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‘They could have killed me’: Trump's 2020 'Seattle whistleblower' finally revealed

Michael Flynn (center) leaves a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., with Geoffrey Flohr aka "Yoda" (front) on Dec. 12, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Jordan GreenandRaw Story June 23, 2024

The scene is straight from a discount bin spy novel.

A black SUV arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to collect Sabrina Keliikoa, a QAnon adherent and supervisor at the facility’s FedEx air freight terminal.

Keliikoa was scared out of her wits.

She did not want to go.

But late on this Friday night in early December 2020, Keliikoa felt as if she had no choice: A retired Michigan State Police officer nicknamed “Yoda” had just warned that her life was in danger.

Keliikoa called in another employee to finish her shift. She entered the vehicle driven by a Marine Corps veteran who had provided security for American diplomats in Iraq. They arrived at a hotel where the driver checked her in. There, Keliikoa stayed for the next two days. A rotating set of “guards” occupied the adjacent room in shifts.

What was possibly happening here?

As Keliikoa would later testify in legal deposition, a video of which Raw Story recently reviewed, a man entered her hotel room and asked her to write an affidavit about election ballots she’d seen — and considered suspicious — at the FedEx facility shortly after the 2020 election.

The man was part of a secretive team of Donald Trump supporters, operating without legal authority but under the leadership of former Trump national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, that aimed to obtain information they believed could be used in lawsuits to change the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.

More generally, they hoped to undermine public confidence that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.

Keliikoa described the experience as being “detained” and complained she became a “pawn” of people determined to use her.

“So, I got a phone call that said somebody is coming in from another state with illegal ballots, and they were going to be looking for me, and they were going to try to kill me,” Keliikoa testified. “And I started crying because this turned into the biggest s---show when it shouldn’t have been.”

The escapade showcases the absurd lengths Flynn and his team went to concoct evidence that Trump had the 2020 presidential election “stolen” from him.

These and other baseless allegations of election fraud would instill fury in Trump’s supporters, who by the thousands attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while attempting to prevent Congress from certifying the election.

These new revelations about Keliikoa’s ordeal also come at a time when Trump, who is expected to again be the Republican nominee for president, relentlessly claims that the multiple criminal prosecutions against him constitute an effort “to rig the presidential election of 2024.”

Trump’s script is familiar and predictable: He similarly made repeated claims well in advance of the 2020 election that the vote would be rigged. It’s an all-but-foregone conclusion that if Trump loses the 2024 election, he will exclaim, as he did then, that he actually won, and that Democrats, communists, the “deep state” and other perceived bogeymen stole it from him.

And if history is a guide, high-profile Trump surrogates can again be expected to again chase phantom evidence and spin wild tales in service of Trump’s I-can’t-lose approach to campaigning.

‘A plane full of ballots’

Until now, Keliikoa — the woman who held the information so feverishly sought by Trump’s supporters following the 2020 election — was known only as “the Seattle whistleblower.”

Keliikoa’s deposition, taken in March, fills in details about the “stop the steal” escapade and are being reported for the first time by Raw Story.

The seeds of Keliikoa's ordeal began germinating in November 2020. An array of high-profile Trump supporters had initiated a frenzied effort to collect affidavits that they hoped would bolster claims of election fraud, which pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell detailed in a series of lawsuits.

The goal: overturn the presidential election results in tightly contested states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, and more generally, to undermine confidence in the election.

With his charisma and the respect he commanded as a retired lieutenant general, Michael Flynn, who had briefly served as Trump's national security advisor, quickly emerged as a de facto leader among the group of “stop the steal” operatives surrounding Powell.

The 2020 election was “the greatest fraud that our country has ever experienced in our history,” Flynn told far-right broadcaster Brannon Howse during an interview aired on Nov. 28, 2020. “I’m right in the middle of it right now, and I will tell you that, first of all, the president has clear paths to victory.”

Flynn had reason to feel emboldened. Three days earlier, then-President Trump granted Flynn a full pardon, wiping away his guilty plea to charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Flynn began to speak at rallies and make media appearances on Trump’s behalf.

Flynn’s interview with Howse was his first interview of any sort since receiving Trump’s pardon. The key to exposing the election fraud, Flynn told the podcaster, was channeling the perceived power of hundreds of Trump supporters who believed they witnessed voting fraud or election irregularities.

“I mean hundreds and hundreds of Americans around the country, not just the swing states, but many, many other states that are coming forward with their stories and putting them down in affidavits,” he said at the time.

Four days later, Powell addressed a “Stop the Steal” rally in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta. There, she angrily told the crowd that there had been “flagrant election fraud,” and said her team had “evidence” of all manner of ballot fraud, including “a plane full of ballots that came in.”

Enter Staci Burk.

Burk was a former school board member and law school student in Arizona who suffers from a medical condition known as pulmonary arterial hypertension.

A man in Burk’s lung condition support group told her about a woman in Seattle who allegedly had information about illegal ballots. That woman was Keliikoa, and Burk’s lung condition buddy arranged to put the two women in touch.

But Burk first attempted to report Keliikoa's information to the FBI and then relayed it to Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend, a leading figure in the pro-Trump stop-the-steal effort. The supposed intel eventually filtered up to Sidney Powell’s legal team.

Burk and Keliikoa kept in touch by phone for the next month, but Keliikoa would later say she wouldn’t characterize their relationship as a friendship. Keliikoa didn’t want to give up her anonymity. Burk felt caught in a bind; she didn’t want to associate her own name with information she didn’t know firsthand, but she was feeling pressure from Townsend and others to persuade Keliikoa to come forward.

“I’ve been working on her coming forward for over a month,” Burk told Carissa Keshel, Powell’s assistant, in a Dec. 1, 2020, text message reviewed by Raw Story. “I almost facilitated a call with you, but she just got to work. She will likely let me do a conference call with anyone. But she’s still afraid to come forward.”

“What can we do to make her feel more comfortable?” Keshel asked Burk. “We can facilitate security.”

Attempting to find a way to obtain the information while preserving Keliikoa’s desired anonymity, Keshel suggested that Keliikoa forward her ballot intel to Burk, who, in turn, could include it in her own legal declaration. (Burk never fulfilled the request to provide such a statement.)

“Ok I just spoke with General Flynn,” Keshel told Burk. “He says if nothing else, if she can get us as much evidence as possible: pictures, facts. If she can send that to us (or you) and if she can even just write an email. Then you can do another declaration to cover for that. I hope that makes sense.”

What happened next demonstrates the effort by Flynn, Powell and a gaggle of pro-Trump activists to obtain affidavits supporting claims of election fraud was carefully orchestrated. It stands in stark contrast to the picture painted by Flynn — one of ordinary citizens organically and voluntarily coming forward to tell their stories out of a sense of patriotic duty.

Like Keliikoa, Burk found herself in the middle of conspiratorial talk surrounding supposed illegal ballots transported on planes and various security concerns.

Also — not insignificantly — if Powell's team was going to get access to Keliikoa, they would have to go through Burk, who was the only one who knew Keliikoa’s name or how to get in touch with her.

Flynn’s security team finds the ‘Seattle whistleblower’

On the morning of Dec. 4, 2020, Keshel texted Burk to tell her that she thought they had Burk’s “security issue all ironed out.”

Keshel then texted a photo of a man she identified as “Yoda” and a link to the website for 1st Amendment Praetorian, a volunteer security group linked to Flynn.

“Yoda” was Geoffrey Flohr, the retired Michigan State Police officer.

“Gen Flynn and his brother arranged the security for you, so I trust them,” Keshel told Burk in a text message.

“Yoda” arrived at Burk’s home in Florence, Ariz., later that day.

As previously reported by Raw Story, Burk has said that “Yoda” woke her up in the middle of the night. He told her that he had reliable information that the “Seattle whistleblower” was about to be kidnapped and taken to South Korea. “Yoda” even claimed that Burk’s friend in Seattle could potentially be killed if they didn’t send a security team to protect her, Burk recalled.

Burk called Keliikoa and put her on speaker phone so “Yoda” could speak to her.

Keliikoa would later testify that she was terrified by “Yoda” telling her about threats to her safety because bad actors were supposedly attempting to prevent her from exposing massive election fraud.

Indeed, she was so terrified that she called in another employee to cover for her and complete her work for the shift.

“And then what ended up happening is continuous phone calls back and forth,” Keliikoa testified. “‘Okay, well, somebody’s gonna send somebody to pick you up and take you to a safe place.’ But my name should have never been out there, and that makes me mad.”

At Burk’s insistence, late on that Friday night in early December 2020, “Yoda” provided Burk with a resume and photo of the driver who would pick up Keliikoa at the FedEx facility at the Seattle airport.

At 11:50 p.m., Burk texted the resume to Keliikoa.

Roland Hurrington — described on his resume as a Seattle-area Marine Corps veteran “responsible for the protection of classified material, equipment and U.S. mission personnel” — arrived at the FedEx facility in the black SUV to transport Keliikoa.

Keliikoa testified that Hurrington passed through a security checkpoint at the facility. How he was able to do that remains unclear, but Keliikoa speculated that the security personnel may have let him through based on the assumption that he was a chauffeur.

The pickup took place late at night — roughly 30 minutes after “Yoda” first spoke to her, according to Burk’s account.

“And then I get detained, taken,” Keliikoa recalled in her deposition. “And I don’t know who this person is. I don’t know where I was going. I can’t believe I actually agreed to go with this person, because they could have killed me and threw me on the side of the road, and nobody would have known.”

As it turned out, there never was a plot to kill Keliikoa.

In fact, while the pro-Trump stop-the-stealers involved didn’t know or admit it at the time, their entire ballot fraud enterprise was little more than a house of cards perched on pillars of sand.

And the ground beneath them was about to start quaking.

‘He fabricated everything’

Jim Penrose, a cyber-security expert who had previously worked at the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama, would later acknowledge to Burk that he was the man who showed up at Keliikoa’s hotel room and urged her to write an affidavit. After “Yoda” tracked Keliikoa down, Penrose went to her hotel room to meet her.

Penrose has been identified by the New York Times as being one of three men who joined Flynn and Powell at the South Carolina estate of defamation attorney Lin Wood to “gather and organize election information.” One of the others was Seth Keshel, a former Army military intelligence captain who was married to Carissa Keshel.

“We had a security team dispatched in Seattle,” Penrose told Burk in a phone call that she recorded on Christmas Day of 2020.

“My worst fear was that the people were moving, you know, like a team of people that might want to, you know, even kidnap your friend in Seattle,” he said. “I didn’t want to let that happen, right, because I thought it was a situation that was dangerous. And we didn’t have enough info at the time to make a better decision.”

The reason why it was necessary for Flohr to wake up Burk involved grave concerns about an Arizona-based security company called Mayhem Solutions Group.

Why would Flohr care so much about this security firm?

Penrose had told Flohr a wild story about two Mayhem Solutions Group employees he believed were planning to fly an airplane to Phoenix to Seattle and potentially “kidnap” Keliikoa and take her to South Korea because of information she might have about election fraud.

The idea that Mayhem Solutions Group would be involved in a plot to harm Sabrina Keliikoa for the purpose of preventing her from exposing anti-Trump election fraud was not only bizarre. It was based on an utter fabrication.

Owner Shawn Wilson and his employee, Kenneth Scott Koch — both far-right operatives — were prone to conspiracy theories. Koch was a member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers and an anti-COVID lockdown crusader. Koch had presented himself to Burk as a shadowy agent for a rogue government operation involved in illegal ballot trafficking.

More than two weeks before the Flynn security team was dispatched to Seattle, Koch had come to Burk’s house in Arizona to advise her on home security. During a discussion about a similar theory concerning illegal ballots being unloaded from a plane at Phoenix Sky Harbor, Koch told Burk that a group of men shown in a photo standing next to the plane were “my guys.”

Koch, who had organized an anti-lockdown group in Arizona in response to COVID-19 measures, went on to suggest to Burk that pro-Trump amateur sleuths attempting to uncover election fraud might learn about more than they bargained.

“A lot of these people want to be the center,” he said. “They wanna have the information. The problem is the information they don’t want.” For reasons that remain unclear, Penrose would hire an investigative team that included two former FBI agents to interview Koch about his claims, but not until after the madcap mission in Seattle to obtain the affidavit from Keliikoa.

“We interviewed Koch at length, and he said he fabricated everything,” Penrose told Burk during the Christmas Day phone call.

A one-time ‘hostile actor’ in Flynn’s camp

Patently ridiculous is the notion that a lie told by an anti-COVID lockdown advocate in Arizona, about illegal ballots on a plane, would trigger a weeks-long wild-goose that reached the highest levels of then-President Donald Trump’s inner sanctum, up to and including his former national security adviser.

In the end, the lead that sent Flynn’s associates to the Seattle airport under the pretext of a manufactured election crisis in December 2020 turned out to be little more than a photo of ballots and unexplained beeping from a package scanner that raised the suspicions of Keliikoa, a woman whose imagination was set alight by QAnon conspiracy theories.

One would not be faulted for thinking that nothing about this fake ballot-hunting story seems real.

Except for the fact that it is real.

It’s unclear whether Koch and his boss, Shawn Wilson, knew Flynn prior to the 2020 election. Regardless, Koch’s admitted deception hasn’t prevented Wilson from associating with the Flynn camp since that time.

The America Project, a nonprofit co-founded by Flynn, published a video in late 2023 that presented Wilson as someone who “knows more about what is going on at the border than probably anybody in America.” (Not mentioned in the interview was the fact that Wilson’s company had subcontracted with the state of Texas to operate buses transporting migrants to Democratic-run cities.)

As Election Day 2024 draws nearer, Wilson has only become more public and overt about his support for Trump.

The messaging in Wilson’s interview for Flynn’s nonprofit was a classic appeal to authoritarianism by invoking fear — part of Trump’s playbook since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015. Wilson claimed that a military assault similar to the one launched against Israel by Hamas is imminent at the U.S southern border.

The remedy, Wilson suggested, is to ensure that Trump wins the 2024 election, adding, “I’ll be leading the charge with him right behind him.”

‘There was no goldmine’

Keliikoa confirmed her QAnon association, which inspired her ballot skepticism, during her deposition earlier this year.

She allowed that she sent Burk a link to a three-hour documentary video series Fall of the Cabal, which is described by the Anti-Defamation League as “a popular recruitment tool for QAnon followers.”

Keliikoa testified that following the November 2020 presidential election, she became suspicious because “we were moving ballots after places were called.” (That wouldn’t have been unusual, considering that the U.S. Postal Service was under a federal court order to locate and deliver mail-in ballots that hadn’t been received by Election Day.) One package that caused a scanner to triple beep — meaning “that it’s not recognized” — also concerned her.

“I believe that something looked wrong,” Keliikoa testified when asked under oath by Burk whether still believes that she witnessed election fraud at the FedEx facility in November 2020.

But Keliikoa admitted that she had nothing of value to share with the ad-hoc security team that sequestered her in a hotel in December 2020.

“They wanted to know if I knew about a plane coming in with these illegal ballots,” Keliikoa recalled. “I told them, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ That didn’t come from me. I don’t know what you’re saying.’ They were asking me if I knew about stuff that was going on outside of my workplace. I don’t. I was working. I don’t go out to other places.”

This didn’t stop Powell, who included a “Jane Doe” witness — Keliikoa presumably — on a witness list filed as part of an Arizona ballot lawsuit in support of Trump’s stop-the-steal effort. “Jane Doe,” Powell said at the time, would “testify about illegal ballots being shipped around the United States including to Arizona on or about before Nov. 3, 2020.”

No one was more disappointed by Keliikoa’s statement than Penrose.

“I thought when we exfil-ed her and we got her to write her affidavit, I thought we were going to have a goldmine of information,” he later told Burk, using the spy-craft term “exfiltrate” that means to furtively remove someone from a hostile area.

“There was no goldmine,” Penrose continued. “She had a picture of two ballot bags, and I asked her: ‘Would you know if ballots came across the tarmac from that Korea Air flight?’ And the answer was, ‘I just know what comes in this bay door from the USPS and what goes out these bay doors to get loaded on FedEx planes.’ So, the answer was there was no smoking gun per se with respect to that.”

The band breaks up

These days, few of the people involved want to discuss the Seattle ballot brouhaha, now revealed as a tangle of conspiracy theories, creative fantasies and outright lies — all in service to Trump’s goal of retaining presidential power that he was about to lose.

Reached by Raw Story earlier this month, Penrose’s lawyer John S. Irving said, “We don’t have anything to add.”

Keliikoa declined to comment to Raw Story for this story.

In an email to Raw Story last week, FedEx Media Relations said, “We do not have any comment at this time.”

Hurrington, the Marine Corps veteran who drove Keliikoa in the SUV, could not be reached for comment. Flohr also could not be reached for comment.

Some of the key players involved have also split up.

Keliikoa said in her deposition that one of the men who met her at the hotel told her it would “be in my best interest not to keep in contact” with Burk because she was a “troublemaker.”

Burk told Raw Story this month that Keliikoa had previously told her that it was Penrose who called her a “troublemaker,” but during her deposition, she claimed that she didn’t remember the names of anyone at the hotel.

“That was clearly projection since he was overseeing and directing a group of heavily armed former law enforcement holding my family and me hostage using fear and deception, who then spent months continuing to use that group to manipulate and malign my character to cover for their bad behavior,” Burk told Raw Story.

Flynn and Powell are both defendants in Burk’s lawsuit, along with former Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend. Burk accuses the defendants of civil rights violations, false imprisonment, assault, infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy.

In a filing seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, Flynn’s lawyers wrote that Burk’s claims are “baseless” and “frivolous,” while denying that their client sent the security team to her house or that he intended that they hold her “hostage.”

But Flynn’s efforts to distance himself from Burk are belied by the fact that Flohr — aka “Yoda,” the ex-law enforcement volunteer dispatched to her home in Arizona — flanked Flynn as part of his security detail when he spoke at a pro-Trump rally in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., less than a week after he was at Burk’s house in December 2020.

Flynn is currently promoting a documentary movie that portrays him as a victim of political persecution, and Trump has hinted that he may bring his former national security adviser back to public service — and the taxpayer-funded payroll — should he win election to a second term.

Flynn did not respond to repeated requests for comment made by Raw Story through his lawyers.

Last year, Powell pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties in Georgia.

Burk is suing Koch for fraudulent misrepresentation, invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress in the Arizona state courts, separate from her federal claim against Flynn, Powell and Townsend. Representing herself, Burk deposed Keliikoa for her lawsuit against Koch. Last week, Burk filed a motion to consolidate her case against Koch with her federal lawsuit against Powell and Flynn.

Under cross-examination by Koch’s lawyer in March, Keliikoa downplayed her role in giving life to the “ballots on planes” theory.

“The only relevance I have is a lot of people got involved and it turned into, like I said before, a big s---show where a lot of people were involved that should have never even been there, that should have never been involved,” she said. “And I got thrown into the mix like everybody else. I was used as a pawn. That’s what makes me mad.”

Knowing what she knows now, Keliikoa said, she would have never agreed to write the affidavit.

“I thought people really wanted to help,” she said in her deposition. “And now I know otherwise.”

“Nobody really cares,” she added, “because everybody has their own objective.”

Key players

Staci Burk is a former school board member from Arizona who found herself in the middle of a conspiracy theory concerning illegal ballots and airplanes after the 2020 election.

Roland Hurrington is a Marine Corps veteran enlisted to pick up Sabrina Keliikoa at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport FedEx air freight terminal in December 2020.

Geoffrey Flohr, also known as “Yoda,” is a retired Michigan State Police officer who volunteered for the 1st Amendment Praetorian security group in late 2020 and early 2021. He used Staci Burk to track down Sabrina Keliikoa.

Michael Flynn is a retired lieutenant general who served as national security advisor for President Donald Trump before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI. Trump pardoned Flynn in November 2020, and Flynn emerged alongside Sidney Powell as a key player in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Sabrina Keliikoa is a former FedEx supervisor and QAnon adherent who claims to have been detained by a security team linked to Michael Flynn that obtained an affidavit about election ballots observed at her facility shortly around the time of the 2020 election.

Carissa Keshel was a volunteer who served as attorney Sidney Powell’s assistant in late 2020, as Flynn worked with Powell to overturn the 2020 election.

Kenneth Scott Koch is a security contractor formerly employed by Mayhem Solutions Group (now MSG Risk Management & Intelligence) who “fabricated” a story about his involvement in illegal ballot trafficking. Koch organized anti-lockdown protests in Arizona and was a member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers.

Jim Penrose is a cyber-security expert who worked for the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama. He traveled to Washington state to obtain an affidavit from Sabrina Keliikoa.

Sidney Powell is a former federal prosecutor who filed lawsuits in Arizona and other states seeking to overturn the 2020 election based on outlandish claims of voting fraud.

Kelly Townsend is a former Arizona state House member who told Staci Burk it was imperative that the “Seattle whistleblower” (now revealed to be Sabrina Keliikoa) come forward and report her suspicions about illegal ballot trafficking after the 2020 election.

Donald Trump is the former president of the United States who is again running for the presidency in 2024. Many of the actions described in this story were done in Trump’s name.

Shawn Wilson is the president of MSG Risk Management & Intelligence (formerly Mayhem Solutions Group). Jim Penrose told Staci Burk that he was initially concerned that Wilson, along with Kenneth Scott Koch, were “hostile actors” intent on harming Sabrina Keliikoa.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/mike-flynn/

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Inside the secret campaign to distance a former Trump NSA official from Michael Flynn's security team

Jordan Green and Raw Story July 28, 2022

In late 2020, Lt. General Michael Flynn sent a security team to the home of Staci Burk, an Arizona law student. The team leader asked Burk to prepare an affidavit with information about ballots on planes that could be used to support lawsuits filed by attorney Sidney Powell to overturn the 2020 election.

Members of the security team, part of a group called 1st Amendment Praetorian, took Burk’s cell phone against her will. She later learned that it turned up in Washington, DC a couple of days before Trump supporters overran the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Burk herself was not in DC in December 2020 and January 2021. She said in a court filing in February 2021 that she learned on Jan. 11 that her phone was at the Willard Hotel, which has been described as a “command center” of the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

The 1st Amendment Praetorian security team’s seven-week residency at Burk’s home upended her life. Burk fled her home, incurred financial debt, reassessed her beliefs about the election and struggled to repair her reputation as various conspiracy theorists in the election denial world assailed her credibility.

Burk’s ordeal with 1st Amendment Praetorian — better known by its initials 1AP — pulled her into the orbit of a dizzying array of pro-Trump actors, including Arizona politicians, conspiracy theorists and associates of Flynn and Powell.

In January 2022, almost one year after her cell phone was confiscated, a lawyer who served in theTrump White House Office of Presidential Personnel namedAndrew Kloster reached out to Burk with an unusual request. He wanted a written statement from her disassociating a former National Security Agency official and Flynn associate from 1AP.

The request came just as the investigation of the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol was causing increasing unease among allies of the former president.

Kloster told Burk he was representing Trump NSA official Jim Penrose as a “sort of a favor” during the phone call earlier this year, which Raw Story is reporting for the first time. Kloster also indicated he was familiar with the former president’s interest in the widening congressional probe.

Described in his Federalist Society bio as “a longtime fixture of the conservative movement” who had worked at the Heritage Foundation, Kloster joined the Trump White House Office of Presidential Personnel in 2020. After Trump left office, Kloster served as chief of staff for a special counsel appointed by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to investigate the outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin.

“I was in the Trump White House, and I know many people; I talk with them continually about what’s going on,” Kloster said. “And I’ve been involved with some of these other January 6th matters. And it’s really — I think at the highest level, [Penrose is] not involved with anything untoward. But there’s always concern when you’ve got these giant Democratic sort of fishing expeditions that he just wants to button things up so that he can — if anyone does come to him, he can say, ‘Look, I had nothing to do with this. I had nothing to do with that.’

“So, it’s one of those things, like, a lot of people are concerned — Jim is concerned,” Kloster continued. “And it’s more like what can he do affirmatively before anything — before anybody does anything to kind of help him protect himself. And so, I think your issue is one of those loose ends that he just wanted to button up — not because he has any — you know, things could just continue and nothing could ever happen, and he could not get that from you and things could still be totally fine. Or, he might need it at some point.”

Emails to the January 6th Committee for this story seeking clarification on whether Penrose is under scrutiny went unreturned.

According to a professional biography, Jim Penrose retired from the NSA as a senior-level defense intelligence analyst in 2014. Lin Wood, the defamation lawyer who collaborated with Powell to file election challenge lawsuits, has confirmed that Penrose joined Powell and Flynn at his South Carolina estate in November 2020 to work on the election, along with Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence captain, and Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjaswho would later lead the partisan review of the Arizona election.

Raw Story initially contacted Staci Burk in August 2021. She has continually expressed reluctance about going on the record due to her concern about ongoing threats from associates of Michael Flynn, including 1AP member Michael Kenny. She says she is releasing the recording now because she feels the public has a right to know about matters important to democracy.

Robert Patrick Lewis, the 1AP cofounder, received a subpoena from the January 6th Committee in November 2021, requesting that he appear for a deposition and turn over documents. Lewis’ lawyer, Leslie McAdoo Gordon, has since indicated that Philip Luelsdorff, the other cofounder, and the organization itself have also been subpoenaed. Lewis appeared before the committee in April and invoked the Fifth Amendment, on his lawyer’s advice.

Citing a ruling by a federal judge in California that gave credence to an assertion made by the committee that President Trump participated in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election, McAdoo Gordon said in a letter to the committee that the committee’s position puts pressure on the US Department of Justice to pursue charges.

“Thus, the committee’s theory creates a genuine risk of criminal exposure for anyone who may have, in the opinion of motivated prosecutors, assisted former President Trump or his supporters in any way as they contested the election results between November 2020 and January 6, 2021,” McAdoo Gordon wrote.

In an addendum provided to the committee in July, McAdoo Gordon confirmed that Joshua James, who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, was “a member of 1AP for a very short time in 2020.” James was charged as part of a conspiracy with other members of the Oath Keepers militia. McAdoo Gordon told the committee that James left 1AP after being advised he could not simultaneously be in the Oath Keepers and 1AP. She added that James was not a member of 1AP in January 2021 and has had no association with the group since that time.

Kloster told Burk thatPenrose told him he had previously approached 1AP with a similar request seeking a statement absolving him of responsibility, without success.

“It’s timely because of all this general January 6th stuff,” Kloster told Burk. “And he’s not involved with any of that. But it’s just like, they certainly are at one level or another. And they’re probably flailing about. I mean, part of the reason — you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe they would collude to give him that’ — no, they don’t want to give him that because what they’d rather do is have anything to pin on anybody to save their own butts. But, according to him, they had talked and approached them several times to get some letter like this from them. And that is his interpretation of them kind of stiff-arming him is that they want to have him in their back pocket, along with whatever else they have, just to save their own butts on X, Y and Z.”

Burk did not accede to Kloster’s request because she told him that would be a lie, and she said he did not contact her again.

‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’

Based on his conversations with Jim Penrose, Andrew Kloster told Burk he understood his client’s relationship with 1st Amendment Praetorian to be minimal.

“It seems like he thinks that his relationship was that they were there in the mix and that he would talk with people because they reported to other people,” Kloster said. “He comes in as a contractor with a very limited relationship on his technical stuff. He sticks to that lane, but of course, everyone’s talking with everyone, and so he will talk to people. But he was not in the chain of command. He had no idea about X, Y and Z with your phone or whatever.”

As previously reported by ProPublica, Penrose told Burk during a phone call in late December 2020 that he had spent $75,000 to pay former FBI agents to look into two separate allegations about potentially illegal ballots delivered by plane in Phoenix and Seattle.

“Let me be crystal clear: I’m investigating this on behalf of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, right, the people that are going to take this right up to the president and the Supreme Court and work on these cases,” Penrose told Burk during that call.

The call, which Burk recorded, took place on Christmas day after she and a 1AP member named Brandon Pittman had returned from a local shooting range. According to an incident report by the Florence Police Department,Richard “Chi” Chichester, a former correctional officer from Massachusetts who was also a member of the 1AP security team, reported that two black SUVs had followed Burk home from the shooting range. The incident also prompted a phone call to Penrose.

The recording reveals that Penrose, who expressed concern about Burk independently investigating the two ballots-on-planes leads, set parameters and conditioned the 1AP security team’s continued presence at her home on her compliance.

“Here’s the deal: If we’re going to protect you, we need to have some kind of understanding about what the parameters are and the way you’re going to engage publicly and how you’re going to expose yourself to threats publicly,” Penrose said. “Because it’s all of us, right? We’re all in this together.”

Penrose added that anything Burk did — from picking up the phone to inviting someone into her home — was “impacting the guys in the room with you, and anybody who’s going to be assigned to your protective detail.”

Burk told Raw Story she turned over her recording of the phone call to the January 6th Committee in October 2021.

Raw Story reviewed more than 20 recordings — which Burk has not publicly shared — that provide a picture of how her cell phone was stolen and how it wound up at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, just before Jan. 6.

In recorded statements, Pittman and Chichester — the two 1AP members assigned as Burk’s protective detail at the time — have both admitted that her phone was stolen, while giving conflicting accounts of how it took place. In one of the recordings, Pittman told Burk that he learned that Chichester had her phone in Washington, DC.

Joe Flynn, Michael Flynn’s brother, corroborated the account in a phone call with Burk.When the matter was brought to his attention, Flynn indicated he turned to a man named Geoffrey Flohr for an explanation.

Flohr, whose nickname was “Yoda,” was a former Michigan State Police officer and former polygrapher with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Pittman described him as the “team leader,” and Chichester called him “the guy in charge.”

“Yoda told me that Chi took it out of your hands,” Flynn told Burk. “Or something like that. And when I heard that, I said, ‘What are these people doing taking somebody’s property without their permission?’”

In his phone call to Burk in January, Andrew Kloster said that Jim Penrose acknowledged he was engaged with 1AP “as a general matter, about security.” If Penrose expressed the view that Burk’s phone was needed, Kloster suggested, the 1AP members took it to a level that his client never intended.

“I mean, it’s almost like the Thomas Becket [quote], ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” Kloster told Burk. “And then they take it as an order to murder the bishop—same thing. Like, ‘We’ve got to worry about our phones. And here’s a phone.’ And then they take that as, ‘Well, let’s go steal the phone.’ That is the darkest interpretation that you can reasonably draw.”

“They decided to do that, yes,” Kloster continued. “And again, I don’t know. But they decided to do that. And then claim that it was an order to, like, cover their butts. Which shouldn’t cover their butts…. But it just makes it look worse for all involved… when really they’re just overzealous nutcases.”

The precise reason why Burk’s phone was stolen and who, if anyone, ordered it remains unclear. Regardless, responsibility for the misdeed ultimately fell to Flohr, who also served in Michael Flynn’s personal security detail for his speech in front of the Supreme Court during the Jericho March on Dec. 12, 2020.

Chichester told Burk he encountered Flohr at the Willard hotelafter Burk’s phone surfaced in DC.

“He just tapped me on the shoulder, didn’t say a f***ing thing, okay?” Chichester recounted. “And I was just watching him as he came past, all right? I was angry. I probably showed a little bit of anger in my face or something because I was pissed off at him because of the whole clusterf***…. Because of the whole thing — the stealing — the phone being stolen. The way he did things, it was just all f***ed up, and he was the guy in charge.”

James Curtis, a Marine Corps veteran who replaced Chichester on the 1AP protective detail at Burk’s house, also blamed Flohr.

“Seeing Yoda plan the theft of the phone — that by itself is problematic,” Curtis said. “But the timeline that sets this in motion and moves this off of you being a team player and to a target is knowing that on day one, they came asking for your phone.”

In a call with Burk, Flohr told her he was told “to be quiet” about the phone debacle “because this had the potential of blowing up all over the place. You literally hold — I’m telling you right now — you literally hold 1A Praetorian in your hand. That’s how it’s viewed. But I wanted the f***ing truth.”

Flohrsaid he reported the matter to Matthew Wallach, a prominent 1AP member.

“We want to do the f***ing right thing,” Flohr said. “And it’s all on my shoulders. So, listen up. It’s all on my shoulder. I went and told him forty-five seconds after f***ing numb nuts there right next to you told me what it was. I went and drilled it right into the people that run this place. And I said, ‘We got to fix this. We gotta f***ing fix this.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re gonna take it under advisement, get through the DC op, and then address it.’”

Flohr ended his involvement with 1AP shortly after Jan. 6, 2021. After the phone debacle, Pittman told Burk that Flohr’s departure was directly linked to the handling of her security detail.

“Because of the issues that we had with you, and the way that they were handled was a bunch of bulls***, and Yoda was the guy that was like, ‘This is a bunch of bulls***,’” Pittman told Burk. “And so, Yoda, like, shields me from a lot of flak, because I tell Yoda, and Yoda tells the bosses. The bosses hit back at Yoda, and then Yoda hits back at me, you know?”

As previously reported by Raw Story, Flohr was on the grounds at the US Capitol, along with a second 1AP member named Alan Kielan.

Leslie McAdoo Gordon, 1AP’s lawyer, said in a statement provided to the January 6th Committee in early July that she learned following Robert Patrick Lewis’s deposition that “two members of 1AP went with or followed the portion of the crowd from the Ellipse that went to the Capitol grounds.” McAdoo Gordon minimized Flohr and Kielan’s connection to the organization, writing, “They had already completed their work with 1AP at that time.” She added that the two men went to the Capitol “without the knowledge or approval of 1AP or Mr. Lewis.”

Flohr could not be reached for comment for this story.

After Burk’s phone was stolen, James Curtis accurately predicted that she would become the target of a campaign to discredit her. He also entertained the possibility that Penrose bore some responsibility for the theft.

“I don’t know Penrose, but if he’s self-serving enough to take your phone, he’s also self-serving enough to help fabricate tales about you that aren’t true,” Curtis said. “But right now, your actions are being defined probably — I’m making some assumptions here — your actions are being defined by whoever it was that wanted your phone. And so, your actions are not going to be defined in a way complimentary to you or the truth you understand, right? They’re going to be defined in ways that benefit whoever took your phone — presumably Penrose, right?”

When Kloster called Burk nearly a year later, she told him that's almost exactly what ended up happening.

“He pushes this out there: ‘She’s crazy, she’s this, she’s that,’" Burk said of Penrose. "And tries to discredit and do all of this stuff, which leads all of those minions who thought they were saving the country and all of that to then chase me out of town and dox and harass and threaten."

Penrose could not be reached for this story.

Reached by Raw Story by phone, Joe Flynn said he doesn’t know why Burk’s phone was stolen, but indicated he was surprised to hear Penrose’s name come up in connection with the episode.

“It was inconsequential,” Flynn said during a brief interview. “It doesn’t mean much to anybody.”

Joe Flynn has acknowledged his role in assigning the 1AP security team to Burk’s home.

“At the time we were working with 1st — 1A Praetorians,” Flynn said in an interview for the QAnon-aligned Patriot Voice channel on Telegram in January. “We were working with them for a very short period of time, just after the election when we were participating in the rallies in Washington. And their team provided General Flynn, myself, Sidney, Patrick [Byrne] and a few others security…. By the way, they provided that security free of charge.At the time, we didn’t have any money, so that was a benefit not having to pay that money. As I understand it, we sent a team out to watch over her out in Phoenix.”

Joe Flynn told Raw Story that his brother “didn’t have anything to do” with the decision to assign a security team to Burk, but Flohr gave a different account to Burk.

“It started with Joe,” he told Burk. “I got a call from him. He goes, ‘And we need ya in the Southwest.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ He says, ‘Hold on.’ And then Mike comes on the phone. He says, ‘Yoda, this is Mike Flynn. I need you to get to the Southwest for a whistleblower that we have down there. How long is it going to take you to get there?’ I said, ‘I haven’t been out to Arizona before.’ I said, ‘It’s going to take me a day and a half.’ He says, ‘Get going.’ And so, I did, because I had to pack my car. Two and a half hours later, I was on the road.”

Before 1AP’s arrival, a man named John Shattuck, who is linked to Michael Flynn through the Gold Institute for International Strategy, arranged for a local firm in Arizona called Mayhem Security Solutions to provide security for Burk.

Joe Flynn later explained to Burk that Mayhem was replaced because their fee was too expensive.

“We couldn’t afford it,” Flynn told Burk. “We weren’t going to be able to pay them. They wanted us to pay them thirty thousand dollars. We don’t have that kind of money. So, we said, ‘Okay, we got this other group who can do it for free.’”

‘If there’s going to be a second Trump term…’

Burk, who has since concluded there is no evidence of widespread election fraud, looked into two separate allegations about potentially illegal ballots on planes shortly after the Nov. 3, 2020 election.She said that Geoffrey Flohr, the team leader for the 1st Amendment Praetorian security detail at her house asked her to prepare an affidavit for Powell.Burk said assertions about extensive fraud by Powell and Michael Flynn helped convince her there must be something to the allegations of ballots on planes, which Powell herself mentioned in a speech at a Dec. 2, 2020 rally in Alpharetta, Ga.

“I listened to General Flynn and Sidney Powell say they had reliable evidence there were bad actors rigging the election and their team validated there was a great deal of corroborating evidence it was true and that I was in grave danger of being killed and needed a security team,” Burk said in a statement to Raw Story.

“Those were obviously lies,” Burk continued. “I believed the lies because, at the time, I thought, why else would they be taking the South Korean plane story so seriously when it was their associates who were on the ground with the plane taking video.I now see in their psyop I was a pawn, and it was much easier to raise money if they terrorized the witnesses and then said they needed money to protect the witnesses. I was just a pawn in their elaborate money-making venture,” Burk added.

Burk claims that in late December 2020, she had not been aware of a Dec. 18 meeting that took place at the White House in which Flynn, Powell and Byrne urged President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and order the National Guard to seize voting machines.

“It was my understanding Trump had a plan, and I trusted that,” Burk said. “As things came to light, I now see everything their associates did with me between November 2020 and May 2021 was all gaslighting, cover up and narrative control with an ends-justifying-the-means mentality and little care or concern for how their actions terrified my family and disrupted our lives.”

Joe Flynn said in a text to Raw Story that his brother was not interested in responding.

“This is a story about nonsense and nothing,” he said, “and anyone who reads Raw Story needs to get a mental exam.”

Sydney Powell could not be reached for this story.

Despite describing Penrose as a “contractor” during the period he engaged with 1AP, Kloster also suggested to Burk that his client’s relationship with Michael Flynn was insignificant.

“He knew General Flynn,” Kloster said. “He knew who he was. They had some communication. There was no hand in glove. He didn’t report to him, or vice-versa.”

Kloster also dismissed the notion that Penrose was working on behalf of President Trump, telling Burk: “I’m a little bit closer to some of that stuff. I kind of know — yeah, that’s a little bit, uh, that’s on the order of puffing up, for sure, yeah.”

Kloster did not return messages for this story. But in a post on Telegram in early July, he announced a new project to protect the professional reputations of so-called “America First” public servants.

“We’re just getting started, but if you’re looking to assist in giving our conservative public servants the tools they need to survive attack, pls look at this new org run by our former WH staff,” Kloster wrote.

The website for Personnel Policy Operations describes the new nonprofit’s foundational precept as a belief that conservative public servants targeted for “persecution” by “the radical left, corporate media, tech companies, leftwing NGOs and other activists” need support in order to succeed, while warning that without a robust safety net, “others will be deterred from entering public service in the first place, or from taking real action for their country.”

Klosterrecently spoke up in defense ofKenneth Klukowski,a former senior counsel to Trump Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark. Kuklowski reportedly helped Clark draft a letter to state officials in Georgia in late December 2020 requesting that they delay certifying their votes to allow time for federal prosecutors to investigate election fraud allegations.

“The January 6th investigation is all about attacking mid-level and senior staff like Ken, to ensure that we don’t have a farm team in 2024, no matter who the president is,” Kloster told The Federalist last month. “This isn’t about the truth, but about making it impossible for conservatives to successfully enter and leave government.”

In a recent Axios report, Kloster was named as part of a group of “former Trump administration and transition officials working on personnel, legal or policy projects for a potential 2025 government.”

Jack Posobiec, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a political operative who is “known primarily for creating and amplifying viral disinformation campaigns,” praised Kloster’s Personnel Policy Operation while filling in as a host on the “War Room” show for former White House strategist Steve Bannon on July 1. (Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress on July 22 for refusing to cooperate with the January 6th Committee.)

“We’ve got the precinct project that’s going on here from the War Room,” Posobiec told Kloster. “That’s precinct by precinct across the country. We’ve got the dismantling of the administrative state. That’s the other project. But what you just said, I think, is one of the most important lessons, shall we say, from the first Trump term, which is that personnel is policy.

“If there is going to be a second Trump term — and that’s basically been kind of the theme of this show today — that this key office, the PPO and the staffers across the government, right, getting into the administrative state and wrestling down with Leviathan.”

It was through another Trump administration official that Kloster became acquainted with Jim Penrose, he told Staci Burk earlier this year.

“So, I got connected with Jim through a friend of mine who was in the administration, who’s very, very good,” Kloster said. “I had reached out to him thinking it was not quite a pro bono, but sort of a favor, because I don’t actually represent people too often. Then, I spoke to Jim, and I thought, ‘My gosh, he’s done a lot, he’s good, and a lot of people are vouching for him.’ And then, so I’m now representing him.”



https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/22/2070612/-Lawfare-nonsense-rejected-Michael-Flynn-lawsuit-for-restraining-order-from-select-Committee

kos no lnx

there’s an effect from those stonewalling insurrectionists not complying with subpoenas, as Michael Flynn’s motion to block the 1/6 Committee’s subpoena gets thrown out. Coup Coup achoo. The Committee already has the phone records, they just want to ask questions, much like for Scott “Free” Perry and Gym Jordan. The planning for the insurrection will likely include an examination of post-Charlottesville pseudo-support groups like Proud Bois, Oat Squeezers, Nervous-Sheep, and 14th Amendment Centurions.

BREAKING: after a trump judge recused herself from Flynn’s lawsuit, it was given to a GW appointee (Judge Scriven) who has just DENIED Flynn’s motion for a temp restraining order to block the 1/6 committee’s subpoena of his phone records. pic.twitter.com/BFuhRndivx

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 22, 2021

(CNN) November

An obscure far-right paramilitary group is in the spotlight this week after getting subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

The committee subpoenaed the 1st Amendment Praetorian, a group founded in 2020 that recruits military veterans and former police officers to provide security at right-wing events.

Lawmakers also subpoenaed the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, extremist organizations with dozens of members who are facing criminal charges in connection with January 6. The panel said these subpoenas could shed light on how pro-Trump groups planned for violence that day.

Here's what we know about the 1st Amendment Praetorian and its ties to January 6.

The group's name and logo invoke ancient Rome and the Praetorian Guard of elite bodyguards and intelligence operatives that protected the Roman emperor. They are one of many far-right groups that appropriate Greco-Roman imagery to promote political violence, according to an analysis from Pharos, a group at Vassar College that studies these historical overlaps.

The 1st Amendment Praetorian's website says the goal is to "protect the Republic and anyone who is willing to stand up on her behalf to voice their opinion or bring attention to something they've found, like voter fraud." They do this by providing security at controversial events, including at three pro-Trump rallies in Washington, DC, during the presidential transition.

Like many paramilitary groups, they recruit US military veterans, retired law enforcement and ex-members of the intelligence community. Their website says their members must attend monthly training sessions.

[...]

The group provided security at pro-Trump rallies in November and December 2020 that were followed by violence and arrests on the streets of DC. They were also present at a rally on January 5 that featured incendiary speeches from far-right provocateurs like Ali Alexander and Roger Stone, and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.

Robert Patrick Lewis was a featured speaker at the January 5 event. He invoked the American Revolution in his brief address to the crowd, where he compared the "Stop the Steal" movement to George Washington's surprise attack on pro-British troops after crossing the Delaware River in 1776.

"I am willing to get up here and walk into danger if we need if, if we need to be there, to make sure we don't cede this country, and have my kids grow up in a Communist hellhole," Lewis said. "And I need each of you to fight as hard as you can to ensure that does not happen."

www.cnn.com/…

Watch this clip while reminding yourself that this guy, Michael Flynn, was the US National Security Adviser under five years ago pic.twitter.com/OuetmGxkZm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2021

THREAD:

General Flynn played a significant role in the insurrection operation.

"Flynn Org" was heavily involved in the "legal/propaganda" part of the op in the months leading up to 1/6. Evidence of Flynn Org's involvement in the "kinetic" part that day is also growing. /1

"Flynn Org" consists of a large cast of high- and low-profile characters Flynn's recruited to achieve his goals.This story will be told w/ a focus on a group recruited in mid-Nov 2020 to conduct his dirty work: 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP), led by Robert Patrick Lewis. /2

On 11/14/20, 1AP provided security at the Million MAGA March in DC for VIPs including Ali Alexander and Flynn's brother, Joe Flynn. Immediately afterwards, the Flynns pounced on 1AP and successfully recruited them into the "Flynn Organization," as Lewis later described it. /3

First, the very next day on 11/15/20, General Flynn quote retweeted Tracy Beanz--another VIP at the 11/14 event for whom 1AP provided security--and asked his supporters to donate to 1AP. Flynn's tweet in support of 1AP reached over 23,000 likes. /4

https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1333843818072956932

The same 1AP donation page that General Flynn promoted on 11/15 went on to raise $125,223 for 1AP as of 1/8/21. Flynn's endorsement not only went a long way financially, but also in ingratiating the Flynns to 1AP... /5

https://twitter.com/visionsurreal/status/1358578361069694976

It's quite possible Lewis' "our people" was a reference to 1AP's new dba "The Shepherd Group" that was registered to work for and/or receive financial assistance from the federal government 7 days later, 11/25/20. The Flynns' involvement seemed to precipitate such changes. /10

The following day, 11/16/20,1AP member Alan Kielan (Uncensored Abe) hosted Joe Flynnon his show for 50 mins. Joe said Sidney Powell's part of the Flynn family, explained her "release the Kraken" statement, & he was already intimately familiar w/ her upcoming legal filings. /6  Joe Flynn finished his interview w/ 1AP's Alan Kielan on 11/16/20 by saying he "loves" 1AP, "we may be using you again some time soon," and by asking Kielan to say hi to 1AP member "Yoda," whom Joe calls "my boy.” 1AP's Yoda (#ShadowFlynn) will be a key figure in this story. /7

The following day on 11/17/20, Lewis made an interesting comment with respect to election "hijinks" in Georgia: 1AP had "some people from our group who have worked on some of the high-tech aspects of that and hopefully at one point we can talk about that." /8

The next day, on 11/18/20 as a guest on Kielan's show, 1AP's leader Robert Patrick Lewis revealed: "We [Joe Flynn and I] have a lot of mutual friends. A lot of our people have been working with the Flynn family on some of the things they've been doing." "Our people"? /9

In addition to providing physical security, 1AP had an existing intel team comprised of veterans from "every 3-letter agency" that worked on developing threat assessments for each event. The Flynns co-opted 1AP's intel team to assist Sidney Powell with her legal filings. /11

The Shepherd Group's 11/25/20 registration as a government contractor happened to be the same date Sidney Powell's legal case in the state of Michigan was filed, which included a declaration signed by an anonymous "military intelligence analyst" with the code name "Spider." /12

Although "Spider" was later identified as Josh Merritt working for Russell Ramsland's Allied Security Operations Group (a 1AP partner), I revealed in this thread that Spider's declaration lifted exact screenshots of an anonymous researcher on Twitter. /13

https://twitter.com/visionsurreal/status/1400171459473985536

No surprise to me as, in a 1AP video dated 12/9/20, Lewis said "our intel team has been processing a lot of OSINT" for "the Sidney Powell legal team" and "[w]e've been helping them kind of collate it, bring them to the right place, and sort it, and also do a lot of digging." /14

Per above video, 1AP's "OSINT" for Powell included: "... things that people have been sharing on social media regarding these different pieces of the election fraud puzzle whether it be digging into the companies that are behind it--Dominion, Smartmartic, Scytl..." /15

Of relevance, later on in the video, Lewis said: "We have these other parts of our intelligence team that are working on helping the legal filings and the court cases and getting everything together for the evidence that they need." "They" was likely Powell's team. /16

Also in the 12/9/20 video:1AP was protecting election fraud "whistleblowers." Here, Lewis explains "the Flynn Organization reached out to us and asked if we could help them with some of these different whistleblowers and have a security detail on them." So, Flynn Org. /17

Lewis went on: "So we've been doing that... I'm not going to say exactly when. I'll just say that we've had a team and we have other teams that are ready to go protect some of the other ones, and some that already are." I know who one of Flynn Org's whistleblowers is... /18

It'sStaci Burk from AZ who posted 2/12/21 on FB: “... by the end of November I had a full-time security team of 3-5 former top law enforcement and military individuals… (sent by General Flynn and Sidney from an organization called 1A Praetorians)” /19

https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1411749569264701443

Jim Penrose (Flynn's assistant & former NSA officer) "provided operational management for a security team of approximately 13 top military and law enforcement professionals who came to [Staci Burk's] home for 7 weeks, providng round the clock security" /20

https://twitter.com/PiperK/status/1395308408249544707

Penrose may be a 1AP member. Burk's reliability may be questionable, but she provides on FB screenshots of texts & other photographic evidence to support her claims, plus her story is broadly consistent w/ 1AP's Lewis. Burk's account will be important later in this story. /21

To further corroborate the Flynns' involvement in coordinating 1AP's protection of whistleblowers, Joe Flynn tweeted on 12/7/20 a link to 1AP's crowdfunding page, explaining the whistleblowers came to "our legal teams."Flynn Org's legal teams? /22

I agree with what @PiperK who's followed Flynn closely has pointed out: Flynn's involvement of military personnel in the election fraud filings in Nov 2020 and subsequent "audits" in 2021 are essentially a "military operation (irregular warfare)." /23

https://twitter.com/PiperK/status/1394049305405579264

And while much of my thread so far has focused on the "legal/propaganda" component of this operation, it is now time to slowly unravel Flynn Org's involvement in the "kinetic" part of this operation that went down on the infamous date of January 6th, the Capitol insurrection. /24

As early as 11/23/20, Cindy Chafian (the "organizer" of the Million MAGA March on 11/14 per the permit, which also specified 1AP as security) tweeted that 1AP would also be providing security for the upcoming Jericho March in DC and was endorsed by General Flynn. /25

threadreaderapp.com/...

Full story from @woodruffbets for Politico:https://t.co/7rNknpBwfV

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) December 6, 2021

3 RETIRED GENERALS: “chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time... potential for a breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines is significant… not 1 leader who inspired it has been held to account…”

BE ALARMED. https://t.co/hVUYY5mqaA

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) December 17, 2021

Wednesday, Dec 22, 2021 · 2:51:51 PM PST · annieli


Philip Luelsdorff

Luelsdorff is the director of Business Development for 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP), a fascist paramilitary security group that has provided “security” for far-right politicians and fascist rallies, including a QAnon convention this past May in Dallas. The online group @Capitolhunters, which has curated and organized crowd-sourced information regarding the January 6 coup, reported that Luelsdorff’s mother, Baroness von Luelsdorff, claims to be an exiled Russian aristocrat.

The co-founder of the paramilitary group is former US Army Green Beret Robert Patrick Lewis. Lewis has previously served as bodyguard for Trump-aligned figures and has been named by the Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Lewis was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and in an October 11, 2020 Facebook post he described the 1AP as a “group of military, law enforcement and intelligence community veterans,” who “provide pro bono intelligence and security services to patriotic and religious events.”

1AP provided “security” at several of the rallies leading up to the January 6 attack. On the event permit listed for the November 14 Million MAGA March at Freedom Plaza, which was obtained by Cindy Chafian on behalf of Women for America First, the permit notes that 1AP members would be wearing black T-shirts and serve as “demonstration marshals.” At 2:18 p.m. on January 6, 2021 Lewis’s official Twitter account tweeted: “Today is the day the true battles begin.”



youtube flynn this is the main event


Robert Patrick Lewis, the founder of far-right group 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP), is suing the New York Times (NYT) for allegedly defaming the organization, which played a role in the Jan. 6 attack, Rolling Stone reports.

The lawsuit, filed last month, seeks $100 million from the prominent news outlet for allegedly reporting "egregious lies" concerning the group's connection to the insurrection.

Per Rolling Stone — the first to report on the lawsuit — on the evening before the attack, Lewis was welcomed to speak on the Freedom Plaza stage by right-wing activist Cindy Chafian, whose mission was to acknowledge "people who often go unseen and unknown."

READ MORE: [How DeSantis 'could potentially transform American society' by challenging the First Amendment: journalist

Chafian honored 1st Amendment Pratorian — “a play on the imperial Praetorian Guard that provided security to Roman emperors” — along with the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other ultraconservative groups, although the organization describes itself as "non-partisan."

As Lewis, an ally of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn took the stage, he said to the crowd, “Not far from here, General George Washington — in weather just like this — loaded up a ragtag group of soldiers who crossed the Delaware River,” Lewis said, before shouting: “This is our Delaware!”

He continued, “This is our time… to make sure that we don’t cede this country and have my kids grow up in a communist hellhole." He implored listeners to "fight as hard as you can to ensure that that does not happen!”

Per Rolling Stone, the group's lawsuit falls into a series of "high-dollar defamation suits brought by 1AP that are ostensibly attempting to clear its reputation."

READ MORE: Unequal justice: Donald Trump’s war on the First Amendment will one day reach the Supreme Court

Rolling Stone reports:

Seen in another light, the lawsuits present a vivid irony: They are filed by an organization that presents itself as a protector of first amendment rights, against parties who’ve leveraged their own freedom of the press to raise concerns about 1st Amendment Praetorian.

The Jan. 6 Committee tweeted in November of 2021 that it subpoenaed a list of "organizations linked to the violent attack on the Capitol," including 1AP.

According to Rolling Stone, the subpoena letter read:

On January 4, 2021, the 1st Amendment Praetorian Twitter account suggested that violence was imminent: “There may be some young National Guard Captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours. Pray with every fiber of your being that their choices are Wise, Just, and Fearless.”

WATCH: Marjorie Taylor Greene 'wrongly' declares her Twitter ban as illegal

The April 2022 transcript from Lewis' meeting with the committee was released in December, exposing the far-right leader's refusal to answer questions such as "Were you involved in discussions with the White House regarding efforts to overturn the election?"

He opted not to respond to the panel "citing his constitutional first and fifth amendment rights," according to Rolling Stone.

Now, Lewis is speaking up with legal action.

According to the legal filing, he alleges four articles published by the NYT "inaccurately paint 1AP as 'a right-wing paramilitary group, like high-profile extremist and far-right nationalist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, that was involved in President Donald Trump’s plot to interfere with the certification of the 2020 vote count and the attack on the Capitol.'”

READ MORE:A militia expert explains the complex relationship between Trump and the Capitol rioters

The Trump-supporting leader maintains in the lawsuit that 1AP is “not a violent, dangerous, paramilitary, extremist group,” fully denying the group's role in the attack.

In the NYT's defense, a spokesperson told Rolling Stone, “We reported accurately and responsibly, and plan to vigorously defend against this suit.”

READ MORE: Why 'footnotes' and 'small print' are a 'powerful' part of the Jan. 6 report: legal expert

Rolling Stone's full report is available to read at this link.



https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/first-amendment-praetorian-new-york-times-lawsuit-1234677286/

‘1st Amendment’ Group Sues New York Times Over Unflattering Description

The paper described the group as pro-Trump, right-wing extremists. The group says it exists to protect people engaged in free speech — and wants massive damages over the paper's coverage

BY TIM DICKINSON

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

[Donald Trump supporters and QAnon believers rallied in front of the Supreme Court on December 12, 2020 and listened to retired general Mike Flynn who received a pardon by Trump. The crowd refused to accept the results of the Presidential election, marched and rallied in Washington DC, two days before the Electoral College meets to confirm the winner. The rally went through the National Mall, Freedom Plaza, and past the Capitol and White House. The crowd at this rally (many not wearing masks) was smaller than the one a month before, and attracted Proud Boys, members of America First, and militia members. The crowds also cheered for recently pardoned Michael Flynn, and watched a flyover of Trump flying in the Marine One helicopter.

Robert Patrick Lewis of 1st Amendment Praetorian, front right, accompanies retired general Mike Flynn in Washington, D.C., on December 12, 2020 MARK PETERSON/REDUX]

ON THE STORMY evening of Jan. 5, 2021 on a stage at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C., Cindy Chafian warmed up the crowd. “Are you all pissed? Are you ready to fight back? Tomorrow we’re going to make history!”

Chafian — a right-wing activist who helped organize D.C. rallies that preceded the insurrection of Jan. 6 — asked the crowd to give thanks to “people who often go unseen and unknown.” First, she gave “a huge shout out to Enrique and the Proud Boys.” Lamenting that the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio, couldn’t speak as planned, she led a rowdy chant of appreciation: “En-ri-que!” “En-ri-que!”

Chafian then introduced Robert Patrick Lewis, founder of a group called 1st Amendment Praetorian. More than two dozen 1AP members were serving as “demonstration marshalls” to “help maintain order among participants,” according to the rally’s permit. “These guys work vigilantly,” Chafian said. “You don’t see ’em. You don’t hear ’em. But know this. But when you guys are going back to your hotel tonight, they’re the ones who are integrated into crowds keeping you safe.”

Chafian put 1AP in notable — indeed, notorious — company: “Them, and the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters. All of those guys keep you safe. All of them. I’ll stand with them, because I’m tired of the Left telling us we can’t talk about them.”

The burly, bearded Lewis then strode onto center stage and gave Chaffian a hug, before turning to the cameras, and the crowd he greeted as “Patriots!.” Standing at the mic, Lewis spoke for 1AP, but didn’t linger on security logistics. Rather, he invoked 1776 and the American Revolution: “Not far from here, General George Washington — in weather just like this — loaded up a ragtag group of soldiers who crossed the Delaware River,” Lewis said, before shouting: “This is our Delaware!”

Warning of an “enemy at the gates,” Lewis continued: “This is our time… to make sure that we don’t cede this country and have my kids grow up in a communist hellhole.” The 1AP leader then fired up the crowd: “I need each of you to fight as hard as you can to ensure that that does not happen!”

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Two years later, the words and actions of Lewis and 1st Amendment Praetorian, and the group’s intersection with the events that culminated in the storming of the Capitol, are at the center of a $100 million legal battle between 1AP and the New York Times — over whether the group was defamed by articles that, 1AP claims, falsely painted it as an “extremist paramilitary group that played a central role in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

The lawsuit against the Times, filed in early January, has not been reported previously. It denounces what 1AP calls the paper’s “egregious lies,” while denying that 1AP members “played any part in the attack.”

“Plaintiff seeks compensatory damages and punitive damages in the sum of $100,000,000.00,” the group writes in its suit.

The litigation is part of a pattern of high-dollar defamation suits brought by 1AP that are ostensibly attempting to clear its reputation. Seen in another light, the lawsuits present a vivid irony: They are filed by an organization that presents itself as a protector of first amendment rights, against parties who’ve leveraged their own freedom of the press to raise concerns about 1st Amendment Praetorian.

The court blitz complicates efforts to scrutinize 1AP, which the Jan. 6 Committee’s final report describes as a “paramilitary group,” and whose founder Lewis has touted the need for a “second American revolution.”

Former General Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s recently pardoned national security adviser, departs a protest of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, led by 1AP’s Geoffrey ‘Yoda’ Flohr, outside the Supreme Court on December 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. Thousands of protesters who refuse to accept that President-elect Joe Biden won the election are rallying ahead of the electoral college vote to make Trump’s 306-to-232 loss official. TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES

The name 1st Amendment Praetorian is a play on the imperial Praetorian Guard that provided security to Roman emperors. 1AP was founded in 2020 by Lewis, a decorated former Green Beret, who has said that 1AP is composed of “military, law enforcement, and intelligence community veterans.”

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In legal documents, 1AP has described itself both as a “non-partisan” “civil liberties group” dedicated to the free expression of “every American,” and as a corporation founded to provide “pro bono security and protective services at grassroots events.” These documents depict a group that — though it provides protective security at political rallies — holds itself apart from the political fray.

Has 1AP been grievously misunderstood? Has this “civil rights” champion been unfairly judged by the company it kept? Was it out of bounds for the nation’s newspaper of record to write about 1AP in the context of Trump-aligned militant groups that stormed the Capitol?

The public record about 1AP is far from cut-and-dried. It reveals that government investigators had significant questions about 1AP’s activities in the buildup to, and the day of, Jan. 6.

In Nov. 2021, the House Jan. 6 Committee tweeted that it had issued subpoenas to “individuals and organizations linked to the violent attack on the Capitol,” including 1AP, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers:

BREAKING: The Select Committee subpoenas individuals and organizations linked to the violent attack on the Capitol:

• Proud Boys International, L.L.C.

• Henry “Enrique” Tarrio

• Oath Keepers

• Elmer Stewart Rhodes

• Robert Patrick Lewis/1st Amendment Praetorian

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) November 23, 2021

The subpoena letter to Lewis highlighted 1AP’s post-2020 election security work for “Stop the Steal” leader Ali Alexander, as well as for Trump loyalist Gen. Michael Flynn. “You have also claimed to be in contact with Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, prior to Jan. 6,” the Committee wrote. (Rhodes — who never set foot inside the Capitol — has since been convicted of seditious conspiracy, along with five other members of that militia.)

The Jan 6. Committee then laid out a concerning fact pattern related to 1AP in the days leading up to the insurrection, writing:

On January 4, 2021, the 1st Amendment Praetorian Twitter account suggested that violence was imminent: “There may be some young National Guard Captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours. Pray with every fiber of your being that their choices are Wise, Just, and Fearless.”

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The subpoena indicated that 1AP didn’t just provide security at events — taking note of Lewis having been “listed as a speaker on a permit for the ‘Rally to Revival’” (This was the same Jan. 5 event where Lewis invoked Washington’s pivotal 1776 river crossing.) 

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The subpoena quotes Lewis tweeting at 2:18 p.m. on Jan. 6 (during the attack on the Capitol): “Today is the day the true battles begin.” And it cites a tweet by the 1st Amendment Praetorian account two hours later: “The cost of Truth is Pain. The greater the Truth, the greater potential for pain!!”

In response to the Committee, Lewis’ attorney at the time sent a spirited letter, insisting that “the criminal conduct at the Capitol that day is antithetical to 1AP’s values,” adding: “To think that 1AP and its members played a role in the January 6 riot is absurd.”

The letter described 1AP members as “Civil Liberties Advocates” who seek to “secure the First Amendment rights of each and every American” whether they are “right, middle, left, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, politicians, public speakers, the media, etc.”

The lawyer insisted that on Jan. 6, “1AP’s activities consisted of providing personal security for a short period of time for a rally participant, but primarily in buttressing security for members of the main-stream media who were covering the rally at the Ellipse.” (This lawyer did not respond to an interview request.)

Deposed by the Committee in mid-April 2022, Lewis had a forum to set the record straight, under oath. The transcript, released in December, reveals Lewis refused to answer the Committee’s questions, citing his constitutional first and fifth amendment rights, as well as objecting to House process. Lewis rebuffed basic questions about 1AP, the provocative tweets included in the Committee subpoena, and his relationships with Ali Alexander, Alex Jones, Gen. Michael Flynn, Stewart Rhodes and others.

Perhaps the most intriguing question Lewis refused to answer?

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Mr. Lewis, you’ve claimed to have driven Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn to the White House on December 18th, 2020. Were you involved in discussions with the White House regarding efforts to overturn the election?

In its final report, the Jan. 6 committee left myriad unanswered questions — including about 1AP. The report mentions 1AP only in passing, calling it a “paramilitary group” that coordinated with Rhodes on VIP security for Gen. Flynn at a Dec. 2020 religious rally called the “Jericho March.”

But a review of deposition transcripts the Committee released into the public record offers additional insight. The documents reveal that the Committee peppered witnesses, including Gen. Flynn, about whether 1AP members had entered the Capitol or communicated with those inside.

The Committee heard testimony fromDustin Stockton — a Tea Party organizer and former colleague of Cindy Chafian — that he’d seen Chafian and her husband working in a suite with 1AP members on the eve of Jan. 6 in the Willard hotel. Stockton testified that the “Chafian and 1AP room” had “a very military feel,” elaborating: “There were maps and… what looked like military-type comms with people on the computers, and earpiece.”

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The committee also heard testimony from Oath Keepers about 1AP. One alleged 1AP had a role in “orchestrating” Stop the Steal rallies in advance of Jan.6.And two testified that 1AP members [jaso?  landon?  — though not Lewis himself — dined with Stewart Rhodes and a group of Oath Keepers at an Olive Garden in Northern Virginia on the night of Jan. 6, discussing the chaos at the Capitol.

One thing is for certain: By going on the legal offensive 1AP has differentiated itself from groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, whose leaders have had to mount defenses to charges up to and including “seditious conspiracy.”By contrast its suit against the Times maintains, 1AP has been “thoroughly investigated by the FBI, and cleared of any wrongdoing.” (The Department of Justice would not discuss this claim.)

In its lawsuit against the Times, 1AP objects to four articles published last year. The suit decries what it calls the “defamatory gist” of the stories, claiming they inaccurately paint 1AP as “a right-wing paramilitary group, like high-profile extremist and far-right nationalist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, that was involved in President Donald Trump’s plot to interfere with the certification of the 2020 vote count and the attack on the Capitol.”

The litigation insists that 1AP is: “not a violent, dangerous, paramilitary, extremist group” adding that “1AP played no role whatsoever in the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 and certainly did not storm the Capitol.”

As quoted by the suit, the articles were headlined:

“Another Far-Right Group Is Scrutinized About Its Efforts to Aid Trump”

“New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Ahead of Jan. 6”

“Jan. 6 Panel Explores Links Between Trump Allies and Extremist Groups”

“Raskin Brings Expertise on Right-Wing Extremismto Jan. 6 Inquiry”

The suit quotes passages from the first article, dated Jan 3, 2022, that it describes as factual but “susceptible to a defamatory implication.” They include: “the group had men on the ground outside the building on Jan. 6 and others at the Willard Hotel, near some of Mr. Trump’s chief allies.” And: “at least one of Mr. Lewis’s lieutenants, Geoffrey Flohr, a former Michigan police officer, was outside the building walking the grounds and talking on his cellphone just before the riot erupted.” (Flohr did not respond to an interview request.)

The suit takes particular umbrage with a passage stating that a member of “1AP posted on Twitter…claiming he was in an ‘overwatch position’ in Arlington County, Va., where prosecutors say the Oath Keepers had placed at a hotel an armed ‘quick reaction force’ that was prepared to move into Washington if needed.”

The lawsuit counters: “Members of 1AP were staying at a Holiday Inn in Arlington (7.5 miles away from the Capital) because of the favorable room rates.” It insisted the that hotel had “no line of sight” to the Capitol, and that 1AP members “had no knowledge” of the Oath Keepers’ location or quick reaction force.It argues that Times implied a “connection between 1AP and the activities of the Oath Keepers that was knowingly false and defamatory.”

The 1AP also claims, without providing evidence, that the Times and reporter Alan Feuer were in league with the federal government: “Upon information and belief, in pushing the ‘domestic violent extremism’ narrative, NYT and Feuer were acting upon instructions and at the direction of one or more government agencies, including the Federal Bureau Investigation (‘FBI’).”

A spokesperson for the Times defended its journalism to Rolling Stone, insisting: “We reported accurately and responsibly, and plan to vigorously defend against this suit.” Lewis did not respond to interview requests from Rolling Stone. Emails to the attorney who filed the litigation, seeking comment about the suit, as well as about Jan. 6 Committee records, were not returned.

The suit against the Times is the third in a string of multi-million-dollar federal defamation suits filed by 1AP. The group sued Substack journalist and Twitter personality Seth Abramson in federal court in April 2022 for $25 million. That lawsuit claims Abramson used his Twitter account to falsely imply that 1AP and top members were: “involved in the January 6 insurrection, committed Federal crimes… or otherwise engaged or participated in criminal, dishonest, deceptive, immoral, unethical, unprofessional or improper conduct.”

The lawsuit insists that 1AP and its founder did not “aid and abet in insurrection or sedition.” The group further claims that “1AP never planned or schemed with Oath Keepers, Stop the Steal, 3 Percenters, or any other group.” The suits insist of Lewis, “He did not run, enter or participate in the activities of any ‘war room.’”

In a filing that seeks to have the case dismissed, Abramson claimed his tweets about 1st Amendment Praetorian were “First Amendment protected speech.”

In October, 1AP also filed a $50 million lawsuit against former Rep. Denver Rigglemanand his publishers over a book the Republican authored about Jan. 6., The Breach. The litigation alleged Riggleman published “false statements, defamatory implications and insulting words,” adding that the “defamatory gist” was that “1AP participated in the attack on the United States Capitol…and otherwise engaged in coordinated acts of ‘domestic terrorism.’” (This lawsuit was “voluntarily dismissed” without explanation by 1AP in November.)

The lawsuits filed by 1AP assert that both the group and its founder have fallen on hard times. One claims Lewis is now “virtually unemployable,” despite a successful military career and an MBA degree, the adding that even security work for campaigns has dried up because misinformation about Jan. 6 has made “Lewis and 1AP toxic in the political world.“ 

1st Amendment Praetorian, one suit alleges, in even worse shape. ”1AP is now basically insolvent,” it states, “and completely destroyed.”

The claim by 1st Amendment Praetorian lawyers that the group is above-the-political-fray does not square easily with the public record of rhetoric and activism of founder Robert Patrick Lewis, which grounds him firmly on the MAGA right.

From the beginning, 1AP launched with a pungent political perspective. In a Sept. 2020 tweet thread announcing the creation of 1AP,Lewis railed against “Marxist & leftist politicians aiming to lock down total control” as well as “their tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups such as ANTIFA & BLM.”

Lewis also inveighed against the “corrupted Main Stream Media [that] does their best to… destroy the lives of any public or private citizen who dares step up to them or fight back against their narrative.” He insisted of 1AP: “We’ve drawn our line in the sand, and we, as a group, are not going to take or allow it anymore.”

In a similarly stark video — filmed in mid-November 2020, not long after Trump lost reelection — Lewis touted his work with “Stop the Steal” founder Ali Alexander, while warning viewers that1AP had been picking up “intelligence” about a looming “Antifa Tet Offensive,” a reference to a surprise enemy attack during the Vietnam War.

Lewis did not simply ask for crowdfunded donations so his group could keep the peace and ensure all parties could exercise their constitutional rights.Rather, he gave a call to action to Trump supporters “to go to D.C. this weekend and participate in the Million MAGA March.” In stark contrast to 1AP’s assertions of non-partisanship, Lewis exhorted: “This is the time…when every man and woman needs to choose a side.”

In another politically charged video on Dec. 9, 2020, Lewis called Trump and Gen. Flynn his “personal heroes.” He added that Trump was “working towards the same goal as all of us — and that’s to Make America Great Again.”He blasted domestic enemies and what he described as China “sock puppets”whom he claimed had terrible aims: Namely, to make sure that “election fraud goes unchecked” so that “our republic is allowed to be destroyed from within.” Lewis vowed: “That’s something we’re not gonna allow sitting down.”

On Jan. 6, 1AP’s litigation insists, the group’s actions at the Ellipse were innocuous and focused on providing volunteer “personal security” — including to members of the press. One lawsuit describes how Lewis left Trump’s speech, “returned to his hotel room to change out of his suit, and spent the rest of the day at the Willard Hotel.” Citing the Lewis’ military record, that litigation insists: “the idea that Lewis…would participate in a coup to overthrow the United States Government” is “obviously preposterous.”

But well after the events of Jan. 6, Lewis continued to preach a message of upheaval similar to the one he delivered on the rainy stage at Freedom Plaza. In a May 30, 2021 video titled: “You say you want a revolution?” Lewis issued a call for a “second American revolution.” Lewis said he did not want it be “kinetic” — i.e. a violent civil war. But he insisted “it’s either going to be total annihilation and we’re going to let this country fall and our kids will never know freedom,or you take part in the revolution and we all band together and we all do what has to be done.”

Lewis encouraged like-minded Americans to move as one: “There’s a lot of people that say… ‘they’ll arrest whoever goes first,’” but he added: “If we are all together, they aren’t enough jail cells in the country.”


ref blog

Leslie McAdoo Gordon: Position Statement As To Subpoenas With Addendum

Original Title:

Leslie McAdoo Gordon: Position Statement as to Subpoenas With Addendum

Uploaded by

The Federalist

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A lawyer for 1st Amendment Praetorian, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting free speech rights, is slamming the January 6 Committee for its McCarthyite and anti-American tactic...


https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000042647/pdf/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000042647.pdf

For THE WITNESS: 17 18 DAVID OLIVAS 19 Olivas Law PLLC 20 3300 Oak Lawn Ave. 21 Dallas, Texas 75219

michael l simmons

simmons

From Indianapolis, Indiana. I'm 38 this year. Educational background, I 9 graduated from high school. Went to college for 2 years. And then I took some 6 10 courses, like some security course work. And I went to a -- a -- explosive school down in 11 Tennessee. I mean, other than that, like, I just -- I try to -- I try to take light courses to 12 further my career field. 13 Q And, when you say "security," is it like actual classic personal security type 14 stuff or like cybersecurity? What type of security are you taking classes for? 15 A Well, I do executive protection, but I was going to college for cybersecurity 16 stuff for 2 years, and then I went back into security work. triple canopy?

...

this -- you know, it -- the chick getting shot. Mike calls a bunch of veterans to rise up 2 against what was going on in the government. You know, shit like that. 3 And then, you know, they were talking about other stuff that was going on around the country. Like, apparently, at the same time the Capitol got hit, some other State's  capitol got hit, same time, same kind of way, or something like that. And so they were 6 talking about how they might try to say it was an organized attack and stuff. 7 And, you know, again, Josh is sitting at the table with us. You know, Josh is kind 8 of quiet and reserved, but, you know, he's doing the Josh thing. You know, didn't 9 mention at all he went in the Capitol. Kelly's having phone conversations with people. 10 And, you know, just ate and left. 11 Q So you met with the 1AP guys that night at Olive Garden eating? 12 A Yeah, we met -- it was a couple 1AP guys there. 13

Q What were they -- I guess, were they talking about that they had gone in the  Capitol? Or what were they talking about? 15 A No. They were just talking about, like, you know, how the veteran lady [ashli babbit]  getting shot might cause a spark amongst veterans against the stuff that was going on in  the country and stuff like that, and a Black man. You know, just people's opinion about,  you know, what was going on. 19 But, you know, nobody talked about running in the Capitol. You know, nobody  mentioned they went in the Capitol. And, again, Josh is sitting right next to damn  Landon. He said nothing about going in the Capitol. Like, golly. But, you know what I mean? 

When we left dinner, get back to the hotel, Kellye pulls -- like, Kellye drove up to  the hotel. She was so frantic. And she was like, hey, you know they're looking for  people. They're gonna come and -- you know, the police or whoever's gonna come and grab people. You know, they're looking for people. And she went way so far left field  that she was talking about how they were gonna do drone strikes on me and my family.  Told me I need to go home and move my people out. Like, Jesus Christ.  And so everybody left. And she was still ranting and raving. And it was just,  you know -- I just casually collected my stuff, filled up my gas tank, and got on the road.

Q  What was Mr. Rhodes's mood like on the night of January 6th? I mean, he was -- you know, no changes. Just, you know, Stewart. You know, talking about, you know, this could be a spark of the revolution. And, you know, 9 like, people are gonna start to talk about, you know -- because, like, remember, like, all 10 the other capitols got hit -- and he's like, people are gonna start to talk about how this 11 might be a planned attack. And he was like, I just think it's patriots being upset about 12 what's going on. And stuff like that. You know, just Stewart. 13 Q I guess I have to ask you: Like, he's talking about a revolution. Like, there 14 was just a violent day at the Capitol. I'm just trying to understand, because it seems like 15 you're not attached to this at all, like, what are you thinking. Like, let's just say you 16 leave, right, to go back and you call someone as a friend; like, what do you say about 17 what just happened and the dinner you just left? 18 A I mean, it's -- I mean -- I mean -- same kind of stuff you'd say. Vo, man, 19 look, this shit was crazy, man. Like, you know what I mean? These people just ran up 20 in the Capitol. Like -- so, you know, it was conversations like that, you know. 21 But, like, me listening to Stewart talk about stuff like that, like, to me it was just 22 Stewart talking about stuff. You know what I mean? So, like, that didn't move me too 23 much. 24 But, like, the events that happened? Yeah, like, I've never seen anything like that 25 in the United States. You know what I mean? Now, like, you know, I wasn't real...


lnx in rs bak


Re: Trumpista fascists on the march

:{:{Post:(style="position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px;padding:0px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;clip:rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px);border:0px"):}::(style="width:1.28571em;text-align:center;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}: by seacoaster » Thu Jan 06, 2022

Celebrity criminal Mike Flynn, back in the news with his fascist pals, wrapped up in the flag:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/us/p ... jan-6.html

Days after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year, federal law enforcement officials pursued two high-profile extremist groups: the far-right nationalist Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia. Members of both organizations were quickly arrested on attention-grabbing charges, accused of plotting to interfere with the certification of the 2020 vote count.

Now congressional investigators are examining the role of another right-wing paramilitary group that was involved in a less publicly visible yet still expansive effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in power:the 1st Amendment Praetorian.

Known in shorthand as 1AP, the group spent much of the postelection period working in the shadows with pro-Trump lawyers, activists, business executives and military veterans to undermine public confidence in the election and to bolster Mr. Trump’s hopes of remaining in the White House.

By their own account, members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian helped to funnel data on purported election fraud to lawyers suing to overturn the vote count. They guarded celebrities like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, at “Stop the Steal” rallies, where huge crowds gathered to demand that Mr. Trump remain in office. And they supported an explosive proposal to persuade the president to declare an emergency and seize the country’s voting machines in a bid to stay in power.

None of 1AP’s top operatives have been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot, and it remains unclear how much influence they exerted or how seriously criminal investigators are focused on them. Still, the group had men on the ground outside the building on Jan. 6 and others at the Willard Hotel, near some of Mr. Trump’s chief allies. And in the days leading up to the assault, 1AP’s Twitter account posted messages suggesting that the group knew violence was imminent.

“There may be some young National Guard captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours,” read one message posted by the group on Jan. 4.

Last month, citing some of these concerns, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack issued a subpoena toRobert Patrick Lewis, the leader of 1AP. On the same day, it sent similar requests to Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers.

As part of their inquiry, congressional investigators have obtained numerous audio recordings of 1AP members and are trying to determine how they fit into the broader investigation. Mr. Lewis did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but in recent months he has told parts of his story in online videos and podcasts.

Made up largely of Special Forces veterans and former intelligence officials, 1AP was founded in September 2020 to protect Trump supporters from harassment at rallies and to safeguard free speech rights from “tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups,” Mr. Lewis wrote in a thread of tweets announcing the creation of the group. In a video attached to the thread, he said it would be “a tactical mistake” to discuss how many members 1AP had, noting only that it was several times more than the dozen in a standard Special Forces operational unit.

By the time he founded 1st Amendment Praetorian, Mr. Lewis, who once served as a medic for a Special Forces team, had been out of the Army for a decade and reinvented himself as an author and commentator with an interest in military issues and right-wing politics. Among his works were two action novels describing how the Green Berets saved the American homeland from a fictional invasion and a memoir depicting his rise from poverty and adoption to success in the 10th Special Forces Group, an elite unit stationed in Germany.

1AP’s first “mission” — protecting conservative V.I.P.s — came in October 2020, when the group provided security at a march in Washington led by the Walk Away Foundation, an organization that seeks to persuade Democratic voters to leave the party, Mr. Lewis said in a YouTube video posted that December. The foundation’s leader, Brandon Straka, a former hairstylist in New York, was among those arrested in the Capitol attack. Court papers suggest that he recently began to cooperate with the government.

At that event and others, 1AP provided more than bodyguards, Mr. Lewis said. Its protective detail also included “low-viz operators” dressed in plainclothes moving in the crowd. “We had eyes and ears everywhere,” he added.

As the presidential election drew closer, Mr. Lewis branched out beyond personal protection and started giving interviews, casting himself as a security expert, to right-wing news outlets, including those connected to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Among his claims — so far unsubstantiated — was that “professional analysts” working for 1AP had infiltrated “encrypted forums” visited by members of the loose left-wing collective known as antifa and had discovered plans for a nationwide attack.

“Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they are planning a massive ‘antifa Tet offensive’ bent on destroying the global order,” he told Fox News two days before Election Day.

Once the votes were cast, Mr. Lewis turned his attention back toward guarding pro-Trump luminaries at rallies in Washington, where throngs of people showed up in support of the lie that the election had been rigged. One of his clients was Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer, who was a featured speaker at the so-called Million MAGA March on Nov. 14, 2020. (Mr. Alexander has since given testimony to the House select committee.)

Around the same time, 1AP became involved in another project connected to challenging the election. Members of the group, as Mr. Lewis put it in his video in December, began to scour the internet for “OSINT” — or open source intelligence — about allegations of election fraud. Whatever evidence they found, he said, they sent to Sidney Powell, a Dallas-based lawyer who filed four federal lawsuits in late 2020 contesting the results of the presidential vote.

The lawsuits, which ultimately failed and resulted in a federal judge imposing sanctions on Ms. Powell, described without any credible evidence a plot by a cabal of international powers to hack U.S. voting machines and flip the count away from Mr. Trump.

By mid-December 2020, 1AP took a job protecting one of Ms. Powell’s former clients, Mr. Flynn, at a second large pro-Trump rally in Washington. The rally was put together, public permits say, by Cindy Chafian, an organizer for the pro-Trump group Women for America First, which arranged for caravans of the president’s supporters to rally across the country after the election. (Ms. Chafian has also been subpoenaed by the House select committee.)

This rally — on Dec. 12, 2020 — helped to solidify 1AP’s relationship with Mr. Flynn and Ms. Chafian. It also brought the group into contact with the Oath Keepers, who joined their protective detail, according to a television interview that the militia’s leader, Mr. Rhodes, gave that day.

In the interview, Mr. Rhodes described how the two groups worked together at the rally. He then urged Mr. Trump to “wage war” against “traitors” at home by imposing martial law. That was the same message that Ms. Powell, Mr. Flynn and others in their orbit were advising at the time.

Mr. Lewis says he played his own small part in the effort to persuade Mr. Trump to declare martial law. On Dec. 18, he said on a podcast last year, he drove Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn to the White House to meet with Mr. Trump. It is not clear whether Mr. Lewis attended the meeting, where Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn urged the president to declare a national emergency and demand a recount of key swing states on live TV, according to the business executive Patrick M. Byrne, who was also there.

It was not long after the White House meeting that Mr. Lewis, like others, turned his attention toward Jan. 6, which was widely seen as the final opportunity for Mr. Trump and his allies to stop the certification of the presidential vote.

On Jan. 5, Mr. Lewis gave a speech at an event organized by Ms. Chafian at Freedom Plaza in Washington, telling the crowd that they should not be “intimidated” by the “enemy at the gates.” Another organizer of events that day, Dustin Stockton, said that he saw Mr. Lewis and Ms. Chafian with other members of 1AP in a room at the Willard Hotel, not far from the “war room” where some of Mr. Trump’s top allies had gathered.

On the day of the Capitol attack, at least one of Mr. Lewis’s lieutenants, Geoffrey Flohr, a former Michigan police officer, was outside the building walking the grounds and talking on his cellphone just before the riot erupted, according to public videos. (Mr. Flohr did not respond to messages seeking comment.) Ms. Chafian and her husband, Scott Chafian, were also in the mob outside the building.

Another member of 1AP posted on Twitter that afternoon, claiming he was in an “overwatch position” in Arlington County, Va., where prosecutors say the Oath Keepers had placed at a hotel an armed “quick reaction force” that was prepared to move into Washington if needed.

As for Mr. Lewis, he told The Daily Beast last year that he was at the Willard again on Jan. 6, away from the chaos at the Capitol.

“Today is the day the true battles begin,” he wrote on Twitter just as the Capitol was breached."


jan esq chls pierce

hey, we have a new one, according to the New York Times.

Now congressional investigators are examining the role of another right-wing paramilitary group that was involved in a less publicly visible yet still expansive effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in power: the 1st Amendment Praetorian. Known in shorthand as 1AP, the group spent much of the postelection period working in the shadows with pro-Trump lawyers, activists, business executives and military veterans to undermine public confidence in the election and to bolster Mr. Trump’s hopes of remaining in the White House.

By their own account, members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian helped to funnel data on purported election fraud to lawyers suing to overturn the vote count. They guarded celebrities like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, at “Stop the Steal” rallies, where huge crowds gathered to demand that Mr. Trump remain in office. And they supported an explosive proposal to persuade the president to declare an emergency and seize the country’s voting machines in a bid to stay in power.

You have to admit they have a real gift for naming themselves. At least they won’t be testifying in Latin.

Made up largely of Special Forces veterans and former intelligence officials, 1AP was founded in September 2020 to protect Trump supporters from harassment at rallies and to safeguard free speech rights from “tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups,” Mr. Lewis wrote in a thread of tweets announcing the creation of the group. In a video attached to the thread, he said it would be “a tactical mistake” to discuss how many members 1AP had, noting only that it was several times more than the dozen in a standard Special Forces operational unit.

I’m starting to wonder whether or not having a massive intelligence apparatus and a huge standing military since the end of World War II has been all that great an idea, especially now that the alumni are starting to go into business for themselves. After all, the original Praetorians got pretty good at icing emperors with whom they were dissatisfied, and they defied the civil authority to do anything about it. Which, most times, it did not.

In the interview, Mr. Rhodes described how the two groups worked together at the rally. He then urged Mr. Trump to “wage war” against “traitors” at home by imposing martial law. That was the same message that Ms. Powell, Mr. Flynn and others in their orbit were advising at the time. Mr. Lewis says he played his own small part in the effort to persuade Mr. Trump to declare martial law. On Dec. 18, he said on a podcast last year, he drove Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn to the White House to meet with Mr. Trump. It is not clear whether Mr. Lewis attended the meeting, where Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn urged the president to declare a national emergency and demand a recount of key swing states on live TV, according to the business executive Patrick M. Byrne, who was also there.

Another member of 1AP posted on Twitter that afternoon, claiming he was in an “overwatch position” in Arlington County, Va., where prosecutors say the Oath Keepers had placed at a hotel an armed “quick reaction force” that was prepared to move into Washington if needed. As for Mr. Lewis, he told The Daily Beast last year that he was at the Willard again on Jan. 6, away from the chaos at the Capitol. “Today is the day the true battles begin,” he wrote on Twitter just as the Capitol was breached.

There were people who saw this coming. Journalist Dave Neiwert was on this case back when it seemed that this kind of thing was limited to a bunch of goons in the wilds of Idaho. In Alt-America, his most recent book, Neiwert reminds us of Robert Paxton’s persuasive definition of fascism as a movement that is marked…

“by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood”, in which “a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion”.

A lot of what Paxton describes has evolved into instinctual behavior in our present politics. These elements of fascism are already here. Its vocabulary and syntax have long been an important part of our national dialogue. They simply have not yet fully coalesced. God help us if they do.


https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1545445726238527488

pix yoda in willard war rm w eastman rudy bobb ryan woman june 2021


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to

wards the end of her testimony to the House January 6 select committee, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson raised for the first time the prospect that Donald Trump might have had a line of communication to the leaders of the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol.

The potential connection from the former US president to the extremist right-wing groups came through her account of Trump’s order to his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to call Roger Stone and Mike Flynn – which Meadows did – the evening before the Capitol attack.

Trump’s order to Meadows, even though Hutchinson said she did not know what was discussed, is significant because it shows the former president seeking to have a channel to two figures with close ties to the leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups....The sworn testimony from Hutchinson about Trump’s order to Meadows raised the spectre that Trump wanted to learn what plans had been drawn up for the extremist groups regarding January 6 and wanted his aide - rather than doing it himself - to connect with Stone and Flynn.

Now next Tuesday, at its seventh public hearing led by congressman Jamie Raskin, the select committee is expected to examine the connections between Trump and the extremist groups in closer detail, according to a source familiar with the investigation. There seems to be a lot to go after.

The account of Trump’s order was not the only link from the White House to the extremist groups. Hutchinson also testified that she recalled hearing the terms “Oath Keepers” and “Proud Boys” whenever former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was around at the White House.

The Trump “war room” that Hutchinson referred to in her testimony appears to have been the one set up by Giuliani and Eastman, and staffed by other pro-Trump figures including lawyer Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, and Giuliani’s aide Bernie Kerik.

That “war room” had specific goals: to help pressure then vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify Biden’s election win and send it to the House of Representatives in a contingent election, or failing that, delay the joint session beyond 6 January 2021.

While Stone also had a mid-size suite at the Willard hotel on 5 January and 6 January, it was a different room that was totally separate to the “war room” put together by Giuliani and Eastman. Flynn was also briefly at the Willard, but again, did not lead the “war room”.

By the evening before the Capitol attack, Trump knew that Pence was resisting that plan to unilaterally reject Biden’s election win and that Pence was unlikely to do anything to stop the certification – what Trump thought was the only way left to somehow get a second term.

It was against that backdrop, Hutchinson testified, that Trump wanted Meadows to call Stone and Flynn, a directive that the panel believes could amount to him trying to figure out if any other avenues remained to stop Biden’s certification, say sources close to the inquiry.

The select committee, the sources said, is for the same reason also examining whether Meadows initially expressed an interest in going to the Trump “war room” at the Willard the night before the Capitol attack before being talked out of the idea by Hutchinson.

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Stone and Flynn

}:

Stone has repeatedly denied he had anything to do with the Capitol attack, but he would have been a natural choice for Trump to try to reach on 5 January 2021 had he sought to get a sense of what extremist groups might have been planning for the next morning.

The far-right political operative based in Florida, for instance, had close ties to the Proud Boys and its ex-national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, who lived in Miami before his arrest for seditious conspiracy, well before Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden.

When Stone travelled to Washington DC before 6 January 2021, he was accompanied by a man named Jacob Engels, a member of the Proud Boys from Florida who served as something of a lieutenant for him on the day before and the day of the Capitol attack.

Through Engels in particular, Stone appeared to maintain his ties to the Proud Boys, even though during his stay at the Willard hotel on those two days, it was a small group of the Oath Keepers who acted as his personal security detail, pictures and court records show.

The people that guarded Stone included Joshua James, an Oath Keepers member indicted for seditious conspiracy and is cooperating with the government, and Michael Simmons, codenamed “Whip”, who served as the “operations leader” for the Oath Keepers for January 6.

Meanwhile, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn would have been another natural choice for the former president to try and reach in order to learn what extremist groups interested in stopping Joe Biden’s election win certification might be planning.

Flynn was also connected to the Oath Keepers through his own security detail called the 1st Amendment Praetorian, after the two groups guarded him as early as 12 December 2020, when Flynn took part in a Women for America First-affiliated march and rally.

The 1st Amendment Praetorian, though, appeared to serve both a security function and an intelligence-gathering function for Flynn – a former director for the Defense Intelligence Agency – according to multiple people who worked directly with the group.

Flynn’s operatives were involved in election fraud conspiracies from the outset, 1AP’s leader Robert Patrick Lewis and others have said, including working to gather intelligence about the claims cited in lawsuits filed by former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell.

The members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian do not appear to have stormed the Capitol like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, but at least one of its operatives, Geoffrey Flohr,circled the Capitol as the attack was underway talking covertly with an earpiece.

While Flohr walked around the Capitol seemingly relaying information, another member of the 1st Amendment Praetorian, Philip Luelsdorff, was observing proceedings in the Trump “war room” led by Giuliani and then Trump lawyer John Eastman at the Willard hotel

...https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/us/politics/first-amendment-praetorian-trump-jan-6.html...


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Missing: flohr ‎| Must include: flohr

4 SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE JANUARY ...

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1st_Amendment_Praetorian_v_T...

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(Filing Fee $ 402.00, Receipt Number ANYSDC-27150856)Document filed by 1st Amendment Praetorian..(Carlini, Anthony) - PacerMonitor Mobile Federal and ...

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'I know way too much': Staci Burk fled her home after watching ...

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Trumpista fascists on the march - Page 100 - LaxPower Back-Up Stick

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Mar 17, 2022 — On 1/7/21, 1AP's Robert Patrick Lewis said 1AP's security team drove them to that meeting! Who was driver? Lewis, Flohr, Luelsdorff?

31 posts · in the voting machine companies' lawsuits?

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Colors, Gilding and Painted Motifs in Persepolis: Approaching the Polychromy of Achaemenid Persian Architectural Sculpture, c. 520-330 bce.

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Während Flohr im Kapitol umherging und scheinbar Informationen weitergab, beobachtete ein anderes Mitglied des 1st Amendment Praetorian, Philip Luelsdorff, ...