Following a series of legal setbacks, and despite the absence of tangible evidence in a case built on the testimony of a spectacularly dubious star witness, federal prosecutors are prepared to begin the sedition trial of seven members of Michigan’s “Hutaree” militia.

The federal indictment describes the Hutaree militia as a domestic terrorist group – the embodiment of recent warnings from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regarding the supposed menace of “anti-government extremism.” According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Graveline,”The court will hear testimony and examine evidence concerning this particular group’s hatred for, and desire to do physical harm to, law enforcement.” The case against the Hutaree members relies heavily on 100 hours of covertly recorded conversations and the testimony of a confidential informant (that is, snitch for the Feds) who has pleaded guilty to a domestic violence charge involving the use of a firearm.

Rather than charging the Hutaree members with overt criminal acts, the Feds are prosecuting them for “sedition” – that is, criminal “offenses” that consist of expressing opinions about government corruption and making physical preparations to for self-defense against criminal violence by government authorities.

Lloyd Meyer, a Chicago attorney and former terrorism prosecutor, points out that this kind of prosecution is very unusual:

“How often do American citizens get charged with sedition or inciting discontent and resistance against big government? Heck, most citizens are discontented with the government. In this case, no one pulled a trigger and no one got hurt. … A jury could believe that the feds went after this group with a meat cleaver instead of a scalpel.

Federal prosecutors initially attempted to have all nine members of the Hutaree militia held without bail as a severe threat to public safety. In May 2010, Federal District Judge Victoria Roberts granted them bail. She also expressed pointed misgivings about the merits of the federal case.

The Hutaree group militia allegedly plotted to murder a law enforcement officer and then follow up with opportunistic attacks on other LEOs who would attend the funeral. This rampage would supposedly precipitate a wide-scale revolt against the federal government and its local affiliates.

Conversations discussing that scenario were reported by a federal informant who infiltrated the group and – acting as a provocateur– thoughtfully offered to teach them how to make improvised explosive devices.

While federal prosecutors have provided ample evidence that members of the Hutaree are passionately anti-government — what decent person isn’t? — they haven’t been able to demonstrate that the group did anything more than engage in survivalist training and indulge in apocalyptic rhetoric.

Defense attorneys, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio decision, maintain that seditious speech — including speech that constitutes an incitement to violence — is protected by the First Amendment as long as it does not indicate an “imminent” threat.

The prosecutors’ brief, invoking the the 1995 seditious conspiracy trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, maintained that it was not necessary to demonstrate a threat of imminent harm, but rather only that the defendants had formed an “agreement to oppose by force the authority of the United States.”

(It should be noted that Rahman was able to obtain a U.S. visa only through the CIA’s intervention, and that the radical Muslim terrorist cell he joined, which carried out the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, included at least three others who  had been on the payroll of U.S. intelligence.)

Judge Roberts didn’t find the government’s case compelling.

“Discussions about killing local law enforcement officers — and even discussions about killing members of the judicial branch of government — do not translate to conspiring to overthrow, or levy war against, the United States government,” she wrote.

Since the federal case against the Hutaree rests entirely on what was said by the suspects, rather than anything specific that was done by them, it’s difficult to see what’s left of it. But that hasn’t deterred the Feds from proceeding with the show trial, which is most likely intended to be a template for future prosecutions of other Americans deemed to be “anti-government extremists.”

Read more here.