Rank and Vile – Stunning Inspector General Report Shows FBI Facilitating Predator Coach Larry Nassar Rape of U.S. Gymnasts – Worse, The FBI Lied to Investigators and Then The DOJ Refused to Prosecute
An absolutely damning Inspector General investigation of FBI conduct in the rape and sexual assault of U.S. Gymnasts reveals how FBI agents facilitated Nassar’s sex crimes by taking no action despite numerous witness statements to them.
Worse yet, the FBI never reported the sexual assaults to local law enforcement… and to top it off, the FBI agents lied during the investigation of their conduct, and the DOJ under AG Bill Barr refused to prosecute the FBI liars.
The entire IG report [Must Read pdf Here] reveals layer-upon-layer of FBI wrongdoing, misconduct and false statements in an effort to cover-up their activity when the internal investigation of their conduct began. This report is a total condemnation of the FBI rank and file. It really is quite stunning.
IG Report Excerpt – […] “The OIG found that, despite the extraordinarily serious nature of the allegations and the possibility that Nassar’s conduct could be continuing, senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations with the utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required, made numerous and fundamental errors when they did respond to them, and violated multiple FBI policies.
The Indianapolis Field Office did not undertake any investigative activity until September 2nd, five weeks after the meeting with USA Gymnastics—when they telephonically interviewed one of the three athletes. Further, FBI Indianapolis never interviewed the other two gymnasts who they were told were available to meet with FBI investigators.
This absence of any serious investigative activity was compounded when the Indianapolis Field Office did not transfer the matter to the FBI office (the Lansing Resident Agency), where venue most likely would have existed had evidence been developed to support the potential federal crimes being considered, even though the Indianapolis office had been advised to do so by the USAO and had told USA Gymnastics that the transfer had occurred.
Additionally, the Indianapolis office did not notify state or local authorities of the sexual assault allegations even though it questioned whether there was federal jurisdiction to pursue them. As a result, the Lansing Resident Agency did not learn of the Nassar allegations until over a year after they were first reported to the FBI and then learned of them only from the MSUPD.
Moreover, the FBI conducted no investigative activity in the matter for more than 8 months following the September 2015 interview. During that period of time, as alleged and detailed in numerous civil complaints, Nassar’s sexual assaults continued.” (read full report)
FBI Response to IG – “As the Inspector General made clear in today’s report, this should not have happened. The FBI will never lose sight of the harm that Nassar’s abuse caused. The actions and inactions of certain FBI employees described in the report are inexcusable and a discredit to this organization. The FBI has taken affirmative steps to ensure and has confirmed that those responsible for the misconduct and breach of trust no longer work FBI matters.
Prior to today, the FBI initiated improvements to make sure that serious allegations, such as these, are promptly shared with our law enforcement partners and within the FBI. As a continuation of these efforts, the FBI is fully committed to implementing all of the recommendations made by the Inspector General.
We will take all necessary steps to ensure that the failures of the employees outlined in the report do not happen again.” (link)
Comment: There will be no fixing the FBI. As I have pointed out before on numerous occasions; between the FBI, CIA & DoJ it is simply a series of events/FF & cover-ups from all parties. This is very serious business & very serious times and a continuation will totally erode the stability, confidence & trust. If indeed trust even exists at this point.
Federal Protection of “Oath Keepers” Kingpin Stewart Rhodes Breaks The Entire Capitol “Insurrection” Lie Wide Open
Hey Republicans, you can crack open the entire story of January 6, 2021 (“1/6”) with one simple, relentless question: what is the FBI and Army Counterintelligence’s relationship with Stewart Rhodes?
Yale Law School ‘04 graduate Elmer “Stewart” Rhodes, III.
Stewart Rhodes is the founder, boss and kingpin of the Oath Keepers.
Whatever the truth of these hyperbolic claims, the fact remains: the Oath Keepers are the most extensively prosecuted paramilitary group alleged to be involved in 1/6. Indeed, it was the alleged “pre-planned assault” on the Capitol by Stewart Rhodes’s alleged Oath Keepers lieutenants that was used as the key talking point to try to convert the day’s events from a protest into an “insurrection.”
But Stewart Rhodes is not simply a key figure in the Oath Keepers. Stewart Rhodes is the Oath Keepers, according to Oath Keepers board member Richard Mack.
Elmer Stewart Rhodes III — a one-time Army paratrooper, disbarred Yale lawyer, constitutionalist, gun enthusiast, and far-right media star — founded the group called the Oath Keepers in 2009. Since then, he has ridden crosscurrents of American anger and strife that ran from scrubby Western deserts to angry urban protests right into the Capitol rotunda.
…
Mack said he and others also raised concerns about the Oath Keepers’ participation in violent protests…
He said it had become clear that the board had no real power. “[Stewart Rhodes] is the Oath Keepers. It’s hard to separate the two,” Mack said. “It’s his organization, and he can do what he wants to do.”
Other dissenting voices found that they were no longer welcome. Jim Arroyo, the vice president of the Arizona chapter, said relations began to fray over Rhodes’ insistence on total control… [Buzzfeed]
WATCH: CHECK OUT DARREN BEATTIE’S LATEST INTERVIEWS
A mere indictment of Stewart Rhodes, today, for the same conspiracy charges alleged against his underlings, would collapse the entire “threat” of the Oath Keepers that the country has heard so much about. From NPR:
Rhodes is the central figure of the organization. He is the founder, leader and center of gravity for the group. In theory, then, an indictment against Rhodes could lead to the group’s collapse.
The Justice Department argues that Stewart Rhodes both substantially organized and activated an imputed plan to use violence, on 1/6, in real-time, through a series of encrypted Signal messages beginning at 1:38 p.m., as Trump concluded his rally speech on the National Mall, and 62 minutes before Oath Keepers lieutenants allegedly formed a “military stack” to rush the Capitol doors.
These facts alone, as alleged, are more than legally sufficient to secure an indictment of Stewart Rhodes. We will walk you through the mountains of direct and circumstantial evidence built on top of these allegations, but readers must understand this: the only reason Stewart Rhodes is not in jail *right now* is because of a deliberate decision by the Justice Department to protect him.
Indeed, it is unclear whether the FBI has even sought to search Stewart Rhodes’s residence, personal belongings, or electronic devices, other than a single iPhone allegedly seized on the streets from agents in unmarked FBI vehicles in late April (since returned). For reasons discussed below, there is good reason to suspect the FBI will pursue a tightly controlled and very limited scope of investigation into Stewart Rhodes,. Beyond that narrow scope, they may not want the information they are likely to find.
Why doesn’t anyone at the FBI or DOJ want him?
If 1/6 was an “insurrection,” why protect the one man who, more than any other individual referenced in the charging documents of the 530+ open criminal cases, comes closest to the media’s ravenous description of a “lead insurrectionist?”
Is it possible that the Oath Keepers, the most prominent antigovernment group in the United States, has been run, in effect, by the United States government itself — and nobody has mentioned it until now?
Revolver News generated tremendous discussion and controversy with our previous piece exploring the possibility that some of the unindicted individuals referred to in the 1/6 charging documents may be undercover agents or informants.
With this piece, we intend to focus this discussion on a single individual, Person One; i.e., Stewart Rhodes — the leader of the Oath Keepers.
If it turns out that Stewart Rhodes has had a relationship with the federal government, the implications would be nothing short of staggering.
For Stewart Rhodes is not just a senior member of the Oath Keepers, he is the Oath Keepers. Given the fact that the Oath Keepers are the major paramilitary organization imputed (by government and media alike) to be responsible for the most serious and egregious elements of the so-called 1/6 insurrection, it follows that it would not only be fair, but necessary to conclude that in an essential respect the 1/6 event was planned and orchestrated by elements of the government itself.
In other words, 1/6 was not the result of an intelligence failure as FBI Director Christopher Wray, the US Senate, and the media tells us. Rather, 1/6 was the result of an intelligence set-up.
The following questions should be shouted from every megaphone, every street corner, and every Congressional lectern until the American people get full and complete answers:
Does the FBI now, or has it ever, maintained a formal or informal relationship or point of contact with Stewart Rhodes, whether directly or indirectly, including through intermediaries?
Do any other Federal counterintelligence equities, whether in military, intelligence or law enforcement, including but not limited to Army Counterintelligence, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), or otherwise, maintain or have they ever maintained a formal or informal relationship with Stewart Rhodes, whether directly or indirectly, including through intermediaries?
If such a confidential relationship did exist between Stewart Rhodes and one or more U.S. counterintelligence equities, how do the FBI and other responsible agencies reconcile the enormous gravity of this omission from their previous deflections, non-answers, and boilerplate that they had “no actionable intelligence” before 1/6?
If such a confidential relationship did exist between Stewart Rhodes and one or more U.S. counterintelligence equities, does this explain the FBI and Justice Department’s failure to pursue criminal actions against Stewart Rhodes in similarly high-profile “right-wing conspiracy plots” in which Rhodes appears to have played a similarly driving role?
More specifically, did the FBI or any other U.S. counterintelligence equities maintain a discrete or confidential relationship with Stewart Rhodes during the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff? Was this fact dispositive in the Justice Department’s decision to charge 19 defendants — including certain of Stewart Rhodes’s alleged Oath Keepers underlings — for conspiracy to obstruct a legal proceeding, and to spare Rhodes of similar charges?
Has the FBI even procured a search warrant for Stewart Rhodes’s personal residence and home electronics? If so, on what dates and what specific categories of evidence were sought?
If Stewart Rhodes is subsequently arrested after the date of this report (given the pressure these revelations are likely to generate), how does the Justice Department explain its failure to indict Stewart Rhodes on conspiracy charges for nearly six months, when its declared purpose for seeking bail denial for simple trespassers was the DOJ’s stated need to prevent “the immediate danger to the community” defendants allegedly posed? Given that multiple Oath Keepers were charged before the January 20th inauguration citing the need to stop their “immediate danger,” why did the DOJ not file immediate charges against Rhodes, and then make a superseding indictment later in time, as is their routine practice in 1/6 cases?
Stewart Rhodes and the “Shock and Awe” Standard
Before we turn to Stewart Rhodes’ statements and behavior leading up to and during 1/6, it is important to keep in mind the so-called “shock and awe” standard of prosecution applied to those actually indicted for 1/6 related crimes.
Lead 1/6 prosecutor Michael Sherwin explains this “Shock and Awe” standard in his own words:https://www.youtube.com/embed/FoAqWnD7NTI?start=221&feature=oembed
Here is a partial transcript of Shwerin’s interview above:
Sherwin: I wanted to ensure, and our office wanted to ensure, that there was shock and awe. That we could charge as many people as possible before [January] 20th. And it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C., because they were like, ‘If we go there, we’re going to get charged.’
…
We wanted to take out those individuals who were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did…
Narrator:Sherwin told us that the most serious cases so far focus on about two dozen members of far right militias.
In this article we focus our scrutiny and our suspicion on one individual, Person One, otherwise known as Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the paramilitary Oath Keepers group. In keeping with the structure of our previous report, we will examine the as-of-yet unindicted Mr. Rhodes’ actions and statements in light of the Shock and Awe standard of prosecution described above.
It is essential here to make an important note of clarification. The purpose of this analysis here is not to aid in the prosecution of any of these unindicted co-conspirators. Rather, our aim is to point out that, given the standards of indictment applied to those actually indicted, it is very strange and indeed suspicious that certain unindicted co-conspirators have managed to avoid indictment. This does not necessarily mean that we approve of the standard of indictment itself. Quite the contrary, the aggressive standard of indictment and prosecution, through an unimaginably broad application of “conspiracy” charges, is immoral, unjust, and absurd.
The same applies to this piece, and to Mr. Rhodes himself. Revolver harbors no ill-will toward Mr. Rhodes and we are not interested in calling for his indictment. Our interest in Mr. Rhodes is limited solely to our interest in the question of Federal foreknowledge of and possible involvement in the events of 1/6.
Finally, to get a more concrete sense of what the Shock and Awe prosecutorial standard looks like in practice, we once more offer the case of George Tanios. Though in truth we could just as easily have picked one of the several hundreds of political prisoners being detained and subjected to third-world level abuse in prison.
Readers may recall from an earlier Revolver report that George Tanios and his companion Julian Khater have been charged with nine criminal counts for actions taken on 1/6 just outside the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.
The most serious charge was assault on an officer with a dangerous weapon, arising from Khater’s alleged use of Tanios’s chemical spray to tag Officer Sicknick and two other officers in the face.
There, Tanios: (1) did not go in the Capitol; (2) did not use any bear spray himself; (3) had bear spray in his backpack and when his buddy Khater reached in to take it out, Tanios actively tried to stop him; and (4) in the end, it turns out, as prosecutors now acknowledge, his buddy never even used the bear spray.
And still, the DOJ has slapped this 39-year-old sandwich shop owner, George Tanios, with 60 years worth of stacking “conspiracy” charges because he said, “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet.”
As we proceed to consider the case of still unindicted Stewart Rhodes, keep in mind this George Tanios “Shock and Awe” standard of prosecution.
Stewart Rhodes’s Alleged Overt Acts
We will now chronicle Stewart Rhodes’s path from Election Day to so-called “Insurrection Day,” as alleged by the Justice Department.
The first cited event comes from a November 9th video conference on the platform GoToMeeting. According to the Oath Keepers indictment, Rhodes (Person One) said the following to his Oath Keeper followers in the meeting:
We’re going to defend the president, the duly elected president, and we call on him to do what needs to be done to save our country. Because if you don’t guys, you’re going to be in a bloody, bloody civil war, and a bloody – you can call it an insurrection or you can call it a war or fight.
The DOJ alleges that Rhodes (Person One) “called upon his followers to go to Washington D.C,” in order to let the President know “the people are behind him” and to prepare for, among other things, fights against Antifa:
PERSON ONE told his followers they needed to be prepared to fight Antifa, which he characterized as a group of individuals with whom “if the fight comes, let the fight come. Let Antifa – if they go kinetic on us, then we’ll go kinetic back on them. I’m willing to sacrifice myself for that. Let the fight start there. That will give President Trump what he needs, frankly. If things go kinetic, good. If they throw bombs at us and shoot us, great, because that brings the president his reason and rationale for dropping the Insurrection Act.
Talk of the “Insurrection Act” is commonplace in Rhodes’ communications with his Oath Keepers followers. What he seemed to convey is that the Oath Keepers should be primed for an insurrection and to stand-by armed, just in case Trump offered some (undefined) signal. This of course is an effective technique (common to agents provocateurs and other informants) to keep followers psychologically primed for violent action without making any explicit and direct command to do so. From the DOJ:
PERSON ONE continued, “I do want some Oath Keepers to stay on the outside, and to stay fully armed and prepared to go in armed, if they have to . . . . So our posture’s gonna be that we’re posted outside of DC, um, awaiting the President’s orders. . . . We hope he will give us the orders. We want him to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia.”
One week after Election Day, in a November 10 public post on OathKeepers.org, Rhodes told his followers to ignore “D.C.’s ridiculous anti-gun laws” should they perceive a signal that President Trump has called them up as a militia:
Our men will be standing by, awaiting the President’s orders to call us up as the militia, which would override D.C.’s ridiculous anti-gun laws (by federal statute, all Americans from age 17-45 are subject to being called up as the militia by the President, and all military veterans are subject to being called up until age 65 because of our training and experience). – Stay tuned for further details.
Rhodes further primed his followers for the possibility of major conflict, assuring them that “skilled special warfare veterans” will be “standing by armed, just outside D.C., as an emergency QRF” to step in with heavy weaponry, if necessary:
Oath Keepers will also have some of our most skilled special warfare veterans standing by armed, just outside D.C., as an emergency QRF in the event of a worst case scenario in D.C…
Reading this, one sees how Stewart Rhodes’ actions and behavior feed into the very worst narratives about 1/6 — narratives used to smear all patriots who participated in the event, and even all Trump supporters more broadly.
The situation looks even worse once one understands what exactly a “QRF” or “Quick Reaction Force” does.
In its proper military context, a Quick Reaction Force refers to a military unit that carries bombs, explosives and firearms around in cars, trucks or mobile units to enter violent situations with heavy weaponry:
Rhodes does not explicitly talk about his planned QRF comprised of “skilled special warfare veterans standing by armed” also having explosives. But explosives are both a common feature of QRFs in a military sense, and in fact Rhodes’s alleged Ohio Oath Keeper underling, the bar owner Jessica Watkins, was said to have had bomb-making instructions somewhere, whether physical or on a computer, when police arrested her.
What we know is this: Jessica Watkins was arrested on January 19. Stewart Rhodes is still a free man.
In that same November 10 public post referenced above, Stewart Rhodes concluded his message to his followers with a note from a “friend from Serbia” indicating “WHAT WE THE PEOPLE MUST DO.” This message, among other things, included calls to “gather in the capital,” “storm the Parliament” and engage in “complete disobedience” even though “I know, not nice, but it must be done.” And in so proceeding, the message assures, “no barricades will be strong enough to stop them, nor the police determined enough to stop them.”
On December 6, 2020, less than a month before 1/6, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes said the following:
Show the world who the traitors are, and then use the Insurrection Act to drop the hammer on them. And all of us veterans who swore that oath–until you’re age 65, you can be called up as the militia to support and defend the Constitution. He [President Trump] needs to know from you that you are with him, [and] that if [Trump] does not do it now while he is commander in chief, we’re going to have to do it ourselves later, in a much more desperate, much more bloody war. Let’s get it on now–while he is still the commander in chief.
Strike now. If you [President Trump] fail to act while you are still in office, we the people will have to fight a bloody civil war and revolution against these two illegitimate Communist China puppets, and their illegitimate regime, with all of the powers of the deep state behind them, with nominal command of all the might of our armed forces (though we fully expect many units or entire branches to refuse their orders and to fight against them)…
If you [President Trump] fail to do so, we the people will have to fight a bloody revolution/civil war…
In case any of his followers may have missed it, on December 23, 2020, Rhodes continued yet again with “Act Now! Do NOT Wait for Jan 6”:
If you fail to do your duty, you will leave We the People no choice but to walk in the Founders footsteps, by declaring the regime illegitimate, incapable of representing us, destructive of the just ends of government… And, like the Founding generation, we will take to arms…, we will declare our independence from that puppet regime…
There are millions of American patriots standing ready. Do not forsake them. Do not leave them to have to do it all themselves.
The FBI and DOJ are well aware of all these data points, and have been since at least the middle of January 2021.
As early as one week before 1/6, Rhodes gathered all of his top lieutenants together in Signal chat group “DC OP: Jan 6 21”:
55. At least as early as December 31, 2020, WATKINS, KELLY MEGGS, JAMES, MINUTA, PERSON ONE, PERSON THREE, PERSON TEN, and others known and unknown joined an invitation-only encrypted Signal group message titled “DC OP: Jan 6 21” (hereinafter the “Leadership Signal Chat”).
By January 2, 2021, Rhodes was getting regular updates on the vaunted “ferry plot” that the media made so much hoopla about as a domestic terror threat. From Law & Crime:
Hours before Senate Republicans killed an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6th siege, federal prosecutors disclosed communications about how Oath Keepers allegedly plotted to storm Washington, D.C. with guns by boat by way of the Potomac River.
Rhodes’s own alleged Oath Keeper lieutenant was giving him constant updates on the so-called “ferry plot’s” status, right there in the Leadership Signal Chat:
68. On the evening of January 2, 2021, at about 5:43 p.m., KELLY MEGGS posted a map of Washington, D.C ., in the Leadership Signal Chat, along with the message, “1 if by land[,] North side of Lincoln Memorial[,] 2 if by sea[,] Corner of west basin and Ohio is a water transport landing !!” KELLY MEGGS continued, “QRF rally points[.] Water of the bridges get closed.”
The DOJ even references a Stewart Rhodes’s January 4, 2021 OathKeepers.org article as evidence of the Call To Action that alleged Oath Keepers 1/6 conspirators responded to in coming to the Capitol:
12. On January 4, 2021, PERSON ONE posted an article to the Oath Keepers website encouraging Oath Keeper members and affiliates to go to Washington, D.C., for the events of January 5-6, 2021, stating: “It is CRITICAL that all patriots who can be in DC get to DC to stand tall in support of President Trump’s fight to defeat the enemies foreign and domestic who are attempting a coup, through the massive vote fraud and related attacks on our Republic. We Oath Keepers are both honor-bound and eager to be there in strength to do our part.”
13. In his January 4 post, PERSON ONE also observed: “As we have done on all recent DC Ops, we will also have well armed and equipped QRF teams on standby, outside DC, in the event of a worst case scenario, where the President calls us up as part of the militia to to assist him inside DC. We don’t expect a need for him to call on us for that at this time, but we stand ready if he does (and we also stand ready to answer the call to serve as militia anytime in the future, and anywhere in our nation, if he does invoke the Insurrection Act).”
14. PERSON ONE named PERSON TEN to be the leader of his group’s operations in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.
On January 4, Stewart Rhodes’s operations commander, “Person 10,” checks into the “QRF hotel.” Recall that QRF (Quick Reaction Force) is a military term that Rhodes evidently employs to refer to Oath Keepers’ stash of weapons to be used if/when called upon.
82. On January 4, 2021, PERSON TEN checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Virginia. The room was reserved and paid for using a credit card in PERSON ONE’s name.
85. On January 5, 2021, PERSON ONE and MINUTA separately traveled to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Virginia.
So much for the highlights regarding Rhodes’ activities leading up to 1/6.
105. At 1:25 p.m., PERSON ONE messaged the Leadership Signal Chat, “Pence is doing nothing. As I predicted.” About 15 minutes later, he sent another message, stating, “All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no intent by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it into their own hands. They’ve had enough.”
106. At 1:48 p.m., PERSON ONE sent a message to the Leadership Signal Chat informing the group that he was on his way to the Capitol.
Note how the specificity suddenly drops off in paragraph 106. Every other text in this indictment is a direct quote. And then suddenly, for no reason, the specific words of the text are not quoted. Instead, we just get the paragraph “informing the group that he was on his way.” Well, what exactly did he say? How did he say it? Was it just “On my way”? Was it enthusiastic encouragement? Were there direct orders or stronger suggestions?
114. At 2:03 p.m., the administrator of the “Stop the Steal J6” Zello channel directed the group, “You are executing citizen’s arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud . . . .”
115. At 2:06 p.m., PERSON ONE sent another message to the Leadership Signal Chat asking for PERSON TEN’s location before stating, “I’m trying to get to you.”
119. At 2:14 p.m., PERSON TEN wrote to the Leadership Signal Chat, “The have taken ground at the capital[.] We need to regroup any members who are not on mission.”
120. At 2:15 p.m., PERSON ONE placed a phone call to KELLY MEGGS, which lasted approximately 15 seconds
123. At 2:24 p.m., KELLY MEGGS placed a phone call to PERSON ONE, which lasted approximately 2 seconds.
124. At 2:25 p.m., PERSON ONE forwarded PERSON TEN’s message (“The have taken ground at the capital[.] We need to regroup any members who are not on mission.”) to the Leadership Signal Chat and instructed: “Come to South Side of Capitol on steps” and then sent a photograph showing the southeast side of the Capitol.
Kelly Meggs, one should recall, is among those Oath Keepers indicted on February 19.
At 2:35 p.m., Meggs along with several others joined together to form the so-called “military stack” formation that we hear so much about in the press. Prosecutor Michael Sherwin makes a huge deal of the so-called stack in the “Shock and Awe” interview we addressed above.
The following gives a sense of Rhodes’ activity leading up to the stack formation at 2:35 p.m. (again from the indictment):
126. 2:31 p.m., PERSON TEN placed a phone call to PERSON ONE, which lasted approximately 5 minutes and 25 seconds.
127. At 2:32 p.m., KELLY MEGGS placed a phone call to PERSON ONE, which lasted approximately 1 minute and 37 seconds.
130. At 2:33 p.m., JAMES placed a phone call to PERSON TEN, which lasted approximately 49 seconds.
One additional charged member of the group has denied knowing that Person One was on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. However, publicly available photographs and video show someone consistent in appearance with Person One on the east side of the Capitol on the afternoon of January 6, 2021. At one point, around 4:00 p.m.—as many rioters were exiting the Capitol—a large group that included co-defendants Kelly Meggs, Connie Meggs, Graydon Young, Laura Steele, other members of the stack, and other individuals wearing “Oath Keepers” clothing and insignia who also stormed the Capitol gathered around Person One and stood around waiting for at least ten minutes in that location.
This was a fraudulent election but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.
Rhodes never made such a tempering statement on 1/6 in any of these filings, despite the fact these Oath Keepers lieutenants were all allegedly recruited to and trained as Rhodes’ militia, under Rhodes’ alleged organizational command.
In fact, that very night of 1/6, as members of his own militia were dejected about the day’s events, Rhodes reassured them that they had done the right thing. At 7:41 p.m., three hours after the last protester left the Capitol, Rhodes texted the Leaders chat:
The founding generation Sons of Liberty stormed the mansion of the corrupt Royal Governor of Massachusetts, and trashed the place. They also jumped on board a ship carrying East India Tea, and dumped it in the harbor. We are actually in a far more deadly situation given the FACT that enemies foreign and domestic have subverted, infiltrated, and taken over near every single office and level of power in this nation. We have one FINAL chance to get Trump to do his job and his duty. Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming if Trump doesn’t take decisive action right now. It helped to send that message to HIM. He was the most important audience today. I hope he got the message.
As we conclude this section, it is important to take stock of the material presented so far. Given the above selection of Stewart Rhodes’s actions and words leading up to and on 1/6, and given that Rhodes is the leader of the major militia group associated with 1/6 — why no indictment for Rhodes?
This pressing and decisive question cannot be considered in isolation. Instead, as we have argued throughout this series, it must be considered in light of the maximally severe standard of “Shock and Awe” prosecution applied to those indicted for 1/6 crimes. After having looked at Rhodes’s statements and actions leading up to 1/6, and noting that a sandwich shop owner George Tanios faces 60 years for the utterance “no, no, not yet,” is it not bizarre that Mr. Rhodes hasn’t yet been indicted?
At the time of writing, countless Americans are being held in prison under abusive and unjust conditions for minor if not non-existent offenses related to 1/6. The reason for such severity is the notion that 1/6 was an attempt at an insurrection, an organized and planned attempt to “siege” the Capitol and obstruct the healthy functioning of our democracy. And yet, when we examine the evidence, it appears that the overwhelming share of “insurrectionist” words and actions associated with 1/6 come from the Oath Keepers organization. How then do we explain hundreds of Ordinary Joes rotting in prison and George Tanios facing 60 years in light of the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, being charged with nothing?
Now is the time to emphasize another caveat. While we strenuously disagree with Rhodes’s rhetoric about “bloody civil war” and insurrections, the purpose of this is not to take issue with or criticize all of the Oath Keepers’ beliefs. Some of the Oath Keepers’ stated beliefs seem very reasonable — their stated resistance to totalitarian overreach, skepticism about the 2020 Presidential election, support for the 2nd Amendment and so forth.
Precisely because many patriots will find much of the Oath Keepers’ beliefs reasonable and attractive, we have no doubt that many members of the Oath Keepers organization are good, well-meaning patriots (and many veterans) who simply found the wrong outlet and organization to fight against the corrupt ruling class of our country.
We sympathize with these patriots and the position they’re in. But the reality is that it is very unlikely that any organization or militia with the stated purpose of the Oath Keepers to recruit law enforcement officers and veterans can help but become, in effect, a honeypot trap. And this is what we believe the Oath Keepers is at the highest organizational level, and we believe the overwhelming share of evidence indicates that Stewart Rhodes’s primary purpose is to fulfill this deceptive function on behalf of elements within the government.
Finally, we re-emphasize our earlier caveat. The purpose of this expose is not to target Mr. Rhodes personally nor are we interested in him being indicted. Our interest is in the federal infiltration, involvement and foreknowledge of 1/6.
In the following section, we will draw upon the information above among other important details and observations to make a more focused legal case for conspiracy that could be the basis of the indictment of Mr. Rhodes. The notion that it would be difficult to put together such an indictment is simply not sustainable. Again, the purpose here is not to encourage Rhodes’ indictment per se but to draw careful attention to the by now unavoidable conclusion that he’s being protected. The following section is especially important for the army of regime media “fact checkers” who inevitably will descend like hyenas upon this groundbreaking, dangerous, and yet vitally important investigative piece.
Three self-styled militia members charged in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol began soliciting recruits for potential violence within days of the 2020 presidential election, later training in Ohio and North Carolina and organizing travel to Washington with a busload of comrades and a truck of weapons, U.S. authorities alleged Wednesday.
The arrests this weekend of several people with alleged ties to far-right extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, suggest that the riot was not an entirely impulsive outburst of violence but an event instigated or exploited by organized groups. Hours of video posted on social media and pored over by investigators have focused on individuals in military-style gear moving together.
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The indictments come one day after Acting U.S. Attorney Michael R. Sherwin said that investigators are turning their focus to whether militia groups and individuals in several states may have coordinated or planned ahead of time to commit criminal acts. Law enforcement officials have focused on the Oath Keepers, the nativist Proud Boys, and Three Percenters, another anti-government group that takes its name from the bogus claim that only 3 percent of the colonists supported the American Revolution against the British.
From those January 19 arrests until the present day, Stewart Rhodes features prominently as the star of every Oath Keepers indictment. That includes four superseding indictments to add new defendants and new charges.
Three individuals associated with the Oath Keepers, a paramilitary organization focused on recruitment of current and former military, law enforcement, and first responder personnel, were indicted today in federal court in the District of Columbia for conspiring to obstruct Congress, among other charges.
Jessica Marie Watkins, 38, and Donovan Ray Crowl, 50, both of Champaign County, Ohio; and Thomas Caldwell, 65, of Clarke County, Virginia, were indicted today in federal court in the District of Columbia on charges of conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and unlawful entry on restricted building or grounds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1512, 1361, and 1752. Watkins and Crowl were arrested on Jan. 18; Caldwell was arrested on Jan. 19. All three individuals originally were charged by criminal complaint. The maximum penalty for Obstructing an Official Proceeding is a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
The reason this is relevant is that one not need to have entered the Capitol for the conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding to apply. All that needs to be shown for an indictment is that an individual entered into the criminal conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and took a so-called “overt action” in furtherance of that conspiracy.
It is especially interesting, then, to compare the government’s descriptions of the words and actions of Stewart Rhodes with its descriptions of other indicted Oath Keepers whose actions constitute “overt actions” required in the government’s minds to indict for this particular alleged criminal conspiracy — that is, obstructing the Senate proceeding. To start with, we encourage the reader to review the previous section chronicling Rhodes’s actions and behavior leading up to and on 1/6 in some depth.
For now, we turn our attention to a remarkable government document expressing opposition to indicted Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell’s motion for bail.
Evidence that the government will disclose to the defense this week—a Signal chat called “DC OP: Jan 6 21”—shows that individuals, including those alleged to have conspired with the defendant, were actively planning to use force and violence. The participants in this chat include: Person One, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, and regional Oath Keeper leaders from multiple states across the country…
So here the government references Stewart Rhodes (Person One) as a participant in a Signal chat “DC OP” (and boy was it ever) whose participants, again, according to the government, were “actively planning to use force and violence.” The especially remarkable thing is that Caldwell, the subject of the indictment itself, is not even a member of the Signal chat, whereas the unindicted Stewart Rhodes is.
The chat discusses members and affiliates of the Oath Keepers coming to Washington, D.C., for the events of January 5-6, 2021, to provide security to speakers and VIPs at the events. There is no discussion of forcibly entering the Capitol until January 6, 2021. However, there is talk about being prepared for violence…”
Person One also says, “Highly recommend a C or D cell flashlight if you have one. Collapsible Batons are a grey area in the law. I bring one. But I’m willing to take that risk because I love em…”
These messages echo the words of Person One in the call for action he posted to the Oath Keepers website on January 4, 2021, in which he stated: “It is CRITICAL that all patriots who can be in DC get to DC to stand tall in support of President Trump’s fight to defeat the enemies foreign and domestic who are attempting a coup, through the massive vote fraud and related attacks on our Republic. We Oath Keepers are both honor-bound and eager to be there in strength to do our part,” including “prepar[ing] to do whatever must be done to honor our oaths[.]” (ECF No. 18 at 2.) These statements and messages all show that the co-conspirators joined together to stop Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote, and they were prepared to use violence, if necessary, to effect this purpose.
The prosecution concedes that there is no explicit discussion of forcibly entering the Capitol, but then notes that there is talk of being prepared for violence. Rather than reference anything that Caldwell (the defendant) said, the government cites Stewart Rhodes’s talk about coming prepared for violence with collapsible batons. And then the government uses the specific phrase “call to action” to describe Rhodes’s call to patriots to go to DC. The government concludes by saying that the aforementioned statements and messages all demonstrate a conspiracy to stop congressional certification.
We leave aside whether the government’s claim that such statements and actions establish a conspiracy in their own right. That is not the central issue here. The issue is that the government essentially claims Caldwell is part of a conspiracy and yet overwhelmingly cites not Caldwell’s but Caldwell’s Oath Keeper commander Stewart Rhodes’ communications and “calls to action” as establishing said conspiracy. At this juncture we are not saying that either Caldwell or Rhodes is justly guilty of conspiracy. Rather, we are pointing out the glaring discrepancy in the fact that Caldwell is indicted and Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers whose communications and actions are said to establish the conspiracy, remains free and unindicted.
It does not matter whether they planned to use this violence to support the president when he invoked the insurrection act or to attack the Capitol if the vice president allowed the certification to go forward—under either scenario, they were plotting to use violence to support the unlawful obstruction of a Congressional proceeding.
Again, this is a remarkable position for the government to have given the repeated and numerous instances in which Rhodes would psychologically prime his followers for bloody violence just in case President Trump gave some unspecified signal activating the Insurrection Act. A more comprehensive list can be found in the previous section. For convenience, here are a few selected from the previous section:
We’re going to defend the president, the duly elected president, and we call on him to do what needs to be done to save our country. Because if you don’t guys, you’re going to be in a bloody, bloody civil war, and a bloody – you can call it an insurrection or you can call it a war or fight.
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PERSON ONE told his followers they needed to be prepared to fight Antifa, which he characterized as a group of individuals with whom “if the fight comes, let the fight come. Let Antifa – if they go kinetic on us, then we’ll go kinetic back on them. I’m willing to sacrifice myself for that. Let the fight start there. That will give President Trump what he needs, frankly. If things go kinetic, good. If they throw bombs at us and shoot us, great, because that brings the president his reason and rationale for dropping the Insurrection Act.
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PERSON ONE continued, “I do want some Oath Keepers to stay on the outside, and to stay fully armed and prepared to go in armed, if they have to . . . . So our posture’s gonna be that we’re posted outside of DC, um, awaiting the President’s orders. . . . We hope he will give us the orders. We want him to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia.”
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[Person 1] Our men will be standing by, awaiting the President’s orders to call us up as the militia, which would override D.C.’s ridiculous anti-gun laws (by federal statute, all Americans from age 17-45 are subject to being called up as the militia by the President, and all military veterans are subject to being called up until age 65 because of our training and experience). – Stay tuned for further details.
Rhodes further primed his followers for the possibility of major conflict, assuring them that “skilled special warfare veterans” will be “standing by armed, just outside D.C., as an emergency QRF” to step in with heavy weaponry, if necessary:
Oath Keepers will also have some of our most skilled special warfare veterans standing by armed, just outside D.C., as an emergency QRF in the event of a worst case scenario in D.C...
It does not matter whether they planned to use this violence to support the president when he invoked the insurrection act or to attack the Capitol if the vice president allowed the certification to go forward—under either scenario, they were plotting to use violence to support the unlawful obstruction of a Congressional proceeding.
And yet if this is the case, how on earth does one explain Caldwell’s indictment and Oath Keepers founder and kingpin Stewart Rhodes’ lack thereof?
The Caldwell prosecution’s opposition to bail motion continues:
The Signal chat referenced above shows that the group—which included at least two individuals alleged to have conspired with Caldwell—was activating a plan to use force on January 6. At approximately 1:38 p.m., Person One wrote, “All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no intent by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it into their own hands. They’ve had enough.” At 2:14 p.m., an individual leading the coordination of the security details run by the Oath Keepers on January 5-6 stated, “The have taken ground at the capital[.] We need to regroup any members who are not on mission.” Person One then reposted that message and instructed the group: “Come to South Side of Capitol on steps” and then sent a photograph showing the southeast side of the Capitol. At 2:41 p.m., Person One posted another photograph showing the southeast side of the Capitol with the caption, “South side of US Capitol. Patriots pounding on doors[.]” At approximately 2:40 p.m., the individuals in the “stack,” to include co-defendants Kelly and Connnie Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Graydon Young, Laura Steele, Donovan Crowl, and Sandra Parker, forcibly entered the Capitol through the Rotunda door in the center of the east side of the building.
The above passage begins with government reference to the Signal group “activating a plan to use force” on January 6th. Stewart Rhodes was not only a member of the Signal group “activating a plan to use force”: the document goes on to directly quote Rhodes, multiple times, to support its claim of such activation.
U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin, who propounded the “Shock and Awe” standard of prosecution, made a very big deal about this 2:40 p.m. moment when the Oath Keepers formed a “military stack” and went into the U.S. Capitol. Meanwhile, we have seen that Sherwin’s own Justice Department argues in public filings that the whole thing was activated, at least in part, by the still-unindicted Stewart Rhodes.
Kelly Meggs has denied that any one in particular made the decision or gave the command for the group to enter the building. One additional charged member of the group has denied knowing that Person One was on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. However, publicly available photographs and video show someone consistent in appearance with Person One on the east side of the Capitol on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.At one point, around 4:00 p.m.—as many rioters were exiting the Capitol—a large group that included co-defendants Kelly Meggs, Connie Meggs, Graydon Young, Laura Steele, other members of the stack, and other individuals wearing “Oath Keepers” clothing and insignia who also stormed the Capitol gathered around Person One and stood around waiting for at least ten minutes in that location.
And so we see that the government seems to assign culpability to “one additional charged member” on the basis of possibly knowing that Person One (Rhodes) was on the Capitol grounds on 1/6. And the government further goes on to stipulate that many of the co-defendants all gathered around to meet Person One (Rhodes) after exiting the Capitol, clearly suggesting Rhodes as the leader and organizer. And indeed, he’s the founder and head of the organization to which these co-defendants allegedly belong.
The government has, in effect, built its case against the 16 Oath Keepers in large part by saying “We know you’re guilty of conspiracy because we definitely know your leader Stewart Rhodes is guilty of conspiracy, and it looks like you were following your leader.”
But Stewart Rhodes is not even charged. He is still just “Person One.”
Almost as strange as Rhodes’ apparent protection from indictment is the complete lack of curiosity or skepticism as to why. Indeed, even as Revolver’s previous investigative report gained nationwide attention for suggesting that some of the unindicted persons named in charging documents were federal operatives, no media source to our knowledge has directed its suspicions at Oath Keepers founder and kingpin, Stewart Rhodes.
In early March, there was a barrage of headlines indicating Stewart Rhodes’s days were numbered.
No one in broadcast or print media found it odd that: (1) this a conspiracy case; (2) federal prosecutors have pinpointed (in Caldwell’s bail motion document) Rhodes as a person who directed the conspiracy, in real-time; and (3) a key alleged director of the entire conspiracy is not actually indicted in the conspiracy.
Although the Regime Media has not bothered to register any suspicion at Rhodes’ seeming protection, the collection of headlines above implicitly suggests the media is resting on two possible innocent explanations — both of which can be easily dismissed.
The first possible objection is that the government is just having a difficult time indicting Stewart Rhodes because he did not technically go inside the Capitol. As we have shown previously in this section, this possible objection is destroyed by the prosecutors’ own arguments. Indeed, the main indictment against the Oath Keepers is not storming the capitol or trespassing, but rather conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding (Senate certification). This does not require entering the Capitol.
Thomas Caldwell is not alleged to have gone inside the Capitol, and was indicted in the alleged conspiracy anyway. Furthermore, as we have seen above in this section, the prosecutors repeatedly refer to Stewart Rhodes’ communications, statements and actions to establish the basis for the very conspiracy for which they charged his underling Thomas Caldwell.
Not only did Thomas Caldwell not go in the U.S. Capitol, the prosecutors argue that Stewart Rhodes’ actions — and Thomas Caldwell’s proximity to those actions — are sufficient to pursue bail denial for Thomas Caldwell.
The second possible objection is that Rhodes has not been charged because the government is upping the ante and going for a full blown sedition conspiracy. But this doesn’t explain why Rhodes wouldn’t be indicted on lesser conspiracy charges right away, along with the 16 others. The DOJ could simply file a superseding indictment, and tack on additional charges later, while Rhodes is already arrested.
This is not a RICO case. You don’t need any more evidence than you already have to indict Stewart Rhodes. All you need is agreement to the conspiracy and an overt act. You have his “agreement” a thousand ways from Sunday, all stipulated above.
Need some overt acts? In the indictment alone, here’s a quick review based on material already presented in this article:
Overt acts by Stewart Rhodes in paragraphs 35, 55, 85, are all before January 6, and barely include the full range referenced. Then, in the “Overt Acts” specifically on the day of 1/6, the prosecutors allege (in the Caldwell bail document) Stewart Rhodes committed Overt Acts in furtherance of the conspiracy occurred in the section “Overt Acts: The January 6 Operation” section in paragraphs 100, 104, 105, 106, 112, 113, 115, 120, 124, 126, 127, 163, 164 and 165.
In the present political and legal environment the Stewart Rhodes conspiracy charge is perhaps the single easiest indictment to bring in all of modern American history. We invite legal experts from CNN, New York Times etc. to try their best to read the Oath Keepers court docket and explain, formally, how there are not facts alleged sufficient to bring an indictment against Stewart Rhodes.
That was the headline everywhere. The Justice Department’s arch-nemesis, Stewart Rhodes, summoned like a Great Phantom Menace, wreaking havoc on downtown Washington from his cave in Afghanistan. From the Daily Mail:
Defense Secretary announces 2,300 National Guard troops will stay in DC for TWO more months as it’s revealed Oath Keepers leader ‘planned to use force and violence to storm the US Capitol’
U.S. prosecutors on Monday revealed they have new evidence tying the Oath Keepers to plans to use ‘force and violence’ during the Capitol riots It includes texts from the far-right militia’s leader Stewart Rhodes
They were found in texting app Signal in a chat named ‘DC OP: Jan 6 21’
‘All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no intent by him to do anything,’ Rhodes allegedly said in one text
He has not been publicly charged in connection with the breach of the Capitol
It comes as D.C. law enforcement says the threat to the Capitol remains
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin formally approved an extension of the National Guard deployment for another two months
Close to 2,300 troops will continue to provide security in D.C. until May 23
If the DOJ wanted to go for sedition charges, it would have been far more advantageous to indict Rhodes five months ago, because Rhodes would be in a much weaker legal and financial position. He’d be fighting sedition charges while he’s already breaking down under the weight of conspiracy charges.
And come to think of it, is the government not worried that this allegedly dangerous leader of the “nation’s largest militia” might pose a flight risk post 1/6?
How about a security risk?
Was the DOJ not worried that Stewart Rhodes’s hyped up so-called radicalized paramilitary organization would plan “another” domestic terror attack? Rhodes texted to all of his lower-level lieutenants that 1/6 was “NOTHING compared to what’s coming.” The Justice Department ruthlessly indicted and moved to deny bail those who received that text — why is Rhodes being protected?
For a fuller answer to this disturbing question, we conclude our exhaustive analysis of Rhodes’s relationship with 1/6, and go back further in his biography.
The federal protection he seems to enjoy in relation to 1/6 indictment is nothing new, and in fact reflects a curious pattern in Rhodes’s life spanning decades.
The piece, published two months before 1/6, described Rhodes as a ticking time tomb of a latent national security threat to the 2020 U.S. election. According to The Atlantic biography, after a long stint in the Army’s 72nd Airborne unit, Rhodes was allegedly discharged from service with a fractured spine, and found himself a 28 year-old car valet with no college education. In 1993, down and out, Rhodes then allegedly accidentally shot himself in the face with a loaded handgun, going blind in one eye. Through a still little-understood sequence of events, Stewart Rhodes went from down and out, to community college, to Yale Law School, arguably the most selective academic institution in the country. From the Atlantic:
Rhodes was a little-known libertarian blogger when he launched the Oath Keepers in early 2009… Rhodes had joined the military just out of high school, hoping to become a Green Beret, but his career was cut short when he fractured his spine during a parachute training jump. After his discharge, he worked as a firearms instructor and parked cars as a valet. In 1993, he dropped a loaded handgun and it shot him in the face, blinding him in his left eye. The brush with death inspired him, at 28, to enroll in community college. He went on to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he graduated summa cum laude, and then to Yale Law School.
An Army spokesperson said they could not verify Rhodes’ service because it would have taken place too long ago; the National Archives said it is not processing service records requests during the pandemic.
Even the FBI has appeared skeptical of Stewart Rhodes’s ascension from 28-year old car valet with one eye and no college education to a prize-winning Yale School Law graduate turned founder of America’s largest militia. A January 9, 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) document refers to Stewart Rhodes’s background from paratrooping to Yale with only the words “allegedly,” along with redacting every other detail that could prove useful to corroborating such history:
This is a frequent pattern. The FOIA has four consecutive pages of wholly redacted blocks. Not a single detail, apparently, is suitable for public consumption.
What little is unredacted from the FBI records on the Oath Keepers and Stewart Rhodes is replete with references to undercover informants and FBI surveillance absolutely swarming the group since its early years. Recall that “CHS” refers to Confidential Human Source:
The academic world’s apparent top expert on the Oath Keepers, Sam Jackson, also appears to have fallen short of independently confirming the official timeline of Rhodes’s mythical ascent from Army paratrooper to 28 year-old car valet in Montana with zero college education, to Yale Law School, then [Insert 4-Year Black Hole], then voila, the most prominent antigovernment group in the country. From YouTube:
“It’s not entirely clear what his background was immediately before starting the group,” Sam Jackson concludes. “He talked a little bit about why he formed the group. But one thing worth noting is, all of my research focuses on all of the communications that the group puts out. So it’s all things that they could strategically decide to reveal and it isn’t necessarily indicative of what really happened, if you want to make that distinction.
The blog from which the Oath Keepers sprouted was filled with the kind of fire and venom commonly associated with what is now known as “Fedposting” — outrageous, incendiary rhetoric that is technically lawful, but is also prone to generating leads for the FBI to pursue when the informant’s loyal followers amplify the rhetoric or formulate plans to take such rhetoric seriously.
For example, in a May 2009 Oath Keepers blog post, Rhodes responded to an alleged “delicate metro-sexual male student” who said he would follow immoral orders by military superiors by saying: “At that moment, I understood what H. L. Mencken meant when he said ‘every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.’”
Now, there is no bigger critic of social justice warrior poseurs taking the form of “delicate metro-sexual males” than Revolver. However, the issue here is that Rhodes’ behavior and context eerily and overwhelmingly appears to fit the pattern of a government informant or agent, dating back many years before the events of 1/6.
Typically, informants will put out such rhetoric as a honeytrap, and then report their own overzealous followers and adherents to Federal law enforcement. They collect checks for jailing their own well-intentioned patriot “comrades” whose lapses in judgment, intelligence, or self-control lead them one step too far down the path of escalating keyboard warrior rhetoric.
This was exactly the shtick, incidentally, of another high-profile right-wing “shock jock” patriot leader, Hal Turner, who was revealed to be a self-admitted “deep undercover intelligence operative” for the FBI. Incidentally, Hal Turner’s tenure with the FBI ended within mere months of Stewart Rhodes’s starting of the Oath Keepers:
They called him “Valhalla.”
But it was more than a nickname.
For more than five years, Hal Turner of North Bergen lived a double life.
The public knew him as an ultra-right-wing radio talk show host and Internet blogger with an audience of neo-Nazis and white supremacists attracted to his scorched-earth racism and bare-knuckles bashing of public figures. But to the FBI, and its expanding domestic counter-terror intelligence operations in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Turner was “Valhalla” – his code name as an informant who spied on his own controversial followers.
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“I was not some street snitch,” Turner said in one of several lengthy interviews at the Hudson County Jail, where he was kept until the terms of his bail were worked out in October — terms that prevented him from talking to reporters after his release. “I was a deep undercover intelligence operative.” [NorthJersey.com]
A good example of how FBI informants such as Hal Turner repeatedly got loyal followers indicted for amplifying rhetoric coming from the informer is an email from Hal Turner to his handler, FBI Agent Stephen Haug, where he notes: “Once again, my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy”:
I wrote an opinion piece on my site today in which I opine about 46 US Senators who I believe should be removed from office on July 4 for betraying their constituents and this nation.
An anonymous person, posting on the outside, third-party visitor comments area of my web site wrote:
“Im going to kill senator feinfold on July 4th, may thomas paine smile upon me and alexander hamilton bless my cause. praise the lord and pass the ammunition.”
Once again, my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy.
From the very outset of Stewart Rhodes’s founding of the Oath Keepers, to his actions in advance of and on the day of 1/6, Stewart Rhodes’s entire career has been a case study in “fierce rhetoric” wherein Rhodes repeatedly rallies his followers to take action, and everyone gets indicted but him.
Perhaps the most notable example of this is the Rhodes’s involvement in the so-called Bundy Ranch affair in 2014.
In the early years of the Oath Keepers, from 2009-2013, Stewart Rhodes’s provocations were mostly limited to keyboard warrior activities, such as encouraging military veterans to disobey orders from their superiors en masse. It’s worth noting if his adherents followed Stewart Rhodes’s dictates, they would be arrested or court-martialed. Rhodes’s rhetoric would “serve to flush out a possible crazy,” in Hal Turner’s words.
Then, in October 2013, Stewart Rhodes announced the Oath Keepers would be “operationalized” into special on-the-ground teams modeled after the U.S. Special Forces.
In April 2014, rancher Ammon Bundy set off a nationwide flashpoint for patriots versus the Federal government when his family stood their ground in defying orders by the Bureau of Land Management. In response, Stewart Rhodes put out a call for all Oath Keepers special teams to fly to Nevada’s Bundy Ranch to help the Bundy family in an armed standoff, even if that meant violently resisting unconstitutional orders issued by the Federal government.
Media outlets reported on conflict between different factions of Bundy supporters. A “wild, paranoid rumor” that Attorney General Eric Holder was preparing a drone strike against them caused Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes to remove his men from the supposed “kill zone.” In a recorded video, other Bundy supporters talked openly of shooting Rhodes for what they viewed as “desertion” and “cowardice.” Rhodes later described one situation as “this close from being a gunfight.” He recounted another situation in which he said a man drew a gun on a member of another militia.
Rhodes was then booted from Bundy Ranch by the unanimous vote of other militiamen on site, who openly described him as a likely FBI informant or federally-sponsored agent provocateur.
An incredible video clipped below shows all the hallmarks of a classic Stewart Rhodes sequence: a call to arms for Oath Keepers to stop a Federal enforcement action; threats of a bloodbath, then throwing other people out in front to be the footsoldiers of any armed or violent resistance.
In March of that year, federal officials began to round up Bundy’s cattle. One of his sons was arrested and cited for misdemeanors. Word spread, and members of militant groups from across the country poured in to support the Bundys, leading to an armed standoff near the Interstate 15 overpass.
Rhodes implored members and other supporters to come to Nevada or at least to make donations to the cause. “Whatever you can send will be a blessing for the Patriots out there in the Nevada landscape,” read a notice on the Oath Keepers’ website. “Just as in any military combat operation, the supply lines are extremely important for victory.”
Heavily armed Oath Keepers from around the country heeded the call.
Rhodes made the most of what had quickly become a media circus, holding multiple press conferences and appearing regularly on cable news networks wearing the group’s merchandise and displaying its Oath Keepers flag. The government, eager to avoid bloodshed, released the cattle, handing a huge victory to the protesters. But almost immediately afterward, Bundy started making racist comments, and conservative media dropped his cause. Within days, Rhodes pulled the Oath Keepers out, claiming he was concerned about the possibility of a government drone strike.
According to three former group members, the Bundy standoff had been a bonanza for the organization. Membership soared, two of them said, and donations poured into the group’s PayPal account. But despite pledges to support other militant groups involved in the standoff, little if any money ever reached them, according to Gary Hunt, who helped to lead a coalition of those groups.
“It was bullshit,” said Hunt, who characterized the Oath Keepers as deserters. Local militant groups banned them from returning, telling them “You’re lucky that you’re not getting shot in the back.”
Retired Marine sergeant and tea party activist Jerry DeLemus was one of many from around the country who had answered Rhodes’s call to action, driving nearly 3,000 miles from New Hampshire to Nevada, where he was made head of security, according to blog posts on the Oath Keepers’ site.
Two years later, DeLemus was arrested by the FBI on a variety of charges related to the standoff.
His wife, Sue DeLemus, a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, remembers the phone ringing a few days later. “Rhodes had one of his men call me and say, ‘Sue, it’s so sad. We want to help you. You can call us any time,’” she said. “What a joke. They never provided any help at all.”
Jerry, who eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy and interstate travel in aid of extortion, is still serving out a seven-year sentence.
“How come Stewart isn’t in prison?” Sue asked. “He was there. He told everyone to come.” [Buzzfeed]
Rhodes would repeat this shtick in various permutations from 2015 and 2016 with similar outings, like the Kim Davis affair and the Malheur National Wildlife Reserve stand-off. To fully go into these events would fall outside the scope of this study.
What is especially interesting to note, however, is the frequency with which Stewart Rhodes justifies his involvement in events with the pretext of providing bodyguard services, or “personal security” services. This was the same justification he gave to Sheriff Arpaio, who would later be probed by the FBI and indicted, and the same excuse Rhodes would later give to get close to Roger Stone, who the FBI has been eagerly pursuing for another round of indictments, as well as Alex Jones, Michael Flynn, and other VIPs at the November-December 2020 “Stop The Steal” events.
For what it’s worth, providing “security support”, free of charge, to leaders of “extremist groups” is by far the most popular cover story used by undercover FBI and Army counterintelligence operatives to gain personal access to VIP leaders of a network being spied on by government agencies. There is certain intel you only get by being up close, all day. For example:
-Tupac Shakur’s personal bodyguard was an FBI informant. -Fred Hampton’s personal bodyguard was an FBI informant. -Malcolm X’s personal bodyguard was an FBI informant. -The personal bodyguard of the Aryan Nations key leader Richard Butler was an FBI informant. -Even the chief of security for JFK investigator Jim Garrison was an FBI informant.
Put simply, dissident organizations can expect a lot of free offers for volunteer bodyguard services right before something very bad happens. And volunteering bodyguard services is precisely what Stewart Rhodes claimed he was doing to explain his presence around D.C. during the November-December “Stop the Steal” events.
The Bind
Revolver’s previous investigative report generated tremendous attention and created a national conversation about the possibility of federal infiltration, incitement, and foreknowledge in relation to the events of 1/6.
If our first piece helped to focus the conversation about 1/6 on the possibility of federal infiltration and incitement, we hope this piece will focus the question of possible federal infiltration and incitement on Oath Keepers founder and boss Stewart Rhodes.
Perhaps there are innocent explanations to the facts and arguments supplied throughout this piece. If Stewart Rhodes has such answers, we are happy to entertain them in good faith. Again, this isn’t ultimately about Stewart Rhodes, this is about the United States Government — and the possibility that key and senior militia figures involved in the 1/6 event are in fact operatives of some (perhaps rogue) element of the national security state. After all, the national security state, with a compliant regime media, is using 1/6 to justify its domestic war on terror against patriotic American citizens. The stakes are high and the public deserves to know the truth, no matter how embarrassing or how dirty.
The virtual absence of real investigative journalism is part of the reason our national security state has gotten away with taking away so many of our liberties, and so fast. Revolver is happy to fill in this gap and operate on the cutting edge.
It is astonishing to us that no one had thought to bring up the Michigan kidnapping plot in light of 1/6. The Michigan plot involved the same action (storming of the state capitol) and one of the same major militia groups (Three Percenters). Not only was that plot heavily infiltrated (at least 5 of the 18 plotters turned out to be fed operatives), but the FBI agent who oversaw that infiltration operation got promoted to the DC office where he went on to oversee the 1/6 investigation. The parallels were remarkable, and it is still more remarkable that no journalist thought to ask whether there could have been similar infiltration in 1/6 — specially in the key militia groups implicated in the most egregious and spectacular elements of 1/6.
Similarly, no one in the national security state or in the Regime media expected some scrappy investigative news outlet to shine the spotlight on Stewart Rhodes in the way that we have. But, unfortunately for them, we have done just that. And now, the very fact that there will be increased attention on Stewart Rhodes’s case in light of this context creates a strategic dilemma for both the DOJ/FBI (and whatever agency Rhodes might be associated with) and the regime media alike. We call this strategic dilemma “The Bind.”
“The Bind” is as follows:
On the one hand, by the Biden Administration’s own logic, there is perhaps the greatest prerogative in all of modern American history to arrest and indict Stewart Rhodes right now. All of the key answers to the alleged Oath Keepers conspiracy — and by extension the so-called pre-planned assaults on the “Temple of Democracy” — are likely to be found in his records, on his electronic devices, and in the process of his prosecution.
Further, the apparent national imperative to arrest and indict Stewart Rhodes intensifies with each passing day. The Pentagon has identified the Oath Keepers — which is little more than a vessel for one man, Stewart Rhodes — as the only right-wing extremist group featured twice on its “symbols of extremism” chart. The Oath Keepers are also front and center, right next to the ISIS flag.
In essence, if 1/6 were truly like 9/11 (laughable, but that’s how the government is treating it), then the Pentagon itself is by implication positioning Stewart Rhodes almost as its Osama Bin Laden figure:
Any junior U.S. Attorney could simply pick out one of the sixteen already filed criminal complaints alleging conspiracy (18 U.S.C. 371) against Stewart Rhodes’s underlings, simply swap out “Person 1” with “Stewart Rhodes,” and secure the single easiest indictment in modern American history.
One would think there should be a phalanx of angry U.S. Attorneys all pining for the career prize of being the one who took down Stewart Rhodes.
But therein lies the bind: if Stewart Rhodes (as we strongly suspect) is a federal operative, or was in communication with federal operatives, or was under the surveillance of Feds, the entire artifice of 1/6 lies comes crumbling down.
They need Stewart Rhodes’s communications if they really want to figure out what happened on 1/6, but if those communications become part of the Discovery Production of the trial case, and Stewart Rhodes was in communications with Federal assets, then it’s game over for the Justice Department.
They look ridiculous if they don’t prosecute Stewart Rhodes, but if they do, and he’s a Fed, then he has leverage to squeal on them.
All of this was fine before this Revolver report, when Stewart Rhodes was just Person One, and the media left him alone. But now the cat is out of the bag and the spotlight is on Mr. Rhodes and the government’s seeming protection of him.
So what are they to do? They could hope that this piece gets censored or simply doesn’t pick up traction. Perhaps they could get disinformation agents of various kinds to muddy the water and shift the narrative away from Rhodes himself. The national security state can certainly expect help from the (heavily infiltrated?) regime media.
But what if this isn’t enough? If this report generates sufficient attention, there will be real pressure for answers regarding why Stewart Rhodes hasn’t been prosecuted.
If Rhodes has government handlers in the FBI or some other agency, very difficult questions could arise (and possibly are arising at this very moment). The handler’s job would be to get Rhodes to accept some charges, to assuage an increasingly skeptical public, but assure Rhodes that while they might sound serious, they won’t amount to much. Once the public pressure and scrutiny subsides, they can reduce the charges over time and it won’t be a big deal.
The key point is this: the government would have to hit Rhodes with an indictment sufficient to assuage the public but also do so in a manner that Rhodes doesn’t expose his possible relationship with the FBI or other agencies, thereby blowing open the whole plot.
It’s a delicate bind and requires finesse.
On first glance, the reader might think we have set up something of an unfalsifiable thesis. After all, if we’re arguing that the fact Rhodes hasn’t been prosecuted points to the likelihood he is a federal operative, we can’t have it both ways. If he remains unindicted we can cite this as evidence for our thesis; and yet, we are now saying that the publication of this very piece might change the strategic dynamic such that he ends up indicted.
This objection misses the point. Irrespective of what happens going forward in terms of indictments, we believe that the evidence provided in this article overwhelmingly suggests Rhodes is a federal operative of some kind. The fact that he hasn’t been indicted as of June 30, 2021, in light of additional context provided above, is the argument.
We at Revolver realize that this is an evolving story set in motion, and have an interest in understanding and gaming out possible threads of development in any case.
REPORT: Whistleblower Told Tucker Carlson Biden Admin’s IC is Illegally Monitoring His Electronic Communications
In what may be an early example of the saying “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” Tucker Carlson reported on his show Monday night that he has received notice — AND EVIDENCE — that internal communications among the staff of his show are being monitored by the Intelligence Community of the Biden Administration. This would be the first reported instance that I’m aware of regarding a Biden Administration official leaking information to a news media outlet calling attention to allegedly illegal/objectionable conduct taking place inside the Administration.
These kinds of leaks were endemic during the Trump Administration, as liberal Trump-hating officials in the government bureaucracy regularly leaked information to media outlets hostile to Trump such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. Now we have a Biden Administration Official engaged in the same conduct — but this time the operations being “leaked” are targeted at a media outlet hostile to Biden.
The segment that runs a little over two minutes is captured in the Tweet below by my new BFF Cernovich.
While the piece is relatively short, there are a few issues covered by Carlson that need to be unpacked, starting with the claims about the NSA.
Carlson reports that over the weekend he was in contact with a “whistleblower within the US Government.” Later Carlson adds that the Whistleblower is “in a position” to know the information he/she was providing.
According to Carlson, the Whistleblower told him the NSA is monitoring communications for the purpose of later leaking them to the public with the goal of taking Carlson’s show off the air. To prove that the information was legitimate, the Whistleblower described back to Carlson information about a story his staff is working on that could have only come from text messages and email communications between Carlson and members of his staff. Carlson told his audience that they filed a “Freedom of Information Act” request earlier today seeking any and all information about surveillance activities being conduct against him or members of his staff by any government agency.
There are a few legal and technical inaccuracies in Tucker’s story — not really his fault; he’s just got a few details wrong. The NSA is not “spying” on Carlson — the NSA “spies” on everyone all the time. The NSA gathers “signals intelligence.” Pretty much every form of communication or data transfer that takes place in electronic fashion is monitored and recorded by the NSA in massive database facilities in various locations. It is listening to everyone all the time. NSA’s technical capabilities involve simply “riding” the structural “spine” of the internet, and copying data as it passes through. It similarly intercepts electronic data in the atmosphere and downloads it.
Accessing the contents of those databases by government officials for the purpose of pulling out and listening to/looking at the communications by specific individuals is the act of “spying.” The NSA does not have a cadre of employees/agents who engage in that activity on their own. The NSA workforce simply pulls out data at the request of other government agencies in the intelligence community and passes along the requested information to them.
There is a legal process for doing this. But with respect to United States citizens, that process is supposed to involve an appropriate warrant issued by a federal judge based on the correct kind of showing under an appropriate statute, all justifying access to the stored communications. It is certainly possible that some agency has gone through that process to access the communications of Carlson and his staff, but it is hard to come up with any kind of plausible “legal” scenario involving a subject matter that might involve. The fact that a Whistleblower reached out to Carlson to alert him to what was happening and communicated to him that the motives behind the acts are political lends substantial credence to the idea this is an illegal enterprise being conducted for political goals.
A second issue raised by Carlson tonight is his report that FBI “Agents” — plural — to whom he spoke over the weekend confirmed that the FBI did have “sources” or “informants” among the crowd during the protests on January 6.
I’m not sure that is a shocking revelation as federal law enforcement often mixes in, or has sources providing information who are mixed in among protest crowds at public gatherings. Carlson’s report on what he was told by the Agents ends with that, but Carlson added words to the effect “So the FBI knew what was going to happen.” It is impossible to know if that is true without knowing what information the FBI sources had learned prior to the protests beginning. Just having sources in place is oftentimes not enough — it all depends on whether the place where they have positioned themselves is such that they can acquire non-public information known only to a limited number of people.
But, more important in my view is the contact reported by Carlson confirms something that I have long tried to convince readers about — that there are “anti-Biden” and “anti-Democrat” people employed across the federal workforce — including in the Intelligence Community and the FBI — and these people will be a source of information to the outside world in the same way that “anti-Trumpers” inside the Trump Administration were sources of information to the outside world. These people exist, in large numbers, and they hate what the Democrats and the Biden Administration are starting to do to the institutions where they work and to the country as a whole.
Comment: Now here’s where Shipwreckedcrew and I differ in our opinions: The “leaks” which appeared in CNN, WaPo, NYT and CNN were in fact footnoted extensively in the final Mueller Russian collusion and Pres. Trump impeachment hoax; approximately 200+ times and presented by Weissmann & company as irrefutable proof of collusion. So to infer this is simply a tit for tat situation….I would beg to disagree .
However, as for the NSA, I am in complete agreement – they are data collectors and spy on everyone.
….as liberal Trump-hating officials in the government bureaucracy regularly leaked information to media outlets hostile to Trump such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. ….
Unindicted Co-Conspirators in 1/6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of Federal Foreknowledge
Of all the questions asked, words spoken, and ink spilled on the so-called “Capitol Siege” of January 6, 2021, none hold the key to the entire event quite like what Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked of Christopher Wray.
The Democrat from Minnesota asked the Trump-appointed FBI Director: Did the federal government infiltrate any of the so-called “militia” organizations claimed to be responsible for planning and executing the Capitol Siege?
Christopher Wray is able to uncomfortably weasel his way out of answering the question directly, partially because Klobuchar does him the courtesy of not asking him the question directly. Klobuchar instead asks the FBI director if he wishes he had infiltrated the militia organizations allegedly involved in 1/6 — assuming from the outset that there was in fact no infiltration, thereby providing the FBI director an easy way to avoid addressing the question one way or another.
Revolver News is willing to address the matter directly in the following three questions:
In the year leading up to 1/6 and during 1/6 itself, to what extent were the three primary militia groups (the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters) that the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and network news have labeled most responsible for planning and executing a Capitol attack on 1/6 infiltrated by agencies of the federal government, or informants of said agencies?
Exactly how many federal undercover agents or confidential informants were present at the Capitol or in the Capitol during the infamous “siege” and what roles did they play (merely passive informants or active instigators)?
Finally, of all of the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the charging documents of those indicted for crimes on 1/6, how many worked as a confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the federal government (FBI, Army Counterintelligence, etc.)?
From now on, all discussion of 1/6 must give way to a laser-like focus on the questions above, with an unwavering persistence at obtaining the answers.
If the narrative about 1/6 does not conform to the questions above, the American people will never learn the most important truth about what 1/6 is, and what kind of country they’re really living in.
If it turns out the federal government did in fact have undercover agents or confidential informants embedded within the so-called militia groups indicted for conspiring to obstruct the Senate certification on 1/6, the implications would be nothing short of seismic. Especially if such agents or informants enjoyed extremely senior-level positions within such groups.
One of the key consensus points among the FBI-DOJ and the regime media is the idea that, while 1/6 is primarily the fault of Trump-supporting QAnon-infused “domestic terrorists,” it is secondarily the fault of so-called “intelligence failures.”
Klobuchar’s own question at the March 2, 2021 FBI hearing (above) reinforces this “intelligence failure” narrative, but she is not alone. A five-month “bipartisan” Senate investigation recently arrived at the very same “intelligence failure” narrative to explain the breach of the Capitol and associated events on 1/6:
A bipartisan Senate investigation of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection found security and intelligence failures at every level of government that led to the breach of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob as lawmakers in a joint session were certifying the 2020 election.
The 95-page report, a product of a roughly five-month, joint probe by the Senate Homeland Security and Rules Committees, found significant breakdowns ranging “from federal intelligence agencies failing to warn of a potential for violence to a lack of planning and preparation by (U.S. Capitol Police) and law enforcement leadership.” There was no overall operational or staffing plan for that fateful day, a total failure of leadership, according to the committees. [ABC News]
If it turns out that the federal government (FBI, Army Counterintelligence, or a similar agency) had undercover agents or confidential informants embedded in any of the groups involved in 1/6, the “federal intelligence agencies failing to warn of a potential for violence” looks less like an innocent mistake and more like something sinister.
Indeed, if the federal government knew of a potential for violence in or around the Capitol on 1/6 and failed to call for heightened security, the agencies responsible may in fact be legally liable for the damages incurred during that day.
It is unsettling to entertain the possibility that the federal government knew of a potential for violence on 1/6 and did nothing to stop it. It presents the question: why would agencies, or certain elements within, sit back and let something like this happen on purpose?
A still more disturbing possibility arises from a careful study of the unindicted co-conspirators listed throughout the various charging documents of individuals facing the most serious charges related to 1/6.
We at Revolver News have noticed a pattern from our now months-long investigation into 1/6 — and in particular from our meticulous study of the charging documents related to those indicted. In many cases the unindicted co-conspirators appear to be much more aggressive and egregious participants in the very so-called “conspiracy” serving as the basis for charging those indicted.
The question immediately arises as to why this is the case, and forces us to consider whether certain individuals are being protected from indictment because they were involved in 1/6 as undercover operatives or confidential informants for a federal agency.
Here it is useful to draw a distinction between two discrete categories of participants in the so-called Capitol Siege.
The first category is the group of mostly harmless tourists who walked through already opened doors and already-removed barricades, and at most were guilty of minor trespassing charges and light property offenses. The second group consists of those who were violent with police officers, broke down barricades, smashed windows, belonged to a “militia” group engaged in military-style planning prior to the event, discussed transporting heavy weaponry, and so forth.
Up until now, the overwhelming (perhaps exclusive) share of counter-establishment reporting on 1/6 has focused on absolving the first group. And this is a valuable thing. The notion that these harmless “MAGA moms” wandering around the Capitol were domestic terrorists engaged in an insurrection is absurd. That many of these people are being held in prison, without bail, under harsh conditions, amounts to an unacceptable and outrageous abuse of basic human rights.
However, the possibility that the federal government had undercover operatives or informants involved in the events of 1/6, from its planning to its execution, compels us to turn our attention to the second category of participants.
We are especially interested in the unindicted co-conspirators who belonged to any of the big three “militia groups” — the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters. Indeed, it is these militia groups whose behavior, statements and planning leading up to and during 1/6 most closely align with the “violent insurrectionist” caricature we hear about in the media, and which the government claims to be going after in its aggressive prosecutions.
If it turns out that an extraordinary percentage of the members of these groups involved in planning and executing the Capitol Siege were federal informants or undercover operatives, the implications would be nothing short of staggering. This would be far worse than the already bad situation of the government knowing about the possibility of violence and doing nothing. Instead, this would imply that elements of the federal government were active instigators in the most egregious and spectacular aspects of 1/6, amounting to a monumental entrapment scheme used as a pretext to imprison otherwise harmless protestors at the Capitol — and in a much larger sense used to frame the entire MAGA movement as potential domestic terrorists.
This is what’s at stake in getting to the bottom of 1/6.
And so we proceed, unafraid, to investigate the question on which everything else pertaining to 1/6 hinges — did the government have informants or undercover agents in any or all of the “big three” militia groups leading up to or on 1/6? How many of the key unindicted co-conspirators in DOJ prosecutions are unindicted because they are undercover operatives or confidential informants?
In short, what did the federal government know in advance about 1/6, when did they know it — and how far did any undercover operations go?
Something’s Rotten in Michigan: The Forgotten Case of the Whitmer Kidnapping Plot
Of course, we could point to countless examples in America’s history of undercover agents and informants being actively involved in various “domestic terror plots.” But for the purposes of the argument we’re making here we need only go back a few months prior to 1/6 — to the so-called “Whitmer Kidnapping Plot.”
Indeed, what if we told you that scarcely three months before the 1/6 Capitol Siege, the FBI arrested 14 people for planning to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the State Government — and that the alleged conspiracy to overthrow the State government involved storming of the State Capitol?
And what if we told you that of the 14 individuals who allegedly plotted the “kidnapping” and overthrow of the state government, at least five were undercover agents and federal informants? And as if that’s not enough, many of the individuals allegedly involved in this plot appear to belong to the “Three Percenters,” one of the very same militia groups now blamed for storming January 6.
And, as the cherry on top, what if we told you that the director of the Detroit FBI Field Office, who oversaw the infiltration operation of the Michigan Plot, was subsequently granted a highly coincidental promotion to the D.C. office, where he is now the lead FBI agent for all 1/6 cases?
As crazy as it sounds, all of this is true. A full account of the Michigan Plot and its parallels to the Capitol Siege runs outside the scope and purposes of this article. Nonetheless, it will be useful to briefly flesh out some of the most salient details alluded to above.
The left-wing blog Jacobin, of all places, provides a good description of the allegation and charges:
Since last week, the headlines have been lit up by a shocking story out of Michigan: the FBI had foiled a plot hatched by anti-lockdown protesters and right-wing militia members to kidnap and try for “treason” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who one of the ringleaders called a “tyrant bitch.”
According to a federal affidavit and court testimony, the plot involved surveilling Whitmer’s vacation home in Western Michigan and the surrounding area, procuring explosives and tactical gear to fight off police, taking part in armed training exercises, and even possibly blowing up a nearby bridge. The alleged plotters discussed using a fake pizza delivery to kidnap Whitmer, leaving Whitmer on a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan, and even kidnapping Virginia governor Ralph Northam, one of the “tyrants” who, they believed, were abusing their power to order statewide lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic. [Jacobin]
Drawing upon entrapment cases used in the War on Terror, the Jacobin piece expresses concerns that the whole Michigan Plot itself may have been the result of entrapment of vulnerable, cognitively deficient and mentally unstable individuals by FBI informants. The following passage discusses the pathetic state of Adam Fox, the man designated by the government as the “mastermind” of the kidnapping plot:
According to the FBI’s affidavit, the bureau made heavy use of informants and undercover agents in the case. At least four took part — specifically, two informants and two undercover agents, on whose evidence gathering the criminal complaint was based on — though it’s implied that some unspecific number of additional personnel were involved.
And, as with earlier, Muslim-targeting cases, the FBI appears to have been integral to the plotters’ ability to carry out the scheme. The affidavit notes that an undercover agent told the ringleader it would cost $4,000 to procure explosives. Four of the accused planned to meet with another undercover agent posing as an explosives expert to pay for them and, they were told, to get some excess tactical gear the agent had the day they were arrested. In court, Richard Trask, the agent who authored the affidavit, said he didn’t know how much money the defendants had on them when they were put in handcuffs, aside from the $275 held by Adam Fox, pegged by Trask as the ringleader.
Even the profile of Fox is not unlike those of earlier targets like Shareef and Hester. Fox was reportedly struggling with money and had been on the brink of homelessness after his girlfriend kicked him out of her house, before being taken in by his friend and employer, who let him stay temporarily in the basement of his vacuum store. It was there in that cramped storage space, cluttered with boxes and spare vacuum parts, where Fox was living with his two dogs and meager possessions, that he at one point held a meeting to allegedly plan out the kidnapping. [Jacobin]
The possibility of an FBI entrapment-type operation is especially disturbing in light of the striking parallels between the Michigan Plot and the so-called Capitol Siege of 1/6.
The Michigan Plot did not start out as a kidnapping. According to the DOJ’s own indictment, the plot started as a plan to “storm the Capitol building” in Lansing, Michigan. And the “conspirators” would do so by amping up “at least 200 men” from an upcoming unrelated rally planned at the Michigan Capitol building (a rally that was focused on the Second Amendment, not insurrection) by agitating enough rallygoers to run inside and occupy the building.
Paragraph 10 of the FBI affidavit describes the plot to “storm the state capitol”:
10. Fox, in coordination with CROFT, met with members of the militia group at various times in June 2020. During one such meeting on June 18, 2020, which was audio recorded by CHS-2, FOX, militia group leadership, including Michigan resident Ty GARBIN, and CHS-2 met at a Second Amendment rally at the State capitol in Lansing, Michigan. In an effort to recruit more members for the operation, FOX told GARBIN and CHS-2 he planned to attack the Capitol and asked them to combine forces.
“CHS-2” refers to a “Confidential Human Source,” which means government informant. As mentioned above, the groups involved with this alleged plot were absolutely replete with undercover informants and operatives. Consider the following excerpt, from the same FBI affidavit:
4. In the course of its investigation, the FBI relied on information provided by Confidential Human Sources (CHS) and Undercover Employees (UCE) over several months. Not all CHSs and UCEs were present at all times, however, at least one CHS or UCE was usually present during the group meetings. Those CHSs and UCEs consensually recorded the meetings and conversations with the subjects. Some meetings or conversations were recorded by more than one CHS or UCE. Certain CHSs also had access to group or individual texts, online chats, and phone calls. Each CHS was vetted for reliability by the FBI agent handling the source. None of the CHSs were aware of the other CHSs involved with the groups in order to preserve the independence of their reporting. Although multiple CHSs were used over the course of the investigation, this complaint only relies on audio recordings and information provided by CHS-1, CHS-2, UCE-1 and UCE-2. [FBI Affidavit]
In the above excerpt, the FBI acknowledges the use of both confidential informants and undercover employees over the course of several months leading up to the so-called “thwarted plot.”Specifically, the complaint acknowledges two confidential informants and two undercover employees. Subsequent to the DOJ’s filing charges, however, another deep undercover informant unexpectedly outed himself (more on that later), bringing the tally of known government operatives up to five.
Here’s a clip of one of the informants talking about storming the Michigan State Capitol:
No wonder this Michigan plot didn’t take the federal authorities by surprise!
FBI infiltrators comprised, at the very least, 26 percent of the plotters. That is, at least five FBI operatives have been disclosed, against just 14 suspects indicted.
A look at the annotated indictment reveals that at every level of the plot, FBI operatives played the most important leadership roles:
-The plot’s “explosives expert,” who the plotters were accused of planning to buy bombs from, turned out to be an FBI agent.
-The head of transportation for the militia outfit turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.
-The head of security for the militia outfit turned out to be an undercover FBI informant.
-At least two undercover FBI informants were active participants in the initial June 6, 2020 meeting in which the plot to storm Capitol buildings was allegedly hatched — meaning at least three FBI informants infiltrated before the conspiracy even started.
In one of the plot’s climactic scenes, in the main van driving up to look at Governor Whitmer’s vacation home, three out of the five people in the van — 60 percent of the plot’s senior leaders — were federal agents and informants:
31. FOX, CROFT, CHS-2, a UCE, and an individual from Wisconsin traveled in the first vehicle. While in the vehicle, CROFT and FOX discussed detonating explosive devices to divert police from the area of the vacation home. They stopped at the M-31 highway bridge on the way, where FOX and the UCE inspected the underside of the bridge for places to seat an explosive charge. FOX took a picture of the bridge’s support structure, which he later shared with CHS-2 in their encrypted chat. From there, they drove to a public boat launch across the lake from the vacation home to watch for the other cars in their group. [FBI]
You may be wondering how you get “three out of five” when the DOJ’s complaint only acknowledges two undercover FBI operatives: UCE (meaning “Undercover Employee,” or full-time agent) and CSH-2.
That is because the FBI went to great lengths to hide their affiliation with the fifth person in the van, describing him only as “an individual from Wisconsin” (again, more on this later).
Let’s take stock of what we have so far. We have a group of plotters that is heavily infiltrated by FBI informants and undercover agents, who were allegedly planning to kidnap the Michigan governor and storm the state capitol.
What we also know is that many of the main figures indicted in this plot seem to be associated with a militia group called the “Three Percenters” — one of the very same “big three” militia groups primarily charged with orchestrating 1/6.
Just to take a few examples:
The FBI alleged Adam Fox and Barry Croft were the supposed masterminds of the plot, with Adam Fox described as the Michigan state leader of the Three Percenters and Barry Croft as a national leader of the Three Percenters.
Michigan Plot indicted co-conspirators Brian Higgins and Michael Null were identified as Three Percenters as well.
As was Michael Jung, who was not indicted in relation to the kidnapping plot. Jung allegedly was a member of both the Oath Keepers and second in command of the Wisconsin Branch of the Three Percenters. Jung’s 2-acre homestead in Wisconsin is where the DOJ alleges the Michigan “plotters” held firearms training and field exercises under the watchful eye of undercover informants.
And so we see the strange parallels between the so-called Michigan Plot and the so-called 1/6 Capitol Siege. In Michigan you had an alleged plot involving the storming of a state capitol, allegedly involving members of one of the very same key militia groups associated with the 1/6 plot. And we’re supposed to believe that despite massive and now publicly confirmed FBI and government infiltration of the Michigan Plot, there was no similar infiltration for 1/6?
Such a position appears still less plausible when we consider a final, suspicious connection between the Michigan Plot and 1/6.
The head of the FBI field office in Detroit, Steven D’Antuono, who oversaw the infiltration (and incitement?) operation into the Michigan plot was quickly and quietly promoted to lead the coveted Washington, DC field office:
Steven M. D’Antuono, who was named chief of the Detroit FBI office a year ago, has been promoted to head the Washington Field Office, a coveted post in the bureau.
FBI Director Christopher Wray made the announcement Tuesday, just several days after D’Antuono’s agents and state police busted up a plot to abduct Gov. Gretechen Whitmer. His official new title is assistant director in charge. [Deadline Detroit]
If you’ve been following along so far, you can probably take a guess as to what Steven D’Antuono is up to in his new, coveted perch…
That’s right, he’s one of the key figures overseeing the investigation into the 1/6 Capitol Siege. What a coincidence!
Let’s recap what we’ve established. Just months prior to the U.S. Capitol Siege on 1/6, the FBI thwarted a similar plot involving a siege at the Michigan State Capitol, whose plotters belong to one of the three main militia groups associated with 1/6. The FBI was able to thwart this on the basis of an astonishing infiltration rate of said groups involving undercover operatives and informants who had been working in such capacity, just in one tiny Michigan network, for more than seven months. They were so well-infiltrated that they already had three informants embedded in this random Three Percenter network before any plot was even hatched. Furthermore, just days after the plot was foiled, FBI director Christopher Wray quietly promoted the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Michigan Plot operation to a coveted D.C. field post, where he now oversees the investigation into 1/6.
The above parallels between the Michigan Plot and 1/6 do not necessarily mean that the the FBI had undercover informants and operatives who were involved in 1/6. But it sure as heck reinforces our intuition that it’s a distinct possibility. And it forces us to ask the question once again — if the government foiled the Michigan Plot, why didn’t they step in to stop the so-called siege on 1/6?
It is now imperative for anyone who cares about the truth to demand that Christopher Wray answer the question — to what extent did the FBI or any other government agency infiltrate the key militia groups associated with the U.S. Capitol Siege?
And more pressing still, a question to which we now turn our attention: how many of the unindicted co-conspirators in 1/6 prosecutions are unindicted on account of a prior arrangement with the federal government as an undercover operative or informant?
Shock and Awe: The DOJ’s Standard of Prosecution
Revolver News’s investigative team noticed from the very beginning a highly unusual and hard-to-explain feature of the conspiracy indictments filed against the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.
Revolver took special notice of not only the unusual volume of unindicted co-conspirators, but a still more unusual feature that the statements and actions of the unindicted co-conspirators in many cases seemed far more egregious and aggressive than those of the persons actually indicted.
It is essential here to make an important note of clarification. The purpose of this analysis here is not to aid in the prosecution of any of these unindicted co-conspirators. Rather, our aim is to point out that, given the standards of indictment applied to those actually indicted, it is very strange and indeed suspicious that certain unindicted co-conspirators have managed to avoid indictment. This does not necessarily mean that we approve of the standard of indictment itself. Quite the contrary, the aggressive standard of indictment and prosecution, through an unimaginably broad application of “conspiracy” charges, is immoral, unjust, and absurd.
We hope that one consequence of this seismic exposé will be a serious and prompt reform of the justice system to prevent such aggressive and politically motivated prosecutions on the part of the government.
Broadly speaking, there are three primary reasons to see an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal complaint: grants of immunity, pragmatic considerations, and evidentiary concerns.
Grants of immunity are traditionally only issued as the result of a plea deal reached between a defendant and prosecutors. Specifically, in exchange for agreeing to testify against “Big Fish” in the conspiracy, a “Little Fish” may remain an unindicted co-conspirator and never be charged.
But there are two reasons this possibility is far less likely in the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys indictments.
First, the timing doesn’t add up. The first indictment in the Oath Keepers case, already containing multiple key unindicted co-conspirators, was filed on January 27.
The First Superseding Indictment was filed on February 19. The Second Superseding Indictment was filed on March 12. The Third Superseding Indictment was filed on March 31. But the first plea deal in the Oath Keepers case was not struck until April 16. This means that none of the unindicted co-conspirators in the first three months of filings could have gotten a grant of immunity.
And even then, only one guy so far has copped a plea. Informal plea negotiations among the broader group didn’t even start until last week.
There are what appears to be upwards of 20 unindicted co-conspirators in the Oath Keepers indictments, all playing various roles in the conspiracy, who have not been charged for virtually the exact same activities — and in some cases much, much more severe activities — as those named alongside them in indictments.
The timeline and fact pattern suggests therefore that the only unindicted co-conspirator who could be unindicted as the result of a grant of immunity would have to be the single person from the Fourth Superseding Indictment onward, which was filed on May 26.
The other reasons to typically see unindicted co-conspirators — pragmatic concerns and evidentiary concerns — seem far less likely in this case as well.
Listen to then-Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin describing this remarkably merciless “Shock and Awe” prosecutorial campaign:
I wanted to ensure, and our office wanted to ensure, that there was shock and awe. That we could charge as many people as possible before [January] 20th. And it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C., because they were like, ‘If we go there, we’re going to get charged.’
We saw “Shock and Awe” in action in the DOJ’s terrifyingly twisted “conspiracy” case against George Tanios, discussed at length in a previous Revolver report.
George Tanios and his companion Julian Khater have been charged with nine criminal counts for actions taken on 1/6 just outside the steps of the U.S. Capitol building. The most serious charge was assault on an officer with a dangerous weapon, arising from Khater’s alleged use of Tanios’s chemical spray to tag Officer Sicknick and two other officers in the face.
There, Tanios: (1) did not go in the Capitol; (2) did not use any bear spray himself; (3) had bear spray in his backpack and when his buddy Khater reached in to take it out, Tanios actively tried to stop him; and (4) in the end, it turns out, as prosecutors now acknowledge, his buddy never even used the bear spray.
And still, the DOJ has slapped this 39-year-old sandwich shop owner, George Tanios, with 60 years worth of stacking “conspiracy” charges because he said, “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet.”
As we proceed to consider the following unindicted co-conspirators, keep in mind this George Tanios “Shock and Awe” standard of prosecution.
The Unindicted Co-Conspirators
The first suspiciously unindicted co-conspirators we will consider are the “Person Two” and “Person Three” who are unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment against Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell (and the 15 named co-defendants).
For those unfamiliar, Thomas Caldwell is a 65-year-old from Virginia and an alleged member of the Oath Keepers, which the DOJ refers to as a “paramilitary” or “militia” group. The Caldwell case served as one of the first major indictments following the January 6 incident.
The DOJ press release provides more detail:
Jessica Marie Watkins, 38, and Donovan Ray Crowl, 50, both of Champaign County, Ohio; and Thomas Caldwell, 65, of Clarke County, Virginia, were indicted today in federal court in the District of Columbia on charges of conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and unlawful entry on restricted building or grounds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1512, 1361, and 1752. Watkins and Crowl were arrested on Jan. 18; Caldwell was arrested on Jan. 19. All three individuals originally were charged by criminal complaint. The maximum penalty for Obstructing an Official Proceeding is a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
According to the charging documents, Watkins, Crowl, and Caldwell communicated with each another in advance of the Jan. 6, 2021, incursion on the U.S. Capitol and coordinated their attack. Watkins, Crowl, and Caldwell are all affiliated with the Oath Keepers, while Watkins and Crowl are also members of the Ohio State Regular Militia. Watkins claimed to be a commanding officer within the Ohio State Regular Militia in a social media post. [Department of Justice]
A careful read of the indictment against Caldwell reveals that a certain “Person Two” was a key co-conspirator alongside Caldwell in nearly every dimension relevant to the charges in question.
Person Two planned logistics with Caldwell days in advance of 1/6, stayed in the same hotel room for days together, and when Caldwell allegedly “stormed the barricades” into restricted areas outside the U.S. Capitol, Person Two is alleged to have “stormed the barricades” right beside him.
But five months since the acts both co-conspirators allegedly committed, only Caldwell has been charged. Person Two, for some mysterious reason, remains an unindicted co-conspirator.
For example, the DOJ alleges:
48. Meanwhile, CALDWELL, who was positioned on the west side of the Capitol, joined with PERSON TWO and others known and unknown in storming past barricades and climbing stairs up to a balcony on the West side of the Capitol building.[DOJ – Fourth Superseding Indictment]
Person Two is with Caldwell side by side, doing the same actions, going into the same restricted areas of the Capitol, coming out, every step of the way from the beginning of the day until they return to a hotel they share together. But for some strange reason, Person Two, who could not have gotten a plea deal, is not indicted, named, or pursued at all. From the government’s brief against reconsideration of detention:
Did you see us storm the Capitol today? [Person Two] is exhausted and will give you the long version later… I will send you now a sequence of pics as we get bearer, climb through the construction and scaffolding meant to stop us, up the stairway where they were shooting teargas and the grins after we were in as well as the view looking out from the balcony.
…
Hell yeah! [Person Two] and I rolled with the Oathkeepers and some other militia.
…
On my side another round of indiscriminate tear gas shots. I gotta say, I was carrying my American flag and I got up on that fountain and I said let’s go. Patriots forward! And people were screaming it and we surged forward. I will neve forget the feeling. And [Person Two] I said . . . do you want to go and [Person Two] said something like let’s go!
…
We got to the level where they do the inauguration and I gotta say it was exhilarating to stand there with thousands, some even hanging from the scaffolding, waving my American flag and [PERSON TWO] waving the flag singing America the beautiful and the Star spangled banner with hundred of thousands of people I didn’t know.
…
On my side the cops showed up on a level above us with riot guns and about this time I had left [PERSON TWO] and [name omitted] one of our other pals by the railing about 20 yards back.
52. On December 30, 2020, WATKINS and CALDWELL exchanged the following text messages:
WATKINS: Looks like we are greenlight to come to DC on the 6th. The Rally Point still at your place?
CALDWELL: Not that I am aware… Here’s the rub: [PERSON TWO] and I will be in a hotel within striking distance of the city starting on the 4th so we won’t even BE here.
Even more suspicious than Person 2 described above is Person 3, who is yet another unindicted co-conspirator in the Caldwell indictment.
Note that in the Michigan Plot described in the previous section, both the main van driver and explosives supplier were undercover FBI operatives.
Here, the Oath Keepers’ main bus driver and supposed explosives supplier remains an unindicted co-conspirator. That person is simply listed as “Person 3” in the complaints.
Consider the following from paragraph 64 of the Caldwell indictment:
On January 1, 2021, CALDWELL wrote to CROWL, “Check with Cap. I recommended the following hotel to her which STILL has rooms (unbelieveble).” CALDWELL then sent a link to the Comfort Inn Ballston, the same hotel that he recommended to others on January 1. CALDWELL continued, “[PERSON TWO] and I are setting up shop there. [PERSON THREE] has a room and is bringing someone. He will be the quick reaction force. Its going to be cold. We need a place to spend the night before minimum. [PERSON ONE] never contacted me so [PERSON TWO] and I are going our way. I will probably do pre-strike on the 5th though there are things going on that day. Maybe can do some night hunting. Oathkeeper friends from North Carolina are taking commercial buses up early in the morning on the 6th and back same night. [PERSON THREE] will have the goodies in case things go bad and we need to get heavy.” [DOJ – Fourth Superseding Indictment]
In arguing defendant Caldwell should be denied bail, the DOJ cites Caldwell’s “leadership role in planning the events of January 6” as including “finding lodging” for Person Three. They even explicitly refer to Person Three as “a third co-conspirator.” Why is this “third co-conspirator” still unindicted?
Perhaps most significantly, the government has proffered, and the indictment alleges, that Defendant Caldwell played a leadership role in planning the events of January 6, 2021: by (1) finding lodging just outside Washington, D.C. for himself, co-defendant Watkins, co-defendant Crowd, and a third co-conspirator, Person Three, whom Caldwell said would be serving as part of the “quick reaction force” to support the operations on January 6 (ECF No. 18 at 7-9); (2) distributing maps to the quick reaction force to help it find the quickest route to the Capitol, should its services be required (id. At 9); and (3) by discussing whether it would be possible to recruit people with boats to join the plan, so that they could participate in the quick reaction force and ferry “the heavy weapons” across the Potomac River, should that become necessary during the events of January 6 (id. At 9). [DOJ – Caldwell Bond Motion]
In the Michigan Plot, an undercover FBI operative was the recipient of hand-drawn maps from the “plotters” doing reconnaissance missions. Here in 1/6, it is once again the mysteriously unindicted co-conspirator “Person 3” who receives hand-drawn maps:
75. On January 4, 2021, CALDWELL emailed PERSON THREE several maps along with the message, “These maps walk you from the hotel into D.C. and east toward the target area on multiple roads running west to east including M street and P street, two of my favorites…” [DOJ – Fourth Superseding Indictment]
Further, in the Michigan Plot, defense counsel alleges it was an undercover FBI operative who actually organized and paid for the hotel rooms during the key planning meeting on June 6, 2020.
Here, our mysteriously unindicted “Person Three” reserved and paid for various Oath Keeper hotel rooms:
68. KELLY MEGGS paid for two rooms, each for two people, at the Comfort Inn Ballston from January 5-6, 2021. The rooms were reserved under the name of Person Three.
From the indictment, Person 3 was tasked with stashing the heavy weapons at the “QRF hotel”, and standing by as QRF operator in case he was summoned to take the weapons directly to protesters at the scene. [Indictment, paragraphs 83, 84 and 90 and Bond Hearing, pp. 13-14]
This same pattern applies to the booking of most Oath Keeper hotel rooms:
82. On January 4, 2021, PERSON TEN checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Virginia. The room was reserved and paid for using a credit card in PERSON ONE’s name.
95. MINUTA, using his personal email address and his personal home address, reserved three rooms at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., under the names of MINUTA, JAMES, and PERSON TWENTY. A debit card associated with PERSON FIFTEEN was used to pay for the room reserved under MINUTA’s name. [DOJ Indictment]
Indeed, the curious lack of indictments filed against the entire gamut of Persons referenced as playing leadership roles within the Oath Keepers on 1/6 raises red flags. This includes: Person 2, Person 3, Person 10, Person 14, Person 15, Person 16, Person 19 and Person 20, along with many co-conspirators listed only as “an individual.”
For example, while transgender bar owner and Ohio Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins is inside the mezzanine of the U.S. Capitol, she is being directed, encouraged and egged on by “an individual” whose identity the DOJ clearly knows, since the DOJ stipulates the “individual” had “participated in at least one prior Oath Keeper operation:”
141. An individual who had participated in at least one prior Oath Keeper operations with WATKINS responded, “Get it Jess. Do your fucking thing. This is what we fucking [unintelligible] up for. Everything we fucking trained for.” [DOJ Indictment]
Among such individuals, consider the alleged administrator of the “Stop the Steal J6” Zello channel.
The Zello channel in question was populated by patriot/militia personalities who were variously monitoring and participating in 1/6 activities in real-time. For those unfamiliar, Zello is an app that allows for walkie-talkie functionality on a cell phone. Because phones signals were “jammed” by law enforcement in the Capitol area, Zello’s walkie-talkie function was useful (and pre-planned) to stay in communication.
The DOJ alleges:
114. At 2:03pm, the administrator of the “Stop the Steal J6” Zello channel directed the group, “You are executing citizen’s arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud.” [DOJ Indictment]
The DOJ point-blank says this Zello channel administrator “directed the group” as it was carrying out the alleged Capitol attack. If the group is carrying out a conspiracy (and that’s what the defendants are charged with), this Zello channel administrator is directing the conspiracy in real-time. Further, applying the George Tanios “shock and awe” standard, it would certainly appear that direct instructions and active encouragement to co-conspirators in real-time to perform “citizens arrests” on the assembly (presumably Congress) is far worse than George Tanios merely saying “Hold on, hold on, not yet,” which was the sole hook needed for the DOJ to jail him without bail facing 60 years of charges.
An important reminder for the reader: the point of this exercise is not to encourage the prosecution of this or any other unindicted co-conspirator. The purpose is to suggest the oddity that such co-conspirators have not been indicted, given the absurdly severe “Shock and Awe” standard applied to those who have been. To the extent that this double-standard suggests that the unindicted co-conspirator remains such because he or she has a relationship with the federal government, this is of profound public interest.
We do not mean however to legitimize or condone the “Shock and Awe” standard applied to those indicted, or the wide scope and abusive application of “conspiracy” statutes to target political dissidents.
Under the same (absurd and unjust) standard of prosecution applied to this and every other 1/6 case, this statement, made in real-time over private walkie-talkie to the Oath Keepers inside the Capitol is immediately sufficient to charge this “individual” with conspiracy as well. Is this person being protected? If so, why?
Turning to the Proud Boys side, it appears that the individual who set up the Proud Boys’ communications infrastructure is still being protected by the DOJ. The DOJ refers to this person only as “UCC-1” (UCC meaning an explicitly spelled out “unindicted co-conspirator”):
47. At 9:09 p.m. UCC-1 broadcast a message to the New MOSD and Boots on the Ground channels that read: Stand by for the shared baofeng channel and shared zello channel, no Color, be decentralized and use good judgment until further orders” UCC-1 also wrote, “Rufio is is in charge, cops are the primary threat, don’t get caught by them or BLM, don’t get drunk until off the street.” UCC-1 then provided a specific radio frequency of 477.985. [DOJ – First Superseding Indictment]
Note that the “baofeng channel” here refers to encrypted two-way Chinese Baefeng radios.
Recall in the very beginning of this report, the Senate hearing exchange (in which Sen. Amy Klobachar asks FBI Director Wray if he wishes the FBI infiltrated the Proud Boys) begins with her exasperation over the Proud Boys having “Chinese radio”:
“And they show up, we now know in this complaint, with encrypted two-way Chinese radios…”
What a dark irony if it turns out that the very radios in question here were supplied to the Proud Boys group by an informant or undercover agent!
UCC-1, as well as two additional unindicted co-conspirators referred to only as “Person-One” and “Person-Two” in the Proud Boys indictment, were all in Proud Boys “upper tier leadership,” and appear to have been the most prolific planners and incendiary advocates of “insurrection” in the run-up to and on the day of 1/6.
For example, the DOJ cites statements made almost exclusively by unindicted co-conspirators as statements that “revealed a plan to storm the Capitol and to let the crowd loose.” Below is a direct quote from that DOJ motion. Note that only a single statement in this entire exchange, cited as the DOJ’s proof of an ongoing conspiracy, is made by a conspirator the DOJ actually indicted (Charles Donahoe). Even then, the indicted conspirator’s statements are orders of magnitude less specific, conspiratorial and incendiary than those made by unindicted co-conspirators UCC-1, Person-1 and Person-2:
Statements made contemporaneous to the event, however, revealed a plan to storm the Capitol and to let the crowd loose, e.g.:
UCC-1: I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today Person-2: Would be epic UCC-1: The state is the enemy of the people Person-2: We are the people UCC-1: Fuck yea Person-1: God let it happen . . . I will settle with seeing them smash some pigs to dust Person-2: Fuck these commie traitors Person-1: It’s going to happen. These normiecons have no adrenaline control . . . They are like a pack of wild dogs DONOHOE: I’m leaving with a crew of about 15 at 0830 to hoof it to the monument no colors Person-2: Fuck it let them loose Person-1: I agree . . .
For this exchange, made on 1/6, in the exclusive, encrypted senior leaders-only chat of the Proud Boys, the DOJ has sufficient grounds to indict UCC-1, Person-1 and Person-2 as co-conspirators.
But the roles of UCC-1, Person-1 and Person-2 look even worse when you understand the structure and hierarchy of the Proud Boys chain of command on 1/6.
First, there were only a very small handful of people in the “upper tier leadership” private Telegram chat of the Proud Boys. When the channel was set up on December, 29, 2020, it was just six people, including Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, longtime Proud Boys “thought leader” Joseph Biggs, Proud Boys Auburn chapter head Ethan Nordean, and Proud Boys Philadelphia chapter head Zachary Rehl. That’s four named individuals and two-unnamed.
On December 29, 2020, the Proud Boys Chairman announced the leadership and structure of the Ministry of Self-Defense. The leadership and structure included an “upper tier leadership” of six people, which included Proud Boys Chairman, Nordean, Biggs, and Rehl. Later that evening, Donohoe explained the structure with reference to the upcoming trip to Washington, D.C. Among other things, Donohoe explained that the MOSD was a “special chapter” within the organization. The “special chapter” was not to have any interaction with other Proud Boys attending the event. Other Proud Boys attending the event were to coordinate with their own chapters and “do whatever you guys want.” [May 13 DOJ filing, pp. 3-4]
The day before 1/6, the Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, a known FBI informant, was arrested on weapons charges and ordered by a Judge to stay away from D.C.
Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the right-wing group the Proud Boys, has been ordered to stay away from Washington, D.C., after he was arrested on vandalism and weapons charges. The ruling comes one day before pro-Trump demonstrations are planned in Washington as Congress convenes to count the Electoral College votes ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
Tarrio was released from custody on Tuesday, but Judge Renee Raymond ordered him to stay away from Washington. Raymond said the government’s request for Tarrio to stay away was reasonable given his prior statements about burning anything associated with Black Lives Matter, Raymond also ordered that Tarrio not possess a firearm or ammunition while in Washington.
Tarrio was arrested Monday after he arrived in Washington on a charge stemming from the destruction of a Black Lives Matter banner at a historically Black church. He was found to be in possession of several high-capacity firearms, stemming in felony charges.[CBS]
A full discussion of Tarrio is outside the scope of this piece. For now, we will simply note how remarkably convenient it is that the head of the Proud Boys, a known FBI informant, just happened to get arrested and banned from D.C. the day before the January 6 protest, in which Proud Boys were involved.
What better excuse for the leader not to be present on that fateful day?
Upon Tarrio’s arrest on January 4, the “upper tier leadership” of the MOSD Telegram channel was “nuked” and a channel, “New MOSD” took its place. We now know this top leadership Telegram group included unindicted co-conspirators UCC-1, Person-1 and Person-2 (as well as Proud Boys North Carolina chapter leader Charles Donahoe).
On January 4, 2021, shortly after Proud Boys Chairman’s arrest pursuant to a warrant issued by D.C. Superior Court, DONOHOE expressed concern that encrypted communications that involved Proud Boys Chairman would be compromised when law enforcement examined Proud Boys Chairman’s phone. DONOHOE then created a new channel on the encrypted messaging application, entitled “New MOSD,” and took steps to destroy or “nuke” the earlier channel. After its creation, the “New MOSD” channel included NORDEAN, BIGGS, REHL, DONOHOE, and a handful of additional members. [DOJ – First Superseding Indictment]
The DOJ cites Person-1 as saying the following:
Person-1: God let it happen . . . I will settle with seeing them smash some pigs to dust Person-1: It’s going to happen. These normiecons have no adrenaline control . . . They are like a pack of wild dogs Person-2: Fuck it let them loose Person-1: I agree . . .
Furthermore, DOJ cites Person-1 as belonging to Proud Boys’ “upper tier leadership”:
A video call was held with prospective members of the MOSD on December 30, 2020. The self-proclaimed leadership of the MOSD introduced the chapter and explained the expectations, including the strict chain of command. As one member (“Person-1”) of the upper tier leadership explained…
This unindicted co-conspirator, Person-1, then explained that all Proud Boys leaders must obey the orders of any person in the senior leadership chat. That means UCC-1, Person-1 and Person-2 had directorial authority over indicted defendants in the group:
“[Directions] could come from any single person that you see on your screen right now… but the one thing that everyone has to understand, is, yes, you might be getting told things from different people, but it’s all information from the same plan. [Joe] Biggs] is not going to tell you something different than I’m gonna tell you. [Proud Boys Chairman] is not going to tell you something different than Zach [Rehl] is going to tell you. It’s all one operational plan, so don’t get hung up on the delivery. The information is all the same. [Bond Motion]
So if UCC-1, Person-1 and/or Person-2 were undercover informants or agents, note that instruction given by them to other Proud Boys in the chat was to be taken as a direction coming straight “from the top.”
40. On January 4, 2021, at 7:15 p.m., DONOHOE posted a message on various encrypted messaging channels, including New MOSD, which read, “Hey have been instructed and listen to me real good! There is no planning of any sorts. I need to be put into whatever new thing is created… DONOHOE then wrote, “Stop everything immediately” and then “This comes from the top.”
And in fact, these unindicted co-conspirators did appear to override indicted defendants:
41. On January 4, 2021, at 8:20 p.m., an unindicted co-conspirator (“UCC-1”) posted to New MOSD channel: “We had originally planned on divying them up and getting baofeng channels picked out.” [DOJ – First Superseding Indictment]
The next day, UCC-1 did in fact set up and distribute the Baofeng Chinese radio frequency [paragraph 47].
While UCC-1 set up the Chinese radios and walkie-talkie teams, and Person-1 gave operational instructions, Person-2 was repeatedly posting into the senior leadership chat the most inflammatory and inciting comments of anyone in the organization:
On January 4, prior to his arrival in Washington, D.C., Proud Boys Chairman communicated his expectation that he would be arrested upon entering Washington, D.C. Shortly thereafter, UCC-1 wrote, “We should tell our guys and double down.” Another member of MOSD leadership (“Person-2”) subsequently wrote, “I say fuck it. Let’s set it off[.]” Person-2 then posted “J20” and then “Drag them out by the fucking hair” and then “If they steal it[.]”
Notably, Person-1 and Person-2 were the same participants in the Telegram message chats on January 6 who expressed their hope that the “normies” would “burn that city to ash” and suggested that those on the ground should “turn them loose.” In addition, Person-2 was the individual who posted an alert in the Telegram messages: “Storming the Capitol now” and directed participants to “Get there.”[DOJ Motion]
By the severe “Shock and Awe” prosecutorial standard applied to George Tanios, it is difficult to understand how the unindicted co-conspirators described above have not yet been indicted.
As yet another reminder, we are not advocating for the prosecution or indictment of anyone. Rather, we are pointing out the seeming double standard applied to certain indicted persons (George Tanios, for example) and a number of highly suspicious unindicted co-conspirators, with a view toward the strong possibility that the latter categories contain federal informants and undercover operatives.
Conclusion
By way of conclusion, let us return to a curious feature of the Michigan Plot described earlier in this report.
During one of the plot’s climactic scenes, in the main van driving up to look at Whitmer’s vacation house, three out of the five people in the van — 60 percent of the plot’s senior leaders — were undercover agents and operatives:
31. FOX, CROFT, a CHS-2, a UCE, and an individual from Wisconsin traveled in the first vehicle. While in the vehicle, CROFT and FOX discussed detonating explosive devices [DOJ Indictment]
The FBI and DOJ went to great lengths to conceal the fact that the fifth man in the van, “an individual from Wisconsin,” was actually a deep undercover federal informant.
This “individual” allegedly organized the initial June 6, 2020 meeting in Dublin, Ohio where the entire Michigan Plot was allegedly hatched. He even allegedly paid for the attendees’ hotel rooms to travel there.
No wonder that the FBI-DOJ tried to conceal the central role of their mole in setting in motion a conspiracy blamed entirely on patriot/militia groups!
The “individual from Wisconsin,” also referenced variously throughout the Michigan Plot courts documents as “an individual”, is the longtime government mole Steve Robeson. We know this, because in November 2020, one month afterthe October 2020 indictment was filed, Steve Robeson blew his cover by spilling on a livestream: “I am the individual from Wisconsin.”
The criminal complaint describes a late-night surveillance run in mid-September from the group’s remote training site in Luther to Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan. Three vehicles made the trip, including a truck containing five people: accused ringleader Adam Fox, Croft, an informant, an undercover FBI agent and “an individual from Wisconsin.”
“That’s me,” Robeson tells members during the online meeting. “I’m the individual from Wisconsin.” [Detroit News]
Steve Robeson, 58, had been penetrating right-wing patriot/militia groups as a secret informant for the Federal government for over 35 years.
Robeson has a history of testifying for the government. In 1985, he testified against a suspect in a murder and arson case involving members of the Ghost Riders motorcycle gang, according to a Wisconsin State Journal article. The article portrays Robeson as a jailhouse snitch who shared a county jail cell with one defendant in the case. [Detroit News]
In a possible preview of what might come for some of the unindicted co-conspirators in 1/6, the FBI-DOJ burned Robeson, their own secret informant, by hitting the man they paid to infiltrate patriot groups with a 10-year charge for owning a gun (as a convicted child molester, he was not allowed to own a gun, which the FBI obviously knew in advance). Perhaps this is the price that Robeson paid for blowing his cover?
There is a fascinating moment in the October 14 preliminary hearing where Detroit FBI Field Office Special Agent Richard Trask brings personal notes to the stand, which he only consults when talking about key events concerning the “individual from Wisconsin”. When questioned on cross-examination about the contents of the notes and why they weren’t disclosed to defense counsel, Special Agent Trask says his admits his notes were prepped in a joint meeting the night before between the FBI and DOJ. When defense counsel Mr. Graham motions the judge for a copy of the notes, DOJ prosecutor Mr. Kessler rushes in to specify that defense counsel will only get a redacted version of the notes because they relate to unindicted co-conspirators and concealed-identity informants. [Preliminary Hearing Transcript – also see image sequence 1, 2, 3, 4]
Steve Robeson (“an individual”) being outed as a deep undercover FBI mole just months ago in the Michigan Plot, among other incidents, calls into question every major unindicted co-conspirator in the 1/6 case docket referred to only as “an individual.” Indeed, in the case of Robeson, the FBI and DOJ conspired to use this exact language trick to hide the existence of secret FBI informants from the judge, defense counsel and the public.
In the end, we are left with burning questions that ought to entirely reshape the way the nation thinks and talks about the events of 1/6.
From now on, every politician, commentator, and concerned citizen who cares about 1/6 has a duty to put the pressure on FBI director Christopher Wray to come clean.
In the very beginning of this piece we drew attention to Senator Klobuchar asking Christopher Wray about infiltration, but formulating the question in a way that assumed there was none. Don’t you ever kick yourself, she asked the FBI director, for not having infiltrated these groups that planned to do violence on 1/6?
Now, armed with the formidable research in this article, any politician in Senator Klobuchar’s shoes ought to kick themselves if they don’t ask the following:
Director Wray: How many of the unindicted co-conspirators in January 6 cases are now, or have been, undercover agents or confidential informants?
Indeed, pulling on the thread developed in this ground-breaking report could unravel the full story of what the FBI really knew about 1/6 — a potentially extraordinary scandal.
Comment: We are taught at an early age to respect authoritative figures (clergy, teachers, police, judges, etc) as they are an essential part of the structure, which holds together our social order. However, what happens to our social structure, our law and order, if they are the PRIMARY source of the corruption?
The FBI announced that 33 Missing and/or Exploited children were rescued in California in a multi-agency effort. Operation Lost Angels was launched on Jan. 11 and in addition to the recoveries, resulted in the arrest of a suspected human trafficker on state charges.
During January—Human Trafficking Awareness Month—the FBI worked with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and more than two dozen law enforcement and non-governmental partners to identify, locate, and recover missing children, particularly those who have been or were suspected of being sexually exploited and/or trafficked.
Of the 33 children recovered, eight were being sexually exploited at the time of recovery. Two were recovered multiple times during the operation while on the “track,” a common term used to describe a known location for commercial sex trafficking. It is not uncommon for victims who are rescued to return to commercial sex trafficking either voluntarily or by force, fraud, or coercion. This harmful cycle highlights the challenges victims face and those faced by law enforcement when attempting to keep victims from returning to an abusive situation. Victims may not self-identify as being trafficked or may not even realize they’re being trafficked.
There have been a string of high profile operations focused on missing and exploited children in the past year.
On Aug. 27, “Operation Not Forgotten” resulted in the discovery of 39 missing children in Georgia and Florida. Authorities said the children were between the ages of 3 to 17. Of the 39 endangered children, 15 were victims of sex trafficking.
In early September, Marshals declared that they had rescued eight “highly endangered” missing children in Indiana during “Operation Homecoming.” On Sept. 17, U.S. Marshals Service executed “Operation Triple Beam,” a 60-day mission to decrease violent gang crime in Oklahoma City. U.S. Marshals made 262 arrests, seized illegal firearms and narcotics, as well as located five missing children. Later in September, U.S. Marshals rescued 35 missing children during “Operation Safety Net” in Ohio.
In October, the Marshals Service announced they rescued 11 children in New Orleans, two of which were said to be in “extreme danger.” Later in the month the Marshals announced the recovery of 45 missing and endangered children in Ohio and West Virginia during “Operation Autumn Hope.” The operation led to 179 arrests that were made by the Central Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force.
In November, the U.S. Marshals rescued 27 missing children in Virginia during “Operation Find Our Children.”
