#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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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-…
To all who will read the Jack Smith report on Tuesday - be warned that it's even worse than expected on the physical attack. It's just wrong. Like this: the attack did not start with 1000s of people marching from the Ellipse. It started with a few hundred, led by Proud Boys. 1/
What you won't find here: the 200+ Proud Boys who marched around the Capitol, kicked off the attack, and helped in nearly every breach. The gang who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. In this report, they don't exist. 2/ documentcloud.org/documents/2548…
You also won't find: the money used to pay militia to attend. "It's all paid for", people whispered. Who paid? You won't learn that. You also don't see: the online campaign before the attack. This early flier said noon - soon they switched to 1 PM. 3/