Olean man arrested by US Marshalls for threatening a Minnesota lawyer
By Andrew Harris
The mugshot seems to tell the tale well. Luke Wenke of Olean is currently in a federal prison awaiting a court hearing after US Marshalls arrested him on Friday. The arrest came after Wenke sent dozens of threatening messages to a Minneapolis defense lawyer. Wenke was upset with the lawyer for not providing proper representation to Benjamin Ryan Teeter, who was charged with conspiracy to aid the Palestinian paramilitary group Hamas.
What sounds like a fairly standard case of political harassment, gets pretty crazy when you do a simple internet search on Wenke. He apparently is a well known Cattaraugus county political activist, a libertarian who also operated a pole dancing studio in Olean called “Mt. Herman Pole Dojo.”
The Olean online news site TapInto.com did an interview with Wenke last summer and described him as:
“Luke Wenke is a political figure from Olean who has held the position of Cattaraugus County Libertarian Party Chairman and is running for Chairman of the Libertarian National Convention.”
The interview includes discussion on crypto currency, being named “armed and dangerous,” by the New York State Intelligence Center, and his arrest in Indiana. To know more about Wenke, this interview is a must read: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/greater-olean/articles/q-a-luke-wenke-discusses-politics-and-cryptocurrencies
The well known online “troll,” has drawn the ire of local activists like Chanel Welch who said this about Wenke after he posted a meme advocating for sexual violence:
“He’s created anti-Semitic stickers with swastikas laid over local activists which were then placed around Olean creating a sense of fear in our Jewish community. He is an internet troll who is now facing the consequences of the sexist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic remarks he’s made online.”
The Facebook page “Olean War Zone,” operated by Wenke in 2020, lays his political ideology bare:
“Basically whatever Luke Wenke is doing, Olean watches. Olean has nothing else better to do because everyone’s sitting around sitting on their 1990s flannel couches eating greasy subs from Park n’ Shop all day. Everyone fights about bu****it in here while Luke Wenke is out there literally trying to get s**t done. Say whatever you want in here, Luke Wenke doesn’t give a f**k because Luke Wenke is a real American. Free speech extremism will lead us all to victory.”
Wenke currently resides in a US Marshalls holding cell, the pole dancing studio is no longer, and his fellow Libertarians will likely not be electing him to serve as the Party Chairman.
Intrigued? Listen to this podcast with Wenke, described as a, Anarcho-Capitalist Entrepreneur Running A Pole Dojo.
