#SeditionHunters - as we near the 1-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, 2 resolutions: no more lies, & release all footage. LA Times just posted video that shows...Glen Simon (#PurplePantherPunk) of GA lied for his plea deal, hid assaults on police. (h/t @SometimesUsefu2) 1/
Simon was well-known inside the Capitol: he posted pix on FB, was reported in January, is seen in many videos. He pled guilty to Parading & Picketing (US 5104 e2G)... but didn't mention he was also one of the 1st onto the W. Plaza, fought police there. 2/ justice.gov/usao-dc/case-m…
As is usual, Simon's plea deal has an escape clause, allows charges for "any crime of violence" he committed. So he'll go to prison. But J6 defense attorneys - stop wasting everyone's time, hurting your clients (judges don't like lies). Tell the truth. 3/
Here's another assault: Simon's part of the lead group trying to push through the outnumbered Capitol Police. All these fighters skipped Trump's speech, pre-staged. This is a crisis moment on the Plaza, 15 mins after the first breach - disaster prevented only by arriving MPD. 4/
Any assault on video will come out - but it's a lot more efficient if journalists release footage sooner. @latimes & @kentnish have "hours" more - please post it! Other media posted raw reels that allowed amazingly helpful syncs, revealed key details. 5/
Simon was flagged on the Plaza by #SeditionHunters within hours of the release (h/t @SometimesUsefu2, @Other63517090) - trained eyes work fast, but need material! Here's the partial LA Times release, 28 minutes with jump cuts. 6/
But most patriotic are outfits like @wusa9, who released 5.5 hours of continuous footage. Watch their anchors prepping, fumbling - & being inspiring pros. 1.4M views & critical for understanding the Capitol attack. We must pull together - release it all 7/
On Jan 6, many heroes defended the Capitol. In the days after, others went sleepless night after night, archiving over 22,000 videos to preserve the historical record. Media, help them now: #ShareTheFootage#OpenSourceHistoryJ6 8/
Since this thread is circulating again, an update about timing. Glen Simon's big assault on the police line was about 15 mins later than first thought - LA Times footage wasn't continuous but #SeditionHunters matched it to DC police bodycam footage.... 9/
... and found Simon face-on in the bodycamera from a DC police officer, grabbing for the barrier. Huge h/t to @SometimesUsefu2 & @Other63517090, who worked this out the old-school way from raw memory and patient labor. Pro film editors welcome to help! 10/
Trump defers to El Salvador's sovereignty but threatens Greenland. Why? It's not strange. Trump is deferring to Silicon Valley neo-fascists. They dream of seizing Greenland, but El Salvador president Bukele is their guy. He's their test case for a crypto-powered autocracy. 1/
Bukele branded himself the tech-friendly modern dictator: yes death squads, but also Bitcoin. Shred your old financial system and pay salaries in Bitcoin? Done in El Salvador. Spend taxpayer money on a national cryptocurrency reserve? Also El Salvador. 2/ time.com/6103299/bitcoi…
Bukele's bitcoin bet isn't going well; he has to beg IMF for a loan. But some US oligarchs see him as a role model. It's no coincidence that Trump picked El Salvador as a partner in autocracy. When Bukele visits Trump on Monday, that must be reported. 3/ bbc.com/news/articles/…
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…