Tea party activist charged with extortion and stalking

Tea party activist and Republican central committee member Doug Sedenquist failed to appear in court Tuesday because he was detained – behind bars for additional criminal charges.

According to news reports out of Detroit and Green Bay, Wisc., Sedenquist, a northern Michigan talk-radio host,  was arrested last week and spent Thanksgiving weekend in an Upper Peninsula jail on charges of extortion, using a computer to commit a crime, aggravated stalking, and possession of a drug chemically similar to a controlled substance.

Both the extortion and computer crime charges are 20-year felonies, according to the Delta County prosecutor. Until recently, Sedenquist, 51, served as vice chair of the Delta County GOP.

He was supposed to appear in a Green Bay courtroom on Tuesday after pleading guilty to previous charges that stem from a March standoff with police in a mall parking lot while Sedenquist was armed with a rifle.

Sedenquist is best known as a leader of a group of tea party activists that have essentially declared war on the Michigan GOP’s leadership. In August, he described one Republican senator as “a piece of excrement.”
It appears Sedenquist is following in the footsteps of his sidekick, fellow radio talker Randy Bishop, aka “Trucker Randy.” Several years ago, Trucker Randy pleaded guilty to two fraud felonies in Macomb County and then fled to northern Michigan, emerging as the chairman of the Antrim County GOP and a self-proclaimed leader of the state’s tea party movement.
Sedenquist will almost certainly face some kind of censure at the next meeting of the Republican State Central Committee on Dec. 14 in Lansing.