Tag: riots

Speaker Johnson says he’ll make 44,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage available to the general public

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday he plans to publicly release thousands of hours of footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, making good on a promise he made to far-right members of his party when he was campaigning for the job.

“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson said in a statement.

The newly elected speaker said the first tranche of security footage, around 90 hours, will be released on a public committee website Friday, with the rest of the more than 40,000 hours expected to be posted over the next several months. In the meantime, a public viewing room will also be set up in the Capitol for viewing the footage.

For the last several months, the GOP-led House Administration Committee has made the video available by appointment only to members of the media, criminal defendants and a limited number of other people. The video shows some of the fighting up close and gives a bird’s eye view of the Capitol complex — one that visitors rarely see — as hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building, violently attacking police officers and breaking in through windows and doors.

By expanding this access to the general public, Johnson is fulfilling one of the pledges he made last month to the most conservative members of his party, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who orchestrated the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The move will grant the general public a stunning level of access to sensitive and explicit Jan. 6 security footage, which many critics have warned could be endangered if it gets into the wrong hands. The hours of footage detail not only the shocking assault rioters made on U.S. Capitol Police as they breached the building but also how the rioters accessed the building and the routes lawmakers used to flee to safety.

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The FBI Halted Probe Of Pedophile To Focus On January 6. Now He’s Accused Of Abusing A 10-Year-Old Boy.

On January 6, 2021, the FBI explicitly chose to abandon a sting on a child pornographer in Virginia who was messaging with an undercover agent about having sex with a nine-year-old boy, opting instead to focus on prosecuting Donald Trump’s supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. Less than three years later, the FBI discovered the same man living in Alaska where he appears to have been performing sex acts on a 10-year-old boy, according to court documents.

On December 2, 2020, an internet user with the screen name “gayboy69freak” messaged an undercover agent with the FBI’s Washington Field Office, who was posing as a father pimping out his 9-year-old son, and told him that he wanted to travel to D.C. to have sex with the boy. The man also sent the agent a video of “a prepubescent minor male being anally penetrated by an adult male’s erect penis.” His IP address led the FBI to Brogan Welsh of Glenn Allen, Virginia.

What appears to be a slam-dunk case against a child predator was abruptly abandoned just one month later.

“On January 6, 2021, FBI, Washington Field Office, [decided] this investigation was halted due to events that occurred at the United States Capitol Building that day,” court documents say.

The man was only arrested, and the court documents only filed, because Welsh moved to Alaska and crossed the Anchorage FBI’s radar in an unrelated perversion investigation. On October 24, 2023, after coming across troubling chats from Welsh on a phone they seized from a different alleged pervert, Alaska FBI agents went into his house and “located items including sex toys that are very small in size and apparently consistent with the body size of an approximate 10-year-old boy,” as well as children’s underwear.

“The investigation has revealed that a 10-year-old boy was, in fact, residing at the residence belonging to Welsh,” the agents wrote.

In other words, because the FBI called off the dogs even after Welsh sent child porn to an FBI agent, he appears to have gone on to molest a 10-year-old.

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It Begins. Biden’s DOJ Starts Arresting Trump Supporters Who Stood Outside the US Capitol and Committed No Violence – Despite Registered Rallies on Capitol Grounds that Day

On October 13, 2022, the FBI testified that they were using geo-tracking data to identify Trump supporters who had gathered near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

A bombshell report by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) revealed the “vast, secretive” partnership between private companies and the federal government to surveil and track the movements of millions of Americans.

According to the EFF, the intel alphabet agencies, including ICE, the FBI, US Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Defense (DoD), as well as state and local law enforcement, are being funneled hordes of private cell phone location data by private brokers who harvest the information.

This is the same tactic that Gregg Phillips, Catherine Engelbrecht, and True The Vote used for their investigation into the mail-in ballot dropbox fraud during the 2020 election. The cell phone location data collected by this group was used to identify the network of Democrat operatives who committed mass election fraud, as seen in the recently-released documentary “2000 Mules.”

The FBI was alleged to have used this data to identify patriotic protesters who traveled to Washington DC on January 6, 2021, to support President Trump and the US Constitution.

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Seventh So Cal Antifa member convicted in violent conspiracy and rioting case

A So Cal Antifa member pleaded guilty to being part of a violent, organized Antifa riot almost three years ago at Pacific Beach, San Diego.;

Faraz Martin Talab, now 29 years old, of Atwater Village, Los Angeles, was captured on evidence video on Jan. 9, 2021 at a riot where roving mobs of black-clad Antifa members attacked supporters of Donald Trump and people walking on the beach boardwalk. He is now the seventh person to plead guilty in the ongoing felony conspiracy case.

In San Diego County Superior Court on Oct. 13, Talab pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to riot with his ten Antifa co-defendants, plus he admitted to assaulting a person with force likely to produce great bodily injury. As part of his plea deal, Talab admitted to joining in the Antifa attack with co-conspirators Joseph Austin Gaskins, 23, and Christian Martinez, 25. Gaskins was convicted in a plea deal in November 2022.

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Man Given Secret Jan. 6 Plea Deal Finished His Prison Sentence With No Public Court Record

A Jan. 6 defendant from Pennsylvania originally charged with felonies including assaulting police at the U.S. Capitol and civil disorder was given a secret plea deal and served his entire prison term without details being recorded on a public court docket.

Samuel Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pa., was arrested by the FBI on July 26, 2021, and later charged in a superseding indictment (pdf) with assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.

Mr. Lazar was ordered detained until trial despite his numerous requests for reconsideration.

On March 8, 2022, Mr. Lazar accepted a deal from prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one felony: assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and aiding and abetting. The plea deal included language that Mr. Lazar would assist federal authorities with the ongoing Jan. 6 investigation, according to a case status report (pdf) filed on Oct. 2.

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Ruthless J6 prosecutor (who persecuted “Lectern Guy”) just got a triple dose of karma and now finds himself behind bars…

A ruthless former January 6 prosecutor just got a triple dose of karma and now finds himself behind bars. The bizarre incident unfolded on the Howard Franklin bridge in Tampa as rush hour was finishing up last Tuesday. It’s not clear at this point exactly what happened, but local media is calling it a “road rage” incident. Patrick Douglas Scruggs, the former J6 prosecutor, allegedly stabbed a driver who hit his car and then attempted to stab Good Samaritans that stopped to offer help. He was arrested on aggravated battery, aggravated assault and armed burglary charges.

The “burglary” charge  is interesting. We’re assuming Mr. Scruggs is also accused of stealing from the driver–what he allegedly stole is not known at this point.

Tampa Bay Times:

According to a news release issued Tuesday by the Florida Highway Patrol, a 40-year-old Tampa man was driving a sedan south on Interstate 275 when he and his 43-year-old wife noticed a vehicle that was stopped in the travel lanes of the bridge shortly before 9:24 a.m. The 35-year-old driver, also of Tampa, was slumped over inside his sedan, troopers said, so the couple pulled over in front of the car to help.

The 40-year-old man was unable to get inside the other sedan, so he walked back to his car to get something that could break the window. While he was doing that, the 35-year-old man woke up and accelerated forward, crashing into the couple’s sedan. He shifted into reverse and then tried to get around the couple’s sedan, according to troopers, but at that point, he struck Scruggs’ sedan as he was driving by the scene.

Scruggs pulled over, got out and walked up to the driver of the vehicle that hit his car. According to the Highway Patrol, Scruggs broke a window and started stabbing the 35-year-old man with a pocketknife.

The couple returned to the vehicle to help the man being stabbed, but Scruggs then tried to stab them and they fled, troopers said.

And in an interesting twist, Adam Johnson, better known as “Lectern Guy” for swiping Pelosi’s lectern on that fateful day, was prosecuted by Mr. Scruggs.

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FBI lost count of how many paid informants were at Capitol on Jan. 6, and later performed audit to figure out exact number: ex-official

The FBI had so many paid informants at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that it lost track of the number and had to perform a later audit to determine exactly how many “Confidential Human Sources” run by different FBI field offices were present that day, a former assistant director of the bureau has told lawmakers.

At least one informant was communicating with his FBI handler as he entered the Capitol, according to Steven D’Antuono, formerly in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office.

D’Antuono has testified behind closed doors to the House Judiciary Committee that his office was aware before the riot that some of their informants would attend a “Stop the Steal” rally thrown by former President Donald Trump, but he only learned after the fact that informants run by other field offices also were present, along with others who had participated of their own accord.

The Washington field office had to ask FBI headquarters “to do a poll or put out something to people saying w[ere] any CHSs involved,” he said, so they could get a handle on the scale of the FBI’s spying operations at the Capitol that day.

“We started getting responses back” from FBI headquarters, added D’Antuono, which helped identify which field offices had planted confidential informants in the crowd. 

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A Jan. 6 rioter was convicted and sentenced in secret. No one will say why

Hundreds of rioters have been charged, convicted and sentenced for joining the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Unlike their cases, Samuel Lazar’s appears to have been resolved in secret — kept under seal with no explanation, even after his release from prison.

Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in July 2021 on charges that he came to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, dressed in tactical gear and protective goggles, and used chemical spray on officers who were desperately trying to beat back the angry Donald Trump supporters.

There is no public record of a conviction or a sentence in Lazar’s court docket.

But the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that the man was released from federal custody this week after completing a sentence for assaulting or resisting a federal officer. Lazar was sentenced in Washington’s federal court on March 17 to 30 months in prison, according to the Bureau of Prisons, but there’s no public record of such a hearing. He had been jailed since July 2021.

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FBI Knew Ukrainian Spy Was at Capitol Riot: QAnon Shaman

Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman,” claimed the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) knew that an alleged Ukrainian spy participated in the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Chansley, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison over his involvement in the January 6 riot but was released earlier this year, said in an interview with conservative activist Laura Loomer that the FBI questioned him about the presence of Sergai Dybynyn, an alleged Ukrainian spy with reported ties to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has risen to prominence amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

The FBI has not confirmed Chansley’s statement, which could not be independently verified. Newsweek reached out to the FBI via email for comment.

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Special Delivery: Severed Finger “From Living Human” Sent by Mail to French President Emmanuel Macron’s Home

France is burning under President Emmanuel Macron.

On Monday, in a disturbing turn, a severed human finger was sent to the official presidential home. The package did not contain any correspondence, only the finger, which investigators determined came from “a living victim” who, according to police sources, has been identified.

The Evening Standard reports:

The macabre parcel containing the amputated digit arrived at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Monday.

“The finger was initially put in a fridge where the police put their snacks,” said a source at the official presidential home. “This was to make sure it was preserved and could be analysed as quickly as possible.”

Tests later identified the finger as belonging to a “living human being,” who was contacted and “given full medical support,” said the source.

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