#SeditionHunters - is this the downfall of Alex Jones, the “king of conspiracy” (CNN), the most famous figure at the Capitol attack? He’d tormented the Sandy Hook parents for years; last week lost by default their multi-$M lawsuit. Will the law come for him for Jan 6 too? 1/
Alex’s reel shows how central he is on Jan 6: VIP section at the rally, marched w/ entourage to the Capitol (trailed by shouts: “Alex Jones!”), speechifed from the E. steps..& then decamped to a rented rooftop overlooking the besieged Capitol. He KNEW. 2/ rumble.com/vndge8-alex-jo…
Alex films himself so much we had to edit to keep the reel to 17 mins - but he must hate our reel since it keeps getting banned from YouTube. It's on Rumble now; hope to repost on the ‘Hunting Insurrectionists’ YT channel (itself shadowbanned -use link) 3/ youtube.com/channel/UCboWX…
Alex’s Jan 6 reel must be interesting if someone doesn’t want it seen! Alex & wife Erika stayed at the Willard with elites like Roger Stone, were driven to the Ellipse rally where they sat with InfoWars’ Owen Shroyer (arrested) & rally organizer Cindy Chafian (subpoenaed). 4/
Alex’s InfoWars footage often seems staged, self-serving & misleading. At 1:32 PM: “They just breached the Capitol” (40 mins after the walkway breaches, 40 mins before the break-in). Alex blames provocateurs, but then heads there. Ali Alexander says “the s-- of your dreams”. 5/
Alex’s shell game is dizzying. He arrives at the W. Capitol as the scaffolds are breached, uses a bullhorn to urge people to move from West to East...his words are “We are peaceful”, but the motion is just what is strategically needed to pad out the thin East side crowds. 6/
On the East side Alex and entourage go up the Capitol steps at 2:17 PM, the crowd cheering. He gives a speech, again saying “be peaceful”, but also “1776!” and “We will never give in!” Four minutes after he descends the steps, the mob breaks open the E. Capitol doors. 7/
Alex travels all afternoon with Ali Alexander, architect of ‘Stop the Steal’. #SeditionVIP’s Michael Coudrey and Jason Jones, both connected with Ali, arrived separately and pre-positioned on the north balcony, then followed Alex down the stairs and joined up with his group. 8/
An hour later, Owen & Alex emerged on the roof of 101 Constitution Ave, pre-rented for his InfoWars broadcast with the battered Capitol as backdrop, the giant flag perfectly framed. It’s hard to believe they didn’t know what they would be getting. 9/
Alex’s Jan 6 show is fascinating - watch as they slowly realize the attack is failing. Host Harrison Smith had gushed about the “onrush of patriots”, now is shocked, disbelieving: “so President Trump is sending the National Guard now” (laughs) “he never sent it for Antifa.” 10/
While Alex Jones deflects blame (“95% of this is provocateurs”), Ali Alexander seems shamelessly unrepentant. He released his own video to make it clear: “I do not disavow this”. (Tweeted out by Michael Coudrey, who then fled the U.S. for South Africa.) 11/
Alex’s bodyguards, many ex-Blackwater, wrap up the day with a rooftop photograph. We marked Tim Enlow - he's a public figure as the first TX policeman ever fired for racial profiling. Ex-Army, + 8 years as a “security contractor” in Iraq & Afghanistan. 12/ austinchronicle.com/news/2001-12-2…
Enlow has a long paper trail, not just the Austin firing. He left Blackwater (now Academi) shortly after being named in a federal lawsuit by whistleblowers fired for reporting that Enlow was falsifying firearms training test results. See Wired article. 13/ wired.com/2012/07/blackw…
Alex’s men are proud to show their Blackwater connection. Here they are on Jan 5th in the Willard Hotel posing with ex-Blackwater guard Paul Slough, convicted for killing Iraqi civilians, then pardoned by Trump on Dec. 22, just 2 weeks before. 14/
The just-pardoned Slough was a kind of celebrity in DC that weekend. On Jan 5th eveninge hung out in the VIP tent at the Freedom Plaza rally, near Roger Stone, who had gotten his own pardon the day after Slough's. 15/
Alex Jones helped fund the pre-attack rallies, may have connected organizers Cindy Chafian and Caroline Wren. It’s hard to sort since all are now spinning. Chafian now claims to have met Alex in December “by complete happenstance” at the Willard Hotel. 16/ propublica.org/article/trump-…
Jones and Cindy Chafian are tight enough that on Jan 6, Alex’s wife Erika traveled with Cindy’s group all the way to the Capitol where they watched the violent tunnel attack. Erika did depart a bit earlier, & alone - Alex says in his broadcast she “just got back” at 3:57 PM. 17/
Alex has been promoting bizarre conspiracy theories for 25 years, now to 2M listeners (satanist cults! plans to breed a master race!). SPLC called him “the most prolific conspiracy theorist” of our era; Rolling Stone “the most paranoid man in America". 18/ rollingstone.com/culture/cultur…
After 20 children (& their teachers) were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, Jones called it a hoax and relentlessly harassed the grieving parents. They sued; a TX judge just ruled him in default & liable for all damages. His reign may be ending. 19/ washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10…
Alex Jones is no military mastermind of the Capitol attack...but seems he knew what was coming, & he had a role in the ecosystem of insurrection: inciting the crowd, drawing them there. Coudrey's pre-attack Tweet says "If we give the order, DO NOT LEAVE DC." Who is "we"? 20/
More broadly, Alex’s toxicity helped make the attack possible. The people lured to the Capitol were prepped with the kind of propaganda that Alex pioneered; he was ahead of his time: "There's a war for your mind", his site says. The U.S. is fighting that war now, all of us. 21/
Update: the @January6thCmte just issued a subpoena for Ali Alexander. The target is the Jan 6 permit for Lot 8, just across E. Plaza & likely where Alex Jones' group met up. Letter specifically mentions Ali's "Victory or death" chant the night before. 23/ january6th.house.gov/sites/democrat…
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Tony Perkins frets about "political disaster" from Trump's involvement with Epstein. Back in 2016, when Ted Cruz floundered at the polls, Perkins pushed religious-right leaders to switch to Trump, calling it a "calculated risk". How does that calculation look now, Tony? 1/
Tony Perkins was the mentor of a young Mike Johnson, an unmarried law student who had oddly taken in a young boy. Perkins knew what Johnson was, but pushed him into politics anyway. @tperkins: all this will be in the history books, as your legacy. 2/
@tperkins Before Mike Johnson ran for office, he was Dean of a new law school named for notorious pedophile Judge Paul Pressler, who preyed on young boys. Tony Perkins sat on its board. And also on the board was a relatively unknown Ted Cruz - who'd known Pressler since he was a teen. 3/
Each Epstein email has so many layers of slime people miss some. This is Ken Starr, fired for covering up sexual assault, offering to help former client Jeffrey Epstein's friend's sexual harassment case by introducing him to Jed Rubenfeld, put on leave for sexual misconduct. 1/
Epstein's elite world was VERY elite: Yale Law prof Jed Rubenfeld's wife Amy Chua, also a Yale Law prof, was the mentor of Yale Law student JD Vance. Ken Starr was the mentor of Yale Law grad Brett Kavanaugh, also accused of sexual assault but now seated on the Supreme Court. 2/
Ken Starr, despite his long trail of sexual grossness, cosplayed as a warrior for an also-gross sexual prudishness. He and Brett Kavanaugh went after Bill Clinton (a visitor to Epstein's island) for oral sex with an intern. Kavanaugh came up with the graphic sexual questions. 3/
One fascinating thing in the Epstein email drop is an exchange around Trump's election in 2016. It suggests a tense, ongoing relationship, and Epstein's power.
Part 1, Sept 23: Linda Stone jokes that Epstein will get a cabinet position if Trump wins. Like Trump owes him. 1/
Backing up: the exchange is with Linda Stone, a tech exec who'd known Epstein since the 1990s: she brokered his entrance into academia, linked him with scientists. In 2016 they were close enough to be chatty, far enough to go months between emails. 2/ politico.com/news/magazine/…
Part 2, Sept. 26: three days after Stone asked Epstein if Trump could win, he answers: "too soon to tell, we will know more come oct 15". He doesn't explain: what would he learn then? Meanwhile Stone isn't even sure if Epstein supports Trump: "Which team you pulling for?" 3/
This week in Trump-Epstein: first @JSweetLI IDs the 14-year-old girl Epstein brought to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump in 1994. Then the House Dems release an email where Epstein says Trump hung out at his house with underaged girls: "[VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him" 1/
in short: Trump spent so much time with Epstein and underaged girls that even Epstein couldn't figure out how it wasn't news!
"Jane", who testified she'd been abused by Epstein, was entered in Trump's pageants in the 1990s, long before Kirk and Halligan in 2009. Still, it's odd how so many women in Trump's circle had walked the stage in front of him as barely-clad teenagers. 3/
Realize: when Ed Martin drafted the pardon for the fake electors he was pardoning himself: he made it pre-emptive and general, covering "all United States citizens for conduct relating to ... efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election" 1/
Ed Martin was one of the first people who Ali Alexander drafted into Stop the Steal, on Nov. 4, the day after the election. He was a major player, and was deferential to Ali ("Orders, General Ali?"). Ali in turn said he leaned on Ed for advice and for contacts to lawmakers. 2/
The Jan 6 Capitol attack was astroturfed. It could not have happened without efforts from the top - filing bs election-fraud suits, whipping up crowds and getting media attention with Stop the Steal rallies, then pressuring lawmakers to comply. Ed Martin was deep in it. 3/
The techbro plot they talk of openly, to seize power by dominating the global weapons industry is luckily so far stymied by their products not working.
Peter Thiel's Stark drones flopped in trial. Big dreams are a start, but you have to execute too. 1/
Even if the techbros fail at their hoped-for military surveillance state, their bad products can still weaken the U.S. Trump and Hegseth are shoveling weapons contracts to Silicon Valley startups. Here's $642M for the Peter Thiel-backed Anduril. 2/ govconwire.com/articles/andur…
Sam Altman's OpenAI got $200 M this year to inject AI into military decision-making. This is a partnership with Anduril too, to make AI tools “for security missions”. 3/ theguardian.com/technology/202…