As for those of us who’ve been following it, we all know that both P’Nut and Fred have already been decapitated, and as it turns out, neither tested positive for rabies.
Yet, there are still armed government agents who’re having a rough time differentiating between law abiding, honest citizens and actual bad guys.
As it turns out, Jennifer Mayo of the greater Corpus Cristi area of Texas, happens to be fowler of exotic poultry breeds. She also has quite a national following of her niche market.
Sadly for Mayo, she now sees her business being shutdown, a whopping $250,000 fine, and to top it all off, 20 years in prison.
Jeff Charles of RedState.com is reporting (emphasis mine);
What started as a Texas farmer’s love for exotic chickens has led to armed federal agents storming her farm, killing her prized birds, and a possible 20-year prison sentence for bringing rare eggs into the country.
Jennifer Mayo, who owns a chicken farm in South Texas, has found herself at the center of a federal smuggling case that has destroyed her business and left her fighting for her freedom.
Her focus on rare and exotic breeds like the Dong Tao, which are native to Vietnam, helped her stand out from other chicken farming operations.
Mayo’s ordeal began in 2023 when she traveled to Vietnam to visit her brother. During her trip, she purchased Dong Tao eggs from a government-operated farm.
Charles notes that after leaving Vietnam, Mayo openly declared the chicken eggs to Customs officials both in the Philippines and Los Angeles.
After eventually getting home to Texas, Mayo notified her followers that the breeds of chickens had just been added to with the Dong Tao’s arrival.
Undoubtedly, what Mayo didn’t see coming was approximately 40 armed officers raid her farm, arrest her, arrest tenants on the farm, and lastly, destroy all her Dong Tao chickens.
To continue with the bad news, even though the United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Texas is giving public notice that Mayo ‘plead guilty’ to smuggling rare chickens into the country, Mayo notes that her government-appointed lawyer pressured her to make a snap-decision as well as just lousy representation.
I understand that bringing in live chicken eggs and live chickens from a part of the world where Avian Flu could be a problem… I get it. Destroy the eggs.
But I certainly get the impression that this was, as usual, laziness from an already bloated bureaucracy. As Mayo was quoted;
“I get to LAX, still nothing… It was completely my intent to declare them,” she said, adding that she didn’t see a single customs agent as the airport was under construction. “What I had read on the website for customs was that it was at the discretion of the customs agent. So I was like, ‘If they let me through, they let me through. If they don’t, I had a wonderful experience on this trip,” she said.
As also reported by Charles;
Mayo’s legal fight has been exacerbated by difficulties with accessing discovery materials. She is in the process of filing a motion asking the court to compel her court-appointed attorney to release the materials.
Mayo indicated that her attorney pressured her into a guilty plea without informing her of all of her options. “I asked him repeatedly for the discovery, and he said, ‘It’s too many pages to print, and I cannot give you electronic access,’” she recounted.
She reluctantly signed the agreement but has since successfully withdrawn her plea, citing ineffective counsel.
Her court-appointed attorney gave her fewer than 24 hours to sign the plea deal.
In the meantime, Mayo has setup a GiveSendGo account to help cover the cost of fighting the federal government.