By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
What do you call a former member of Congress once accused of illegal pro-Russian activity, who denies the 2020 presidential election results, and who took part in storming a police barrier during the Jan. 6 riots?
New Hampshire’s Free State activists call former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher a featured keynote speaker for this weekend’s Liberty Forum.
Rohrabacher is one of dozens of speakers taking part in the Free State Project’s Liberty Forum being held this weekend at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord. He’ll be there with New Hampshire Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, Free State Project founder Jason Sorens, and a host of libertarian activists.
The Free State Project claims more than 20,000 people have pledged to move to New Hampshire as part of an effort to create a liberation utopia in the Granite State. But the group has been working to shed its wild image in recent years as more members are getting elected to the New Hampshire legislature.
Free Staters are seen as harboring fringe ideology, obsessed with crypto currency, the gold standard, and dismantling government. It led to fiascos like the Free Town Project in Grafton where libertarian policies resulted in people living in tents and storage containers, local government getting slashed, new residents refusing to clean up their homesteads, and a surge in aggressive black bears attracted by the waste.
The Free State Project also attracted notorious members like Ian Freeman, who is currently behind bars on federal money laundering charges. He was kicked out of the Free State Project in 2014 after publicly advocating lowering the age of consent to allow sex with minors. Despite his ouster from the project, Freeman continued to be part of the libertarian community up until his incarceration.
In 2023, Libertarian Party leader Jeremy Kauffman was booted from Free State Project’s the board after he refused to tone down his online trolling, including his promotion of a racist social media feed. Kauffman, the mercurial Libertarian Party candidate for Senate in 2022, was voted off the board after weeks of tension with other members, like Carla Gericke and Sorens.
At the time, it was a signal that the Free State Project was trying to clean up its act. The same year, the Free State Project hired former Maine politician Eric Brakey to be the next executive director.
With a long record as a regular person, including stints in state politics in Maine and employment as a substitute teacher, Brakey presents a new image for the Free State Project. He’ll be one of the featured speakers this weekend, talking about tax nullification.
But while the Free State Project tries to normalize its image as a political movement for regular people who are not weird, a figure like Rohrabacher could be seen as a relapse.
Rohrabacher is set to speak about marijuana legalization, possibly the one area of belief he shares with Free Staters. As a conservative Republican representing Orange County, California, Rohrabacher opposed gay marriage, supported enhanced interrogation during the War on Terror, and has been an advocate of using military force throughout the Middle East.
He’s also been questioned for his close ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The two met in the 1990s and formed a friendship that’s lasted for decades. He was called Putin’s favorite congressman by Politico, accused of taking bribes from Putin by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and investigated by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
After losing reelection in 2018, Rohrabacher left California for Maine where he reportedly planned to write screenplays. He’s since spread misinformation about the 2020 presidential election, falsely claiming it was stolen by the Democrats. He was spotted taking part in the Jan. 6 riots, but was never criminally charged for his actions and claimed he never entered the Capitol complex that day.