“What do you want me to tell you? That I
tased him? Yes. Am I a fucking piece of shit? Yes.”
Here’s Trump fanatic Danny Rodriguez confessing to electroshocking D.C. Officer Mike Fanone on Jan. 6.
(Will add key moments of the FBI interview here as the videos process.)
Danny Rodriguez was arrested by the FBI in March, one month after he was named in a HuffPost story as the rioter who electroshocked Officer Mike Fanone. Now he's trying to get his confession suppressed. huffpost.com/entry/daniel-r…
Danny Rodriguez: "Trump called us. Trump called us to D.C... he's the commander in chief and the leader of our country, and he's calling for help -- I thought he was calling for help."
Here's Danny Rodriguez talking about how he tried to join the Army after Trump became president and showed up to a recruitment center in a Trump shirt.
FBI: "the court of public opinion has a story from the Huffington Post, has a story from Waterspider on Twitter, from Antifa and BLM."
Danny Rodriguez: "My story is just that we thought that we were going to save America, and we were wrong."
FBI: "We talked about the story that's being written by -- about Danny, right? Danny gets to choose if he writes a story today with us. But right now, the story that's being told is by D.C. -- is by Antifa, BLM, and the Huffington Post."
"I don't fly because I have issues with flying. But there was an idea that, if anybody needed to take anything, like, weed maybe, knife, pepper spray, that stuff's not going to be able to get on the plane."
FBI: "Full disclosure, all the cards are out on the table, you're looking at seven federal felony counts. Seven."
Danny Rodriguez: "What is that? The rest of my life in prison?"
FBI: "It's a lot of years, man."
"We felt that they stole the election... we felt that they stole this country, that it's gone, it's wiped out. America's over... it's very stupid and ignorant, and I see that it's a big joke, that we thought that we thought that we were going to save this country."
"We thought we were... part of a bigger thing. We thought we were being used as a part of a plan to save the country, to save America, save The Constitution, and the election, the integrity."
Q. You thought you were that three percent guy.
A. (Crying.)
"I'm so stupid. I thought I was going to be awesome. I thought I was a good guy."
FBI: "Tasering Officer Fanone, that was a really bad choice, too."
RODRIGUEZ: "Yeah."
FBI: "But..."
RODRIGUEZ: "I just thought that were going to end up..."
FBI: "On the right side."
Danny Rodriguez: "Am I mental? Am I? Am I just that stupid?... Did we all really just -- are we all that stupid that we thought we were going to go do this and save the country and it was all going to be fine after? We really thought that. That's so stupid, huh?"
"I thought that I was doing the right thing. I thought it was all going to be different. I thought Trump was going to stay President. I don't know. I just can't believe my life, what I did to it."
MR. RODRIGUEZ: Is there really going to be all these prison cells open for all of us or what?
AGENT ELIAS: What are you talking about?
MR. RODRIGUEZ: Is there enough room for all those 10,000 patriots?
Meanwhile, a right-wing pundit who has appeared with Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and previously called Mike Fanone a “crisis actor” is now claiming that a MAGA hatted rioter who drove a stun gun into Fanone’s neck was framed “bc he protested.”
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.@nickquested has an important new film out called 64 Days that zeroes in on the critical timeframe in the lead up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
I’ve watched far more Capitol attack footage than any sane human being should, and even I was floored by what he’s got.
The day after the 2020 election, a mob of Trump supporters who believed Trump’s lies about voter fraud flooded to the TCF Center in Detroit, the largest majority-Black city in the nation.
NBC News’ own @PattersonNBC was inside, here’s some of what he saw:
As @janestreet and I report in our new story on the chaos at the TCF Center in 2020, some of the key instigators there — including folks banging on the windows — had official ties to the Trump 2020 campaign operation.
@janestreet Now, here's a key thing to know about the people who flooded down to the TCF Center on Nov. 4, 2020, because they saw some post on Facebook or something: They're plainly wrong. Trump didn't lose Michigan because of fraud in Detroit, where he performed better than he had in 2016.
NEW: One of the worst Jan. 6 rioters, David Dempsey, hit with 20 years in federal prison by a Reagan-appointed federal judge who has spoken out about the “preposterous” and dangerous rhetoric some Republicans have used in an attempt to “rewrite history" on Jan. 6.
Dempsey appeared to flash an “OK” sign as he was led out of court, several witnesses observed. Other rioters have yelled “Trump won!” as they were led out of court.
DOJ inspector general concludes, as folks who were paying attention four plus years ago did contemporaneously, that having Bureau of Prisons guards man civilian protests was a bad idea.
"Allowing federal law enforcement to operate with anonymity all but eliminates accountability when force is inevitably used against demonstrators." huffpost.com/entry/william-…
"A senior Justice Department official credited Barr with the idea of bringing in federal prison corrections officers, calling it an example of Barr’s 'outside the box' thinking." huffpost.com/entry/william-…
“If [we] don’t have a charge, we don’t say anything about an investigation; we just don’t do that.”
From the OIG report on Willam Barr and the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who helped fuel the ex-president's bogus voter fraud narrative back in 2020.
He announced his resignation just before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was fueled by Trump's election lies. huffpost.com/entry/david-fr…
"Freed’s unusual conduct came under intense scrutiny from Justice Department veterans who noted it was “wildly improper” for a federal prosecutor to be making public declarations about investigations that could be used as a political cudgel and help undermine confidence in the electoral process." huffpost.com/entry/david-fr…
DOJ inspector general's report on the Roger Stone sentencing recommendation (remember that?) is now out. It calls former interim U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea's leadership "ineffectual" and DOJ's handling of the Stone sentencing "highly unusual." Bill Barr refused to cooperate.
"we found that Barr had articulated his position about the sentencing recommendation both before and shortly after the first sentencing memorandum was filed, and before the President’s tweets." oig.justice.gov/sites/default/…
"Barr was in the middle of listening to what others thought about the idea of a second filing when someone mentioned the tweets, and then 'the air almost went out of the room.'"