudden have to know the law and then presumably do something if someone said they were planning to buy drugs with the Bitcoin [?in theory?]. These weren’t actual employees or staff of the church here. So what you might be able to imply is willful blindness here isn’t within context of the churches vending machines and other actions and operations as it pertained to selling Bitcoin and by comparison to what every bank cash ATM machines does. To take this and accept it as true would mean that every bank was committing willful blindness by not asking you where or what you were planning to spend your ATM cash withdrawals on. It’s also a silly question in that how many of us even know where we are going to spend that cash or what on? I don’t know where or what I’m going to spend it on when I withdraw it. I bet you don’t either most of the time. The same thing applies to Bitcoin purchases.

Ian went out of his way to comply with the law. Yes- he knew how others were targeted for prosecution and where they fell afoul of the law, but didn’t his refusal to make those mistakes prove he was making every effort to comply EVEN if he didn’t agree? The law doesn’t dictate what people believe. The law dictates what they must do and Ian did what he had to do, but nothing says he had to agree that drugs are bad to sell Bitcoin. He may have had to act under some set of circumstances (like if he had to register as a money transmitter) had he encountered a customer purchasing Bitcoin and then stating he was selling drugs. The reality is Ian refused to sell Bitcoin to an undercover officer claiming to be a drug dealer once he was made aware of this falsehood. He may have known this was an undercover officer by the mere fact this was a standard operating procedure used by malicious officers to prosecute innocent Bitcoin sellers, but none of that or if anything it just goes to prove he’s innocent. It doesn’t prove he’s trying to cater to criminals or that he’s being willfully blind. It proves the opposite. That he was COMPLYING with the law. They’re literally crucifying Ian for following the law while claiming he didn’t want to follow the law (even though they have no proof to that end) and therefore he’s a bad man and he should be locked up for the rest of his life.

It’s not even clear that he could have knowingly operated a money transmission business as the laws at the time did NOT include Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. The government is just intentionally blind here due to their bias. It’s not clear cut that he was operating a money transmitting business as the government apologist in the podcast is claiming. The law was changed in 2021 AFTER the FBI arrested Ian and the Crypto6 to include virtual currency. For him to knowingly done so it would have had to been clear that the Bitcoin was in fact money as defined by the law or some instrument thereof AND he was transmitting it. This is a question that remains open for debate and the lawyers disagree on which is evidenced by the very fact that different lawyers are arguing it in the courtroom. It was not transmitted like a money transmitter transmits money either. The law says to another place or person. The church sold Bitcoin to users and did NOT move money from one physical location to another or from one person to another.

Every person who bought Bitcoin online was required to provide a ID. The church had a picture of an ID for every “victim”. To suggest that they weren’t following a set of KYC procedures is a flat out lie. It may not have been what the government agents wanted, but the law does not dictate the specific of the KYC procedures. When you go to a store and purchase a gift card do they ask for your ID? I can tell you they don’t. They may have a warning about scams posted and it might be some states do require ID, but it’s not a federal mandate required by KYC. This isn’t ‘facilitating’ scammers as they want to portray it. Not even a fraction of 1% of purchasers were victims of scammers according to the governments own statistics in this case. The victims also bought Bitcoin in this case from other sellers. It was not a case where “if only the church hadn’t sold them bitcoin, or if only the church had done KYC” that these people wouldn’t have lost money. Every one of them bought Bitcoin from other sellers and a heck of a lot more Bitcoin in fact in at least some instances. Some as was previously stated were actually actively and knowingly laundering money for scammers and these same people the government is claiming are “victims” of the church. It’s absurd to claim an actual money laundering individual is a victim of a church when the church knew NOTHING about it at the time it occurred and actively tried to stop scammers/money laundering through more stringent measures than any other bank or money transmitter.

Romance scams are real, but they’re not the fault of the banks. They’re not the fault of Bitcoin sellers. They’re not the fault of Ian, the Crypto6, or the Shire Free Church. The fees were also far less than the government claimed. The government claimed 10-21% and in reality all the victims paid 10%. The church actually charged as little as 5% and all of this is well within what the market rate was for the given method. The vending machines were as low as 8%. In person it was at times as low as 5%. Online it was at least as low as 10%. The 20-21% would probably have been for new customers and via payment methods that had more risk associated with them. Vending machines in Boston are in the 20% range for comparison. The government tried to claim anything over 1-2% was insane profits when it didn’t take into account that vending Bitcoin through a vending machine has different costs associated with it than selling Bitcoin wholesale via a major online exchange. The rates in practice were below the market rates and it’s only through manipulation of the facts and of folks who do not know what the range is for fees that you can make it out as if this was some sort of “scheming” or catering toward scammers that the government would have you believe. The reason that there were actually very few victims of scams purchasing through the church is that the church had a very strict KYC policy and was relative to the methods used. In other words the policies for the vending machines were less than that of online sales. One business owner testified he was unaware of even a single minor incident until years later and another business owners testified that they were unaware of anyone becoming a victim. This includes a business owner who regularly helped people with Bitcoin, but he said that it was only once that he ever needed to ask someone to leave.

While people DID purchase Bitcoin online via sending cash on a rare occasion, and most was done via wire transfers and cash deposits every person was required to write that they understood they were purchasing Bitcoin from the church. A photo of a drivers license was required and a picture of the bank receipt with very particular wording on it. This ensured that people for the most part didn’t unknowingly purchase Bitcoin and become victims of scammers. Scams take many forms and you can’t stop all scams, but no one who purchased Bitcoin from the church was unaware of what they were doing. No “victim” thought they were purchasing a car while wiring money to the church. Bitcoin was only ever released upon the confirmation that the buyer understood that they were buying Bitcoin from the church. All of this was presented at the trial.

Notice how the agents can’t tell you how many people were impacted even though the state did reveal this statistic. They can’t tell you because they’re manipulating you. They are lying. They just say “many people”. The reality is a few people did lose a lot, but it was not as a result of the church or failures of the church to do KYC. These people lost much of their money via purchasing Bitcoin from various sellers. There were hundreds if not thousands of people selling Bitcoin. They had 7-8 victims testify, but not all of these victims were actually victims in the end. The restitution hearing is occurring on January 8th, but even before this date determines how many victims there are a number of them have been dropped. That is they’re NO LONGER victims. You would think they’d have to prove that these people were actually victims BEFORE the trial started. That is sadly not how the real world works though. In the real world you get convicted based on lies told by prosecutors, “victims”, and others with a financial interest in the case. Then who is and isn’t an actual “victim” gets figured out after the trial is over. If you throw enough “victims” up to testify it sounds like someone was harmed, but it doesn’t make it true, and certainly even if these are genuine victims it’s not the case that the church partook. In fact the judge ruled Ian did NOT have knowledge of the crime and one of the charges were thrown out as a result. Other charges should have been thrown out as well, but apparently thinking about money laundering is illegal, but knowledge is a requirement of actual money laundering. So they can convict you of conspiracy to launder money without any actual money laundering ever having occurred. And in reality without ever having thought of money laundering given that the church took many steps to thwart would-be money launders.

They claim we used the word “victimless financial crimes”, but to the extent this has some truth there are victimless financial crimes. This case is evidence of that. Whose the victim of this crime? There is a victim of a third party who actually duped someone maybe, but there is no victim of the crime here committed by the accused. Ian isn’t being accused of targeting elderly people or targeting scammers. At various point the prosecution admitted that much even if they did say it at other points. The government and the judge agreed in two separate hearings involving Renee and Mr Nobody that no one ever lost a dime. There was zero restitution owed by anyone else because there were no losses yet somehow this has now changed. Now there are victims who Ian owes money to even though there were not victims of the crimes. There were victims of third parties of which Ian didn’t know or have anything to do with… but no direct victims (and this assumes what we are being told is correct since no evidence was presented to prove these folks were victims of third parties beyond some testimony of the victims of which couldn’t even clearly remember or identify who or where they bought Bitcoin from).

The protections for consumers are a farce. The government wants you to believe these were all elderly folks yet many of the so-called victims were younger than the judge, prosecutor, and defense lawyer in the case. They also use an interesting choice of words. They facilitated money laundering, but didn’t know of the money laundering. The banks in that regard all facilitated money laundering too, but didn’t know of the money laundering occurring. Somehow one little piece of paper somehow immunizes the banks and despite the church doing more than the banks to stop scams they want to hold the sellers of Bitcoin to a higher standard. Or at least Ian. Remember, this isn’t about Bitcoin. It’s about one agent having a grudge against free staters and libertarians. How many different “crimes” does an agent have to investigate over close to two decades before he finally gets his “man”? Apparently two arrests and a disparagement of a mans reputation I suppose is the answer to this one.

Rather than make work for yourself government agents… if you really care about these “victims” maybe you should focus on actually getting laws passed to help stop vulnerable folks from being so easily victimized. The banks didn’t stop these people from wiring “large” sums of money to parties they didn’t know. It wasn’t little old vending machines in Keene New Hampshire that were the problem. It was that there was and is zero measures in place for “vulnerable” people to wire away life savings. A seller of Bitcoin can’t know if the buyer has billions of dollars and a $25,000 purchase is nothing to sneeze at. A bank on the other hand would or at least might know.

Of course if we actually solved this problem through real measures law enforcement would be out of a job, so of course they don’t want to actually solve this problem. The solution boils down to simple mathematical algorithms. You don’t need to regulate money transmission at all outside of traditional banking institutions. All you need to do is require a two-step confirmation process on the wiring of funds over a certain threshold over a particular period of time for a particular demographic. This can be based on how much is in an account, how much is normally sent out, and age. Someone whose 20 might have zero checks. Someone whose 55 might have an algorithm that stops wire transactions that are 1.5x their normal monthly expenditure / withdrawal. This shouldn’t stop them from conducting the wire, but if a 2nd person now needs to sign off on it is required it makes the amount of hoop jumping a scammer does significantly higher. Or they may need to stop in at the bank to do the wire and the bank employee maybe has to accept a certain amount of risk. That is if they wire $100,000 and it turns out to be a scam they’re on the hook for a weeks wages. Of course none of this should stop someone from spending their own money and risking everything … including sending it away to a scammer… but … it would make it more difficult for someone to be scammed and be able to excuse it away as “someone should have stopped me”. If you are really that incapable of managing your own money maybe it’s time to hand that responsibility off to someone else and stop blaming innocent intermediaries that are just doing what you asked. The rest of society should not be burdened because there are dumb or vulnerable people in the world.

The bank accounts didn’t get shut down because the rules weren’t being followed as the government is now claiming. The bank accounts got shut down mostly as a result of attempts by scammers to get elderly folks to wire funds that were then later realized to be scams. When the victim went in and told the bank the bank would pull the money back. If the money is pulled back the receiving bank has to deal with it. The seller has to deal with it. Everyone has to deal with it. The receiving bank now starts asking questions. It turns out that every receiving bank agreed with the church in regard to the KYC policy and thus the church never lost any money except for in one incident where Ian realized he made a mistake. In that instance he refunded the customer or otherwise didn’t fight it. In all the other instances he won and the receiving bank agreed with the church. Accounts may have been shut down, but it wasn’t because of a lack of KYC or criminality of some kind. The banks didn’t outright say the reason they shut down accounts typically, but it always occurred when customers pulled back money whether it was someone trying to scam the church directly (aka a scammer sent money from his own bank, then claimed he was scammed when he wasn’t) or indirectly via third party victims. The point is there was not ever a situation where “receiving bank detects scam” or lack of KYC compliance and shuts account down. The only possible time that might have occurred was with a credit union. The humorous thing is the credit union expert testified that they were allowed to permit the transactions to occur for a long while and despite suspicions no issues ever occurred. They later killed the account without money getting pulled back. That account was I believe not used to sell Bitcoin humorously. There were a dozen or so accounts, but this was over a period of 5 years. It’s not what the government is making it out to be. The church took steps to minimize the likelihood of scams because it was in everyone’s interest to stop scamming.

The government says these accounts were shut down due to suspicious activity yet that just isn’t the case. At best they can claim that may have occurred with a single credit union account that was not used to sell Bitcoin. None of the banks were brought in to testify to this “suspicious activity” claim or reason as to why an account closure occurred. None of these banks would ever say why they shut down an account either when asked by the church. There is no substance behind these agents claims that the accounts were being shut down due to suspicious activity. The agents say this and that, but the truth is somewhere else. What exactly was suspicious exactly too? Why was it that accounts were only closed after sending banks pulled money back? If an account has been used for 6 months to a year and a half with the same type of activity and no closure why did it take so long? It’s not suspicious activity that resulted in account closures. It was sending banks pulling money back that resulted in their closures. This doesn’t mean these people would have lose their money either. The sender would have had to sign a receipt saying that they understood they were buying Bitcoin from the church. This may have actually resulted in accounts getting shut down as those would-be victims may have realized that they were being scammed and gone to their bank to try and undo the transaction. In some respect that is the point of all this, but receiving banks aren’t going to like that. Undoubtedly this was more of a “we’ll take your money until it’s no longer in our interest to do so” situation. The banks never lost any money according to the government, but they did profit off all the fees they charged.

The church donation point they keep harping on was more of a handful of senders writing it as the reason they were sending the money. I have no idea if these were outright donations or the people just considered the proceeds donations or what the story was. There were all sorts of reasons people would put down as to why they were sending out a wire. Often they’d write investment or something else entirely.

The government wants you to believe that because a dozen accounts existed that can be tied to crypto by different people that it somehow is evidence of bank fraud. This just isn’t the case. They took accounts opened by different people for different entities and different reasons and put them all together and said look here all these accounts is evidence of crime! They connected the accounts through malicious descriptions. For example Ian referred customers at one point or another to Aria and even if there was no profit in it they’re now claiming it’s “one thing” or one business. Now because it’s one business those different accounts being opened is somehow bank fraud.

The series of events was more along the lines of Ian having an account in his own name, selling Bitcoin for the church, then using an account specifically for the Shire Free Church to sell Bitcoin. Then at some point it made sense to open an account specifically for selling Bitcoin and keep the Bitcoin sales separate from the other Shire Free Church account(s) (which by the way is actually what you’re suppose to do). So a DBA was registered with the state to that end and an account opened. Effectively it’s a logical succession of account creation over a 5+ year period. Over a few year period some accounts were closed, but not because of suspicious activity. It was because of scammers victims going to their bank and saying they were scammed. The sending banks would claw the money back. This would start a tug of war. Ian would have to prove that the sender knew what they were buying and the church won every case. The account would remain shut down, but not because of suspicious activity or non-compliance with KYC or anything of that nature. No bank employee ever testified to that and they would always refuse to say why an account was closed. However with enough accounts closed it becomes obvious. You need to try and minimize receiving monies that are derived from fraud before it hits your account rather than after. After the fact you can send money back maybe, but you can’t stop someone from trying to wrongly ‘claw it back’. Even when you win the account will remain closed.

Suspicious activity isn’t a crime either. It’s effectively occurs through routine activity like making deposits. If you go to the bank every day and your business brings in $7,000-$8,000 in cash because it’s a cash business that might get picked up as “suspicious activity”. It’s not illegal, but it falls within certain amounts that the bank has to report it even though its entirely routine for you and the reason you are doing it is because the bank is suppose to keep your money safe right? What would the alternative be? Keeping the money In a safe and then doing a weekly deposit? Well, a $50,000 deposit is also suspicious because of the amount of cash you are now depositing all at once. No matter how you do it the government thinks that is suspicious. Did you just buy a house and just made $150k wire and have never done that before? Well, you’re now suspicious too. There are millions of these suspicious activity reports that get filed. If you haven’t had one or another report filed on you I’d be shocked.

There was no evidence presented to suggest that large amounts of cash was dealt with outside of the vending machines. The banks don’t like dealing with cash. This would likely have been problematic. Cash by mail occurred, but was not common. The cash was mostly from vending machines.

There was no evidence of ANY profit being made. They showed the fees were charged, but the money went back into crypto mostly and it all went into the Shire Free Church.

The government didn’t prove its case. The preponderance of evidence is in theory how it works, but the government didn’t even have a blockchain expert to connect any of it together. What they did was make claims, but didn’t back those claims by any evidence. The court ruled in Ian’s favor here in at least one aspect and that was the FBI’s lead expert was NOT an expert. This humorously from a judge who thinks the blockchain is a person. Yea- he stated that in open court. The jury convicted, but the judge also later ruled the jury ruled in error as there wasn’t evidence to prove the knowledge component for at least one of the charges. That charge was thrown out. The defense will argue in future appeals all the charges should have been thrown out.

The co-spend analysis and tools didn’t withstand scientific scrutiny remember. What the government did was put a non-blockchain non-expert on the stand and we’re now suppose to believe that despite that she is NOT an expert what she said was accurate and true. At no point did they even explain blockchain or Bitcoin. They dumb’d it down to a point where they were merely making accusation without any evidence to back it up. You hit send, money appears there. Meanwhile money hasn’t been defined, sending hasn’t been defined. What does sending mean? Nothing moved from one location to another or from one person to another (as a money transmitter would be doing). You might think you understand these words and in some context you probably do. But if you don’t understand how Bitcoin works you wouldn’t understand that “sending” isn’t the same thing nor is it sending it on another behalf. The bank sent money on their customers behalf to the church. They acted as an intermediary. The church didn’t act as an intermediary to move money. The church sold it’s own Bitcoin to it’s customer. It would more akin to a US bank selling you Euros, but where Euros weren’t defined as money because Euros are new and somehow different from other currencies too. Virtual currencies were added to the money transmission law, but not until 2021. This is after the fact and if such a law existed it would be known as an ‘ex post facto law’. That’s not legal in the United States. A law must exist at the time you violated it. They can’t pass a law years later and say you broke this law that didn’t exist at the time you committed a a given act.

They’re not telling the trust again about everyone taking a plea deal (minus Ian Freeman anyway). The government dropped the charges against Colleen Fordham. She never took a plea deal and was one of the most respectable individuals in that she refused to take a plea deal. Mr Nobody was bullied into taking a plea default. His circumstances were such that he’d likely have seen a more serious outcome as a result of prior activism. Mr Nobody stood up to the FBI in 2012 refusing to wear a wire into the Keene activist center. They were after Ian Freeman. For his refusal the FBI had the state arrest him over the illegal sale of marijuana. He took that to trial and lost. He spent a year in a cage already defending Ian Freeman. While it is probably the case he should have continued to fight it Mr Nobody already had spent six months locked up over this for at best a seriously minor role in it all. Colleen Fordham didn’t even have a cryptocurrency wallet at the time and hadn’t for a number of years. They arrested her likely in an effort to get at Ian. The same is likely the case for Renee and Andrew Spenella. Andrew wasn’t even aware of what was going on. His name just happened to be on one of the bank accounts. Renee was more involved, but had not been involved for a while. She had long ago moved on. The FBI actually attempted to intimidate Renee into testifying on behalf of the FBI and this occurred 8 months or so prior to the FBI raiding. This and another incident more than tipped off the Crypto6 and community that a raid was coming. However there is a bit of thought by some that if the FBI was going to do something they probably would have done it already. However between that and the undercover FBI agent it was pretty clear that the 6AM raid was real when it finally arrived. I will admit at first I thought the FBI was elsewhere that morning… and well, they were sort of, but I didn’t immediately think Bitcoin and simultaneous coordinated raid on a half dozen of my closest friends. That took 30 seconds and about the amount of time it took me to get my car out of the driveway. I headed straight to the main location they’d be targeting: The Free Talk Live studio. I will also mention Aria did hold out on taking a plea deal and likely only got time as a result of that delay. Ultimately it’s hard to stand up to a government with unlimited resources, 100s of agents, and millions of dollars spent in an effort to entrap you in a crime you didn’t actually commit.

Despite the governments attempt to force people to testify against Ian in the Crypto6 case including otherwise would-be co-defendant it was mostly to little benefit of the government. Nothing was revealed that wasn’t already well known. What Ian did wasn’t a crime. Chris Reetman (Colleene’s husband) testified at trial for instance that he believed Ian wasn’t required to register with FinCEN even though had he gotten another crypto vending venture off the ground he would have registered. The reason for this is because of how the vending machines would have been operated. The church only ever sold its own Bitcoin. Chris on the other hand would be connecting his vending machines to an exchange and in that context he would be acting as an intermediary rather than an individual or entity just selling its own Bitcoin.

They were forced into pleading guilty under the full threat and significant violence of the government. No one genuinely admitted to anything. You forced words out of his mouth at the threat of violence.

What they also fail to state in telling us about the restitution / sentence and how Ian will pay the victims more rather than the government is that Ian requested that the penalty be minimized so as to maximize the amounts going to the victims of third party scammers should that be ordered. It was not the government requesting this. Ian would rather people who harmed him (the “victims” who testified) get more money than for the state to get anything. Why? At lest these “victims” aren’t likely to go and utilize that money to commit violence again others. The government on the other hand absolutely will utilize that money to harm other peaceful people. This is the difference between Ian and the government. The government claims to care about you whereas Ian actually cares about you.

Again they change what they claim the fees charged were. At one point during the trial it was 10-20% that they were claiming. Now it’s 5-15% in this podcast. Someone clearly read my prior posts at Free Keene. The only reporting of a 5% fee was from me. Almost no one else was aware of this number as it was an in-person number at a particular point in time many years ago and the church rarely sold to people in person. Keep in mind this was not always 5% so you may have paid 10% in later years as the costs of operating the vending machines and selling Bitcoin went up. At all points these fees were well within or even below market rates. At the time the 5% in-person rate was charged the vending machines were around 8%. Closer to Boston the non-church FinCEN registered vending machines were charging around 20%. This blows the idea that people are paying this “high fee” out of the water. KYC FinCEN registered and compliant sellers were charging substantially more than the church and the online exchanges were probably in the 1-2% range. 5% once you account for the additional labor involved and other costs isn’t so out there.

The agents in the podcast also speak of bank fees that are in the few percent range and act as if this is evidencing that it makes no sense to buy crypto at this rate. The implication is only criminals would buy and spend Bitcoin at this rate. This argument falls flat on its face once you consider that a business purchasing goods with a credit card that pays 3-5% in bank fees (credit card fees) for the goods and then turns around and sells those goods to you and also pays with a credit card just resulted in the banks netitng 6-10%. In other words the price has to jump on those goods by 10%, not the “few percent” the government is claiming. It costs a lot more to use banks than crypto. With Bitcoin or probably better compared these days to Bitcoin Cash you’d not pay anywhere near this even if you pay 10% to acquire it. The problem here is the receiver doesn’t pay 3-5% to receive your crypto once those dollars are crypto (that would be the company you end up spending that crypto you bought). This enables many merchants to discount the price of the goods for those who pay with crypto. My business offers free shipping as an example. Others offer discounts as high as 10%. It’s only through ignorance and a lack of understanding of the banking system that you can make this argument against crypto or fees sound rational. However as was pointed out some people use crypto not to save money- that is only a side effect. No. Some of us use crypto out of principle. We want to spread peace and one way to do that is by undermining the ability of government to skim value off the inflating of the dollar or other government fiat currencies (aka Euros, British Pound, etc). This is why Bitcoin is popular in libertarian circules and got adopted in libertarian circles prior to the speculators figuring out they could make a dime off it. Many today do utilize it as an investment vehicle, but that has NEVER been the reason I use crypto.

They talk about seizing 3 million in cash and cryptocurrency. The humorous part of this is that about ~$4 million of that which was seized (at today’s exchange rate anyway) was money donated to the church in 2016. It was NOT fees charged from selling Bitcoin. I’m sure the evidence to this end will be forthcoming at some point, but I also am sure plenty of people in libertarian circles are already well aware of this and witnessed that donation first hand. Maybe there is even video of this somewhere. I have not looked, but it’s also the most likely scenario given acquiring such item years after the bars were discontinued would have been costly. Given Ian and the church were around at that time regardless of what you believe about Ian it’s the most likely route into the church’s hand.

There isn’t a question about where the money went. One of the governments agents testified to the fact that most of it went right back into purchasing Bitcoin for the churches coffers. So the church didn’t get to keep $10 million dollars. At best if the church received $10 million and the average fee was 10% then it would appear the church netted $1 million. That isn’t really the case though as the church had to pay to acquire the Bitcoin and it had to pay landlords to rent the space the vending machines existed in. The church had to hire contractors to fill vending machines. The church had to do technical support for people not super familiar with Bitcoin (another reason someone would buy Bitcoin from the church likely rather than go through complicated KYC procedures, though the churches online sales were just as if not more complicated despite the lies the agents are telling). Now where did the rest of the money go? Isn’t it obvious? And shouldn’t you know that already? The Shire Free Church funded the construction of orphanages in Africa, helped the homeless in Keene, turned a church building into a Mosque for another persecuted minority, and contributed to many different worthwhile projects. You just refuse to acknowledge the good work of the church and its participants. As we’ve stated all along government employees are the real scum of the universe. They’re the ones stealing and using violence and coercion to get their way. They call it taxation and justify it through laws. These laws have real victims resulting in people losing their homes and businesses. It’s immoral, but the real scammers in this case are those falsely claiming to be going after “fraud” and humorously maybe sort of scammers. The governments own “victims” who testified in the crypto6 case all stated the FBI was NOT interested in going after the scammers. They only ever wanted Ian Freeman the “victims” claimed. It was only after calling the government out that they brought in a fed to claim something was “happening” in regard to going after the actual scammers in this case. That is NONE of the crypto6. Where are those scammers now Mr FBI??? I thought you were going to do something about the actual scammers? That’s right. Just another lie from your federal government.

There was a clear use. You just ignored it. We’ve been reporting on where that money went this entire time. We talked about it on Free Talk Live. We wrote about it at FreeKeene.com. To claim it wasn’t advertised is absurd. Aria posted about it online at least in relation to the Reformed Satanic Church. Completely separate from the Shire Free Church mind you, but Ian wrote about the Shire Free Church and we talked about it on Free Talk Live all the time. There was no paperwork filed (the church was registered with the state sadly just so you a-holes couldn’t claim it was fake) with the government, but that doesn’t mean it got spent on sex, drugs, and fancy cars. If it had the FBI would know about it because the government SURVEILLED the churches studio, infiltrated via agents, and followed us around for the last 7+ years. They mapped out Ian’s network not unlike that of the Mafia. It was disgusting considering that all Ian ever wanted was more freedom and peace in the world.

There is nothing wrong with cash and there is nothing wrong with Bitcoin (well, as it existed years ago). The two are more alike than dissimilar. Retaining the freedom of cash is NOT immoral. Your lies won’t succeed in undermining our freedom or our movement.

I ask one last question! What financial benefit did ANY of us get from this so-called scheme you claim. Last I checked there is zero evidence of ANYONE benefiting. Not at least by the size of the claimed scheme. If the one-bedroom Ian shares with his wife or ex-girlfriend counts then OK! But that’s an absurd claim and the IRS said that was 100% OK. It did not constitute taxable income for which Ian would have had to file a return, but even that is a bit much as the churches wealth was not from selling Bitcoin. It pre-dated it. But seriously- you’re not suggesting the government spent millions of dollars over 5 years to get Ian for the sake of the one-room, food, the clothes on his back, and the gas in the churches vehicle are you? That would be the most absurd waste of stolen (taxes) money ever.

No one facilitated scammers. No one! The Shire Free Church implemented a STRONGER KYC policy than any of the banks that wired money to the church. This is where said policies were warranted and no evidence exists to suggest that had a piece of paper been filed with this or that agency that the world would somehow magically be a safer place no matter how much you may want that to be true.

As to how to look at Ian and the Crypto6? I will hold Ian up as a hero, I will hold up Mr Nobody as a hero. Ian is a potential martyr particularly depending on how things continue to unfold on appeal, and certainly everyone is a victim of big corrupt government and the thieves calling themselves employees of the federal government. I will also give my respects to all the others connected to this case who suffered at the hands of government with one exception. A lying thieving fake collaborator of government: Melanie Neighbors. The Crypto6 stood relatively strong against the beatings of government and there is nothing more I could possibly ask of anyone moving to the free state. These people took the statement of intent to it’s maximum interpretation and for that I respect them greatly:

“exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.”

(white) goldstandard-01-03-24-H.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-01-03-24-H-y.pdf

The post House Gold Standard – January 03, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

(white) goldstandard-01-03-24-S.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-01-03-24-S-y.pdf

The post Senate Gold Standard – January 03, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

• These are the most liberty-critical hearings for the week
• Click on the bill number to read the bill.
• Click on the committee name to email the committee your thoughts.

Of the 0 hearings in the House, we are recommending support of 0 and opposition of 0 with 0 being of interest.
Of the 41 hearings in the Senate, we are recommending support of 1 and opposition of 10 with 7 being of interest.

Position	Bill	Title	Committee	Day	Time	Room	State Analysis
Of Interest	SB369	directing the office of professional licensure and certification to provide notice of public meetings and an opportunity for comment, creating a new position, and making an appropriation therefor.	Executive Departments and Administration	Tue 1/3	1:00 PM	SH Room 103	This bill directs the office of professional licensure and certification to provide to the public notice of its meetings and an opportunity to comment in such meetings. This bill also establishes an attorney II position for the office of professional licensure and certification.
Of Interest	SB487	relative to the division of personnel in the department of administrative services.	Executive Departments and Administration	Tue 1/3	1:30 PM	SH Room 103	This bill creates a new chapter for the personnel appeals board. This bill repeals 6 statutes related to the department of administrative services division. This bill is a request from the department of administrative services.
Of Interest	SB480	relative to the administration of professional licensure and certification and the regulation of real estate practice.	Executive Departments and Administration	Tue 1/3	1:45 PM	SH Room 103	This bill requires: I. Any board or commission whose total number of active licensees exceeds 7,000 to have a dedicated, trained, and knowledgeable customer service administrator that works for the administrative section of the office of professional licensure and certification to respond to inquiries from the public and licensees. II. Makes various amendments to allow for inactive real estate licenses. III. Amends the education approval process for the real estate commission.
Oppose	SB404	relative to expanding child care professionals’ eligibility for the child care scholarship program.	Health and Human Services	Tue 1/3	1:00 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes eligibility criteria for child care professionals to receive child care scholarships.
Oppose	SB499	relative to reduction of hunger for children, older adults, and people with disabilities.	Health and Human Services	Tue 1/3	1:30 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill directs the department of education to expand options for free and reduced priced meals to students and directs the department of health and human services to implement a summer EBT program to provide assistance to families with children eligible for free and reduced price meals over the summer. The bill also directs the department of health and human services to participate in the elderly simplified application project within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to provide food assistance to eligible older adults and people with disabilities.
Oppose	SB335	relative to alcohol packaging.	Commerce	Wed 1/4	9:10 AM	SH Room 100	This bill restricts the use of certain images and phrasing in alcohol packaging that are attractive to minors.
Oppose	SB365	relative to the sale or use of lithium-ion batteries for electric bicycles, scooters, or personal electric mobility devices.	Commerce	Wed 1/4	9:20 AM	SH Room 100	This bill prohibits sales of lithium-ion batteries and electric bicycles or electric scooters that have not been certified by a nationally recognized testing laboratory.
Oppose	SB330	relative to allowing the ability to work from home to count toward unemployment benefits eligibility.	Commerce	Wed 1/4	9:30 AM	SH Room 100	This bill repeals disqualification for unemployment benefits for those not available for work outside a home.
Of Interest	SB341	relative to mandatory disclosure by school district employees to parents.	Education	Wed 1/4	9:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill requires all school employees to respond honestly and completely to written requests by parents regarding information relating to their children.
Of Interest	SB342	relative to school building aid funding.	Education	Wed 1/4	9:20 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes a new school district building aid funding program using state funds allocated to each district and makes an appropriation therefor.
Support	SB442	relative to student eligibility for education freedom accounts.	Education	Wed 1/4	9:40 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill expands the definition of “eligible student” for the education freedom account program to include students whose enrollment transfer request was denied.
Oppose	SB522	relative to establishing an early childhood education scholarship account and making an appropriation therefor.	Education	Wed 1/4	10:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill requires rulemaking by the department of health and human services on child care early education and establishes an early childhood education account program to provide funds for an education freedom accounts scholarship organization to administer grants to eligible New Hampshire pre-kindergarten children for qualifying expenses.
Of Interest	SB303	relative to the use of renewable energy funds by the department of energy.	Energy and Natural Resources	Wed 1/4	9:00 AM	SH Room 103	This bill adds battery storage projects to uses of the renewable energy fund, deletes a required renewable generation incentive program, and authorizes a political subdivision incentive, rebate, or grant program using the fund. The bill also modifies the reporting date by the department of energy concerning the renewable energy fund. This bill is a request of the department of energy.
Oppose	SB541	relative to retail pet stores.	Energy and Natural Resources	Wed 1/4	9:45 AM	SH Room 103	This bill prohibits the sale of dogs and cats by retail pet shops except in certain cases.
Of Interest	CACR24	relating to reproductive freedom. Providing that all persons have the right to make their own reproductive decisions.	Judiciary	Wed 1/4	1:00 PM	SH Room 100	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution would amend the constitution to provide that individuals shall have a right to personal reproductive autonomy.
Oppose	SB428	relative to the use of automated license plate readers by law enforcement officers.	Transportation	Wed 1/4	1:15 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill defines the appropriate use of automated license plate readers by law enforcement officers. The bill also makes an appropriation to the department of safety for digital automatic programming interface to connect data from the division of motor vehicles to the state police.
Oppose	SB580	relative to establishing a noise barrier on Teaberry Lane, Bedford, NH.	Transportation	Wed 1/4	1:30 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill mandates the construction of a noise barrier on Teaberry Lane, Bedford, NH.
Oppose	SB471	relative to adding a speed limit of 45 miles per hour on rural highways.	Transportation	Wed 1/4	2:00 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill adds a speed limit of 45 miles per hour on rural highways.

The post Bill Hearings for Week of January 01, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

I’ve been writing FreeKeene.com founder Ian Freeman back and forth at the Merrimack County Spiritual Retreat for the last few weeks.  I recently sent him a letter with pictures of the Fraternal Order of Police logo and a picture of Lucifer’s circle.  I pointed out to Ian that they are so similar one cannot help but wonder if the state is itself satanic.

 

The FOP is definitely masonic…  and the masons themselves cannot deny they have a rank called “The Knight of the Brazen Serpent.”    Sounds satanic to me.

Here is Ian’s letter back to me.  He gave me permission to transcribe it for you all to read.

Dear Brad,

 

Creepy, FOP logo with the all-seeing-eye on it and a possibly Masonic handshake.  Whether it’s satanic at the top or all-the-way down the organization, I presume we’ll never know, but we can judge by their actions that the state is certainly un-godly.

 

I just finished reading “The God of War” by Reverend J.J. Taylor from 1920.  It was sent to me by Sheriff David Hathaway and it’s excellent.  As a Christian yourself, I’d say it’s a must-read.  Written in the aftermath of WWI, it’s a scathing excoriation of the vast hypocrisy of purported “Christians” turning against Jesus’ teachings of peace and instead supporting war.  It’s a quick read at 150 pages, and absolutely demolishes the warmongering “Christians.”

 

But back to the original topic of the state as a satanic organization, if we’re talking about Satan as Lucifer the light-bringer and advocate for humanity, then no, the state is not satanic, as the state is anti-humanity and against light as it oppresses, cages, and destroys human life.  It claims to favor educating, but only really to indoctrinate and control, not illuminate.

 

However, I suspect you are referring to the more typical view of Satan as the embodiment of all things evil, a trickster, enslaver of souls.  In which case, yes the state is absolutely Satanic.  It is nothing more than an evil religion created to trick people into violence, theft, and eternal conflict on Earth, while pretending to do the opposite.

 

Of course “it” is just people, suffering under a mutual delusion that they are a part of something greater than the sum of it’s parts.

 

Or maybe they really are, the literal arms, legs, and heads of pure evil.  They surely believe they are doing good things, though.  Doubtful that very many of them think they are evil or Satanic.  They truly believe that peace can be accomplished through war, that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, and other contradictory statisms.

 

“The State People” – probably a more accurate way of speaking of them rather than “the state,” which seems it grants them the acknowledgement of their supreme being.  Anyway, The State People wisely mix their statism with appeals and references to God:

 

• “In God We Trust” on currency
• Prayers to open congressional/city council sessions
• Politicians claiming religious beliefs
• Chaplains in the miltary
• Churches adopting state icons like the US Flag alongside their own

 

It’s no wonder Christians engage in icon-worship without even questioning.  The flag, the government, and God are the trinity in their minds.  They cheer on war, mass incarceration, and fear of foreigners without an inkling of a clue that they are violating the ten commandments and aren’t even trying to follow Jesus’ example.

 

If you haven’t sent Ian a letter yet…  why not?  I’m sure he’d love to hear from you!

Reach him at :

Ian Freeman
314 Daniel Webster Highway
Boscawen, NH
03303

Or feel free to e-mail me your letter to him.  I’ll print it and throw a stamp on it for you.

In a recent post here on Free Keene, Mr. Penguin wrote, “…here is what we’re going to do. We’re going to write Ian Freeman at every opportunity.” I just made such an opportunity. My letter to Ian is in the mail. I thought I’d share it here in the hope that it nudges others to also carve out a little time to send him some love.

Ian,

I hope this letter finds you with peace of mind. I think about you often and send positive vibes.

I was sorry to see how swayed by disinformation were the individuals who concluded that your actions or inactions were cage-worthy. Sorry — but perhaps not surprised — due to the very real implications of the weaponization of psychology coupled with technocracy. That indoctrination pushed through so many institutions manipulates individuals to favor unthinking allegiance and to act based on fear, rather than to cultivate ones own critical thinking skills and to act based on love.

Despite the multitude of claims levied against you, I was unable to discern any harm that you wrought to person or property. At most, you didn’t ask permission of some strangers who purport to be your master. And that is what this whole charade — and the attempts to cage you in the past — was about. The fact that you think for yourself and act accordingly. In order words, that you govern yourself. And even more damning— that you encourage others to do so as well.

A while back — as you’ll recall — I started calling you “IF” — short for Ian Freeman. I don’t believe anyone else ever picked it up, but I liked it. Something different and personal — a term of endearment I suppose. Last week I stumbled across the poem “IF” by Rudyard Kipling. I had read it a couple of times in years past, including when I saw it printed on a poster at an Airbnb in Florida, and thought it especially striking now, not just due to the title (which I hadn’t really noticed before) but due to the sentiment contained. I’m guessing you too have spied this poem at some point, but I wanted to share it — to get it in front of you — per your recent experiences.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
?Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Hopefully some of that resonated with you. I do think you are well-positioned, mentally and spiritually, to handle your present circumstances. Balanced. Able to find harmony. To see the bigger picture. But still, that does not negate the injustice to which you (and so many others now caged) are being subjected. 

I did a little more digging re: that poem and as I guess you would welcome more, not less, detail about it — both for historical context and as food for thought — please allow me to continue in this vein. 

The poem was published in 1910. As you can surmise from the poem’s last word — Rudyard wrote it for his son, John, who was 13 at the time. John perished only five years later. At the strident encouragement of his father, John had joined the British army during “the war to end all wars”. According to Wikipedia, “Rudyard Kipling came to see the war as a crusade for civilization against barbarism, and was even more keen that his son should see active service.” I wonder if Rudyard ever realized the folly of his nationalism, jingoism, and divisiveness

According to the interwebs, Rudyard had used as inspiration for the poem a man named Leander Starr Jameson, who moved from London to South Africa for his health and to continue his well-regarded medical practice. Eventually Jameson came to the attention of Cecil Rhodes — who was then heading-up the UK presence in that area. Jameson was wooed into politics, and later — at the behest of Rhodes with an eye to establishing greater UK domination in the region — led an unsuccessful uprising against the Boers. After “the Jameson Raid” — Rhodes was officially demoted (though still held sway) and Jameson was arrested, brought to London, tried, convicted, then in true political fashion, soon pardoned. While I don’t think Rudyard’s imperialist traits are worth embodying, one may discern wisdom, or agreement in some of his writings. After all, the truthfulness of something is not contingent on the speaker. 

(And, as an aside: Rhodes later went on to be instrumental in the formation of the Round Table Group, which sought to more closely align the UK-based regime with the regimes of its then-current and former colonies; to frame things not between nation-states but between those in political power and those out of political power, and to further empower the former while systematically dumbing-down the latter).

Much love to you IF. Thanks for living true to yourself.

P.S. I caught a bit of Stella Assange’s presentation made at Bitcoin Amsterdam a couple of weeks back. After she spoke, one of the staff commentators echoed what Stella had said — “Free Assange, Free the World” then added, “Free Snowden, and Free Ross.” I thought worthwhile the inclusion of: “Free IF.”

Twelve years ago I blogged on this website a criminal court case in Cheshire County, NH involving a military veteran turned independent journalist named Jason Talley.  Mr. Talley had become ensnared in contempt of court and disorderly conduct charges after he dared commit the dastardly crime of mere possession of a recording device in a New Hampshire court facility.

Ultimately, after months of litigation, the case was won in Mr. Tally’s favor due to a technical “error” committed by the prosecution.  In my humble opinion this “error” was intentionally committed to protect the New Hampshire Judiciary from having to publicly defend their egregious conduct.

What “egregious conduct” you ask?  The court order that Mr. Talley was accused of violating was put in place after another activist, Ademo Freeman, was arrested for “threatening” the Keene District Court Presiding Judge Edward Burke.  This interaction was caught on video and contained absolutely no threat.  What followed were administrative court orders restricting the Federal and State Constitution so that cameras could not be possessed in court facilities.

You see the misconduct here?  Judge Burke breaks the law that forbids making false claims to law enforcement officers and then supervisory judges in the New Hampshire Judiciary restrict people’s freedoms as a result.

A crime or misconduct committed by a state employee cannot give justification to the government to restrict the freedom of those who are not in government.  Not unless there are two classes of men.  This is what they did.

Why is this misconduct relevant today?  Well…  it is a black-and-white example of how individuals in government employment are able to break the law with impunity and then cover for each other when they’re caught.  I personally notified the Attorney Generals Office, the Legislature, and the Judicial Conduct Committee.  To my knowledge no one ever was held accountable.

I would have far less of a problem with this misconduct if the government was not going after peaceful friends of mine for victimless offenses, fining them, and then using that money to pay their own salaries.

In New Hampshire there are three existing government systems: The Federal Government, The New Hampshire Government, and the Shire Society.  Two are recognized as sovereign, the third is not.  I seek to change this.

I intend on representing a Shire Society member who is targeted by the State for victimless crime prosecution.  I am not a Shire Society member as my allegiance is to the New Hampshire and Federal Constitutions, but when the State prosecutes a Shire Society member for victimless crimes and uses those fines to pay the salaries of judges who are not subject to the same rules, we have two classes of men…  and that is prohibited by Part I, Article 10 of the New Hampshire Constitution.

Every New Hampshire law enforcement officer, judge, and lawmaker is duty bound like me to uphold the Right of Revolution…  and I intend on doing that by fighting for the Shire Society being a revolutionary government system.

We’ll see how it goes.  Stay tuned!

If you work in New Hampshire government and are wondering why I’m about to come after you like this, this is why.

Freedom’s the answer…  so what is the question? ????

(white) goldstandard-10-26-23-J.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-10-26-23-J-y.pdf

The post Joint Recommendations Gold Standard – October 26, 2023 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

It’s time once again to refill our PAC so we can continue supporting the ever-growing ranks of New Hampshire pro-liberty Representatives and Senators!
Similar to last year, we will be holding a fundraising event at Vine 32 in Bedford on Monday, November 27. Capacity is limited, so buy your tickets (each of which is a PAC contribution) now!

And if you can’t attend but have the means to help us prepare for what are sure to be challenging elections, please consider donating to the PAC.

The post PAC Refill Fundraiser appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

Crowd of Revolutionaries Gathers to Read and Sign the new Declaration of Independence.

NEW HAMPSHIRE – For the first time in the state’s recorded history, legislators in the New Hampshire House of Representatives have filed two bills aimed at giving voters the opportunity to vote on whether or not New Hampshire will peacefully secede from the United States of America.

State Representative Matthew Santonastaso (R – Cheshire 18) has sponsored a groundbreaking new bill that will force the creation of a Secession Study Committee in the Granite State. This comes on the heels of a bill filed recently by State Rep. Jason Gerhard (R – Merrimack 25) that if passed, would allow voters to amend the New Hampshire Constitution, declaring that the state will secede from the United States should the national debt reach a staggering $40 trillion.

The Secession Study Committee, as envisioned by the bill, won’t just be a cursory look into New Hampshire declaring its peaceful independence from the United States. It will delve into understanding the multifaceted implications, the potential benefits, and the challenges that New Hampshire might face if it were to consider seceding from the Union. This initiative underscores the urgency and importance of having a well-informed discussion on the subject.

Representative Santonastaso stated,“Given the current challenges at the federal level and potential unforeseen changes in the national landscape, it’s essential to study the feasibility of an independent New Hampshire. This effort is not about neglecting our shared history; it’s about proactive planning and ensuring our state shall persist under any circumstance.”

Carla Gericke, President Emeritus of New Hampshire’s Free State Project, weighed in on the matter, stating “The increase in the number of New Hampshireites, and now our legislators, who support peacefully exiting the Union, is indicative of the Biden admin’s complete and utter failure to represent the interests of our state. The federal government have nobody to thank but themselves for the inevitable result – more and more of us want to choose freedom.”

Matt Sabourin dit Choinière, the chairman of the New Hampshire Independence Political Action Committee, commented “The purpose of these bills is to get the tough questions relating to independence out on the table, and then get some answers to the public, it’s basically an outline for future grand national strategy. My father always said growing up that if a private business were to operate the same way as the government, they’d be locked in prison. It’s time to fire D.C.”

In the state’s 2022 legislative session, the House rejected a proposal that would give voters the opportunity to amend the New Hampshire constitution, allowing the state to peacefully declare independence from the United States. While opponents of New Hampshire’s secessionist movement have historically argued that the federal government is a net positive or at the least can be molded into one, proponents have argued that the federal government is too far gone – citing issues such as inflation, ongoing wars abroad, and healthcare. New Hampshire is one of approximately 25 states that pays more in taxes to the federal government than they receive in federal funding.

Once introduced, both bills will move to committee for further discussion and review. If passed, the Secession Study Committee would be comprised of members from both the House and Senate, as well as experts in economics, law, and governance. Their findings would be presented to the state legislature for consideration.

For the full press release see: https://nhipac.org/2023/10/18/684/

NEW HAMPSHIRE – For the first time in the state’s recorded history, legislators in the New Hampshire House of Representatives have filed two bills aimed at giving voters the opportunity to vote on whether or not New Hampshire will peacefully secede from the United States of America.

State Representative Matthew Santonastaso (R – Cheshire 18) has sponsored a groundbreaking new bill that will force the creation of a Secession Study Committee in the Granite State. This comes on the heels of a bill filed recently by State Rep. Jason Gerhard (R – Merrimack 25) that if passed, would allow voters to amend the New Hampshire Constitution, declaring that the state will secede from the United States should the national debt reach a staggering $40 trillion.

The Secession Study Committee, as envisioned by the bill, won’t just be a cursory look into New Hampshire declaring its peaceful independence from the United States. It will delve into understanding the multifaceted implications, the potential benefits, and the challenges that New Hampshire might face if it were to consider seceding from the Union. This initiative underscores the urgency and importance of having a well-informed discussion on the subject.

Representative Santonastaso stated,“Given the current challenges at the federal level and potential unforeseen changes in the national landscape, it’s essential to study the feasibility of an independent New Hampshire. This effort is not about neglecting our shared history; it’s about proactive planning and ensuring our state shall persist under any circumstance.”

Carla Gericke, President Emeritus of New Hampshire’s Free State Project, weighed in on the matter, stating “The increase in the number of New Hampshireites, and now our legislators, who support peacefully exiting the Union, is indicative of the Biden admin’s complete and utter failure to represent the interests of our state. The federal government have nobody to thank but themselves for the inevitable result – more and more of us want to choose freedom.”

Matt Sabourin dit Choinière, the chairman of the New Hampshire Independence Political Action Committee, commented “The purpose of these bills is to get the tough questions relating to independence out on the table, and then get some answers to the public, it’s basically an outline for future grand national strategy. My father always said growing up that if a private business were to operate the same way as the government, they’d be locked in prison. It’s time to fire D.C.”

In the state’s 2022 legislative session, the House rejected a proposal that would give voters the opportunity to amend the New Hampshire constitution, allowing the state to peacefully declare independence from the United States. While opponents of New Hampshire’s secessionist movement have historically argued that the federal government is a net positive or at the least can be molded into one, proponents have argued that the federal government is too far gone – citing issues such as inflation, ongoing wars abroad, and healthcare. New Hampshire is one of approximately 25 states that pays more in taxes to the federal government than they receive in federal funding.

Once introduced, both bills will move to committee for further discussion and review. If passed, the Secession Study Committee would be comprised of members from both the House and Senate, as well as experts in economics, law, and governance. Their findings would be presented to the state legislature for consideration.

For the full press release see: https://nhipac.org/2023/10/18/684/

Ian Giving Speech On The History Of The FBI’s Attack On Free Staters

First of all, if you haven’t read my write-up on the history of the FBI’s attack on liberty in New Hampshire and how one agents serious grudge has resulted in millions of dollars wasted and 3 targeted attacks on one man Ian Freeman, his radio show Free Talk Live, and ultimately the Free State Project’s libertarian migration movement check that out first, and then come back here when you are done. Also, check out TheCrypto6.com for video coverage, how to access links to articles, news coverage, and Free Talk Live coverage of the case, documentaries, and more.

Now I’m imagining you are here because you want to know how you can write to Ian Freeman. His current status is he’s being held at the Merrimack County Spiritual Retreat until at least his next court appearance where the defense and prosecutor will hash out what restitution will be stolen from Ian Freeman and… presumably others given that Ian has taken a vow of poverty and retains few possessions let alone any valuables. To be clear, most people don’t know this as Ian is a very humble individual and I’ve NEVER heard him speak about this semi-private decision publicly. However I feel this is as good a time as any to point this out given his current situation.

Now the state has kidnapped and caged many members of our community over the years, but this time it’s different. The amount of cage time is almost unprecedented outside of one other amazing activist and now a state rep Jason Gerhard (for those who don’t know Jason partook in anti-tax activism and spent 12+ years in federal prison for it).

So here is what we’re going to do. We’re going to write Ian Freeman at every opportunity. Send him print outs of things you find interesting that he can read. Send him letters about what is happening around New Hampshire. Let him know what the media is saying about his sentence. Let him know what we’re doing and how we are doing. Have you been pushing for New Hampshire independence? Has there been progress in that arena? Let Ian know! It’s not likely he’ll be able to read about this stuff in the mainstream media.

Mailing address:

[inmates’s name]
314 Daniel Webster Hwy
Boscawen, NH 03303

No inmate number is required, just the inmates name (Ian Freeman) at the jail’s address. Things to note: No crayon, altered paper, laminated paper, polaroids, staples, or paper clips are allowed and your mail may get rejected if any of this is true. We recommend typing your letter or writing with a black or blue pen to avoid having your mail being returned. What constitutes crayon may include colored pencil.

Be sure to number your correspondence with “Letter number #” at the top of each page as well as page # like this “Letter number 2 Page 3 of 6” so that the person you are writing to knows what order letters came in and for that matter if a letter or page doesn’t arrive in tact.

As always, assume that everything is going to be read, not all your mail may get received, and any response may not get returned to you.

And one last thing… Ian’t not actually the only caged activist in prison right now. We shouldn’t forget that Aria is also serving an 18 month sentence for selling Bitcoin as well. She is another of the Crypto6. You can find out how to write to her at https://www.ariadimezzo.com/

Around ~250 supporters turned out for Ian’s sentencing hearing between day 1 & 2 with some amount of overlap

Sadly many folks with an ulterior motive and those otherwise misinformed keep repeating the lies of the prosecution and mainstream media. I’m going to try and straighten out fact from fiction as the one person whose quite literally stood next to Ian Freeman and watched each and every little aspect since before the arrests in 2021 over the dastardly crime of not getting a permission slip to sell bitcoin. Let me start at the beginning though with some history lessons about the origins of the Shire Free Church and and the governments effort to squash the Free State Project as this case was never really about Ian selling Bitcoin or scammers as the prosecution would like you to believe.

Ian has been a key participant in the Free State Project and larger migration movement of libertarians to New Hampshire. The Free State Project aims to concentrate libertarians and like-minded individuals in New Hampshire for the purposes of securing liberty in our lifetime.

https://www.freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/ian-sentencing-video-freekeene/ian-sentencing-day-video-w-court-ruling-small4.mp4

Ian’s sentencing speech read aloud by Captain Kickass, pre-sentence protest, and reaction from supporters after conviction + special edition of Free Talk Live; If you’d like to support those supporting the Crypto6 consider purchasing the Crypto6 music created by our very own Captain Kickass : https://captainkickass.com/

 

 

In the early days of the Free State Project early movers were asked why they moved and 2/3rd of them responded with Ian Freeman, Free Talk Live, or something connected to Ian. If there was ever a super activist it was Ian Freeman. Ian has been a non-stop super activist since moving to New Hampshire over a decade ago. He co-founded a talk show called Free Talk Live that gives anybody and everybody the opportunity to speak about anything they like on a nationally syndicated radio show. This however is just one of many activities Ian is active in. From reporting on abusive state actors to filming boring hearings at the state house. From protests to running for office Ian has done, Ian has organized it, and Ian has even committed acts of civil disobedience in face of cage time to protest unjust laws harming peaceful people. Ian even co-founded a church in 2010 for all the philosophically principled libertarian activists moving to New Hampshire! The church, the Shire Free Church was never going to be an ordinary church with steeple however. It was and is an interfaith church where the only requirement to partake is that you are an advocate of peace.

We take this mission of advocacy very seriously. Everyone who moves to New Hampshire for the Free State Project has signed a statement of intent and advocates for peaceful solutions to solve problems rather than violence or threats thereof. Often although not always violence is done through or in the name of the state. Many don’t likely understand what a libertarian actually is and confuse political messages by people claiming to be libertarian while not being libertarian with actual libertarians. Actual libertarians believe in something called the non-aggression principle. In simple terms it’s the idea that violence should only ever be used as a last resort and in self defense. Personally I like to describe it being just shy of a pacifist philosophy. When someone advocates for war, I object. When someone advocates to solve a social problem through the legislature I object. In order for a law to be legitimate in my eyes a party with a valid claim must be the victim of violence. Outlawing guns does not involve a victim. A party with a gunshot wound probably involves a victim of violence. Outlawing the former does not follow libertarian philosophy. Outlawing the later outside self defense does. Taxing John at the point of a gun is violent and the laws illegitimate. Asking John to make a voluntary contribution to help someone in need on the other hand is perfectly acceptable and admirable.

This advocacy for peace and criticism of law enforcement and governance by the way of a gun has never sat well with the bureaucrats and government employees and it’s even resulted in a decade long grudge between a particular federal employee Phil Christiana and a particular free state project leader Ian Freeman. In fact Ian gave a talk on the background of FBI’s attack on free staters and the connection to FBI agent Phil Christiana at the Porcupine Freedom Festival in 2022.

While the first issues between agent Phil Christiana and free staters began prior to Ian Freeman joining the Free State Project it was Ian Freeman that really ticked off Phil Christiana. Phil Christiana appears to see Ian as his enemy having led not 1, not 2, but 3 FBI investigations into taking Ian out. The first that I’m aware of occurred in 2012 with the arrest of Free Talk Live co-host Rich Paul. At the time Ian Freeman had taken the initiative to create an activist center and apparently Phil Christiana really hated this. The feds setup an undercover sting operation in an effort to rope in Rich Paul (he changed his name for political reasons to ‘Nobody’, and is the same co-host arrested in the Crypto6 case) with the intent of using Rich to get at Ian Freeman. Rich was brought to the local Keene police station and waiting inside was an FBI agent. That FBI agent told Rich that he had two choices. He could face prosecution or go wear a wire into the Keene activist center. Long story short- Rich refused, took it to trial, risked 100+ years in a cage, and ended up losing at least legally speaking. Despite the max he could have gotten he spent one year in a cage for this.

 

 

In 2016 the FBI once again were up to no good. An agent made a false swearifcation two weeks after a co-founder co-host of Free Talk Live criticized the FBI for distributing child pornography. It was not only disturbing, but hypocritical as the FBI regularly explains the ban on child pornography distribution as being to protect the children. By that logic the FBI was literally harming the children it was claiming to protect. This criticism came about a year after the FBI raided actual pedophiles or at least to the extent that they were telling the truth as the raids were based on tainted warrants. In any event the false affidavit that led to a raid was intended to take out Ian Freeman and Free Talk Live by way of slander through the media. Despite this 2016 raid on Free Talk Live’s studio and hit on Ian’s reputation Phil Christiana failed to take out either Ian Freeman or Free Talk Live. About 7 of 200 radio stations stopped airing Free Talk Live in response to the raid. Despite no arrests and no evidence the feds smeared Ian’s name all over the newspapers. Ian and others who had electronics stolen from the studio have been forced to sue the FBI to get their equipment returned. It’s only been in the last year or so that the FBI has had to give up and return the equipment as no crime was ever committed. They have however tried to drag the return of Ian’s devices out in furtherance of their goals of taking Ian out by way of leaving a question mark in peoples minds as to the extremely disturbing insinuation. While Ian may think optimistically about the judge in his Crypto6 case I don’t. During the sentencing hearing for Crypto6 co-defendant Renee Spinella Judge Joseph Laplante directed the prosecution to pursue fraudulent charges against Ian for despicable crimes that even the prosecution responded had been investigated and had no merit.

The Shire Free Churches Vending Machines Warned Users About Potential Scammers And The Various Ways They May Get Tricked Into Buying Bitcoin

In 2016 they raided over non-existent despicable content that didn’t exist based on a fraudulent affidavit. According to the prosecutor immediately following the March 2021 Crypto6 arrests she stated that the Crypto6 investigation began in March of 2016. If you can do the math this was immediately following the failed attempt at taking Ian out via a raid over content that alluded to crimes that never occurred. In 2021 after a 5-year investigation the FBI raided again this time over the bastardly crime of selling Bitcoin. The prosecution may now be claiming it was about scammers or money laundering. However that isn’t how it started, and during sentencing the prosecution admitted as much. The feds didn’t have a case. They didn’t know of any victims relating to Ian Freeman or the Shire Free Church. After spending millions of dollars on round the clock surveillance of Free Talk Live’s studio, tailing co-hosts vehicles for months on end, and infiltrating the libertarian porcupine freedom festival what did they know? They knew Ian was on the board of the Shire Free Church, that Ian and the church were selling Bitcoin for charity. This was never a secret. The vending machines had been well advertised in the newspapers and on popular online sites tracking where users can find a Bitcoin vending machine. The vending machines even warned unattended purchasers about the risks of online scammers and to never send Bitcoin to someone they did not know. This is no different than what retailers do for pre-paid card products.

 

2017 Photo Of The Shire Free Churches First Vending Machine Available For General Public Access Getting Some Publicity In The Local Paper

 

Ian even warned everyone including customers that transacted off of LocalBitcoin including via his Telegram profile of scammers

Ian even warned users in his social media profiles that he would NEVER ask anyone to send him crypto of any kind. A common scamming tactic is to impersonate other users in an effort to trick friends into sending crypto.

Ian didn’t sell crypto for profit, the Shire Free Church sold it for charity AND because Ian firmly believes whether you do or not that spreading crypto undermines government induced violence. Ian and the rest of us are advocating for a peaceful voluntary society in the courts, in the state house, and on the radio. It sounds kinda crazy if you don’t have an understanding of currency and the history of money or the context in which this preaching occurs. And remember this is merely one outreach effort of the church. Before dollars existed notes were issued to people who physically deposited their gold with banks. The promissory notes could then be handed in and the bank would give you your gold. In time people began trading those promissory notes directly for goods and services rather than exchanging actual gold. The United States created a currency and that currency was a standardization of the promissory notes that had previously been issued by private banks. This made it even more convenient as now you didn’t have to trade your TD bank promissory notes for a Bank Of America promissory note when you traveled outside the reach of TD Banks. After World War II the United States even convinced- or bullied may be a more appropriate term here the rest of the world to adopt the US dollar as the world reserve currency. This is all currencies were tied to the US dollar and the US dollar could then be exchanged for gold held by the United States. Now everyone was dependent on the dollar to buy and sell things between foreign countries. In 1971 the US ended this convertibility.

Bitcoin was started as a means of escaping banks and supporting violent governments, not as a tool for investors, even if admittedly it’s been the best investment in all of human history thus far

No longer could you get your gold out. Some countries did try to forcefully repatriate their countries gold reserves. Long story short the United States eliminated the ability to get your gold out of their vaults, the thing that actually has value. You might now be wondering why did they do that? Well, the United States was at war and by eliminating this convertibility the could print dollars and tax or steal from anyone who held US dollars. This funded the wars occurring at the time and the United States remains on this system today. In recent years (depending on what system you use to do the calculation) US dollar holders lost as much as 18% of their dollars value, or in other terms gold had they merely been safekeeping it for you. If you disagree with funding violence spreading Bitcoin or crypto more generally is one way to minimize your participation in government committed atrocities. You may have seen the drop Bitcoin, not bombs stickers, and this is at the heart of why principled libertarians became interested in Bitcoin before “investors” got on board.

Now I’m sure people are yelling, but the The Shire Free Church was fake! Because that is what the perpetrators of the real fraud have said. They have said it was setup disingenuously to attract scammers too. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the Shire Free Church dates back to 2010. 6 years before the first vending machines were installed in publicly accessible places or Bitcoin sold online. The Church was not that different than a TV ministry that preaches its values, but in this case had real people in the physical and local world community in New Hampshire too. A government informant was even married by the Shire Free Church’s minister Mark Edge at the Porcupine Freedom Festival in 2018. Many others have also been married by the Shire Free Church. The humorous thing here is Melanie Neighbors both claimed on the stand that the church was fake while then being questioned about why she would have had a fake church marry her. She had no good response to that.

 

 

Shire Free Church Minister Mark Edge Officiates The Marriage Of Fed Informant Melanie Neighbours. Take particular note of the religious clothing the minister is wearing. It says bitcoin, not bombs which is a reference to the immorality of using US dollars. US dollars are what we call fiat currency, or my preference is dirty fiat. It means government money of which has no backing. This is you can’t redeem your dollar for a certain amount of gold and the US government prints more and more dollars to fund war efforts. The printing of these dollars results in inflation and the loss of dollar holders purchasing power. Members of the Shire Free Church and particularly those most devoted resist the use of dollars whether it be through use of Bitcoin other cryptocurrencies or Goldbacks (Goldbacks are a currency containing actual gold).

The Shire Free Church was founded by group of people and has over the past 13 years had many different outreach projects. It’s not just a front to sell Bitcoin. The church was funded initially by donations by different people. The donation of a single person that was not Ian included a 100 BTC Casascius Bar. It’s hard to even calculate what that is worth today as so few are left unredeemed and the value isn’t just in the 100 Bitcoin. However, that alone over the last 13 years meant the church had enough reserves to last it at least 40 years assuming that the value kept going up or the church otherwise invested it. Yes, churches, and non-profits have investments, and they also have employees. Ian however did not receive a salary and what most people don’t know is he long ago took a vow of poverty. His minimal existence is sustained by the church. He has one bedroom in one of the churches two properties. He drives a church vehicle that is also used for other church activities. This is a vehicle that was purchased used for what I believe was less than $10,000 at the time. That’s it! This is the guy that people are vehemently attacking based on lies that he profited from the sale of Bitcoin. He never had a need. He donated two properties to the church in 2010, before taking a vow of poverty. The one property is today over-valued at under $300,000 and the other is a mixed use property with a small convenience store on it and a house that is harder to estimate, but maybe also in the $200-300,000 range. The property has not had a successful enterprise on it in at least a few decades, but the church has given several small businesses and minority entrepreneurs over the decade an opportunity to get into the game and at least try to make something of it. According to the experts that testified Ian may not owe any taxes, and the IRS’s website says neither churches nor ministers must file a return. The gist of it is a minister of a church is only required to file if they have a job working at Mc Donalds on the side. The essentials can be covered by the church. Ian devoted his life to his ministry. While he does not currently hold a paying job he has had employment in the past working at K-mart and was previously employed in the radio business. In fact after Ian’s 2021 arrest he was given a prestigious freedom of speech award by talk radio’s premiere industry publication. He has also previously received other awards including one for being the most outspoken advocate for freedom by the Free State Project.

 

The Two Church Owned Properties

 

Do you think having a privacy policy makes you someone who caters to scammers? I’d hope not. Your bank has one of these. Do you really think a money laundering business would advertise that they require ID? Of course not. Would an individual that the prosecutors are claiming to be, and at least to this degree are right a genius really have used Telegram, but than not deleted their conversations with victims? Would they have run Linux and then not made the disk read-only despite having created educational videos on Tails? Tails is an operating system designed to provide anonymity to users for those unaware. Ian didn’t create “secret chats” as Telegram calls them to securely communicate using end-to-end encryption with anyone the government is disingenuously calling a victim. In fact, the government attempted to imply that Telegram was used to hide a crime when no efforts were taken to do so. While Telegram by default has encryption it’s not end-to-end and no more secure than the platform utilized primarily to sell Bitcoin. What was the reason? I didn’t ask, but it’s obvious to anyone whose ever sold anything on eBay. Platforms like these charge fees. By taking a purchase off a platform you save on the fees. This usually works fine so long as you have a history with a buyer. These are the instances where Ian took some sales off of localbitcoin where the church normally sold Bitcoin.

Another lie that has been repeated and perpetrated by false prosecutorial claims was that Ian charged “exorbitant fees” to exchange proceeds from fraudsters’ romance and other scams into Bitcoin, which was really the church, and those fees they claimed he charged for Bitcoin were 10-21%. This is wrong. It’s an outright lie and manipulation. The church may have charged as much as 21% at some point to a first time customer under some circumstance. However all the victims in this case paid 10%, not 21%. These are competitive rates for online peer to peer platforms within the time frame  alleged and for the methods of payments used (which each have different costs associated with them). For selling crypto the church actually charged as little as 5% and its vending machines typically had the lowest rates for purchasing Bitcoin anywhere. The first time I purchased Bitcoin from the churches vending machine I paid an 8% fee. This is as low as I believe the vending machines themselves ever got. The prosecutor claimed that these fees were evidence that that Ian catered to scammers. It’s not the case given that they were in line with the industry norms. The church didn’t operate a Bitcoin exchange as the government claims. The church operated 1-4 vending machines with a new vending machine coming online about once a year. The church also sold Bitcoin on localbitcoin, but the fees varied and were determined by the market and costs associated with different methods. Vending machine rates differ but are typically (yes, FINCEN registered) around 8-20% and there was only one example of another vending machine operator charging 8% that I’ve ever encountered. Bitcoin exchanges are a high volume operation and have different costs associated with them. This is why they can offer 1-2% fees, but this can also be misleading as often exchanges lie to you. They don’t sell you Bitcoin. They sell you IOUs for Bitcoin. In other words if you send IOUs from one user to another on the same exchange it doesn’t cost anything more because you aren’t actually sending Bitcoin. But if you withdraw your IOUS and exchange them for actual Bitcoin to a wallet you control off the exchange or for a fiat currency these exchanges will charge another percentage fee on top of this 1-2% advertised rate.

Other disturbing aspects about the case is the basis for which the prosecutor considered a transaction to be suspicious. The prosecutor asked how Ian could possibly have overlooked the fact one guy was black. The government says that Ian should have filed a report on it (even though he couldn’t as the church wasn’t a money transmitter under the law). People who are over 60 are also suspicious apparently as well people from other countries or maybe it’s just countries that are predominantly not of Caucasian or of European dissent. It frankly wasn’t clear how far this guys bigotry extended. Meanwhile Ian regularly helped business owners and others at no charge as well as folks on the older side with their crypto questions. A number of business owners testified to this. One lady regular came and comes to our Keene Decentralized Currency Meetups. She was the oldest person to testify at 79 years old during the trial. Many other businesses were setup to accept crypto by Ian- and not once did he ask for money. Ian didn’t do cryptocurrency activism for profit. He did it for religious reasons. He believes in peace and anything to that end he supports. Speaking of which Ian wasn’t selling just Bitcoin as a fundraiser for the church. The church also sold goldbacks which are a form of ‘real money’. What that means is that the currency isn’t backed by gold. It is gold. To Ian it’s not about making money. He was already wealthy prior to founding the church and rather than retire like some people in our community he took a vow of poverty and disposed of his assets. He now works focuses full time on various outreach efforts to that end.

Let’s talk about some of these other outreach efforts for a moment that have nothing to do with Bitcoin. The government admits that most Bitcoin sold went back into buying Bitcoin. They never claimed it went to fund luxury cars, mansions, or his personal benefit. They may have said it was his personal gain, but no evidence of this existed that they could point to. No, not at all, but I can tell you where the money went that didn’t return to the pool to purchase more Bitcoin. It went to charitable causes in Keene and to people around the world.

The church funded the construction of a mosque for a persecuted religious minority in Keene. The space was donated by the church and about 20 muslim families one of which was from India even testified to that end. He did not know much about the Shire Free Church other than that the church had funded the construction of the mosque and that his family partook in the mosques services, but none-the-less, the church was focused on its mission of spreading peace and helping people in need. The government then had the gall to insult the man asking if the mosque was just another front for Bitcoin. The man responded that he didn’t know anything about Bitcoin although acknowledged his Indian Curry Restaurant accepted Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies even though he didn’t know much about it and needed a lot of help with it. Something else which he said was that Ian was always extremely helpful with Bitcoin and promoting his business. When he was asked if Ian charged for this he said no. He also said he was extremely appreciative of Ian and all that Ian had done to drive traffic to his struggling restaurant. This was also said by a number of other witnesses that were brought in to counter the governments slander.

Another instance of the churches outreach efforts included funding for an orphanage in Uganda. What is truly disingenuous and nefarious is the feds denial of a mans visa who could otherwise have come to the United States to testify on Ian’s behalf about orphanage he helped build with the Shire Free Churches funding and support. This was one of the larger financial contributions to charitable causes that the church made and its members helped raise additional funds for.

Some Of The People Involved In The Uganda Orphanage The Shire Free Church Made Possible

The church has also attempted to acquire and donate property to a local homeless shelter. What almost no one else is aware of besides me, Ian, and maybe couple of others is that the FBI interfered in the effort to acquire and donate a portion of a property to the homeless shelter. The property consisted of two attached buildings and one of them would have been donated to the shelter had the shelter not backed away in fear of the consequences as the result of government meddling. It was not the church or Ian that were fake, or at fault for under-performing if you were to somehow try and argue that, but the government’s own intimidation of charitable organizations that the church was attempting to work with.

The church also helped many people in the community who were of lower income with below market rate rents. Some of these families had members with drug addiction issues and other mental health problems. Other members of the church would routinely volunteer to drive some of these individuals around. One family lacked a car. Neither mom nor dad could drive and were dependent on the church and its members for rides to and from grocery stores and even getting to and from work. On numerous occasions I personally drove one mother who had been separated for the sake of the kids to and from work while she was attempting to beat a terrible drug addiction. Both sides had mental health issues, but at least dad was employed and able to take care of the kids with some amount of outside assistance. Dad eventually was able to get on some form of government assistance and is now running his own business and licensed.

Before the building was converted to a mosque other church members assisted in cleaning it out. This volunteer work was grueling. The house had previously been used by a family who had fled the state. Their drug addictions were severe and despite having garbage pickup service paid for by a good samaritan they would never put the garbage outside for pickup. Instead of using the service they started using the basement as a dumping ground for their trash. This resulted in a house full of bed bugs, rodents, and physical deterioration of the property. It took a slew of volunteers to help clean it out. If only I wouldn’t embarrass one of the volunteers who did the dirtiest of the deeds I’d include a picture here of him that I have stripping down to his undies and being scrubbed down outside the home (no worries, it’s not weird, it is someone very close to me). It was that disgusting. It’s unclear if those bedbugs were ever fully eliminated. It’s been at least a good handful of years and despite this there was a bedbug infestation that was recently discovered by new tenants. Keep in mind the church immediately took appropriate action to remediate the situation once it was brought to attention.

During the sentencing hearing at least one of the media outlets seemed to describe supporters as disturbing as if we were giving a scammer a “standing ovation when he entered the room”. In reality we were supporting an innocent man fighting against thugs who were defrauding the public and using violence against a man who went above and beyond to stop scams and educate people about safe and proper use of Bitcoin. Not just as an investment, but as a means of transacting business. Bitcoin is not just a means of spreading peace, but while we may have peaceful objectives it’s actually a means of helping people escape an actually nefarious system. Bitcoin was created in response to the 2008 financial collapse when the banks took peoples homes after knowingly issuing subprime loans that borrowers would not be able to pay back when interest rates rose. Bitcoin enables users to be their own bank. One need not procure the services of highly regulated and immoral financial institutions to conduct transactions at a distance. These financial institutions have been ordered by bureaucrats with regulatory authority to ban classes of people from protesters to workers in the legal sex trade. From Justin Trudeau ordering bank account seizures during the truckers protest in Canada to US bureaucrats cutting off access to unauthorized entrants to essential banking services. Sometimes these acts just push up the cost of sending money back home, but at other times it’s it’s a complete financial nightmare for people who haven’t even been in a completely legal industry for 20 years. Protecting vulnerable people is a lofty goal, but it’s not morally acceptable to lock people up, use violence against, and lie about individuals did under the guise of fighting crime. It’s not morally OK to exploit and use people as scapegoats to send a message either.

At the end of the day Ian was convicted of something he did not do. Fortunately all of the significant charges including money laundering were tossed for lack of evidence before sentencing or dropped prior to the trial. The jury didn’t have evidence upon which to come to a verdict of guilty as the evidence presented actually proved his innocence. He turned down the undercover IRS agents ask to buy Bitcoin and would not sell to him once he knew the agent was pretending to be a drug dealer. Ultimately 20 of the 27 trumped up charges were dropped or otherwise tossed. What remains must now be appealed post-sentencing.

Some points to note about how the judge and audience are being misled. One victims letter that was read to the court included that a scammer directed her to wire money to the church and sent $300,000 “wiping out her life’s savings”. This isn’t correct. She may have been ripped off for $300,000, but the church didn’t see that money. The scammers would direct their victims to purchase various amounts of Bitcoin from different sellers. The church did receive some repeat business, but ultimately these amounts were a small percentage of the funds lost. Ian would utilize commercial phone books to lookup and call buyers in an effort to avoid calling someone merely pretending to be the buyer. Through this method he was able to confirm that the buyers of Bitcoin from the church understood that they were buying Bitcoin and were not being scammed. The problem ultimately was that scammers aren’t all dumb. Some are actually very intelligent and were successful at convincing their victims to lie about their purchases. At one point Ian even asked a women if she had ever met her husband. This was not because he suspected her of being a victim necessarily, but merely because he was trying to catch any potential scammer off guard. While offensive in nature he carefully asked the question blaming the law as to why he was asking it, still to some offense. To make a long story short she lied and said she had. If she had said she had never met her husband Ian may have been able to have persuaded her not to buy Bitcoin for a lover she had never met in person. Remember that it was not just the church that victims would buy bitcoin from, so even had he refused to sell to her she would not have been left unvictimized short of Ian having been able to convince her of the mistake she was making.

One of the most interesting parts of the sentencing was that a supposed victim read a letter for the audience that stated she had bought her bitcoin at a vending machine in the state of Florida. The Shire Free Church never operated a vending machine outside the state of New Hampshire. This was not testimony, but it demonstrates that these women were being coached and providing unreliable testimony. These so-called victims were convinced by the prosecution that Ian was somehow involved in their victimization despite it being the farthest thing from the truth. “if only Ian had registered” was the logic, despite that not making an iota of a difference given the churches know your customer regime was stronger than that of any bank these victims used to wire funds to the church in the first place.

There was one other disturbing thing I overheard from a conversation between a Sentinel reporter and a government employee. The government employee was OK’ing the writers story. Whether this was suggestive that he was working hand in hand or otherwise seeking approval it didn’t appear to be honest journalism. The media for the most part failed to get the whole story or fairly report the story although I believe the reporting for the Sentinel on this sentencing story despite this incident was not as terrible as I’ve seen it on other articles they’ve  written about the Crypto6. At least some effort appeared to be made to give the resemblance of fair reporting whether or not it actually was.

The government brought in a lot of sob stories about elderly women being victims. In reality it wasn’t all women, and they weren’t all elderly. About 20% of the victims were young and no older than the judge, prosecutors, and lawyers, and some were men. The victims were that of third party perpetrators and the government admitted during the trial that Ian did NOT scam anyone or know of the scammers at the time these victims were being scammed. They attempted to frame it as if he knew the people buying Bitcoin were victims of scammers by carefully cutting audio from episodes of Free Talk Live where the scams were discussed post-discovery. Prior to discovery Ian did not know any of these victims at trial were being victimized by a third party scammer. These so-called victims had lied to the banks which were used to wire the money to the church. The banks didn’t have any effective KYC- procedures either that worked 100% of the time. A credit union lady testified they don’t have to cut off individual transactions even. Know your customer procedures were followed by Ian religiously. Know your customer procedures are not created by the government, but rather by the financial institutions licensed to transmit money or otherwise those operating banks. KYC is not required unless you are moving money on behalf of another from one location to another or from one person to another. The church never transmitted anything. The church sold Bitcoin and only sold Bitcoin from it’s own wallet raising money for charity. No financial gain occurred as it relates to Ian Freeman.

Ultimately the lawyers who advised the church prior to the 2021 arrest were correct on the requirements and whether the church had to register with the regulatory agency FINCEN. The lawyers that advised the church had a deep understanding of what Bitcoin was. The judge on the other hand couldn’t fathom what Bitcoin was. In his decision he actually revealed that he thought the blockchain was a real life breathing human being. The church in practice only ever sold its own Bitcoin though and did not move money on behalf of others like walmart does or a bank does or an actual exchange does. The church didn’t need to register as a money transmitter for this and other reasons, but the ignorance of the judge resulted in a conviction on the money transmitter charge anyway. The other aspect of why the church wasn’t required to register came down to the fact the church wasn’t doing it for profit. A person selling Bitcoin without a profit or markup for instance or a church doing it for charity isn’t included in the law. I believe that the defense preserved the issue for appeal so it could get overturned on appeal. Unfortunately it’s more than likely Ian will serve out his sentence prior to the appeal meaning that while he may get found not guilty of all the charges later he’ll still have served his sentence.

For now the remaining convictions that will need to be appealed include the follow: Operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and attempts to evade or defeat tax in the years 2016 through 2019.

For that Ian has been sentenced to 8 years for what amounted to a paperwork violation. The good news is this is more than half of the minimum sentence for the charges he’s been convicted of. In practical terms the estimate for his release with “good time” under a new law is 4 ½ to 5 years. And sadly yes he has not been allowed to remain free on appeal as the judge had previously stated was likely. This is probably because he threw out the money laundering charge prior to sentence and it was the lack of evidence for the knowledge component of the money laundering statute that the judge thought would be successful on appeal. So, the good news is he’ll be back. The bad news is it probably won’t be before his appeal is concluded or his sentence is completed. Judge Laplante also sentenced Ian to two years of supervised release, ordered him to pay a court fine of $40,000, and ordered forfeiture and restitution to be decided at a future hearing. Stay tuned to Free Keene for continuation of this story and others. And remember, Ian may be held up for a bit, but the Free State Project, Free Talk Live, and the church live on. We should be ecstatic as our community is thriving with record numbers of new movers every year, more and more government violence in New Hampshire being eliminated,  and those advocating violence being done away with in favor of peaceful liberty minded individuals. For that I am very thankful! So lets keep up the good work.

 

A Locally Organized Bitcoin Pizza Day Photo Celebrating The Day That Bitcoin Was First Used A Currency, NOT Just Some Investment Vehicle Or Scammer Tool

It’s been two-and-a-half years since the outrageous raid against half-a-dozen peaceful advocates of cryptocurrency here in New Hampshire, now known as “The Crypto Six“. Sadly, federal court rules prohibit any kind of recording of court proceedings, so I’m sharing with you the text of what I intend to read in court prior to the judge issuing his sentence on my now seven victimless crime convictions, as he tossed one of the worst two convictions out a couple of weeks ago. Here it is:

I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today. I hope you can appreciate that I’m in a bit of an awkward position. Normally apologies and acceptance of responsibility are expected from a defendant at a sentencing hearing. I have been convicted on all eight counts I faced in trial by a jury of twelve other human beings. Since that time, this court has thankfully overturned my wrongful conviction on the money laundering count. We are going to be appealing the remaining seven convictions on the basis that the prosecution never proved a single one of them. So, I can’t apologize for those things, as I do not believe I broke the law. Regardless, the jury found me guilty despite the defects in the prosecutors’ case, so there is something in their opinion to be acknowledged. I don’t know if they didn’t like me or didn’t believe me, but they thought I deserved to be found guilty – and I have to accept that there was some reason they did that, whether I like it or not.

There is something I do want to apologize for however, and that is that I failed to detect and prevent 100% of scam victims from using my services. For that, I am sorry. To the extent that my screening and know-your-customer procedures failed to alert me and the victims to what was happening to them, I take full responsibility for my failure and would like to request the court direct any fine toward the scammers’ victims, instead of the government.

In their recent sentencing memorandum, the prosecution accused me of never having a real job. The truth is, I’ve worked several years at K-Mart and several at multiple radio stations, including several working for Clear Channel Communications, now known as iHeartRadio. That is where I began my now nationally syndicated talk radio program in 2002, that they insultingly call a “hobby”, simply because its revenue is down from its previous heights. They act as though I could be heard on over 170 radio stations nationwide without any history in the industry or having ever lifted a finger. They obviously know nothing about entrepreneurship and the countless hours I have invested in building and maintaining the studio, calling radio stations to get them to carry our show, running our website and online presence, and then actually performing the show three hours a night, several days every week, which I have done for two decades of my life. My show is my life’s work, and it’s completely unnecessary to their case to belittle it. We have been honored by TALKERS Magazine, the top industry publication, with inclusion into their “Heavy Hundred” for over a decade. It’s a list of the most influential talk show hosts in America. This year we ranked at number 25. TALKERS also awarded me with their coveted “Freedom of Speech Award” in 2022, an annual award that has gone to approximately 30 talk hosts in the last few decades including Rush Limbaugh.

The have also insulted my religion and my church, simply because they don’t understand it, or pretend not to. While we don’t utilize a traditional religious meeting space, we did provide one, free of charge, to the local Muslim community, as our witness Mohammed Ali testified. This is because the Shire Free Church, like the Unitarian Universalists, is an interfaith church. Our ministers in Keene conduct their ministry via broadcast media, as many television and radio churches have done for decades. Our church has donated to multiple charities including the Hundred Nights Homeless shelter, Liberty in North Korea, and were instrumental in building an orphanage in Uganda. Multiple local business owners testified under oath and via written letter, that I provided all my cryptocurrency consulting services to them free of charge, as this was also part of my church mission. Despite the prosecutors’ claims that I’m the only minister, we actually have multiple and they have presided over multiple weddings, including the very witness they had falsely testify that the church isn’t real. Despite the prosecutors’ claim that the Church only existed to confuse banks, the Shire Free Church was founded a year prior to my inspiration to launch our first vending machine in Keene, and three years before my first localbitcoins sale.

However, the most insulting part about the case against me is the idea that I was conspiring with fraudsters to assist them in their evil deeds. The prosecutors’ case attempted to have it both ways – on one hand they said advertising that I respected privacy was an invitation to criminals, but then they showed some of the detailed requirements I put buyers through to verify their identities and alert them to what they were buying and how. What they did not show the jury was my list of questions I had developed to ask people prior to selling them bitcoin. The questions specifically identified different types of scams and required the buyer to confirm they were not being victimized.

It’s worth pointing out that my procedure was more in depth than any of the banks who also sent away the scam victims’ life savings, yet the bank tellers and managers were not arrested.

Unfortunately, it took me some time to develop these procedures as I learned slowly of the different types of scams. There was no how-to-manual to read when I started this and initially I was the direct target of the scammers, who used my bank info to pay credit card bills or car payments. Since the banks never told me why they were closing my accounts, it kept me in the dark much longer about what was happening to a small percentage of my buyers.

The prosecution suggested during trial that the only reason I had identification procedures in place was to protect my bank accounts. While that is one reason, it’s not the only reason. The other reason is because I don’t want people to be taken advantage of. As a libertarian voluntarist, I am firmly against fraud and would never want to be a part of it. Indeed, my perfect seller ratings on localbitcoins.com were proof of my reputation for honesty. Eventually, my mission expanded beyond spreading bitcoin to include to never let a scammer get through my screening.

Sadly, no matter how strict I became or how many hoops I put in place for buyers to jump, I could not catch them all, as I learned with the case of Patrick Brown, who testified at the trial. Mr Brown said under oath that I only asked him one question when we talked on the phone prior to selling him bitcoin. However, by that time I had developed the series of questions I mentioned earlier, which included asking him if there was a third party putting him up to this and if he was under duress. He assured me he was buying the bitcoins for investment purposes on his own volition. So I sold it to him, and then he came back for a few more buys. I thought he was a satisfied, repeat customer until his bank tried to pull back one of his wires from my account. I reached out to Patrick, whose number I still have in my phone, to try to find out what happened, and eventually heard from Detective Allen Snoddy from Travis County Sheriffs. I spent a half hour on the phone with Detective Snoddy and provided any information I could to help him with his investigation, and Detective Snoddy explained to me what had happened to Mr. Brown. That’s when I learned that he WAS under duress as the scammers were threatening him and pretending to be federal government agents. It was in my conversation with Detective Snoddy that I learned Patrick Brown lied to me to get me to sell him bitcoin.

The other witnesses in the case, I had no idea were victims of scams, and I didn’t find out they had been victimized until I saw their names and stories in the discovery for this case. Karla Cino had purchased many times from me over longer than a year. She represented herself to me as a successful real estate agent who was buying for herself and eventually selling to others. I didn’t know until the trial that she’d been working with a scammer for half-a-decade and was herself acting as a money transmitter for the scammer. She kept those details from me. The same was true about Nancy Triestram – she revealed at trial she was actually working with her scammer and moved money at his behest, while keeping me in the dark. Dannela Varel was a sophisticated financial advisor by trade, but even she was fooled by a scammer. What I learned was the scammers are so persuasive, they will get their victims to lie and do anything necessary to get through my requirements – it didn’t matter how strict I was or how many questions I asked. I was also the victim of the scammers, who had their victims lie to get through my security – putting me unknowingly in the position of taking the fall for their crimes.

One more example of the dishonesty of the victims in this case came to light since the previous sentencing hearing, where Karen Miller read her letter to the court. In it, she admitted having bought bitcoin from me with other people’s money that the scammer had his victims send to Karen. Karen never told me this. Like Patrick Brown, I still have her cell phone number in my phone, as I had spoken to her more than once to make sure she was a consenting buyer, as she purchased from me multiple times. She appeared to be a wealthy businesswoman buying bitcoin for investment and business purposes. I met Karen through Rebecca Viar, who I considered to be a good customer. Karen Miller assured me in my first phone call with her that she knew Rebecca Viar personally. This turned out to be a lie. Thanks to the most recent letter filed by the prosecution from Pam Hamilton Campbell, we know Karen Miller was willing to tell lies to get what she and the scammer wanted from me, and others. In her letter, Pam Campbell stated Karen Miller “posed on the phone to me as the scammer’s sister… she and I spoke on the phone several times. She assured me that, as his sister, she was also sending him money to help him out of his situation. I would never have sent him money – $753,251 out of the kindness of my heart, had she not compelled me using the unconscionable methods via emotional blackmail, perpetrated to commit this crime.” I want to be clear, I don’t think Karen Miller was knowingly part of this scam. However, she was under this man’s spell and was willing to lie to help him. She lied to Pam Campbell to get her to send Karen money and she lied to me to get me to accept it. However, she never told me she was using other people’s money. This is yet another example of how I was tricked by the scam victims. Now these poor people think their scammer has been caught and is facing punishment, when in reality whoever “Jerry Harmon” is is still out there, probably still running the same scam and using one of the thousands of other bitcoin sellers on the peer-to-peer sites.

I am sorry those people were taken advantage of and that I couldn’t stop them all. I did stop plenty of them, however. While the prosecutors focused on a few dozen scam victims who bought bitcoin through me, they objected to me showing my user feedback on localbitcoins. This is because the only negative feedback I had was from likely scammers who were mad that my requirements were too onerous. Between my account, Renee’s, and Nobody’s accounts, we had thousands of buyers and 100% positive feedback. In addition to stopping scam victims from buying from me in the first place, my procedures were able to stop multiple scams in-process, including an elderly Doctor from Alabama who we worked with the police to get his $4,000 back to him, a young stockbroker from New York City who nearly lost $5,000, and Paul Niwa’s elderly mother Yoshino, who I saved from losing $11,000 and went through many hoops to get her the money back after the bank closed our account. The idea that I was somehow in support of scammers or tolerant of them is negated by the fact that I worked to get people their money back and worked with law enforcement on multiple occasions. Were I a part of the scam, there would be no reason to return Mrs Niwa’s money, as it was already in our bank account.

Further, the church already had plenty of bitcoins years prior to selling them, so the idea that this was all about making money from scammers is absurd – this was all about getting people to adopt bitcoins, which is why despite the prosecution’s claims of high rates, our vending machines were priced lower than any other in the region.

The prosecution would have you believe that charging 10% on localbitcoins is outrageous compared to the below 1% rate that exchanges would charge, and therefore only scammers would apply. They say this while ignoring the testimony of their own witness, Chris Rietmann who said that my prices were in line with the markets we were in and while ignoring the thousands of satisfied customers we had on that site over the years. Even prosecution’s own numbers admit only a small portion of our buyers were victims of scams. Clearly there is a demand for the personal service we provided. Further, the centralized exchanges can’t stop the scammers either. Their onboarding procedure is completely automated – there is no personal phone interview – and involves the customer handing over their social security number and their ID. Scammers can easily have their victims, who we know are willing to lie to buy bitcoin, jump through the exchange hoops. However, the exchanges have their government paperwork, so they are not facing criminal charges, just like the banks aren’t facing charges for wiring away the victims’ life savings.

Despite the prosecution’s assertions, simply advertising that one respects privacy is not an invitation to scammers, especially when paired with the ID and security requirements I had. Privacy is a right enshrined in the New Hampshire constitution’s Bill of Rights and was placed there by a supermajority of the voters in 2018, so clearly privacy is popular and not a criminal act or an unspoken conspiracy.

Their case for conspiracy to money launder was innuendo – suggesting I should have known scams were happening simply because a portion of my buyers were of retirement age. The prosecutors claim cash is a “red flag”, but people who appreciate privacy also appreciate cash. The desire for privacy is not a crime nor evidence for suspicion. Further, poor grammar on the internet is common – many people of all ages who might speak fine in real life are constantly cutting corners in their internet communications. Though third party trades are riskier, I required ID from all parties involved and even made phone calls to ask probing questions of the buyer’s agents, though the government’s witnesses didn’t recall the extent of my questions.

Assisting scams would have meant major frustration for me as unhappy buyers always led to a bank account being closed. A customer pulling back a wire also meant I would become the scammer’s victim, as I would have already sent the bitcoin and there is no way to reverse a bitcoin transaction like one can a bank transfer. There is simply no reason I would have wanted these difficulties to happen more often and working with scammers or trying to attract them, would have ensured it happened more often than it did.

In order to prove the count of money laundering conspiracy with the scammers, they would have to prove willful blindness, as no other evidence was presented. To prove willful blindness they had to prove I consciously and deliberately avoided learning facts in question. Given I had a rigorous set of Know Your Customer requirements in place, it was clear I was trying to catch and prevent scammers. Further, I had assisted law enforcement in their investigations of those scammers. Additionally when I was able to detect a scam in progress, I was able to stop the transaction and worked to get the funds back to the scam victim, as was testified to by Paul Niwa. I was able to interdict multiple scams and make the victims whole. This is the opposite of willful blindness – this is willfully trying to stop scammers and protect my buyers.

As a longtime advocate for jury nullification, I’m well aware that juries also have the power to do what could be called “reverse jury nullification”, and convict someone who wasn’t proven guilty by the evidence. Perhaps that is what happened in this case. However, before you render your sentence, there are some important factors to consider.

The real shocking revelation from the testimony in this case was the complete lack of interest on the part of the FBI in catching or even investigating the actual scammers. On cross, Patrick Brown admitted the FBI never asked a single question about what happened to the roughly $900,000 he sent to other people or places at the behest of the scammer – $900,000 that did not go into any of my accounts. Mr. Brown stated that they never inquired about the scammer at all and had no interest in what happened to the bulk of his life savings. Karla Cino, similarly, said she’d be happy to talk to the FBI about her scammer who she admitted she was still in touch with as of the week before appearing at trial. She also said the FBI had never asked her to help provide any information about him or put them in touch with him.

I hope you will consider this very carefully in your sentence. The fact that the FBI had zero interest in catching or investigating the scammers themselves reveals the truth about this case. It was brought in bad faith. Another example of this is when the FBI first approached my ex girlfriend Renee and her then-fiancee Andy in 2018 to question them about working with me selling bitcoin, they already could have brought charges for “money transmission”, and perhaps some others, but they did not. In fact, since they didn’t charge Renee, Andy, or me at the time, we figured it was more proof we weren’t doing anything illegal and they were just on a fishing expedition hoping to find something. If you’ll recall, I was operating on my attorney Seth Hipple’s guidance letter explaining why what we were doing did not require a money transmitter license at either the state or federal level.

Throughout the case, they have acted as though this prosecution was about saving elderly victims from scammers, but if that were true, why not arrest me in 2018? Why did they wait three more years? They kept spending taxpayer dollars on investigating me with 24 hour a day surveillance and letting me continue to sell bitcoin to many hundreds more people. If this was about enforcing the law, they’d have arrested me in 2018. They also don’t actually care about the scam victims – that’s why they never asked Patrick Brown or Karla Cino anything about their scammers. They wanted to arrest a high-visibility bitcoin advocate and seller and use the maximum amount of force and intensity to take me down to show everyone what happens when you don’t ask their permission to sell bitcoin.

However, the idea that a government license matters in regards to stopping scammers is disingenuous. We learned through the witness testimony that every single one of these scam victims first went to their bank and authorized the bank tellers to send out hundreds of thousands of dollars via wire transfer in order to buy bitcoin for their scammers. It didn’t matter that the banks are registered money transmitters – they sent away these peoples’ life savings. My know your customer procedures were even more in-depth than the bankers but the scam victims lied to me like they lied to the bankers. What did it matter if the banks filled out a SAR or CTR on the transfer? They still sent the wires, because in the end, you do what the customer wants, after you’ve done your best to alert them to possible scams. It wasn’t the SARs or CTRs that alerted the FBI to the victims who testified in this case – it was my own KYC files from my laptop. Based on what I saw in discovery, the FBI had zero awareness of most of the scam victims until they started contacting the people they found in my files.

The government estimates that the scam victims lost several million dollars to their scammers via buying bitcoin from me. However, that number is the total they lost to the scammer. An average of about 10-15% went to me and my friends – the rest of it is in the scammers’ possession. Though the prosecution likes to bring up the 21% number, that was only for first-time buyers because they were the highest risk, and I subjected them to in-depth KYC requirements. Most of the regular buyers that turned out to be victims were at a 10% commission, because to me they were good, satisfied, regular buyers.

As we learned at trial, Karla Cino lost $100,000 of her own money early on in her several year long relationship with her scammer, and then she began assisting him by receiving funds from his other victims – years before opening her first trades with me. So in some of the victims’ cases, they weren’t even sending their own money, making it hard to know their own personal loss via trades with me, if any at all.

Though they are now again saying I’m a flight risk, the prosecution previously went from saying I was a threat to the community to have me wrongfully denied bail for 69 days all the way to consenting to dropping location monitoring and computer monitoring prior to trial. It’s clear I am not a threat to anyone and I can obey various restrictions, including home incarceration, without being a burden on the Probation department.

I’ve already lived under pre-and-post trial restrictions for over two years in addition to the 69 days I spent behind bars. If I have to go back to a cell as part of the sentence, my radio show and our over 170 AM&FM radio stations will be unnecessarily harmed. My co-hosts will do their best to keep things going in my absence, but no one knows the studio equipment like I do. A prison sentence for me may be the death sentence for my 20-year-old radio program. I also have a wife, Bonnie, who I love very much and my absence would harm her greatly.

While I have my criticisms of the justice system in this country, I know it is made of individuals and throughout this process, you have shown yourself to be thoughtful, fair, and willing to change your mind. Thank you for that.

Who: Free Talk Live’s Ian Freeman faces years in prison, NHexit.com and friends to protest. If you’re against both Federal overstep and violent revolution…you’re invited.
What: Demonstration, sentencing, possible “camera disobedience” and arrests.
Where: Outside Federal Courthouse / 55 Pleasant St. / Concord, NH
When: 8:30a.m. Mon Oct 2, 2023 – His final sentencing is scheduled for 90 minutes later in the same building.
Why: The occupiers of New Hampshire have prosecuted the local talk show host for Bitcoin-related “crimes” which are arguably victimless and arguably not even crimes. They forbid filming the sentencing process and recently arrested State Rep Jason Gerhard for trying to do so. More activists are expected (though not certain) to challenge the recording ban Oct. 2 and risk arrest.

Background/Details/Updates:
https://forum.shiresociety.com/t/join-nhexit-com-to-protest-fed-prosecution-of-crypto-six-oct-2-concord-nh/13646

Dave Ridley
NHexit.com