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COMMENT: In a previous post, we chronicled the abrupt changes Trump made in the Defense Department following his defeat.
Unnamed officials in NATO countries have opined that the events of 1/6/2021 were a coup attempt by Trump’s forces.
In addition, there is an ongoing investigation of an active duty PSYOP officer who operated under the Special Forces command structure for leading a contingent of 100 strong to the “rally” on 1/6/2021.
As veteran listeners/readers will no doubt realize, these events are to be seen against the background of numerous programs and posts highlighting Specialized Knowledge and Abilities and Serpent’s Walk
* Multiple European security officials told Insider that President Donald Trump appeared to have tacit support among US federal agencies responsible for securing the Capitol complex in Wednesday’s coup attempt.
* Insider is reporting this information because it illustrates the serious repercussions of Wednesday’s events: Even if they are mistaken, some among America’s international military allies are now willing to give credence to the idea that Trump deliberately tried to violently overturn an election and had help from some federal law-enforcement agents.
* “We train alongside the US federal law enforcement to handle these very matters, and it’s obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored,” one source told us.The supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday to stop the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory were attempting a violent coup that multiple European security officials said appeared to have at least tacit support from aspects of the US federal agencies responsible for securing the Capitol complex.
Insider spoke with three officials on Thursday morning: a French police official responsible for public security in a key section of central Paris, and two intelligence officials from NATO countries who directly work in counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations involving the US, terrorism, and Russia.
They said the circumstantial evidence available pointed to what would be openly called a coup attempt in any other nation. None were willing to speak on the record because of the dire nature of the subject.
While they did not furnish evidence that federal agency officials facilitated the chaos, Insider is reporting this information because it illustrates the scale and seriousness of Wednesday’s events: America’s international military and security allies are now willing to give serious credence to the idea that Trump deliberately tried to violently overturn an election and that some federal law-enforcement agents — by omission or otherwise — facilitated the attempt.
‘Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup’
One NATO source set the stage, using terms more commonly used to describe unrest in developing countries.
“The defeated president gives a speech to a group of supporters where he tells them he was robbed of the election, denounces his own administration’s members and party as traitors, and tells his supporters to storm the building where the voting is being held,” the NATO intelligence official said.
“The supporters, many dressed in military attire and waving revolutionary-style flags, then storm the building where the federal law-enforcement agencies controlled by the current president do not establish a security cordon, and the protesters quickly overwhelm the last line of police.
“The president then makes a public statement to the supporters attacking the Capitol that he loves them but doesn’t really tell them to stop,” the official said. “Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle.
“I can’t believe this happened.”
A law-enforcement official who trains with US forces believes someone interfered with the proper deployment of officers around Congress
The French police official said they believed that an investigation would find that someone interfered with the deployment of additional federal law-enforcement officials on the perimeter of the Capitol complex; the official has direct knowledge of the proper procedures for security of the facility.
The security of Congress is entrusted to the US Capitol Police, a federal agency that answers to Congress.
It is routine for the Capitol Police to coordinate with the federal Secret Service and the Park Police and local police in Washington, DC, before large demonstrations. The National Guard, commanded by the Department of Defense, is often on standby too.
On Wednesday, however, that coordination was late or absent.
‘It’s obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored’
“You cannot tell me I don’t know what they should have done. I can fly to Washington tomorrow and do that job, just as any police official in Washington can fly to Paris and do mine,” the official said. The official directs public security in a central Paris police district filled with government buildings and tourist sites.
“These are not subtle principles” for managing demonstrations, “and they transfer to every situation,” the official said. “This is why we train alongside the US federal law enforcement to handle these very matters, and it’s obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored.”
The National Guard, which was deployed heavily to quell the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, did not show up to assist the police until two hours after the action started on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.
Video shows police doing nothing as rioters access the building
One video appeared to show some police officers opening a barrier to allow a group of protesters to get closer to the Capitol dome. Another video showed a police officer allowing a rioter to take a selfie with him inside the Capitol while protesters milled around the building unchecked.
Kim Dine, who was the chief of the Capitol Police from 2012 to 2016, told The Washington Post that he was surprised that the Capitol Police allowed demonstrators on the steps of the Capitol. He said he was also mystified that few rioters were arrested on the spot.
Larry Schaefer, who worked for the Capitol Police for more than 30 years, told ProPublica something similar: “We have a planned, known demonstration that has a propensity for violence in the past and threats to carry weapons — why would you not prepare yourself as we have done in the past?”
…
Systematic failures
The French police official detailed multiple lapses they believe were systematic:
1. Large crowds of protesters needed to be managed far earlier by the police, who instead controlled a scene at the first demonstration Trump addressed, then ignored the crowd as it streamed toward the Capitol.
2. “It should have been surrounded, managed, and directed immediately, and that pressure never released.”
3. Because the crowd was not managed and directed, the official said, the protesters were able to congregate unimpeded around the Capitol, where the next major failure took place.
4. “It is unthinkable there was not a strong police cordon on the outskirts of the complex. Fences and barricades are useless without strong police enforcement. This is when you start making arrests, targeting key people that appear violent, anyone who attacks an officer, anyone who breaches the barricade. You have to show that crossing the line will fail and end in arrest.”
5. “I cannot believe the failure to establish a proper cordon was a mistake. These are very skilled police officials, but they are federal, and that means they ultimately report to the president. This needs to be investigated.”
6. “When the crowd reached the steps of the building, the situation was over. The police are there to protect the building from terrorist attacks and crime, not a battalion of infantry. That had to be managed from hundreds of meters away unless the police were willing to completely open fire, and I can respect why they were not.”‘Thank God it didn’t work, because I can’t imagine how hard it would be to sanction the US financial system’
The third official, who works in counterintelligence for a NATO member, agreed that the situation could only be seen as a coup attempt, no matter how poorly considered and likely to fail, and said its implications might be too huge to immediately fathom.
“Thank God it didn’t work, because I can’t imagine how hard it would be to sanction the US financial system,” the official said. By sanctions, he means the imposition of the diplomatic, military, and trade blockages that democratic nations usually reserve for dictatorships. . . .
An Army psychological operations officer who led a group during the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that culminated in a deadly mob breaching the U.S. Capitol had resigned her commission several months prior to the event, according to a defense official familiar with the situation.
Capt. Emily Rainey, 30, was still on active duty during last week’s protests. However, she had already been handed down an adverse administrative action for a separate incident and resigned her commission, the official told Army Times.
Rainey’s involvement in the rally is currently under investigation by 1st Special Forces Command, which oversees her PSYOP unit . . . .
. . . . During last week’s events in D.C., Rainey led roughly 100 members of a group called Moore County Citizens for Freedom to the region. President Donald Trump spoke at the rally there and repeated false claims that the 2020 election had been rigged against him.
Moore County Citizens for Freedom describes itself on its Facebook page as a nonpartisan network promoting conservative values through education and activism.
Rainey told the Associated Press that her group and most people who traveled to Washington “are peace-loving, law-abiding people who were doing nothing but demonstrating our First Amendment rights.” . . . .
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/law-enforcement-military-probing-whether-members-took-part-capitol-riot-n1253801
Law enforcement and the military probing whether members took part in Capitol riot
Some active-duty and retired military service members and law enforcement officers are suspected of having participated in the protest and the ensuing riot.
NBC News
Jan. 12, 2021, 7:59 PM EST
By Janelle Griffith and Phil McCausland
Former and current members of law enforcement agencies and the military appear to have participated in last week’s chaos in Washington, alarming lawmakers on Capitol Hill and Americans nationwide as each day brings new video and information about the riot and the rioters.
Investigations by law enforcement agencies and news organizations, along with a series of arrests, have exposed a widening issue of domestic extremism among the ranks of those who are meant to protect Americans.
On Monday, even the U.S. Capitol Police announced that the agency had suspended “several” of its own and will investigate at least 10 officers for their actions.
Police departments in New York City, Seattle and Philadelphia, as well as smaller agencies across the country, are investigating whether their officers participated in the pro-Trump riot, which has been tied to the deaths of five people, including a Capitol Police officer. The investigations are based on tips, including social media posts.
The Army said it was investigating a psychological operations officer who led 100 Trump supporters from North Carolina to Washington. The FBI arrested a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel in Texas after he breached the Senate chamber wearing tactical gear and carrying zip-tie handcuffs known as flex cuffs. There are calls for a Pennsylvania state legislator, who is a retired Army colonel and taught at the Army War College for five years, to resign after he and his wife attended Wednesday’s event. Ashli Babbitt, 33, the QAnon supporter who was shot and killed by Capitol Police, was a 14-year Air Force veteran.
The Department of Justice is reportedly investigating 25 members of the service, though it is unclear whether they are retired or active in the military ranks.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D‑Ill., said in a letter to Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller that the Pentagon needed to open an investigation to determine if retired or current members of the military “engaged in insurrection against the authority of the United States, or participated in a seditious conspiracy that used force to: oppose the authority of the United States; prevent, hinder and delay the execution of the Electoral Count Act; and unlawfully seize, take or possess property of the United States.”
That domestic extremist groups may have targeted for recruitment members of law enforcement agencies and the military as well as veterans is unsurprising to Elizabeth Neumann, who was the assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the Department of Homeland Security until she resigned in April.
Neumann said that the military and law enforcement agencies have long known that active-duty recruitment by the far right was an issue but that they have done little to address it. The problem was further deprioritized when President Donald Trump entered the White House, she said.
“It’s a movement,” said Neumann, who said right-wing extremism has developed around support for Trump and his dog whistles. “A lot of them are very decentralized, but there’s a sophistication in who and how they groom people and how they recruit people and where they try to encourage people to go for their longer-term aims.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we have a problem of white supremacy and extremism in law enforcement and the military,” she said.
Congressional efforts to investigate members of the military and law enforcement agencies in the past, however, have largely been stymied.
Most recently, a bill titled the Domestic Terror Prevention Act made its way through the House, although it never came to a vote. Among other provisions, it would have required the secretary of homeland security, the attorney general and the director of the FBI to file an annual report that assessed “the domestic terrorism threat posed by White supremacists and neo-Nazis, including White supremacist and neo-Nazi infiltration of Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies and the uniformed services.”
The Senate never considered the legislation after it was introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin, D‑Ill., with 13 Democratic co-sponsors. Durbin’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A former House staffer who worked on the legislation said Democrats and Republicans struggled to support the bill’s provision to require a domestic terrorism assessment of extremist groups’ potential infiltration of law enforcement agencies and uniformed services.
The military and law enforcement agencies were considered a dangerous third rail.
“Before Wednesday, a politician couldn’t even publicly acknowledge that this could be a problem. Two years ago, we were just trying to get a report to see if these were just one-offs, because we kept seeing growing domestic terror plots,” the staffer said about the work on the bill. “But everybody was like, ‘Dear God, whose boss is going to lose their seat over this?’ ”
Law enforcement at issue
Police departments across the country are investigating their own members’ involvement in the Capitol riot.
The mob showed up at Trump’s behest to march on Washington in support of his false claim that the November election was stolen and to stop lawmakers from confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
New York City’s mayor and police commissioner have said they intend to fire anyone who stormed the Capitol.
“This is a group of people who attacked our Congress, attacked it to disrupt the presidential vote count,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “Anyone who participated in that, anyone who stormed that building trying to disrupt the workings of government, should not be allowed to serve in government.”
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Monday on the NY1 news channel that so far, one New York police officer is alleged to have participated in the attack and that “anyone committing crimes certainly would have a very short shelf life with the NYPD.”
Shea said the officer’s name wasn’t being released “because we don’t know if it’s true or not.”
Over the weekend, the Philadelphia Police Department said it was made aware of social media posts that alleged that one of its detectives “may have been in attendance at the events.”
A police spokesman, Sgt. Eric Gripp, said an internal affairs investigation had been launched to determine whether any of the department’s policies “were violated by the detective, and if they participated in any illegal activities while in attendance.”
Philadelphia police declined Monday to identify the detective, citing the internal investigation. Gripp said the detective’s assignment has been changed pending the outcome.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, citing sources within the police department, identified the officer as Detective Jennifer Gugger, a member of the Recruit Background Investigations Unit. Gugger couldn’t be reached for comment at numbers listed for her.
The police department in the town of Rocky Mount, Virginia, said in a statement Sunday that it was aware that “two off-duty officers were present at an event in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.”
Rocky Mount police said that they had notified federal authorities and that the officers are on administrative leave pending review.
“The Town of Rocky Mount fully supports all lawful expressions of freedom of speech and assembly by its employees but does not condone the unlawful acts that occurred that day,” the statement said.
Rocky Mount police didn’t return an emailed request for comment. NBC affiliate WSLS of Roanoke, Virginia, identified the officers through social media posts as Thomas Robertson and Jacob Fracker, neither of whom could be reached for comment.
If Trump actually attempted a coup it would have been far better organized since everything he has done with crowds has always been done efficiently.
Remember the Reichstag fire !
@Robert Severin–
Bullshit.
This is like saying if the Nazi Party and Hitler had launched the Beer Hall Putsch (a better comparison than the Reichstag Fire or Kristallnacht), it would have been better organized and succeeded.
Why do you think NATO security officials have said it was a coup attempt?
Get Real,
Dave Emory
This next AP article talks about how the “rioters” included a well organized and prepared group of men wearing olive-drab helmets and body armor trudged purposefully up the marble stairs in a single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the one ahead in a formation, known as “Ranger File,” which is a is standard U.S. military operating procedure for a combat team that is “stacking up” to breach a building. They had body armor and technology such as two-way radio headsets that were similar to those of the very police they were confronting.
Others at the rally were wearing patches and insignias representing far-right militant groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and various self-styled state militias.
Participants included:
— an active-duty psychological warfare captain from North Carolina who organized three busloads of people. A
— - a decorated Navy Seal that as a result of his participation was forced to resign resigned from a program that helps prepare potential SEAL applicants (i.e.t to recruit and program new extremists into the SEALS from the time they join.
— “Marine vet/ boxer/ patriot/ Proud Boy.” who was with a group at the Capitol whose members said they would have killed “anyone they got their hands on,” including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The witness further stated that members of this group said they would have killed (Vice President) Mike Pence if given the chance,”
The article also mentions that experts in homegrown extremism have warned for years about efforts by far-right militants and white-supremacist groups to radicalize and recruit people with military and law enforcement training. They wore military-style patches that read “MILITIA” and “OATHKEEPER.”
https://apnews.com/article/ex-military-cops-us-capitol-riot-a1cb17201dfddc98291edead5badc257
Capitol rioters included highly trained ex-military and cops
January 15, 2021
By MICHAEL BIESECKER, JAKE BLEIBERG and JAMES LAPORTA
WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump’s supporters massed outside the Capitol last week and sang the national anthem, a line of men wearing olive-drab helmets and body armor trudged purposefully up the marble stairs in a single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the one ahead.
The formation, known as “Ranger File,” is standard operating procedure for a combat team that is “stacking up” to breach a building — instantly recognizable to any U.S. soldier or Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a chilling sign that many at the vanguard of the mob that stormed the seat of American democracy either had military training or were trained by those who did.
An Associated Press review of public records, social media posts and videos shows at least 22 current or former members of the U.S. military or law enforcement have been identified as being at or near the Capitol riot, with more than a dozen others under investigation but not yet named. In many cases, those who stormed the Capitol appeared to employ tactics, body armor and technology such as two-way radio headsets that were similar to those of the very police they were confronting.
Experts in homegrown extremism have warned for years about efforts by far-right militants and white-supremacist groups to radicalize and recruit people with military and law enforcement training, and they say the Jan. 6 insurrection that left five people dead saw some of their worst fears realized.
“ISIS and al-Qaida would drool over having someone with the training and experience of a U.S. military officer,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “These people have training and capabilities that far exceed what any foreign terrorist group can do. Foreign terrorist groups don’t have any members who have badges.”
Among the most prominent to emerge is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and decorated combat veteran from Texas who was arrested after he was photographed wearing a helmet and body armor on the floor of the Senate, holding a pair of zip-tie handcuffs.
Another Air Force veteran from San Diego was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to leap through a barricade near the House chamber. A retired Navy SEAL, among the most elite special warfare operators in the military, posted a Facebook video about traveling from his Ohio home to the rally and seemingly approving of the invasion of “our building, our house.”
Two police officers from a small Virginia town, both of them former infantrymen, were arrested by the FBI after posting a selfie of themselves inside the Capitol, one flashing his middle finger at the camera.
Also under scrutiny is an active-duty psychological warfare captain from North Carolina who organized three busloads of people who headed to Washington for the “Save America” rally in support the president’s false claim that the November election was stolen from him.
While the Pentagon declined to provide an estimate for how many other active-duty military personnel are under investigation, the military’s top leaders were concerned enough ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration that they issued a highly unusual warning to all service members this week that the right to free speech gives no one the right to commit violence.
The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police was forced to resign following the breach and several officers have been suspended pending the outcome of investigations into their conduct, including one who posed for a selfie with a rioter and another who was seen wearing one of Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps.
The AP’s review of hundreds of videos and photos from the insurrectionist riot shows scores of people mixed in the crowd who were wearing military-style gear, including helmets, body armor, rucksacks and two-way radios. Dozens carried canisters of bear spray, baseball bats, hockey sticks and pro-Trump flags attached to stout poles later used to bash police officers.
A close examination of the group marching up the steps to help breach the Capitol shows they wore military-style patches that read “MILITIA” and “OATHKEEPER.” Others were wearing patches and insignias representing far-right militant groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and various self-styled state militias.
The Oath Keepers, which claims to count thousands of current and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members, have become fixtures at protests and counter-protests across the country, often heavily armed with semi-automatic carbines and tactical shotguns.
Stewart Rhodes, an Army veteran who founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 as a reaction to the presidency of Barack Obama, had been saying for weeks before the Capitol riot that his group was preparing for a civil war and was “armed, prepared to go in if the president calls us up.”
Adam Newbold, the retired Navy SEAL from Lisbon, Ohio, whose more than two-decade military career includes multiple combat awards for valor, said in a Jan. 5 Facebook video, “We are just very prepared, very capable and very skilled patriots ready for a fight.”
He later posted a since-deleted follow-up video after the riot saying he was “proud” of the assault.
Newbold, 45, did not respond to multiple messages from the AP but in an interview with the Task & Purpose website he denied ever going inside the Capitol. He added that because of the fallout from the videos he has resigned from a program that helps prepare potential SEAL applicants.
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. of Texas was released to home confinement Thursday after a prosecutor alleged the former fighter pilot had zip-tie handcuffs on the Senate floor because he planned to take hostages.
“He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Weimer said. “His prior experience and training make him all the more dangerous.”
Federal authorities on Friday also arrested Dominic Pezzola, a 43-year-old former Marine from New York who identified himself on social media as being a member of the Proud Boys.
The FBI identified Pezzola as the bearded man seen in widely shared video shattering an exterior Capitol window with a stolen Capitol Police riot shield before he and others climbed inside. He also appears in a second video taken inside the building that shows him smoking a cigar in what he calls a “victory smoke,” according to a court filing.
In an online biography, Pezzola, whose nickname is “Spazzo,” describes himself as “Marine vet/ boxer/ patriot/ Proud Boy.” Service records show he served six years stateside as an infantryman and was discharged in 2005 at the rank of corporal.
According to court filings, an unidentified witness told the FBI that Pezzola was with a group at the Capitol whose members said they would have killed “anyone they got their hands on,” including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The witness further stated that members of this group said they would have killed (Vice President) Mike Pence if given the chance,” the affidavit said.
Army commanders at Fort Bragg in North Carolina are investigating the possible involvement of Capt. Emily Rainey, the 30-year-old psychological operations officer and Afghanistan war veteran who told the AP she traveled with 100 others to Washington to “stand against election fraud.” She insisted she acted within Army regulations and that no one in her group entered the Capitol or broke the law.
“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey said.
More than 125 people have been arrested so far on charges related to the Capitol riot, ranging from curfew violations to serious federal felonies related to theft and weapons possession.
Brian Harrell, who served as the assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security until last year, said it is “obviously problematic” when “extremist bad actors” have military and law enforcement backgrounds.
“Many have specialized training, some have seen combat, and nearly all have been fed disinformation and propaganda from illegitimate sources,” Harrell said. “They are fueled by conspiracy theories, feel as if something is being stolen from them, and they are not interested in debate. This is a powder keg cocktail waiting to blow.”
The FBI is warning of the potential for more bloodshed. In an internal bulletin issued Sunday, the bureau warned of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, police departments in such major cities as New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston and Philadelphia announced they were investigating whether members of their agencies participated in the Capitol riot. The Philadelphia area’s transit authority is also investigating whether seven of its police officers who attended Trump’s rally in Washington broke any laws.
A Texas sheriff announced last week that he had reported one of his lieutenants to the FBI after she posted photos of herself on social media with a crowd outside the Capitol. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said Lt. Roxanne Mathai, a 46-year-old jailer, had the right to attend the rally but he’s investigating whether she may have broken the law.
One of the posts Mathai shared was a photo that appeared to be taken Jan. 6 from among the mass of Trump supporters outside the Capitol, captioned: “Not gonna lie. ... aside from my kids, this was, indeed, the best day of my life. And it’s not over yet.”
A lawyer for Mathai, a mother and longtime San Antonio resident, said she attended the Trump rally but never entered the Capitol.
In Houston, Police Chief Art Acevedo said an 18-year veteran of the department suspected of joining the mob that breached the Capitol resigned before a disciplinary hearing that was set for Friday.
“There is no excuse for criminal activity, especially from a police officer,” Acevedo said. “I can’t tell you the anger I feel at the thought of a police officer, and other police officers, thinking they get to storm the Capitol.”
___
Bleiberg reported from Dallas and LaPorta from in Delray Beach, Florida. Robert Burns and Michael Balsamo in Washington; Jim Mustian, Michael R. Sisak and Thalia Beaty in New York; Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland; Juan A. Lozano in Houston; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Martha Bellisle in Seattle; Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles; and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, contributed.
___
Follow Associated Press Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck; Jake Bleiberg at http://twitter.com/JZBleiberg; and James LaPorta at http://twitter.com/JimLaPorta
___
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org
This next article shows surprising knowledge of White House personnel by the good old American Patriot who sells MyPillow Mike Lindell. However, he may have been simply a messanger passing along a message. Mr. Lindell had a meeting with Don Trump and tried to persuade him to declare martial law, utilize the Insurrection Act for his purposes and execute CIA leadership shakeup in his last few days starting with Kash Patel to lead it. The article does not mention that before working in the United States Department of Justice National Security Division, where he simultaneously served as a legal liaison to the Joint Special Operations Command, Mr. Patel ws a public defender he represented clients charged with felonies including international drug trafficking, murder, firearms violations, and bulk cash smuggling.
For a pillow company owner and salesman, Mr. Lindell has an uncanny understanding of White House operations and who needs to be replaced before the Presidency expires.
Lindell made claims of election fraud claims on the Far Right wing Media Station Newsmax and they cut him off while he was on the air. On the day of the MAGA riots he was in D.C., and after it he asserted the event was staged by Antifa. He pushed the message that Trump supporters ‘broke the algorithms.’ These rantings are consistent with the far right propaganda that rallied the rioters to their cause.
Lindell also a relationship with Mike Flynn, the national security advisor who lied to the FBI, got a pardon, then went to the Oval Office and advocated martial law.
If one were trying to get a better night of sleep, I would recommend that they spend their money on a bet that pillow salesman Mike Lindell is a deep cover agent serving fascist objectives rather than on his pillow, even if it is made in America.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9153263/Donald-Trump-holds-talks-MyPillow-CEO-Mike-Lindell-brandishes-notes-MARTIAL-LAW.html
Donald Trump holds talks with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell who brandishes notes about ‘MARTIAL LAW’
By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR and KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:41 EST, 15 January 2021 | UPDATED: 22:15 EST, 15 January 2021
President Donald Trump reportedly cut short his meeting with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell within minutes, after the entrepreneur was spotted at the White House brandishing notes referencing martial law, the Insurrection Act and a CIA leadership shakeup.
Lindell said that Trump appeared ‘disinterested’ in his notes, and officials say Trump quickly dismissed him and sent him to the White House Counsel’s office, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
Lindell, an informal Trump advisor who enthusiastically backed conspiracy theories about massive election fraud, appeared unexpectedly at the White House Friday afternoon. A Marine was stationed outside the West Wing, indicating Trump was most likely there.
The MyPillow CEO claimed to Haberman that the notes he was carrying were on behalf of an unnamed attorney he’s been working with to ‘prove’ that Trump really won the presidential election.
Lindell denied that the notes referenced ‘martial law,’ but an administration official said that they definitely contained the phrase, and photos of his notes appear to show it.
Once Trump dismissed him, Lindell insisted on meeting White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and the meeting turned awkward in part because the blacked-out part of his notes related to calling for Cipollone to be fired, Haberman reported.
PHOTO CAPTION: Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow, stands outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, U.S., January 15, 2021. A closeup of his notes revealed tense topics ranging from martial law to the Insurrection Act and the leadership of the CIA
PHOTO CAPTION: A Washington Post photographer snagged an image of Lindell’s notes, which he did not conceal outside the West Wing
Amid a huge National Guard presence in D.C. after last week’s MAGA riots in the Capitol, close-up of Lindell’s notes revealed some bizarre snippets about what may be on his mind.
Lindell, like Trump, spoke to the January 6 rally crowd outside the White House before Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
A Washington Post photographer obtained a close-up of papers carried by Lindell.
One ominous line said ‘martial law if necessary upon the first hint of any....’ The term does not come without precedent. Former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn spoke openly about it while parroting Trump’s claims of a ‘rigged’ election – and scored his own White House meeting afterward.’
Another line, partly obscured by Lindell’s hand, most likely referenced the ‘Insurrection Act’ – the subject of discussion before after the election about use of forces inside the country. It said to ‘Act now as a result of the assault on the ...’
Other lines hinted at recommended staff moves. One reads ‘Colon NOW as Acting National Security...’ – suggesting a staff move atop the National Security Agency or a new National Security Advisor.
The following lines reference Fort Mead and a top cybersecurity lawyer, which could identify Frank Colon, who according to his LinkedIn page is an attorney with Cyber Operations 780th Military Intelligence Brigade.
Colon said he had never met Lindell and was baffled by the proposal to install him in a high-ranking position, according to New York Magazine.
He described himself as ‘just a government employee who does work for the Army.’
PHOTO CAPTION: Lindell claimed that the notes he was carrying were on behalf of an unnamed attorney he’s been working with to ‘prove’ that Trump really won the presidential election
PHOTO CAPTION: The notes also appear to reference potential cabinet moves just days before Trump is to leave office
PHOTO CAPTION: MyPillow CEO speaks at ‘Stop the Steal’ rally, accuses Fox News of trying to overthrow Trump administration. Following the rally, a MAGA mob ransacked the Capitol
There are also references to ‘Kraken’ lawyer Sidney Powell, who oversaw failed election challenges in court and who has been at the White House post-election.
‘Move Kash Patel to CIA Acting,’ it says, in a line which could indicate a proposal to oust CIA Director Gina Haspel, and put in her place a Trump loyalist recently moved to the Pentagon.
‘I ordered the DOD to fully cooperate with President-elect Joe Biden,’ Patel wrote in an op-ed posted by Fox News Thursday – after the Biden transition complained for weeks it was not getting the briefings it requested.
Other lines are mere snippets, but they suggest Trump’s obsession with a ‘stolen’ election – although Joe Biden beat him by 7 million votes, or 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.
‘Been with getting the evidence of ALL the ... as the election and all information regarding ... among people he knows who already have security ... done massive research on these issues,’ the notes say.
‘Foreign Interference in the election Trigger ... powers, make clear this is a China/Iran ... domestic actors. Instruct Frank,’ it says.
PHOTO CAPTION: The notes mention ‘Kraken’ lawyer Sidney Powell, as well as other individuals
The meeting comes days after Trump took part in a scripted video where he finally said: ‘A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20.’ But he hasn’t said outright that Joe Biden won, even as Vice President Mike Pence finally called Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and began what appears to be a farewell tour.
Trump has been hunkered down in office, with bizarre White House schedules saying only that: ‘President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.’
A message to Lindell was not immediately returned. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
Trump’s obsession with overturning the results are also reflected in charts that could be seen as trade advisor Peter Navarro walked on White House grounds. It said ‘Vote Irregularities and Illegalities by Category and State.’
Trump himself is expected to leave D.C. on January 20th, with no plans for the traditional meeting with President-elect Joe Biden.
The ominous snippets in Lindell’s notes about the election were contradicted by reality on the ground at the White House Friday afternoon. A procession of aides left the building with boxes, even packing away large framed photos that have adorned the building.
HOW MIKE LINDELL WENT FROM CRACK ADDICT TO CHRISTIAN PILLOW PITCHMAN TO QANON SPOUTING TRUMP ADVISER
With his preternaturally dark hair and mustache, ubiquitous TV ads and triumph-over-tragedy personal story, Mike Lindell should be the perfect pitchman for his pillows.
But his advocacy of Donald Trump appears to have taken him into darker and more dangerous territory, carrying notes about ‘martial law’ to the Oval Office for a meeting with Trump on his last Friday in the White House.
Lindell, 59, was a small-time Minnesota businessman who became addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol, losing his wife with whom he had four children to divorce because of it, but — according to his often-told story — still managed to invent his MyPillow in 2004 and turn it into a success.
The pillow itself is a patented foam design and from the beginning Lindell manufactured it in his native state and put its Made in America credentials in the pitch.
In its first years Lindell sold it at mall kiosks and state fairs but his own life had a dramatic change, he says, in 2009, when he became sober, putting it down to the power of prayer.
Cleaned up, he recorded a 30-minute live-audience infomercial at the cost of $500,000 in 2011 and watched the success take off — with Lindell the focal point as much as the pillows.
With tranches of TV ads Lindell made a fortune — not without bumps on te way including settling a lawsuit for claims the pillows helped with snoring and divorcing his second wife after less than two months of marriage — and made his evangelical faith and then his allegiance to Trump as much part of his pitch as his products.
They appear to have first met in August 2016 and he jumped on the Trump train, going to the first presidential debate in October, and speaking at a rally that November.
Since then he has become a regular rally performer, even pitching a run for Minnesota governor in 2022 — which he has not mentioned recently — and chairing the state’s Trump campaign.
At the rallies he would be introduced as ‘the MyPillow guy’ to cheers and describe Trump as ‘chosen by God,’ tout his own faith and soak up the applause.
A fairly regular White House presence, he touted to Trump an unproven COVID ‘cure,’ oleandrin, whose manufacturer he had a stake in.
Ben Carson, a distinguished neurosurgeon turned Trump cabinet member, took it. He succumbed badly to the infection; Carson has not maintained a medical registration for some years.
Lindell devoted himself to Trump in the weeks before the 2020 election, appearing at multiple rallies and convincing the president he would win Minnesota, which he lost handily.
But after the election defeat Lindell became obsessed by Trump’s claims of voter fraud and has pushed them at every turn, including on the Right Side Broadcasting Network YouTube channel which he has a financial stake in.
He lambasted Fox News for its coverage even though he is thought to be its biggest single advertiser, and he pushed the outer fringes of conspiracy theories from discredited ‘Kraken’ attorney Sidney Powell.
He appears to have funded the Right Side Broadcasting Network, a YouTube channel which aired rallies from the March for Trump bus tour whose speakers included Lindell and Lin Wood, the even more fringe attorney who suggested Mike Pence should be executed.
Among the cast of ‘reporters’ on RSBN’s coverage were other Trump rally regulars including the ‘wall guy’ who wears a suit which represents the Mexican border wall. The suit is designed to look like it is made of bricks, when the wall is in fact steel and rebar. The ads were inevitably for MyPillow.
Lindell also appears to gave developed a relationship with Mike Flynn, the national security advisor who lied to the FBI, got a pardon, then went to the Oval Office and advocated martial law.
So discredited were Lindell’s fraud claims that Newsmax had to cut him off live on air but he was unstoppable: on the day of the MAGA riots he was in D.C., then after they happened he spouted claims that the whole event was staged by Antifa.
From a private jet a few days later he recorded a message that ‘Donald Trump will be our president for the next four years.’
On January 20 he will find out if his faith in Trump has been rewarded or if his claims get the same F rating from reality which his company did from the Better Business Bureau.
PHOTO CAPTION: A Marine outside the door indicated the president was most likely there
PHOTO CAPTION: US President Donald Trump listens as Michael J. Lindell, CEO of MyPillow Inc., speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 30, 2020
PHOTO CAPTION: Lindell’s pillow company regularly advertises on Fox News
PHOTO CAPTION: Former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn speaks during a rally to protest the results of the election, in Washington, U.S., December 12, 2020. He urged martial law in a post-election video
A viewing platform for the inauguration already has printed signage for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden spoke in Delaware about changes he plans to institute for vaccine rollout, following reports that the Trump Administration Operation Warp Speed name will be one of the first things jettisoned.
Even lower level aides in the West Wing have already departed, leaving a skeleton crew – even as the nation faced a relentless surge of coronavirus infections and deaths.
Lindell posted even after the riots with claims about ways to ‘suppress the evil’ and ‘beat the evil’ with claims that Trump supporters ‘broke the algorithms.’
He posted brief comments, which appear to be made aboard a private jet, where he wrote that ‘Donald Trump is going to be your president for the next 4 years.’
Lindell retweeted a tweet by Right Side Broadcasting Network January 10 which bashed the idea of impeachment as pointless. ‘Seems like a whole lot of trouble to go through to impeach someone who, if tradition has its way, will be gone from office in 10 days. What is going on here, Nancy? Seems a little desperate. There must be...other factors at play,’ it said.
Was the insurrection an inside job? That’s the question a group of congressional Democrats are demanding be investigated following a constellation of reports pointing towards exactly that scenario. President Trump’s role in fomenting the the violent mob was out in the open at the “Stop the Steal” rally that immediately preceded the storming. He openly called on his audience to go to the Capitol and ‘fight like hell’.
It’s the potential role of members of Congress that has Democrats howling for an investigation under the growing pile of investigation of collaboration between Republican members of Congress and the rioters. Secret collaboration that they don’t want to publicly discuss. That’s the picture that’s emerging now that we have other members of the House, notably Mikie Sherrill, who have publicly come forward claiming they witnessed rioters being given what appeared to be “reconnaissance” tours of the congressional complex on January 5 by Republican members of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already talking about possible prosecution of members of Congress who were found to have “aided and abetted the crime”.
As the following USA Today piece notes, the Capitol Police admitted on Friday that they had launched their own inquiry into these mysterious tours so some sort of investigation has apparently been started that could reveal Republican congressional members aiding and abetting the insurrection with aid that includes Jan 5 tours of the Capitol.
And as the following piece also disturbingly notes, the nature of the intent behind those mystery tours of the Capitol has become something of an area of dispute between federal prosecutors pursuing charges. On Thursday, federal prosecutors in Arizona told judges that there was “strong evidence” that rioters had intended to apprehend and “assassinate elected officials.”
But on Friday, the federal attorney in D.C. overseeing the investigation, Michael Sherwin, said that authorities have so far found only “bread crumbs” of evidence suggesting that the insurrection was coordinated. Sherwin also noted that the search for possible “command and control” of the violent mob represented a “top-tier” priority for investigators. And regarding the claims by federal prosecutors in Arizona that strong evidence planned on assassinating elected officials, Sherwin stated on Friday that there was “no direct evidence of kill and capture teams” so far. So we saw a distinct walk-back by federal prosecutors on Friday of the explosive claims made by federal prosecutors in Arizona on Thursday.
While it will be very interesting to see if a command and control mechanism was indeed directing at least some of that mob, it’s also the kind of investigative angle that ignores the nature of how ‘leaderless resistance’ works, where avoiding the need for command and control mechanisms is half the point. Trump’s exhortations at the rally were enough. Trump’s words were the command and control mechanism. It’s one of the concerning aspects of Sherwin suggesting there’s only “bread crumbs” of evidence that the insurrection involved coordination. Indirect coordination by vague inflammatory rhetoric is how the far right would likely pull off an insurrection. So either Sherwin was being diplomatic, or we’re already looking at sign of another questionable investigation into Republican high crimes that ignores how the far right really operates and coordinates:
“While officials said they were “making progress on all fronts,” D.C. U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said that authorities have so far found only “bread crumbs” of evidence suggesting that the assault was coordinated.”
The overseeing investigator in DC has only found bread crumbs pointing towards coordination between the rioters and others. And yet this came a day after federal prosecutors in Arizona told a judge that “strong evidence” showed rioters intended to apprehend and “assassinate elected officials.” Why the backpedaling? Are investigators going to be allowed to ask difficult questions or is this the kind of ‘investigation’ tasked with coming up with an ‘answer’ that isn’t overly politically explosive. After all, if it turns out Republicans in congress did collude with the rioters, those federal prosecutors are going to probably face the death threats:
But federal prosecutors aren’t the only ones investigating the question of whether or not members of congress helped orchestrate the riot. The Capitol Hill police opened up an investigation too following a letter from 30 House Democrats calling for an investigation of the Jan 5 mystery tours:
So while the back and forth messaging from the federal prosecutors is troubling, at least it looks like there are multiple investigations asking the question of whether or not congressional Republicans colluded with the insurrectionary mob in advance.
Then again, it’s not like we should expect the Capitol police to produce a thorough investigation either. The Capitol police are also one of the many institutions charged with ignoring the warnings that something like this was in the works, after all and Congressional Democrats are calling for investigations into the House and Senate Sargeants at Arms too. If there really was a larger plot involving members of Congress it wouldn’t be surprising if some element of the Capitol police forces were in on it too.
So we’ll see what conclusions these parallel investigations by federal prosecutors and Capitol police. Will the conclusions roughly align? And what about collusion between the rioters and the White House? Is that be investigated too? Let’s hope so, because as the following ProPublica article describes, the collusion between the “Stop the Steal” organization and the rioters, and allusions to violence, was right out in the open for weeks. And “Stop the Steal” — which was founded by Roger Stone in 2016 to help Trump secure the GOP nomination — is basically a Trump White House operation and creation of Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, even if it’s technically run by Roger Stone acolyte Ali Alexander. That’s why Recall how ‘Alt Right’ personality Nick Fuentes — who spoke at the December 12 Stop the Steal rally where Trump did multiple Marine One flyovers — was openly ruminating about killing state legislators who don’t support the efforts to overturn the election for Trump. So if these investigations into collusion with the rioters doesn’t find collusion by the White House, we’ll probably need an investigation of the investigations because this is the kind of collusion that no one was hiding:
“The warnings of Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol were everywhere — perhaps not entirely specific about the planned time and exact location of an assault on the Capitol, but enough to clue in law enforcement about the potential for civil unrest.”
The warnings of planned violence were everywhere. Include coming from the mouth of Ali Alexander, the Stop the Steal founder who was telling followers to bring sleeping bags and plan to occupy the area outside of the Capitol. But at the same time Alexander was telling supporters to get ready for an occupation — something that could at least in theory be relatively peaceful — he was also making statements on Parler like ““If D.C. escalates… so do we.” And Trump was backing this up with calls for his supporters to take their grievances to the streets in a “wild” protest:
Was the wild nature of the Jan 6 insurrection the same “wild” protest Trump had in mind? Was it not wild enough? Were targeted kidnappings and assassinations part of the wildness that Trump and the Stop the Steal team planned? These are the question investigators need to be asking. So with multiple investigations already underway into official collusion with the rioters, and multiple versions of events already being portrayed by federal prosecutors, it’s looking like we’re in store for a pretty wild legal investigation. A wild legal investigation that’s either going to result in a wild set of high-level prosecutions or, more likely, a wild cover-up.
This next Jan. 15, 2021 Guardian U.K. article by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, talks about a possible source of funding for the efforts to overturn the U.S. 2020 Presidential Elections.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/15/trump-republicans-election-defeat-club-for-growth?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Some portions from the article are included below with commentary where noted, but does not included the entire article:
The Club for Growth has supported the campaigns of 42 of the rightwing Republicans senators and members of the House of Representatives who voted last week to challenge US election results, doling out an estimated $20m to directly and indirectly support their campaigns in 2018 and 2020, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
About 30 of the Republican hardliners received more than $100,000 in indirect and direct support from the group.
The Club for Growth’s biggest beneficiaries include Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, the two Republican senators who led the effort to invalidate Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and the newly elected far-right gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert, a QAnon conspiracy theorist. Boebert was criticised last week for tweeting about the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the attack on the Capitol, even after lawmakers were told not to do so by police.
Public records show the Club for Growth’s largest funders are the billionaire Richard Uihlein, the Republican co-founder of the Uline shipping supply company in Wisconsin, and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, an options trading group based in Philadelphia that also owns a sports betting company in Dublin.
While Uihlein and Yass have kept a lower profile than other billionaire donors such as Michael Bloomberg and the late Sheldon Adelson, their backing of the Club for Growth has helped to transform the organization from one traditionally known as an anti-regulatory and anti-tax pro-business pressure group to one that backs some of the most radical and anti-democratic Republican lawmakers in Congress.
Here’s the thing about the hyper wealthy. They believe that their hyper-wealth grants them the ability to not be accountable Reed Galen
The Club for Growth has so far escaped scrutiny for its role supporting the anti-democratic Republicans because it does not primarily make direct contributions to candidates. Instead, it uses its funds to make “outside” spending decisions, like attacking a candidate’s opponents.
In 2018, Club for Growth spent nearly $3m attacking the Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, a race that was ultimately won by Hawley, the 41-year-old Yale law graduate with presidential ambitions who has amplified Donald Trump’s baseless lies about election fraud.
That year, it also spent $1.2m to attack the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who challenged – and then narrowly lost – against Cruz.
Other legislators supported by Club for Growth include Matt Rosendale, who this week called for the resignation of fellow Republican Liz Cheney after she said she would support impeachment of the president, and Lance Gooden, who accused Pelosi of being just as responsible for last week’s riot as Trump.
Dozens of the Republicans supported by Club for Growth voted to challenge the election results even after insurrectionist stormed the Capitol, which led to five deaths, including the murder of a police officer.
Public records show that Richard Uihlein, whose family founded Schlitz beer, donated $27m to the Club for Growth in 2020, and $6.7m in 2018. Uihlein and his wife, Liz, have been called “the most powerful conservative couple you’ve never heard of” by the New York Times. Richard Uihlein, the New York Times said, was known for underwriting “firebrand anti-establishment” candidates like Roy Moore, who Uihlein supported in a Senate race even after it was alleged he had sexually abused underage girls. Moore denied the allegations.
Yass of Susquehanna International, who is listed on public documents as having donated $20.7m to the Club for Growth in 2020 and $3.8m in 2018, also declined to comment. Yass is one of six founders of Susquehanna, called a “crucial engine of the $5tn global exchange-traded fund market” in a 2018 Bloomberg News profile. The company was grounded on the basis of the six founders mutual love of poker and the notion that training for “probability-based” decisions could be useful in trading markets. Susquehanna’s Dublin-based company, Nellie Analytics, wagers on sports. [Editorial question: Could some of these “probability-based” decisions be related to trading on information with advanced knowledge of Trumps “crazy” or improper market moving Tweets?}
A 2009 profile of Yass in Philadelphia magazine described how secrecy pervades Susquehanna, and that people who know the company say “stealth” is a word often used to describe its modus operandi. The article suggested Yass was largely silent about his company because he does not like to share what he does and how, and that those who know him believe he is “very nervous” about his own security.
Yass, who is described in some media accounts as a libertarian, also donated to the Protect America Pac, an organisation affiliated with Republican senator Rand Paul. The Pac’s website falsely claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election. [Ed. Note: low profile and association with Rand Paul may suggest underground fascist links].
This Washington Post Article provides and interesting fact that Pardoned General and Trump Riot supporter Mike Flynn’s brother, Charles was part of the delayed National Guard Response and the originally denied this. “Army falsely denied Flynn’s brother was involved in key part of military response to Capitol riot. Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn is the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and training. Why would a Constitutionally Sworn Military Personnel lie about this and violate the Military Code of Conduct? I recommend that you read the article and come to your own conclusion if there was influence with this Coup by infiltrations at the highest level of the military or not. Also if both Flynn’s became Generals, is this more than a coincidence. We need more information to determine if Mike and Charles Flynn be similar ideologically with similar fascist loyalties?
On a separate note, As I read this I realized that QAnon was created in part to mobilize what is referred to in the Nazi Book by National Alliance “Serpents Walk” as “Christian Fascists” in what they believe is a fight with Satan (the Democrats).
By Dan Lamothe, Paul Sonne, Carol D. Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis
January 20 at 10:42 PM ET
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/flynn-national-guard-call-riot/2021/01/20/7f4f41ba-5b4c-11eb-aaad-93988621dd28_story.html
Highlights state:
The Army falsely denied for days that Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the brother of disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, was involved in a key meeting during its heavily scrutinized response to the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Charles Flynn confirmed in a statement issued to The Washington Post on Wednesday that he was in the room for a tense Jan. 6 phone call during which the Capitol Police and D.C. officials pleaded with the Pentagon to dispatch the National Guard urgently, but top Army officials expressed concern about having the Guard at the Capitol.
Flynn left the room before the meeting was over, anticipating that then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who was in another meeting, would soon take action to deploy more guard members, he said. “I entered the room after the call began and departed prior to the call ending as I believed a decision was imminent from the Secretary and I needed to be in my office to assist in executing the decision,” Flynn said.
The general’s presence during the call — which has not previously been reported — came weeks after his brother publicly suggested that President Donald Trump declare martial law and have the U.S. military oversee a redo of the election.
The episode highlights the challenge for the Army in having an influential senior officer whose brother has become a central figure in QAnon, the extreme ideology that alleges Trump was waging a battle with Satan-worshiping Democrats who traffic children. Michael Flynn, who previously ran the Defense Intelligence Agency and left the Army as a three-star general, has espoused QAnon messages, and QAnon adherents are among those who have been charged in connection with the attempted insurrection. In November, Trump announced he had pardoned Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
The night before the Capitol siege, Michael Flynn addressed a crowd of Trump supporters at Freedom Plaza near the White House, saying: “This country is awake tomorrow. . . . The members, the members of Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight . . . we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie.”
“Charlie Flynn is an officer of an incredibly high integrity,” McCarthy said
The teleconference, organized by D.C. officials after authorities already had declared a riot at the Capitol, focused on what actions the military could take in response to the violence, with the Capitol Police chief pleading for help and the acting D.C. police chief growing incredulous at the Army’s reluctance to engage. The call included senior Army officials at the urging of Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, according to one person with direct knowledge of the situation.
It was at times difficult for the participants of the call to discern which top Army official was speaking. Officials on the call recalled hearing two Army leaders discussing the “optics” and “visual” of having National Guard members respond at the Capitol. One of the Army leaders described the protesters as “peaceful,” and Contee responded that “they’re not peaceful anymore,” two of the officials said.
One official directly familiar with the situation said there was concern in both the Army and National Guard about possible political fallout if it was discovered that Flynn was involved in the Army’s deliberations. That is despite it being commonplace that the person in Flynn’s role would have been involved
Army officials declined to answer several questions about Flynn’s statement, including how long he was in the room during the call, whether he said anything, and if he was the one who described the crowd at the Capitol as mostly peaceful.
The Army also declined to answer why it falsely said for days that Flynn, who already has been confirmed by the Senate for a promotion to four-star general, was not involved.
This next CNN Article from 1-18-2021 by Nelli Black, Scott Bronstein, Bob Ortega, Benjamin Naughton and Yahya Abou-Ghazala shows how people who were pardoned by Trump were part of the plot including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. Also involved were his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and a newcomer whom I am sure we will be hearing more about in the future, Ali Alexander. This is an excellent summary of public evidence.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/18/politics/trump-bannon-stone-giuliani-capitol-riot-invs/index.html
How Trump allies stoked the flames ahead of Capitol riot
(CNN) — Steve Bannon evoked the beaches of Normandy. Michael Flynn drew comparisons to Civil War battlefields and spoke of Americans who died for their country. Roger Stone called it a struggle “between the godly and the godless, between good and evil.” Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” Ali Alexander said it would be a “knife fight.”
As 2020 faded into 2021, some of President Donald Trump’s most influential supporters — among them members of his inner circle who were in direct contact with the President — spoke in ominous and violent terms about what was coming on January 6.
Even as anxious eyes turn toward the Inauguration Day on January 20, the words of these firebrands in the leadup to the riots at the Capitol raise crucial questions about the relationship between the rhetoric of far-right figureheads and the violence that unfolded on January 6.
“All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon, Trump’s former top White House adviser, promised listeners of his podcast — called “War Room” — on January 5.
The next day, Trump himself gave a rambling speech near the White House where he claimed the election “was stolen from you, from me and from the country,” and called on supporters to “walk down to the Capitol.”
“We are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” he added, “and we are probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you will never take back our country with weakness.”
Soon after, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, killing a police officer and assaulting others before charging inside — some carrying weapons and zip-tie handcuffs.
“What we have is influential, powerful people influencing the President and pushing out messages that are radicalizing large chunks of the population,” said Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer for the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a nonprofit organization that monitors extremism around the world. “It’s very dangerous.”
To be sure, as a rule most speech that doesn’t convey a direct threat or incite “imminent lawless action” is protected under the First Amendment.
But experts told CNN they believe Trump and his most visible allies bear a great deal of responsibility for stoking the flames that led to the January 6 uprising.
“When you are an adviser to a President, formal or informal, you need to think about the impact of anti-democratic rhetoric,” said John Hudak, an expert on governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “And the President himself, and a lot of the President’s supporters and certainly his children, seem to believe that it is responsible for a President and his advisers and family to be anti-democratic. That’s a real problem. And we haven’t really experienced that in our history.”
Trump has already paid a historic price for his words, with the US House on Wednesday voting to make him the only American president to have been impeached twice — this time for “incitement of insurrection.”
But while much attention has been paid to Trump’s words in the run up to the breach of the US Capitol, less talked about is the fiery rhetoric of his most high-profile champions.
Bannon and Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment. Stone rejected CNN’s questions as “defamatory attempts to say that my belief in God and my view of the last election in apocalyptic terms is somehow inciting violence.” Alexander argued he had “no involvement in the breach of the US Capitol.”
Flynn attorney Sidney Powell, who herself is facing a defamation lawsuit over her claims about the election (she’s denied the allegations), insisted that Flynn “encourages patriotism and lawful political action,” and to suggest otherwise is “absolutely ludicrous.”
Bannon’s menacing metaphors
PHOTO CAPTION: Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon exits the Manhattan Federal Court on August 20, 2020 in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
In the weeks between the election and that day, Bannon and his guests and co-hosts on his “War Room” podcast relentlessly promoted conspiracy theories of election fraud and cast the fight to overturn the election results in war-like and often apocalyptic terms.
Bannon’s menacing metaphors first landed him in hot water a few days after on Election Day, when he suggested in a video that posted to several of his social media accounts that, if he were in charge, he wouldn’t merely fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and Anthony Fauci — the US government’s top infectious disease expert — but would put their heads on pikes “as a warning to federal bureaucrats.” Twitter permanently suspended his account.
In December, Bannon’s co-host tweeted a video of Bannon speaking on “War Room” overlaid with cinematic music and dramatic images from the famous D‑Day battle scene of “Saving Private Ryan.” In it, he spoke of the “moral obligation” Trump supporters have to “the kids that died at Normandy.” He added that if they allow Biden — “that feckless old man” — to win, “I want you to explain that to the 20-year-old kid in the first wave on D‑Day.”
On December 28, Bannon insisted that patriotic Trump supporters had to be ready to fight in the spirit of George Washington’s soldiers during the American Revolution and American soldiers on D‑Day in World War II. “That’s our DNA, that’s where we come from,” Bannon said.
Bannon began promoting the upcoming DC protests of January 6.
“l’ll tell you this,” Bannon said the day before the riot. “It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. OK, it’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is, strap in ... You have made this happen and tomorrow it’s game day. So strap in. Let’s get ready.”
The podcasts also pointed to close coordination with Trump’s team. “You and me were talking almost every day, many times, you know, 10 times a day,” Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn said to Bannon on December 28.
Meanwhile, a senior Trump adviser confirmed that the President and Bannon have been in communication in recent weeks, discussing Trump’s conspiracy theories about the election.
‘You either fight with us or you get slashed’
PHOTO CAPTION Roger Stone, former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, is flanked by security during a rally at Freedom Plaza, ahead of the U.S. Congress certification of the November 2020 election results, during protests in Washington, U.S., January 5, 2021.
Just before Christmas, Alexander — a political activist who has organized pro-Trump rallies, including one of the demonstrations that converged on the Capitol lawn on January 6 — used violent metaphors to hint at what was to come in January when speaking to followers of his livestream channel on the social media platform Periscope. In his freewheeling monologue, Alexander credited Roger Stone, a veteran Republican operative and self-described “dirty trickster” whose 40-month prison sentence for seven felonies was cut short by Trump’s commutation in July. (He was given a full pardon in December).
“This is something Roger and I have been planning for a long time,” Alexander said. “And finally, he’s off the leash. So, you know, it’s a knife fight and your two knife fighters are Ali Alexander and Roger Stone, and you either fight with us or you get slashed. So I’ll let you guys know more about what that means as we evolve.”
Alexander has helped turn the “Stop the Steal” slogan that Stone launched on Trump’s behalf during the 2016 primaries into a rallying cry for conservatives around the country.
At a DC rally on the night of January 5, Stone took the stage clad in one of his trademark pinstripe suits as a dance track titled “Roger Stone did nothing wrong” blared from the speakers.
After repeating the falsehood that the election was stolen from Trump, Stone, 68, rallied the faithful with an us-versus-them battle cry.
“This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this country between dark and light, between the godly and the godless, between good and evil,” he said. “And we will win this fight or America will step off into a thousand years of darkness. We dare not fail. I will be with you tomorrow shoulder to shoulder.”
Stone also has bumped elbows with extremist groups, most notably the Proud Boys. In September he endorsed the congressional candidacy of Nick Ochs, who founded the Hawaii chapter of the far-right organization. Ochs, whose bid for the US House came up short, was arrested for his role in the Capitol siege. Law enforcement was alerted to it by the photo Ochs posted on Twitter of himself enjoying a cigarette in the building, and by the comments he made to a CNN reporter.
Long a dispenser of supercharged rhetoric, Stone was not muted by his recent run-in with the law, and was talking about election fraud even before November.
In September, he went on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show, InfoWars, and the two mused discursively about “fake ballots,” Big Tech and the Clintons.
“If someone will study the president’s authority in the Insurrection Act in his ability to impose, impose martial law,” Stone said, “if there is widespread cheating, he will have the authority to arrest (Mark) Zuckerberg, to arrest Tim Cook, to arrest the Clintons, to arrest anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity.”
War analogies abound
PHOTO CAPTION: Former US National Security Advisor Michael Flynn speaks to supporters of President Donald Trump during the Million MAGA March to protest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in front of the US Supreme Court on December 12, 2020 in Washington, DC.
For his part, Jones has joined “Stop the Steal” efforts since the November election and used inflammatory, dark rhetoric to bolster the movement’s false claims.
Two days after election day, Jones said, “We are in the attempted overthrow of our country.” When a guest on the show mentioned people showing up in person to protest the counting of votes, Jones drew a comparison to World War II.
“It’s like when Hitler was bombing London, most Brits were against a war because they had World War I. But once Hitler bombed them, over 95% said let’s go to war,” he said. “This is a war. This is not regular times.”
Jones did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Also employing war analogies is another beneficiary of Trump’s pardon powers — Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser.
Speaking to a fired-up crowd at the DC rally on January 5, Flynn — who was pardoned by Trump in November after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian diplomat — managed to pack election-fraud conspiracy theories, violent innuendo and a call to action into a couple of sentences.
“In some of these states, we have more dead voters than are buried on the battlefields of Gettysburg, or the battlefields of Vicksburg, or the battlefields of Normandy,” he said. “Those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don’t have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow, we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie.”
Much of the rhetoric leading up to the riot has been draped in the language of existential threat.
Speaking at a January 6 rally just before the siege, Rudy Giuliani — Trump’s personal attorney — spoke in grandiose terms about the stakes at hand.
“This is bigger than Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s bigger than you and me. It’s about these monuments and what they stand for. This has been a year in which they have invaded our freedom of speech, our freedom of religion, our freedom to move, our freedom to live. I’ll be darned if they’re going to take away our free and fair vote. And we’re going to fight to the very end to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
His mention of “trial by combat” was cited by the New York State Bar Association, which has launched an inquiry into Giuliani to determine whether he should be expelled from the group.
“Mr. Giuliani’s words quite clearly were intended to encourage Trump supporters unhappy with the election’s outcome to take matters into their own hands,” the group said in a statement. “Their subsequent attack on the Capitol was nothing short of an attempted coup, intended to prevent the peaceful transition of power.”
Experts concerned that incitement is far from over
John Scott-Railton, a researcher at University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab who now works with others to identify extremist groups who were part of the Capitol mob, said the rhetoric plays into the fantasies of armed protesters who have been gunning for a civil war.
“They’re ready — it’s what they’ve been prancing around in the woods, playing dress up, preparing for,” he said. “I’m just terribly worried that they weren’t satisfied with what happened on the sixth, and they’re going to come back for more.”
As for Bannon, the tenor of his podcast took a turn once the violence started unfolding.
On the morning of January 6, before the rally and march on the Capitol, Bannon echoed Stone’s words by saying the day would be a battle between “the children of light and the forces of darkness.”
But the podcast’s tone shifted sharply as footage of the violence at the Capitol was broadcast nationwide. Even as Bannon and his co-podcasters continued to describe Vice President Mike Pence as a traitor, they absolved Trump and themselves from any responsibility for fomenting violence.
“What’s going on right now was choices made by individuals who are fed up with what they’ve seen happen,” said right-wing activist Ben Bergquam on a War Room episode later that same day. “When I’m talking to people on the ground, that is what I’m hearing over and over and over again, it has nothing to do with President Trump’s words.”
Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, said anyone paying attention knew the events on January 6 would be a magnet for angry people. The violence of extremists, he added, has historically been sparked by a fear that something is being taken away — be it a White majority, guns or a way of life.
“Whether it’s illegal or not, people have gotta know better,” he said. “You don’t have to be a genius to know how people are incited by words.”
CNN’s Nelli Black, Scott Bronstein, Bob Ortega, Benjamin Naughton and Yahya Abou-Ghazala contributed to this report.
One of the most bizarre things about the Capital Insurrection is when Jacob Chansley, the man who painted his face in red, white and blue, was shirtless and had a Viking hat led a Christian prayer from the Senate floor podium. This on the surface appeared to be pure lunacy but actually there was a sub-rosa strategy behind this.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, 33, is a well-known supporter of the QAnon conspiracy in his home state of Arizona, where he is a failed actor and lives with his mom.
The ‘QAnon shaman’ who stormed the Capitol building during last week’s riot wearing a fur hat with horns and face paint was kicked out of the Navy in 2007 for refusing to take an anthrax vaccine, it has been revealed.
Chansley had also been planning to return to Washington DC to create a disturbance at Joe Biden’s inauguration before he was arrested Saturday, according to federal prosecutors.
The article states “In that photo, Chansley held a sign that read, ‘HOLD THE LINE PATRIOTS GOD WINS.’” I believe this is part of a strategy for the underground Reich to target fundamentalist Christian nationalists to support fascist causes.
The MOST SIGNIFICANT CLUE in the article stated “One of his tattoos is said to show the symbol of Wotanism, an acronym for ‘Will of the Aryan Nation.’”
‘I obey the orders of the president of the United States,’ he said.
https://mol.im/a/9176681
Donald Trump gave what may be an Aryan Fist Pump/ White Power Symbol as he boarded Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House while he made his final exit from the White House en-route to his Mar-a-Lago Florida Resort.
See picture # 5 out of 28 https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/in-pictures-trumps-fist-pump-as-biden-takes-charge-20210121-h1ti9o
Senator Josh Hawley who tried to delay the Senate Certification of the Election for Joe Biden also has a fist pump on January 6 to the crowd before they rushed the Capital. The article interpreted it as a show of solidarity for President Trump. Look near the bottom of the article for the fist pump picture.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article248354085.html
My question is if this was an Aryan Fist Pump identified by the ADL and it suggests Underground Reich loyalties more than simple pro-Trump loyalties:
The Washington Post has a new report giving us more details on the timeline of actions, or lack of actions, in the chain of command overseeing the DC National Guard during the January 6 storming of the Capitol. It’s more or less in line with what we already knew, but with more details about the nature of the obstructions in the chain-of-command that created the multi-hour delays in ordering in the Guard while a pro-Trump mob scours the Capitol for members of Congress. As the report describes, the obstructions were largely put in place in advance, including removing the ability of the head of the DC National Guard, Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, to independently send in emergency forces without first getting permission from the Pentagon. And many of these restrictions were publicly known in advance too, with a senior US official telling the Washington Post on Jan 5 that the military would be “absolutely nowhere near the Capitol building”. This was in response to what was then the growing concerns that then-President Trump would do something as extreme as declaring martial law in order to force a new election or worse.
And then, after the Capitol police formally requested the National Guard (a formal request that, itself, came in late at 1:49 PM, well after the Guard was clearly needed), the decision at the Pentagon to ultimately release the troops was apparently being wrestled over on a phone call described by participants as “chaotic”, where concerns of the ‘optics’ of sending in the Guard weighed heavily on top Pentagon officials. Oh, and it turns out one of the participants of the chaotic phone call included Charles Flynn, brother of Michael Flynn. So apparent sensitivities over the heavy-handed use of the National Guard by Trump to quell police brutality protests in the summer of 2020 were apparently the excuse used to first preemptively restrict the ability of the National Guard commanders to respond quickly to emergencies and then continuing holding back the Guard after the request was finally made:
“Walker and former Army secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, along with other top officials, briefed the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday behind closed doors about the events, the beginning of what is likely to become a robust congressional inquiry into the preparations for a rally that devolved into a riot at the Capitol, resulting in five people dead and representing a significant security failure.”
As we can see, there was no shortage of disturbing revelations when Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, and former Army secretary Ryan D. McCarthy kicked off the congressional inquiry into the Jan 6 insurrection. A day when standard operating procedures for the National Guard were not in operation and local commanders had their powers to take emergency military action preemptively restricted by the Pentagon leadership. Restrictions that were put in place, in part, because of concerns of a repeat of the heavy-handed use of the National Guard in the summer of 2020 to quell police brutality protests. So fears of repeating Trump’s prior abuses of power played into the decisions to preemptively hold back the Guard:
And yet, even if we accept at face value the concerns over optics as a reason for the preemptive moves to restrict the ability of the local commanders to call in emergency troops on their own, that still doesn’t explain the multi-hour delays in securing the higher-up authority when the request was finally made. We have DC police chief Sund making a request to the DC National Guard chief Walker at 1:49 PM (already way too late). Then Walker asks for authority from the Army leadership and doesn’t receive a response for another hour and fifteen minutes. And it’s ultimately three hours for acting defense secretary Christopher Miller gives the authorization:
Why the absurd delay in giving the authorization? Optics. That’s the explanation, we’re given, where extreme concerns inside the Pentagon led to the decisions to preemptively restrict the ability of local commanders to send in even the emergency troops, because “we don’t want to send the wrong message”. And this extreme apprehensiveness on the part of the Pentagon was publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon to the Washington Post on Jan 5, a day before the riot. It raises the question of whether or not these public messages in advance of Jan 6 about how the Pentagon was planning on having a minimal presence on the Capitol that day, despite all the warnings of possible violence, were taken by the insurrectionists as a kind of public ‘green light’ to proceed with the insurrection:
But then there’s General Walker’s the potentially highly explosive phone call with the Pentagon, described as “chaotic” and with a large number of participants. Who was on the phone call and what were they arguing? All we are told is that there were concerns by many, including Army staff director, Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, over the ‘optics’ of sending in the National Guard to back up the Capitol police. This conversation about ‘optics’ was, of course, happening while images of a ransacked Capitol were broadcast across the world:
Who was on that chaotic phone call at the Pentagon and what were they arguing? That remains a big open question in this inquiry, although we have some answers already. For example, the Pentagon was initially denying that Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn — brother of Michael Flynn — was on that phone call. But now we’re learning that, yes, Charles was on the call. Although he claims he was only on for four minutes and didn’t say anything but others on the call are telling reporters otherwise. So we know the brother of Michael Flynn — one of the biggest public backers of the idea of Trump declaring martial law — was on the Pentagon phone call, we know his presence on the call was initially hidden, and we know that he’s continuing to hide what he said on the call. But we still don’t know what he said. So hopefully investigators will be getting some answers to the question of what Charles Flynn actually said on that phone call, along with the rest of the call participants, because it sounds like the argument over whether or not to send in troops during that phone call may have been a major factor in the multi-hour delay:
“The general, who will soon be promoted to a four-star officer, said he could not remember whether he said anything on the call. “I do not recall saying anything in the conference, but I may have, and I just don’t recall saying anything to the audience on the other end,” he said. Other participants on the call have told The Post they heard Flynn speak.”
It’s another discrepancy in the story of this ‘chaotic’ phone call. First the Pentagon denies Flynn was on the call. Then we learn he was on the call, but Flynn assures us it was briefly and he didn’t say anything. But others on the call say otherwise. What was Charles Flynn arguing on this call? We still don’t know. But it’s not hard to imagine what he might have been advocating given all the efforts to obscure these details.
And that’s the part of this most clearly emerging from this investigation: we still don’t know what exactly happened, but it’s becoming increasingly clear a lot of people don’t want us to know what happened. The contours of a coverup are clearly visible.
Here’s a story that adds some disturbing context to the recent reports that Donald Trump’s planned impeachment defense will revolve around arguing that the Jan 6. storming of the Capitol was justified:
ProPublica has an interesting report on the individuals involved with the planning of the January 6 “March to Save America” pro-Trump rally that immediately preceded the storming of the Capitol. This is the rally associated with Roger Stone’s “Stop the Steal” group, leading many to suspect Stone himself may have been the ringleader for the event.
We’re now learning more about the people directly involved in organizing the rally. It turns out that, in the week leading up to the rally, there was a flurry of changed plans. Plans that suddenly included a late effort to get Donald Trump himself to speak at the rally. Who was behind these changed plans? Caroline Wren was suddenly asserting control over the planning. And Wren just happens to be a deputy to Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at Trump Victory, a joint presidential fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign. In addition, the production company that helped but on the event was owned by Justin Caporale, a former top aide to first lady Melania Trump.
But it doesn’t sound like the Trump campaign directly hired Wren to do that work on the event. Instead, it was Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the heiress to Publix Super Markets, who committed around $300k to fund the rally. Fancelli’s financing of the rally was reportedly facilitated by Alex Jones. So while the question of Roger Stone’s involvement in the rally/coup attempt is still an open question, those questions of who planned that rally and what exactly did they plan are questions that go well beyond Roger Stone now that we’ve learned that aides to Melania and Don Jr’s girlfriend were the key figures behind some sort of last-minute change in plans for the event that catalyzed the insurrection. An event that was paid for by a wealthy grocery heiress thanks to the work of Alex Jones:
“Wren was no ordinary event planner. She served as a deputy to Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at Trump Victory, a joint presidential fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign. The Justin mentioned in her text was Justin Caporale, a former top aide to first lady Melania Trump, whose production company helped put on the event at the Ellipse.”
Caroline Wren, Don Jr.‘s girlfriend’s deputy fundraiser, was the one calling the shots. That’s the picture that’s emerging of the final week leading up to the event. As well as a picture of an operation where the ultimate message of the event was very much in flux until the last minute. Why? Because that message depended on how many Republicans in congress they could ultimately get to join in on opposing the electoral vote count. In other words, the rally and the Congressional objections to the electoral count were jointly planned stunts that required coordination. Last-minute opportunistic coordination in this case:
But it wasn’t the Trump campaign that directly paid for the “March to Save America” rally. No, it was Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli who ended up paying the $300,000 for the rally with Alex Jones playing some sort of middle-man role:
It’s quite a snapshot of the state of American civics in 2021: a wealthy heiress coordinating with a far right internet trash conspiracy peddler finances a rally intended to whip the crowd into an insurrectionary fervor based on a blatant Big Lie. And the person directly running the show was a top fundraiser for the president’s son’s girlfriend. At this point, perhaps Donald Trump’s best impeachment defense just might be to diffuse blame by pointing to all of the other people who were clearly involved in its planning. There were already so many chefs in the coup-kitchen, Trump’s involvement in the planning wasn’t really necessary.
Ftr Coup Coup Radicalizing the Base 2–5‑2021
A March (and Apri)l, 2021 Mother Jones article by Mark Follman talks about how trump pushed the Communist Conspiracy message in a threatening “plot to steal America” with inflammatory and couched racist rhetoric to radicalize his base and incite violent attacks that serve his political agenda. His base is made to feel like they are a special group with a mission. However they mistakenly believe they are fighting against tyranny in order to gain back their own freedom, whicle in reality doing the opposite. He benefits from the propaganda outlet Epoc Times.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/02/trump-stochastic-terrorism-us-capitol-mob-incitement/
Selected portions of the article state:
Trump did more than just invite supporters to a rally. He also repeatedly shared a slickly produced video, titled “The Plot to Steal America,” that warned ominously of a Chinese communist scheme involving Biden, the Democrats, and the news media, and called for Trump supporters to mobilize. “We know that our rights don’t come from the government, but from God,” declared the narrator, an Ohio jewelry buyer formerly employed by the pro-Trump propaganda outlet the Epoch Times. “And we will fight to the death to protect those rights.” In a tweet the day after Christmas, Trump suggested that if the Democrats were in his position, the “Rigged & Stolen” presidential election would be considered “an act of war, and fight to the death.”
The description of Trump as a terrorist leader is neither metaphor nor hyperbole—it is the assessment of veteran national security experts. Trump, those experts say, adopted a method known as stochastic terrorism, a process of incitement where the instigator provokes extremist violence under the guise of plausible deniability. Although the exact location, timing, and source of the violence may not be predictable, its occurrence is all but inevitable. When pressed about the incitement, the instigator typically responds with equivocal denials and muted denunciations of violence, or claims to have been “joking,” as Trump and those speaking on his behalf routinely made.
“Stochastic” derives from the ancient Greek words stochastikosand stochazesthai, meaning “skillful in aiming” and “to target.” Among counterterrorism experts, the term historically was applied to the techniques used by ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as anti-abortion religious extremists, all of whom used inflammatory rhetoric to radicalize others to carry out horrific attacks. Trump did the previously unthinkable: He brought the method into the White House
Trump’s nods and winks to far-right hate groups began during his 2016 campaign and came to a head in August 2017 when he suggested that the torch-wielding white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, included some “very fine people.” His demagoguery was initially focused on “the other,” whether it was Muslims, or Mexican “rapists,” or migrant caravans, or “shithole” countries. He repeatedly attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people,” provoking violent threats and plots against journalists. By his 2020 reelection campaign, he’d turned his incitement squarely on the American political leaders who opposed him.
The campaign of incitement escalated last spring when Trump urged supporters to “Liberate Michigan!” in response to pandemic restrictions ordered by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He then sided with the armed protesters who swarmed the state Capitol: “These are very good people, but they are angry,” he tweeted. “They want their lives back again, safely!” By early October, the FBI had arrested 13 people for violent plots, including some who allegedly planned to kidnap Whitmer. Far-right extremists also allegedly targeted Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, whom Trump had blasted as “crazy” for his pandemic policies and for supposedly planning to take away Virginians’ guns. When asked during a presidential debate in September whether he would denounce the neofascist gang known as the Proud Boys, Trump infamously responded that they should “stand back and stand by.”
Trump’s nods and winks to far-right hate groups began during his 2016 campaign and came to a head in August 2017 when he suggested that the torch-wielding white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, included some “very fine people.” His demagoguery was initially focused on “the other,” whether it was Muslims, or Mexican “rapists,” or migrant caravans, or “shithole” countries. He repeatedly attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people,” provoking violent threats and plots against journalists. By his 2020 reelection campaign, he’d turned his incitement squarely on the American political leaders who opposed him.
The campaign of incitement escalated last spring when Trump urged supporters to “Liberate Michigan!” in response to pandemic restrictions ordered by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He then sided with the armed protesters who swarmed the state Capitol: “These are very good people, but they are angry,” he tweeted. “They want their lives back again, safely!” By early October, the FBI had arrested 13 people for violent plots, including some who allegedly planned to kidnap Whitmer. Far-right extremists also allegedly targeted Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, whom Trump had blasted as “crazy” for his pandemic policies and for supposedly planning to take away Virginians’ guns. When asked during a presidential debate in September whether he would denounce the neofascist gang known as the Proud Boys, Trump infamously responded that they should “stand back and stand by.”
On December 14, state electors in Michigan and Arizona faced with “credible threats” were compelled to take extraordinary security measures as they convened to certify Biden’s victory. “We are stuck parsing Trump’s words, forced into textualist debates about what he meant,” Kayyem tweeted that day. “Meanwhile his supporters know EXACTLY what he means
The Proud Boys embedded Trump’s “wild!” tweet in flyers encouraging members to join the DC rally and hawked T‑shirts with the slogan “Proud Boys standing by.” In late December, the Wall Street Journalreported, leaders of the group—some of whose members stormed the Capitol—vowed on social media to put “boots on the ground” and “turn out in record numbers” on January 6. Trump, one said, had just given them “the green light.”
“We love you. You’re very special,” Trump told the mob, looking directly into the camera. “I know how you feel.”
Even as his presidency neared its end, security experts warned that Trump still needed to be vanquished as a terrorist leader. “He tells them where to go. He tells them what to do. He tells them why they’re angry,” Kayyem said
The Capitol insurrection was a beginning, not an end—celebrated by far-right extremists as a thrilling affirmation of their relevance. National security experts and historians alike know that failed coup attempts are often followed by successful ones.
“Bad ideologies don’t die, but they do get shamed and isolated,” says Kayyem, noting Biden’s ability to rebuke Trumpism with a folksy “C’mon, man!” or a “You can’t be serious.” No ink was spared during the Trump presidency, she adds, over trying to understand the grievances of his ardent supporters. But violent extremism requires otherwise: “My hope is we’ll see the Biden administration push an agenda of shaming this.”
Everything from the monetization of far-right rage by Fox News and its upstart competitors to extremist groups recruiting and radicalizing people via social media must be confronted. “The biggest challenge,” observes Kayyem, “is going to be a cultural change with what was allowed to fester and how we root it out.”
Here’s an interesting point of conflict breaking out in the world of far right social media that threatens to drag the Mercers into the ongoing purge of the Republican Party and Conservative movement of anyone who shows of hint of ‘censoring’ even the most outrageous far right Big Lies:
The CEO of Parler, John Matze, was fired last week and he’s blaming the investors for the move. Matze says he received a written warning that he violated the terms of his confidentiality agreement by making disparaging statements and disclosing insider informatino to the media that could damage the reputation of the company. Matze claims that they fired him shortly before the platform was coming back online and did it because they are attempting to restrict his ability to speak his mind about his vision for Parler. The twist is that the main investor is Rebekah Mercer. So the CEO of the social media platform that was championed as the right-wing free-speech haven is claiming that Rebekah Mercer fired him in an attempt to silence him over his comments about the future of this free-speech platform.
What was the different in visions for Parler? Well, here’s where we find a double-twist: Matze claims that he and Mercer disagreed over how to regulate Neo-Nazis and any other domestic terrorism groups that incite violence. Matze wanted Parler to crack down on these groups but says his position was met with silence by Mercer. So, based on Matze’s claims, he was fired in an attempt by Rebekah Mercer to muzzle him and to keep Parler a pro-violence Nazi-friendly platform:
““That’s not the vision I had for the company,” Matze told USA TODAY. “These people just want to censor me. Obviously, my statement about their vision not aligning with mine must be true considering they are trying to stop me from speaking my mind.””
Matze is being muzzled. That’s how he put it. Muzzled over his warnings that Parler crack down on neo-Nazis and other domestic terror groups that incite violence. Rebekah Mercer wants to keep Parler open to such groups, according to Matze:
And Matze’s warnings about incitements to violence on the platform are directly related to the other major legal issue facing Parler: the role it played in in orchestrating the January 6 storming of the Capitol:
Or maybe Matze is a liability in the growing libel lawsuits brought by Dominion against the various media platforms that aggressively pushed the vote-rigging claims without evidence? It’s not clear. But as the following article points out, whether or not the Mercers were directly involved in planning the insurrection, they are perhaps the largest donor for the hyper-Trumpian wing of the GOP that most enthusiastically backed the insurrection, like Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. And Ali Alexander, the Roger Stone acolyte and primary organizer of the ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies, even received Mercer donations for his “Black Conservatives Fund” outfit back in 2014 and 2016. As we should expect, the Black Conservatives Fund is one of the groups that was promoting the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally.
So between their broad backing of the far right groups that actually staged the and financing of Parler, it’s not all a stretch to describe the Jan 6 insurrection as being was orchestrated by the dominant ‘Mercer-wing’ of the GOP:
““The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution,” Bannon told The New Yorker in 2017. “Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody, including the Kochs.” Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, sees it differently. Rebekah Mercer, he said in an interview with Salon, is the “chief financier or one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement, and that’s what it is.””
Rebekah Mercer is the “chief financier or one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement.” That’s how former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt describes her. It sounds like Rebekah is the one most directly involved with managing the Mercer family’s political investments and she might even be more of a zealot than her father. And that’s fundamentally why we can predict with confidence that any investigation into the financing behind the insurrection will lead back to the Mercers. Although, thanks to the US’s dark money laws, it will probably be years before we get a better idea of just how much they spent:
It’s rather fitting that the first family of American fascism also owns the company claiming to have the US’s largest private cache of machine guns. Because if we had to attempt to characterize the Mercers’ political philosophy, it could roughly be symbolized as a giant pile of privately owned machine guns. The worship and execution of raw power. A political philosophy that’s as shallow as it is chilling. And quite a good fit with the Trumpian cult of personality that has stolen the hearts and minds of the GOP base. It’s arguably the worst aspect of the story of the rise of the Mercers: It isn’t just that the GOP is being taken over by the Mercers’ money. It’s been captured by their philosophy too. Not that the pre-Mercer GOP was anything to brag about, but they’ve managed to taking the rotting corpse of that party and make it even more rotten and souless.
So now that we have the former CEO of Parler publicly accusing Rebekah Mercer of coddling neo-Nazis and domestic terrorists, there’s the question of how Matze’s public accusations might end up impacting Rebekah’s legal culpability in fomenting the insurrection. But perhaps the bigger question is how much will her popularity increase with the GOP base as a result of Matze’s accusations and when is she going to run for office herself.
Here is a January 8, Rolling Stone Article on the symbolysm revealed on the QAnon Shaman’who gave a prayer in the Senate Chamber during the Capital Insurrection. His Tatoo’s have Nazi and White Supremacist symbolism.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-shaman-maga-capitol-riot-rune-pagan-imagery-tattoo-1111344/
Is the ‘QAnon Shaman’ From the MAGA Capitol Riot Covered in Neo-Nazi Imagery?
Runes and other Pagan symbols aren’t inherently racist — but they’ve long been coopted by white supremacists
Kim Kelly January 8, 2021 4:23PM ET
PHOTO CAPTION: Supporters of US President Donald Trump, including Jake Angeli, a QAnon supporter known for his painted face and horned hat, protest in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.
Mere hours after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitolbuilding in Washington, D.C., forcing Congress to evacuate and giving every impression of staging an attempted coup, the right-wing propaganda machine whirred to life. Republican mouthpiece Sarah Palin, Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood (who has since been bannedfrom Twitter for inciting violence), far-right Florida Representative Matt Gaetz,and innumerable pro-Trump social media accounts all began spreadingan unfounded and utterly bizarre false-flag theory that antifascists, or “antifa,” had somehowinfiltrated the crowd and were actually behind all the violence and destruction. Among their major pieces of “evidence” were photos of Arizona QAnonsupporter Jake Angeli, who iswell-knownfor his outsized, costumed presence at pro-Trump rallies and far-right anti-lockdown protests. Angeli himself was mortifiedat being mistaken for antifa, tweeting plaintively, “I’m a Qanon & digital soldier. My name is Jake & I marched with the police & fought against BLM & ANTIFA in PHX.”
ARTICLE LINK: ‘QAnon Shaman,’ Man Carrying Pelosi’s Lectern Both Arrested Following Capitol Riot
But there may be an even more blatant sign that Angeli is no friend to antifascists: his much-photographed bare torso is covered in symbols that have long been used by the white supremacist movement. Given his penchant for showing up to protests shirtless, face-painted, and sporting a horned helmet like some kind of racist Party City Viking who took a wrong turn and ended up at Burning Man, Angeli’s many tattoos are often on full display, including his large trio of Odinist symbols. He has a mjolnir, or Thor’s Hammer, on his stomach, an image of Yggdrasil, or Tree of Life, etched around his nipple, and most significantly, placed right above his heart, a valknut, or “knot of the slain,” an old Norse runic symbol turned recognized hate symbol that is popular among white supremacists. In addition, the mjolnirhas become a symbol of identity among modern heathens, and is particularly popularamong those aligned with the explicitly white supremacist neo-Völkisch” or “folkish” movement.
The presence of Yggdrasil or even mjolniron their own isn’t necessarily cause for alarm, given their popularity among modern pagans and fans of Norse mythology, but there is far less ambiguity around the valknut. There issome debateabout its original meaning, and its three interconnected triangles have appeared on a variety of archaeological objects from the Viking era; the name itself is a neologism, a modern combination of the Old Norsevalr — the slain — and knut, “knot.” While it’s used in some Europeancorporatelogos, Heathens now use it to signify that one is ready to be taken into the ranks of Odin’s chosen warriors — essentially, to die a warrior’s death for the cause. When tattooed on a conservative activist who adheres to a blood libel-style conspiracy like QAnon, it wouldn’t even have to mean he was a white supremacist, but rather that conspiratorial world views have a historical context about which their believers should be slightly self-aware.
Understandably, many actual pagans are horrifiedat the way white supremacists have co-opted their religious and cultural icons and twisted them into symbols of hate. Talia Lavin, who explores the concept in her recent book, Culture Warlords, says that neo-Nazis’ Viking fetish harkens back to their obsession with both traditional European conceptions of masculinity and whiteness itself. “Neopagan symbols offer the hypermasculine aesthetic sheen of the Viking,” she explains via text message. “But we can also see a desire to ground their white supremacist ideology in a purportedly timeless myth, a desire to reach back to an anachronistic, ahistorical ‘perfect’ whiteness, thus grounding their violence in an idealized past, in white nationalism as in any other form of nationalism.”
This kind of Norse imagery had a long history of being co-opted by terrible people. The original Nazis famously made heavy use of Norse and Germanic runes (the “SS” bolt is the most famous example), as do their modern successorsin groups like the Nordic Resistance Movement, the Soldiers of Odin, and the National Socialist Movement,which hasadopted the othalaor odalrune as its logo. Members of the Aryan Brotherhood are fond of tattooing runes and Viking symbols alongside their swastikas and Celtic crosses; an explicitly white supremacist branch of modern paganism called Odinismor Wotanism is promoted by the Asatru FolkAssembly (whose founder, Stephen McNallen, attendedthe deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville) and continuesto proliferateand cross-pollinate with other fascist ideologies (notorious white supremacist and murdererDavid Lane was a fan); and runes are rampant within the neo-Nazi black metal scene (which is where I first came across the valknutafter stumbling on a Nazi black metal band named, well, Walknut). It’s similar to what happened to the swastika, in which an ancient religious symbol was violently co-opted by Nazis and forever poisoned; movements to “reclaim the swastika” exist, but some things simply cannot be undone, no matter how unfair it is to the innocent people who saw their sacred symbol stolen and perverted.
This is also where it can get sticky, though, because there are plenty of pagans and metal musicians who are not affiliated with white supremacist ideologies (as well as explicitly anti-fascist varieties of each). The existence of both Thorr’s Hammer, a highly respected and definitely not-fascist Nineties death/doom project with lyrics about Norse mythology and a Norwegian vocalist, and Thor’s Hammer, a virulently racist neo-Nazi black metal band from Poland with deep ties to the international Nazi black metal scene, make that apparent. Outside of subcultural niches, not every person who gets a rune or Norse symbol tattoo necessarily fully understands its political and cultural history, especially now that Marvel has brought the legend of Thor and his Hammer back into the mainstream.
There is even a growing movement to wrest these symbols and modern heathenism more generally away from white supremacists, with groups like Heathens Against Hateand Heathens United Against Racism offering an antiracist alternative.
If Angeli himself were not so obviously aligned with anti-Semitic far-right extremist politics, his tattoos would not carry nearly so much weight. But since he is, he seems to be sending a message with those interlocked triangles, one that could be recognized by the white supremacists he’s chosen to march alongside.The right’s attempt to paint him as antifa would almost be funny if it weren’t so utterly detached from reality. When someone goes to such extravagant lengths to show you who they are, believe them.
Ftr Coup Coup – Oath Keepers – Three Percenters Plot 02–13-21
This next article alleges that a leader of the far-right Oath Keepers, Thomas Caldwell militia group and led other extremists in a pre-planned plot to attack on the U.S. Capitol. Caldwell’s lawyer said that Mr. Caldwell not only held a leadership position in the extremist group Oath Keepers — had a top-secret security clearance for decades and previously worked for the FBI; potentially exposing the weaknesses of the security checks.
They discussed the possibility of getting a boat to ferry ‘heavy weapons’ across the Potomac River. He sent sent a text message to someone believed to be affiliated with another far right militant group, the Three Percenters. They had a “Quick Response Team” waiting for the heavy weapons a Caldwell was coordinating calls to discuss the plan, and joining forces with another far right wing militia Oath Keeper chapters.
Mr. Caldwell and his associates began plotting their incursion of the US Capitol in November 2020. A co-conspirator, Watkins invited recruits six days after the election for a training camp in Columbus, Ohio, to make people ‘fighting fit’ for Inauguration Day. He told them to prepare to ‘kill and die for our rights’. Another plotter, Crowl, a former Marine mechanic, allegedly attended a different training camp in North Carolina, in December.
These people said that they were working under the perceived directions of Donald Trump, embracing his claims of election fraud and readying themselves for bloodshed. One of these participants made it all the way to the house floor, another to Pelosi’s office.
Authorities found a ‘Death List’ in Caldwell’s home that included the name of an elected official from another state. Investigators also found invoices for more than $750 worth of live ammunition and what appeared to be a gun designed to look like a cellphone, prosecutors said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9251783/Oath-Keepers-rioter-Thomas-Caldwell-plotted-ferry-heavy-weapons-Potomac-prosecutors-say.html
February 11, 2021 Keith Griffith for the Dailymail.com and Associated Press
Oath Keepers ‘leader’ who claims to be a retired FBI section chief ‘discussed using boats to ferry “heavy weapons” across Potomac River for Capitol attack and had “death list” of officials’
A man authorities say is a leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and led other extremists in the attack on the U.S. Capitol discussed the possibility of getting a boat to ferry ‘heavy weapons’ across the Potomac River, prosecutors say.
Thomas Caldwell, 66, is charged with conspiracy to obstruct Congress alongside two other alleged members of the militia group, and court papers filed on Thursday provide chilling new evidence in the plot on Capitol Hill.
Prosecutors said Caldwell sent a text message to someone believed to be affiliated with the Three Percenters, an anti-government movement, on January 3 about the possibility of sending weapons across the river.
‘How many people either in the militia or not (who are still supportive of our efforts to save the Republic) have a boat on a trailer that could handle a Potomac crossing?’ Caldwell wrote, according to prosecutors.
‘If we had someone standing by at a dock ramp (one near the Pentagon for sure) we could have our Quick Response Team with the heavy weapons standing by, quickly load them and ferry them across the river to our waiting arms.’
PHOTO CAPTION: Prosecutors said Caldwell sent a text message to someone believed to be affiliated with the Three Percenters on January 3 about the possibility of sending weapons across the Potomac
PHOTO CAPTION: Oath Keepers are seen using the ‘ranger file’ to move through the crowd on January 6
PHOTO CAPTION: A map shows the proposed boat launch near the Pentagon that Caldwell allegedly proposed using to ferry a ‘Quick Response Team with the heavy weapons’ to the Capitol
Prosecutors revealed the evidence to make the case that Caldwell should remain locked up while he awaits trial.
Authorities also said that during a search of Caldwell’s home, they also found a ‘Death List’ that included the name of an elected official from another state.
Investigators also found invoices for more than $750 worth of live ammunition and what appeared to be a gun designed to look like a cellphone, prosecutors said.
Caldwell’s lawyer is urging the judge to release him, saying he denies being a member of the Oath Keepers or ever going into the Capitol building.
The details come days after Caldwell’s lawyer said the man — who authorities said holds a leadership position in the extremist group — had a top-secret security clearance for decades and previously worked for the FBI.
The FBI has not answered questions about the lawyer’s claim and Caldwell’s lawyer has not responded to multiple messages.
PHOTO CAPTION: ‘Caldwell planned with Donovan Crowl, Jessica Watkins, (pictured) and others known and unknown, to forcibly storm the U.S. Capitol,’ an arrest affidavit says
Group of Oath Keepers seen outside Capitol door on day of siege
Defense Attorney Thomas Thomas Plofchan said Caldwell has held a top-secret security clearance since 1979, which required multiple special background investigations. Caldwell also ran a consulting firm that did classified work for the U.S. government, the lawyer said.
The Virginia man is among more than 200 people charged with federal crimes so far in the deadly siege.
He was charged with conspiracy last month alongside two other accused members of the Oath Keepers, who are accused of planning in advance to carry out violence.
Authorities say Caldwell began plotting to undo President Joe Biden’s victory as early as the days after the election.
Prosecutors said the Oath Keepers communicated during the attack about the location of lawmakers.
At one point during the siege, Caldwell received a message that said ‘all members are in the tunnels under the capital,’ according to court documents. ‘Seal them in turn on gas,’ it said.
Caldwell is charged alongside Jessica Marie Watkins, 38, and Donovan Ray Crowl, 50, of Ohio.
PHOTO CAPTION: Jessica Watkins (left) and Donavan Crowl, both military veterans, were arrested in Ohio
PHOTO CAPTION: Jessica Watkins, 38, a bartender from Ohio, participated in the mob that stormed the Capitol, federal prosecutors say
The trio, who are all US military veterans and affiliated with the extremist Oath Keepers group, are accused of conspiring to obstruct Congress and other counts, punishable up to 20 years in prison.
Watkins, who authorities say conspired with Caldwell, indicated as Biden’s inauguration approached that she ‘was awaiting direction from President Trump,’ prosecutors said in another court filing Thursday.
‘I am concerned this is an elaborate trap,’ Watkins in a text message days after the election, according to the court papers. ‘Unless the POTUS himself activates us, it´s not legit. The POTUS has the right to activate units too. If Trump asks me to come, I will.’
There was no attorney listed for Watkins in the court record.
According to an indictment, Watkins began tapping up potential recruits six days after the election for a training camp in Columbus, Ohio, to make people ‘fighting fit’ for Inauguration Day, telling them to prepare to ‘kill and die for our rights’.
Crowl, a former Marine mechanic, allegedly attended a different training camp in North Carolina, in December, prosecutors said.
PHOTO CAPTION: Members of the Oath Keepers militia group, including Jessica Marie Watkins (Far Left), stand among supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump at the Capitol on January 6
Members of paramilitary group Oath Keepers riot in US Capitol
In the 15-page indictment unsealed last month, prosecutors said Watkins, Crowl and Caldwell all began plotting their incursion of the US Capitol in November 2020, and continued communications until January 19, when Caldwell was arrested.
Watkins, Crowl, and Caldwell are all reportedly affiliated with the anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers, while Watkins and Crowl are also members of the Ohio State Regular Militia.
Who Are the Oath Keepers?
Founded by Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia organization composed of current and former military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath that all military and police take in order to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’
The group describes itself as non-partisan, though several organizations that monitor domestic terrorism and hate groups describe it as extremist or radical.
Mark Pitcavage of the ADL describes the group as ‘heavily armed extremists with a conspiratorial and anti-government mindset looking for potential showdowns with the government.’
Their frequent exchanges varied in topics from a call to action to logistics, including lodging options, coordinating calls to discuss the plan, and joining forces with other Oath Keeper chapters, prosecutors say.
In their planning, prosecutors claim, the group said that they were working under the perceived directions of Donald Trump, embracing his claims of election fraud and readying themselves for bloodshed.
Federal authorities say that Caldwell also sent Facebook messages following the attack.
‘Proud boys scuffled with cops and drove them inside to hide,’ Caldwell’s message said, according to court documents.
‘Breached the doors. One guy made it all the way to the house floor, another to Pelosi’s office. A good time.’
Authorities said Watkins and Crowl returned to Ohio, then went back to Virginia to stay with Caldwell at his Berryville home for three days through January 16.
The FBI complaint said Crowl and Watkins told police in Urbana, Ohio, they drove back to Ohio after hearing the FBI was looking for them.
All three are charged with federal counts including conspiracy, conspiracy to hurt an officer, violent entry, obstruction of official business and destruction of government property.
Caldwell has been detained in the Central Virginia Regional Correctional Facility in Orange, Virginia, since his arrest last month.
This next article by Seth Abramson in “Proof” on January 27, 2021 shows his evidence at what he terms a “War Counsel” which met on January 5, the day before the Capital Riot who met to plan at least a portion of what was the Coup. The meeting included Newly elected Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, Eric Trump, Peter Navarro, Charles Herbster, Ali Alexander, Adam Piper, and Paroned former DIA General Michael Flynn, Corey Lewandowski (former campaign aid), David Bossie (former head of Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation – the organization which won the court case to permit unlimited financial support for a campaign issue, that essentially destroyed our democratice representation who co-produced six feature films with Steve Bannon), Cyberintelligence specialists Phil Waldron My Pillow owner Mike Lindell and Trump supporter, and Daniel Beck,
This article was written before the impeachment trial, but interestingly it would explain why an apparently insignificant and newly elected Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville would be talking with President Trump as the Capital Riot started. This came out in articles the last day of Trump’s second Senate Impeachment Trial. The fact that Senator Tuberville denied his attendance at the January 5the meeting is suspicious.
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/more-revelations-emerge-on-secretive
More Revelations About Secretive January 5 War Council at Trump International Hotel
A few key questions have been resolved, but significant unsolved mysteries remain.
Seth Abramson Jan 27
Reporting in the Omaha World-Herald, as well as social media screenshots and videos, confirm a January 5 pre-insurrection war council at DC’s Trump International Hotel. Also confirmed by the evidence is a list of the gathering’s (minimum) fifteen attendees.
The first Proof article on this subject can be found here.
The secretive January 5 meeting—which one attendee, Senator Tommy Tuberville, has already been caught lying about, and which another, Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, has attempted to scrub his social media to conceal—included eight different components of Trump’s political machine:
¥ Family members: Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle (current girlfriend of Trump Jr., and a former on-air Fox News personality).
¥ Trump’s legal team: Rudy Giuliani.
¥ United States senators: Tuberville and at least two other senators (see below).
¥ Administration officials: Peter Navarro and Charles Herbster.
¥ January 6 organizers: Ali Alexander, Adam Piper, and Michael Flynn.
¥ Trump campaign officials: Corey Lewandowski (former), David Bossie (former).
¥ Cyberintelligence specialists: Flynn (information operations) and possibly Phil Waldron (self-described—see more below—as skilled in “intelligence analysis”).
¥ Trump donors: Mike Lindell, Daniel Beck, and Herbster.
Due to minimal ongoing coverage of this extraordinary pre-January 6 strategy meeting, questions about the Trump International Hotel gathering remain. This article outlines key questions and reveals the answers to several—all uncovered over the last 24 hours.
Question 1: How many senators attended Team Trump’s January 5 war council?
In his initial Facebook post, Herbster listed Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R‑AL) first on his list of meeting attendees, making the addition unlikely to have been—it would seem—an error or fabrication. Herbster’s claim about Tuberville was later confirmed by a Facebook post by meeting attendee Daniel Beck and an Instagram photo of Tuberville at Trump International Hotel. Through a spokesperson, Tuberville denied being at the hotel on January 5.
There’s now evidence Herbster is attempting to doctor his Facebook feed to protect Tuberville. An edit history of the Nebraskan’s deleted-then-reposted confession about attending a January 5 pre-insurrection strategy session reveals that Herbster at one point sought to fraudulently place the meeting at the White House, a lie that would exculpate Tuberville from having deceived the Alabama Political Reporter about his whereabouts, but would inculpate then-President Trump himself as a near-certain meeting attendee. This may be why the edit was quickly abandoned, and Herbster’s post returned to its original condition—in which the top Trump adviser asserts that the January 5 meeting took place in the “private residence of the President at Trump International.” Here’s Herbster’s attempted edit of his social media confession:
Readers will note that the since-abandoned edit also includes Giuliani as a meeting attendee, perhaps as a way of explaining how the meeting could have occurred at the White House—as of the list of meeting attendees in the now-deleted edit, only Giuliani would have had an obvious basis for already being at the White House and convening a meeting there with or without the presence of the president. In any case, Herbster’s fleeting addition of Giuliani to his Facebook feed further confirms Daniel Beck’s claim that Giuliani indeed attended the January 5 war council, albeit (as we now know) at the Trump International Hotel in Washington rather than the White House.
Evidence has also emerged that the now-discredited “voting-fraud expert” Giuliani had tried to promote in the weeks leading up to the insurrection, Phil Waldron, was also at Trump International Hotel in DC on January 5, though we do not know if he attended Trump’s war council. This photograph from Instagram provides the proof:
That Waldron is seen above posing with a woman who during the same period of time posed with Tuberville at Trump International Hotel certainly increases the likelihood that Waldron, like Tuberville, attended the war council (as does Giuliani’s attendance):
Incredibly, Waldron’s LinkedIn profile lists him as a “forklift driver” and “floor sweeper” at One Shot Spirits, a brewery in Dripping Springs, Texas.
Late yesterday, news came to light offering another possible reason for Herbster’s attempt to move the meeting to the White House in this Facebook confession: the revelation that there were at least three U.S. senators in attendance, a circumstance that would cause a meeting at Trump’s private residence in Washington to seem even more suspicious. Per a video posted by Txtwire CEO Daniel Beck, “several” senators attended the January 5 meeting, rather than only Tuberville.
This new claim by Beck is significant in part because it clarifies his earlier claim that “fifteen” people attended the meeting. If by “several senators” Beck meant that there were three, that would bring the known attendance at the January 5 Trump war council to precisely fifteen, while also meeting the generally accepted definition of “several” as meaning “more than two.” Here’s the video from Beck:
BREAKING NEWS: In Video, Txtwire CEO Daniel Beck Says “Several” Senators Attended January 5 Pre-Insurrection War Council at Trump International Hotel, Suggesting That at Least Two Senators (Besides Tommy Tuberville) Remain Undiscovered
There’s little utility in speculating about the identity of the other two (or, theoretically, more) senators at the January 5 war council, as at present even the one senator we know was present denies it—and still hasn’t had his feet held to the fire by major U.S. media.
We can, however, say this much: only a small roster of senators would have been there.
We know from the Omaha World Herald that the purpose of the January 5 meeting was to drum up support in Congress for challenging Joe Biden’s electors, which suggests that the members of the January 5 council were already supporters of such a challenge and intended, by congregating at Trump’s private residence at his Washington hotel, to strategize the augmentation of their camp. Only seven senators besides Tuberville objected to the certification of Biden’s electors 15 hours after the war council began:
¥ Sen. Josh Hawley (R‑MO)
¥ Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑TX)
¥ Sen. Rick Scott (R‑FL)
¥ Sen. Roger Marshall (R‑KS)
¥ Sen. John Kennedy (R‑LA)
¥ Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R‑MS)
¥ Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R‑WY)
If Beck’s claim is accurate, at least two of these seven men and women attended Team Trump’s pre-insurrection strategy session. While speculation will undoubtedly run rampant that the two attendees were Hawley and Cruz—certainly the most persistent and militant senators on the matter of objecting to Biden’s November election victory, Tuberville excepted—for now we can only confirm the probable universe of candidates for these two meeting “slots,” while acknowledging that Beck’s count of the total number of meeting participants could well have been low (suggesting that three or even more figures on the list above may have been present at the January 5 war council).
Question 2: Why did Trump’s top advisers—and even some of the January 6 event organizers—flee the Capitol area before rioters had trespassed on Capitol grounds?
Federal investigators will surely be looking to determine whether any of the January 6 plotters exhibited “consciousness of guilt,” including any evidence of foreknowledge or early awareness that they’d incited an armed mob to trespass upon and assault the U.S. Capitol. One sign of such a consciousness of guilt would be the unwillingness of January 6 plotters to themselves march to the Capitol as they had incited others to do.
As discussed in my prior articles—see here, here, and here—we already know from major-media reporting that Donald Trump was told prior to his January 6 speech that the Secret Service would not allow him to march to the Capitol, yet he falsely told Stop the Steal organizer and far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that he would do so and also, more importantly, falsely told the armed mob he was inciting that he would. In the event, he fled back to the White House with his family immediately upon the conclusion of his speech. We also know that Roger Stone was asked to lead the march but declined, and that Jones too was asked to walk at the head of the march but for unexplained reasons did not end up doing so, and indeed (while he trespassed on the Capitol grounds) never entered the building itself. Moreover, a video archive focused on the assault on the Capitol, compiled by ProPublica, indicates that Jones appeared to earnestly believe the president would be joining the march at the “front” of the Capitol and would “speak” to supporters from there, a possibility that (if imperfectly) exculpates him from believing his Capitol trespass was illegal, but also raises additional questions about the source of his information from the White House.
As for Stop the Steal coordinator and far-right activist Ali Alexander, a recently unearthed video shows him almost comically distant from the event he organized as it was unfolding. In the video, which is repeatedly punctuated by the sound of police sirens, Alexander points at the well-distant assault on the Capitol and declares, “I want to say something: I don’t disavow this, I don’t denounce this.” He says that the assault is “completely peaceful” (though he also adds, tellingly, the words “so far”) and only a “couple of agitators” in the mob have acted otherwise. In fact, the march—as its main coordinator would have known, had he participated in it—had by the time of his video turned extremely violent. This alone makes some of Alexander’s other comments, for instance his boast that this is “exactly what I warned about”, seem vile and churlish.
Alexander explicitly excuses the conduct of the insurrectionists, declaring that, due to the actions of his various adversaries across the U.S. government, “the people feel like this [storming the U.S. Capitol] is their last resort.”
A screenshot of a tweet containing the Ali Alexander video is below
This is Ali Alexander, leader of the so-called Stop the Steal campaign, saying: “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this.”
In the video, Alexander says he knows that the front of the Capitol is similarly mobbed with Trump supporters, raising questions about (a) what communications he was receiving from fellow insurrectionists in mid-coup attempt, and (b) whether he, like Jones, had been particularly told by parties inside the White House or connected to it to pay special attention to logistics at the front of the Capitol. It is already confirmed that Alexander had been in telephonic contact with Team Trump—via the January 5 war council—approximately 15 hours earlier.
What remains unclear is why Trump’s supporters were incited to march on the U.S. Capitol even as their leaders hung back. This raises a third question that will require an answer sooner rather than later.
Question 3: What ties did Team Trump have to the far-right organizations most responsible for breaching the Capitol, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers?
Vice has now confirmed that Trump adviser and Stop the Steal organizer Roger Stone used members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia as his personal security on the eve of the insurrection. Mere hours later, members of the Oath Keepers would, according to the Wall Street Journal, not only assault the U.S. Capitol but attempt to execute a plan that would “seal” the entirety of Congress in the “tunnels” below the Capitol and “gas” them to death.
As for the Proud Boys, the Daily Beast has called the far-right white supremacist “club” for men Trump pal Roger Stone’s “personal army” on the basis of Stone repeatedly taking pictures with members, endorsing them on social media, and using them for his personal protection detail at public events. The Wall Street Journal now confirms that the Proud Boys, along with the Oath Keepers, were “key instigators” in the January 6 insurrection. (Note: this fact was first reported by Proof, using a combination of articles by the Journal—which wrote of men in “blaze-orange hats” leading the first wave of Capitol attackers—and CNN, which reported and then erroneously retracted its reporting that the Proud Boys wore orange hats on January 6. That they had in fact done so was subsequently confirmed for CNN by Proof, using hours of documentary footage from the insurrection).
Proof has previously outlined Alexander’s connections to the Proud Boys, including his decision to wear one of the Proud Boys’ January 6‑signature blaze-orange hats on January 5, with video revealing him doing so while leading a “Victory or death!” chant. In his preposterously off-site video from January 6, Alexander falsely says that “we the people” (including himself in the designation) “[have] completely peaceful” intentions.
Given Alexander and Stone’s ties to the organizations that led the insurrection, federal investigators will wonder how both men knew to be nowhere close to the attack on the Capitol as it happened—as their apparent foreknowledge of the violent actions pre-planned by the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers may eventually produce criminal liability for them for seditious conspiracy.
Question 4: What about Herbster? Did he too flee the march, as he publicly claimed?
The answer: “sort of.”
While Herbster didn’t participate in the march—for reasons that remain unclear, as he was present for the speech by Trump that immediately preceded it, and in theory would have believed Trump (unless he had private information to the contrary) when the then-president told the crowd that he himself would be marching to the Capitol—he did lie to media about where he went afterward, and the truth on that question is jaw-dropping.
While Herbster initially told media, through a spokesperson, that flew home to Nebraska after Trump’s speech, that was a lie. According to Omaha World Herald political reporter Aaron Sanderford, Herbster now admits that he didn’t go to Nebraska after Trump’s Stop the Steal/March to Save America event, he went to Florida—with “Trump’s family.”
It takes no investigative skills to deduce—or at least imagine—that Herbster might not have wanted media to know that, after being with the Trump family on the evening of January 5 to plot a strategy for January 6, he then spent January 6 (and perhaps some time thereafter) with the very family accused of inciting an insurrection on that day.
Herbster’s duplicity as to his actions after the Trump speech on January 6 compounds his duplicity about his January 5 meeting with the Trump family—as evidenced by his various Facebook deletions, edits, and re-postings—and the still-unresolved question about what information he had about the March to Save America that convinced him to stay far away from it.
Herbster’s close relationship with the Trumps has come into even clearer focus in the last 24 hours not just because of Sanderford’s Twitter revelation but a further review of Herbster’s social media presence, which sees him declaring on Twitter on election day in November 2020 that “I am at the White House with the Trump family and a small group of dignitaries eating a beautiful dinner and getting ready to watch a victory tonight!” His photos of his election-day socializing at the White House include these:
ily” in a “small group of dignitaries” on one of the most important days in the history of that family underscores that Herbster may have been privy to information from Team Trump—either via fellow attendees at the January 5 war council or further updates from Trump’s political team on January 6—that it would be unwise to attend the March to Save America Trump had falsely said he would lead (and that Stone had declined to lead, and Alexander declined to attend).
While Donald Trump’s own attendance at the January 5 war council remains unclear, and while Herbster’s social media feeds—at least at present, as we can’t know how much the Nebraska Republican has deleted or edited—do not routinely reveal him spending time socially with the president (albeit he is on multiple occasions pictured with him in photo ops), Herbster’s public-facing media content begs the implication that he is also close with the now-former president.
This not only raises, again, the question of Trump’s presence at the January 5 war council, but also the subsequent conduct of others besides Herbster who attended the meeting. One figure of particular interest is Mike Lindell, given that Lindell has since January 6 been banned from Twitter, visited Trump in the Oval Office and asked him to impose martial law to extend his presidency, been threatened with a lawsuit by a voting software company (Dominion) for spreading misinformation about it, and had his MyPillow products removed from several popular retailers.
Question 5: Why didn’t Trump pull the trigger on Lindell’s proposed “martial law plan,” or the Jeffrey Clark-orchestrated effort to take over the Department of Justice and invalidate Georgia’s November 2020 election results? Why not preemptively pardon the fifteen participants in the January 5 war council, before leaving office?
This bundle of questions remains largely unanswered, though one possible clue to the explanation for Trump’s intermittent reticence in the final days of his presidency—for which he has lost some of his most vocal far-right support—comes in the form of a Senate vote on a “constitutional point of order” taken just yesterday (January 26).
On January 26, Sen. Rand Paul (R‑KY) raised such a point-of-order on the Senate floor, forcing the Senate to vote on whether it would hear and debate his objection to Trump’s second impeachment trial—an objection based on a fringe legal analysis of the Constitution that holds Congress can’t try former presidents post-impeachment, which analysis is rejected by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
That the “motion to table [debate]” on Paul’s fringe legal theory passed 55–45—with all but five Senate Republicans voting “no”—means that 45 GOP senators wanted to at least debate Paul’s premise, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has already called Trump’s conduct “impeachable.” Many media outlets have taken the vote on the motion to table as a proxy for the eventual post-trial vote in the Senate, arguing somewhat speciously that a vote to debate Paul’s premise equals agreement with it. While that’s not so, if Donald Trump believes, as some journalists do, that it is, this might explain several of the decisions he made in the final days of his presidency.
Now that he no longer has access to Twitter, and his YouTube and Facebook bans have been indefinitely extended, Trump faces the prospect of needing to return to politics to regain the daily media attention he craves and the power over others he covets. If he believes the Senate will never convict him of incitement to insurrection, he may commensurately believe that it cannot get the 60 votes needed to disqualify him from holding future office via Section 3 of the 14th Amendment rather than an impeachment trial. The only way for Trump to upset this state of affairs and run the risk of not being able to run for president again in 2024 would be if he confessed in some fashion that he and his team had directly coordinated with the January 6 plotters.
It’s for this reason that, despite the attendees at the January 5 war council now facing potential legal liability—even as they are among Trump’s top lieutenants, and so presumably deemed the most deserving of and eligible for late-presidency clemency—for Trump to have pardoned any of them, let alone executed the plan for martial law Mike Lindell and Michael Flynn proposed, would have risked revealing prior to the final Senate vote in his impeachment trial that he and his compatriots were in fact more intimately involved in the planning of the insurrection than Republican Party brass had previously believed (or, at a minimum, been forced to publicly acknowledge).
It’s for this reason that the information now being presented on this website is so critical: because if major media deigns to report on it only after Trump’s Senate trial has concluded, it will have implicitly provided cover to Congressional Republicans to treat Trump’s offenses as either glancing or a matter of “free speech.” Such claims could never be made about a seditious conspiracy headlined by a pre-insurrection war council Team Trump’s political superstructure attended—with the president himself possibly attending either in-person or via speakerphone.
And yet, if information about the January 5 war council doesn’t “break wide” before Trump’s impeachment trial starts on February 9—less than two weeks from now—a Trump candidacy in 2024 is all but assured. And given what we now know about Trump and his team’s virulent opposition to American democracy’s core processes, a Trump presidential run 48 months from now could imperil the country’s very survival.