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Paul LePage Is in Trouble. Again. (Politico)
Paul LePage Is in Trouble. Again.
Maine’s governor is taking heat for a bizarre series of meetings with extremist groups.
By COLIN WOODARD
July 07, 2014
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/paul-lepage-is-in-trouble-again-108618.html#ixzz36sMUmsgr
Paul LePage, Maine’s tea party-backed governor, is no stranger to controversy. He’s told the state chapter of the NAACP to kiss his butt, likened the Internal Revenue Service to the Nazi Gestapo, issued blanket gag orders against the state’s largest newspaper chain (whose headquarters he also joked about bombing) and denounced—on camera—a Democratic state senator for always wanting to “give it to the people without Vaseline.”
But this past week, the governor was embroiled in perhaps the strangest of his many scandals: the revelation that he had met with an obscure circle of particularly nutty conspiracy theorists at least eight times for a total of 16 hours last year, despite the objections of his staff.
Some of the members of the circle have previously identified themselves as “Sovereign Citizens,” a movement the FBI considers a domestic terrorist threat, though at least some of them now deny any such association. Members have espoused the belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Sandy Hook school shootings were perpetrated by the U.S. government, which engages in “mind control” and is preparing a “holocaust” against America’s Christians. They think the government is illegitimate and that top state officials are guilty of treason.
And last February, one recounted on his pirate radio broadcast a meeting he had just attended with Governor LePage in which he said the execution of the top leaders of the Democrat-controlled state legislature was discussed. “They’re talking about hanging them,’” Jack McCarthy, host of the Aroostook Watchman radio show, recalled LePage saying in the meeting with McCarthy and his colleagues. McCarthy shared his response to LePage with his listeners: “Praise the Lord, let’s hang a few. We’ll be done with this crap.”
But this past week, the governor was embroiled in perhaps the strangest of his many scandals: the revelation that he had met with an obscure circle of particularly nutty conspiracy theorists at least eight times for a total of 16 hours last year, despite the objections of his staff.
Some of the members of the circle have previously identified themselves as “Sovereign Citizens,” a movement the FBI considers a domestic terrorist threat, though at least some of them now deny any such association. Members have espoused the belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Sandy Hook school shootings were perpetrated by the U.S. government, which engages in “mind control” and is preparing a “holocaust” against America’s Christians. They think the government is illegitimate and that top state officials are guilty of treason.
And last February, one recounted on his pirate radio broadcast a meeting he had just attended with Governor LePage in which he said the execution of the top leaders of the Democrat-controlled state legislature was discussed. “They’re talking about hanging them,’” Jack McCarthy, host of the Aroostook Watchman radio show, recalled LePage saying in the meeting with McCarthy and his colleagues. McCarthy shared his response to LePage with his listeners: “Praise the Lord, let’s hang a few. We’ll be done with this crap.”
-snip-
