Conspiracy theorist and activist Adam Kokesh was arrested in his Northern Virginia home Tuesday night on drug possession and weapon charges. The arrest followed a widely seen recent video in which Kokesh loaded a shotgun.
Lt. Steve Elbert, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office told the Washington Post that the former Marine was held at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center and charged with possession of schedule I and II drugs while in possession of a firearm, a felony punishable by up to 12 years in jail.
Adam Kokesh’s radio show issued a press release claiming U.S. park police and local police used extreme tactics to apprehend the radio show host and activist. “The officers used a battering ram to knock in the door after two knocks, and did not announce that they had a warrant. Immediately after breaking down the door, a flash bang grenade was deployed in the foyer. Numerous police vehicles, including a light armored vehicle and two low-flying helicopters barricaded Adam’s street. More than 20 armored SWAT team members surrounded the house, as well as a number of detectives, and plainclothes officers. Assault rifles were aimed on all members of the team as they were handcuffed without being told why they were detained. Masked and armored police in full ‘Storm Trooper’ gear flooded in and ransacked the residence.”
The recent storm of scandals plaguing Washington has some anti-government activists eager to harness popular outage and implement radical policy changes or even the overthrow of the federal government. Some, however, are attracting the avid interest of police instead of average citizens. Kokesh had planned an open carry march on Washington for July 4, but called it off late in May.
Last Thursday, Kokesh uploaded a video to YouTube in which he loads four shells into a shotgun in Freedom Plaza in the early morning, while reciting a “Pledge of Resistance.” In the video’s description, Kokesh dares viewers to count the number of felonies he commits in the 23-second clip, which is oddly titled, “Open Carry March in DC a success.”
“We are the final American revolution,” Kokesh says as he cocks the shotgun. “See you next Independence Day.”
Kokesh and law enforcement aren’t strangers to one another. In May, officers arrested Kokesh at a marijuana prohibition protest, charging him with federal felonies that could have resulted in decades of jail time. The charges were later reduced to citations.
Announcing the cancellation of the open carry march, Kokesh warned darkly in a statement issued from a Philadelphia jail, “Should one whole year from this July 4th pass while the crimes of this government are allowed to continue, we may have passed the point at which non-violent revolution becomes impossible.”
The arrest made it impossible for Kokesh to effectively organize the armed march, he said.
“It kind of hard to organize an event when you’re in that kind of position, and to do something that is so dependent on one person as the march proposal has been, when they can just, you know, take me out off the streets and isolate me and put me in communications silence whenever they feel like,” Kokesh said. “The way we’re going to set this up for next year, is going to be not at all dependent on any individual and it’s going to happen with or without me. So if we take the guns out of it, we’re planning on doing the same thing and making the march the same route.”
Second Amendment supporters feared the consequences of Kokesh’s armed march and predict a grim future for other anti-government activists who go beyond issuing statements and hosting radio shows.
“This is precisely the kind of criminal act that the District of Columbia will almost certainly act upon,” Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a former prosecutor for the District of Columbia who now works with the Second Amendment Foundation, told The Daily Caller in May. “Even though I support the Second Amendment, I don’t support illegal activity or endangering the public. This strikes me as a very dangerous idea.”
D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier vowed to arrest Kokesh and any other protesters who participated in the cancelled open carry march, saying there was “a difference between civil disobedience and actually violating the law.”
Kokesh’s renewed call for a march on 50 state capitals achieved mixed results. Fans posted scattered videos and photos on his Facebook fan page wall, but Kokesh claimed marches took place at all 50 states and plans to release a video clipping together recordings of each protest. He also wants to launch a viral video campaign of supporters submitting their own “Pledge of Resistance” recitations, and plans to go on a speaking tour later this year.
“It’s ridiculous to think in the system we have today that electoral politics is going to have any kind of solution to the American people,” Kokesh said. “Every state should secede and we should abolish the federal government. This is the abolition movement.”
Gabe Finger contributed to this article.