Contradictory news on group behind Pawlenty ‘threat’ letter

I’m seeing contradicting stories on Friday’s news that Tim Pawlenty was among some 30 governors to receive letters threatening removal from office if they don’t resign. He was, but there’s some question about whether the group sending the threatening letters is legit. A new report says the group behind the threats, the Guardians of the Free Republics, likely didn’t exist until two months ago — or at least its website didn’t. But according to a coordinator for the group, “the Guardians have members in every state.”

Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein writes that “The Guardians of the Free Republics are just a Web cover for a single unhinged Silicon Valley dude who isn’t even American-born.” The magazine reports that the group’s web domain names have been registered to a California “conspiracy maven” named Clive Boustred for only about two months. Posits Weinstein:

[I]t’s worth noting that subversive groups on the left and the right have long attempted to exaggerate the size and reach of their “movements” in a stab for attention and legitimacy. Mayhaps the attention being given to today’s “patriots” is nothing but a nightingale’s song and an ideological cover for self-obsessed individuals, looking for millstones on which to grind very small axes.

Could be. But reporting by the Des Moines Register Saturday suggests there may be others involved. Reporter William Petroski interviewed Hal Epperson, who says he’s the coordinator of the Guardians group in Phoenix. He claims the group has established an “assembly in Iowa.”

“I can tell you that the Guardians have members in every state,” Epperson told the Register. “This is a nonviolent group that has a lawful remedy for the corporate government. … There is no relationship to the militias or anything of a violent nature or a terrorist nature.”

Petroski also talked with Craig Halverson, national director of the Minuteman Patriots, a group not affiliated with the Guardians. He says he’s aware that the group has been recruiting in Iowa, holding meetings and circulating a petition.

“They are just like the tea party people who are unhappy with the way that government is going, but they took a different route,” Halverson said.

I’m awaiting a response to my email to the group seeking a response to these stories and inquiring whether they’re active in Minnesota.