In the wake of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol by a group of pro-Trump supporters, many have wondered who was really behind the attack and why it happened. Darren Beattie, a professor at Duke University, has devoted his life to finding the truth about what happened that day.
00:00:00.000You remember the Trump days before the mainstream media went on a four-year vacation?
00:00:04.580They worked nonstop like deranged bullies obsessed with destroying Donald Trump.
00:00:09.760One of the rare instances of the media waking up during the Biden years is their obsession with January 6th, the insurrection.
00:00:18.780And I say that in quotes because they have pushed that word like a thief pushes a stolen TV.
00:00:24.560Meanwhile, they golf clapped last summer as anarchists and radicals literally burned American cities to the ground, resulting in $2 billion worth of damage.
00:00:35.620And how many countless people have died since then for this experiment with our cops?
00:00:42.500It's so more than a little strange that they've spent so much time on the insurrection narrative.
00:00:49.180I mean, after a while, you have to wonder, why is it they're still talking about it?
00:00:53.180Because they aren't really talking about it.
00:00:56.440They're insisting that it was an insurrection without really giving us anything.
00:01:05.160Strangely, their insistence focuses on the unquestionability of the whole situation.
00:01:33.260It's more of an expose and a very comprehensive one.
00:01:38.080At the center of all of it is this mysterious guy from Arizona named Ray Epps, a name everyone should know, and a name that you will not hear on CNN, NPR, MSNBC, or from the administration.
00:01:52.580We know that he was on the FBI most wanted list.
00:01:56.900He was one of the first 20 people added to the list.
00:02:00.040But he was removed just one day after Revolver published an article about him.
00:02:07.060That alone would seem to be enough to raise the alarm.
00:02:23.540In response of him telling people who are Trump supporters, hey, we got to go in and take over the Capitol, people that were Trump supporters began to chant, Fed, Fed, Fed, because they felt he was a Fed plant.
00:02:36.500As well as the footage of him on the morning of January 6th telling people to go to the Capitol 30 minutes before the end of Trump's speech.
00:02:46.100Recently, in a House oversight hearing, Representative Thomas Massey asked Attorney General Garland about the situation, and Garland was surprisingly close-lipped about the matter.
00:02:58.260This whole thing ends in a question, not an answer.
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00:05:08.780I majored in mathematics as an undergraduate and did a Ph.D. in the philosophy of mathematics as presented through the lens of a German philosopher, Martin Heidegger.
00:05:20.220And then I was teaching at Duke and one of the interests I had was sort of the underlying logic behind various political coalitions.
00:05:31.400And I had a thesis that essentially the underlying logic behind the Republican coalition had become obsolete post-Cold War.
00:05:39.760And it was due for a certain type of realignment.
00:05:42.940And, in fact, I presented this thesis through a course I was teaching called Left, Right, and Center.
00:05:48.180And contemporaneous to that course we saw it play out in real time with the emergence of Trump and, to a certain extent, with the emergence of Sanders on the left.
00:06:00.060So it was very interesting to teach that and, of course, I was not just a detached theoretical observer.
00:06:46.600I mean, a lot of things have changed since then.
00:06:49.320And so, to some extent, the analysis requires its own kind of update.
00:06:53.960But at the time, you know, you just saw the same types of refrains coming out of GOP and the messaging as though we'd never gone kind of beyond the Reagan years, as though the kind of economic philosophy represented in the Reagan years was somehow essentially connected with the various other positions, for instance, on foreign policy, on cultural policy and so forth.
00:07:21.860And I think a lot of times because people see various political issues packaged together, they assume that there's some type of essential coherence.
00:07:30.900When in a lot of cases, they're packaged together in an arbitrary way or maybe not entirely arbitrary, but contingent to the underlying political circumstances that existed.
00:07:41.860And I think the way that a lot of the GOP platform in the movement conservative platform was constructed, it was very much attached to the peculiar circumstances of that Cold War period and required a certain type of substantial software update, as it were, in order to address the emerging challenges of the 21st century.
00:08:04.460So, we have free aligned, I mean, I find myself, I've always been a freedom of speech guy, you know, First Amendment is brilliant, all of them are, but the First Amendment, especially with what I do, I've always been there.
00:08:21.400And the left used to be the champion of that, and now we're on opposite sides.
00:08:27.900I've always been a guy who said, well, you know, big, big corporations, what are they going to do?
00:08:33.720Not realizing what corporations that are bigger than countries, and many countries in the cases of these corporations now combined, can do and are doing.
00:08:46.280So, now I'm almost, I wouldn't say I'm an anti-corporous, but I'm very suspicious, and I want nothing, I want our government to do nothing with the private sector at all.
00:09:04.360We are all flipping and finding ourselves in proximity of very strange bedfellows.
00:09:12.540Right, and I think it's simply a matter of pragmatically addressing the predominant threats to liberty that exists today, and it takes different forms.
00:09:25.540And this is, I guess, a partial update from the issues I was focused on back during the Trump candidacy.
00:09:31.540Back then, it was somewhat significant and even a little bit novel to suggest, oh, we need to reassess our relationship between sort of economic theory and liberty.
00:09:44.440And there's this sort of simplified version of what free market is when really people use that term so loosely as to encompass a free market of the neighborhood lemonade stand and the free market of something like major institutions like Goldman Sachs.
00:10:02.220But the market in which Goldman Sachs exists is not the same market as the kind of neighborhood lemonade stand, and we didn't quite have the vocabulary to recognize those important distinctions.
00:10:18.460But I would say that at this point, we may have gone a little bit far in the other direction.
00:10:25.700At first, it was necessary to say, look, just because these big tech companies are technically in the private sector in a very technical sense doesn't mean that we should simply ignore the overwhelming threat that they pose to free speech and the ability to deliberate in the public sphere, which is a precondition of a democratic society.
00:10:48.460You need free speech in order to have a democratic society.
00:10:51.460And so I think just because everyone was sort of so fixated on this public sphere, private sector distinction, it was important to say, look, just because the threats are coming from the private sector doesn't mean we should ignore them because there is sacrosanct by virtue of not being.
00:11:09.140But I think at this point, I'm almost inclined to kind of push back in the other direction in the following sense, is I think ultimately what big tech is, the major companies, Facebook and all these other things, you cannot understand ultimately what they are without recognizing that they are essentially extensions of the American state.
00:11:33.320And in fact, and the government at the government at the highest levels in the State Department and other spheres, they use Google, Facebook and these other entities as an integral component of their public diplomacy operations, of their propaganda operations.
00:11:50.160It's used to facilitate our objectives overseas.
00:11:53.540We saw this in the, we saw this with the Arab Spring, clearly.
00:11:58.580And in fact, and that's not even to mention the de facto revolving door that now exists between the high level positions at these tech companies and the government.
00:12:09.100And also the fact that these companies are doing major contract work for the government.
00:12:14.960So I think the ultimate position is not quite, oh, public versus private.
00:12:20.160The ultimate, I think, recognition we need to make is at the highest level, that distinction is not very meaningful.
00:12:28.360The public sector and the private sector blend.
00:12:31.720And in the case of big tech, these companies are not ultimately private sector in the way that we imagine.
00:12:39.160And I think that's important when we try to assess solutions, because you can't solve the bottleneck simply by saying, oh, we need some other kind of private sector competitor, because at that level in the economy, everything blends into the state.
00:12:56.060And ultimately, the bottleneck to solutions is the security state, which has been a primary driver of the censorship regime that we have.
00:13:08.320And I think that could be an interesting segue, I think, into the biggest story really of the past few years that encompasses a lot of my reporting on 1.6, which is the fact that the entire national security apparatus in this country has been repurposed and redeployed domestically.
00:13:28.660And that includes the big tech companies insofar as their instruments of the security state.
00:13:35.260The entire apparatus we have has now been reoriented towards silencing and suppressing precisely those insurgent populist energies that animated the Trump candidacy, but also animate other populist movements on the left as well.
00:13:53.420I think it's a very dangerous place, and many people are still coming to realize that this is the reality and how dangerous it actually is.
00:14:01.800What do you think it's going to take to get people to wake up?
00:14:07.160I mean, just in COP26 today, I think it was, the president announced a partnership with his administration, the United States government, and the World Economic Forum, and 20, I think it's 20 or 25 different companies, where it's a public-private partnership.
00:14:30.700This is, this should be terrifying, especially when you see groups like, you know, Bill Gates and Microsoft standing up on the stage as well.
00:14:54.280And I think partially it's a matter of political psychology on the right.
00:15:01.220And this is why my news organization, Revolver.News, I think we're a premier organization, especially catered to the right, to illustrate the threats presented by this repurposed national security state.
00:15:16.240And I think there's a reason that traditionally a lot of the best critiques of the security state have come from the left, because dispositionally, the left, to be generous to them, they have to think of themselves as critics of corrupt institutions of power.
00:15:35.480Now, I think in practice, we can all see that the left overwhelmingly functions as an instrument of those powerful institutions.
00:15:42.880But as a matter of how they need to think of themselves, they have to think of themselves as challenging, powerful, corrupt institutions.
00:15:51.000Whereas on the right, I think there's a very different political psychology at work.
00:15:55.160And that is people on the right want to think of themselves as venerating just institutions of authority.
00:16:01.920And so it's a more difficult proposition to get people on the right to recognize that these institutions, many of which you've had a history of venerating and supporting, like the FBI, like the DOD at its highest levels, like the national security apparatus more broadly, that these have become extremely corrupt and are basically pointing their guns and their fingers at you.
00:16:27.120And I have to tell you, I don't think the problem is that big getting the right to realize that I think I think when you see what happened to Donald Trump and, you know, I said this all during that, if they can do this to the president of the United States, what power do you think you have over them?
00:16:50.360I mean, if they can destroy, lie, cheat, steal, fabricate, eavesdrop, spy on the president, the average person has no chance.
00:17:05.620And for the very first, I've always been very pro-law enforcement and pro-FBI, et cetera, et cetera.
00:17:12.100You know, I'm skeptical about corruption, but I've always felt like it's, you know, a few bad apples.
00:17:17.000When it comes to Washington, D.C., there isn't an institution that I believe in now.
00:17:23.240I believe in the principles that were lined up by our founders and are, you know, up for show for the little people in the archives.
00:17:32.580But those are never used by those institutions, it seems to me.
00:17:36.560And you don't you don't know where to turn.
00:17:39.800You know, you can't turn to the press.
00:18:03.220But I think we should start with Whitmer and and tell that story.
00:18:10.680Yes, no, Whitmer is a very important story.
00:18:15.380And actually, the very first piece that kind of focused the appropriate narrative on January 6th, before the first revolver.news piece that really analyzed the charging documents in relation to the Oath Keepers and presented the thesis that there is very likely FBI involvement here.
00:18:37.020Before that, there were disparate narratives going on like, oh, it was a bunch of people taking selfies.
00:18:47.280But there wasn't the appropriate focus before that.
00:18:53.120And part of the reason is that, you know, we hadn't looked at the charging documents and seen this kind of reverse RICO structure whereby you have a lot of the little fish wallowing in prison where and the bigger fish heads of the militia groups in some cases just enjoying their lives, walking away free.
00:19:12.280But also, it's just, again, I think it goes to this kind of veneration for the institutions, this trust in authority, saying like, you know, maybe they would do this, but they wouldn't do that.
00:19:25.880The feds wouldn't, you know, go into incitement.
00:19:28.280And of course, if you look at the long history of the FBI, it's very clear that they are capable of doing those things, and they have.
00:19:38.800But we pointed out in this very first revolver piece that you don't need to go back to the 60s and look at the history of the FBI.
00:19:46.980You just need to go back a couple months before the so-called siege of the national capital to this Michigan plot that you mentioned.
00:19:58.020Many of your viewers probably heard about it in the context of the media ginning up this idea like, oh, the Trump supporters are terrorists.
00:20:06.020They tried to kidnap the Michigan governor and whatnot.
00:20:10.000Well, it turns out that out of this so-called Michigan plot, 12 of the 26 plotters were either fed agents or fed informants.
00:20:23.60012 out of 26, which is a remarkable ratio.
00:20:40.060Well, most people think of it, this Michigan plot, as the plot to kidnap the governor, which it allegedly was.
00:20:47.400But it was also a plot to storm the state capital, to storm the state Michigan capital.
00:20:54.600So there's an interesting similarity there.
00:20:56.700It also involved predominantly an organization called the three percenters, which is one of the three main militia groups also imputed to the, quote unquote, insurrection aspects of one six.
00:21:12.300And so you have the same militia group, the same plot storming the capital.
00:21:16.620Only in this case, we know for a fact that 12 out of the 26 so-called plotters were actually feds.
00:21:23.900And I always say the cherry on top of the Michigan case is that the FBI director of the Detroit field office, who was presumably overseeing this entire infiltration operation in Michigan.
00:21:38.500The day after these so-called plotters were arrested, FBI director, Ray, promoted this Detroit field office guy to the D.C. field office.
00:21:53.260He was promoted to the D.C. office where he went on to oversee the one six investigations.
00:21:58.880So there are many, many fascinating, fascinating parallels, to say the least.
00:22:05.160Now, I like to be very precise in what I'm claiming, what I'm not claiming.
00:22:09.180I'm not saying that the fact that the Michigan case, which involved one of the same militia groups, involved the same plot to storm a state capital and whose director was promoted to D.C.
00:22:21.240the day after the plotters were arrested.
00:22:23.540I'm not saying that all of those coincidences logically imply that one six was the same thing.
00:22:32.620I'm saying that there's independent, compelling evidence for one six.
00:22:37.160But for those who have some kind of heuristic blockage, as though this this couldn't really be plausible, we wouldn't really do that.
00:22:44.360I'm saying, look, you don't you don't need to read a history of the FBI.
00:22:47.900All you need to do is go months back where they're doing precisely the same thing that I'm suggesting went on in one six.
00:22:55.000It doesn't you don't need an intuition boost from going back in history.
00:22:59.720You just need to look at what they did a couple of months before involving the same groups in the same plot.
00:24:00.500But this one, if this is now, it's not history and it involves the the most respected American law enforcement and the highest law enforcement agency in America.
00:24:17.360And I think it's frightening to go down this road.
00:24:22.720I would imagine if I'm listening to you, there's a big part of me that doesn't want to believe this.
00:24:29.020Whether it's true or not, I don't want to because what it means.
00:24:35.180Can we talk about the psychology of this just a little bit before we move on?
00:24:42.240And it gets back to kind of what I was saying earlier, is that I think part of especially the conservative political psychology is we want to be defenders of just institutions of authority.
00:24:57.260But what happens when those institutions are far from just and not only are they unjust, but they're hostile towards us.
00:25:08.240That's that's a very difficult position to be in versus those on the left who are already primed to challenge unjust institutions of authority, at least according to their political psychology.
00:25:20.320We want to be in a kind of country where we can support our law enforcement institutions, especially the FBI.
00:25:28.400We want to be able to support our generals in the military and so forth.
00:25:36.020And so it's a tougher pill to swallow to see that they're actually not functioning anywhere near the way that we would we would want or expect.
00:25:50.780If I believe this, the power structure is now against me and all those things I used to hang on to of, you know, truth, justice in the American way.
00:26:33.700But I would say that it's better to have a sober understanding of the reality than to rest on on fiction, because it's only on the basis of a sober understanding of what you're up against, that you're actually in a position to address it, even if it's a long, hard road.
00:26:51.780Versus, I think, in terms of the implications, many people, again, on the right are so, I think, inordinately focused on winning elections.
00:27:05.060Not to say that it's a bad thing to win elections.
00:27:08.960And we had a great result in Virginia the other day.
00:27:12.380But I think it's important to note that winning elections can only get you so far if you have the security apparatus against you.
00:27:21.260And I think that the story of the Trump administration illustrates that very well, is that you can have the people on your side.
00:27:31.720But if every major institution is against you, there's only so much you can accomplish, and especially when the national security state is against you.
00:27:40.320When you have organizations like the FBI, Army counterintelligence, and so forth, looking at right wing groups as national security targets to infiltrate and to set up, that is a profound political bottleneck that is not captured in this kind of narrow focus on winning elections.
00:28:00.660So I've been inclined to say that unless and until we bring this national security bureaucracy to heel and back within its appropriate place, pretty much all of electoral politics will be fake and performative because it will run up on this bottleneck.
00:28:20.720And because there's this feeling of being so alone and helpless when you recognize the institutions that are right against you, there's this strong urge to just kind of suck on electoral victories like a pacifier and to pretend that this is the answer to it.
00:28:39.860But the answer, I think, it needs to be much more robust, much more difficult.
00:28:44.040It requires narrative focus, which I think I'm very happy that our reporting has provided some narrative focus.
00:28:54.740But the solution is much more difficult than simply, oh, we need to win the next election because, yeah.
00:29:02.460So let's go to the solution after we talk about the issue.
00:29:46.160And and then we I'm not sure if we got the bad guys.
00:29:49.960I know we I know we've got a lot of grandmas, but I'm not sure if we got the bad guys.
00:29:54.220That's pretty much the narrative that I think you would hear from the average person that, you know, is middle of the ground or leaning right.
00:30:18.260Right. Well, some of it, some of it is true.
00:30:21.220I think the the general truth about the people that you see in the footage and everything is that there were people there for Trump rally, that there were some things that the Capitol Police did that sort of incited the energy of the crowd unnecessarily.
00:30:38.720And a lot of people got caught up in sort of crowd psychology that was, I think, ginned up by various provocateurs, which we can get to.
00:30:47.820But people did get caught up in the crowd psychology.
00:30:51.480In many cases, the doors at the Capitol were open.
00:30:54.820And so all of these factors combined, you get what you see.
00:30:58.980The notion that any of the criminal activity on one six elevates anywhere near nine eleven, which is now the preferred comparison in the government and the regime media is totally absurd.
00:31:15.180The only person killed in cold blood was a Trump supporter veteran called Ashley Babbitt.
00:31:20.500So so in that respect, that's basically what the narrative is.
00:31:26.580As for the infiltration, that's a very specific subgroup.
00:31:32.640And that involves some of the militia organizations that, as you'll note in the reporting on one six, it's the militia groups that did this, quote unquote, military stack.
00:31:43.680And which was, you know, not very impressive in the first place.
00:31:47.540But there is a very narrow group of sort of militias that are being charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
00:31:58.560The Oath Keeper militia group specifically is the most prosecuted group associated with one six.
00:32:03.820And when you look at the militia groups, especially at the leadership level, that's when it starts to get very suspicious as to what role did the feds play.
00:32:14.780And as I mentioned, in the very first Revolver's thesis piece presenting this, we looked at the charging documents related to the militia groups.
00:32:28.960The people referenced in those charging documents who were occupied a more senior position than those people charged, whose behavior is more egregious than the people charged.
00:32:41.300They're referenced, but they're not indicted.
00:32:43.980And so we said, here's a real question that the feds have to answer.
00:32:48.940How do you account for the selective non-prosecution of more senior militia members who, if the other people are indicted, they're doing just as much, if not more?
00:33:00.860And in a follow-up piece, we zeroed in on a very specific person.
00:33:04.800That is Stuart Rhodes, who's the founder and head of the Oath Keepers.
00:33:08.220And we pointed out the extraordinary degree of federal protection that he seems to enjoy, that is very difficult to provide an innocent explanation for.
00:33:23.120But this is, this is, I think, an important part of the story.
00:33:28.640And there are two sort of narrative possibilities.
00:33:33.560When Klobuchar, Senator Klobuchar, asked FBI Director Wray, she said, don't you just kick yourself that you didn't have any informants in there and you just weren't ready?
00:33:56.220She said, don't you kick yourself that you didn't have?
00:33:59.160Well, now we know for a fact that they did have.
00:34:01.920In fact, there was a New York Times piece that came out essentially vindicating some of our original reporting at Revolver News.
00:34:08.940And the New York Times piece talked about a proud boy who was in the Capitol that day texting his FBI handler contemporaneously throughout the entire day.
00:34:21.040Now, it's one thing if the feds had informants.
00:34:24.860What that means is that the feds would have been informed in advance and they simply, for whatever reason, decided to do nothing to provide the requisite security to prevent it.
00:34:36.000So they sit back and just let it happen on purpose, presumably for political reasons.
00:34:42.360But there's an even darker possibility, which I think the evidence points to strongly, which is more than just that they were informed and they did nothing.
00:34:51.100But some of the key, most proactive players in some of the most egregious elements of 1-6 were actually government affiliated or government people.
00:35:03.700And that is to say there's a distinction between the government knowing in advance and doing nothing and the government taking a more proactive participatory role in inciting the event.
00:35:15.400And the latter category is precisely what we saw happened in Michigan.
00:35:19.960And I think it's also what we see in 1-6.
00:35:25.560Well, that would explain why they did nothing.
00:35:37.040Now, what I do know is that there is in the mountains of documentary footage and all the video that exists related to 1-6, there's footage of one person who explicitly and repeatedly calls for going into the Capitol the evening before.
00:35:59.460And this is not just some random crazy in the crowd who comes up with an idea, you know, maybe on drugs and say, oh, let's go into the Capitol, guys, and then that's it.
00:36:55.940It was a veritable where's Waldo situation.
00:36:59.400On the 6th, he is literally everywhere, all sides of the Capitol seeming to persist with his Michigan, directing people to the Capitol, saying we need to go into the Capitol.
00:37:15.220And then, remarkably, but not surprisingly, given his past statements, the very first breach of the Capitol grounds, the barriers, which occurred as Trump was speaking.
00:37:26.920It's important to point out, this was before the main crowd went to the Capitol at all.
00:37:32.380There were people by those barriers who broke them down.
00:37:34.940And the very first breach of the Capitol grounds a guy called Ryan Samsell, who's in jail and has been persecuted in jail under pretty horrible conditions.
00:37:48.560But he was the guy who first broke down the fence.
00:37:53.360And Ray Epps was standing right by him and whispered in his ear two seconds before he breaks down the barrier.
00:38:08.800Initially, the FBI put his face on its 20 most wanted people for January 6th.
00:38:14.720They said they did their whole spiel where they say, we need the public's help in identifying this man.
00:38:20.800The Internet, being the remarkable sort of crowdsourced research tool that it is, came up with his identity within days.
00:38:28.980The feds did nothing with it, just crickets.
00:38:31.420Until finally, like four months later, the day after Revolver News ran its piece on Oathkeeper founder and leader Stuart Rhodes, the day after that, the FBI quietly scrubbed Ray Epps' face from its most wanted database.
00:38:47.920And ever since then, they've had nothing to say about this guy, who, of all people, from the video evidence seems to be if there's anyone who's one of the main orchestrators of the initial breach, it's this guy.
00:39:02.680And he is riding around in the golf cart by his ranch.
00:39:06.520And other people, the grandmas, are rotting away in Abu Ghraib style conditions in D.C. prisons.
00:39:48.140He it looks like he was there to do a job and he was focused on that job.
00:39:53.220He had a natural kind of command over the crowds.
00:39:56.360It's remarkable how he's just standing there saying people go here, people go there.
00:40:00.300People listen to him because he seems like a he has an authoritative presence in that respect.
00:40:07.760But he was very focused, very cool, very detached and professional, which, again, I think is a big red flag.
00:40:14.120Because one of the things that you typically see in provocateurs is this bizarre, this kind of bizarre combination of emotional detachment with kind of radical suggestions.
00:40:27.420Whereas there are a lot of people who got emotionally kind of wrapped up in in the event and they were not cool and detached.
00:40:35.480And whereas he was so, you know, cool as a cucumber, let's go into the Capitol, radical suggestions combined with a detached demeanor.
00:40:45.900So that's another interesting thing about him.
00:40:48.540Another thing which might explain why the FBI decided to scrub his face the day after the Revolver News report on Oath Keeper Stuart Rhodes is that he is a former president of the Arizona chapter of the Oath Keepers.
00:41:11.140And in our piece, we present all kinds of footage from the past of him palling around with Stuart Rhodes and such, his former boss, his former Oath Keeper boss.
00:41:21.920So that's also an interesting thing about him.
00:41:25.520And that's that's basically that's basically it.
00:41:30.040All right. So, I mean, we had a nationwide search.
00:42:08.180Now, there's a possibility that they questioned him and he agreed to kind of cooperate.
00:42:13.040And that's why they're not touching him.
00:42:14.820I don't find that explanation terribly persuasive simply because of the seemingly professional,
00:42:21.980professional, provocative role that he played on January 5th and January 6th.
00:42:27.800And the fact that in my judgment, looking at the footage of him, he appears to be the one of the primary orchestrators of the initial breach.
00:44:11.320He's someone who Stuart Rhodes met at a at a some kind of political rally before and they got to talking.
00:44:21.940And basically, that's how Caldwell got wrapped up in it.
00:44:24.980He's a 60 year old disabled military vet.
00:44:31.540He's not terribly threatening in any capacity, but he's indicted.
00:44:37.520He faces very serious charges, conspiracy charges.
00:44:40.580And the remarkable thing is, if you look at the documents in his charges, the government's case, when they argue for the existence of this conspiracy, rely overwhelmingly to the point of near exclusivity on Stuart Rhodes' statements and actions.
00:45:00.840And again, to give the full account, you have to look at the article or we need more time.
00:45:06.980But if you look at those documents, the government relies overwhelmingly near exclusively on Stuart Rhodes' statements and actions to constitute the conspiracy that they're charging Thomas Caldwell for.
00:45:21.020Which is very strange, because if it were a Rico type situation where they go their way around, guys, yeah, they go up to the little guys to get the big guys.
00:45:32.380They only do that when they don't have enough to go after the big guys.
00:45:36.280Whereas in the case of Rhodes, there's evidence of him trespassing on the Capitol, which is a stupid and trivial charge.
00:45:46.180And if they're as desperate as they claim to be for him, they could have gotten him for that.
00:45:50.980Furthermore, if they're charging Caldwell for this conspiracy and they're using Rhodes' statements and actions to constitute that very conspiracy, they could have, you know, it's very puzzling why they haven't gone after him.
00:46:05.920And perhaps even more puzzling than the fact that Stuart Rhodes, after eight or nine months, remains unindicted while a lot of the underlings and fellow travelers remain indicted, is the fact that Rhodes hasn't even been properly searched.
00:46:22.160So a lot of people, even people who aren't charged with 1-6 related things, people who have the remotest association with it, have received the full kitchen sink treatment by the FBI in terms of the feds going to people's houses, knocking down the door.
00:46:42.980Yeah, I know a couple in Alaska that, you know, early in the morning while they're laying in bed, they come knocking on the door and throw them down.
00:47:07.200And that's the treatment that people get who aren't even charged.
00:47:10.160The feds are just saying, oh, they might have communications with people who that we might want to charge.
00:47:15.620And yet in the case of Stuart Rhodes, whose phone calls are everywhere in the charging documents, who's the founder and head of the most prosecuted group associated with 1-6, the extent of the search that they conducted on him was they took a single cell phone from him when he was in his car four months after January 6th.
00:47:48.440But I would offer a possible explanation.
00:47:52.320And that is this, that they don't want his electronic communications, because as we saw in the story of New York Times story of this proud boy in the Capitol texting his FBI handler.
00:48:05.320And as we saw in the Michigan case, one of the key informants basically got outed because of a leaked text message between the informant and the handler.
00:48:15.680The feds don't want the electronic evidence because there's something called the Brady rule that obliges the prosecution and the government to hand over all potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense.
00:48:31.620And that would certainly include evidence regarding informants and undercover agents.
00:48:36.620So if, if it is the case that Rhodes has some type of undisclosed relationship with the feds, they would have every incentive not to collect his electronics, give him four months to dispose of whatever kind of incriminating communications he might have.
00:48:54.700And then do just a total, just total performance art type search where they take a single cell phone four months after.
00:49:04.980And even in that case, according to a lawyer for, for Rhodes, she suggested that that search pertained to their investigation into someone else.
00:49:15.180So that may not even be an investigation to Rhodes.
00:49:17.780And yet all of the left wing media, all of the mainstream media, they're the ones now who want to trust the authorities.
00:49:26.180They're saying any minute now, any minute now they're going to get Rhodes because he's the big bad orchestrator of the whole thing any minute now.
00:49:33.940And they're just afflicted with this profound cognitive dissonance because the most parsimonious and persuasive explanation for why he enjoys such federal protection is not one that these mainstream and left wing journalists want to entertain.
00:49:50.000Because then they'd have to acknowledge that they are serving these powerful and corrupt institutions rather than challenging them.
00:49:57.660And that this whole narrative that's been set up not just to throw grandmas in prison for trivial offenses, but in a larger sense, the whole narrative that's been set up to cast over 70 million Americans as domestic terrorists for their political beliefs, that that whole narrative is based on not just a lie, but a malicious lie and a malicious scheme by their own government.
00:50:24.340The very national security institutions that want to prosecute this false domestic war and terror were responsible for setting up the false narrative in the first place.
00:50:36.780This is so crazy. I mean, this is the Reichstag fire.
00:50:40.780And I think we found out, didn't we find out in the end that it was the the communists that said it, but it could very well have been, you know, the Nazis who said it and blamed it.
00:50:52.060I remember on January 6th, when this was happening before the break in before the speech, I said, if you're going, please watch who you're standing next to.
00:51:02.000I mean, this just feels like the perfect opportunity to have a Reichstag fire.
00:51:07.680When I first when I first saw it, it didn't seem to me that it was.
00:51:12.620I mean, I've been around conservatives for a very long time.
00:51:17.440They're not the ones that burn up the Capitol, you know what I mean?
00:51:21.620Right. And there's yeah, there's a remarkable record of of all the Trump rallies.
00:51:29.200How many of there have been riots like zero? Right.
00:51:32.060And that's and that's why it was so obvious when someone like Ray Epps said we need to go into the Capitol.
00:51:38.620It was so obvious that he wasn't part of the group.
00:51:42.120And and that's why people literally started chanting Fed, Fed, Fed after he said that, because it was so out of keeping with the ordinary conduct of of those Trump supporters, of those, you know, Americans who just wanted to express their beliefs peacefully in a an organized demonstration.
00:52:02.820So. So. So. So let me go back to because you've you've made this point a couple of times that the prison situation or the jail situation is atrocious.
00:52:13.500Right. You can't hear this except from one of their attorneys.
00:52:19.280You know, there's Congress just said, hey, you got to go look.
00:52:23.620And they came back and said, oh, no, there's nothing bad there.
00:52:26.500It's it's fine. Other parts of the jail are worse.
00:52:30.660But they're part of the jail seem to be OK.
00:52:34.220What's the truth on how these people are being held?
00:52:38.100Well, this is a subject on which I'm, you know, I've taken an interest, but I can't claim to be a subject matter expert.
00:52:44.680And there's a great reporter who sort of my partner, comrade in reporting this called Julie Kelly.
00:52:55.680And she's an expert on the conditions in these prisons, which I can only say from what I've what I've read are really atrocious.
00:53:05.460There are people being held in solitary confinement.
00:53:07.860There are people in all types of horrible conditions.
00:53:10.360There's, you know, mold and, you know, a lot of these people are old and they're not in a position health wise to to live under these kind of squalid and difficult conditions.
00:53:22.540And there are some cases of direct physical abuse on the part of guards.
00:53:27.460In fact, Ryan Samsell, the person who allegedly is the first person to break the barrier after Ray Epps whispered in his ear two seconds before he was beaten up by guards.
00:53:43.660And I find his case actually very interesting because, first of all, he knows what Ray Epps whispered in his ear.
00:53:59.260I think he's someone who is just kind of foolish and suggestible, who did something very stupid and unstable.
00:54:07.700Uh, that doesn't mean he deserves to be brutalized by prison guards, but, um, he certainly would know what Ray Epps said, and he might have more insight into the other people who are orchestrating the initial breach.
00:54:22.600And it could be an intimidation factor.
00:54:25.920It could be why they're beating him up because they say, look, you know, if you, if you go public with what you might or might not know about Ray Epps or these other people, you're going to have hell to pay.
00:54:38.200And additionally, it's interesting that whereas all these other people, the government prefers to charge like multiple charges with conspiracy charges.
00:54:48.140Samsell is charged as a standalone case.
00:54:52.600Which also doesn't make any sense because there was like coordinated activity leading to that initial breach.
00:54:59.800So why in so many other cases, including the Oath Keepers cases, they charge a bunch of people in conspiracy and they hit this guy with standalone cases.
00:55:08.440It seems like they're deliberately constructing things so as to cordon him off from the other people that he was coordinating and communicating with leading up to that initial breach in order possibly to protect, uh, people like Ray Epps.
00:55:22.600So is there such a thing as a fair trial here?
00:55:26.580Is there, is there such a thing as getting to the bottom of this?
00:55:31.800Well, those are two different questions.
00:55:33.840Um, I hope that there's a possibility of a fair trial.
00:55:37.100There's, it's, it's a dubious prospect, um, in DC, that's for sure.
00:55:46.880In some cases, these people have, um, incompetent, uh, legal counsel.
00:55:52.760And in some cases it might even be worse than incompetence, uh, which is something I'm looking into, but is too speculative at this point to go into greater detail.
00:56:03.400Um, but as for, will the truth come out?
00:56:07.720Well, I did mention a, uh, this thing called the Brady rule.
00:56:12.040And, and that does oblige the government to hand over potentially a sculptatory information that could involve information about informants.
00:56:20.320In the Michigan case, the lead defense counsel in that case, I believe his name is, uh, Blanchard, has made this a key part of the defense strategy to point out the extent of infiltration and the nature of what the informants were doing.
00:56:40.180It's one thing if it's just, they have informants passively sitting around.
00:56:43.880It's another, if the informants provide such proactive support for the plan that it wouldn't have happened had it not been for the feds involvement.
00:56:54.120And it looks like that's the case in Michigan and that's become a key part of the defense strategy.
00:57:00.400I think similarly, the defense counsel in the one six cases, they need to get up to speed.
00:57:09.480They need to take some cues from the Michigan case and they need to make the infiltration, the federal involvement in one six, a key part of their defense strategy.
00:57:20.320I think that will help their, uh, uh, their, their, their, uh, the defendants and also will help the American public get the full truth or at least a fuller truth about exactly what happened on that day.
00:57:44.560I, I, I would imagine that if the tapes were made available, you'd see a lot more interest instances of, uh, provocateur type activity.
00:57:54.280I think even more so you'll see instances of, uh, maybe, uh, Capitol police officers letting people in the building and so forth.
00:58:03.480And that would discredit the narrative that people are just bashing, bashing in and going in.
00:58:09.120Most people went in when it was already, uh, inviting them with, with open doors.
00:58:14.100And as for the people who are bashing down the windows and so forth, they appear to be coordinated and they're dressed all in black.
00:58:23.200And we still don't know who these people are.
00:58:25.260And I suspect that maybe the government has footage of that type of activity that they don't want the public to have.
00:58:32.840So, um, so those are just some possible reasons.
00:58:37.380In the, in the, in the aftermath, we had, um, uh, we had the Capitol police go silent with the police officer that shot, which is bizarre.
00:58:49.740Cause you know, the name of the police officer within five minutes of a discharge of a gun in almost all cases.
00:58:55.580Um, and then you had the, uh, the, uh, Nancy Pelosi authorize the Capitol police to get, uh, Pentagon equipment to become an intelligence agency and listen and track people in DC.
00:59:47.960Um, it's, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's very bizarre.
00:59:51.940Um, it's, it's disturbing that that would happen to any kind of, um, sort of enforcement organization, the kind of militarization that you see,
01:00:02.160especially when the militarization now is basically pointed at 70 plus million Americans who happen to object to the direction of the,
01:00:34.700Any of the stuff that happened on January 6th?
01:00:39.080Well, I mean, he gave, he gave a speech, but I think that's entirely, uh, appropriate as a speech.
01:00:45.380I wish that he would, um, uh, lend his voice toward the narrative of potential FBI involvement, potential government involvement.
01:00:55.820And just generally, um, I would say, I wish he had taken a kind of more active role in, uh, expressing concern for the people who have been, uh, unjustly, uh, prosecuted, uh, as a result of, uh, 1-6.
01:01:12.980As for the kind of the idea that, uh, Trump was sort of incited or is part of the conspiracy, I think that's very far-fetched and ridiculous.
01:01:22.620But I will point out that it's, it's an interesting tie-in that the head of the January 6th commission in Congress, his name is, uh, Benny Thompson.
01:01:33.720Now, Benny Thompson, in his personal private capacity, uh, initiated a lawsuit against Donald Trump, against Roger Stone, against the Proud Boys, and against the Oath Keepers.
01:01:51.720And in this lawsuit, he presents his own theory of the case.
01:01:57.180And in this theory of the case, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were coordinating with Trump's inner circle to plan this riot in advance, which I think is fairly ridiculous.
01:02:11.280But what's interesting about this is that the Oath Keepers appear, they're, there's, they have a star role in Benny Thompson's personal lawsuit presenting his theory of the case.
01:02:24.420And he even sent this, uh, lawsuit to Rhodes to notify him of it and had like a big, you know, bold letters, attention, Stuart Rhodes.
01:02:34.660Now, Benny Thompson is the chair of the 1-6 commission, and he hasn't said a word about Stuart Rhodes.
01:02:44.320He's just as uninterested in Stuart Rhodes' communications as the FBI and government are.
01:02:51.180And, and the commission is demanding the communications record of seemingly anyone who set foot in the Capitol within a month of 1-6, everyone except for Rhodes.
01:03:01.720So I just think that's an additional detail that's quite remarkable that the head of the commission did a lawsuit presenting a theory of the case in which Stuart Rhodes takes a key role.
01:03:14.500And now that this guy runs the entire January 6th commission, he's expressed zero interest in Stuart Rhodes.
01:03:21.500So, uh, so, so tell me, you, you said earlier that maybe that, you know, that we had, uh, we had a way out, uh, that you had some suggestions on what could be done.
01:03:35.920Well, um, there are some, uh, historical precedents for bringing the national security state to heal.
01:03:42.840I think we're somewhat, uh, uh, uh, at a distance from being able to achieve this in the same way, but we should focus our efforts toward that end.
01:03:54.800There is something called the church committee that you might recall, uh, that was, uh, set up a big kind of congressional commission that, uh, basically detailed the, uh, excesses and abuses of the intelligence community, the CIA, the FBI,
01:04:10.700and attempted with some degree of success to bring them back under the kind of fold for a little while of appropriate democratic control.
01:04:20.600Um, I think for various reasons, it would be difficult to replicate that now, but I think it should be a focus.
01:04:29.620And I think people on the right should understand the, uh, corruption and abuses and basically the current configuration of the national security state as the predominant bottleneck to any kind of true political victory can win elections.
01:04:51.040You can have electoral victories, but you won't have political victories until this national security bottleneck is somehow addressed.
01:05:00.860And the first step of that, I think is, um, delegitimizing these, uh, institutions in the eyes of the right, because they still maintain a certain degree of implicit, uh, authority.
01:05:14.900And it's very important that they be exposed for what they are and their corrupt activities be exposed.
01:05:22.380And I think it ultimately, it does matter.
01:05:25.040It doesn't get us everywhere, but it does matter if these institutions are no longer viewed as essentially legitimate by the 70 plus million people that they've effectively declared war upon.
01:05:39.180And from there, I think there needs to be a real political focus.
01:05:44.460There's such a kind of phantasmagoria of the news cycle.
01:05:50.000There's a certain kind of ADD element of how conservatives process media.
01:06:29.820Like this narrative wasn't supposed to get out of Pandora's box.
01:06:33.980We're still supposed to be disjointedly talking about, oh, there were Antifa there.
01:06:39.160It wasn't supposed to get to the stage where now every major conservative populist, uh, uh, person in the country is talking about this narrative, including, you know, including you and a lot of other very major voices in the, uh, uh, in the conservative media space.
01:06:58.900It wasn't supposed to develop like this.
01:07:39.880Even though it, even though it's, it's not, I mean, we, we, um, I guess we just need to find out.
01:07:48.880You know, who these guys really are, how, how did, you know, how did they, how did Ray Epps get rolled up into this?
01:08:02.240Well, that's a very interesting question.
01:08:04.260And there's a broader history and context to this.
01:08:07.200And I'm glad, I'm glad you mentioned that, um, that in fact, the, uh, government began its sort of robust infiltration efforts,
01:08:17.640specifically into right-wing militia groups that all kicked off in earnest in the early nineties.
01:08:23.740Now, I think it's important to mention in this context that this is not Merrick Garland's first rodeo.
01:08:30.760In fact, in the early nineties, Merrick Garland was working for the DOJ and the Clinton administration and his portfolio was the domestic extremism portfolio.
01:08:42.800He was in charge right around with that first major infiltration operation called PATCON.
01:08:49.760That, that, that led in, led, led into Oklahoma city.
01:08:52.840And I think part of the reason that the government and the regime media, they're freaking out so much about, uh, this kind of, uh, revolver news narrative of one six is not just for what it exposes about one six, which is huge enough.
01:09:10.340But once people see that they're going to start saying, what other events have we been?
01:09:16.720I saw one this, I saw one this morning about Timothy McVeigh.
01:09:19.620Cause you remember that there, there was a third man that no, I mean, tons of witnesses saw.
01:09:33.680I'm not, uh, uh, ready to report on it fully.
01:09:37.240There's been a lot of reporting out, you know, going back to nineties, but I think the public is now just starting to get prepared to hear the full truth about these things.
01:09:48.800There's so many dark details about Oklahoma city.
01:09:53.740And it's no coincidence that Merrick Garland was one of the key hatchet men was one of the key janitor cleanup guys for this event.
01:10:03.920And they're getting the old band back together.
01:10:07.260Now Merrick Garland is head of the justice department, just as the government is kicking off, it's new and improved and perhaps even more aggressive, uh, domestic war on terror to address the threat posed to the corrupt elements of government.
01:10:25.920By the resurgence of a kind of, uh, uh, populist, uh, element, uh, within the American politics.
01:10:46.700So can I ask you just real quick and we'll have you back on, um, you know, a later date for an update, but also I'd like to talk to you about this.
01:10:53.340Are you familiar with Alexander Dugan?
01:11:01.400Where do you, what do, what are your thoughts on that?
01:11:05.160Well, that's, that's not something that I really have the expertise on.
01:11:10.060As I mentioned, I'm, uh, uh, political, uh, theorist by former profession.
01:11:16.020Um, and I wrote my dissertation on a German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who is someone that Dugan has, uh, commented on and wrote a book on.
01:11:30.700Um, other parts of it, I would critique.
01:11:34.280Uh, Dugan is kind of an interesting, uh, interesting voice in sort of interpreting this, uh, transitional phase that we find ourselves in geopolitically.
01:11:44.460Uh, in, uh, but, um, uh, that's pretty much, that's pretty much all I would say in generic terms.
01:11:54.840But if you have this, what specifically about the fourth political theory, are you, um, the way that, um, uh, the language that he uses is very appealing, uh, to people who feel like a lot of conservatives do right now.
01:12:14.260Um, you know, they, they're, they're, they've lost something.
01:12:18.420They're being told their country is no good.
01:12:20.380They're, uh, told that they're no good, et cetera, et cetera.
01:13:17.940And I, I guess what I would say that's not specific to Dugan, but because Dugan can kind of be thought of as a sort of political philosophical archetype for sort of, uh, Eurasia or Eurasianism as a, an alternative to America.
01:13:40.480I think that, um, we really need, and especially with the rise of, uh, of China, which is in some ways involved with that.
01:13:49.580Although the relationship between Russia and China is a very complicated one and not necessarily configures to, uh, the presentation that Dugan gives.
01:13:59.300But just to keep it, uh, uh, generic, I would say that the rise of China is a very important thing going on right now.
01:14:14.360And it's important not simply as to say, oh, we need to demonize the Chinese and point to all of their abuses.
01:14:21.420I think the, uh, uh, dissipation of America's prestige is something that should really give us pause and not occasion us necessarily to criticize our rivals, but to use it as a mirror to hold up to ourselves.
01:14:45.540Because, um, it is going to be the case that if we are no longer a serious country, which I think we've become largely a joke country, not only a joke, but an evil country.
01:15:04.520It represents disseminating the very woke poison that we inflict on our own domestic population and the rest of the world is going to be just as tired of it as a lot of us are.
01:15:19.000But unlike the conservatives who are relatively impotent politically within the United States to challenge the dominant American regime, there are going to be major competitors with real self-sufficiency that present legitimate alternatives to the woke prison that the United States has become.
01:15:41.220And so, uh, and so, uh, and I, and I, I, I think that in certain ways, multi polarity geopolitically is something to be cautiously welcomed because I view China certainly not as a free nation, but I don't view the United States as a free nation either.
01:16:03.680And I would rather have competing authoritarian regimes with different taboos than a one world situation with the same taboos.
01:16:14.560And for all of China's faults, you can, there's actually a popular tweet that I had, um, Senator Marshall Blackburn tweeted a photo of Winnie the Pooh saying, look how free we are in America that I can tweet Winnie the Pooh.
01:16:31.920Whereas in China, it's an insult to President Xi, so you can't do that.
01:16:37.220Look at me, I'm showing how we have free speech in the United States by tweeting Winnie the Pooh.
01:16:55.920And I think increasingly, one thing that people on the right, especially if they're labeled as dissidents by their own government, will take advantage of is something that I call taboo arbitrage, which is basically taking advantage of the fact that there are different taboos in different parts of the world.
01:17:17.560And in fact, it sounds crazy, but it might be the case that in the future, professors who are fired for violating the diktat of wokeness in the U.S. will be hired at Chinese universities.
01:17:36.660I think, again, we want to be in a position where we say America is the best, America is the freest, but we're kidding ourselves if we're there.
01:17:44.780And we should look at the rise and the increasing competence of countries like China, not as an occasion to just saber rattle and say how bad they are, but to honestly look at ourselves and say, are we really going in the direction where we're going to be capable of controlling the 21st century?
01:18:06.020And are we going to be deserving of controlling the 21st century?
01:18:10.260And I think the answer to both of those questions at this point is a resounding no.
01:18:17.920I have said for a long time, if we don't face up to our past and we also don't stop this spin away from, you know, the founding principles,
01:18:34.280we're going to we're going to make the Germans look like rookies.
01:18:38.260I mean, our technology alone could enslave the entire world.
01:18:42.020And if it's not us, it's going to be China and we'll be in bed with them.
01:18:46.140I mean, we're doing some really frightening things that I never expected my country to be involved in.
01:20:16.480But unfortunately, it doesn't even seem like Afghanistan is enough.
01:20:22.140It might require something even more humiliating before we really say, like, wow, we need a profound course correction in this country,
01:20:31.060because the hierarchy of taboos and the nature of accountability in the United States of America now
01:20:38.780is such that a general will suffer more severe repercussions if it comes out that 20 years ago he used the N-word than it will if he loses a war.
01:21:23.420Today, we have our president trying to lead the globe in climate change, which is just the Great Reset is the next, I think, slave tactic from the big corporations.
01:21:38.920So thank you so much for being on the program.