How My Mother Tried to Frame Me with a Gun at an Airport
By Michael Kelman Portney
I had just caught Abby lying. A lot. The paper trail I unearthed tore the bottom out of fifteen years of her bullshit — about a promise my grandfather Zollie made me, about the business he told me would be mine, and about her own statements regarding her sister Natalee’s will.
She told me Zollie’s Freeno/Green Machine business was gone, dissolved, “defunct.” State filings proved otherwise — alive on paper, renewed by her own employee. She told me Natalee never had a will, completely ignoring that we were both in the room when she signed it; the same hour the business deal was made. She said family assets were handled above-board. The loan trails showed hundreds of thousands of dollars in smoke and mirrors.
Once you strip the stories down to the receipts, Abby’s whole empire is quicksand. And when she knows she’s caught, she doesn’t defend — she attacks. If the facts are stacked against her, she builds new ones out of perjury and paper. If the truth threatens to surface, she manufactures a crisis to bury it under noise.
That’s what led to the airport setup.
The Chain of Command
The move started with me. On the night of January 28, 2025, I told my brother Scott that I planned to fly to Great Falls the next day. My mission was simple: collect my Aunt Natalee’s diaries, potential evidence of fraud Abby didn’t want in daylight.
Scott ran to Abby. Abby ran the play, and the wheels were in motion before I even left for the airport. She told Evelyn — my grandmother, 94, fragile but still capable of following instructions, and mean as ever — to file for a protection order. She didn’t stop there. She supplied the “evidence” herself: a copy/ pasted text message I’d sent to a third party, Jorden Kirkhart, taken completely out of context, and sent it to Evelyn for use in the petition.
That’s the chain: I told Scott, Scott told Abby, Abby pulled the strings, Evelyn danced.
The Pasted Text
The form Evelyn signed had one central question: “Did the respondent use a gun, threaten to use a gun, or any other weapon?”
The true answer was no. But Abby wanted a different answer, so she handed Evelyn a paste of a text where I had used the phrase “crime scene” to describe the American Music building — a metaphor for suspicious paperwork and potential law enforcement presence.
Abby knew the context. She cut it out. Evelyn swore it under oath anyway. My cousin Cortney notarized the perjury with her stamp.
That’s not evidence. That’s theater.
The Cortney Exchange
Minutes before boarding in Portland, I texted Cortney. Family to family. I told her I wanted to meet, to show her the evidence, to sit down and go through it together. I even dangled a peace offering: let’s have a Moose Drool while we do it.
Her reply chilled me: “I already know you’re coming.”
How? Who told you? She wouldn’t answer. She accused me of manipulation.
Only later would I realize the truth: she knew because she had just notarized the petition for her grandmother Evelyn. The cousin I reached out to for truth was literally stamping the lie meant to frame me.
The Art of War at the Gate
I had just finished reading The Art of War. So there I sat at the gate, ticket in hand, five minutes before boarding, staring at Cortney’s message, with that hollow pit in my stomach. Sun Tzu’s words rang in my head: avoid the enemy’s prepared ground.
The ambush wasn’t going to be at baggage claim. It was going to be as soon as I stepped off the plane in Great Falls. Deputies would be waiting at the jet bridge, paperwork in hand, ready to drag me into a courtroom where the verdict was already written. My mother had built a narrative about guns, drugs, and threats in a likely attempt to get a mental health hold, which would have started at 72 hours, but could have been approved for as long as 14 days. The hearing was set for February 11…
My gut told me exactly what Sun Tzu would have told me: don’t walk into the choke point. So I didn’t. I walked away from the gate.
From the moment the pieces started falling into place, my nervous system locked into a state of hyper vigilance. I felt crushed between the weight of betrayal, the danger, the Fear, and the implications. I felt like I had been hit with a stun gun or a flashbang. I was processing the threat so fully that it was as if time had slowed down. My body tightened up, and my limbs tingled, and felt like they were miles away. I moved through the airport with the coordination of a drunk, with an “Oh shit” look on my face that probably left other travelers going “Glad my morning is going better than that guy’s.”
I approached the ticket counter to try to get a refund, and I was so frazzled I couldn't even get my autism card out of my wallet. This is a card I carry in case I ever have a stress response or neurological response so strong that I'm unable to properly communicate. That's exactly what happened. I eventually told the gate agent “I just realized I'm in danger if I go where I'm going.”
The Housekeeper Call
As I left the ticketing counter and headed for the parking garage, my phone buzzed. It was Phoebe, my housekeeper. She sounded bewildered.
“Why does your mom want me to go through your house for a gun? You never told me you were going out of town.”
I became flushed with heat, and my head started to throb. That’s when the setup clicked into focus. Abby wanted Phoebe to “discover” ammo or residue while I was in the air, timed to coincide with deputies intercepting me in Montana. Two fronts of the same play. The headline would write itself: Unstable son, intercepted at airport, potentially armed and dangerous. Abby knew I didn't have a gun, but she also knew that I used to, and that I still had ammo. The premise on it’s face was ridiculous: I had just passed through airport security.
I told Phoebe to play along. Tell my mom she’d search, but not to actually come over. I headed back home to regroup.
The Wi-Fi Gambit
I immediately knew I might not be safe at home once my family learned I wasn’t on the flight. To buy myself time, I leaned into the lie. I posted a cheerful little blog on my site about the wonders of in-flight Wi-Fi, like I was typing it out at 30,000 feet with ginger ale in hand.
Let them think I was airborne. Let them think their trap was working. Let them think I was about to be surrounded by Montana law enforcement and hauled off to jail, trying my best not to have an autistic meltdown, and that their long nightmare, my investigation, would soon come to a satisfying conclusion with me bouncing off the walls of a padded room in Montana. Like the Spanish Inquisition, I would be made to “confess” that the fruits of my investigation were meaningless and that I had invented this conspiracy theory. The problem: it’s all documented.
My IP logs showed that Scott read the Wi-Fi article not long after I posted it, and I knew that his reconnaissance would be passed along to Abby and Evelyn. They bought the ruse hook, line, and sinker.
While Abby and Evelyn pictured me in the sky, I was back on the ground, safe, free to maneuver. And maneuver I did, to a hotel where I would camp out for the next couple of days, returning home only to feed my cats, and only after a few trips around the block to scope things out.
Seeing the Petition
It wasn’t until weeks later that I finally saw the petition itself. And there it was: my flight number, printed in black and white. A number I had never announced to anyone. Somehow it was in the paperwork filed in Cascade County. It also had references to guns and drugs, and said that I had invented a conspiracy in my mind.
That detail hit harder than the perjury. My private travel plans had already been wired into the court file, along with a mental health narrative they needed to justify a 72-hour psychiatric hold with potential 14-day extension.
That’s not coincidence. That’s collusion.
A Backchannel
Later, Abby admitted that the family had a connection to Judge Parker. A back channel. An ex parte relationship. She said it with a kind of smugness, like it was an inside joke. And boy do his rulings seem to back that premise up.
He extended an order that had already expired. He held a hearing without service. He let unsworn speculation about my autism, reframed as mental health struggles, pass as evidence. He issued a firearm prohibition across state lines.
That doesn’t look like impartiality. It looks like kinship in robes.
What It Feels Like
Civil rights violations don’t feel abstract. They don’t feel like case studies in Con Law textbooks. They feel like betrayal in real time.
They feel like your grandmother swearing lies into the record.
They feel like your cousin stamping those lies with her notary seal.
They feel like your maid being conscripted into a fake scavenger hunt for ammo.
They feel like your mother feeding the whole operation from behind the curtain.
It feels like standing at a boarding gate with your nervous system in collapse, knowing that stepping onto the plane is stepping into a trap.
The Setup in Full
Here’s the anatomy of what Abby built:
I told Scott.
Scott told Abby.
Abby orchestrated everything, fed Evelyn cropped evidence, and directed her to file.
Evelyn lied under oath.
Cortney notarized the perjury.
Phoebe was pressured to “find” a gun at my house.
Judge Parker signed off on rulings that lined up perfectly with Abby’s playbook.
Every road leads back to Abby. She was the architect. Evelyn was the mouthpiece. Cortney was the stamp. Parker was the rubber gavel. Phoebe was the pawn.
And I was supposed to be the sacrifice.
When I confronted her, she told me she had nothing to do with the order despite her name showing up in the evidence literally coordinating a third party text message. She told me I got myself in gun trouble by scaring an old lady. I reminded her that that I don’t own a gun, and that the old lady did not know I was traveling, so if anybody scared her it must have been Abby. But to be clear the premise that there was any fear at all except of legal liability and exposure is complete and utter bullshit.
Why This Matters
This isn't just my story. It's about how protection orders meant to save lives get weaponized to silence whistleblowers. It's about courts that hold hearings without serving defendants, then hide the evidence by falsely claiming cases are "sealed."
When someone with autism challenges corruption, suddenly their disability becomes a weapon against them. The neurological response I had at that airport—the one that left me unable to get my autism card out—that's exactly what they were counting on. Paint the autistic person as "unstable," get a psychiatric hold, make the problem disappear.
Every fraudulent protection order undermines real victims. Every judge who rules without a hearing erodes due process. Every clerk who fabricates a "seal" to hide misconduct corrupts the public record. Every lawyer who refuses to file evidence exposing judicial violations betrays their oath.
This happened in Montana, but the playbook exists everywhere: small-town networks where judges, lawyers, and wealthy families coordinate to crush anyone who threatens their interests. Where your rights depend not on law but on who you know.
You should care because if you ever expose fraud—especially if you're neurodivergent, poor, or otherwise vulnerable—these same tactics can be used against you. The airport setup failed because I trusted my gut and walked away. How many others have walked into these traps?
Sunshine is the only disinfectant for this kind of corruption. Every exposed lie, every documented violation, every fabricated seal we reveal makes it harder for them to do this to the next person.
Conclusion
So here it is in plain language: my mother tried to frame me with a gun at an airport.
She wanted deputies waiting at the jet bridge in Great Falls. She wanted my house ransacked for ammo while I was “in the air.” She wanted the optics of a dangerous son in handcuffs to bury the truth of her lies.
What she didn’t count on was Sun Tzu at Gate C.
Five minutes before boarding, I trusted the pit in my stomach. I didn’t walk into the choke point. I left the airport standing, not in cuffs. And instead of an ambush, all Abby has left is exposure.
Because once you’ve seen the setup, you can’t unsee it. And once you know your own mother is willing to frame you with a gun you don’t even own, you stop treating the Constitution like paper and start wielding it like a blade.
That’s what I’m doing now.
