#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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Reminder: Ed Martin, Trump's US Pardon attorney (R) and George Santos, whose sentence he just helped commute (L) were both speakers at the Stop the Steal rally the day before the Jan 6 Capitol attack. The next day, they both sat in the VIP section at Trump's Ellipse rally. 1/
On Jan 6, Ed Martin, as a founding member of Ali Alexander's Stop the Steal team, had a better seat than George Santos, a lesser figure. Brandon Straka, the man who first got Santos into politics, sat in the front row center; Ed two rows back; Santos deeper in the crowd. 2/
Santos, who rocketed from a minor part of Brandon Straka's WalkAway operation to a member of Congress, was sentenced to over 7 years in prison for wire fraud and identity theft. Today Trump let him out. Ed Martin says he was "honored" to help "make clemency great again". 3/
Trump's move this week revoking 6 visas for posting about Charlie Kirk is a wake-up call. These weren't random. They were all prominent people in the arts, with business visas. One is German filmmaker Mario Sixtus, whose new documentary criticizes AI and US tech firms. 1/
Sixtus' documentary examines how AI slop is infecting the internet, making it a "dumping ground for machine-generated nonsense". He's based in Berlin, but interviews famed US AI researcher Melanie Mitchell. Now he can't come to the US to promote it. 2/ arte.tv/de/videos/1221…
These six are not random. Another revokee, music exec Nota Baloyi from South Africa, has said he was targeted and wonders if South African right-wingers sent in a tip. US journalists need to ask how these six were chosen. Whose speech is being barred? 3/ news24.com/southafrica/ne…
A big caution here: we have to take seriously that GOP has coordinated talking points that No Kings will involve an act of terrorism. We have to ask seriously whether someone has planned such an act. It wouldn't be provoking people in frog costumes. It would be worse 1/
The last time we heard so much talk about "Antifa" as a terrorist threat was Jan 2021, just before the Capitol attack. The 200+ Proud Boys who kicked it off didn't wear "colors"; they came "dressed as Antifa". They talked about it repeatedly. That instruction came from above. 2/
Remember: in 1999, a month after he was made Prime Minister, Putin solidified his power using explosions that killed hundreds. He blamed Chechen terrorists as a pretext for a crackdown. Regardless of who planted the bombs, Putin found a use for them. 3/ henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/upl…
Jan 6 is in the news again as GOP Senators reveal that FBI searched their phone records in 2023. A totally reasonable action, but what's surprising is the list. The FBI left off Ted Cruz, by far the Senator with the most known ties to Jan 6! And they added some surprises 1/
The article by @etuckerAP & @stephengroves gives the basics, but not why this information was released now or why these Senators were chosen. Before Jan 6, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz were talked of as a team plotting something - so why isn't Cruz here? 2/ apnews.com/article/fbi-ja…
The FBI has private sources of information, but the list is still baffling. (Why Dan Sullivan of AK?) The Congressional Insurrection Scores rank lawmakers by publicly known actions around Jan 6. In this metric, Sens Cruz, Hawley, & Tuberville stand out. 3/ docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
Just unbelievable stuff coming from independent journalists. Jack Posobiec, a Roger Stone protege, was one of the biggest spreaders of Russian disinfo in 2016. Of Pizzagate. Of election-fraud claims in 2020. And it took til now to show he was voting fraudulently himself? 1/
Slate picked up this article (kudos!) but both journos are independent.
Poso was one of the first people tapped for Ali Alexander's Stop the Steal. He pushed election-fraud claims to 1M followers, watched the J6 attack from Alex Jones' rented rooftop. 2/ slate.com/news-and-polit…
How is it that with all the resources of mainstream media his own voter fraud gets uncovered only now? How did CBS cover Poso, a major propagandist and a vector for foreign influence? They interviewed him about "the death of his friend Charlie Kirk". 3/
Dear god, our politicians have learned nothing. DO NOT LET YOUR OPPONENT SET THE NARRATIVE. Offense, not defense. The answer to "you are shutting the government down to give illegal immigrants healthcare" is "The GOP shut down the government to give handouts to billionaires." 1/
Never, never, use their framing. It does not work to try to avoid a fight by saying "we all agree", if your opponent is determined to fight. It just concedes territory. It makes their framing the topic Don't defend against a bad-faith argument. Attack and move forward. 2/
If someone insists on fighting you, you have to fight back. DO NOT ANSWER A BAD-FAITH QUESTION. Do not cede that authority. Just say the question is bs - attack their motivation - and move on to say what you think is true. Be the boss, set the terms of the debate. 3/