Sovereign citizens are US citizens who claim to have special knowledge or heritage that renders them immune from government authority and laws. Although the ideology itself is not illegal, sovereign citizen violent extremists express their anti-government or anti-authority violent extremist beliefs through the use or threat of force or violence, while sovereign citizen criminals use these beliefs to justify non-violent activities, such as fraud and theft. Sovereign citizen violent extremists or sovereign citizen criminals may attempt to frame legal encounters with government officials as negotiable commercial transactions, or claim legal immunity based on “common law rights of man.”