UPDATE: Shawna Forde links to Rep. Tom Tancredo

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Shawna Forde, executive director of the Minutemen American Defense, who ordered a family murdered during a recent home invasion burglarly in Arivaca, AZ, is no run-of-the-mill criminal. She is one serious piece of work. Check out this tagged series of reports from crooks and liars.com, which tracks right-wing extremist organizations. Shawna Forde | Crooks and Liars

The Colorado Independent adds this interesting report Tancredo linked to Minuteman group accused of Arizona double-murder:

Shawna Forde and members of Minuteman American Defense — an anti-illegal immigration vigilante group charged in the double homicide of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter and the attempted murder of the man’s wife — shared a stage, if not their vigilante streak, with former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo.

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Her most recent link to Tancredo, the former Republican congressman from Colorado, occurred at a sparsely attended 2007 Everett rally organized by The Reagan Wing and MAD, a splinter group Forde led that was an offshoot of the more widely known Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. The event featured representatives of Tancredo’s dark-horse presidential campaign and a letter of support from the candidate himself.

In typically fiery tone, Tancredo extended his regrets for being unable to attend the “Illegal Immigration Summit”.

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At the time of the Washington State rally, Tancredo was in Iowa stumping “in a packed room inside the Des Moines Quality Inn. Standing room only,” according to his now-abandoned campaign blog.

Bay Buchanan, campaign chair for Tancredo’s presidential bid, dismissed the letter as a boilerplate rejection to attend the event — one of dozens routinely sent by the campaign.

“We were a very lean operation and we didn’t have anyone formally in Washington State,” Buchanan told The Colorado Independent. “To the best of his knowledge Congressman Tancredo has never met Ms. Forde.”

Yet, a July 1, 2007, story published by the Everett Herald further placed official Tancredo campaign staff at the event as well as Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist — whose own group’s bitter 2005 internal power struggle led to the creation of the defense corps that eventually spawned Forde’s faction.

Saturday’s six-hour forum held at the Everett Elks Lodge was organized by Minutemen American Defense and The Reagan Wing, both Washington-based conservative groups.

Forde, the founder of Everett-based Minutemen American Defense, encouraged the audience to shout “take back America” together several times during her speech.

Presidential candidate and California Rep. Duncan Hunter spoke to the audience via cell phone, saying he would build an 850-mile wall along the southern border stretching from California to Texas.

A representative for presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and Republican congressional hopeful Doug Roulstone also spoke. People paid $30 each to attend.

The newspaper noted that Forde was a 2007 candidate for the Everett City Council on an anti-immigration platform. She received 5,900 votes, or 35 percent, but lost the general election. A year prior she unsuccessfully attempted to put a ballot initiative before voters that sought to prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving state aid.

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The Tancredo-Forde connections continue with their joint association with the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Forde participated in a televised 2006 town hall meeting in Yakima, Wash., where she was identified repeatedly as a representative of FAIR.

Tancredo has had long-standing relationships with FAIR and its sister organizations, funded by Michigan eugenics-proponent John Tanton, from his days in Congress as founder and chair of the House Commission on Immigration Reform. Many of Tanton’s organizations, including FAIR, have been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Since Forde and her cohorts have been charged with first-degree murder in the killings and assault of the Flores family, FAIR and both Minuteman sects have issued statements distancing themselves from Forde and the splinter group she led.

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