The Political Persecution of Tyler Dinsmoor

June 22, 2022 — OAK HARBOR, WASHINGTON — In the early hours of the morning on June 17, 2022, Mrs. Tyler Dinsmoor awoke to find some strange messages on her phone and a couple of missed calls. The messages purported to be someone with the police department wanting to speak with her or her husband. She was confused and unsure if this was some sort of prank. She explained that in the days prior her husband had been targeted by Antifa online and had been forced to take his website down to protect his customers. Her husband, Tyler Dinsmoor even posted about this on the social networking site Gab.com.  (Full disclosure, I know Tyler from Gab and had some friendly interactions with him online)

Mr. Dinsmoor owns and operates the Dinsmoor Sheepskin business which is a family run company that sells sheep products. Very quickly, Mrs. Dinsmoor would realize that the messages and calls were not some pranks by Antifa agitators.

According to the Whidbey News Times:

Officers from seven law enforcement agencies, responders from two federal agencies, multiple armored vehicles, a negotiating team and a police helicopter took part in the arrest Friday morning of a North Whidbey man who had been posting online comments about killing gay people and seemed to be especially fixated on the June 18 Anacortes Pride Parade, according to police.

The officers took 27-year-old Tyler R. Dinsmoor into custody on a $1 million warrant at his home on Lyon Road without incident, according to Oak Harbor Police Chief Kevin Dresker.

Dresker said the massive show of law enforcement was due to the nature of Dinsmoor’s online comments, which included violent vitriol aimed at the LGBTQ community and ominous posts about the gay pride parade. The chief said officers were also aware that Dinsmoor owns guns. – Whidbey News Times

Clearly the Oak Harbor Police seemed interested in alerting the media to the arrest and made some allegations that I feel are wrong and politically motivated. It is my personal opinion and assertion that the police cherry-picked quotes out of context to paint a narrative about Mr. Dinsmoor that does not comport to reality. It should also be noted that Mr. Dinsmoor has no criminal record or violent history at all. He is a disabled Navy Veteran. He is a small business owner, and a loving husband and father of two young children. His wife is pregnant right now with their third child. Tyler Dinsmoor is a very strong Christian who believes in the Bible and enjoys sharing the Word of God with others. This has not always been welcomed in the community which is predominantly liberal and left wing.

The Whidbey News Times went on to state:

It wasn’t the online comments that led to arrest, however, but a homophobic threat he allegedly yelled at a North Whidbey woman on June 14, a police report states.

Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks said his office has been working closely with the Oak Harbor Police Department on the case. He said that prosecutors interrupted testimony in a trial June 15 to obtain an arrest warrant, which was authorized by Island County Superior Court Judge Christon Skinner.

Prosecutors charged Dinsmoor in Island County Superior Court June 15 with committing a hate crime, a felony charge.

In asking the judge for the warrant, Deputy Prosecutor Michael Safstrom described Dinsmoor as presenting ‘an extreme risk of actual violence in the near future.’

Dresker said law enforcement in Island and Skagit counties, as well as Homeland Security, were aware of Dinsmoor’s online posts on Gab.com, a social media platform popular with ultra-conservatives. Concerned citizens have been sending screenshots of Dinsmoor’s posts to police.

Anacortes police and organizers of the June 18 pride parade were also aware of the posts and had planned extra security measures prior to the arrest, according to law enforcement.

Detective Sgt. Jennifer Gravel with the Oak Harbor Police Department wrote in her report on the case that a woman who lives at a North Whidbey home with her wife and children told police that Dinsmoor yelled at her from a nearby house that ‘it used to be legal to kill gay people,’ the report states. The woman said the comment was especially frightening because a neighbor told her that Dinsmoor had previously pointed a gun at the neighbor’s nephew, who is Black, when he went into the yard of a nearby residence to return a fishing pole.

In her report, Gravel details some of Dinsmoor’s online posts, which include videos, photos and written statements. He used an offense slur to refer to people in the LGBTQ community throughout the posts and often referenced the Bible.

In various posts, Dinsmoor wrote that God hates gay people, that ‘sodomites all deserve to die,’ that he wants the death penalty for all gay people and that ‘all homosexuals are child-rapists in wait, and all (every single one) should be put to death immediately,’ the report states. He called another online commenter ‘a (slur for homosexual) sympathizer worthy of death.’ He wrote that ‘it’s not murder if it’s a justified killing.’

In her report, the detective wrote that Dinsmoor posted an image of the Anacortes parade flyer with the comment ‘talk me out of it.’ He also posted a Photoshopped image of a man with a shoulder holster pointing a handgun at a group of people who appear to be in a gay pride parade, the report states.

This week, Dinsmoor posted that he ‘was 9mm away from fedposting’ two gay people at a store. ‘Pray for me bro,’ the post goes on, ‘I might not make it through this (offensive term) month,’ the report states. The detective explained that ‘fedposting’ is internet slang for something posted online that shows premeditated planning of criminal activity.

Dinsmoor’s posts also include racist, sexist and anti-Semitic comments, the report indicates. He wrote that white people aren’t responsible for the ‘bad behavior’ of Black people and that the best-case scenario is Black and white people living in separate nations, the detective wrote. He wrote that a ‘career woman’ is useless and ‘an abomination.’

Gardner wrote that she believes Dinsmoor is ‘an extreme risk to the public, especially the upcoming Pride events in the area.’ She noted that he owns a semi-automatic rifle and other guns. The detective recommended that Dinsmoor be ordered to submit to a psychological evaluation if he’s released on bail.

Court documents state that Dinsmoor owns a home-based business called Dinsmoor Sheepskins. In January, he spoke against an affordable housing sales tax at an Island County commissioners’ meeting. – Whidbey News Times

Let’s break this down, because this is incredibly misleading. We will start with the first paragraph: they claim Tyler was not arrested due to anything he said online (which by the way appears to be first amendment protected speech, NOT imminent threats). However the entire incident report by Det. Sgt. Jennifer Gravel (available online) is filled with commentary about Mr. Dinsmoor’s online comments. Those posts are totally unrelated to the incident that they claim was cause for the arrest and charge of a felony hate crime. From what I was able to understand from reading the incident report, this is all based on allegations and hearsay and some “offensive” posts online which, as I will PROVE, were completely taken out of context.

Moving to the next part, it references Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks. Who is Greg Banks, you ask? Well, he appears to be a mentally unstable anti-Trumper. Banks has made lovely comments that seem far more “vitriolic” and “ominous,” such as this gem:

Greg “Ass Mad” Banks

Mr. Banks’ Facebook page is littered with this type of derisive commentary. It actually got SO bad that he was forced to publicly address it. When Mr. Banks eluded to the need to “cleanse” society of Trump supporters, was this an “ominous” and “violent” threat? Should we have a contingent of SEVEN law enforcement agencies, responders from two federal agencies, an armored vehicle, a negotiation team, and police helicopter show up to the Banks house at 8 a.m. to drag him out away from his children and hold him on a one million dollar warrant because he MIGHT do something “violent” in the future?

Then there is this lovely post made by Banks’ wife, which he chose to amplify. Jason Rantz writes of Mr. Bank’s activities:

A county prosecutor has again denigrated constituents, this time with the alarming claim that we must ‘cleanse society’ of the ‘diseased thinking’ of Trump supporters.

Island County prosecutor Greg Banks is notoriously anti-Trump. He spends a remarkable amount of time posting unhinged rants on his personal, public Facebook page. It’s become so bad that residents have repeatedly questioned whether or not conservatives would be treated fairly in his office or in court.

Though he previously apologized for his posts, promising not to attack President Donald Trump voters again, Banks posted his most vile musing yet.

The day after the first presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, Banks turned to Facebook to vent.

It’s fair to criticize the president’s handling of the question. I did just that on FOX News. But it’s not OK to falsely quote the president to make your point. It’s despicable and dangerous.

But more disturbingly, in the comments section, he used a common term associated with violent, systematic, forced removal of people from an area.

After someone condemned the president’s fake quote, Banks wrote: ‘The terrifying part is 38% of voters don’t see anything wrong with that. Even after we flush Trump, we have a difficult job to cleanse society of their diseased thinking.’

Banks doesn’t explain what the “diseased thinking” is, but it’s a rather remarkable claim for Banks to make.

His Facebook oozes with vicious smears and deranged thoughts. Banks might be the one suffering from diseased thinking. He comes off as having an unhealthy obsession with Trump and his supporters.

Previously, Banks was called out for these posts, which included comparing Trump supporters to the KKK while arguing Trump’s supporters are ‘racist bullies with second-grade intellects and behavior disorders.’

After the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH shined a spotlight on his posts in August 2019, Banks wrote an email apology to his staff at the Island County Prosecutor’s Office. He acknowledged that he did ‘something pretty stupid’ by posting so many insults against Trump supporters. – Jason Rantz

In his persecution of Tyler Dinsmoor, does Mr. Banks believe he is doing his part to “cleanse society” of “Trump supporters” by using malicious prosecution to rip Tyler from his family and throw him into a gulag. Should Mr. Banks be forced to submit to a psychological examination as they have demanded of Mr. Dinsmoor?

Now let’s talk about the allegations of “ominous posts” about an upcoming pride parade. Det. Sgt. Gravel’s incident report and the Whidbey News Times article mention a quote that says “talk me out of it,” but they EXCLUDE the rest of his commentary where he makes CLEAR that he is referring to non-violent demonstrations and passing out leaflets with his family:

Not only does Mr. Dinsmoor say that he would only go to pass out leaflets with his family, he includes the comment that he “wouldn’t go anyway.” NONE of that context is included in the incident report or in virtually ANY of the mainstream news reporting on this. Why was that omitted? I called Det. Sgt. Gravel to ask that and some other questions, but so far she has not returned my calls.

Let’s look at the post referenced in the incident report that mentioned a “photoshopped” picture of someone pointing a gun at a “pride parade,” which they also used to bolster this theory that Mr. Dinsmoor presents a “threat” of “violence in the near future”:

ONCE AGAIN this is made in the context of peacefully demonstrating and counter-protesting a pride parade, NOT eluding to acts of violence. It’s a meme.

Let’s look at some of the other posts:

That is about all the posts that even reference that upcoming Anacortes Pride Parade that the police claim Tyler was “fixated” on. It’s absurd to suggest that fewer than three posts about an event demonstrates any fixation on it.

Mr. Dinsmoor could be said to have made some offensive posts online, but none of that was expressing any kind of violent intent at all, they are clearly based on his religious convictions and beliefs.

Here is the actual incident report (I have made redactions to protect the privacy of Tyler’s accuser), based WHOLLY on hearsay allegations, gossip from neighbors about things they claim happened “years ago” with no evidence to prove it, as well as some offensive posts online:

I have highlighted in red the MANY problematic statements here.

This detective doesn’t even understand what “fedposting” means.

This should disturb everyone who is a God fearing Christian and who is to the right of Mao.

Pattern of Attack

What we are seeing is a new pattern of attack to shut down Christians and any effective and real political opposition. This is a multi-pronged attack:

This will be the blueprint for waging a war on Christians and conservatives in the coming months and years. Tyler is the test case for this. It involves weaponizing and using things like Red Flag Laws, Hate Crime legislation, Community Policing, and Pre-Crime — all as part of the “war on “domestic terror.” But who is the person that gets to define a domestic terrorist and on what basis? Could living off grid make one a domestic terrorist? How about attending a Baptist Church, does that make one a domestic terrorist?

An Antifa account on Twitter called “We Will Be Ruthless” claimed responsibility for having agitated to get Mr. Dinsmoor arrested:

Pay close attention to the Anacortes Police response, because they were right. There was NO implied threat against the Anacortes Pride Parade.

A very important part that this account let slip was the “community outrage” line that prompted a “federal” investigation. Now as far as I have seen there are NO federal charges against Mr. Dinsmoor. But the point stands that the Antifa “community” is claiming responsibility for forcing police to do what they wanted. I wonder, does the Oak Harbor Police Department harbor Antifa sympathizers or members?

Community Policing

During the 2020 “summer of love” riots across America, many leftist activists tried to push a movement to “defund” police and institute something they called “community policing” by untrained individuals. Groups like the Black Panthers have been arguing for what they are calling “community control of the police,” which is interesting in light of the Antifa post about “community outrage” making the police act against Mr. Dinsmoor’s as well as the mentions in his incident report of the community complaining to the police about his Gab posts.

From Howie Hawkins:

This policy paper makes the case for reviving the Black Panther Party program for community control of the police.

“Pending transformation to a democratic society, community control of the police is an immediate reform we must demand.”

Their [the police] real power is manifested in the organized guns and force. But we’re saying that the people in this community, the people in this country, don’t have any control over that organized guns, force, and power. We’re saying that the capitalist, the racist, and others have control over it. And we’re saying that we want to change it, that we want to revolutionize it, turn it over into the hands of the people, for a new process to occur. We’re saying we want community control. – Bobby Seale, Chicago Community Control of the Police Conference, June 1, 1973

So, if the community is mostly leftist, and they don’t like a right wing Christian that has a “Bible Bigot” bumper sticker and lawfully open carries a firearm, maybe part of community policing would be manufacturing a false allegation to get that person removed from the community and charged with a felony hate crime?

Let’s not forget Biden pushing to bring “mental health” into policing:

Less noticed was Biden’s proclamation that ‘gun violence is a public health crisis,’ including his proposal for millions in funding for so-called Community Violence Intervention (CVI). The public health crisis theme was echoed by the Centers for Disease Control. And while the BLM-inspired ballot initiative to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and ‘reimagine’ policing gets headlines; Democrats are using the ‘public health crisis’ ploy to undermine policing across the country.  Fifteen major cities are targeted to lay the groundwork. – Daily Caller

The “public health” nonsense is the same thing mentioned in the red flag laws, which are themselves tied to Pre-Crime measures.

Pre-Crime

References numerous times throughout the incident report about Mr. Dinsmoor’s arrest was the allegation that he “might” do some vague violent act “in the near future,” despite having no history of violence or any criminal record.

John Whitehead writes for Rutherford:

Just as we get a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, there might be a chance of crawling out of this totalitarian cesspool in which we’ve been mired, we get kicked down again.

In the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared that police cannot carry out warrantless home invasions in order to seize guns under the pretext of their ‘community caretaking’ duties, the Biden Administration announced its plans for a ‘precrime’ crime prevention agency.

Talk about taking one step forward and two steps back.

Precrime, straight out of the realm of dystopian science fiction movies such as Minority Report, aims to prevent crimes before they happen by combining widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs to enable police to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

This particular precrime division will fall under the Department of Homeland Security, the agency notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.

The intent, of course, is for the government to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful in its preemptive efforts to combat domestic extremism.

Where we run into trouble is when the government gets overzealous and over-ambitious and overreaches.

This is how you turn a nation of citizens into snitches and suspects.

In the blink of an eye, ordinary Americans will find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.

Of course, it’s an elaborate setup: we’ll all be targets.

In such a suspect society, the burden of proof is reversed so that guilt is assumed and innocence must be proven.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

What’s more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate. – Rutherford Institute

There is a major connection between this pre-crime component and the “pre-crime” arrests not just of Mr. Dinsmoor but a group called Patriot Front as well. I encourage people to read this article about DHS and CP3 as it relates to precrime.

War on Domestic Terror

The Biden regime announced a new domestic war on terror, but the government has been quietly laying the groundwork for this going back decades.

PJ Media writes:

I think the SPLC’s tactics have inspired Democrats’ new domestic ‘War on Terror.’ Not only have Democrats cited the SPLC’s ‘hate group’ accusations, but they have done so in a way that echoes the kind of surveillance state Brennan hinted at.

In 2019, Attorney General Dana Nessel (D-Mich.) targeted conservative groups in her announcement launching a new ‘hate crimes’ unit. Nessel condemned ‘hate groups’ in Michigan, referencing the SPLC’s ‘hate map.’

Throughout the Trump years, at least eight Democratic senators cited the SPLC to condemn Trump’s nominees. Kamala Harris, now Biden’s vice president, attacked Trump judicial nominee Allison Rushing for participating in ADF events.

Biden himself has arguably demonized conservative Christians who oppose LGBT activism. In 2018 at an LGBT activist group, he attacked people who have ‘tried to define family’ in the U.S. as ‘the dregs of society.’ At the CNN LGBT town hall in October 2019, Biden called for a kind of terror watchlist to monitor organizations that oppose same-sex marriage and transgender identity. Biden firmly supports the Equality Act, which would outlaw discrimination against LGBT people. While Americans do not support discrimination, laws like this have been weaponized to punish Christians for refusing to celebrate same-sex weddings. – PJ Media

Joe Biden wanted people put on a “watch list,” for opposing same-sex marriage and transgenders. His regime has pushed the “Equality Act,” which would make Christian beliefs criminal.

Ben Weingarten writes for Newsweek:

The Biden administration’s first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism codifies a federal War on Wrongthink. In sum, the document makes clear that the imposition of Wokeism constitutes a national security imperative.

That is, the strategy uses public safety to justify leftist domination of both public policy and the public discourse, enforcing the regime’s ideology at the point of a government gun.

It comes against the backdrop of the Woking of the defense, national security and intelligence apparatuses, the executive branch more broadly and society itself, whereby those who run afoul of progressivism are deemed bigoted and dangerous—and therefore liable to be purged.

Anti-racist ‘equity,’ which as the Left uses it is antithetical to real “equality,” calls for overtly discriminating against individuals and removing justice’s blindfold. The goal is to use policy to socially engineer the citizenry so that all outcomes are proportional to group identity. Applied Critical Race Theory, in other words, is now set to be our domestic counterterrorism strategy. – Newsweek

Indeed that seems to be the purpose of the new domestic war on terror, identifying and punishing “wrong-thinkers” using the full weight of the state and the federal government.

Hate Crime Laws

What are being termed “hate crimes” and “hate speech” is another prong in the attack on Christians and right wingers.

A December 1992 article from Reason wrote about Hate Crime legislation:

In recent years all but four states have adopted such laws, most of which raise the penalties for existing offenses when they are motivated by bigotry. Supporters of hate-crime laws say they do not want to suppress speech or ideas—only a particularly dangerous kind of crime. Opponents argue that such laws punish what people say, think, and believe, in violation of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court left this debate unresolved last summer, when it addressed the issue of hate-crime laws for the first time. In RAV v. St. Paul, the Court unanimously overturned a St. Paul ordinance that banned the display on public or private property of ‘a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti’ likely to arouse ‘anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.’

The case arose after a teenager, Robert Viktora, burned a cross on the lawn of a black family in June 1990. In addition to charging him with assault under state law, the city prosecuted him under the hate-crime ordinance. And because that ordinance banned specific expressive acts—rather than simply raising the penalty for existing crimes—the Supreme Court’s decision may or may not apply more broadly to ‘penalty-enhancement’ statutes. Since the ruling, state supreme courts have overturned penalty-enhancement laws in Wisconsin and Ohio but upheld one in Oregon. So hate-crime laws, in their most common form, remain very much the subject of legal, political, and philosophical debate.

But Kevin O’Neill, who wrote the Ohio ACLU chapter’s brief against that state’s law, has no such qualms. ‘Our basic concern about hate-crimes legislation in general, and Ohio’s ethnic intimidation law in particular, is that it is an effort by government to punish people because of their ideas,’ he told a wire-service reporter, pointing out that each state ACLU chapter is autonomous.

In fact, the penalty-enhancement approach was designed precisely to avoid First Amendment problems. The model statute developed by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which most states have imitated, raises the seriousness of an offense when it is committed ‘by reason of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation of another individual or group of individuals.’ The model statute also boosts penalties for ‘institutional vandalism’ and allows hate-crime victims to sue for special, general, and punitive damages.

Legislatures passed these laws largely in response to lobbying by the ADL, which presented its first model bill in 1981. – Reason

So “hate crimes” legislation was literally written by the ADL and they then used lobbying and political pressure to force states to adopt it. The article goes on to state that the ADL used misleading data to suggest that “hate crimes” were “on the rise,” fueling a false sense of urgency to adopt the unconstitutional measures. The article concluded with this thought “By creating a distinction based on motive, hate-crime laws are bound to punish people based on their speech, since that is usually the only evidence of bigoted motivation.” and that is exactly what they have done to Tyler Dinsmoor.

Conclusion

I listened in to Mr. Dinsmoor’s first appearance for a bail hearing yesterday afternoon. His lawyer believes Mr. Dinsmoor’s rights were violated. He stated that he intends to challenge the “probable cause” to obtain the warrant. The clearly biased prosecutor lied about Mr. Dinsmoor’s actions more than once and claimed he believed Mr. Dinsmoor posed a “substantial risk to commit a crime,” a “risk he poses based on his own words,” the prosecutor said. The prosecutor repeatedly brought up his “Gab posts” and alleged Tyler communicated “verbally” threats to members of the community but so far we haven’t seen any actual evidence to substantiate these claims of “verbal” statements.

Mr. Thompson, the lawyer for Mr. Dinsmoor said prosecutors and police had cherry-picked posts Tyler made and then “spun a narrative” attacking him for his religious beliefs. He read seven letters of support from the community on behalf of Mr. Dinsmoor, testifying to his kind and loving nature. The letters spoke of how he often helped his neighbors and members of the community. They mentioned his love of God and his family. They characterized him as a family man who they never knew to be violent or threatening.

The Judge ordered $150k secure bond be required — meaning it must be full cash bond or Mr. Dinsmoor could use a property to secure the bond. In addition he was ordered to go through a “7105” psychiatric evaluation before release.

It should be noted another defendant before the same court was alleged to have raped and murdered someone and was released the next day on their own recognizance. So someone alleged to have killed someone is free the next day but someone who is alleged to have said some words inside their own house and made some offensive posts online sits in jail tonight, waiting to be released after having been in jail since Friday, June 17, 2022.

Mr. Dinsmoor has a legal defense fund to which you can contribute if you feel moved to do so: https://www.givesendgo.com/dinsmoor.