Four days ago, a trucker convoy was blocked at the border crossing between Alberta and Montana. The government had no idea how to get the truckers across the border, so they called in the National Guard. The response was to use martial law and the Armed Forces to clear the roadblocks, but did they have what it takes to get them to leave?
00:06:19.020The RCMP officers were trying to force the first group of drivers to leave this afternoon when a second convoy cut off the rest of the highway bypassing an RCMP checkpoint.
00:06:34.020The group says it's refusing to leave until all COVID-19 health restrictions are lifted.
00:06:49.020Well that didn't go well for the police and to their credit they didn't turn violent.
00:06:56.020They were simply outnumbered and they didn't have the equipment.
00:06:59.020By the way in addition to truckers lots of farmers brought their large equipment too.
00:07:03.020There simply was no way of bypassing it and no truck driver who had any thought for his future would sell out his local countrymen to appease Trudeau's RCMP.
00:07:14.020But there was one arrest that was different.
00:07:17.020I'll get to that in a second but first let me backtrack and say that there were a lot of charges emanating from that.
00:07:23.020And Rebel News and or the Democracy Fund has provided civil liberties lawyers in dozens of cases.
00:07:30.020Not just for truckers. I believe that we're crowdfunding the defense of 32 truckers.
00:07:35.020I'll have to check the stats with our external counsel.
00:09:07.020A carefully staged managed press conference by the RCMP showing the weapons that were seized as charges were laid for conspiracy to commit murder.
00:09:18.020Here's a taste of how the mainstream media covered that.
00:09:21.020Coutts border crossing clears organizers trying to distance themselves from what could have been.
00:09:27.020The biggest thing for me, and I think for the group, is let's prove this was not violent.
00:09:33.020And I want a thorough and thorough deep investigation into these gun charges.
00:09:38.020Guns, ammo, and body armor seized when RCMP arrested 11 people in a pre-dawn Tuesday morning raid.
00:09:46.020With charges ranging from mischief, weapons offenses, and conspiracy to commit murder.
00:09:52.020Police alleging connection to an organized group said to have a willingness to use force against police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade.
00:10:02.020Although RCMP have not commented on what group, these patches stood out for the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
00:10:10.020Diagalon is a group that, you know, it started off as almost a joke, but has become kind of a quasi-militia with individuals engaged in weapons training.
00:10:20.020Basically based on an imaginary country that extends from Alaska to Florida.
00:10:25.020The Anti-Hate Network will be watching to see how these patches play into the larger story of the arrests at Coutts.
00:10:32.020Saying they classify Diagalon as accelerationists.
00:10:36.020Who believe that by accelerating the downfall of society by way of assassinations, violent attacks, they would bring about their, you know, ethnostate.
00:10:46.020So it's been co-opted by groups. It's not surprising that we're seeing this in Canada.
00:10:51.020Counter-terrorism expert Mubeen Sheikh says there's been a rise in far-right accelerationists in Canada.
00:10:58.020Just last October, a former Army reservist from Manitoba, Patrick Matthews, was sentenced to nine years for what the FBI says was his role in trying to trigger a race war with accelerationist group The Base.
00:11:12.020For Diagalon, their de facto leader is also ex-military.
00:11:17.020And in a Tuesday night live stream from Ottawa, Jeremy McKenzie addressed the arrest.
00:11:23.020Keep the boys in Alberta. They got arrested. We haven't heard from them. We don't know what's going on.
00:11:27.020There's some rumors they're getting charged with some heavy sh**.
00:11:31.020He's somebody of a concern because the rhetoric he's been using is very accelerationist.
00:11:35.020The idea that, again, the idea of taking advantage and looking for opportunities to kind of essentially fill in the gap if there's some sort of societal collapse and kind of hoping and helping it to move along.
00:11:46.020RCMP in Coots arrested two more people on top of those initial 11.
00:11:51.020One for attempting to ram police vehicles and another arriving at the protest with guns.
00:11:57.020For Sheikh, he'll be watching for more charges.
00:12:00.020The threat of violence and the threat or actual use of violence against government in an effort to overturn its policies, that's literally the definition of terrorism.
00:12:11.020And curious if the U.S. will be involved given what could have been so close to the border.
00:12:17.020I have no doubt that the city slickers seeing that many weapons and that many bullets is terrifying, especially since they were covered in camouflage colorings.
00:12:26.020But if you look at those, those are really just bullets and rifles that pretty much every household in the Lethbridge area has.
00:12:35.020This is not downtown Toronto where only criminals have guns and typically have handguns.
00:12:51.020So arresting men and finding that they have several guns and hundreds of bullets may be shocking to downtown Toronto and to liberal voters.
00:13:00.020But it actually was proof of nothing in itself.
00:13:03.020But that combined with the RCMP narrative was exactly what Justin Trudeau needed.
00:13:09.020And as you may recall, within a day, Trudeau had his fig leaf to cover up his invocation of the Emergencies Act, a kind of martial law that stripped people of their civil liberties, including seizing hundreds of bank accounts of peaceful protesters.
00:13:25.020Well, I'm here in Lethbridge today to cover the trial of those four men.
00:13:30.020However, the trial will not actually happen for nearly one more year.
00:13:35.020The events in question were in January and February 2002.
00:13:39.020It's now almost August 2023, sorry, 22.
00:14:08.020Certain facts are so prejudicial that it's impossible to get a fair trial.
00:14:12.020Sometimes in trials, entire court cases are moved to another city if the local jury pool is too tainted.
00:14:19.020To avoid that in this case, the defense counsel have applied for and received a publication ban over some of the more lascivious details contained in part in a legal document filed by police to get the search warrant.
00:14:34.020That document is called an ITO, an information to obtain.
00:14:41.020It's a document shown to a judge in secret, as in the target of the search warrant is obviously not there.
00:14:49.020Search warrants don't really work well if the person who's going to be searched gets a heads up about it.
00:14:55.020So the documents that were filed with the court were very lengthy and contain unchallenged accusations by the police.
00:15:03.020The trouble with that is that the defense lawyers were not there in that search warrant hearing to rebut or refute or challenge or question or criticize.
00:15:13.020So it's a very special kind of hearing called ex parte.
00:15:16.020In Latin, that means without the other party.
00:15:19.020There's a saying in law, hear the other side, adi alter impartum.
00:15:23.020It's really a fundamental in our justice system.
00:15:25.020You always have to hear the other side.
00:15:27.020That simply doesn't work in search warrants.
00:15:29.020And so that is why the one sided accusations by the police are being kept out of the public eye until the jury is impaneled.
00:15:38.020But that means it's impossible for us to tell you the details, at least as alleged by police, about what the four men in question did.
00:15:49.020Why were they charged with conspiracy to commit murder, but no other truckers were charged with those same things?
00:15:56.020They were charged with minor offenses like mischief or obstruction.
00:16:00.020Why were these four men charged with something differently and how solid are the charges?
00:16:06.020As we know from our own two reporters being in the smuggler's saloon for more than a week, that place was crawling with cops.
00:16:14.020Not just police wearing their RCMP uniforms, but obviously undercover agents too.
00:16:23.020In the case of female police officers, maybe batting their eyelashes at the men and seeing what they might say after a few drinks to show off a bit.
00:16:34.020If these men said certain things, was it their true belief or were they hamming it up for police, hamming it up to look tough?
00:16:42.020Sometimes people enlarge their stories to be a little more heroic or a little more brave.
00:16:48.020The thing is, we can't see that information.
00:16:51.020It's either being redacted to begin with or it's subject to a publication ban.
00:16:57.020We cannot weigh the facts of this case until the trial begins and the facts are introduced in that manner.
00:17:05.020That makes it very difficult and it also makes it difficult for the people gathered here to understand why this case is different in various ways, including one very important way.
00:17:36.020It was an embarrassment for the judicial system how long it took.
00:17:40.020It showed that justice is not quite impartial and it certainly looked punitive.
00:17:44.020But at the end of the day, every other person charged or ticketed or arrested during the lockdowns was given bail.
00:17:52.020In fact, most were not arrested at all.
00:17:55.020Why are these four men still in prison some 500 days after arrest and staring down the barrel at another 400 plus days in prison?
00:18:06.020They'll be in jail a thousand days before their trial.
00:18:12.020You know, I saw news the other day that a convicted terrorist, let me say that again, not an accused terrorist, a terrorist who had her trial and was convicted and sentenced and then was let out, was charged with terrorism related offenses again and was given bail.
00:18:29.020Canada is the country that gives bail to literal convicted, not just accused, but convicted terrorists on their second offense.
00:18:37.020And yet these four men are still in jail. Why?
00:18:40.020Well, that's the trouble we can't tell you because to do so would be to breach the publication ban.
00:18:48.020There was a preliminary matter about whether or not one of the four men, when they gave a confession to police, if they were compelled in some unfair manner to do so.
00:18:58.020The judge ruled on that saying, no, the confession was given freely.
00:19:02.020There are preliminary matters like this that will continue on this week.
00:19:06.020They may or may not have an important effect on the course of the trial.
00:19:11.020Still in the morning, we haven't gone in and heard them yet.
00:19:15.020But I think that we are in for a long slog.
00:19:18.020There is an enormous amount of evidence.
00:19:21.020I've seen some of it heavily redacted, but there were literally dozens of police involved in preparing the case against these men.
00:19:30.020I understand that there are terabytes worth of evidence, whether it's wiretaps or police reports or just visual observations.
00:19:40.020And it's an enormous amount to go through.
00:19:43.020We don't know, or at least we're not able to say what's going on.
00:19:47.020And that makes it difficult for people to understand what they feel is an apparent injustice and double standard.
00:19:55.020I think that one of the problems is giving the justice system the benefit of the doubt is something that these people long ago left behind.
00:20:04.020They saw how the police became political weapons during the lockdown, enforcing things that have nothing to do with the criminal law.
00:20:24.020The justice system, which has yet to strike down a single lockdown law, a single vaccine mandate law.
00:20:31.020Has simply put lost the benefit of the doubt amongst people or at least people who are dissidents, who are contrarians, who would call themselves freedom oriented Canadians.
00:20:41.020They gave the lockdownists and their police enforcers the benefit of the doubt for the two weeks to flatten the curve.
00:20:49.020When it turned into two years, their benefit of the doubt giving was long over.
00:20:53.020And so people here who cannot see the facts alleged against the four accused men certainly aren't willing to believe that it's a fair case.
00:21:02.020Only time will tell when the facts come out in trial.
00:21:06.020I'm going to go into the court and I'm going to do my best to live tweet the proceedings.
00:21:10.020I don't think it will be very substantive.
00:21:12.020Like I say, the trial is almost a year away, but I'll come out and I'll let you know what I see.
00:21:18.020And then I'll give you my thoughts as best I can without stepping on the publication ban of what I think.
00:21:25.020You can see that there are some people here who are upset that Rebel News is not championing these four men.
00:21:38.020Someone who, by the looks of them, would probably be a Rebel News supporter and probably was until recently.
00:21:44.020They don't understand why we're not crowdfunding for these men.
00:21:47.020And in some ways I can't tell you that because of the publication ban.
00:21:51.020What I can tell you is that the money raised by both Rebel News and the Democracy Fund was to defend people for civil liberties offenses, people who committed civil disobedience.
00:22:03.020As you may know, because you may be a donor yourself, we did not crowdfund to defend people accused of conspiracy to commit murder.
00:22:12.020Now, there is a crowdfunding page not run by us that if you want to give to these four men, you can certainly do so.
00:22:18.020And I'm not here to tell you to do so or not to do so.
00:22:21.020But I can explain that neither Rebel News or the Democracy Fund will take our donors money for men who are charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
00:22:31.020And when the facts come out in the trial, you may see for yourself whether or not this was a wise decision on our part.
00:22:39.020But you can see the frustration that someone who just by the looks of them would probably be a Rebel News supporter in every other way that they don't understand why we're not throwing our lot in with these men.
00:22:50.020And unfortunately, it's against the law for me to tell you on camera why that is.
00:22:55.020I'm going to go back in now and I'll come back during a break to give you more of my report.
00:23:08.020Well, hi, I'm back. It is 1230 local time. The court is on a break until 2 p.m. for lunch.
00:23:14.020I should tell you that the bulk of what's been going on today is lawyers and the judge going through arcane details on the law of cracking
00:23:24.020open solicitor-client privilege. Let me explain what I mean.
00:23:29.020An email between the Crown prosecutors and the police was inadvertently leaked or given to defense.
00:23:38.020And they looked at it. And normally those sort of things are confidential. They're private.
00:23:43.020You could even call them secret. But in this case, it was accidentally given.
00:23:47.020And the thing about that is the defense counsel claim that it showed misconduct by the prosecutor and the police.
00:23:57.020That's a pretty big claim to make. They say that after these instructions from the Crown to the prosecutor,
00:24:02.020they changed how they approached the case. And the defense claims that they did so illegally.
00:24:09.020So now the defense wants to crack open more solicitor-client communications between the prosecution and the police.
00:24:17.020That is a very rare thing. It's quite an audacious application by the defense.
00:24:23.020I would call it high risk, high reward. I suppose there's really no downside.
00:24:28.020I mean, if the judge rejects it, the judge rejects it. If the judge upholds that application,
00:24:33.020it would probably be a calamity for the prosecution because when people speak plainly, when they speak candidly,
00:24:42.020when they expect that their emails will never be seen by the public, they're perhaps rude.
00:24:46.020They perhaps take liberties. Perhaps they swear or make admissions that they would never do
00:24:51.020if they thought their publications were going to be made public.
00:24:54.020That's the whole point of solicitor-client privilege.
00:24:57.020It means whatever you say to your lawyer is a secret and no one else can say it.
00:25:01.020Anyhow, I'm just trying to explain the matters that were dealt with in court today.
00:25:08.020Now, regardless of the result, this is not the trial of the substantive case against the four men,
00:25:14.020the conspiracy to commit murder. That trial is not until next year.
00:25:18.020This application today is an attempt to absolutely demolish the Crown's case, though, with this preliminary matter.
00:25:26.020Anyhow, I just want to explain to you what we spent the morning on.
00:25:29.020But there's something else very interesting that's going on here.
00:25:33.020You saw a little taste of that when I was doing my morning opening,
00:25:36.020and a fellow came up to me who looks like a classic rebel.
00:25:40.020And he tapped me on the shoulder, and I don't remember his exact wording,
00:25:43.020but he implied that I'm a sellout and I'm just like the liberal media.
00:25:47.020I don't think I am. In fact, I think that in many ways we are Justin Trudeau's enemy number one.
00:25:52.020He's always trying to block us, to ban us, to censor us.
00:25:56.020I really think he despises us, and I think in the case of me personally, it goes back a while.
00:26:02.020I don't see how we could be accused of that, especially in this context.
00:26:08.020Rebel News and our friends at the Democracy Fund are literally defending 3,000 people who had different lockdown or pandemic charges,
00:26:17.020including dozens of people involved with the trucking convoy.
00:26:21.020But the one thing that I said earlier was that our offer to help people is limited to civil disobedience.
00:26:29.020We would obviously, and God forbid may it never happen, not defend someone who committed murder or terrorism
00:26:36.020in the name of fighting the lockdowns, obviously, and that's such an extreme example.
00:26:41.020But a real-life example is we would not use our donors' money to defend someone charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
00:26:49.020That's just not within the scope of what we told our donors we would do.
00:26:52.020So there's some people here who are very mad about that, who say that we should be taking our donors' money to pay for the legal defense.
00:27:00.020Now, I have tried to learn a little bit more about the cases here.
00:27:04.020I've spoken to some of their legal counsel, but it's difficult to get a full read of things.
00:27:10.020And obviously, they owe me no candor. Their loyalty is to their own clients.
00:27:15.020I've had, and I don't want to get into the conversations I've had with them, but it did not move the needle for me.
00:27:22.020As in, I was wondering if maybe this was a stitch-up.
00:27:26.020Maybe they were framed. If maybe there was nothing here. It was all politics.
00:27:31.020I mean, who knows? If they succeed in their application today, perhaps it'll be proven.
00:27:35.020But I haven't seen anything to that effect. In fact, I have learned a number of things that are subject to a publication ban that make me think we absolutely can't get involved with this.
00:27:46.020But I think that people here are so dedicated to these men. I mean, obviously, they're friends and family, but people who don't understand how they can possibly still be in jail 500 days later.
00:27:57.020And they've seen the injustices wrought against dozens or hundreds or even thousands of other Canadians, and they say this is the worst of it.
00:28:05.020These people are still in prison. These people need more coverage.
00:28:08.020Now, Rebel News has covered these folks, but I think they're mad that we're not cheering for the individual people rooting for them and funding their lawyers as we have been for 3,000 others.
00:28:19.020And I want to be very careful about what I say because, of course, I don't want to violate the publication ban, but I also don't want to violate the personal conversations I've had, including with one family member in the court today.
00:28:31.020It was absolutely heartbreaking, and I listened very carefully to her and what she said, and I asked some gentle questions.
00:28:38.020I put to her some of the accusations from the Crown, and she absolutely denied them and said, in no way is this, does she recognize these charges?
00:28:47.020Her son would never do that. He was a good young man. Absolutely. She's shocked by this whole thing.
00:28:53.020She thinks it's like I really listened, and this woman's heart was so full of sorrow.
00:28:59.020And imagine not being with your son for 500 days and knowing another year plus or almost another year will go by.
00:29:06.020And so I was very moved by that, but I asked her a couple of questions, and I'm not going to tell you her answers because it was a personal conversation.
00:29:13.020But let me put the questions that I put to her, let me put them to this larger group.
00:29:19.020When you have a conspiracy to commit murder, that means people are united in some sort of plan.
00:29:26.020That's what a conspiracy means. I suppose conspiracy doesn't necessarily mean it's dark or evil, but of course, in a criminal setting, it does.
00:29:34.020So what's the what's the network that holds these four defendants together?
00:29:39.020What's the club or the gang or the terrorist group that are like the Hells Angels? Are they all Hells Angels? No, not at all.
00:29:46.020Are they with Al Qaeda? No, of course not.
00:29:49.020But there was something, and this came out very early in the media, that the men and some of their weapons had the symbol of a made up joke group in Canada called Diagalon.
00:30:06.020It's an absurd meme. It's a joke, a prank really. Diagalon being this theoretical country that would diagonally go across North America, and it would be this alt-right place.
00:30:19.020And it was, I think it started as a joke, as so many goofy things do.
00:30:26.020And the trouble is, I think people started to believe in it.
00:30:31.020Or at least if you're going to Diagalon meetings, if you wear a Diagalon crest, if you talk about Diagalon, then maybe it's not a joke anymore, maybe it's actually a thing.
00:30:44.020And so maybe these pranksters and jokesters at Diagalon created, out of thin air, the narrative that the prosecution here needed, and certainly that the media needed.
00:30:58.020Now, by the way, I'm not referring to anything subject to the publication bans here.
00:31:46.020And listen, I understand why people are very upset about things.
00:31:50.020And it's because these men have been in prison for more than 500 days.
00:31:54.020I don't exactly understand that fellow's beef, but there are some real edgy contrarians for whom Rebel News is not rebellious enough.
00:32:04.020Now, I'm not sure if they've crowdfunded any money at all.
00:32:07.020I'm not sure if they've done anything at all.
00:32:09.020I've been to this courthouse, I don't know, a dozen times over the last few years.
00:32:14.020So many times they've actually accredited me as an accredited journalist here and let me sit at the front row.
00:32:20.020I really have been to Lethbridge more than just about any other city in Canada.
00:32:26.020And in fact, in the background, you can see behind me is Arthur Pawlowski.
00:32:29.020His back is to me, he's talking to a crowd.
00:32:31.020I've been to this courthouse a half a dozen times for Arthur alone.
00:32:35.020So I'm not quite sure what Rebel News could be doing that we're not doing other than funding the defense for these people, which we will not do because it's outside our scope.
00:32:44.020But I think I know what animates that guy.
00:32:47.020I mean, I think he wants to get some of our audience and I think he wants some of our reputation that we've built up over eight years.
00:32:54.020And that's fine. I mean, that's the nature of the Internet.
00:32:58.020It's a bit weird that he calls himself a member of parliament when he's not.
00:33:02.020But what I'm sensing here is that people who are desperate for justice and don't understand what's going on have reached out to this Diagilon group and their kooky leader named Jeremy McKenzie.
00:33:18.020Now, Jeremy McKenzie had a reputable past in that he served our country in the Canadian Armed Forces.
00:33:29.020And that should be mentioned every time his name is referred to.
00:33:32.020But he has set up an explicitly racist organization.
00:33:37.020I think it's as a joke, but he's gone beyond a joke to really providing the missing glue for those on the left who would accuse conservatives and populists of being terrorists.
00:33:51.020And it's my belief, and we'll see if it's borne out in trial next year, that the four men here, they were there's a phrase in the Internet LARPing, LARP, live action role playing, that they were sort of pretending to be in the Diagilon.
00:34:08.020And they got the patches and it wasn't really a thing, but it was a pretend thing, almost like Dungeons and Dragons, except for one day in Lethbridge and in Coots, Alberta, their make believe came true.
00:34:21.020And they weren't just talking tough about Diagilon.
00:34:26.020And so, you know, some of the evidence, and again, I'm not referring to anything learned through publication ban material, but the firearms and the bullets, which is fairly normal for country people and rural folks in small town.
00:34:41.020Suddenly, they're transformed from being, oh, that's just a country boy and his rifle and bullets, to, oh, there's a Diagilon patch there.
00:34:49.020This is part of some uprising, revolutionary war.
00:34:54.020I guess what I'm saying is Diagilon, which is a fake joke, because, of course, when it comes to hatred, demand exceeds supply.
00:35:04.020That's why there's so many hoaxes about racism and so, because the media narrative needs it.
00:35:46.020But the thing is, everything he got out of it was at the expense of truly contrarian, truly worried people who are scared about the state of the country.
00:35:57.020And again, I'm not basing this on any secret documents, but it's my theory based on what I've learned about the men and what I've seen in the media.
00:36:06.020And frankly, with my conversations with one of the family members, that these young men actually went too far into Jeremy McKenzie's scheme, weird, fake group.
00:36:21.020And so the police and the prosecutors said, uh-huh, that's the conspiracy.
00:36:47.020And I was shocked to learn yesterday, while I was literally sitting in this court, it came up on my phone a news headline that that same Jeremy McKenzie, the head of Diagilon, the most hated right-wing alt-right group in Canada that is a talking point for every left-wing journalist and politician, he just had a bunch of firearms charges against him dropped.
00:37:12.020I mean, he was on video with illegal, restricted firearms pointing them at people.
00:40:59.020He invented the fake Hells Angels, the fake Al Qaeda.
00:41:04.020And what an irony, what a coincidence that the day these men have their hearing is the day the prosecution just decides to drop those charges against the boss of the diagonal line.
00:41:27.020I don't know exactly what he's mad at, but people are mad.
00:41:30.020And I'm mad too because I think that our justice system is not as just as it could be.
00:41:36.020I've been at this court and I've seen convictions for things that violate the Charter of Rights.
00:41:42.020I think that so far not a single court ruling in this country has struck down any meaningful lockdown law or vaccine mandate.
00:41:50.020I think that when I went to law school, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was considered a sacred document.
00:41:55.020And yet when it comes to real life, it wasn't so.
00:41:58.020Our Supreme Court still hasn't bothered to spend a minute on any of these matters.
00:42:03.020But at the end of the day, I still do believe in the justice system.
00:42:09.020I think it's in trouble. I think it has been brought into disrepute.
00:42:13.020I think it is losing the support of people, certainly in communities like Lethbridge and Coutts.
00:42:18.020But I think even now it's the best system we have.
00:42:24.020That doesn't mean that Rebel News is going to provide lawyers for people accused of conspiracy to commit murder.
00:42:30.020But it does mean that we're going to report the facts as we see them, as we're allowed to do, as far as we're allowed to under publication ban.
00:42:37.020I think I'm going to end the show today because by the time the next part of the hearing continues and then the time zones, we'll miss the show for tonight.
00:42:46.020I really don't think anything astonishing will happen.
00:42:49.020These are pre-trial hearings almost a year before the court date.
00:42:53.020It's interesting in there. A lot of people love Rebel News.
00:42:57.020They've seen us at this courthouse probably, I don't know, ten times.
00:43:01.020But there are some people who love the Diagalon, who love Jeremy McKenzie, and who believe that terrible wrongs are going on.
00:43:13.020We'll see who's right in a year's time when it all comes out of trial.