Back in May of 2008, when Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a group of the Libertarian congressman’s supporters noticed that he had never secured RonPaul.com or RonPaul.org and decided to buy them and launch a fan site supporting his political endeavors. Five years and two failed presidential bids later, Paul wants the domains for himself.

The group behind the sites announced Friday that Paul had filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, “a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations” to “expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation.”

Previously, the group had offered to give Paul the RonPaul.org domain as a free gift as long as they could keep RonPaul.com for their use. When he rejected that offer, they proposed to sell Paul both domains along with the 170,000 person email list for $250,000, an offer he also rejected.

The group summed up their frustration, referencing Paul’s controversial tweet from earlier this week as evidence that something is amiss:

What in the world is going on? Earlier this week we were hit in the face by Ron Paul’s entirely out-of-character anti-Chris Kyle tweet, and now Ron Paul, the Internet grassroots candidate, who was at the right place at the right time to lead the rEVOLution, attacks his own grassroots supporters through an agency of the United Nations to deport them from their own domain names after 5 years of nothing but unlimited, unconditional support on our part? Back in 2007 we put our lives on hold for you, Ron, and we invested close to 10,000 hours of tears, sweat and hard work into this site at great personal sacrifice. We helped raise millions of dollars for you, we spread your message of liberty as far and wide as we possibly could, and we went out of our way to defend you against the unjustified attacks by your opponents. Now that your campaigns are over and you no longer need us, you want to take it all away – and send us off to a UN tribunal?

Paul’s attempt to disenfranchise his most loyal supporters would be disturbing enough. But what really puts his actions over the top is that he’s reaching out to the United Nations for help, an organization he has spent much of his political career demonizing as a foreign body dead-set on taking away Americans’ freedoms.

(h/t Gawker)

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