The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Criminalization of Political Dissent ｜ Guest： Julie Kelly ｜ 3⧸29⧸23

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00:00:30.000 Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining me. I've got a great stream with a great guest.

00:00:35.160 I think you're really going to enjoy this afternoon.

00:00:37.280 Now, we've talked a lot about the criminalization of political dissent here in the United States,

00:00:43.280 and there have been, of course, a lot of developments about that recently.

00:00:47.460 One of the best people on this, someone who has been just doggedly reporting on this on a regular basis,

00:00:53.000 has been the senior writer over at American Greatness, Julie Kelly.

00:00:56.760 Julie, thank you for joining me.

00:00:57.940 Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

00:01:01.680 Absolutely.

00:01:02.540 So this is a story that really isn't popular for a lot of people.

00:01:07.020 A lot of people inside the conservative media, a lot of conservative politicians.

00:01:10.920 Many people don't want to continue to focus on this.

00:01:14.540 Why have you been so committed to following up on the events of January 6th and others

00:01:18.900 where Americans have been prosecuted for their attempt to voice their disagreement with the American government?

00:01:26.420 So I often say to myself, what did I do to deserve this?

00:01:29.780 Like, be the person mostly responsible for covering January 6th from the very beginning.

00:01:34.840 But I just sort of, when I watched what happened on January 6th, I just did not have the same reaction as most people did.

00:01:43.480 I thought it looked very suspicious to me.

00:01:46.840 That's just not how Trump supporters behave.

00:01:49.820 We knew that there was going, something was going to happen, but certainly not what unfolded before our very eyes.

00:01:58.180 So as I started reporting on the events of that day, how the media was covering it,

00:02:03.820 what I really started to dig into was what the Department of Justice was doing in terms of threats to hunt down,

00:02:11.880 investigate, charge, and prosecute anyone who had been involved in the events of January 6th.

00:02:19.020 And I was shocked to learn that the Department of Justice then had switched hands over to Joe Biden's appointees,

00:02:26.100 was seeking what's called pretrial detention, basically denying bail for January 6th defendants,

00:02:33.320 even those accused of low-level offenses or nonviolent charges.

00:02:38.520 So that really shocked me.

00:02:40.220 And that is, I think, what started to motivate my early coverage of the January 6th prosecution.

00:02:49.220 Yeah, I think a lot of people early on in kind of that fog of war period,

00:02:53.180 you know, the media is covering things as they're happening.

00:02:56.480 No one's exactly sure what's going on.

00:02:58.380 You hear about police officers being killed and there's all kinds of violent groups involved.

00:03:03.040 And it's very easy in that moment, the moment of fear and chaos for the media

00:03:08.980 and for bad actors inside the government to kind of advance a lot of narratives.

00:03:15.300 And then over time, we found that there's been a lot of vindication for people like you

00:03:20.900 who have continued to cover this, that many of these stories kind of fall apart under different scrutiny.

00:03:28.160 And I think what's really worried people, of course, has been the very different reactions

00:03:33.480 between, say, the violent and often riotous protests over the deaths of George Floyd

00:03:39.880 and the related BLM and Antifa actions across the United States for months.

00:03:44.780 And then the actions that were taken against Trump supporters in what seems like a situation

00:03:51.560 where the government was more than willing to apply a very dangerous double standard.

00:03:57.120 In fact, one that's not so much a double standard as the establishment of two different justice systems,

00:04:01.840 depending on whose political loyalty or who you owe political loyalty to.

00:04:06.700 That is exactly right.

00:04:10.480 So I think as I started reporting on January 6th and the feedback really was not anything early on 0.99

00:04:17.820 except you're a traitor, you're an insurrectionist, you're a domestic terrorist, 0.93

00:04:21.680 why are you defending these people? 0.97

00:04:23.600 But what really started to impact people was seeing this huge disparity between how the rioters of 2020

00:04:31.360 were celebrated.

00:04:33.960 They were bailed out by politicians.

00:04:37.340 They were heralded in the media as social justice warriors.

00:04:42.180 And of course, a lot of that conduct was far worse, death, destruction, $2 billion at least

00:04:48.080 in property damages than anything that happened on January 6th.

00:04:53.120 And the biggest comparison is what happened in Lafayette Square,

00:04:56.300 which is where you had rioters occupying parts of Washington, D.C., federal property,

00:05:02.560 attacking federal police officers with weapons on this federal property,

00:05:07.600 prompting the shutdown, of course, of the White House, as everyone recalls.

00:05:11.860 And Donald Trump really and his family having to go to a secure location

00:05:15.720 because these rioters were attempting to jump over the fence.

00:05:19.340 They wanted to attack the White House.

00:05:20.900 And so nothing like that happened on January 6th.

00:05:26.160 But yet these people are being treated far differently.

00:05:29.660 And I still think that that is what offends the senses of Americans.

00:05:33.780 Yes, they want people who were engaged in violent behavior,

00:05:36.920 especially assaulting police officers on January 6th.

00:05:39.960 They want those people held accountable.

00:05:41.880 But by the same token, they want the rules to apply to everyone.

00:05:46.960 And that simply is just not the case.

00:05:49.540 We have an out-of-control, vengeful, weaponized Department of Justice

00:05:53.400 criminalizing political dissent and continuing to do so now more than 26 months later.

00:06:00.320 I want to get further into the criminalization of dissent,

00:06:04.400 especially when it comes to the federal departments that seem to be driving

00:06:09.140 some of the action behind the scenes.

00:06:11.420 We'll talk about kind of your reporting on what's happening with the Proud Boys

00:06:15.160 and their trial here in just a moment.

00:06:17.840 But before we do that, guys, let's hear from today's sponsor.

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00:07:42.020 So I think a lot of people are learning more and more, again,

00:07:45.780 about the very concerning cover-up of many of the events

00:07:49.120 and the spinning of narratives around January 6th.

00:07:53.600 But what's also very concerning for a lot of people,

00:07:55.880 people who themselves would like to be involved in making their voices heard,

00:08:00.560 is how much of the federal government seems to be involved in pushing different groups

00:08:07.740 towards possible violent situations or towards situations in which they could have bad optics

00:08:14.060 and possibly be prosecuted by the United States government.

00:08:17.880 One of those, of course, is the Proud Boys in many ways have become infamous

00:08:21.940 because of this scenario.

00:08:24.100 But from your reporting, it looks like the FBI and the DOJ

00:08:27.760 have been heavily involved in possibly shaping the events,

00:08:32.540 especially, of course, the narrative around what's going on with the Proud Boys

00:08:36.060 to the point where it's even interfering with the trials of different members of the Proud Boys

00:08:42.640 because there are so many informants involved, they can't even seem to get witnesses.

00:08:47.660 Can you talk a little bit about what's going on with these trials?

00:08:50.520 So the Proud Boys, you have five members of the Proud Boys,

00:08:54.740 including its not founder, but its leader at the time, Enrique Terrio.

00:09:00.940 Those five men have been charged with seditious conspiracy

00:09:04.340 and other felony and misdemeanor counts for January 6th.

00:09:09.280 Only one man is accused of vandalizing the building and using a riot shield to do so.

00:09:15.540 The others do not face violent charges, such as assaulting police officers,

00:09:20.360 bringing firearms, anything like that.

00:09:23.020 But they've sort of become the poster boys for the so-called militia groups

00:09:27.380 that attacked the Capitol on January 6th, trying to overthrow the government.

00:09:31.280 I don't know how you overthrow the government when you walk through an open door,

00:09:34.600 police officers standing right there and you don't have any weapons.

00:09:37.500 But OK, no one's asking those questions in court.

00:09:40.560 But the revelations that are coming out and this started to trickle out in some of the motions

00:09:46.340 is numerous FBI informants working with the FBI embedded in this group,

00:09:53.180 either members of the group or embedded in the group, however you want to describe it,

00:09:57.060 months before January 6th.

00:09:59.700 This is something that Judge Tim Kelly has tried very hard along with the government

00:10:05.840 to conceal exactly those activities and who they were from the jury.

00:10:13.280 But now that the defense has its turn, on the stand this week is one man who was a proud boy

00:10:20.260 and an FBI informant who breached the exterior boundaries of the Capitol grounds that day,

00:10:26.500 who went inside the building and who was texting his FBI handler throughout the entire day.

00:10:36.200 Apparently, what this man said is that there was no plan by the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol.

00:10:42.920 They were basically there as Proud Boys had been at rallies in D.C. and other places throughout 2020

00:10:50.560 to help law enforcement and to protect them and to protect themselves and protect Trump supporters

00:10:56.820 who had been attacked in Washington, D.C. at previous rallies.

00:11:02.360 So at any rate, there were FBI informants involved.

00:11:06.340 We found out bombshell last week that one of the informants is sort of a proud boy groupie,

00:11:12.160 for lack of a better word.

00:11:13.620 She was hired by the FBI after January 6th.

00:11:16.900 She repeatedly communicated with defendants, with their relatives, met with defense attorneys,

00:11:23.460 constantly reached out to another defense attorney.

00:11:27.080 And so that revelation, disclosure, was not revealed by the government until the night before

00:11:33.080 this particular FBI informant was supposed to testify for the defense.

00:11:38.620 And so Judge Kelly, once again, did not think that that was problematic or scandalous.

00:11:43.180 He said, we're not going to be able to bring that up in front of the jury because it seems

00:11:47.980 like she really was sympathetic to the defendants.

00:11:50.200 And there's no proof that she was being told to report on the defense team or no proof that

00:11:54.680 she actually was.

00:11:55.840 So another FBI scandal, you know, shoved under the rug by a D.C.

00:12:02.200 judge.

00:12:02.740 But we are finding out more about these FBI informants, how many there were.

00:12:07.280 We're going to find out more, I believe, as the defense has their time in front of the

00:12:12.840 jury.

00:12:13.900 And one defense attorney actually joked last week when they found out this defense witness

00:12:19.100 was an informant.

00:12:20.940 Judge, I just want to say for the record, I am not nor have I ever been a CHS, which is

00:12:26.360 Confidential Human Source, which is the official term for informant.

00:12:30.580 So it's sort of becoming a punchline.

00:12:33.020 But look, what it does is it really fuels more suspicion by the American people that

00:12:39.320 federal agents, assets, whatever you want to call them, were deeply involved in what

00:12:44.040 happened that day.

00:12:45.600 And that's why you have the Rasmussen poll that showed 61 percent of Americans think the

00:12:49.460 federal assets provoked the so-called riot that day.

00:12:53.720 And so I think that this is why House Republicans are really being pushed to get the truth out,

00:12:58.680 release the videos, get the records, and more importantly, debunk the numerous lies that

00:13:03.960 the January 6th Select Committee told the public for almost two years.

00:13:08.540 Yeah, I'm glad that's happening.

00:13:10.240 I was honestly a little skeptical that we would see some traction there.

00:13:14.040 But I'm very glad that that is taking place because you look at everything happened with

00:13:19.020 the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping and then January 6th.

00:13:21.980 And you have to ask, why is the FBI so obsessed with attempting to find a very particular type

00:13:29.660 of political actor and kind of encourage them and push them and shape their plans or their

00:13:36.180 actions in a way that's going to produce a result that kind of hurts a political side?

00:13:41.540 I mean, it's very difficult not to notice the language around this insurrection, right?

00:13:48.000 Who is using that term ever before January 6th?

00:13:52.380 Who's talking about insurrectionists before January 6th?

00:13:55.460 No one was.

00:13:56.800 But it feels like this language was very particularly picked by the media and by actors inside the

00:14:03.020 federal government and politicians in hopes of activating like the 14th Amendment and the

00:14:08.980 language against those who have led insurrections be able to run again.

00:14:13.080 And it really does feel like there's a very particular effort to manufacture specific legal

00:14:19.040 language that would prevent someone like Donald Trump from being able to run for office for a second

00:14:23.980 time.

00:14:25.760 So all of this is associated with Christopher Wray's unsubstantiated claim that he made

00:14:33.220 back in 2019 that domestic violent extremists, i.e. Trump supporters, pose this lethal threat to

00:14:40.720 the country, to the homeland. And there's just simply no data to support it. Any random act of

00:14:47.960 violence, any sort of mass shooting, they could tie the shooter to the right in any way was the only

00:14:55.300 evidence that the FBI could come up with to support what Christopher Wray said. So what they really did

00:15:01.120 is started venting these so-called domestic violent extremists. That's what they did in the

00:15:06.880 Whitmer Fednapping hoax, the plot that was supposed to be these white supremacist militiamen loyal to

00:15:13.100 Donald Trump who wanted to abduct and possibly assassinate Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Turns out

00:15:18.840 there were more FBI informants and undercover agents in that plot than there were actual criminal

00:15:24.940 defendants, which is kind of how it's shaping up with the Proud Boys. The only difference with the

00:15:29.940 Proud Boys is this group actually existed. And so it looks like FBI informants were either run into the

00:15:35.780 group or existing members were kind of flipped to become informants. What happened in Whitmer was the

00:15:41.740 FBI was centrally involved in stitching this group together. A lot of the defendants didn't know each

00:15:46.980 other before the FBI got involved, hiring numerous informants, including the lead informant Dan

00:15:54.060 Chappell, who has paid more than $60,000 in cash and prizes for putting this group together,

00:15:59.940 luring them to certain organized events like field training camps and even taking them on so-called

00:16:07.680 reconnaissance missions by Whitmer's cottage. She knew about this for months. She had the FBI

00:16:14.880 installed pole cameras at her summer cottage so they could capture so-called evidence, but she knew what

00:16:21.400 was going on. We don't know exactly what she knew or, you know, how much she was communicating

00:16:25.700 with the FBI, especially that field office up there. Coincidentally, the head of the Detroit

00:16:32.100 FBI field office, after the arrests were announced in October of 2020, was promoted by Christopher Wray

00:16:38.880 to take over the Washington field office, which then would have been, not only were they the lead

00:16:44.200 investigative office looking into January 6th, but they would have had a very good handle on FBI

00:16:50.060 informants, even the ones run out of various FBI field offices across the country.

00:16:54.160 So that man, Steven DeAntuano got a big promotion just weeks before January 6th. January 6th committee

00:17:01.060 never interviewed him, never spoke with him, nor did they talk to Christopher Wray, leaving so many

00:17:06.480 open-ended questions about the FBI's, not just what the FBI did in January 6th, but it's kind of dry

00:17:11.760 run and Whitmer fed napping hoax. So Wray is a Trump appointee, isn't he? Yes. So with that,

00:17:20.240 you just have to ask the question, if you have an organization like the FBI or maybe the wider federal

00:17:27.980 law enforcement system, where even a Republican president can't find an appointee capable of running

00:17:37.440 that organization that won't specifically target and persecute the Republican voter base with the intention

00:17:47.540 of creating a storyline about domestic terror with the intention of punishing political dissidents,

00:17:55.280 what can you do in a situation like that where it seems like even those that might be selected

00:18:01.580 by Republicans are captured by this machine?

00:18:04.840 Well, I think he could have found easily other people to run the FBI. You know, Chris Wray is

00:18:13.740 some law enforcement genius. He had been in private practice. I think he represented Chris Christie and

00:18:20.180 Chris Christie is the one who recommended Chris Wray. It's not like he was a longtime FBI lawman or well

00:18:26.360 respected or well regarded, kind of plucked out of obscurity. I think he worked in the FBI or DOJ years

00:18:32.480 before. But there was a reason that Christopher Wray got installed there. And now we sort of know why.

00:18:39.360 But and let's not forget who Christopher Wray's boss was, William Barr, the attorney general,

00:18:44.640 also appointed by Donald Trump. And, you know, you had President Trump this week, really dismiss

00:18:50.920 concerns that he, first of all, appointed Chris Wray, kept him in power, even as he clearly saw that

00:18:58.140 Christopher Wray was making stuff up about domestic violent extremists, kind of trying to tie him to

00:19:02.760 his own boss, Donald Trump. But when Donald Trump threatened to fire Chris Wray in the spring of

00:19:09.740 2020, Bill Barr threatened to resign. Now, let's think about how great, let's think about that lost

00:19:16.860 opportunity. Donald Trump should have fired both of them on the spot. His attorney general for threatening

00:19:23.260 to walk. If Chris Wray clearly politicized FBI director was fired within Donald Trump's purview

00:19:31.900 to fire the FBI director, that we could have gotten rid of both of them really helped clean up that

00:19:38.120 Department of Justice, especially in 2020, when it was doing nothing with these riots, nothing to

00:19:44.060 investigate election fraud. And then certainly turned around 180 degrees and then targeting Trump supporters

00:19:51.280 for January 6th. So big lost opportunity. I think Donald Trump needs to explain that a little bit

00:19:57.960 more and not dismiss it as another huge personnel mistake that he made in hiring and keeping Chris

00:20:04.000 Wray. Yeah, I think that's got to be a really essential part of anyone moving forward who's going

00:20:09.720 to contend for leadership in the GOP, understanding that policies are great, but personnel are the ones that

00:20:17.120 deliver those policies. And all the legislation and, you know, rhetoric in the world doesn't change the fact

00:20:23.800 that decisions are made, unfortunately, at these bureaucratic levels that have devastating impacts. And so if

00:20:30.040 you're not putting a sufficient amount of careful attention into who holds those positions and why, then, you know,

00:20:38.600 your own supporters could end up in jail for a very long time. Speaking of which, many of these January 6th defendants have been in jail for well over a year at this point, with no trial doesn't seem to be something that should be reasonable or legal, can't set bell or anything at this point. Why haven't more GOP congressmen and other representatives involved themselves? We've had a few, thankfully, but far too many of the

00:21:08.580 too few seem willing to step in and talk about the violation of constitutional rights that's very obviously occurring with a political bias in this situation.

00:21:17.580 Yeah, I think it's really outrageous the Republican silence through all of this. I mean, you don't deny someone bail when they're charged with obstruction of an official proceeding. You don't deny someone bail when they're charged with conspiracy, especially if they have no other violent charges with them, and they have no criminal record. But this is

00:21:38.560 This has been going on since January of 2021. And Republicans just did not want to touch this. They didn't want to be seen as defending anyone who pepper sprayed a police officer on January 6th, even though they were throwing stun grenades, and dousing people with tear gas, punching them, kicking them, using rubber bullets against them, pepper balls against them. These are people standing outside, by the way.

00:22:03.500 This unprovoked attack by D.C. Metro and Capitol Police.

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00:22:39.360 If you spray somebody with pepper spray, a police officer who is attacking you, you should be denied bail for more than two years. You should be sentenced to prison for 71 months, like Julian Cater, the man who finally, after 18 months of being denied bail, suffering in the D.C. Gulag, was tormented into taking a plea deal, pleaded guilty to two counts of attacking Brian Sicknick and two officers and was sentenced to 71 months in jail.

00:23:05.200 I mean, there's no case that's comparable. 32-year-old man, has no criminal record, and he's going to rot in jail for now more than six years because of this vengeful Department of Justice and these sadistic, I call them judges on the D.C. District Court.

00:23:22.600 So, but what's more egregious of men who have been languishing behind bars in custody, indefinite incarceration, as their trials are pushed back, and some of these men, yes, have been in jail for more than two years, while the DOJ plays every trick in the book to either get, extract a plea deal out of them or push off their trial dates.

00:23:47.720 And when Merrick Garland was asked about it this week by Representative Andrew Clyde to explain why you have these men, at least a dozen, who have been held for two years or more, you know, how is that constitutional? How is it legal?

00:24:02.520 He, of course, he, of course, had no idea what he was talking about, didn't know who the defendants were, said something about Sixth Amendment rights, and, you know, go talk to the judge, basically.

00:24:12.580 Well, okay, you can talk to the judge. The judge ultimately is the one who makes the decision, but it's your prosecutors, your Department of Justice, who puts together the motion seeking their pretrial detention, denying their release based on their involvement on January 6th.

00:24:27.520 But Merrick Garland, as usual, had no response because, look, he's not really running the DOJ. That's Lisa Monaco, the Deputy Attorney General, and Matthew Graves, the D.C. U.S. Attorney, who's handling every single January 6th case.

00:24:40.280 I mean, the Republican Party loves to talk about the importance of constitutional government. It's so important to defend these amendments. It's so important to make sure that, you know, the Constitution is upheld.

00:24:52.980 But then when something very basic is threatening the constitutional rights of people who would be their supporters, they just don't seem to be found anywhere.

00:25:04.440 And the question is, I guess at this point, do you even have constitutional rights if no politician, if no representative, or very few of them, is willing to step up and defend and put pressure to make sure that those rights are followed through?

00:25:19.960 I mean, you really have to wonder if the Republicans aren't willing to put pressure on this because, I don't know, they're worried about not being seen as the party of law and order, or they're just so cowed by the media narrative that any association with this will just destroy their ability to garner donors.

00:25:39.140 Then what is the value of these people if they're not willing to push for the rights of their voters when they need them most?

00:25:45.560 You know, this is one thing I ask repeatedly, and I still do.

00:25:50.100 What is the point of a political party who refuses to defend their own supporters, their own voters, when they need them the most?

00:25:58.840 You know, why are you talking about grocery prices?

00:26:02.000 Why are you talking incessantly about school board meetings?

00:26:05.080 Yes, we get it.

00:26:05.840 That was egregious, but that's a done issue.

00:26:08.940 You still have men rotting in jail, political prisoners in the United States of America.

00:26:14.540 That's exactly what they are.

00:26:15.720 They are only there because they supported Donald Trump.

00:26:18.760 They are only there because they protested Joe Biden's election on January 6th for no other reason.

00:26:24.500 You couldn't point to any comparable cases.

00:26:27.500 And so what point is the Republican Party when they're not going to defend these people?

00:26:34.420 And they would say, well, we don't want to look like we're defending anyone who assaulted police officers.

00:26:38.720 Okay, fine.

00:26:39.720 What about what the police officers were doing that day?

00:26:42.380 Well, we don't want to look like we're defending anyone who's in a militia group.

00:26:46.040 I would say, well, a militia group, the Oath Keepers, they're former veterans and police officers.

00:26:51.580 They're there to protect people, too.

00:26:53.360 And how do you have a militia when no one brought weapons to the Capitol?

00:26:57.260 Well, we don't want to defend the Proud Boys.

00:26:58.980 Well, why not?

00:26:59.880 Because they've been maligned by the New York Times or Rachel Maddow or Chris Ray says that they are members of the Proud Boys are domestic terrorists. 0.94

00:27:10.140 And these people are just gutless.

00:27:11.940 And even up until this point, you still only have a small handful.

00:27:15.440 And I will say basically no one in the United States Senate who's standing up against this.

00:27:20.760 But you do have a handful of Republican House members.

00:27:23.660 I think that group is growing, luckily.

00:27:26.200 But it's too late for these men who have been in jail for two years.

00:27:30.620 You know, they needed to step forward at the very beginning.

00:27:33.700 Every Republican.

00:27:34.740 And I'll tell you who else is culpable.

00:27:36.160 Republican governors and Republican attorney generals.

00:27:40.220 You know, Florida has the highest number of criminal defendants in January 6th.

00:27:45.160 Texas, I believe, had the highest number of defendants under pretrial detention orders.

00:27:50.920 You've heard nothing from Republican governors and Republican attorney generals.

00:27:55.660 They have a duty to also protect the rights of their constituents who are being persecuted by this Department of Justice.

00:28:02.500 They have been silent as well.

00:28:04.180 So shame on pretty much everyone in the GOP for their silence and their cowardice and continuing to say nothing as Matthew Graves threatens to round up another thousand defendants.

00:28:18.640 Yeah, I think it's a really important point. 0.97

00:28:20.940 And you can see it's only getting more ridiculous.

00:28:23.340 You have people like Douglas Mackey on trial for posting memes. 0.86

00:28:28.740 You have the FBI field offices talking about how you need to watch out for traditional Catholics who go to Latin mass.

00:28:36.500 It's very clear that we have a security state apparatus that is out of control, highly politicized, and is looking to expand its purview into almost every possible part of American political life.

00:28:51.540 And it really feels in a lot of ways like it was really important to bring the war on terror home, right?

00:28:58.740 We kind of wrapped it up abroad, and now it's time to turn that security apparatus on the American people because I think it's very clear to a certain part of the American elite

00:29:13.160 that they're not doing a very good job, that people aren't going to be fans of the results that they're producing,

00:29:19.840 and they're losing the ability to kind of manufacture the kind of democratic outcomes that they want.

00:29:25.220 And so it's really important to send a chilling message when it comes to political speech and in just basic involvement in civic and public life,

00:29:34.460 that if you have the wrong political opinions, we have all these neat toys and all these techniques and legal apparatus that we've set up around something like the war on terror,

00:29:44.580 and we're more than happy to turn it now and unleash it on you, and don't worry, the political party who's supposed to represent you, the one that's supposed to restrain us,

00:29:53.580 they have no interest in fighting back against this either.

00:29:57.340 Right, exactly. You know, when I wrote the subtitle for my book that was published over a year ago, and it was January 6th,

00:30:04.740 how Democrats used the Capitol protests to launch a war on terror against the political right,

00:30:09.520 I remember my publisher and I were like, well, it might kind of be over the top as well, it's actually happening,

00:30:15.180 but it might sound a little crazy that that's it. But here we are, that's exactly what's happening.

00:30:20.820 Every surveillance tool, you know, they're using the Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate and arrest these people,

00:30:29.220 even on misdemeanors. They have full cooperation with American companies.

00:30:37.060 I just read a criminal complaint that was filed against a woman, probably in her late 50s, early 60s,

00:30:44.380 who went into the Capitol building for 15 minutes. She went in there with her elderly mother,

00:30:49.780 they walked around and left, they committed no violence whatsoever. But they got her bank records from JP Morgan,

00:30:56.960 they got her cell phone records from Verizon. Just like in every other case, they got social media activity

00:31:02.800 from Facebook to build this complaint against a woman who is facing misdemeanor trespassing offenses.

00:31:12.540 So it's not a joke when we say that this is a war on terror, because you have every powerful interest

00:31:18.220 working together collaboratively to brand these individuals as domestic terrorists. And to your point,

00:31:27.040 I think it's also because, you know, where is the war on terror? Where did it go? They certainly don't want

00:31:32.420 to divert those resources to the southern border, where we know people have crossed over who are on

00:31:37.320 watch lists. So, you know, they need to put these resources somewhere, and they're putting them

00:31:43.900 against Trump supporters and continuing to do so. This investigation and prosecution will go on

00:31:50.060 for years until hopefully the next Republican president, if he takes office and shuts down some

00:31:56.780 of these offices, dismantles the FBI. But this is a running campaign theme and a running crusade to

00:32:04.260 criminalize political dissent in the Biden regime. Yeah, and you're really worried about even if a

00:32:09.800 Republican would take up that cause at this point. I think it's got to be essential for everyone

00:32:15.120 involved to hold anyone, again, who's interested in pursuing, you know, leadership in the GOP to make

00:32:21.180 this a top priority and something that they're very clear about the need to happen. And this seems to

00:32:28.300 kind of show a wider concerning trend in just the Western world and liberal democracies in general.

00:32:34.600 We see the actions of somebody like Justin Trudeau in Canada, who's willing to steal the bank accounts

00:32:40.460 of not only protesters, but their families. In many cases, it seems like many of these states are more than

00:32:49.340 willing to get up there and lecture Vladimir Putin and, you know, any, you know, dictators and other

00:32:56.060 nations about human rights abuses, but they're more than willing to commit very similar abuses, you know,

00:33:02.720 with just slightly softer power in their own countries and pretend like there's a significant moral

00:33:08.640 difference from their security state and ones that they demonize across the globe.

00:33:16.240 That's exactly right. I mean, look, when you turn powerful surveillance tools against American

00:33:21.980 citizens, when you hold political prisoners in a special prison in the nation's capital, set aside just

00:33:29.560 for political dissidents, when you strip them of their rights, when you separate them from their families,

00:33:35.600 when you deny their due process rights, when you keep evidence from them, when you bankrupt them,

00:33:42.700 when banks, you know, banks are dropping, have dropped people discharged on misdemeanors,

00:33:47.480 when you put them on a no-fly list, basically, a domestic terror list where they have to spend hours at the

00:33:54.200 airport going through multiple levels of security so they can be humiliated in front of their fellow

00:34:01.080 countrymen. Tell me why we have to worry about Putin. Like, he's probably looking at what we're doing

00:34:08.960 and thinking, wow, wish I could get away with that. I mean, that's why I think he mocked sort of the

00:34:14.380 political prisoners in January 6th. So anyone who thinks that anything Vladimir Putin is doing

00:34:21.020 is a bigger threat to what our own Department of Justice is doing. They're just not paying attention

00:34:26.620 attention to what's happening. And so I think you're absolutely right. I mean, the biggest threat

00:34:32.160 to our country and how this is all, you know, unraveling so quickly is coming right out of the

00:34:38.700 powers that be in Washington. So I wanted to ask you one more thing that I think is really important

00:34:43.620 for people. They're very worried right now. There's a lot of people, you know, you saw the call with

00:34:50.100 Donald Trump and the possibility of asking people to protest on his behalf, whether or not he would

00:34:57.540 get charged in New York. However you feel about Donald Trump's action there. The call from a lot

00:35:03.260 of people, myself included, is you have to be careful about public political action at this point.

00:35:09.280 You have to be worried about exercising your very basic constitutional right to freedom of assembly

00:35:16.760 because it's very clear that you have a government apparatus that is highly invested in trying to

00:35:23.660 drive bad actors out and manufacture situations that they can then use to slander political dissidents

00:35:32.080 and criminalize their acts. And when you're in a situation like this where you just don't know how many

00:35:39.540 FBI agents or informants or whoever else from the government might be trying to shape the events,

00:35:45.660 try to drive things to a particular outcome, what can people do? How should people view political

00:35:52.380 protests in an environment where they're not sure if the government is actively involved in trying to

00:35:58.460 manufacture an excuse to punish them for their disagreement with the regime?

00:36:03.220 Well, I think that's what was so instructive about seeing the outcry when Donald Trump did post on

00:36:11.980 on truth social about this impending. It's not happening. It looks like criminal indictment in New York

00:36:18.580 and calling on people to protest. And you had the entire news media, Democrats, you know,

00:36:25.640 never Trump Republicans are saying, look, he's calling for another insurrection. He wants another attack on,

00:36:31.700 you know, a government building. He didn't say peacefully protest. He said protest. You know,

00:36:36.940 he's trying to gin up another January 6th. So the anvil of January 6th, not just the horrific

00:36:43.640 things that are happening related to the prosecution, but the bigger anvil is to halt

00:36:50.180 political protest and political activity, things that, and of course, peaceful, because that's how

00:36:57.740 the right acts, right? But now the right is very wary of it, of course, to your point about being

00:37:05.680 lured into certain areas or having agitators and provocateurs there, or even being on group chats

00:37:13.780 with people. You know, this is how they got the Proud Boys and other people. They got them into these

00:37:19.040 encrypted group chats and whatever that chatter is, even though it means nothing, that's the overwhelming

00:37:25.000 bulk of evidence against these defendants. So it is very terrifying times. And so we'll see how this

00:37:33.020 plays out in 2024. You see Trump still holding his rallies. Other people are going to rally. But if

00:37:37.580 there is something that people want to protest again, they will immediately be condemned by the left

00:37:44.760 and the news media as being, you know, want to be insurrectionists. So this label is going to be

00:37:50.520 around for a very long time. Yeah. It really does feel like the softer, slower version of a, of a

00:37:56.360 communist, you know, police state where no one knows what the rules are. No one's clear about what their

00:38:04.020 rights are. And at any time attempting to exercise something that you thought was just a basic

00:38:09.540 constitutional right, everyone was entitled to, could immediately end up putting yourself in a situation

00:38:15.880 where you're going to face years in prison without trial simply for being present at something that

00:38:22.560 the media or the government was able to manufacture. And it's just a terrifying situation for a lot of

00:38:28.220 people. Very difficult. I understand a lot of people who want to take popular action, want to be out

00:38:32.400 and exercising their rights, but just, you have to, you have to understand the situation you're in

00:38:38.240 before you make that decision for yourself. I think that's incredibly important. All right, Julie,

00:38:43.040 well, I really appreciate talking with you. Could you tell everybody about your book and where to

00:38:48.640 find your great reporting? Thanks so much. So my book is available at Amazon and all of my work can

00:38:55.240 be found at American Greatness and greatness.com. I'm on Twitter a lot, as you know, posting updates

00:39:01.560 from trial proceedings or new motions that are coming out. And then my own reporting. So that's

00:39:07.400 Julie underscore Kelly two on Twitter. Excellent, guys, make sure that you're checking out all of

00:39:12.920 Julie's excellent work. Thank you for coming by everybody. If it's your first time on the channel,

00:39:17.860 please go ahead and subscribe. And of course, if you want to catch these broadcasts as podcasts,

00:39:22.600 make sure that you subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform. Once again,

00:39:28.780 everybody, thanks for coming by. And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

00:39:37.400 Thank you.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - March 29, 2023

The Criminalization of Political Dissent ｜ Guest： Julie Kelly ｜ 3⧸29⧸23

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