Canada

With appearances on Fox & Friends and many mostly far-right U.S. and Canadian podcasts, larger-than-life lawyer Jeffrey Rath has emerged as the cowboy-hatted figurehead for the Alberta Prosperity Project, or APP.

Rath is also legal counsel to the APP, a loosely organized group of far-right separatists trading on decades of western alienation and grievance as part of a campaign to form a sovereign country, allegedly with the support and encouragement of the Donald Trump regime.

Since early January, thousands of Albertans have been flocking to APP events across the province to sign a petition in support of a referendum on the province’s separation from Canada.

But a few weeks earlier on Nov. 27, Rath definitely was not in a secure facility. It was the eve of the United Conservative Party annual general meeting in Edmonton and Rath was perched on a stool at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald’s horseshoe-shaped bar in downtown Edmonton, profanely disparaging Alberta Premier Danielle Smith while spouting wild, unproven allegations and opinions to some strangers.

“I have this from a pretty impeccable source,” Rath said. “Jason Kenney, Marshall Smith and the other three or four senior high-powered gay deputy ministers within the Alberta government all flew down to Puerto Vallarta together in advance of the last election.”

Rath alleged they “conspired” there “to plot what they were going to do and how they were going to position themselves when Rachel Notley won the election.”