Tonight, residents of a Pittsburgh neighborhood are still reeling after last week’s shooting death of a Moorish sovereign citizen who stood off police for 6 hours before the incident ended in tragedy. Also, Presidential candidate Larry Elder has financial ties with the controversial Chinese cult Falun Gong and their right-wing newspaper The Epoch Times. But first, just how much money does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have and why has it taken a whistleblower to expose it? These stories and our analysis of the cultic influences tonight on Critical Cult News.
Good evening, I’m Chris Shelton, and welcome back to Critical Cult News, the weekly show where we bring you informed and detailed reporting on cult-related activities in the world. Our first story involves the Mormon church, billions of for-profit dollars protected under the church’s tax-exempt status and a whistleblower exposing it all.
The situation: While ostensibly a church and non-profit religious entity, it has recently come to light from reporting by 60 Minutes and Business Insider that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ has an investment portfolio topping $100 billion which includes $49.3 billion invested in stocks and tried to deceive not only its own membership about this, but the Securities and Exchange Commission as well.
Here’s what happened: In February of this year, the SEC charged the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its investment company, Ensign Peak Advisors, for disclosure failures and misstated filings. Like most so-called “white collar crimes”, those sound like innocuous and even boring violations, but these charges don’t really do justice to the years-long campaign of outright deception and the Mormon Church practiced against its own parishioners and the world at large, with literally hundreds of billions of dollars in play.
According to the SEC filings, the church and Ensign Peak “went to great lengths to avoid disclosing the Church’s investments, depriving the Commission and the investing public of accurate market information.” A top church executive stated this was done in part because church leadership was worried members wouldn’t donate if they realized how much money the Church was actually sitting on. As a result of this premeditated deception, the church and Ensign Peak agreed to pay a collective $5 million settlement.
The Mormon Church’s investment portfolio had been kept quiet until 2019, when a former employee of the fund filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging that the fund shouldn’t have tax-exempt status because it doesn’t engage in any charitable activities. As reported in a 60 Minutes special, former senior portfolio manager turned whistleblower David A. Nielsen claimed the church’s investment arm acted as a “clandestine hedge fund” disguised as a charity. This is an all-too-common practice among smaller religious cults but the Mormons figured out how to take this to a whole new level. Nielsen told 60 Minutes they first used false records and statements to appear as a charity, while stockpiling money and misleading church members. During his nine years with Ensign Peak, Nielsen said the value of the firm’s investments boomed past $100 billion. “I thought we were going to change the world. And we just grew the bank account.”
Every year the Mormon Church collects an estimated $7 billion from its 17 million members, mainly in the form of what is called tithing. This is expected to be 10% of each parishioner’s income and it is viewed as a necessity, not an option in the life of an average Mormon. These funds are used to pay the church’s bills and fund its promotion and marketing programs as well as all other church operations. Whatever is left over, about $1 billion a year, is then invested through Ensign Peak. And all of this money is 100% tax-free, including the profits made by their investment firm.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2020, the head of Ensign Peak stated, “Paying tithing is more a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money, so they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn’t make a contribution.”
Money is the root of all evil, or so they say, and religious leaders and the institutions they create are no exception. The Mormons have a long and extremely controversial history which goes well beyond the fundamentalist, polygamy-practicing Mormons living in lawless towns throughout Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, sexually abusing women and children. While known publicly as the “nicest people you’ll ever meet,” everyday members of the Church of Latter-day Saints live a life controlled by church orthodoxy and answerable to church officials, where children as young as 9 years old are routinely quizzed by non-licensed, untrained church officials about the intimate details of their sexual behavior. These are disturbing and cult-like practices which have persisted for over a century. Racism and sexism have been dogmatic elements of the Church’s scriptures since its inception.
But far worse than an abusive belief system and practice, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always held absolute control over the state government of Utah. As we see in today’s story, while the Mormons make a show of towing the line and agreeing to follow federal law, the Church really only does so when it serves their interests. For the SEC to discover this institution has been hiding literally hundreds of billions of tax-free dollars and then deliver a slap-on-the-wrist fine of only $5 million is exactly the kind of “justice” that is no such thing. A few million dollars is chump change compared to the amount of profit the Church walked away with and will continue to do so now. It is obvious the US government has no intention of ever cracking down on or stopping criminal cults like the Mormon Church.
To be crystal clear, it is not their public worship or their beliefs that are in question, but what the Mormons actually do with those beliefs. Like every other destructive cult out there, this Church believes it is ultimately above the law. Why should they have to comply with laws or regulations they see as inconvenient, especially when they have God on their side? So long as the parishioners keep funneling their tithes straight into the Church’s coffers unimpeded by anything like government oversight, we can expect to see more avarice, more greed and a lot more abuse reigned down on the new generations of Mormons who will have to learn the hard way that this group doesn’t care about them anywhere near as much as it cares about dollars and cents.
For our second story tonight, we pivot to the 2024 US Presidential election and a Republican candidate’s financial ties with Chinese cult Falun Gong and its newspaper, The Epoch Times.
The situation? In required financial disclosure statements from GOP presidential candidate and “tough-on-crime” conservative talk radio host Larry Elder on Monday, filed three months late, it was revealed Elder earned between $1 million and $5 million from the far-right newspaper The Epoch Times, a news organ with close ties to the Chinese Falun Gong religions sect.
Here’s what happened: Under federal law, anyone running for president must file signed, certified personal financial disclosure reports. Elder’s campaign missed the mandatory deadline and retroactively applied for extensions, which were granted. These reports detail certain assets, income, debts and professional agreements for themselves and their spouses, with the obvious purpose of revealing any shady or illegal financial ties as well as potential conflicts of interest.
While this is not the first time Elder has run afoul of mandatory election reporting requirements, what was revealed in this filing was somewhat shocking. The disclosure violated not only deadlines but also specific amounts of income Elder has received from various sources. Politico’s Kimberly Leonard tweeted that Elder’s disclosure also violates rules from the Office of Government Ethics which require candidates to provide their exact income, not generalized ranges of income.
While the range of income he reported is unspecific enough to prompt a lot more questions, the fact that Elder has received millions of dollars in income from a far-right, cult-run newspaper should be enough to set off alarm bells to anyone concerned about cults engaging in influence peddling in our political process.
The Epoch Times was founded in the year 2000 and is a nonprofit publication owned and operated by the Chinese religious sect, Falun Gong. They were the second-largest spender of Facebook ads pushing Donald Trump in the 2016 election, but Facebook later banned The Epoch Times from distributing paid ads after they violated ad policies. You may also have heard of The Epoch Times for the fact it spread conspiracy theories about how Chinese Communists were responsible for the release of the COVID-19 viral outbreak. Among information and cult experts, The Epoch Times has long been known to be an active spreader of false news on the order of political propaganda under the cover of objective journalism.
Elder was a contributor or source of many stories published in The Epoch Times, so much so that he has a featured author page on their website. Content was often pulled from The Larry Elder Show for the newspaper and apparently Elder was paid quite handsomely for these contributions.
Falun Gong is a US-based so-called “new religious movement” first founded in China in the early 1990s by Li Honghzi. Their global headquarters are located in Deerpark, New York on a 427-acre compound near where Li currently resides.
Li has claimed to have supernatural powers and abilities, such as moving objects with his mind or making himself invisible. He claims to be the Savior who will “transport mankind to the heavenly kingdom” and has also claimed he is infallible and whatever he says is true. His followers believe he is capable of reading minds and Li uses this to ensure they follow his every command.
In a 1999 Time Magazine interview, Li claimed “If visitors from another planet cannot replace human beings, the society will destroy itself. Modern sciences cannot rescue human beings from being destroyed. I can forecast that in the future, the four limbs of human beings will become deformed; the joints of the body will become immobile and the internal organs will lose their functions. I am working hard to save those who can return to the high moral standards. Modern science cannot understand this.”
The two primary means of public outreach for Falun Gong are its media organization, The Epoch Times and a performance and dance troupe known as Shen Yun, which frequently tours around the United States. Through these and other subsidiary organizations, Falun Gong promotes QAnon and anti-vaccination conspiracy theories as well as far-right ideological positions in both Europe and the US. The organization spent millions promoting Donald Trump in 2016 and has also promoted Radical right candidates in Europe. As reported by NBC News in 2019:
“The Epoch Media Group, along with Shen Yun, a dance troupe known for its ubiquitous advertising and unsettling performances, make up the outreach effort of Falun Gong, a relatively new spiritual practice that combines ancient Chinese meditative exercises, mysticism and often ultraconservative cultural worldviews. Falun Gong’s founder has referred to Epoch Media Group as ‘our media’, and the group’s practice heavily informs The Epoch Times’ coverage, according to former employees who spoke with NBC News. The Epoch Times, digital production company NTD and the heavily advertised dance troupe Shen Yun make up the nonprofit network that Li calls ‘our media.’ Financial documents paint a complicated picture of more than a dozen technically separate organizations that appear to share missions, money and executives. Though the source of their revenue is unclear, the most recent financial records from each organization paint a picture of an overall business thriving in the Trump era.”
There are many cults who present a public face which appears benign and even generally helpful and Falun Gong fits this mode. People see a group which promotes healthy living, exercise, meditation and tolerance and, taking it at face value, believe such a group would not have ill intent or be a dominating force in its members lives. But as one progresses further into the teachings, the supernatural elements of Li’s belief system and the idolization of Li as a god-like figure who alone can save mankind from its own doom become more and more prominent. Routine, scientific medical practices and treatment become discouraged and then forbidden, leading some down roads of physical and mental illness. Reportedly, this has even led to self-harm and suicides around the world.
Larry Elder is not a serious presidential candidate in the 2024 election and was barred from even attending the GOP debate since he did not meet the 40,000 unique donors threshold to attend, nor has he met the RNC’s polling requirement of at least 1% in three qualifying state and national polls. But had he made it on the stage and had he made an impact, what further influence would Li Hoghzi possibly have had in our country’s political process? While there are many holes in the so-called wall separating church and state in the US, religious influence peddling is rampant in our current political scene and it is incumbent on all of us to pay close attention to who and what our candidates and politicians are actually beholden to.
Our final story tonight delves deeper into the background and activities of the Moorish Sovereign Citizen movement, following a recent shooting incident in Pittsburgh.
The situation? Last Wednesday, William Hardison died after a six-hour standoff with police following his refusal to comply with an eviction order in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Here’s what happened: Hardison, a self-proclaimed Moorish sovereign citizen, refused to leave his rental property and threatened to burn the house down with gasoline after firing off his gun, causing the police to declare an active shooter situation. The property was owned by Hardison’s father, who sold the house to a company called 907 East Street. In May, they had filed for eviction but Hardison refused and had not paid rent for the last five months. Court records show Allegheny County Sheriff’s deputies evicted Hardison last year from an apartment on Pittsburgh’s North Side..
After officers made contact with Hardison to serve the eviction, he fired at them. During the standoff, he continued firing his weapon at police as well as shooting down three police drones according to police chief Larry Scirotto. During live news reports from the neighborhood, they continued to hear shots fired. Scirotto reported: “I don’t think anything about this situation was normal. With every opportunity to surrender, we were met with gunfire.”
Despite even televised pleas from his own son to surrender, Hardison refused. At one point, officers rescued a neighbor from a house, quickly vacating the neighbor to a SWAT vehicle.
Police reported there were easily thousands of rounds fired in the neighborhood, with 75 police officers now on administrative leave for firing their weapons during the standoff: 47 from the city, 16 from the sheriff’s office and 12 county officers. Not only was he armed, but Hardison had a lot of ammunition. It was not clear whether Hardison’s fatal gunshot wound was self-inflicted or he was hit by police. Pittsburgh Public Safety confirmed that he was pronounced dead by medics on the scene at 5:08 p.m.
Hardison had a years-long criminal history typical of sovereign citizens, such as carrying a firearm without a license, forging a title or registration as well as in 2005 entering a guilty plea to an accident involving death or injury and in 2001 pleading guilty to disorderly conduct. He received varying months or years of probation for each of these crimes. Hardison’s own attorney in the recent firearm charge stated that alone should have prevented him from purchasing a gun. It’s not clear at this time whether the gun Hardison used during this standoff was legally purchased or not.
So what is this group Hardison was part of? Who are the Moorish Sovereign Citizens? In a nutshell, this movement is a loosely affiliated group which emerged in the 1990s as a subgroup of the larger sovereign citizen movement – people who believe that they as individual citizens have the full right of self-governance and therefore do not have to follow or pay attention to local, state or federal laws. This has led over the years to clashes with law enforcement, many of which have been posted to YouTube showing automobile drivers refusing to provide license or registration to police and then getting into mountains of trouble including even being forcibly arrested.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, not only have Moorish Sovereign Citizens engaged in violence but they also retaliate against government authorities through financial means – a process known as “paper terrorism.” This is a fairly common sovereign citizen tactic where they file fraudulent legal documents, attempt to claim properties through adverse possession, and use pseudolegal arguments to challenge court jurisdiction. These activities have brought them into direct conflict with law enforcement agencies and the legal system in many states across the US. Sovereign citizens have been prosecuted in many states, even right here in Colorado, such as in 2018 when Bruce Doucette was sentenced to 38 years in prison for a laundry list of offenses. He was found guilty of racketeering and filing false liens against property owned by judges in an effort to intimidate and stop them from prosecuting Doucette and his fellows.
The Moorish Sovereign Citizen movement subscribes to a range of unconventional beliefs centered around their interpretation of history, law, and government. They trace their roots back to the Moorish Science Temple of America, founded in the early 20th century by Noble Drew Ali. Ali’s teachings combined elements of Islam with a unique historical narrative that claimed African Americans were originally of Moorish descent and were thus exempt from certain laws and government jurisdiction. According to this lore, African Americans constitute an elite class within American society that give them sovereign immunity from federal and state authority so they don’t have to pay taxes or have a driver’s license.
However, over time, the movement has splintered into various factions, and some individuals have taken these beliefs to extreme and confrontational ends. This has forced courts and law enforcement officers to be more vigilant and informed about the movement itself and recent years have seen direct efforts by judges to hand down extremely tough sentences as a means of discouraging the illegal behavior. While not all individuals associated with the Moorish Sovereign Citizen movement engage in violence, the movement’s ideological beliefs can create situations of tension and danger, as seen in the recent tragic events. In recent years, Moorish sovereign citizen followers have shot and killed police officers in Georgia and Florida during traffic stops or evictions.
Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism said evictions of sovereign citizen followers can easily turn violent. “Like anybody who would be evicted, they might be angry. They might be afraid about what might be happening, have all the natural human emotions as well. So when you combine the ideology with the situation, there have been violent incidents involving sovereign citizens and evictions all the way back to the 1980s.”
Extreme beliefs such as those the sovereign citizens represent are gaining ground in the United States for many reasons. This so-called movement is not organized the same way typical cultic monolithic structures are. They are a fractured and divided community with many variations and positions, but all sharing a unifying theme of individual empowerment and denying the state any legal authority over its population, or even recognition of the state as an entity.
Why would people join such a movement? The common denominator across most cases we’ve seen reported on seems to be catastrophic financial and employment problems which then compound socioeconomic inequity. Once someone has started down the dwindling spiral of missing car or house payments, or when the lack of an effective education prevents some of our nation’s population from being able to obtain gainful employment, they can become overly stressed. Seeking solutions to their desperate times, the sovereign citizen dogma seems to be an easy path out of the legal quagmire such people often find themselves in when they are unable to keep up with their car or house payments or other legal obligations. They often connect with the movement through social media, believe the nonsensical rantings and claims of sovereign citizen figureheads and so begin down a path of self-destruction which, as we detailed tonight, can sometimes lead to tragic outcomes.
The wealth of information available to anyone on the internet is almost incalculably large and often overwhelming. Trying to sort out the facts from the fictions is difficult even for the most educated and experienced of us. If we are going to ever see a change in the number of citizens believing they can just ignore laws at their convenience, we are going to need to see a change in the socioeconomic inequities of our systems and, more broadly, in our ability to question so-called facts we are presented with. The claims of the sovereign citizen movement are almost uniformly and grossly wrong, having nothing to do with the reality we live in. But one of the common denominators of cultic and extreme movements is the insistence on building a different reality bubble and living exclusively in it. When that bubble clashes with the real world, conflict is often harsh if not violent. This is why we believe here at CCN that an ounce of prevention in the form of elevated standards of critical thinking and social services across our nation are the only things that, in the long run, will have any effect on this kind of activity. By the time the guns are out and shots are being fired, it’s far too late to do anything but duck and pray. The solutions to this problem must be implemented far earlier.
Sources:
Mormon Financial Criminality
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mormon-church-ensign-peak-whistleblower-david-nielsen-allegations-60-minutes-2023-05-14/
Larry Elder and Falun Gong
https://news.yahoo.com/gop-presidential-candidate-larry-elders-163506364.html
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/larry-elder-crime-financial-disclosure/?refresh
http://auckland.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/zt/flgzt/200311/t20031119_230528.htm
https://www.newsweek.com/larry-elder-outraged-after-finding-out-he-didnt-qualify-gop-debate-1821650
Moorish Sovereign Citizen Shooting
https://www.wtae.com/article/pittsburgh-standoff-garfield-moorish-sovereign-citizen/44904297#
https://www.wtae.com/article/william-hardison-jr-pittsburgh-active-shooter/44891585
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/moorish-sovereign-citizens