#SeditionHunters - Thursday’s arrest of Alan Hostetter highlighted extremism in Orange County, CA, but even he is junior-league. We knew OC would send their finest, and here he is, the highest-profile #SeditionVIP yet: former U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA 42). 1/
In 2016, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA 23) famously said “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” On Jan 6, Rohrabacher roamed the Capitol all day with a guy in a giant ushanka hat. Is this epic trolling by Russia? 2/ washingtonpost.com/world/national…
Rohrabacher’s been a fervent defender of Putin and Russia, lost his seat in the 2018 election. On Jan 6 he joined the attack on his former colleagues with his pal #RohraBoris, arriving early at the E. Plaza, then moving West by 2:50 PM, in time for the fighting at the tunnel 3/
Could he be disloyal? @anneapplebaum: he's “the living, breathing embodiment of the moral corruption that has seeped into a part of the Republican Party foreign policy establishment..[that] stopped caring about U.S. leadership of the democratic world" 4/ washingtonpost.com/news/global-op…
Rohrabacher is tied to ther OC seditionists. Here he is with Alan Hostetter in Dec. 2020 calling for revolution against “Communists…Marxist-Leninists who are trying to destroy the integrity of our voting system”. No, Dana, voters just didn’t like you. 5/
LA Times warned of OC extremism in March: "A year of right-wing protests in OC...spiraled into increasingly violent language against ever larger foes”. In DC on Jan 5, “a band of radicals invoked 'biblical war' [and] 'shedding of blood' ". 6/ latimes.com/california/sto…
Will Rohrabacher be the limit for our Senators, that gets us an investigation? In OR, lawmakers found their line last week: after video surfaced of a state rep. letting attackers into the statehouse in Dec. 2020, all 59 colleagues voted to expel him. 7/ opb.org/article/2021/0…
Updates / sources
H/t @jakobravner & Bluehatz crew for great find
Note: @FrankFigliuzzi1 called SeditionHunting the “Wild West”; but there is process & organization. #SeditionVIP’s are announced only if 3 people sign off on ID, location, & importance; threads are vetted; & perps are tipped to FBI in advance. Care makes research credible. 10/
Update on Rohrabacher's district, h/t @BarbaraHamrick. CA districts shifted, so Rohrabacher was successively in CA-42, 45, 46, 48.
Rohrabacher has so much shocking stuff the thread could go forever; just a few more goodies. First, poster for 12/2020 Huntington Beach rally 11/
Note that speakers 2 and 3 from the HB rally are arrested.
Second, more fine company for Rohrabacher: Oliver North + disgraced IA ex-Rep. Steve King, stripped of his committee assignments for open affiliation with white supremacy, lost in 2020. Might look for him on 1/6 too. 12/
Third, a nice summary by ABC news of Rohrabacher's Russian contacts including convicted Russian agent / honeypot Maria Butina, famous for infiltrating the NRA. Yes it all sounds like a Tom Clancy novel; sadly it is real. 13/ abcnews.go.com/Politics/russi…
And a quick note to any journos who want to report this - the way to refer to the people responsible for these findings is as "OSINT researchers" or "OSINT investigators". Not "citizen sleuths". 14/
On Jan 6, former U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) watched the fighting from the W. Capitol lawn, far past the breached police barricades, for well over an hour. Adding here highlighted clips + higher-res links for 3 videos that confirm his presence 15/
Betw. 3:00-3:03 PM (timing estimated from flags on terrace). At this point attackers are already inside the Capitol but the violent tunnel fight has only just started.
sighting 15:42
Clip by @CoryCullington. 17/
Video is key to understanding the Jan 6 attack, & there is a lot of it. #SeditionHunters have identified & saved 13,300 non-Parler & 6000 Parler videos (2460 & 100 hours). Our 2 amazing film editors have helped sync it & made incredible reels & clips. 19/ youtube.com/channel/UCboWX…
..but two editors is not enough. When the U.S. came under attack in WWII, the biggest directors in Hollywood - Capra, Ford, Stevens, Huston, Wyler, with 20 Oscars in total - stepped up to help. Now the U.S. needs film editors. @MPEG700 has 8000 members. Contact us! DMs open. 20/
Note: most Capitol sync'd video and perp reels is on Rumble now since our YT channel was shut down: rumble.com/c/c-969823
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In tonight's military purge, Tump named as Chair of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine, a retired Lt. Gen so underqualified he'd need a waiver. Oddly, Caine was installed last month at 3 VC firms doing crypto, AI, and defense tech, including Thrive, founded by Jared Kushner's brother. 1/
It does look bad if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is taking a paycheck from relatives of the president. But since Trump also fired the Judge Advocates General from all four military branches tonight, we might have to wait for an ethics ruling. 2/ military.com/daily-news/202…
The New York Times article tonight calls Lt Gen Caine a "serial entrepreneur and investor", but doesn't mention his role in Joshua Kushner's company. It's not a secret - it's on his LinkedIn. And it's very relevant - the public deserves to understand. 3/ archive.is/8Je1R
For journalists who need a handy reference guide to our new FBI Director, Kash Patel, the Jan 6 "Big Timeline" has 35 entries on him, from his early days attacking the FBI for investigating Trump's Russia ties to his 2024 book calling the FBI "gangsters" and promising a purge. 1/
The "1950-2019" historical tab has 5 entries, starting with Kash's attempts to subpoena the FBI and DOJ for investigating Trump's Russia ties. This is pushback even before Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel. Just ctrl-F search on "Patel". 2/ docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
The "2020-Jan 6" tab has 6 entries. (More on that later). Kash was installed as part of Trump's maneuvers AFTER he lost the election. Chris Miller was made Acting SecDef and Kash his Chief of Staff. Kash delivered the order to withdraw from Afghanistan. 3/ docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
As Trump's folks repeat Elon Musk's bs that tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, here's the 2023 inspector general report on the SSA's death records - with facts. Yes, there are over 6M dead people in the database, but they are NOT PAID. Link follows. 1/
The false claim matters for two reasons. First, Elon & Trump may use these lies to justify cutting Social Security. Second, they may take credit for work already under way - 'we found dead people.' It's not a discovery! It's routine government stuff. 2/ oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads…
The report is only 19 pages and Elon seems to have read none of them. This kind of reporting is why the US has an inspector general for all agencies - to look at data, to find mistakes or even fraud. Trump just fired 15 of those inspectors general. 3/
As US envoy Keith Kellogg tries to sideline Europe from talks over Ukraine, please remember: Kellogg has served Trump for years. Kellogg was on the 2019 phone call to extort Zelensky, then testified at Trump's impeachment: "I heard nothing wrong or improper on the call..." 1/
On Jan 6, Kellogg, who was Mike Pence's security advisor, spent the day with Trump instead. Here he is in the Oval Office with Trump. That's when Trump threatened Pence, then rewrote his speech to "re-insert the Pence lines". Kellogg stuck with Trump. 2/
Kellogg first came to public notice in 2016 when then-candidate Trump appointed a council of 5 national security advisors, names so obscure that the NYT called them "confound[ing]". 2 then got more famous in the Mueller report for their ties to Russia. 3/ web.archive.org/web/2016032302…
Today's news is grim: the two factions taking over our government are united on the one issue we had hoped they might split over. Turns out the techbro neo-fascists and the religious-right Project 2025 guys agree: US education should be gutted, privatized, and made religious. 1/
Here's the article laying it out: Elon Musk and Ted Cruz both urge the TX legislature to pass school vouchers that would push public funds to private religious schools. Musk of course is Peter Thiel's former partner, Cruz his first political protege. 2/ fox7austin.com/news/elon-musk…
Musk's announcement is the more surprising. In my taxonomy of the forces behind Jan 6, Ted Cruz is actually a crossover between the two wings: he's a protege of tech overlord Thiel but also deep in the far religious right, who backed him over Trump for president in 2016. 3/
As Elon Musk gives the Nazi salute in DC, let me just say that it was very clear, 4 years ago, at least to me, that Jan 6 was a precursor, and that this would be the result if we did not investigate it thoroughly - not the footsoldiers but the ones who gave orders that day. 1/
Some people say Jan 6 was more like the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch than the 1933 Reichstag fire, but either way, the analogy holds. The attack was planned; the Proud Boys were sub-contractors; there were people on the ground directing. And we missed it. 2/
Jan 6 is still relevant. Because there was so much effort to erase it, one key task is preserving its memory and its evidence. More broadly, resisting in a way that Germany did not in the 1930s. We need to read our history and listen to historians. 3/ lucid.substack.com/p/its-day-one-…