#SeditionHunters - Alex Jones finally appeared for his deposition yesterday, mostly pleading the 5th. To remind: on Jan 6 Alex began trekking to the Capitol exactly when needed to bring crowds, seemingly on instructions, and the whole InfoWars crew seemed to expect the attack. 1/
Alex did not rush to the Capitol - instead he leads a crowd there only about 1:34 PM, when the attack had stalled. It's the same moment Proud Boy Zach Rehl texts "We’re at a standstill, cops are dropping concussion bombs and pepper spraying..." 1/
You can see the sequence in our agency response timeline. Breaches are in red. Notice after an initial swift attack, there's a blank: for nearly an hour, officers held off the attack on the W. Plaza. That's when Rehl texts, and Alex Jones and Ali Alexander head to the Capitol. 2/
During this "faceoff" period, you can the Proud Boys re-regrouping. You can also see efforts to build up the crowd; Alex & Ali are involved. This is the ONLY time all day when Ali Tweets instructions to his followers: first come to the Capitol, then go around the other side. 3/
That "messages" timeline was made for the Alex Jones and Ali Alexander depositions, to show how their actions served a strategic purpose on Jan 6th. Yesterday Alex pleaded the 5th rather than explain them. 4/
The InfoWars Jan 6 show makes clear they expected the attack. Listen to host Harrison Smith cheerfully talk about expected attacks on State Capitols - and then stop, dumbfounded and angry, after a rumor spreads that Trump has called the National Guard. 5/
Joe Biggs, who marched over 200 Proud Boys to the Capitol and led the attack, is a former employee of Alex Jones at InfoWars. Alex is deeply tied with the people directing the assault - and on Jan 6, they openly say they met with him. (h/t @creek_twit) 6/
These people are all connected, deeply, and with links that pre-date Trump. Biggs first appears on Alex's show in 2013, 8 years before the Capitol attack. But to understand their tangled connections you need to go back further, to when Biggs says he served in Afghanistan... 7/
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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/
The techbro plot they talk of openly, to seize power by dominating the global weapons industry is luckily so far stymied by their products not working.
Peter Thiel's Stark drones flopped in trial. Big dreams are a start, but you have to execute too. 1/
Even if the techbros fail at their hoped-for military surveillance state, their bad products can still weaken the U.S. Trump and Hegseth are shoveling weapons contracts to Silicon Valley startups. Here's $642M for the Peter Thiel-backed Anduril. 2/ govconwire.com/articles/andur…
Sam Altman's OpenAI got $200 M this year to inject AI into military decision-making. This is a partnership with Anduril too, to make AI tools “for security missions”. 3/ theguardian.com/technology/202…
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…