Thread by @SethAbramson

(🆚) NEW: The Troubling Associations of Insurrection-Week Trump "Command Center" Participant Joe Oltmann—the Man Who Tried to Convince the State Department to Overturn Biden's Victory on Insurrection Day

This is scary stuff, but it's worth sharing widely. sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-troublin…

1/ For some reason I still can't figure out, there's a tacit assumption among major media that while those who participated in the bloody assault on the Capitol on January 6 had extremist views, the rich and powerful Trumpists behind the scenes were oddballs but *not* militants.

2/ We've become so inured to what's euphemistically called "political rhetoric" that we have little reaction but a shrug or a roll of the eyes when Giuliani broadcasts a video on January 8 saying that the Democrat [sic] Party and media are indistinguishable, as in "Nazi Germany."

3/ But if the same words—and note that Giuliani *also* compared the supposed Dem-media conspiracy against Trump to the Communist Soviet Union less than 48 hours after he incited an attack on the Capitol—is uttered by a crazy-looking man on the Capitol lawn, *that* makes it scary.

4/ Maybe it's because I was a public defender for years—so I've spent a lot of time around people who *have* committed crimes, who *do* say terrible things, but who *also* have no institutional power—but I find such things *scarier* when they're said by the rich and the powerful.

5/ We have a good sense, from the FBI's January 6 investigation—which thankfully has arrested ~500 people—of what the crazies at the Capitol were saying (and far more importantly *doing*) before, on, and after January 6. But what about those manning Trump's high-priced war rooms?

6/ Joe Oltmann isn't the most *powerful* man who entered one of Trump's (apparently five) war rooms on January 5, January 6 and/or January 7, but he may be about as militant and *influential* as any who did, if his claims of speaking to State's "leadership" on January 6 are true.

7/ Joe Oltmann has ties to a paramilitary operation, ties to the Trumps, ties to Roger Stone's wacky crew of misfit Trumpists, and enough access to the corridors of power that as blood was being spilled at the Capitol he was in a secure Faraday cage at the U.S. State Department.

8/ Isn't it odd that 1,000 different cable networks, newspapers, and digital media outlets have told us the story of Richard Barnett—the criminal schmuck who put his feet up on Pelosi's desk—but we don't hear anything about tech millionaire Oltmann? I guess it's good to be rich?

9/ But here's the other thing I'd say as a former criminal investigator: we learn so much more—I'd argue about *100 times more*—about the insurrection from studying rich and powerful individuals close to its center of power than we do from getting the Barnett story blow-by-blow.

10/ Barnett's will get the book thrown at him and rightly so. No one who knows our justice system from the perspective of a public defender believes otherwise. Barnett is guilty as hell *and* poor—which in America is the magic combination. But will the FBI look at rich witnesses?

11/ There's no evidence yet that Oltmann committed crimes—though he's *skirted the line* of advocating violence (and inciting violence with deranged rhetoric). Certainly, he's implied he's willing to die for Trump, spread disinformation, and played footsie with a nonviolent coup.

12/ The things Oltmann believes—and says—are truly scary, and he's been radicalized to the point it doesn't seem he can even hear himself anymore. He took his militancy to Trump's war room on Insurrection Week; he brought it to State on Insurrection Day. America deserves to know.

13/ But it's beyond just words. By Oltmann's own claims, it was *his* job to "prove" that Biden was staging a coup at the Rally to Save America on Insurrection Eve. It was *his* job to handle (and transmit!) election data at State on Insurrection Day, away from the eyes of media.

14/ Who do I care about more—if I love democracy? An extremist with his feet on a desk at the Capitol? Under the circumstances, I *do* care about that a *lot*. An extremist in a Faraday cage at State on January 6 transmitting election data to overthrow Biden? That *terrifies* me.

15/ A couple weeks ago, I very inartfully disparaged the New York Times for focusing *exclusively* on those who were on-scene at the Capitol on January. I was trying to critique major media—but phrased my critique so poorly some citizen journalists thought I was speaking of them.

16/ In fact my view is that of Sen. Whitehouse (RI): I'm worried that between the FBI, DOJ, Congress, major media and citizen journalists we *still* won't have the *institutional* setup—and as to the FBI/DOJ, Congress and major media maybe the will—to probe rich insurrectionists.

17/ Anyone who watched Manafort, Flynn, and Stone walk fears this. Anyone who saw a dozen slam-dunk Obstruction cases against Trump taken off the board fears this. And anyone who wonders *why the hell Ali Alexander is a free man* and also...

18/ ...why Alexander's *Congressional co-conspirators*—Reps Gosar, Brooks and Biggs—are happily typing away on Twitter and appearing at subcommittee hearings without an ethics probe, Select Committee probe or FBI probe in sight fear where the January 6 probe is (and isn't) going.

19/ When you let a whole class of defendants off the hook in terms of subpoenas, raids, demand letters, interrogations, and so on—which the FBI has thus far done with almost every rich, powerful, and/or influential January 6 witness—you erode your investigation. It's that simple.

20/ The 23 people PROOF identified from the Trump International war room—and the 7 folks thus far identified from the Willard war room (three more close-to-confirmed entrants are briefly referenced in the article above)—have had a shot to synchronize stories and destroy evidence.

CONCLUSION/ My hope is to be able to identify at least two more Willard "war room" participants at PROOF—PROOF's reporting on Oltmann is what revealed that there were "25 to 30" people in the war room in total on January 6—within the next week. Stay tuned. sethabramson.substack.com

PS/ I've now updated this article with a few more pictures.

UPDATE/ Comments are now open for this article for PROOF subscribers. Apparently I clicked a button by accident and closed them. My sincere apologies! It's the one part of the Substack interface I sometimes still mess up.