Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 139 LIVE: Uncaged (feat. Owen Shroyer) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

On January 6th, 2019, journalist Owen Schroeder was at the Capitol to cover the swearing in of Vice President-elect Joe Biden. He was arrested and imprisoned for his part in the process. On this episode of the podcast, we discuss what happened that day, why he was arrested, and how he was treated by the Department of Justice. We also discuss how he is doing and why he should have been allowed access to counsel and treatment during his time in prison. And, of course, we have a special guest on the podcast today, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAETZ), who was there on that day to support the vote recount process and the process that resulted in the election of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. He is currently being held in a federal prison in Washington, D.C. as a result of his participation in the recount process, and the subsequent criminal charges brought against him by the DOJ and the DOJ's decision not to allow him access to legal counsel or access to a lawyer to challenge the outcome of the vote count. In this episode, we talk about that day and what went wrong, and what happened to him that day. and why it s important to remember that no one should ever go to the Capitol unless they ve got their hands on a copy of the results of the election and try to find out who actually voted for President. or votes were cast. in order to be eligible to vote for President and who actually won in a fair and just process or not who actually got to vote not Donald Trump s on the ballot . Who won . . . Donald Trump the Republican presidential candidate by the votes cast by the other person , not by a single person by a third party but by the vote by the machine . And that s not a legitimate vote by an electoral college which is not a sham . by anyone is a sham? what s really a sham ? no by someone who votes for Donald Trump, not by an actual vote and isn t a sham ? or to be if they re elected voted for Trump, it s not a sham , but they re not a criminal so what s going to happen?

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:04:54.000 You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?

00:04:57.000 Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.

00:05:02.000 We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight. 1.00

00:05:07.000 I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.

00:05:11.000 Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.

00:05:13.000 If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around.

00:05:18.000 It's that simple.

00:05:19.000 He's so tough.

00:05:20.000 He's so strong.

00:05:21.000 He's smart and he loves this country.

00:05:23.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:05:25.000 It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.

00:05:30.000 We will save America.

00:05:32.000 It's choose your fighter time.

00:05:34.000 I'm sending the fire brains.

00:05:35.000 Owen Schroer was at the Capitol on January 6th.

00:05:45.000 He was subject to federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment.

00:05:50.000 As we have talked about many of the civil rights issues that January 6th defendants have faced, whether it's been access to counsel or treatment during incarceration.

00:05:58.000 Many of you have asked questions about how Owen's doing and what his conditions are.

00:06:03.000 He's out now, and so I welcome him to the podcast.

00:06:07.000 Owen, I want to get into this full experience you had, but maybe first, just for people who don't know you and your story, explain why you came to the Capitol on January 6th and what your goals were that day.

00:06:20.000 Sure, and the individuals responsible for my incarceration know that what I'm about to tell you is 100% true because they've had complete and unfettered access to all electronic data that they have requested, including multiple cell phones.

00:06:36.000 So, as many people may or may not be aware of now, there was a procedure on January 6th where members of Congress and the Vice President at the time, Mike Pence, can take a second To review the election process, the electoral process, and take a pause to see if all laws were followed before certifying the election of Joe Biden.

00:06:58.000 And we were there that day to support that legal and lawful process, which, by the way, has been done before in America's history.

00:07:08.000 By Democrats, multiple times even by Democrats.

00:07:12.000 So I was there as a journalist covering that proceeding in support of it, hoping that we could review some of the laws, some of the changes of the laws and some of the process that went down in the electoral process that winded up electing Joe Biden.

00:07:27.000 And I don't know, maybe getting a question answered like, How Donald Trump was leading in five states at 3 o'clock in the morning of election night, and then Joe Biden won those states at 3.30, but perhaps that's another issue for another time.

00:07:39.000 So that's what I was there doing that day.

00:07:41.000 It is interesting that we see that pattern play out, right, where you get a lot of early returns from some of the precincts with lower vote totals, and then at the very end, It's almost like you see ballots willed into existence in some of these jurisdictions that don't have the type of tight ballot custody, chain of custody, and transparency regarding votes cast.

00:08:09.000 You really drew a fine point on this fact that people have made these arguments and offered these contests to electors quite frequently.

00:08:19.000 Not just In distant history, but in recent history, the last Republican to be elected president in the absence of some Democrat objection to electors was George Herbert Walker Bush.

00:08:33.000 So you show up as a journalist, you show up as someone interested in that process, and when did you first become aware that what you were doing there was going to have consequence in the federal criminal realm?

00:08:51.000 Well and let me just get one thing clear before I answer that question as well.

00:08:54.000 I never went into the Capitol.

00:08:56.000 I never touched a police officer or any other law enforcement agent and I'm on record trying to stop people from going into the Capitol and trying to work with Capitol Police to try to stop the entire thing from happening.

00:09:10.000 So I just want to make sure that that point is clarified here.

00:09:13.000 Now as far as when did I realize that I was going to be Continued to be persecuted by the Department of Justice.

00:09:21.000 And I say continued to be criminally persecuted because this actually started in 2019. And you may or may not be aware that when Jerry Nadler was holding a sham impeachment hearing of Donald Trump, I stood up during the hearing and I said, Donald Trump is innocent.

00:09:37.000 It's the Democrats are the real criminals.

00:09:39.000 The cops escorted me out of the building.

00:09:41.000 As I'm sure you're aware, this happens all the time in the Capitol.

00:09:44.000 This happens all the time in congressional hearings.

00:09:46.000 The one difference might be that I'm actually a conservative.

00:09:48.000 Usually it's liberals and Democrats that do this.

00:09:51.000 And they just get detained for a minute, escorted out of the building, and that's it.

00:09:55.000 And that's what was going to happen to me.

00:09:57.000 But somebody got on the Capitol Police's walkie-talkie and said, no, you're not going to release Owen Schroer.

00:10:03.000 You're going to arrest him and charge him.

00:10:06.000 And so I've been dealing with this since 2019. Now, there's also other false reports out there that I violated a standard of my probation.

00:10:15.000 I didn't.

00:10:16.000 There are false reports out there that even the prosecuting attorneys tried to argue to the judge inaccurately that I didn't complete my community service.

00:10:25.000 I did!

00:10:26.000 But because of everything being shut down for COVID, they could never clear and complete and get this case off of the docket.

00:10:35.000 But as far as myself and my legal counsel were concerned, this was all done.

00:10:40.000 It was all a done deal.

00:10:41.000 We were just waiting for all the COVID stuff to get the courts back open.

00:10:44.000 And then one day, my lawyer inquires to the Department of Justice saying, hey, when are we going to get this case off the docket?

00:10:52.000 It's been months now.

00:10:54.000 My client has finished his probation.

00:10:56.000 He's completed his community service.

00:10:59.000 Why isn't this off the docket?

00:11:00.000 And then to his suspicion, they said, oh, we can't clear this off the docket.

00:11:04.000 There might be something else going on.

00:11:06.000 Now, this was in the early summer of 2021. And then late in the summer, in August of 2021, I received an indictment from the FBI for my arrest for four completely bogus charges related to January 6th, and then an allegation that I violated my probation, which they argue I did, but we never got to defend that.

00:11:27.000 I didn't.

00:11:28.000 I would argue that I didn't violate my probation, and I think it's very clear In the wording in my probation that I did not violate.

00:11:36.000 But again, these are just false reports that we get from our corrupt Department of Justice, its workers, and the mainstream media.

00:11:42.000 I think there are a lot of people who were at the Capitol grounds on January 6th who didn't go inside, but were there because they wanted to observe this process.

00:11:53.000 Some, like you, wanted to record it in some way for Journalistic purposes.

00:11:59.000 Some wanted to have their voice heard, that they didn't believe that the electors were properly certified and they wanted the benefit of these objections to prevail in the legally contemplated constitutional system that you described.

00:12:16.000 And so really it must have been crazy when you then get the news that this is going to result in this really enhanced federal application of criminal law against you.

00:12:28.000 As we have observed some of these cases, we see prosecutors trying to overcharge or Get even more draconian punishment that you would ever anticipate associated with these types of charges.

00:12:42.000 You know is that something that having gone through this process you think that we ought to investigate and is it is it something you've observed?

00:12:50.000 This is actually a very important point that you bring up here Matt because We are now aware of this, and if there is a silver lining in my case and maybe some of the other January 6th defendants that have just been completely abused by this Department of Justice, perhaps this is the silver lining.

00:13:08.000 What I've realized here is there is no incentive for justice in the Department of Justice.

00:13:14.000 The incentive from prosecuting attorneys and U.S. attorneys is convictions, and the incentive from the judge is prison time.

00:13:23.000 you notice i didn't say justice so what happens is the u.s attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys they will vastly overcharge you six seven charges many of which are just completely ludicrous but they'll wildly overcharge you at the hopes or the assumption that you're going to take a plea bargain and most people do who can trust a jury of their non-peers because this isn't a jury of your peers This isn't a jury of people that know you or live in your area or work in the same field as you.

00:13:53.000 I would have been in a jury in D.C. I would have had no chance.

00:13:56.000 That's not my peers.

00:13:57.000 So you don't really get a jury of your peers and you basically get, oh, are you going to be facing six, seven charges that could completely destroy your life?

00:14:05.000 Or do you want to plead to the one charge that might be like a slap on the wrist?

00:14:10.000 And then you hope you can get back to some semblance of your normal life.

00:14:13.000 Well, let me interrupt you there because I think this is where the pardon power is really going to be important because you had so many people who were confronting this avalanche of charges that you would normally never see applied to a circumstance like this and then people fearing really long incarceration periods Would plead to something for a diminished sentence or a diminished consequence.

00:14:40.000 And now that is something that people are carrying with them.

00:14:43.000 And I want to get to how you think a lot of folks might have been used as political pawns then.

00:14:49.000 But I think that the only way to remediate the dynamic you're talking about, the power dynamic, where people pled guilty who never in their hearts believed they intended to commit a crime and certainly didn't want to violate federal criminal law, those people need to be remediated and restored.

00:15:04.000 And I think that the pardon power could be used effectively by the next president to restore those folks.

00:15:13.000 And Vivek Ramaswamy, as far as I know, is the only candidate that has promised to do so.

00:15:18.000 I think maybe Donald Trump has alluded to that idea.

00:15:21.000 I don't know if he has specifically said in so many words, but The reason why I talk about this now and we're aware of it now is because of the blatant political persecution that's been going down in what I think should be described as the Democrats' Reichstag moment, like the Nazis burned the Reichstag to blame on their enemies.

00:15:41.000 Well, the Democrats either let January 6th happen or who knows, maybe they had the provocateurs in there.

00:15:46.000 To get it to happen and then they use that to destroy their political opposition and ultimately they'd like to use that to destroy Donald Trump and everybody else is kind of just cannon fodder.

00:15:56.000 It's like a never let a crisis go to waste moment for them where like people who had no men's rea to commit a crime had to be overcharged, had to be incarcerated because those people then became a symbol to others of danger and malcontent had to be incarcerated because those people then became a symbol to I can't believe we're applying those terms to like MAGA grandmothers who crossed over a barricade that was ripped down hours before by a Capitol Police officer.

00:16:25.000 But that seems to be the case.

00:16:28.000 Is it your experience, because I know you've communicated with others who've been in these circumstances, that people understand that their case is potentially part of a broader mosaic of Democrats and the political left and the mainstream media to try to scare Americans and to try to make people think that anyone who is associated with the MAGA movement or for Second Amendment rights or who wants to build a wall or have paper ballots is some sort of extremist?

00:16:59.000 Well, let me just tell you from my experience what it feels like.

00:17:03.000 As a journalist, as a talk show host, I now have this looming cloud over my head in the back of my mind with everything I say.

00:17:14.000 I mean, just coming on your show and talking to you, I can't help it.

00:17:17.000 It's like an involuntary muscle movement.

00:17:20.000 Maybe call it an involuntary thought process of self-preservation.

00:17:25.000 Am I gonna get arrested?

00:17:26.000 Am I gonna get imprisoned?

00:17:27.000 Am I gonna get thrown in jail for speaking to Matt Gaetz?

00:17:30.000 Am I gonna get thrown in jail for telling Matt Gaetz and telling the world my story?

00:17:34.000 This is something that I can't shake since I've gotten out of prison.

00:17:38.000 Now, maybe with time, if I go a month or a year or five without the Democrats throwing me back in jail, maybe I can finally shake it.

00:17:45.000 But that's what it feels like now.

00:17:46.000 I have to live with this now in the back of my mind that just for speaking and doing my journalistic duties that I'm going to end up in prison.

00:17:55.000 And while this hurts me, I can't even imagine the next generation of Americans living like this.

00:18:00.000 This is what it's like in North Korea.

00:18:01.000 This is what it's like in China, where people are afraid to speak.

00:18:06.000 Is this what the next generation of Americans is going to have to grow up with in the back of their mind?

00:18:11.000 To me, that just breaks my heart.

00:18:13.000 And, you know, again, I think it's worth mentioning here because I witnessed this.

00:18:17.000 Not only do the people that are in there defending their political views realize that they're part of a larger picture of the Democrat Party trying to oust their political opposition by making examples of the people they're throwing in jail.

00:18:29.000 on a much more broader scale and scope this is what the department of justice does to everyone Matt whether they're facing charges for one thing or the other this is what they do to everybody you know when you spoke at the BOP hearing with Miss Peters you know they're asking for two billion dollars and and you know I can understand where they're coming from they do have a problem with employment they do have a problem with staff and they do have a problem with their facilities I

00:19:00.000 had to shower in showers that had black mold all over them But here's the thing.

00:19:04.000 You and I both know that they could get $2 billion, they could get $20 billion, and nothing is going to improve in this system.

00:19:11.000 What needs to happen, if they were serious, what needs to happen is they need to find out what a prisoner costs annually, Equate that to $2 billion and release that many people back to their families.

00:19:25.000 Because most people got railroaded by this Department of Justice because justice is not their incentive.

00:19:32.000 It's convictions and incarceration.

00:19:35.000 And I learned this firsthand.

00:19:38.000 And what would be your message to those who are still carrying the weight of that with their own freedom being surrendered?

00:19:47.000 I think about the vigils that are held outside the DC Gulag on a nightly basis and the people there who tragically are just trying to have a minute or a moment on the phone to believe that something better is going to emerge from all this.

00:20:02.000 What can you say to them?

00:20:06.000 It's really hard to say anything because my sentence was mere inches compared to the miles of wrongful convictions that people like Enrique Tarrio or Joe Biggs or many others are facing.

00:20:19.000 There's really not much...

00:20:21.000 To say other than I would just like the American people to know that the one thing that helped me get through it in the worst times when I was thrown into the hole and disappeared.

00:20:30.000 In fact, I was in jail for being a speech crime and then I got thrown inside the jail in the jail for speaking too.

00:20:38.000 I can elaborate on that further if you would like.

00:20:40.000 But, you know, what they need to know is that people on the outside still care about them.

00:20:45.000 The letters that I received, the books that I received, was some of the most meaningful things that helped me get through some of the worst times when I was in solitary in there.

00:20:54.000 And they just need to know that people haven't forgotten about them.

00:20:57.000 They need to know that the American people's hearts and minds are still with them.

00:21:02.000 Because, I mean, really, It's dark.

00:21:05.000 It's tough in there.

00:21:06.000 It's psychologically damaging.

00:21:07.000 It's physically damaging.

00:21:10.000 And I've seen firsthand how people that have long time deal with it and there's highs and there's lows and there's good times and there's mostly bad times.

00:21:19.000 But there's really nothing you can say to a man whose life has been stolen.

00:21:23.000 There's really nothing you can say or do to a man who has been thrown in jail as a political prisoner by the Democrat Party.

00:21:31.000 There really isn't.

00:21:32.000 But what you can do to maybe make it a little easier is to just let them know you care.

00:21:37.000 You know, there's some projects out there.

00:21:38.000 I got some mail from them, like the Patriot Mail Project.

00:21:41.000 And others where just getting a letter, just getting a letter from the outside telling you that, hey, we're praying for you.

00:21:48.000 We haven't forgotten about you.

00:21:50.000 You know, Americans are out here still thinking about you.

00:21:52.000 We're still trying to get your stories in front of Congress so that people can know what's going on.

00:21:57.000 I mean, just that helps you get through the day.

00:22:00.000 Just putting 20 bucks into their commissary fund so they can buy something at the store that isn't prison slop to eat.

00:22:07.000 Get a shirt that isn't a gift from the BOP that comes with sweat stains or underwear that comes with poop stains.

00:22:15.000 Just little stuff like that can help their time a little easier go by.

00:22:20.000 But I mean, there's really nothing you can say to a man who's had his life ripped away and thrown in a hole wrongfully.

00:22:26.000 There's really not much you can say, but there's some actions you can take to maybe at least make it a little easier on them while they're down.

00:22:31.000 Undeniably, we need to take more action as Republican leaders to see that the violations of civil rights are remediated to the extent that you can at this stage of the game.

00:22:40.000 And this is time that a lot of people aren't going to get back in the event that...

00:22:45.000 I mean, you mentioned Enrique Tarrio wasn't in Washington, D.C. and has some multi-decade sentence.

00:22:54.000 It's really something that appears more...

00:22:58.000 Like what you'd see in an Orwellian novel than what you'd observe in a free country.

00:23:04.000 Owen, how can people follow your journalism and your work as you continue to offer commentary and analysis on what's facing the country?

00:23:13.000 Well, I appreciate that.

00:23:15.000 And let me just make one more point before I do.

00:23:17.000 When the FBI indicted me, there was a magistrate judge, Judge Faruqi, who issued a motion to the Department of Justice saying, hey, wait a second, you've just illegally charged a journalist.

00:23:29.000 And Matt, I'm sure you're aware of this, but Barack Obama wrote special standards and procedures for charging a journalist.

00:23:35.000 There's different hoops and things you have to do when you charge a journalist.

00:23:39.000 They didn't do any of them.

00:23:41.000 And when this magistrate judge said, hey, wait a second, you just broke the law doing this, they just threw it away.

00:23:46.000 They just didn't even care.

00:23:47.000 They completely ignored it, even though everybody knows I'm a journalist.

00:23:50.000 Now, thankfully, because I have been one of the most censored men in America, censored on all the mainstream social medias, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, everything else.

00:24:02.000 Why?

00:24:03.000 Because I'm a conservative that tells the truth.

00:24:05.000 But thankfully, now that Elon Musk has taken over X, I'm back.

00:24:09.000 I've got my political media account at Owen Troyer, 1776. I've got my personal account back at All I Do Is Owen.

00:24:16.000 But you can follow my show.

00:24:18.000 And what's amazing about this, because, I mean, in a way, it's an honor that the Democrats are so afraid of me.

00:24:23.000 That they throw me in jail for my speech.

00:24:25.000 But in the 30-page sentencing memo, they took speech from my talk show, which is the Infowars War Room.

00:24:33.000 And because we get banned everywhere, you have to go to band.video slash war room to find it.

00:24:37.000 I'm on 3 to 6 p.m.

00:24:39.000 Central Times.

00:24:40.000 They, 30 pages, and almost the entire memo was things I said on my show, nothing to do about January 6th.

00:24:48.000 They quoted me calling Joe Biden a Chinese Communist puppet, and they put that in my sentencing memo, calling it relevant conduct.

00:24:56.000 So apparently my show is so dangerous to the Democrat Party that they use it in sentencing memos against me to throw me in jail.

00:25:03.000 So in a way I'm honored, but like I said, that thought is always there in the back of my head like an itch I can't scratch.

00:25:09.000 Every day I go on air.

00:25:10.000 Are they going to throw me in jail for going on air today?

00:25:13.000 Are they going to throw me in jail because today I said that there's a Biden crime family that needs to have this impeachment inquiry going forward, which thank God the good Republicans in the House made move forward.

00:25:23.000 But that's where you can find me.

00:25:24.000 You can find me on X. You can find me at band.video.

00:25:27.000 You can also find me on rumble.com slash Owen.

00:25:29.000 So really the response here, Matt, has to be like what you've done.

00:25:33.000 And with your podcast, Firebrand, and even when you were going through all the swords and arrows coming after you for ousting Kevin McCarthy, which I think you did the right thing, in times like this, we have to take the bold steps.

00:25:47.000 And at times like this, where people are trying to minimize you, you have to become a maximalist.

00:25:53.000 No, you're absolutely right.

00:25:54.000 Every one of us has a node of power that we can influence in American politics.

00:25:58.000 And what the left is trying to do is they are trying to erode that, diminish that to the greatest extent possible.

00:26:04.000 And I think that using people as pawns as part of this The grand January 6th narrative is a really dangerous feature of that, but we see features of it from the censorship to the demonetizing to the deplatforming.

00:26:18.000 And you're right, the only way it works is that we band together and that we become maximalists.

00:26:25.000 And there are more of us than there are of them.

00:26:27.000 And I think they know it, and I think that's what frightens them the most.

00:26:30.000 Owen, there were so many people that were concerned about you.

00:26:34.000 They were watching this podcast and many others.

00:26:37.000 And so many folks are glad to see that you're free now.

00:26:41.000 And while it is a terrible thing that you had to go through, and it seems to be kind of littered with retaliation and retribution that is tied to constitutionally protected expression, you wonder, you know, like, Does God put us through these trials and tribulations so that we can be maximalists, so that we can go beyond it and help others?

00:27:02.000 And certainly with the slings and arrows I've taken, I firmly believe that builds our calluses so that we're even more prepared for the next fight.

00:27:10.000 And I know you will be.

00:27:11.000 So I'll give you the last word, but thanks so much for joining me on FireBrain, man.

00:27:16.000 I completely agree with that.

00:27:17.000 I can't express my gratitude for all the care and concern and prayers for me while I was in.

00:27:23.000 I will promise those people in your audience that I'm never going to give up in the good fight.

00:27:27.000 And I won't speak for you, Matt, but I know that I'm sure you feel the same way as we're both fighting for the future of not just the United States of America, but really I see it as human freedom of existence on this planet.

00:27:41.000 Amen.

00:27:42.000 Thanks for joining us, Owen.

00:27:43.000 Give this guy a follow.

00:27:44.000 And thanks for joining us on Firebrand.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - December 14, 2023

Episode 139 LIVE: Uncaged (feat. Owen Shroyer) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript