#SeditionHunters - "arrest Friday" is back! Not just in numbers but in importance: the first arrest in awhile of a perp with an "organizational" role on Jan 6. But first, the colorful & violent #PinstripeBoilersuit, FBI #37 and #94, Josiah Kenyon of NV..1/
#PinstripeBoilersuit was ID'd within days of the Capitol attack: a witness told FBI they'd met him on the Washington Metro, gave his motel, ID'd from motel records. Arrests often lag IDs by many months, presumably to not overload the court system. 2/ justice.gov/usao-dc/press-…
And now, the biggest of the big game, hunted for months, the two who ran the breaches on West and East sides of the Capitol - #MaroonPB and #ZZtopPB. The #1 arrest priority for many, not the leaders of the insurrection but on-the-ground executors. 3/
We knew #MaroonPB (Ronald Loehrke of GA) was a Marine from his tattoos, here he is in uniform 2012. #ZZTopPB is James Haffner of South Dakota. Cannot emphasize enough how huge this is. 4/
Indictment is sealed but there's a press release, that doesn't fully explain their role. #MaroonPB was the absolute first perp we made a reel of, before even Proud Boys leader Joe Biggs. He's key to understanding the organization of the Capitol attack. 5/ justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/two…
Here's a "trailer" for the updated #MaroonPB reel, from June. He gave the signal for the taking of the W. Plaza, walked around the Capitol and helped initiate the NE breaches. He was the first clue to the larger organization of the attack. 6/
Here's the reel itself, over 19 minutes - #MaroonPB was everywhere, almost always with #ZZTopPB. If anyone wonders why #SeditionHunters have said for months there was organization - just watch. With this arrest we should expect other big ones too. 7/
Here's #MaroonPB urging people to go from West to East sides of the Capitol to help with the NE breaches - "don't back down patriots - the whole f--ing world is watching you!" (find by @RavenDragon2015) 8/
Here's #MaroonPB at the front of the NE barricade breach. In the yellow hat in front is #LemonyKickit who also moved from W to E to help push through police lines and keep the breaches synchronized. 9/
Here's #MaroonPB in a meeting on the E. Steps so suspicious it got its own hashtag, #J6EastMeet: talking with cops, gesturing. The silver-haired man in front is Warren Gilbert (#GnarleyParley), father of Joey Gilbert who is running for NV governor. 10/
After the E steps meeting, #MaroonPB walked around on E. Plaza and had a triumphal hug with a guy wearing a hat from the Navy VFA-81 Sunliners. 11/
Then #MaroonPB made his way to the top of the E. steps in time for the breach attempts, where #ZZTopPB bear-sprayed the officers guarding the Capitol. (h/t @StevieG54099097 for all video). 12/
#MaroonPB was one of the first people into the Capitol through the main E doors breach, hauled in by people waiting on the inside. He goes in so fast you may have to pause to see him; he's out of frame 6 seconds into the video. He stood out at the Capitol for his competence. 13/
Inside the Capitol #MaroonPB joined the early group in Sen. Merkley's office - not the later pot-smoking crowd, but one with several perps suspected of having roles. 14/
The complaint for #MaroonPB (Loehrke) & #ZZTopPB (Haffner) is public: 25 pages that summarize work by #SeditionHunters over many months. All his Capitol sightings, hotel Jan 5th, earlier Proud Boy marches. Finding him was a true crowdsourced manhunt. 15/ justice.gov/usao-dc/press-…
The complaint adds new insight from phone searches: #MaroonPB is a friend of arrested Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean (#Rufio), who asked #MaroonPB to be "on the front line" with him. Reply from #MaroonPB - he'd bring three "bad mother f---ers" with him. 16/
Journos who call Jan 6 a riot (or complain about DOJ's pace): conspiracy indictments are coming. There was organization; FBI knows it; the hundreds of #SeditionHunters who upended their lives to help know it. The dominoes were being stacked for months and they will now fall. 17/
Journos: to understand how large these efforts are, search Twitter under the hashtags. So many people contributed to this effort they can't all be named. See how much it took. Here's @22ColeRin in March teaching people how to even find #MaroonPB. 18/
The Capitol attack is too big for one person to work out, even a small investigative team. It takes hundreds. Look at one new video from the Plaza, less than a minute long - 98 total hashtags on the front lines facing down police, including all the Proud Boys leadership. 19/
h/t @AlHunt08657198 for the annotation, but it took hundreds to find, describe, categorize perps. It's been a massive, grinding effort, but it will be solved. Perps like #MaroonPB are the threads to pull to untangle the whole story, and FBI is pulling them. 20/
Journalists please understand - collaborative efforts are the only way to find truth in complicated datasets. Society has worked out how to do this - people come together to attack a problem. If we can do this for black holes (below), surely we can do it for democracy too. 21/
Update to clarify: #MaroonPB & #ZZTopPB had moved to GA and SD only recently; both lived in Seattle (Nordean's hometown) on Jan 6. So they're now marked as "Pacific NW" in the PB table (bit.ly/CapitolPBTable). The Western states combined now match a hotspot like FL, NY, AZ. 22/
The PNW connection should have been caught earlier: #MaroonPB stuck so close to two Proud Boys on Jan 6 morning they got flagged as "friends" in his reel in April - we now know they are Jeffrey & Jeremy Grace of Battle Ground, WA. PBs on Jan 6 largely moved in state groups. 23/
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Chaos: two rival factions - one tied the president and one to the VP - are trying to set US policy on Ukraine, cutting out the State Dept. Each pushes Ukraine to surrender, then leaks to press to claim they are official. FT now reports Vance's faction is holding its own talks. 1/
In Oct. the Trump faction - son-in-law Jared Kushner & business pal Steve Witkoff - met secretly with a Russian rep in Miami. Now the Vance faction - his Yale friend Dan Driscoll - is meeting in Abu Dhabi with Russians and a Ukrainian. Rival efforts. 2/ ft.com/content/55a9f8…
FT's source is clearly part of the Vance camp and tries to portray SecArmy Dan Driscoll, a 39-year-old former 1st lieutenant whose only qualification his friendship with Vance, as a new important conduit to Russia. FT had to ask if Ukrainians were involved at all. 3/
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/