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A polygamous sect member loyal to Warren Jeffs has filed additional paperwork claiming the congregation's support for the jailed leader in a church power struggle.
Boyd L. Knudson filed an affidavit Monday claiming that he saw an assembly of about 4,000 people "unanimously stand and raise their hands and voices in favor of sustaining Warren Steed Jeffs as president" as recently as Sunday. Knudson is the registered agent of the Corporation of the President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The paperwork re-empathizes a claim of support that leaders loyal to Jeffs made in papers filed with the Utah Division of Corporations last week.
The action comes after a church elder, William E. Jessop, moved to take control of the church's corporation of the president last week. Leaders loyal to Jeffs, however, are fighting the claim by Jessop, whom Jeffs once pointed to as the church's true leader in a 2007 jailhouse conversation. He later recanted.
Knudson also wrote that the assembly agreed Jessop "is not a part of said church."
The Division of Corporations has placed a hold on Jessop's paperwork, and the two sides now have until May 2 to work out who is in control, said spokeswoman Jennifer Bolton. If Jessop can't prove he was in the right, the conflict will go to court.
Jeffs, 55, is now in a Texas jail awaiting trial on sexual assault and bigamy charges connected to alleged marriages to underage girls.