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Tags: Brandon Straka Scott Presler Walk Away Foundation

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After Trump sets January 6 rioters free, Fox News changes its tune on pardons for violent offenders

During a stretch of Fox programming full of backtracking and excuses for Trump’s pardons, Laura Ingraham hosted two pardoned rioters to rewrite their stories

Written by Alicia Sadowski, Jane Lee, Isabella Corrao & Helena Hind

Published 01/22/25

President Donald Trump has issued pardons or commuted the sentences of all January 6 offenders, violent and nonviolent, flouting the advice of Fox hosts who previously urged him to grant a narrower pardon. With this day one action, Trump has freed over 1,500 offenders, including “violent offenders who went after the police” and “some of the most notorious participants in the attack,” individuals convicted of conspiracy, a rioter who carried a firearm, and a rioter who faced a long list of assault charges.

Fox News hosts maintained for years that violent offenders should not be pardoned

In the immediate aftermath of January 6, Fox News personalities spoke out against the insurrection, with some privately begging the administration to stop the Capitol attack. Even after Trump changed his tune on January 6 offenders and began suggesting pardons for them, Fox News maintained that those who had physically attacked law enforcement should not be among the pardoned.

Even though these Fox hosts argued against pardoning violent offenders from January 6 as recently as December, since Monday, Fox hosts have clearly and at times explicitly supported Trump’s decision to pardon all offenders.

On her Fox News show, Ingraham hosted two people who were issued pardons by Trump and allowed them to rewrite their offenses. During the attack on January 6, Ingraham texted then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, imploring him to get Trump to take action, writing: “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” Four years later, she’s hosting participants and defending Trump’s blanket pardons.

Video

From the January 21, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

LARGE STEEL SCREW

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leslie wackadoo esq claims in 1ap defam bs a leftwing org

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/after-pleading-guilty-to-jan-6-charges-brandon-straka-pledges-to-take-down-the-democratic-party/

https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/08/23/stop-the-steal-hints-of-the-january-5-rallies-in-the-january-6-riot-investigation/

sTOP THE STEAL: HINTS OF THE JANUARY 5 RALLIES IN THE JANUARY 6 RIOT INVESTIGATION

August 23, 2021/in 2020 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

With the charges against Owen Shroyer, the government has now charged three people who had a speaking part in several rallies tied to Stop the Steal the day before the insurrection: Brandon Straka, Russell Taylor and his co-conspirators, and Shroyer. Because I’m working on some gaps in the government’s story — gaps that must be intentional, for investigative or prosecutorial reasons — I want to look at how DOJ is beginning to fill in the story about January 5.

With Walk Away founder Brandon Straka, who was arrested on January 25, the mention of his speech at the Stop the Steal rally at Freedom Plaza in his arrest affidavit was almost incidental, included along with the rest of his incendiary speech directly tied to the riot (but the affidavit didn’t include his other public comments over a broader period — for example, it doesn’t mention Straka’s role in sowing suspicion of the Michigan vote tally).

My review of STRAKA’s Twitter account on January 11, also found a video he had posted of himself speaking at a “Stop the Steal” rally held at Freedom Plazain Washington, D.C. on January 5, 2021. As of January 13, STRAKA had removed this video from his Twitter account, but a video of the entire event had been posted to YouTube. The video showed that STRAKA was introduced by name and brought onto stage. STRAKA spoke for about five minutes during which time he repeatedly referred to the attendees as “Patriots” and referenced the “revolution” multiple times. STRAKA told the attendees to “fight back” and ended by saying, “We are sending a message to the Democrats, we are not going away, you’ve got a problem!”

Though Straka was charged with civil disorder for encouraging others to strip an officer of his riot shield, he has not yet been indicted, with or without obstruction, which these statements would seem to support. Instead, the government has gotten two 90-plus day continuances in this case with Straka’s consent, offering the explanation that, “are continuing to communicate in an effort to resolve this matter.” Straka currently has a status hearing scheduled on August 25, Wednesday, though these things do get moved quickly.

The January 5 rally at the Supreme Court (which featured some of the same people as the Freedom Plaza one) appears in the So Cal Three Percenter conspiracy indictment in part for the logistical challenges it posed.

On December 30, 2020, KINNISON sent a text message to MELE, WARNER, and MARTINEZ in which he attached a flyer advertising the January 5, 2021 rally outside the Supreme Court, at which TAYLOR, HOSTETTER, and PERSON ONEwere named speakers for the American Phoenix Project. After KINNISON set this message, MELE wrote, “We need to make sure we roll into town earlier on the 5th now,” to which KINNISON responded, “We can leave Saturday.”

But it still provided cause for DOJ to mention that by December 30, Russell Taylor knew of a Stop the Steal plan to “surround the Capitol.”

On December 30, 2020, TAYLOR posted to his “russ.taylor” Instagram account:

Spread the word to other CALIFORNIA Patriots to join us as we March into the Capitol Jan 6. The Plan right now is to meet up at two occasions and locations: 1. Jan 5th 2pm at the Supreme Court steps for a rally. (Myself, Alan, [and others] will be speaking) 2. Jan 6th early 7am meet in front of the Kimpton George Hotel…we will leave at 7:30am sharp and March (15 mins) to the Capital [sic] to meet up with the stop the steal organization and surround the capital. [sic] There will be speakers there and we will be part of the large effort for the “Wild Rally” that Trump has asked us all to be part of. [my emphasis]

Mentioning this rally also gave DOJ an opportunity to describe Taylor promising to “fight” and “bleed” in his speech at the rally.

On January 5, 2021, TAYLOR spoke at a Virginia Women for Trump rally in front of the United States Supreme Court as part of a panel of American Phoenix Project speakers. In his speech, he stated:

I am Russell Taylor and I am a free American. And I stand here in the streets with you in defiance of a communist coup that is set to take over America. But we are awake and we are never going back to sleep. We are free Americans and in these streets we will fight and we will bleed before we allow our freedom to be taken from us. We declare that we will never bend a knee to the Marxists within Antifa, to the tyrannical Democrat governors who are puppets, and to the deep state commie actors who threaten to destroy America…. But now these anti-Americans have made the fatal mistake, and they have brought out the Patriot’s fury onto these streets and they did so without knowing that we will not return to our peaceful way of life until this election is made right, our freedoms are restored, and American is preserved.

That is, in the conspiracy indictment charging 3 percenters with organizing not just themselves to come armed to the Capitol, but others in Southern California, the earlier rally serves as both an organizational focus and a platform to sow violence.

Shroyer’s affidavit mentions several things he said on January 5

SHROYER traveled to Washington, D.C. in January 2021, and in advance of January 6, 2021, spoke of stopping the certification of the Electoral College vote. In a video1 posted to the Infowars website on January 5, 2021, SHROYER gave an address in Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C., during which he stated: “Americans are ready to fight.We’re not exactly sure what that’s going to look like perhaps in a couple of weeks if we can’t stop this certification of the fraudulent election . . . we are the new revolution! We are going to restore and we are going to save the republic!”

In another video2 posted to the Infowars website on January 5, 2021, SHROYER called into an Infowars live broadcast and said: “what I’m afraid of is if we do not get this false certification of Biden stopped this week. I’m afraid of what this means for the rest of the month . . .Everybody knows election was stolen . . . are we just going to sit here and become activists for 4 years or are going to actually do something about this .. . whatever that cause or course of cause may be?”3

In addition, SHROYER was featured in promotional material circulated by Infowars. One promotional video urged listeners to “come to the big D.C. marches on the 5th and 6th of January, I’ll see you there.”4 The video ended with an edited graphic of SHROYER and others in front of the Capitol building. That graphic is depicted below:

:{:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:#d4d4d4;;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;height:310.15px;width:450px;position:absolute;left:0px;top:0px"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:#d4d4d4;;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;position:absolute;background:#ffffff;;z-index:300;height:310.15px;width:450px;opacity:0;transition:opacity 0.4s ease-in-out 0s;visibility:hidden"):}:

1 https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff4aebaa285a02ed04c4d6e.

2 https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff511bb5a212330029f5a9c.

3 https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff511bb5a212330029f5a9c.

4 https://www.banned.video/watch?id=5ff22bb71f93a8267a6432ee.

While Shroyer is circled in that graphic — which demonstrates that Jones had a plan to go to the Capitol (significantly, this is the East front) days in advance — it really is all about Jones.

As I noted, this is just a trespass arrest, like hundreds of other trespass arrests (though by charging Shroyer with violating a pre-existing Deferred Prosecution Agreement, they lessen any claims of persecution that will come as they investigate Shroyer further).

But what these three arrests together show is that those involved as speakers on January 5 seem to have had advance knowledge of what would happen the next day.

One of the other mentions of January 5 rallies thus far appears in the filings for Josiah Colt, Ronnie Sandlin, and Nate DeGrave, three random guys who hooked up on the Internet and armed themselves for violence in advance of January 6. Though they have no ties to any organized militia, the day after they went to a January 5 rally, they seemed to know there would be a second front opening at the East door, and Sandlin and DeGrave were among those charged with forcibly ensuring that door was opened.

Tags: Alan Hostetter, Brandon Straka, Josiah Colt, Owen Shroyer, Ronnie Sandlin, Russell Taylor

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/**2020/11**/06/operatives-tied-to-council-for-national-policy-organizing-protests-alleging-voter-fraud/

no lnx twt

as ballot counting to determine the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election continues in swing states, right-wing operatives with ties to the influential Christian Right group Council for National Policy (CNP) are organizing daily #StoptheSteal protests. #StoptheSteal, a “coalition/team effort” that The Washington Post reported yesterday was shut down on Facebook, and FreedomWorks are promoting and hosting rallies across the country based on the false claim that Joe Biden’s growing lead is based on election fraud.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone announced in a statement that its banning of the #StoptheSteal group page with 360,000 members was due to it being “organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.”

The new #StoptheSteal site was registered on November 4 by viceandvictory.com in Fort Worth, Texas. Vice and Victory is nothing but a landing page for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts. An examination of the three, leads to one individual: Ali Akbar AKA Ali Alexander.

Akbar, who has a book written on him titled “Vice and Victory,” has taken on the name Ali Alexander to distance himself from his past legal troubles. In 2007, he pled guilty to felony property theft in Fort Worth, and in 2008 he pled guilty to a felony charge of credit card abuse, reported the daily dot.

Alexander’s homepage, which links to his blog for subscribers and offers a “Persuasion Masterclass” for $199, links to StoptheSteal.us, as does his Twitter profile.

Alexander calls himself an “interpreter of energy for this period,” and is Pro-Trump influencer on Twitter with over 140,000 followers. It is unclear who funds Alexander’s activities, but Politico noted in 2018 that Robert Mercer, one of the “blow-it-all-up billionaires” behind the rise of Trump, gave a PAC Alexander advises $60,000.

Alexander, a former member of CNP, announced the StoptheSteal.us site with a video and a tweet, “Proud to be working with these patriots to Save the Election,” and listed 15 Twitter handles.

Proud to be working with these patriots to Save the Election@ScottPresler @alexbruesewitz @Cernovich @EagleEdMartin @KylieJaneKremer @AmyKremer @thecjpearson @JackPosobiec @debostic @MichaelCoudrey @hollandcourtney @stclairashley @BrandonStraka @DrPaulGosar @ReaganBabe pic.twitter.com/9otKQA7tWv

— Ali stopthesteal.us (@ali) November 5, 2020

Many of the individuals listed are organizers of individual states protests. Jack Posobiec, a correspondent for the far-Right One America News Network, and pro-Trump activistScott Preslerare leading a protest at the capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Georgia protests held yesterday at in Atlanta and Savannah were led by Kylie Kremer, executive director of the Women for Trump PAC; right-wing activist CJ Pearson; former congressional staffer Daniel Bostic; and Amy Kremer, chair of Women for America First and co-founder of Women for Trump. Women for Trump’s co-founder Caroline Wetherington is a member of the CNP.

Trumpist Courtney Holland and right-wing social media operative Mike Coudrey are listed as organizers of a protest scheduled for 6 p.m. tonight at the Nevada Clark County Elections Department in Las Vegas.

Right-wing social media influencer Brandon Straka and Amy Kremer led a Detroit, Michigan protest this morning at the TCF Center, where ballots were being counted. Protesters blocked a bridge, and at least one arrest was reported.

Protests at the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin yesterday, today, and tomorrow are being led by Alex Bruesewitz, co-founder and CEO of the PR firm X Strategies.

Although not listed in Alexander’s tweet, Turning Point USA‘s founder and president Charlie Kirk is listed as leading an Arizona protest at the Maricopa Tabulation Center in Phoenix at 6 p.m. this evening. Kirk is also a CNP member.

Ed Martin, president of the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, listed by Alexander as a partner in the tweet above, is also a member of the CNP.

Early today, Alexander announced protests for every state capital tomorrow at noon.

We want everyone at their state capitols on Saturday at noon. #StopTheSteal @BrandonStraka @ScottPresler @AmyKremer @tracybeanz @alexbruesewitz @stclairashley @EagleEdMartin @JackPosobiec @Cernovich @hollandcourtney @RyanAFournier @thecjpearson

Peaceful Protest

— Ali stopthesteal.us (@ali) November 6, 2020

FreedomWorks, led by president Adam Brandon, who also serves on the advisory council for Turning Point USA and the CNP Action Board of Directors, is also organizing “Protect the Vote” protests in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Oklahoma today. The times of the events do not match the #StoptheSteal events.

FreedomWorks, a group that grew out of a Charles Koch-founded organization and that helped launch the Tea Party in 2009, was also behind many of the protests to reopen the economy amidst the pandemic this year, as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reported.

A number of CNP members are major donors to FreedomWorks.Lawson Bader, president of DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund is a CNP member. DonorsTrust has given $3.4 million (2006-2018) and Donors Capital Fund another $667,000 (2008-2016) to FreedomWorks.

Bradley Foundation president and CEO Richard Graber is a CNP member.Bradley has given FreedomWorks $1.2 million (2007-2017) and disclosed another $100,000 this year to fund FreedomWorks “Save Our Country initiative,” as CMD first reported.

Heather Higgins is a CNP Gold Circle member, and her Randolph Foundation gave FreedomWorks $10,000 in 2017.

The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation gave FreedomWorks $600,000 (2009-2011). Richard DeVos is a former CNP member.

Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA) announced this morning that it is “working with FreedomWorks, Turning Points, Heritage, and countless social media influencers” to promote and hold “Protect the Vote” rallies in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. TPPA’s honorary chairman Jenny Beth Martin serves on the CNP Executive Committee and a number of those working at the Heritage Foundation are also members.

CNP is deeply tied to the Trump administration. In August, Trump himself spoke to CNP on the last day of the meeting, where he repeatedly thanked the Christian Right group for its leadership.

Trump’s vice president Mike Pence went further in thanking CNP in November 2019, for “standing by him” and for giving him counsel “every single day.” Pence later followed up in March of this year in a letter made public by investigative researcher Brent Allpress, in which he “thanked the Council for National Policy for your support and for consistently amplifying the agenda of President Trump and our Administration.”

Brent Allpress contributed research on #StoptheSteal and Vice and Victory for this report.

About David Armiak

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/maga-or-antifa-the-right-wing-war-for-control-of-the-insurrection-narrative/

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MAGA or Antifa? The Right-Wing War for Control of the Insurrection Narrative

Kyle MantylaBy Kyle Mantyla | January 4, 2022

In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a battle broke out for control of the narrative regarding the events of that day. The battle was not between the left and the right, but rather between varying factions of the right-wing movement, as a variety of MAGA activists sought to shape the narrative about what had unfolded at the Capitol. Would they take pride in the Trump loyalists storming the Capitol, or would they baselessly blame the insurrection on left-wing insurgents?

To objective outside observers, it was clear that supporters of former President Donald Trump had violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to intimidate members of Congress into refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Threats of violence had filled social media and calls for war and revolution were ubiquitous at right-wing rallies in the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6. As such, it was no surprise when MAGA activists immediately began praising the “patriots” who stormed the Capitol in the days after Jan. 6.

For example, just two days after the insurrection, radical right-wing anti-Islam activist John Guandolo praised the insurrectionists for showing remarkable “restraint” by not summarily executing the “traitors” in Congress.

A few days later, Guandolo asserted that those who condemned the insurrection were “enemies of the republic” and should be “swinging from a rope because these are traitors to the country.”

QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine was equally proud of the “patriots” who ransacked the Capitol. Lorraine, who had been covering the Jan. 6 events for radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars network, filed a report on her way back to Texas in which she gushed that she had “never felt more pride in my heart and soul than yesterday.”

Lorraine lashed out at those in the MAGA movement who were already trying to distance themselves from the insurrection by falsely blaming the attack on the Capitol on left-wing activists. “No one should be blaming antifa for what happened,” Lorraine said. “American patriots did this. And it’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.”

Likewise, Brandon Straka, a speaker at the Jan. 5 so-called Stop the Steal rally who has since pleaded guilty to joining the mob storming the Capitol, took to Twitter on Jan. 6 to shame conservatives who weren’t supporting “freedom loving Patriots” storming the Capitol.

“Be embarrassed & hide if you need to- but I was there. It was not Antifa at the Capitol.It was freedom loving Patriots who were DESPERATE to fight for the final hope of our Republic because literally nobody cares about them. Everyone else can denounce them. I will not,” Strakawrote on Twitter, according to a criminal complaint.

Not everyone agreed with Lorraine andStraka’s assessment. Even as Trump loyalists fought Capitol police, right-wing conspiracy theorists like Lin Wood and Mark Burns took to various social media platforms to claim that “antifa”—conservatives’ shorthand for anti-fascist activists—was behind the attack. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham—whom the House select committee revealed to have pleaded with Trump’s chief of staff to get Trump to tell his supporters to go home on Jan. 6—went on her show in the hours following the attack to claim “antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson echoed similar messages.

Perhaps nobody better illustrates the “blame antifa” camp than former Rep. Michele Bachmann. Just hours after the insurrection, Bachmann was baselessly declaring those who breached security and ran loose through the Capitol were actually left-wing “rabble-rousers paid to put together a coup.”

In the following weeks, Bachmann repeatedly insisted that the attack on the Capitol was actually carried out by “the progressive left.”

“It is my opinion that this was a theatrical event that the progressive left put on,” Bachmann said. “The individuals who were the instigators, who brought this about, these were agitators brought in to create this problem. I believe it was specifically done to rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement. I also believe that this was done to rebrand the Make America Great agenda—because remember, that was considered extremely popular by about 80 million Americans—so they wanted to rebrand Make America Great as an evil thing and those of us who supported Donald Trump and that agenda as evil and terrorists.”

By July, Bachmann was claiming that MAGA activists had nothing to do with the events of Jan. 6 and that left-wing activists dressed in black clothing had been bused in to attack the Capitol.

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“There were some bad actors who had climbed up … and they actually were pounding on the glass,” Bachmann claimed. “Now, a normal person doesn’t do that. A normal person would never think to pound on the glass. I’ve seen the videotape of the first 14 people who went into the building. They were all dressed in black. They look like they’d been trained as warriors, the people who went in. This was clearly a planned event; that was not the Trump supporters who were around the building. What my conclusion was on-site is that this was nothing short of a coup.”

Despite the initial elation experienced by many MAGA activists in the wake of the insurrection and the endless praise for the “patriots” who had carried it out, the right-wing narrative about the events of Jan. 6 eventually solidified once the reality of the situation began to set in. As hundreds of Trump-loving activists began to face arrest and conviction stemming from their actions on that day and the disgrace the insurrection began to stain the MAGA movement, parts of Trump’s base and the former president himself collectively embraced the baseless belief that the entire thing had been a “false flag” orchestrated by left-wing groups.

So complete has the collective brainwashing been that even those who had initially celebrated the attack on the Capitol reversed course.

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John Guandolo, who initially praised the insurrectionists for showing remarkable “restraint” by not summarily executing the “traitors” in Congress, now claims that he was outside the Capitol during the events on Jan. 6 and saw “several busloads” of “antifa people and non-patriot hostiles” mixing with the crowd and entering the Capitol.

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“It makes you wonder what is actually going on,” Guandolo said. “We know what’s going on. What happened on Jan. 6 was the surrender of the republic and the takeover of the republic.”

John Guandolo | ReAwaken America Tour Dallas

Likewise, DeAnna Lorraine, who was on the ground at the Capitol during the insurrection and initially declared that she could not have been prouder about what happened, completely changed her tune and began insisting that the insurrection was a “false flag” operation set up to “trap” Trump supporters and provide justification for their persecution.

Lorraine eventually so thoroughly repudiated her initial support for the “patriots” who carried out insurrection that she ultimately began spreading a conspiracy theory that police officers who had been in the Capitol that day—several of whom have since died from suicide—were being murdered by the “deep state” to cover up the truth about the events of Jan. 6.

A new NPR/Ipsos poll released Monday shows how deeply this narrative has burrowed its way into the public’s beliefs.. According to the poll, nearly one-third of Republicans falsely say the attack on the Capitol was carried out by “opponents of Donald Trump, including antifa and government agents.”

Of course, this entire narrative shift regarding the events of Jan. 6 raises the question of why MAGA and the GOP have been intractably opposed to the efforts by the House select committee to investigate the attack. After all, if Jan. 6 was nothing but a “false flag” operation carried out by left-wing operatives for the purpose of discrediting Trump and his supporters, wouldn’t Trump and his supporters want that truth to be exposed?

Tags: Brandon StrakaDeAnna LorraineJohn GuandoloMichele BachmannCapitol Insurrection