Richard Trevor Sivell is a New Zealand conspiracy theorist and "sovereign citizen" who was convicted of threatening to kill then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in 2021 and 2022.
[1] In a separate matter he is defending charges of possessing an objectionable publication, namely the livestream that was broadcast during the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.
After making threats to kill on Counterspin Media's Telegram channel in late 2021 and early 2022, Sivell was arrested on 29 March 2022.
During the arrest, which Sivell resisted for a number of hours, he and his supporters posted audio and video clips to social media.
His messages talked about adding individuals including a District Court Judge to a "Nuremberg List" - a reference to executing war criminals.
Researchers also believed that he had fallen out with a number of others in the conspiracy community, including Kelvyn Alp of Counterspin and Brian Tamaki.
[10] At his appearance on 17 December the court's duty lawyer informed the court that, "he’s a sovereign citizen...I’m an agent of the Crown, he was very pleasant but he doesn’t want any help.”[12] In another sovereign citizen-style assertion, Sivell invoked arcane law in claiming "allodial title" over a small public building near Te Puke.
[2][13] In 2020 Sivell, who was working in Tirau, received a warning from Police after distributing flyers that described South Waikato District Councillor Peter Schulte, who had fled East Germany in the 1980s, as a "Nazi".
[16] He was a regular voice on Counterspin's Telegram channel, and commonly invoked the Nuremberg code in relation to politicians and law enforcement.