A sign — a sign in Jerry Lee Clarke’s front yard. That’s what started it all.

It was a few weeks after Donald Trump’s second inauguration and the self-employed house painter wanted to speak his mind. Speak his mind on a sign firmly planted outside the home he and wife Janet Kay bought last November on about three acres along a well-travelled road just outside Helena in unincorporated Shelby County.

“Not my president,” the sign read. “Never.” A large red “X” crossed through “Trump.”

The sign did not sit well with some. Their reactions — defacing it, verbal threats, doxing him on social media and blaring horns as they passed his home — did not sit well with Clarke, according to his daughter Katherine Shelton.

That’s how it all started.

Over the subsequent few weeks, the sign’s message c

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