Tag: riots

Conspiracy Theory or Conspiracy In Fact?

Last week, Fox Nation aired “Patriot Purge,” Tucker Carlson’s three-part series on the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C. No sooner had the program been announced than the regime media went nuts. The former conservative Anne Applebaum, writing for The Atlantic, said it was a “sinister” piece of anti-American propaganda. NPR described it as an “off the rails” “conspiracy theory.” CNN said that it promulgated a “false narrative” that was “politically, historically and logically confused.” 

Translation: Carlson disputes the accepted narrative according to which the protest at the Capitol was an “insurrection” aimed at undermining “our democracy.” Ergo Carlson must be wrong. Cue the heated rhetoric and wheel out that all-purpose epithet “conspiracy theorist.” 

As a side note, I have always wondered why people of a certain ilk believe that uttering the phrase “conspiracy theory” or charging someone with being a “conspiracy theorist” disposes of any argument. George Orwell noted that the term “fascist” had been rendered nearly meaningless by its promiscuous application to all manner of things or people one didn’t like. “Conspiracy theory” is on even shakier ground, because in addition to make-believe conspiracies, the world is full of plenty of real conspiracies about which one needn’t theorize but simply observe and describe. 

When the Soothsayer came to warn Caesar about the Ides of March, he wasn’t warning about a conspiracy theory. He was warning about a conspiracy in fact, something that Caesar came to appreciate personally when the fateful day rolled around. Caesar to the Soothsayer: “The ides of March are come.” Soothsayer: “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”

Carlson’s thesis in “Patriot Purge” is that the extraordinary law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus that had been assembled and deployed to battle terrorism in the wake of 9/11 had not been dismantled after Osama bin Laden was killed. On the contrary, it has been maintained intact and is now being deployed against American citizens who have the temerity to challenge the dominant narrative about the perfidy of Donald Trump and the nature of the January 6 protest. (That Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States, should issue a memo directing the FBI, together with state and local law enforcement agencies, to treat parents who challenge their local school boards over the teaching of critical race theory as “domestic terrorists” shows how elastic that enemies list can be.)

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FBI Sat On Bombshell Footage From Kyle Rittenhouse Shooting

On Tuesday, opening statements in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, an18-year-old aspiring police officer accused of fatally shooting two men and wounding a third on the night of Aug. 25, 2020, as BLM riots raged in the streets of Kenosha in response to a white-on-black police shooting.

While prosecutors have slapped the teen with two counts of homicide and one count of attempted homicide, Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty to all charges, claiming self-defense.

Now, new footage has emerged which bolsters his case.

Before the shooting began, Rittenhouse, 17 at the time, was had arrived in Kenosha in order to help keep order and protect businesses from looting and arson.

“People are getting inured, and our job is to protect this business, and part of my job is also to help people. If there’s somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle, because I need to protect myself obviously. But I also have my med kit,” Rittenhouse said in footage recorded before the incident.

During the course of the evening, protesters became increasingly violent against Rittenhouse and the group he was with – eventually chasing the teen down the street when protester Joseph Rosenbaum was shot dead in the parking lot of a used car dealership. Shortly thereafter, Rittenhouse could be seen defending himself on the ground from multiple attackers – when he fatally wounded another, and shot the bicep of protester Gaige Grosskreutz who had drawn a pistol and was in the process of aiming it at the teen.

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Lindsey Graham Reportedly Called for Officers to Murder Jan. 6 Protesters: ‘You’ve Got Guns… Use Them’

Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly called for law enforcement to murder Trump supporters who were protesting on January 6th.

The shocking allegation was mentioned in an article in the Washington Post about the timeline of events on that day.

In a portion about how lawmakers had to shelter in place when protesters breached the building, the paper describes Graham urging the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms to use guns against the members of his own party.

The Senate and House leaders also had been evacuated by Capitol Police and taken to an undisclosed location, but many lawmakers remained in their chambers for a few minutes before they were led to safety in the Hart Senate Office Building. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham was irate that senators were forced to flee their own chamber. He yelled at the Senate sergeant-at-arms. “What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them.” The South Carolina senator was adamant. “We give you guns for a reason,” he repeated. “Use them.”

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‘Fed-Protected’ Man Identified As Mystery Instigator Of J6 Capitol Breach

In a House hearing on Thursday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned AG Merrick Garland about a mysterious man, Ray Epps, instructing protesters to enter the US Capitol building on January 5, and who later shepherded crowds towards the Capitol on January 6.

The story of the mystery man, Ray Epps, featured in Rep. Massie’s video above is in fact far more shocking than even the good Congressman implies in the hearing. It’s a story so strange, and so scandalous at every turn, that it threatens to shatter the entire official narrative of the “Capitol Breach” and expose yet another dimension of proactive federal involvement in the so-called “insurrection” of January 6th. 

If Revolver News’s previous reporting points to a proactive role of the federal government in relation to the conspiracy cases against Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, the Ray Epps story that follows suggests a similar, yet more egregious, explicit, direct and immediate degree of federal involvement in the breach of the Capitol itself.

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Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting “Insurrection” Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet.

When a population is placed in a state of sufficiently grave fear and anger regarding a perceived threat, concerns about the constitutionality, legality and morality of measures adopted in the name of punishing the enemy typically disappear. The first priority, indeed the sole priority, is to crush the threat. Questions about the legality of actions ostensibly undertaken against the guilty parties are brushed aside as trivial annoyances at best, or, worse, castigated as efforts to sympathize with and protect those responsible for the danger. When a population is subsumed with pulsating fear and rage, there is little patience for seemingly abstract quibbles about legality or ethics. The craving for punishment, for vengeance, for protection, is visceral and thus easily drowns out cerebral or rational impediments to satiating those primal impulses.

The aftermath of the 9/11 attack provided a vivid illustration of that dynamic. The consensus view, which formed immediately, was that anything and everything possible should be done to crush the terrorists who — directly or indirectly — were responsible for that traumatic attack. The few dissenters who attempted to raise doubts about the legality or morality of proposed responses were easily dismissed and marginalized, when not ignored entirely. Typically, they were vilified with the accusation that their constitutional and legal objections were frauds: mere pretexts to conceal their sympathy and even support for the terrorists. It took at least a year or two after that attack for there to be any space for questions about the legality, constitutionality, and morality of the U.S. response to 9/11 to be entertained at all.

For many liberals and Democrats in the U.S., 1/6 is the equivalent of 9/11. One need not speculate about that. Many have said this explicitly. Some prominent Democrats in politics and media have even insisted that 1/6 was worse than 9/11.

Joe Biden’s speechwriters, when preparing his script for his April address to the Joint Session of Congress, called the three-hour riot “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Liberal icon Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), whose father’s legacy was cemented by years of casting 9/11 as the most barbaric attack ever seen, now serves as Vice Chair of the 1/6 Committee; in that role, she proclaimed that the forces behind 1/6 represent “a threat America has never seen before.” The enabling resolution that created the Select Committee calls 1/6 “one of the darkest days of our democracy.” USA Today’s editor David Mastio published an op-ed whose sole point was a defense of the hysterical thesis from MSNBC analysts that 1/6 is at least as bad as 9/11 if not worse.S.V. Date, the White House correspondent for America’s most nakedly partisan “news” outlet, The Huffington Post, published a series of tweets arguing that 1/6 was worse than 9/11 and that those behind it are more dangerous than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda ever were.

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Internal police docs: ‘No good reason for shooting’ Ashli Babbitt

After obtaining over 500 pages of internal documents from the DC Metropolitan Police, Judicial Watch has found that they believe the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, who inside the Capitol during the riot on January 6, was unjustified.

In May, Judicial Watch filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain more than 500 pages of internal documents from the DC Metropolitan Police regarding the killing of Ashli Babbitt.

In the report, eyewitness testimony from a Capitol Police sergeant, whose name was redacted, suggests that while Babbitt did in fact climb through a broken window to enter the Capitol building, she was not carrying a weapon when she was shot by Capitol Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd.

“Sergeant [redacted] observed a white, female protester was climbing through an opened area where the glass pane had been knocked out,” a document from the Internal Affairs Division states.  

“He heard a gunshot and this female fell backwards through the opening. The crowd on the other side of the barricaded east doors, began to step back and some put their hands in the air. Sergeant [redacted] observed Lieutenant Byrd step back just after hearing the gunshot. He did not see anything in the female protester’s hands prior to the gunshot.”

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Ashli Babbitt coverup sparks federal action

The Department of Justice has been hit with a lawsuit for failing to provide public access to its records about the “killing” of Ashli Babbitt.

She was the California woman, unarmed, a 14-year Air Force veteran, who was shot and killed by Capitol police last January when dozens of protesters got rowdy, broke windows and doors, and vandalized parts of the building.

Democrats over and over have claimed the events that day as worse than 9/11 and a true threat to the future of American government.

Babbitt was shot and killed as she climbed through a broken interior window.

Congress and federal and local authorities kept secret for months before finally revealing that her killer was U.S. Capitol Officer Michael Byrd, and then they quickly confirmed he would face no punishment for killing her.

Now government watchdog Judicial Watch has confirmed it filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for its records relating to her death.

Earlier, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, the Civil Rights Division, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation all failed to provide the records responsive to Judicial Watch’s April 14, 2021 and May 20, 2021, FOIA requests.

Those were for records of the shooting, including video footage, and communications about the case and more.

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Covert Postal Service unit probed Jan. 6 social media

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, an obscure arm of the U.S. Postal Service did some serious internet sleuthing.

On Jan. 11, the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program — better known as iCOP — sent bulletins to law enforcement agencies around the country on how to view social media posts that had been deleted. It also described its scrutiny of posts on the fringe social media network Wimkin.

Few Americans are aware that the same organization that delivers their mail also runs a robust surveillance operation rooted in an agency that dates back to the 18th century. And iCOP’s involvement raises questions about how broad the mandate of the Postal Service’s policing arm has grown from its stated mission of keeping mail deliverers safe.

The documents also point to potential gaps in the Jan. 6 select committee’s investigation by revealing concerns about a company it is not known to be scrutinizing. And those documents point to a new challenge for law enforcement in the post-Jan. 6 era: how to track extremist organizing across a host of low-profile platforms.

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Oklahoma Man Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanor for Taking Nancy Pelosi’s Beer on January 6 — Will Serve 6 Months in Federal Prison for the Crime

An Oklahoma man pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after taking one of  Nancy Pelosi’s beers from her office on January 6.

Andrew Craig Ericson, 24, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. Prosecutors will drop three related misdemeanor charges in exchange for his plea. Ericson said in a signed statement that he is pleading guilty because he is in fact guilty.

He will face six months in federal prison and a $5,000 fine after he was tipped off to the FBI by someone who had known him since high school.

Six months in prison for one beer? 

Ericson posted a photo of himself on Snapchat while sitting comfortably with his feet on a table at Pelosi’s conference room and taking a beer out of a mini-refrigerator.

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