Will Anyone Challenge DEMOCRAT Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen? – by Travis Mateer

Why vote for this guy in November? What has Jeremiah Petersen done since 2023 other than hide his face from the public and retreat from the Missoula County courthouse? And why did it take a phone call to the election office to determine that Jeremiah Petersen is, indeed, running as a DEMOCRAT?

When I consulted local media all I got was vague, boilerplate bullshit and NO info on what party Petersen was choosing to affiliate himself with.

Petersen announced on Tuesday that he had officially filed for re-election.

Since taking office in 2023, Petersen says he has strengthened public safety, improved response times, and increased deputy training and retention.

A lifelong Missoula County resident and 22-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, Petersen says there’s still important work ahead in supporting deputies and ensuring fair law enforcement.

After failing to find the most basic information in the KPAX “news” article, I went to the County election website and, guess what? The candidate filing list wouldn’t load! Was it really going to be THIS difficult to find out if Jeremiah Petersen was going to take the big D or run from it?

My next step was to CALL the election office and wait for nearly 10 minutes on hold just to bug poor Ashley about Jeremiah’s mysterious “D”. Ashly, after listening to how enthusiastic I was at 8:30am to obtain this very important piece of information, confirmed that “D” was indeed the political party that Sheriff Petersen still identified as. Thanks Ashley!

One reason this party affiliation is important can be found in the Missoula County Jail Diversion Plan, which contains stuff like this:

Does Sheriff Jeremiah Petersen still believe in the “housing first” model? Or, more likely, is he too busy running away from the Missoula County Courthouse to think about outdated models of dealing with serious mental illness and very destructive drug addiction issues?

The retreat from the Missoula County Courthouse lawn was first articulated at the City Club event earlier this month, which you can watch here, and follows the physical retreat the Sheriff’s Office took last July when they officially moved their offices closer to the jail, which I’ll be writing about next week.

Knowing how informal Montana lawmen can be, I wanted to know if Police Chief Colyer and Sheriff Petersen have actually formalized this jurisdictional shift in responsibility, so I emailed the people who get paid to communicate to people like me, the inquisitive public, and I cc’d the ones who sign the paychecks for Sheriff Deputies–you know, those HIGHER paychecks our previous Sheriff, T.J. McDermott, SUED Missoula County to get after handshake deals went sour behind the scenes, but that’s another story.

While I wait for a response, I’ll offer some free advice to Sheriff Petersen: don’t run from the D, Sheriff, embrace it, because when it comes to the law, some of us understand better than others who is really being protected.

And it’s not “the public”.

Thanks for reading!

Decoding The Signature-Snatchers And The Illusion Of A Non-Partisan Judiciary – by Travis Mateer

First, let’s state the obvious: no one believes anything in 2026 is non-partisan, including the courts. So what is up with the ballot initiative paying assholes in Missoula to harass people for their signature?

There is a desperate and cynical ploy from Montana Democrats to convince and/or gaslight Montanans into believing the bullshit, shoveled by entities like the ACLU, that Montanans prefer PEOPLE over PARTY when choosing judges in this VERY corrupt judicial system.

Here’s the bullshit I will be decoding for today’s post from the ACLU website:

Judges should be elected based on their record and qualifications, not their political party. Montanans have been electing judges in non-partisan elections since 1935.

Politicians in Helena are actively trying to take control of Montana’s court system by passing laws that inject party politics into our judicial system. We need to protect our courts from the threat of political control and ensure that judges remain nonpartisan. This ballot measure protects our long-standing tradition of selecting judges based on the person, not the party.

My assertion, which I will I back up by exposing the groups behind this effort, is that party politics is already all over the “court system”, it’s just difficult to see behind the smokescreen of “non-partisanship”.

If the courts were NOT a partisan-soaked machine functioning as part attack dog, part protection racket, for Montana Democrats, then explain how State Senator, Ellie Boldman, still has a prominent career?

The notorious political rise of this Idaho transplant who used a homeless shelter in Missoula to launch her political career is actually one of the best ways to see the REAL political tentacles slithering behind this effort to keep Montanans bamboozled about how bad the court system has become.

Last month two separate initiatives became one and, according to the Daily Montanan, here’s who, and what, is paying the signature-gatherers to panhandle Missoulians for their scribbled consent:

According to a Thursday press release, Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges, the group started by Ted Dick and Pepper Peterson that sponsored CI-131, announced their endorsement of CI-132.

The consolidation “signals a united effort to protect Montana voters’ 90-year right to nonpartisan judicial elections,” Dick said in a press release. “Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges believes Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts has a strong policy and the resources to ensure the initiative qualifies for the ballot, which is why we have chosen to formally endorse CI-132.”

Dick has formally requested to withdraw CI-131 with the Montana Secretary of State.

Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts is a coalition comprising multiple advocacy groups throughout the state including Montana Federation of Public Employees, Big Sky 55+, ACLU of Montana, Forward Montana, and Catalyst Montana.

The first name that gave the game away for me is the name “Pepper Petersen”, president and CEO of the Montana Cannabis Guild. To give you a sense of the hierarchy Pepper has within the weed industry, he would probably be getting pegged by Ellie Boldman if Montana Democrats ran EYES WIDE SHUT parties.

The next big giveaway is “Forward Montana”, the political creation of Matt Singer and former employer of Catherine Virginia Tooley Shepard before she committed suicide, a sad and tragic death that helps highlight how corrupt the “courts” are, since you would hope that a powerful woman involved in allegedly bullying Catherine for the extramarital affair she had with the woman’s husband would have faced some kind of accountability for her behavior.

I’ll give the ACLU an honorable mention, since Gwen Florio’s husband, Scott Crighton, was its sole director from 1988 to when he stepped down in 2015 to enjoy the retired life and eventually travel with his fiction-writing wife from their new home base in New Jersey.

Gwen Florio, I will remind readers, was instrumental in controlling the narrative around the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office ability to euthanize a black man in a private hospital room. Once that part of the narrative was controlled, the inability of the Stevenson family to find a willing lawyer ANYWHERE in Montana highlights, again, the power of what we’re talking about here to maintain this illusion for the courts and the “non-partisan” role they supposedly play in providing equal justice under the law.

Finally, my favorite “group” in this list of illusion-protectors is the rebranded group calling itself “Catalyst Montana”, formerly known as the Montana Human Rights Network, something I only found out because I showed up to rain on their exploit-the-homeless parade.

If you want to better understand where the Montana Human Rights Network was coming from before they felt the need to rebrand, here is a post I wrote four years ago, titled On Democracy, The Montana Human Rights Network, And The Wrong Kind Of Black People.

And, if you want to better understand “Catalyst Montana”, here’s a screenshot from their new effort to do the same shit under a different name:

In summary, this effort to maintain a false illusion of non-partisanship for the courts appears, upon further scrutiny, to be nothing more than partisan bullshit, but the partisans have money, while I, in contrast, am wondering how I’ll cover my bills this month.

If you would like to help with the latter, I’m my gofundme is 94% to $5,000, a modest figure I set out to raise several years ago. Meanwhile, ICE shooters and widows of dumb martyrs raise over a million.

Such is life in a 250 year old retarded dumpster fire where we allow psychopaths and cyborg nerds to openly harvest our children.

Does A Retarded Media Make Retarded Citizens? – by Travis Mateer

David Erickson finally found a politically-themed “news” story about a restaurant that his employer, Lee Enterprises, is willing to publish.

For contrast, when Sam Risho, the owner of Silk Road catering, ignored my request to remove an image from the work computer that showed my head on the body of Charlie Kirk getting shot, no one in local media gave a fuck. I guess a hostile work environment with a coke-abusing sex offender kitchen manager who was formally questioned in the death of my co-worker, Leah Hartley, just isn’t newsworthy enough for a retarded liberal town like Missoula.

A much more interesting and relevant story than trying to whip up woke outrage at a private business is the story of what Mountain Line got dealt this month in court.

If you had no idea Mountain Line was fighting AGAINST transparency in court, that’s because the media hasn’t covered this story at all. Maybe that will change now that YOUR taxpayer dollars will go to pay for the legal bill to the tune of $25,592 dollars.

Why would a public service that our idiot officials turned into a zero-fare shit-show be against transparency? The answer is right there in the question: Mountain Line is against transparency in order to PROTECT themselves from the consequences of their zero-fare shit-show. Duh.

To expound on what is at stake here, this is from the Facebook page where you can get the information that our local media, so far, has refused to report on:

The Court ruled that MUTD’s blanket denial of public records I.E. specifically, security camera videos from buses operating on public roads, funded by public dollars and recording in public spaces was a violation of the Montana Constitution, Article II, Sections 8 and 9, which protect every Montanan’s fundamental right to know and right to participate in government.

The Court ordered MUTD to produce the requested videos, and awarded attorney’s fees and costs to the Petitioner. Let that sink in. A public transit agency, funded by taxpayer money, denied a lawful public records request, fought it in court for over a year, and lost. These are public records. The public has a right to see them. We have a right to see how public employees like supervisors handle situations and events etc.

Like so many trends in this town related to the policies our officials have undertaken to help “marginalized” populations–like sex offenders who sometimes masturbate on our local buses in the presence of little girls–I’ve been all over this subject for years.

How did I know going zero-fare was going to increase access for sexual deviants? Seven years working at the Poverello Center, that’s how, so when I read this account from 2023, my long-held concerns were unfortunately validated:

A man has been charged with felony indecent exposure for exposing himself to a minor on a Missoula transit bus.

Jack Alan Mellem,36, is accused of exposing himself and masturbating in the presence of a young girl on a Mountain Line Bus on Wednesday, Feb. 8.

In charging documents, the 12-year-old girl told police she was on the bus when a bald man with a barbed-wire tattoo on his face entered the bus on North Avenue and Johnson Street.

The girl told police the man exposed himself and began touching himself while staring directly at her.

After this incident I wrote a blog post, which you can read here, that includes five other posts about our publicly-funded bus system going back to 2019. My insights come directly from the experience I had as the FIRST (and best, obviously) Homeless Outreach Coordinator, working with Mountain Line BEFORE they went zero-fare, then after, so I saw the changes that using warm bodies to chase Federal dollars produced.

Homeless people are great on paper for non-profit grifters like Susan Hay Patrick, but they can be challenging when they congregate for extended periods of time with booze and meth. That’s why our retarded city placed a hilarious sign by the Courthouse lawn-party that’s been going on as the weather has warmed.

Here is the language I’m sure some toxically empathic cog in the HIC (Homeless Industrial Complex) helped devise.

You must remove your belongings from the site within the timeframe on the notice. You should not leave behind any belongings you want to keep. All belongings left behind will be removed by the City. Items that are clearly discarded or valueless, hazardous, soiled, or subjected to rotting or spoiling will be discarded. The City will store remaining personal property for a period of 30 days. The City will post an Impound Notice if belongings are stored during the clean-up process.

If you think your belongings were stored, you can claim them by following the directions on the Impound Notice after the clean-up is complete. Information about how to claim your belongings is also available on the City’s website. You may retrieve any stored belongings without being asked about your criminal background or outstanding warrants.

And here are three pictures I took yesterday morning of the sidewalk/alley just across the street from the sign.

If Missoula was on trial for being retarded, I might be tempted to rest my case, but later this morning Brandon Bryant will finally get to make a court appearance from jail after an extra day in a cell because all the retarded bureaucrats had a holiday yesterday.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned, I have a feeling this is gonna be a big week.

Klaus von Stutterheim Day: How A Berlin-Born New York Transplant Connects Big Sky Democrats To Jeffrey Epstein – by Travis Mateer

If you put “Klaus von Stutterheim” into the Department of Justice’s Epstein database, you won’t get any results. But, if you put in Stutterheim’s Deutsche Bank colleague, Steven Elkman, you’ll get emails like this:

This email is from 2010, three years before Epstein officially became a client of the bank that both Elkman and von Stutterheim worked for. We will return to this year shortly.

Officially retiring from Deutsche Bank in 2012, Klaus came to Montana and hit the ground running, immediately getting involved in Democratic politics by becoming a member of the Seeley Lake Community Council, as this application clearly shows:

Four years later, when the refugee question was getting Big Sky attention, this German-born banker pretended to be a naturally-born American and wrote “opinions” like this for the Seeley Lake Pathfinder:

A fiery debate has broken out about refugees and especially about the possibility of refugees in Missoula, fanned perhaps by the sometimes incendiary tenor of the Presidential primary debates.

But a more dispassionate examination of the facts suggests that things are nowhere near as dire as some fear.

At the outset, we need to acknowledge that Europe finds itself in the most serious crisis in a generation. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are pouring across open borders into Germany alone, a country smaller than Montana. And the combustible concentration of crowds of hundreds of single men in their twenties without any family ties has led to frightening attacks on women in Cologne and elsewhere. No wonder that many Germans are rethinking their original embracement of refugees and are fearful that things have spiraled out of control. And no wonder that some people in the U.S. who have watched those scenes on TV are anxious about what may happen here.

But the situation in the U.S. is literally worlds apart from what is going on in Europe.

After Klaus shares his concern for the continent he was born, he ends his op-ed without ever putting his own immigration history into context:

Finally, this letter would be incomplete if it did not remind my fellow Americans of our proud history of generosity and hospitality. This country was born of refugees fleeing persecution, and we have openly accepted wave upon wave of immigrants who have greatly contributed to our national wealth and to our magnificent cultural diversity, who have made us who we are today, still, in my opinion, the most exciting nation on earth.

Let us open our hearts and say, “Welcome!” to at least a handful of our fellow women and men whose lives have been cruelly torn away from them and who linger in desolation and destitution today.

Remember, this was 2016, the year Hillary Clinton ran for president. And who just shockingly claimed immigration has gone too far? That’s right, Hillary Clinton.

The speed at which Klaus von Stutterheim involved himself with Democratic politics in Big Sky Country is curious, but maybe this is just the kind of thing a retired banker born in Berlin likes to do.

I mean, it’s not like some Epstein connected power broker like Andrew Farkas was visiting Big Sky in 2010, right?

Who is Andrew Farkas and why was he hanging out in a tent in “Greenough” in August of 2010? Was this a Paws Up Ranch meeting like the one Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Peter Thiel had last June?

For readers not familiar with Andrew Farkas’ Epstein connection, which I assume is most of you, here’s some context:

Andrew Farkas become a prominent figure in New York City commercial real estate in the 1990s. In 1990 Farkas founded Insignia Financial Group which he took public in 1993. In 1996 he purchased the brokerage firm Edward S. Gordon and Company. In 1998 he sold his portfolio of residential properties to AIMCO.

Farkas’ primary investment vehicle is Island Capital Group, set up as a merchant bank. The company had a subsidiary, Island Global Yachting (IGY), which developed and managed marinas. IGY’s first project was Yacht Haven Grande on Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands which began in 2001 and opened in 2007.

In 2007 Island Capital acquired the Montauk Yacht Club Resort and Marina in Montauk, New York. The property was sold in 2017 to George Filopolous.

In 2010 he acquired Centerline Holding Company, a major commercial real estate mortgage servicer.

And here’s the part from Farkas’ Wikipedia entry that highlights his connection to Epstein:

It came to light after Jeffrey Epstein’s second arrest that Epstein owned 50% of the American Yacht Harbour at Red Hook; the other half was owned by Farkas. The partnership came about in 2007 when Epstein was having financial, regulatory and legal problems.

In 2010, just a few months before Farkas visited this part of Montana, Klaus von Stutterheim was riding horses and writing about it just a few miles from where Farkas would be staying in a tent. Hmmm.

Before I get to the hilarious Missoula County Commissioners proclamation that awkwardly includes a reference to pizza, let’s see what Klaus thought about Missoula’s former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott, the guy at the helm when the Sheriff’s office euthanized Sean Stevenson.

It wasn’t just words that Klaus committed to his preferred candidates, like T.J. McDermott, it was money, which is publicly available information. That is how I was able to find this:

In addition to money from the von Stutterheim’s, I also found a donation from Susan Hay Patrick, the director of United Way of Missoula County and a recipient of Federal money through the Sheriff’s Office via Project Safe Neighborhood when she isn’t ignoring a fake anti-trafficking non-profit called the LifeGuard Group.

Here is Susan Hay Patrick’s donation to her favorite Sheriff:

And here is how Susan Hay Patrick spends Uncle Sam’s money from a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release:

“The Missoula County Sheriff’s Office looks forward to this partnership with the United Way to provide assistance through Missoula Substance Abuse Connect to those in our community who are dealing with addictions and substance abuse issues. I’d also like to thank United Way of Missoula CEO Susan Hay Patrick for her efforts on this project,” Missoula County Sheriff TJ McDermott said.

Missoula Substance Abuse Connect will be managed by United Way of Missoula County and a volunteer board of business and community leaders. The project director is Shannan Sproull, who is an authority on substance abuse prevention with decades of experience in the public and private sectors. The project chair is Janna Lundquist, a respected organizational consultant and former United Way board president with an extensive background in business and nonprofit leadership. Project leaders are recruiting an executive committee and working group from among the 40 public and private coalition member organizations.

PSN Missoula County’s partners include the U.S. Attorney’s Office; Missoula County Attorney’s Office; Montana Department of Justice’s Prosecution Services Bureau, Highway Patrol and Division of Criminal Investigation; the Montana Department of Correction’s Adult Probation and Parole Division; the Missoula Police Department; the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office; Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Marshal’s Service.

For more information about Missoula Substance Abuse Connect, contact Susan Hay Patrick, CEO, United Way of Missoula County, susan@MissoulaUnitedWay.org; 406-360-0596.

Getting back to Klaus von Stutterheim and the kind of people who appreciate him, I have to highlight Pete Talbot, son of John Talbot, the retired CIA agent who married into our local newspaper empire, Lee Enterprises, and the man who has a plaque inside the Journalism building on campus, where I make a point to throw away my trash in the trash can right below it.

Here’s Pete Talbot’s appreciation for the Berlin-born banker who loves horses, Democrats, and non-violent refugees who would never rape anyone:

What is well dissevered? Achieving the status of having local elected officials gush about conserving land, eating pizza, and opening Montana up like the legs of a two-bit whore for child-fucking, jerky-munching sociopaths.

Happy STUTTER-BUTTER DAY everyone!

Weaponized Protection Orders, Non-Compliant Sex Offenders, And The Case Of Brandon Wayne Bryant – by Travis Mateer

After failing to pay rent for several months, and a subsequent physical altercation with his roommate, the man pictured above, who goes by “Jim”, got a local court to implement a temporary order of protection to keep him safe.

To better understand this process, here are the statutes and legal language that describes this concept, and the requirements that need to be met, in order to get legally protected.

With this in mind, let’s ask ourselves a simple question: why would a person who is feeling so unsafe that they seek a Temporary Order of Protection choose to go to a physical location where they know the person they are terrified of will be? If there truly exists a “REASONABLE APPREHENSION” of danger, wouldn’t this act undermine that claim?

Yesterday, during the anti-war protest that’s been happening on Fridays at 12:30pm every week for years, Brandon Bryant, the JSOC drone-program whistleblower, was in attendance when his former roommate saw him from across the street and CHOSE to close the gap.

My understanding is that Brandon Bryant ALSO has a temporary protection order against “Jim”, who has a more accurate name that he doesn’t like circulating, since the name “Bryce Walker” connects to his incest conviction and the requirement that he register as a sex offender here in Missoula.

I wonder if the people at the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative know about this history, since “Jim” seems to have some kind of official role at this non-profit working with marginalized populations from a faith-based perspective (meaning suckers for a redemptive sob story from convicted pedophiles).

Not only did I see all this trouble for Brandon Bryant brewing back in August, when I wrote the preemptive threat assessment that I later expounded on in this post about the cultural context of a double homicide related to drug trafficking, I’ve been the only one to continue writing about Bryant’s alleged assault of the four badges who beat and tased him for not putting his stick down fast enough.

The combination of stick and verbal stones landed Brandon Bryant in serious trouble before, five years ago, but, after just two hours of deliberation, a jury of his peers returned a not guilty verdict in 2021 on the felony intimidation charge he faced and beat:

A Missoula District Court jury took just two hours to acquit a veteran accused of intimidating the City Council.

In 2020, Brandon Bryant landed in jail shortly after he brought a wooden Japanese training sword to a council meeting and criticized the use of special property tax money.

Prosecutors used that and an edited video of Bryant to charge him with a felony.

This week, three council members, Bryan von Lossberg, Gwen Jones and Julie Merritt all told the jury Bryant scared them.

But four council members and the mayor testified they did not fear him.

The feelings of City Council were VERY important in the County Attorney’s attempt to criminally charge Brandon Bryant five years, but when someone approached HIM at Charlie B’s just five months ago and called him a WOKE FAGGOT, to his face, leading to an brief altercation after Brandon’s attempt to video record this man’s aggression was cut short by a physical attack, our local authorities made NO EFFORT to investigate what happened INSIDE the bar, nor any effort to secure video evidence of this altercation, which led to the 911 call, which led to our four terrified and apparently poorly trained Missoula police officer resorting to excessive force on an officially disabled Veteran.

While Brandon Bryant has done himself NO favors by how his subsequent online posts have expressed anger and feelings of abandonment and persecution–posts which have led to additional criminal charges that will be adjudicated by this town’s criminal “justice” system–there’s a wide-range of data one might consider that doesn’t overtly name people loudly and angrily, but nonetheless should be considered when parsing out what might be happening. Having gone through something similar myself, I went scrolling through “Jim’s” publicly available Facebook posts to see if any red flags appeared, like perhaps a more subtle effort to gaslight someone by implying they are “crazy”.

I offer this tidbit of context because, as someone who has been meeting on a weekly basis with the person I believe “Jim” is referring to here, I’ve had nothing but good interactions, including chats about how to manage strong feelings while being actively targeted, thus triggered, leading to responses that can occur in physiological ways when you have PTSD and other underlying issues from serving in America’s armed forces.

When I had a temporary restraining order put in place nearly three years ago now, the “substitute” municipal judge who knew my “petitioner” denied the objection I raised, denied my request for a postponement, since I lacked legal counsel and she did not, and then the substitute judge (Judge Streano was on vacation, I was told) also ignored one of the final emails I received from my petitioner when I tried leaving this year-long, toxic relationship.

If this was a football game, and I was Brandon Bryant’s football coach, I would remind him that it’s usually the “reaction” that gets the flag or penalty. I’ve also been trying to explain that, at the end of the day, unless more conventional media takes on our stories, no one is going to care about our Facebook posts or blog posts.

What I’m trying to do here, with this one, is share some of that highly valued “lived experience” our victim culture loves strategically deploying for their preferred demographics of dependency. In the spirit of lived experience, imagine trying to breakup up from someone and receiving this set of conditions followed by four consequences of saying no:

Before I get to the consequences, I will add that the people closest to me advised me to stop all contact. Was that good advice?

I don’t know, but from a more objective vantage point, I think the advice Brandon Bryant got yesterday from BOTH his therapist and Public Defender to self-report for clarification at the police station after NOT getting initially arrested was not good advice. Instead of clarification, Bryant was arrested and is currently sitting at the Missoula County Detention Facility.

Thanks to an eerily similar process, I also spent time at this facility because I didn’t think further direct engagement with someone exhibiting signs of borderline personality disorder making unreasonable demands and issuing threats which were definitely followed through on with maximum impact.

While I wouldn’t wish the experiences of lawfare on anyone, there are valuable lessons I have acquired along the way, so sometime next week I may try to explain why Sheriffs running county jails across the country might look at sex offenders differently than the general public thinks they would.

Next week will also be a challenging one for Mr. Bryant, who will exit jail to return to the courtroom for pre-trial hearings as judgement day, once again, comes knocking. And, like so many other local topics I am ahead of the curve on, expect the paid reporters to start covering this story eventually, maybe even the one with the amazing mustache who seemed really grumpy with me for saying hi the other day at Flippers.

Thanks for reading!

UPDATE: in thinking about the comment I highlighted from “Jim’s” Facebook account, the timeline doesn’t fit the “roommate” being Mr. Bryant, but that brings up the question of how offenders go about updating their information regarding where they are staying, something I will look at in a later post.