#SeditionHunters - as we ring out the year & 358 days of sedition hunting it seemed time to summarize what we’ve achieved so far. The community's found so many #SeditionVIPs it’s hard to keep track, so here’s a guide: 74 Capitol attack figures as the 12 days of Christmas. 1/
We’ll count them off as:
12 Stop-the-Stealers
11 Sore Losers
10 Candidates running
9 Leaders leading
8 State legislators
7 Bikers biking
6 Arrested streamers
5 Anti-vaxxers
4 Federal pardons
3 Angry preachers
2 CNP’ers
and 1 monstrous ego who can't let go 2/
12 Stop-the-Stealers - note these are only a small part of Ali Alexander's crew of dozens on Jan 6. 3/
11 Sore Losers - sad figures who lost an election for U.S. Senate or Congress and are still fuming about it, now trying to overthrow elections instead. 4/
10 Candidates running - J6 insurrectionists now running for federal or high state offices. These are the folks who would help overturn the next election. 5/
9 Leaders leading - Nine who provided active leadership in the events of January 6 and in the attack itself. All are seen on Capitol grounds. 6/
8 State legislators - On Jan 6 eight state representatives were seen on Capitol grounds. Some like Vernon Jones were rally speakers. Some walked in with the Proud Boys (Biedermann) or came in armor (Evans). All seemed to expect that attack that occurred. 7/
7 Bikers biking - members of Bikers for Trump, Bikers for 45, and other similar groups were heavily represented on Jan 6, some providing rally security. All here are leaders or high-level figures in these organizations. 8/
6 Arrested streamers. We expect more arrests as DOJ works out their definition of "who is a journalist", but here are the most famous so far. Two from InfoWars, the rest independent. 9/
5 Anti-vaxxers. While many J6 perps are covid deniers, this group helped lead protests and rallies and have been drivers of the anti-vaxx movement. Two (Gold and Strand) have been arrested for Jan 6 already. 10/
4 Federal pardons. All these suspected J6 figures were pardoned by Trump between Nov 2020-Jan 2021. Three have been subpoenae'd by the January 6 Committtee; Manafort's company ran the Jan 6 rallies. (See justice.gov/pardon/pardons… for full list). 11/
3 Angry preachers. While many religious leaders seemed to find insurrection compatible with pastoral duties, these 3 are the angriest, loudest, and most nationally known of those who entered Capitol grounds. 12/
2 CNP'ers. The shadowy Council for National Policy, which mixes mainstream conservatives with far-right extremists, was heavily represented at the morning Ellipse rally on January 6, & at least 2 longstanding members played roles at the Capitol. (See splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016…) 13/
1 Monstrous ego who can't let go. While many figures helped produce the organized attack on January 6, and likely some more directly issued orders, it could not have happened without Trump. 14/
The 67 on the grounds here are only a subset of the backlogged #SeditionVIP list - 16 are totally new. Considered-but-rejected categories include "Grifters grifting" (too many); "Dirty tricksters", "Russian girlfriends" (too sensitive).. See jan6attack.com/individuals.htm for more. 15/
The slides are available for download in the public "Jan 6 Resources and Analysis" folder at bit.ly/Jan6Analysis. Please feel free to use, and please retweet! Happy New Year's to all, and may 2022 be better than 2021. With your help it can be. 16/
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The dreaded "I told you so" moment: for years this account has warned that Trump and his backers want to dictate what schools can teach, from K-12 and university. That they wanted to impose curricula. And now it's here: Trump is trying to seize Columbia, a private university. 1/
n Sep. 2022 I put it in a Twitter thread: that Trump had offered control over education as a quid pro quo for supporting his coup. Trump may not care about schools, but the people behind him do. They want to take away freedom of thought and speech. 2/
Trump and his backers copy Victor Orban, who seized universities in Hungary. Hungarian envoys are now at every major right-wing conference. CPAC went to Hungary. University leaders should have read Orban's blueprint and prepared. This is their plan. 3/ verfassungsblog.de/how-the-destro…
Trump is doing it: using the Justice Department to go after his 'enemies' and support his Big Lie. Pardoning the J6ers was just the first step. He's now using DOJ to attack those who said he lost in 2020, starting with Chris Krebs. It's full dictator mode: no law but power. 1/
Cannot emphasize enough how bad this is. A president using law enforcement to persecute those who won't repeat his lies. A pliant Attorney General who has also said she would send US citizens to foreign torture camps. All Americans must speak out or this is the end. 2/
Going to add some other reactions here - many see how bad this is. Tim Miller calls the move "Stalinesque". He says "Any person who reveres our constitutional republic should speak out against it." 3/
Journalists reporting on Pete Hegseth's brother Phil seem to be missing his work in 2017-2018 - he worked for Cliff May's Foundation for the Defense of Democracies as a "social and digital media specialist", and also wrote some articles for them. 1/ web.archive.org/web/2017100314…x.com/MilitaryTimes/…
This doesn't seem like earthshaking stuff, but it's trivial to find and oddly he omits it from his LinkedIn. Phil Hegseth shows up on the FDD staff page in Feb 2017 and is gone in June 2018. Here's one of his articles, a summary of a report. 2/ web.archive.org/web/2017110221…
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies had a roster of very well known conservative voices so there's a lot of people you can call for stories about Phil Hegseth - including Michael G. Waltz, now Pete Hegseth's Signal buddy. 3/ web.archive.org/web/2017091201…
Today 19 Dem Senators helped enable both Trump's attack on science and the techbro power grab by confirming the most unqualified person ever to lead the Office of Science & Technology Policy: a non-scientist (BA in politics) who spent 8 years working for Peter Thiel. 1/
The Senate-confirmed head of OSTP has ALWAYS been a high-level scientist - this is the person who advises the president on science and technology. Why Kratsios? Because he's a Thiel protege. In 2017, Trump picked him up directly from his job at Thiel Capital - a VC guy. 2/
By now Kratisos is in AI. In Dec. Trump nominated a slew of AI-tinged science advisors. Of 4 names here, only one (the woman) has science PhD: Lynne Parker is an EE prof & NSF director. The other 3 are Thiel / Andreessen VC men, techbro nepo babies. The Pete Hegseths of tech. 3/
Mother Jones has written on this story from 2023, that our now-US-Attorney for DC brokered Michael Flynn's pardon as a quid pro quo. I can't QT Dan Friedman since he's since blocked me. But Martin's involvement in Flynn's pardon is an important story and it's worth revisiting. 1/
This paragraph in the article, which says Ali Alexander used Ed Martin to process funds for the Jan 6 rally, seems wrong, maybe got scrambled. Charlie Kirk's TPUSA handled the money, which Caroline Wren got from donor Julie Fancelli. There IS an Ed Martin connection tho... 2/
Ali Alexander's testimony shows the J6C were going after Ed Martin's involvement with busing people to DC. They ask if Martin fronted money for buses and got reimbursed by Kirk's TPUSA. Ali swears he doesn't know about logistics, just helped publicize. 3/ govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GP…
As Trump begins disobeying court orders, watch for support from Josh Hawley (Yale Law, here with new theories on how US courts work) and Ted Cruz (Princeton). Both are proteges of Peter Thiel (Stanford), as is JD Vance (Yale). Hawley & Cruz were key to Trump's plans on Jan 6.. 1/
In the weeks leading up to January 6, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz were treated as a pair by other Senators, and were assumed to be LEADING the plot. Trump called them over and over in the hours before the attack, threatened them after. He'll use them now. 2/
On Jan 6, Hawley and Cruz were the two Senators who stood to sustain objections to the vote - vital for producing a delay. Then night before, Trump called Hawley 3 times and Cruz once. On Jan 6 he called Hawley again. He needed them then, and will now. 3/