1ap 1st amend praetorian

===

basically took "protectee" hostage?!

vets? active duty?

joe kent hired by tulsi

see willard war room

bad code box sizing the federalist

june 2021 willard war room

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

===

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mojo dc 4 25

When Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, went looking for someone to head the National Counterterrorism Center, she landed on Joe Kent, a former Green Beret, past CIA officer, and twice-failed MAGA congressional candidate in Washington state, who, as the Associated Press reported, “stands out for the breadth of his ties to a deep-seated extremist fringe.” During his first campaign in 2022, Kent consulted with white nationalist Nick Fuentes on social-media strategy. He also had a member of the Proud Boys on his campaign staff, and he embraced as a supporter and ally Joey Gibson, the leader of Patriot Prayer, a Christian nationalist group.

But his associations with far-right extremists began prior to his attempt to win a congressional seat. In 2020, Kent helped boost the organizing message of a new right-wing paramilitary outfit that called itself the 1st Amendment Praetorian.

On September 20, 2020, Robert Patrick Lewis, a former Green Beret and QAnon supporter, posted a long thread on Twitter (now X) that announced the formation of the group. Lewis declared that a band of “military, law enforcement & intel community veterans” had come together to protect the First Amendment rights of conservatives. He presented a harsh, conspiratorial, and paranoid view, claiming, “There are Marxist & leftist politicians aiming to lock down total control over our populace.” He asserted, “Their tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups such as ANTIFA & BLM demand total subservience to and adulation of their specific view of the world.” And he maintained the “corrupted Main Stream Media does their best to tarnish the reputation and destroy the lives of any public or private citizen who dares step up to them or fight back against their narrative.”

Lewis called on “military, law enforcement or intelligence community” veterans to join 1AP and fight back. In an apparent sign of support, Kent reposted this thread.

Lewis noted that 1AP would be providing security services for right-wing rallies and marches, including those “with a large number of high-profile, conservative VIPs speaking & attending.” For one event, he said he needed veterans to provide “physical security, intelligence/surveillance and to serve as team leaders for small security & intelligence and intelligence cells.” He promised, “we will keep your names confidential and our personnel records & communications will be encrypted.” He added, “This group was formed to protect attendees at President Trump’s campaign rallies.”

Soon after forming 1Ap, Lewis presented it not only as a security service for the right but as an intelligence operation. He told Fox News, “Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they [Antifa] are planning a massive ‘Antifa Tet Offensive,’ bent on destroying the global order they are not beholden to any one party. Their sole purpose is to create havoc, fear, and intimidation.” (No such uprising occurred.) After the election, 1AP claimed it was collecting evidence of fraud. On January 6, as the riot began at the Capitol, Lewis tweeted, “Today is the day the true battles begin.” (He later said he was at the Willard Hotel, not Capitol Hill, that day.)

Lewis’ 1AP did provide security at various events featuring far-right extremists. According to the final report of the House January 6 committee, during a December 12, 2020, rally of pro-Trump election deniers in Washington, DC, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing, anti-government militia, “coordinated” with 1AP “to guard VIPs, including retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne.” (Both Flynn and Byrne were prominent promoters of the crackpot conspiracy theory holding that the 2020 election was stolen form Trump.) Months later, Lewis and 1AP provided security at a QAnon conference in Dallas, where Flynn essentially called for a military coup in the United States.

On social media, Kent has often boosted posts from Lewis. At one point each complimented the other for a podcast appearance. When Kent ran for Congress, Lewis expressed his support for him on social media. Ina 2022 Telegram post, Lewis said that he knew Kent “personally” and “wish I could personally vote for him.” In January, 1AP posted on Telegram that there were “mumblings” that Kent could be appointed to lead the National Counterterrorism Center and that this “would be a very good thing. I could not support this more strongly.”

Mother Jones sent Kent, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center a list of questions about Kent’s support for 1AP and his relationship with Lewis. Neither Kent nor the agencies responded.

Kent has an established record as an extremist and promoter of conspiracy theories. During his 2022 run, he called for charging Dr. Anthony Fauci with murder to hold him “accountable” for the “scam that is Covid.” He promoted Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him. He backed the idea the January 6 riot was orchestrated by the Deep State to discredit Trump and his supporters. He referred to the J6 rioters as “political prisoners.” He pushed the notion that billionaire Bill Gates was seeking to “control the food supply” and “control housing” to force people to “live in the pod eat the bugs.”

Like Gabbard, Kent has no experience in leading a large intelligence organization. (After serving in the Army, he was a field operative for the CIA for a short time.) Both Kent and Gabbard were on the infamous Signalgate chat. As head of the NCTC, Kent will have the responsibility for monitoring and preventing both foreign and domestic terrorism. But his past as a conspiracy theorist and his association with far-right extremists raise questions about his analytical abilities and his capacity to assess threats of domestic terrorism that arise from the right. His association with 1AP and Lewis is just one more reason to wonder about his judgment.

---

AN 6 24

no lnx

alternet-

‘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.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.”

no lnx

"Today is the day': Here's why the 1st Amendment Praetorian is under scrutiny by Jan. 6 committee

Jordan Green, Staff Reporter

August 28, 2021

see below

===

see yoda

bad code no lnx txt

===

youtube flynn this i th 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!”

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.”

Profits from Trump and Kushner's White House Connection to Saudi Prince Continue to Roll in

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Who Is @Catturd2, the Sh-tposting King of MAGA Twitter?]

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:

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.)

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?

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 from Dustin 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.”

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 Extremism to 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 Riggleman and 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 that 1AP 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.”

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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 byThe Federalist

Description: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...

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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...

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lnx in rs bak

===

Re: Trumpista fascists on the march

Quote

Post 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.

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 to Robert 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.

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.

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.

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

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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guk

vid flynn "this is the main event"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuNMQYyeL0I

towards 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.

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...

===

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/08/exclusive-1st-amendment-praetorian-goes-after-jan-6-committee-for-mccarthy-esque-defamation-tactics/

thefed july

a lawyer for 1st Amendment Praetorian, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting free speech rights, is slamming the Jan. 6 Committee for its McCarthyite and anti-American tactics, in a letter obtained exclusively by The Federalist. Subpoenas shared exclusively with The Federalist confirm the congressional inquiry is McCarthyism on steroids.

To the public, the Jan. 6 Committee pushes false narratives premised on guilt-by-association, while behind the scenes the committee demands its targets abandon their constitutional rights. But now, 1st Amendment Praetorian is pushing back, with the group’s lawyer going public with the committee’s anti-American machinations.

On Thursday before the long Independence Day weekend, the New York Times reported that Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin stated that when the Jan. 6 Committee reconvenes public hearings in July, “he intends to lead a presentation that will focus on the roles far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and 1st Amendment Praetorian played in the Capitol attack.” According to the Times, “Mr. Raskin has also promised to explore the connections between those groups and the people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.”

“No matter what you think of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, 1st Amendment Praetorian in no way resembles those groups,” Leslie McAdoo Gordon, an attorney for 1st Amendment Praetorian, told The Federalist. 1st Amendment Praetorian provides pro bono security services at events to ensure a heckler’s veto does not interfere with the speakers’ constitutional right to express their viewpoint, McAdoo Gordon explained.

Court documents obtained by The Federalist provide more background on the organization, which Robert Lewis, a retired United States Army Green Beret and recipient of the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, founded in 2020 as a Delaware nonprofit.In the legal filing, Lewis explained that he started the nonprofit “to ensure that every American can freely associate, freely gather and freely speak on matters of public concern to them without threat or fear of intimidation, retribution, bodily harm or death.”

However, for the last year, the Jan. 6 Committee and a complicit press have falsely portrayed 1st Amendment Praetorian, also known as 1AP, as right-wing, paramilitary, or even a militia, McAdoo Gordon said. “They are none of those things,” the lawyer told The Federalist. She further stressed this point in her Thursday letter to the Jan. 6 Committee, noting that 1st Amendment Praetorian is not an “anti-government” group and “did not, would not, and will not advocate, condone, or excuse violence in the pursuit of political aims. Doing so contradicts its core mission and values.” The letter continued: “Any suggestion that Mr. Lewis or Mr. Luelsdorff would do so is categorically false and deeply offensive.”< Nor does the politics of the volunteers or speakers enter the equation, McAdoo Gordon added, saying: “1st Amendment Praetorian screens individuals interested in helping protect free speech, most of whom are former military or law enforcement officers, to confirm they are who they say they are, that they have been honorably discharged, and have no criminal record or other concerning background information.” Raskin’s reported comments to the Times, however, indicate that the Jan. 6 Committee is poised to feed the country more false and misleading information, this time about 1st Amendment Praetorian. Raskin’s assertion that 1st Amendment Praetorian played any role in the Capitol attack is blatantly false, McAdoo Gordon said. “My clients had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 riot,” McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist, adding that their planned tasking to provide security in D.C. ended after the Jan. 5 rally. “While the Committee and its members may be able to defame American citizens and organizations from the floor of the Congress with impunity due to the Speech and Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” McAdoo Gordon noted in the letter she sent to the committee yesterday, she reminded the “members that they are not legally at liberty to do so in the media.” And the remarks attributed to Raskin by the Times last week, that the 1st Amendment Praetorian is a “far-right” group with a “role” in the “Capitol attack,” are “false and defamatory,” the letter stressed. [bad code box]

“1AP is a mainstream, nonpartisan group with no role whatsoever in the attack on the Capitol.... 1st Amendment Praetorian’s letter added that it “will vigorously defend its reputation, including through defamation lawsuits.” Here, the group noted that “1AP has sued lawyer/Twitterer Seth Abramson for defamation in federal court in New Hampshire (where Mr. Abramson resides) for his defamatory statements that 1AP and its members were involved in the Capitol riot and are ‘insurrectionists’ or ‘seditionists.’” The nonprofit “will be no less vigorous in pursuing its rights against others who defame it, Mr. Lewis, or Mr. Luelsdorff,” the letter continued. In her letter, McAdoo Gordon also corrected many of the false stories being peddled about the group by detailing exactly what they did and did not do on Jan. 6. Most of the members of 1st Amendment Praetorian had left D.C. after the Jan. 5 rally. But the next day, Lewis and other members of 1st Amendment Praetorian, who had remained in D.C., including Philip Luelsdorff, who is a former U.S. Army Ranger, were asked to provide some additional protection services for the media outlets covering the protest at the Ellipse, which they did, according to McAdoo Gordon. When the rally ended, 1st Amendment Praetorian released the remaining volunteers.” McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist. <

While there, she explained, the hotel staff asked if 1st Amendment Praetorian could help maintain order given the flood of people into the lobby and around the hotel after the Ellipse events ended. 1st Amendment Praetorian agreed, and Luelsdorff voluntarily escorted three individuals to a hotel room where Trump’s lawyers were working and then left a minute later. Neither Luelsdorff nor Lewis had anything to do with the legal team’s work at the Willard Hotel. Nor did they enter the Capitol, Capitol grounds, or even march to the Capitol, McAdoo Gordon stated. “I was working with the Jan. 6 Committee staff to arrange for my clients to voluntary meet with investigators, within the limits of their First Amendment rights,” McAdoo Gordon explained, when news broke that the Jan. 6 Committee was arguing in federal court that Trump’s former campaign attorney John Eastman should be forced to turn over attorney-client-privileged emails because of a supposed criminal conspiracy between them. “The committee’s pushing of a preposterous Section 371 conspiracy theory left me with no option but to recommend that my clients assert their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination,” McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist. This reference to a Section 371 conspiracy concerns a section of the federal criminal code that makes it a crime to “conspire to defraud” the United States. In litigation involving Eastman, the Jan. 6 Committee alleged “that President Trump, Dr. Eastman, and others conspired to defraud the United States by disrupting the electoral count,” supposedly in violation of Section 371. But McAdoo Gordon, a longtime white-collar criminal defense lawyer, eviscerated the theory, pointing to recent Supreme Court precedent holding that the scheme or artifice “to defraud” language in another criminal statute could not be interpreted so broadly

While 1st Amendment Praetorian had nothing to do with any disruption of the electoral count, much less the violence that occurred on Jan. 6, the committee’s McCarthyite tactics raise even graver concerns for McAdoo Gordon. In her letter, she noted her surprise “to see the Committee play a portion of the video testimony of its deposition/meeting with Lt. General Michael Flynn in one of its prior hearings, in which he apparently asserts his privilege under the Fifth Amendment.”

“The Government presenting a person asserting their Fifth Amendment privilege in order to imply to the public that the person is ‘guilty’ of some crime is a McCarthy-esque tactic that offends the Constitution and is unworthy of the United States Congress,” 1st Amendment Praetorian’s lawyer wrote. Given the Committee’s past actions, McAdoo Gordon noted in her Thursday letter that she is “forced to anticipate that the Committee will use the same totalitarian tactic to improperly smear 1AP. 1st Amendment Praetorian’s letter then stressed that it “has asserted its Fifth Amendment privilege before the Committee solely because the Committee is asserting that groups and persons who never went to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but had some role in the events that led up to that ultimate riot there, are participants in a criminal conspiracy.” While 1AP “believes itself to be innocent of any wrongdoing or criminal conduct,” the group’s attorney stressed that “since it may find itself as a target of an unfounded criminal investigation, I have advised my clients to assert their Fifth Amendment privilege so that their truthful testimony is not twisted and used against them.”

[W]e have emphasized that one of the Fifth Amendment’s “basic functions . . . is to protect innocent men . . . `who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.'”...“The circumstances in which an innocent citizen finds himself faced with an out-of-control prosecutor, or a mistaken theory of criminality, or an overzealous legislative inquiry — which is the situation 1AP finds itself in — is precisely when the citizen most needs the protection of the Fifth Amendment. For the Congress to attempt to turn that protection into a weapon against a citizen, or a group of citizens, is repellant. I urge the Committee not to engage in such un-American behaviors. Unfortunately, I have little faith that the Committee will heed my appeal. This leaves me with no choice but to pre-emptively speak publicly about these issues before the Committee engages in wholesale defamation of 1AP from its powerful national platform.”< The committee seeks to prove guilt by association, McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist, pointing to the subpoenas issued to 1AP, Lewis, and Luelsdorff, which demand that the nonprofit provide “all documents and communications concerning the participation of individuals employed by or in any way affiliated with 1AP” related to two other rallies in D.C. at which the group provided security, one in mid-November and the second in mid-December.

Those rallies had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, but the committee claims an interest in the material because of the identity of the speakers. The subpoenas also demand that “documents sufficient to identify all employees, officers, and board members” of 1st Amendment Praetorian be turned over to the committee, as well as “all agendas, minutes, notes, or other records related to meetings” of the nonprofit The committee, in essence, is demanding a list of 1st Amendment Praetorian’s members — a clear violation of their 1st Amendment rights to free speech, association, and to petition the government, the non-profit’s lawyer told The Federalist: “I told the Committee that they should approach my client like they would the ACLU or the NAACP.”

“If you wouldn’t ask the ACLU or the NAACP the question, don’t ask my client either,” McAdoo Gordon told investigators. McAdoo Gordon’s reference to the NAACP holds specific significance because the U.S. Supreme Court in...>NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958), unanimously ruled that the First Amendment protected the right of the organization and its members’ rights of association and assembly and that the government could not demand that the NAACP reveal its membership list Further, for the committee to use subpoenas “to demand financial and fundraising records (including bank account information) and ‘recruitment’ information from a non-profit civic organization, especially a civil liberties group, is wholly unacceptable,” McAdoo Gordon added in the letter. In short, the committee’s treatment of 1AP “is a gross affront to 1st Amendment....>Every American should be outraged at the attack on our fellow citizens’ First Amendment rights of association, speech, and assembly, McAdoo Gordon, a former long-time member of the ACLU who resigned from the organization after the group abandoned its civil liberties mission, told The Federalist.

“And now Congressman Raskin is telling the Times he plans to ‘explore the connection between those groups and the people in Mr. Trump’s orbit....That is precisely what the First Amendment protects Americans from: being investigated because of the individuals with whom they associate. But not only does the Jan. 6 Committee not care, neither does the legacy media. The question remains whether Americans will, or whether they have lost their sense of decency....

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as apermanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

leslie wackadoo repped j6 depo lewis

https://january6th-benniethompson.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/20220415_Robert%20Patrick%20Lewis.pdf

declined before and at git to answer anything b/c 1a org; claimed to be willing to cooperate before subpoena at end.

===

an 2 23

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.

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."

Rolling Stone reports:

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:

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

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.

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.”

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

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]

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

Profits from Trump and Kushner's White House Connection to Saudi Prince Continue to Roll in

Mike Pence Hit With Subpoena by Special Counsel Investigating Trump

Who Is @Catturd2, the Sh-tposting King of MAGA Twitter?]

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.

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

Perhaps the most intriguing question Lewis refused to answer?

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.”

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.”

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.”

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 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’).”

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.)

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

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.”

---

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

Description:

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...

---

ref 2

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

simmons

...

---

lnx in rs bak

===

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

...

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 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 atOlive 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, Kellyepulls -- 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.

---

===

dustin j6:

1 Virginia -- PA border if any things got really sticky. What's that comment about?

2 A So both Jennifer and I worked for Gun Owners of America for a long time,

3 and it was frankly like braggadocios fluff about knowing a bunch of the patriot groups in

4 Virginia in case, you know -- especially with Cindy and:{ Jason Funes,there was over the

5 top talk about like, Well, what if they come in and start shooting and stuff. So that was

6 kind of my overly braggadocios like, Oh, I know the people in Virginia we could call over if

7 things got sticky.

8 Q Right. And I'm just not familiar with some of the shorthand that you might

9 be using. When you say 3K guys with 2K AR-15s, is that -- what does that mean?

10 A Like the groups -- I mean, the numbers kind of pulled out of thin air, but like

11 Gun Owners of America is headquartered in Virginia. And, so, like I know a bunch of

12 guys with a bunch of guns that we could call if things -- right, if as you're worried about

13 like, you know, the Feds are going to start shooting at us.

So 3K means 3,000 and 2K means 2,000?}:

Correct.

Sorry, real quick. Did you say, was the concern that the Federal

18 government was going to shoot on you?

19 A Correct. Correct. I'm not saying that that was my concern, but I'm saying

20 with some of the other people who were involved, especially surrounding like the 1AP

21 guys,that their frankly paranoias around some of this stuff was often over the top.

22 BY

23 Q Well, I think that raises an interesting question that I'd be interested in

24 getting your perspective on is, the distinction between what you're getting when you

25 have a licensed professional security firm versus a more volunteer, takes on the loo

...

1 was: In your professional work at this time, was a $1,000 one-time contribution a

2 notable donation to the cause?

Yes.

And so --

A Well, I won't say it was overly notable, right? We were getting quite a few.

6 But it was that he did a thou -- I remember he did a thousand dollars and a recurring

7 hundred dollars, which is a significant commitment.

8 Q And when you said earlier raising -- correct me if I'm wrong. I think you

9 had said earlier that the fundraising for Women for America First during this time period

10 generated a few hundred thousand dollars?

Which time period are you referring to?

Well, let me actually just ask you: Between this

13 post-election-to-January-6th timeframe, how much, if you had to ballpark it, were they

14 raising?

15 A I believe, in grassroots contributions, I believe we brought in between

16 $700,000 and $800,000.

17 Q And that does not count the $250,000 donation --

18 A That is not including the Lindell donation or any other large donations the

19 Kremers may have got without my knowledge or, you know, have shared with me.

...ion beforehand, which felt like a very tense situation.

2 The -- I'm trying to think if there's anything else that stands out.

3 It felt real -- like, compared to November, it felt like we had done a really good job

4 at adapting, and we felt that we did a vastly superior job with security. And then also

5 that there were vastly less confrontations between the people who -- we see ourselves as

6 representing, like, the Tea Party grandmas, if you will. And, after the November rally, I

7 remember how upset we were to go home and watch -- there were a bunch of viral

8 videos of, like, Trump people walking back to their hotel and getting attacked, like, even

9 old ladies and stuff. And I remember we didn't -:{- the feeling in December was

10 that -- there were a bunch ofProud Boys and antifa people who had, like, clashed; like,

11 both sides were out looking for the same fight. So, like, for us, the crazies are the

12 crazies, but our job was to protect and secure, like, the patriotic Americans who were

13 answering our call to come out and have their voices heard. And December felt like we

14 did a really good job with that.

When you say "the crazies are thecrazies," is that -- you're referring to --

mean on both sides. So, like, the -- there are elements, right, within the

Proud Boys and some of these -- some of the militia groups that are, frankly -- they're like

18 soccer hooligans. They're looking to get into -- like, they get off on battling each other.

19 And you see it play out in, you know, these events all over the country where you

20 see the leftist crazies and the right-wing crazies fight each other with their shields and all

21 the other silliness.}:

22 Q But it was your sense that the security you had put in place for December at

23 least was sufficient toprotect the Tea Party grandmasor the people who were coming...

[vip mad b/c no badges] p.m.]

2 The Witness. So she tells me that she raised $3 million. She's the one who

3 raised all the money and paid for everything at the Ellipse, and the Kremers paid

4 absolutely nothing, which was news to me because the Kremers had been pressuring me

5 to ramp up fundraising since like Christmas-ish, saying that like we were completely out

6 of money, and we weren't going to be able to continue unless, like, I pulled a rabbit out of

7 the hat. And I was able to go to another guy who's in my business, who was able to do a

8 rev share that was wildly successful in, like, cover stuff.

9 But it was portrayed to me that like we were spending a massive amount of

10 money on this January 6th event.:{ And Caroline told me that she raised the $3 million,

11 and that she parked the money with the Republican Governors Association, TPUSA, and

12 Tea Party Express.}:

13 And I actually clarified with her, because, like, I assumed she meant Tea Party

14 Patriots, but she clarified that it was Tea Party Express, which seemed interesting because

15 both Amy and I have our political roots there.===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/michael-flynn-associate-first-wave/

close associate of retired Lt. General Michael Flynn was among the first wave of rioters who breached the outer barricades at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Raw Story has confirmed.

Brian Gamble, a US Navy veteran and QAnon promoterwho now serves as chief information officer of a nonprofit led by Flynn, showed up at the barricades erected at the entrance to the Northwest Walkway about 30 minutes before a crowd that included hundreds of Proud Boys massed there and eventually overwhelmed police lines. Gamble’s presence has been described in podcasts by Tim Hart, a fellow QAnon promoter who accompanied Gamble on Jan. 6 and is currently facing two felony charges related to his involvement in the attack on the Capitol.

Publicly available video Gamble, who was dressed in a black helmet inscribed with the words “Kill the Deep State”, a black tactical shirt and black gloves while carrying a bullhorn and chest-mounted GoPro camera, at the front of the line when three successive barriers were breached, allowing rioters to stream onto the Capitol lawn. Gamble and Hart made their way to the Lower West Plaza, where rioters battled police in riot gear, and eventually rushed up a staircase in the scaffolding erected for Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO who has financed a string of election-denier efforts while working alongside Flynn since 2020, told Raw Story that Gamble disclosed his presence at the Capitol when he hired him at the America Project in May 2021. The America Project was founded by Byrne, along with Michael Flynn and his younger brother, Joe Flynn.

“On the morning of January 6, Brian decided on this approach: He would walk towards the Capitol until someone told him to stop,” Byrne said in a text to Raw Story. “When someone told him to leave, he would leave. And in between the two, he would do to [sic] keep everyone calm, assist anyone who needed it. And if an opportunity arose to assist the police in keeping things peaceful, he would do so. He followed that plan.”

Hart said in an interview with the QAnon program Bards Logic earlier this year that the sound was bad at the Ellipse, where President Trump was speaking, and he suggested to Gamble, whom he referred to as “my buddy,” that they should “just walk down to the Capitol” so they could “be the first in line.”

Hart has described his movements with Gamble on Jan. 6 on different podcasts, along with an interview for Patriot Soap Box, a QAnon-friendly program, that he joined live after he and Gamble returned to their hotel room following the attack on the Capitol.

“There was three gates; this is the first one that — basically, me and Brian stayed there for half an hour and just chilled and talked,” Hart explained on the program while showing video footage he recorded. “And then a lot of people got up in there. And then they basically just pushed from behind and we were, uh, I mean, like literally bowling pins and just kind of pushing the gates down. And it wasn’t like I was trying. I was talking to the people, the guards there, and they knew we weren’t the ones pushing.”

Hart was playing Trump’s speech on a portable radio, and the timing of Trump’s remarks confirms that Hart and Gamble were at the barrier at 12:28 p.m. — roughly 30 minutes before the initial breach.

During the interview, Hart suggested that he and Gamble assessed the barricades at the Northwest Walkway for vulnerabilities.

Gamble can be seen in the background of the video as Hart turns to him and says, “They weren’t very prepared, were they? We were like, ‘Man, that looks like a weak spot there.’ We would say it to ourselves, and then it wasn’t two minutes later that they’re — I don’t know."

gamble told Raw Story he was not familiar with the video, and declined to directly address Hart’s statement.

“It’s a shame that people like you are more about division and not unity, and so that’s all I’ve got to say,” he said before hanging up the phone.

While falsely claiming that nothing was destroyed in the Capitol building, Hart said in the Patriot Soapbox interview: “After the results I seen that the bastards did tonight I’m thinking maybe they should have burned it down. Then they could have at least held the vote off.”

Gamble can be seen in the video directly behind Hart as he made the statement.

In another segment of Hart’s interview, an unidentified woman said she wanted to get someone to read from the Book of Esther, a text embraced by Christian nationalists.

“Esther’s a really good book to read for things in times like this,” the woman said. “Remember, Haman was hung on his own gallows.”

“I’m thinking what they do in times like this is — I’m thinking them patriots that got pepper-sprayed in the face are going back and being like, ‘Damn, I need to clean my guns,’” Hart responded. “I mean, I don’t understand what the other options are after this. We’ll sit back and wait a little bit longer. But this whole Q thing was to keep patriots from storming the freaking White House.”

Byrne said Gamble disclosed to him during his job interview that he had been interviewed by federal investigators, adding that “they let him know that the videos of his behavior had all been examined and it had been broadly noted that he had acted as a good citizen.”

Online researchers who began poring over video footage of the Jan. 6 attack identified Gamble as early as April 2021. Hart was charged with obstruction of justice/Congress and obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, along with four additional charges connected to his actions inside the Capitol building, in June 2021, but Gamble has not been arrested. The FBI did not respond to an inquiry about Gamble from Raw Story.

In an with the Firearms of America YouTube channel shortly after he joined the America Project,Gamble disclosed that he had been fired from his job because of the FBI investigation.

“You know, the FBI contacted my employer,” Gamble told host Frank Valentine. “What do you do? They contact your employer, and say, ‘Although he’s not under investigation or being charged with anything — yet… we just want to let you know, be aware of this person’s extracurricular activities. Which, technically, is code for saying he hangs out with General Flynn. I mean, General Flynn is the most crucified politician.”

After briefly serving as Trump’s national security advisor, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. The Department of Justice later moved to drop its prosecution of the case, and in November 2020 — during the interim period between the 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration — President Trump issued a pardon to Flynn.

Flynn emerged as one of the most visible champions of Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, simultaneously leveraging his past military service and martyr status as a supposed target of the “Deep State.”

On the eve of the attack on the Capitol, Flynn addressed supporters at Freedom Plaza, using language that invoked struggle and suggested a historic inflection point was at hand.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow — trust me — the American people that are standing on the soil that we are standing on tonight, and they’re going to be standing on this soil tomorrow — this is soil that we have fought over, fought for, and that we will fight for in the future,” Flynn said. “The members of Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you who don’t have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow we the people are going to be here and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie.”

:{Gamble is not the only associate of Michael Flynn who has been identified as being at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Publicly available }:{ shows}::{ Geoffrey Flohr, a former Michigan State Police officer who previously served in Flynn’s security detail during a rally on Dec. 12, moving around the }::{east side }::{of the Capitol}::{ less than 20 minutes before rioters broke through a barricade there. }:Flohr was a member of 1st Amendment Praetorian,:{a volunteer security group that provided protected details to Flynn, Ali Alexander, Brandon Strakaand other leaders in the effort to overturn the election.No member of 1st Amendment Praetorian, including Flohr, has been arrested in connection with the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6. But a lawyer for the group has}:**disclosed**:{that Joshua James, a member of the Oath Keepers who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, had been a member of 1st Amendment Praetorianprior to Jan. 6.}:

During his appearance before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Flynn his Fifth Amendment privilege to not give testimony that could be used against him a criminal proceeding when asked by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.): “Do you believe the violence on January 6th was justified?”

In a public statement released earlier this year in response to the committee, Flynn said it was "a flat-out lie that I had anything to do with any person or organization who intended to act, or who acted, unlawfully on January 6."

During a pro-Trump event in Fort Myers, Fla. in July 2021, Gamble said he received a phone call from “Flynn” shortly after he was fired from his job. Gamble did not specify whether the call was from Michael Flynn or Joe Flynn, but said the caller put him in touch with Byrne, who interviewed him for the position and ultimately hired him.

Gamble appears to have come to the Flynn family’s attention after organizing the first Red Pill Roadshow event with his wife at the Washington Monument in September 2019. Gamble his wife asked him to help her put together the event to create a forum QAnon supporters to meet in person after some of her favorite influencers were “censored.” Afterwards, they celebrated the success of the event at the Trump International Hotel, and Gamble said he ran into Brad Parscale, the digital media director for the Trump campaign.

Gamble Valentine that he attended at a book-signing event for Sidney Powell, who represented Flynn in his effort to get his federal charge dismissed. Gamble said he handed a “Magic Q-ball” — a novelty item he marketed to defray costs for Red Pill Roadshow — to Powell and asked her to pass it on to Michael Flynn.

Suddenly, Gamble recounted, he felt two hands on his shoulders and turned around to find a man saying, “Red Pill Roadshow? The Flynn family are huge fans of yours.”

During an Aug. 20, 2020 interview with QAnon influencer Dustin Nemos to promote an upcoming event in Jacksonville, Fla. that was timed to coincide with the Republican National Convention, Gamble said that he had spoken with a member of the Flynn family earlier that day. Gamble said the topic of the call was about Michael Flynn potentially joining the event remotely or the family providing a pre-recorded statement.

Despite providing a platform for QAnon influencers and marketing QAnon-themed merchandise, Gamble tends to downplay his association with the conspiracy theory. He told Valentine that his wife “was following” the QAnon movement at the time of the first event in 2019, adding, “I don’t agree with what their beliefs are, but I know that they’re Americans and what they’re saying is protected by our First Amendment.”

Many of Gamble’s statements in response to coverage of his Red Pill Roadshow events follow a three-part pattern of denying and deflecting attention from his association with QAnon, emphasizing free speech, and attacking the news media.

Responding to coverage by a local NBC affiliate about Michael Flynn’s appearance at an event in southwest Florida in March 2021, Gamble told a conservative outlet: “To say we’re a QAnon event or anything like that — nothing could be further from the truth. We’re free speech event.” He went on to condemn media coverage of the event as “the typical scare tactic used against our events to try and suppress opposing political views in the public domain.”

Gamble’s criticism dovetails with Flynn’s efforts to discredit the news media.

Flynn ended an interview with an Associated Press reporter in February 2022 after she asked him if he communicated with his brother, Gen. Charles Flynn, on Jan. 6.

“Because of this interview, I will never talk to AP again,” Flynn. He added, “I’m so sick of this because it’s all so fake and it’s so targeted. It’s all about, ‘We’re gonna get this guy.’”

Gamble told Nemos that he developed a disdain for the news media while serving in the US Navy in the Balkans in the late 1990s.

As a 19-year-old service member with Cosmic Top Secret clearance — giving him access to sensitive information held by NATO allies — Gamble said he would review “message traffic,” and then “come out of my tent” and “see a CNN correspondent saying something that has absolutely nothing to do with the truth.

“My field is information, so yeah, I’ve been a digital soldier — I’ve been a thorn in their side since the nineties, so a digital soldier for some time,” Gamble added. “So, yeah, that’s how I got into this.”

It was in the US Navy, Gamble told an audience in Fort Myers in July 2021, that he received training in psychological operations.

“And I was rushed into this program to where I started learning about information warfare, psychological operations and information analysis and stuff like that,” he said. “So, I had a unique perspective about how the United States military processes information.”

In another interview with Michael Thompson at the Florida Conservative, Gamble said he was discharged from the military under a reduction of forces program during the Clinton administration. After leaving the military, he said he created Yahoo online chat rooms.

“Like, we were Alex Jones in the late nineties on the internet, before it was cool, I guess you could say,” Gamble said.

Gamble’s training in psychological operations mirrors his boss, Michael Flynn’s background in military intelligence. Flynn served as director of intelligence in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan prior to heading the US Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014.

“America Project — we are information experts,” Gamble told Thompson. “That is one of the reasons I landed there with my background.”

The America Project is described on its website as “the largest support network of America First, pro-freedom organizations, businesses and individuals,” with six focus areas in “election integrity, medical freedom, border security, parental rights, Second Amendment rights and freedom of religion.”

Discussing the nonprofits’ work with Thompson, Gamble described it as a “counterbalance” to liberal financier and philanthropist George Soros, a bogeyman of the far right.

“We’re developing the systems, the platforms, the networks,” Gamble said. “Now, when a bus shows up, we got two buses showing up — and the information and organization and the funding that takes to really counter what they’re doing.”

Gamble has cultivated ties with two extremist groups that featured prominently in the attack on the Capitol. His name is listed on a membership roster of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers that was leaked through the group Distributed Denial of Secrets last year. The entry for Gamble indicates that he paid an annual membership, but does not include a date for the transaction. Raw Story was able to reach Gamble by calling the phone number listed in the Oath Keepers membership roster.

Five members of the Oath Keepers, including founder Stewart Rhodes, are currently on trial in Washington, DC for seditious conspiracy in connection with their actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

More recently, in July 2021, Gamble disclosed that he had met with Enrique Tarrio, at one time the national chairman of the Proud Boys. Tarrio was arrested seven months later, in March 2022, and is also charged with seditious conspiracy, along with four other Proud Boys leaders. In July, Gamble posted a photo on Facebook of himself and Tarrio giving the middle finger to the camera. The text accompanying the photo reads, “Dear Christopher Wray,” apparently addressing the FBI director

after Gamble and Hart joined the group of rioters that pushed through the barricades at the Northwest Walkway entrance on Jan. 6, they followed them to the Lower West Plaza. Video posted on Parler on Jan. 6 shows Gamble and Hart standing on a small staircase surveying the plaza as at least a half-dozen Proud Boys and known associates move in and out of a crowd massed against a line of Capitol police in riot gear.

At 1:10 p.m., Gamble can be seen speaking to a police officer at the top of the stairs as Hart uses a telescoping rod to obtain crowd footage. Gamble can also be seen using his GoPro camera to film the crowd. Meanwhile, a Proud Boy from southwest Florida named James Hoel can be seen coming up the staircase, eventually moving past Hart and Gamble, and speaking with the same officer.

It is unclear whether Gamble and Hoel — both residents of southwest Florida — knew each other at the time, but Hoel has subsequently become infamous as the Proud Boy who was elected alongside Michael Flynn to serve on the Sarasota County Republican Executive Committee.

Roughly around the same time that Hoel was speaking with the officer another man can be seen in the video and wedged himself between Hart and Gamble.

“What are you waiting for?” he yells, becoming increasingly incensed. “We already voted, and what have they done? They stole it. We want our f***ing country back.”

At the same time, Gamble can be seen speaking to Hart, and Hart soon turns towards the crowd on the plaza and starts motioning with his hand.

“Let’s go!” yells the man on the staircase and others. “Come on.”

“We gotta go lawfully, man,” and unidentified man can be heard arguing. “Legally and lawfully.”

But the video shows others prevailing over the man who counseled respect for the law. The video shows a handful of rioters, including Ronald Loehrke, a man who marched with the Proud Boys, pointing towards the scaffolding where the rioters had found a lightly guarded staircase. The rioters began pointing towards the staircase and yelling, “We gotta go,” within 20 seconds of Hart’s hand gesture. They would soon rush up the staircase, eventually allowing them to reach a window that Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola broke out with a stolen police riot shield.

Although there is no evidence Gamble went inside the Capitol, images captured by professional photographers and videographers show that he donned a gas mask and went up on the scaffolding.

Byrne told Raw Story that Gamble assisted the police on the Lower West Plaza and on a couple other occasions.

“They did not have enough men to cover an area they were trying to cover,” Byrne said. “He offered the policeman in front of them that if they wanted him to, he would step up and block this one space that they did not have blocked. They agreed to his cooperation, and he actually stood up at one point at the end of the police line for the police, making sure that no one could squeeze through this crack that was open on the side of the planter. The police thanked him.”

===

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

no lnx

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 the Trump White House Office of Presidential Personnel named Andrew 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 Penroseas 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 Ninjas who 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, McAdooGordon 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 that Penrose 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 hotel after 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.”

Flohr said 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.”

Kloster recently spoke up in defense of Kenneth 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.alternet.org/2022/07/inside-the-christian-nationalist-organizers/

six months before the 2020 election, Tomi Collins, a Christian right organizer from North Dakota, issued a demand on Twitter for the execution of political enemies in the federal government bureaucracy — citing an array of imagined offenses, including the QAnon hoax that progressive elites are harvesting children’s blood.

“#WeThe people demand incitements [sic] for #SpyGate #PizzaGate #UraniumOne #Adrenochrome,” shewrote. “#DeepState will be exposed and hung for treason. Even if we have to do it ourselves! #CoordinationMatters.”

Collins closed her digital call to arms with two more hashtags: #PatriotsMobilize and #1LoudVoice.

Collins serves as executive director of a little-known Christian right outfit called America Restored. Collins has described America Restored, which is organized as a private corporation, as a vehicle for providing strategic consulting and funding to grassroots organizers.

As early as January 2018, less than a year into the Trump administration, Collins was warning followers on Facebook Live about “voter machine fraud,” and foreign election interference, while specifically referencing Dominion Voting Systems. Her description of a plan “to cheat” in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections uncannily anticipated public claims by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell that have prompted a defamation lawsuit against the two attorneys who litigated President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Collins’ role as a key, if overlooked, organizer in the sprawling network of operatives and influencers highlights the role of Christian nationalism in a movement that remains committed to overturning the 2020 election and vanquishing political opposition. Many of the tenets of a hyper-partisan version of Christianity — entwined with syncretic strains of the QAnon cult — were voiced by the far-right organizers who galvanized defiance of the 2020 election results, including some who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The mission statement for America Restored, prominently displayed on its website’s landing page, clearly describes the work of the organization led by Collins: “America Restored is ‘We The People’ building a powerful, action-driven infrastructure by organizing and mobilizing existing, effective patriot groups and freedom-loving Americans in all major areas of influence: Education, Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment and Media.”

The mission statement ends with a pledge that inaccurately conflates the organization’s vision of a Christian theocracy with an originalist view of the country: “We The People willsee America restored to our founders’ original intent.”

America Restored’s mission statement explicitly references Seven Mountains dominionism, a far-right Christian ideology that emerged in the mid-1970s. It holds that Christians are called on by God to dominate all realms of civil society, including government.

Katherine Stewart, author of the 2020 book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, described Seven Mountains dominionism in an email to Raw Story as “the conviction that Christians of a certain hyper-conservative variety are called by God to dominate the main peaks of modern civilization in the United States and, ultimately, the world.”

C. Peter Wagner, one of the ideology’s key proponents, preached that Christians’ responsibility for taking over “whatever molder of culture or subdivision God has placed them in” is a matter of “taking dominion back from Satan,” according to Stewart.

America Restored’s grafting of Seven Mountains dominionism ideology onto a claim of restoring the original republic represents a fundamental misreading of the founders’ intent, Stewart told Raw Story. Stewart cited appeals to reason and deistic or atheistic philosophy as underpinning the thinking of founders such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. But even more important than what the founders thought, she said, is the question of what kind of government they established.

“Was it a government that derives its legitimacy from its appeal to Christian revelation, or from its endorsement by Christian ecclesiastical authorities?” Stewart wrote. “The answer to that is no. America’s founders established the world’s first large-scale modern secular republic.”

Four days after the 2020 election, Collins spoke at a “Stand With Trump Rally” at the North Dakota state capitol in Bismarck. Collins told the crowd she had been contacted by the Trump campaign’s legal team and had attended “meetings with intelligence folks.” Raw Story has not been able to verify these claims independently.

“It’s an amazing day when you get to stand and go from a conspiracy theorist to getting called up by the campaign and attorneys all over the country saying, ‘What about those voting machines? What’s going on in them?’” Collins said. “Hey, let’s go. We’ve got some lawsuits to do.”

Collins went on to describe a plan to “mobilize all 50 states” for rallies that would augment the lawsuits with continuous public pressure to overturn the election results.

“We worked in conjunction with Stop the Steal to get folks at capitols in every single state in the union so we the people could be heard,” Collins laterrecalled in an interview for a far-right podcast, referencing the coalition led by Ali Alexander.

Felisa Blazek, a New Hampshire-based event planner, described a markedly similar effort.

“I had started the 50-state rallies with — actually ahead of Ali,” Blaze an interviewer the following summer. “And Ali, having all of his width and breadth of followers — although he’s gone into hiding — God used him in that way, right? God used Cain and God used Abel. He sends out someone who has a much bigger presence on social media than myself. God’s calling for me was to be a base cheerleader, not a main player. So, we’re doing these 50-state rallies at all the capitols every Saturday after the steal of the November election.”

It is unclear whether Collins and Blazek worked together on the effort to mobilize Trump supporters for the rallies, and neither woman responded to repeated requests for interviews. But language used by the two women in interviews to promote their projects and on websites for their respective organizations — including the #1LoudVoice hashtag and Seven Mountains dominionism ideology — bear striking similarities.

The #1LoudVoice hashtag was used in Collins’ social media beginning in May 2020 and has also been prominently displayed on the America Restored website. Meanwhile, a tab on the website ThePatriotParty.rocks, which promotes events organized by Blazek, includes the heading “Our Mission: #1LoudVoice.” The mission statement includes a “call to action,” declaring it is “time to rise up in unity, go into the harvest and take our country back.” The statement continues: “We are assembling to organizing and mobilizing [sic] existing Patriots groups [sic] in all major areas of influence by a national digital communication platform and network influencing all seven (7) spheres of influence: Education, Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment, Media.”

The page includes a link to a separate site listing “coalition members,” including Virginia Freedom Keepers and Latinos for Trump, two of the groups that hosted a MAGA Freedom Rally one block from the US Capitol on Jan. 6; and:{1st Amendment Praetorian:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}:, a security group associated with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn that provided personal security details for speakers at several rallies and assisted attorney Sidney Powell with research on purported election fraud.

And although it is unclear what role, if any, Blazek had in organizing the Dec. 12, 2020 Jericho March that helped build momentum for Jan. 6, a photo gallery is displayed under the “Events” tab on the ThePatriotParty.rocks website, with images of Flynn, InfoWars host Alex Jones, and Oath Keepers founderStewart Rhodes.

Using Seven Mountains dominionism language in an interview to promote a two-day Patriot Party event at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Arizona two weeks before the 2020 election, Blazek avoided any mention of Christianity while highlighting defiance of mask mandates during the COVID pandemic.

“The seven spheres of influence to me and what I am trying to rally around are organizing people in education, family, faith, business, government, entertainment and media,” she said. “Underneath all of those are health and medical because health and medical touch each one of those. It doesn’t get its own sphere; it’s that magical bridge.”

Blazek had hoped to secure a special appearance by Flynn and his family, whom shedescribed as “the tip of the spear in our movement,” for the gathering, but had tosettle for his sister, Barbara Redgate. Other guests included Cowboys for Trump, led by Otero County, NM County Commissioner Couy Griffin.

Folded into the Patriot Party, the Q Con Live! gathering organized by Chris Jacobson commandeered a conference room at the Arizona resort.

Blazek described her radicalization during a joint appearance with Jacobson on a QAnon podcast in June 2020. She said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon provided an initial jolt, but in early 2020 she said a friend prodded her to look into a conspiracy theory associated with the Sovereign Citizen movement that posits that the British crown holds the originals of American birth certificates. That led her to research the Federal Reserve, she said, prompting a weekslong quest to sources that predate Christ, until, Blazek said, she “worked my way back up to the heart of the issue, and landed with the corruption of the Deep State and how everything’s really been a lie.”

While promoting QAnon, Jacobson expressed a more conventional view of religious nationalism in response to a question about the role of religious leaders in the United States’ civic life.

“And we need to get back to being one nation under God, so that He will continue to bless us,” Jacobson said. “Our founding fathers all, whether they were Christian or not, they understood and said that if we don’t have a higher power — in other words, God — that this whole experiment, this United States of America, would fail.”

Blazek, in turn, affirmed a “spiritual, but not religious” outlook, and expressed a QAnon slogan as a central tenet of her faith.

“I really feel like our statement, ‘Where we go one, we go all,’ represents the true God,” she said. “The true and one God — our God.”

During the Q Con Live! conference, Alan Hostetter, an anti-lockdown activist from southern California,told attendees: “We are at war right now…. Nobody wants violence. We are conditioned from the time we are children to always think violence is a horrible, horrible thing, until we go back and reflect on the Revolutionary War. They picked up guns at some point, and said, ‘Enough!’”

Hostetter would later recall in a court filing that when he sat down after his speech, he noticed a man dressed in headgear and horns carrying a sign that read “Q sent me” enter the back of the conference room and stand in the back. It was Jacob Chansley, who would later gain infamy as the “QAnon Shaman” when he stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Hostetter faces charges of his own, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, due to his role in the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Griffin wasfound guilty of entering restricted grounds and sentenced to time served.

Griffin told Raw Story that he met Chansley “at the event in Scottsdale,” and that after their arrests the two men were housed in adjacent jail cells.

Reflecting on the awkward commingling of Christianity and QAnon, Griffin told an interviewer last fall: “I spent all my time witnessing to [Chansley] about Christ and about how he needs to put his faith in Jesus because he’s, in my opinion, and by scripture, he’s lost in that account.”

Griffin told Raw Story that he first met Blazek at the Patriot Party event in Scottsdale, and that since then he has come to know her “as a great patriot.”

“Felisa’s a good person; she’s an organizer,” Griffin said. “To make it look like she’s organizing a violent uprising — that’s what the American people are sick of. People are getting tired of the fake news.”

Many of Trump’s supporters involved in the effort to overturn the election — both before and after Nov. 3, 2020 — used language of “good” and “evil,” and even “war,” as a call to action.

“It’s not left and right, it’s not red and blue,”saidDavid Sumrall, an organizer with the pro-Trump group Stop Hateduring an interview with Redgate to promote her appearance at the October 2020 event in Scottsdale. “It’s good and evil…. It’s just real deal. And I’ve told people this a hundred times if I’ve said it once: Until we put the cross next to the flag again, this is a holy war we can’t win.”

A week before the election, Stop Hate posted a video of Daniel Goodwyn speaking at a rally in San Francisco on the group’s Instagram page.

“They’re Satanists and pedophiles,”said Goodwyn. “They’re disgusting. And we have God on our side. And Trump’s gonna win. The only thing standing in our way is the corruption, because they’re gonna try to steal the election via fraud.”Goodwyn, who shared a social media post promoting the Proud Boys and President Trump’s instruction to “stand back, stand by,” live-streamed his participation in the storming of the Capitol, and faces charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct, among other offenses.

A month after the election, white supremacist Nick Fuentes addressed Trump supporters at a “Stop the Steal” rally outside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Phoenix.

“This is not simply a political struggle, as I’m sure all of you know,” Fuentes said. “The real struggle is not between Republicans and Democrats. The real struggle is between good and evil. This is a spiritual war. It is a spiritual war between the devil and the children of Jesus Christ.” Video of Fuentes’ speech was amplified on social media by Goodwyn and Stop Hate.

Stewart, the author of the Power Worshipers, said extremism that rejects the idea that people can disagree without dehumanizing their opponents isn’t compatible with democracy.

“A large-scale political movement that believes that any deviation is illegitimate, and that political opponents are literally controlled by demons puts democracy in peril,” she said.

As Jan. 6, 2021 approached, #1LoudVoice became a mobilizing call for Trump supporters to pressure Congress to block the certification of Joe Biden as the next president.

Felisa Blazek hosted a conference call on Dec. 30, 2020. The guest, a social media strategist named Jason Sullivan who had worked with Trump confidant Roger Stone during the 2016 election,urged listeners to “descend on the Capitol.”

During the call, one of the listeners asked Sullivan what group he was with.

“I am not with a group,” Sullivan said. Blazek interjected and Sullivan amended his statement.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Thank you for correcting me. I just joined with #1LoudVoice. Yes, Felisa’s fantastic and I greatly admire her.”

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https://www.rawstory.com/1st-amendment-praetorian-2657145878/

no lnx vid?

One more plan': Inside the plan to mobilize ‘millions of patriots’ to ‘take it into their own hands’ on Jan. 6

Jordan Green, Staff Reporter

April 15, 2022

While high-level allies were lobbying President Trump in mid-December 2020 to use the National Guard to seize voting machines and appoint conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell special counsel to investigate election fraud, discussions were already taking place about mobilizing supporters to make an intimidating show of force at the US Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the election.

Robert Patrick Lewis, a retired Army Special Forces operativeand leader of the 1st Amendment Praetorian volunteer security group, described a “plan” in a Dec. 15, 2020 podcast that has, to date, received scant attention and that eerily predicts the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

“And there’s even one more plan,” Lewis told fellow 1st Amendment Praetorian member Alan Kielan in an episode of Kielan’s QAnon-inspired “Uncensored Abe” podcast. “And that’s if they can’t get it done through the courts, can’t get it done through law enforcement, can’t get it done through the military. I still hold firm that there are two men that can issue one sentence. And there would be at a minimum 10 to 15 million pissed-off patriots that would take it to the streets and go take it into their own hands.”

Lewis and 1st Amendment Praetorian were intrinsically connected to the team led by attorney Sidney Powell, retired Lt. General Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne that was attempting to overturn the election through legal challenges followed by the effort to activate the National Guard to seize voting machines, both fed by baseless claims of election fraud.

[RELATED: Prosecutors 'may soon reach a charging decision' on Rudy Giuliani: CNN

Lewis has said that during the period from November to January, 1st Amendment Praetorian “had a team in DC with General Flynn and Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, and so we got a front-row view to a lot of this stuff coming in.” In the same interview with right-wing broadcaster Doug Billings, Lewis said 1st Amendment Praetorian’s “intel team” had been processing open-source intelligence and synthesizing “different things that people had been sharing on social media regarding different pieces of this election fraud puzzle,” including fanciful theories about election software companies allowing foreign interference by countries like China, Venezuela and Iran.

A 1st Amendment Praetorian “security team” drove Flynn and Powell to the White House for a Dec. 18 meeting, Lewis has said. During the meeting, Flynn and Powell reportedly urged Trump to issue an emergency order to seize control of elections machinery. In his interview with Billings, Lewis said 1st Amendment Praetorian delivered “intelligence” to “the White House… directly to the president.” It remains unclear how the information was conveyed to the president; in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday, Lewis said he has never met or spoken to Trump.

Beyond relaying baseless claims that undermined confidence in the election, 1st Amendment Praetorian also provided security for speakers, including Flynn, at large pro-Trump rallies in DC on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12 that helped build momentum for Jan. 6. Three days before Lewis’ comment to Kielan about “one more plan,” 1st Amendment Praetorian had provided Flynn’s personal security detail for the retired general’s triumphant speeches on the National Mall and in front of the Supreme Court.

Lewis referenced the Battle of Athens, an armed conflict that took place in Tennessee in 1946 when US military veterans forcibly seized control of ballot boxes, as a precedent for what might happen in the coming days during the Dec. 15 interview.

[RELATED: Trump lawyers to talk with Jan 6 committee — but there won’t be a transcript: report

“If the elected officials lose the consent of the governed, as American citizens we have the constitutional authority to go physically rip them out of their offices, tie ’em down to a railroad tie and run ’em out of town,” he said. “Right? Running them out of town on a rail. We can do that if they lose the consent of the governed. And there are enough of us.

“And all it would take would be one sentence from President Trump or General Flynn,” Lewis continued. “And I guarantee you 10 to 15 million pissed-off American patriots — probably a large percentage of them would be vets — would be willing to drop everything, go to DC or their state capitol and take action into their own hands.”

1AP leader Robert Patrick Lewis shares 'plan' to mobilize 'pissed-off patriots'

www.youtube.com]

At least two members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian were on the grounds of the US Capitol on Jan. 6. Geoffrey Flohr, a retired police polygrapher who had served with Lewis in Flynn’s personal security detail, was seen walking on both the west and east sides of the Capitol while talking on a cell phone. Kielan has said on his podcast that he was on the steps of the Capitol and “watched as flashbangs got shot right over our heads.” Kielan said the FBI came to his house to interview him two months after the attack.

Lewis told Raw Story that he listened to President Trump's speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, and he has told the Daily Beast that he was at the Willard Hotel when he tweeted, at 2:18 p.m. that day: “Today is the day the true battles begin.”

In an email to Raw Story earlier this week, Lewis said "the only thing" 1st Amendment Praetorian volunteers did on Jan. 6 was provide personal security details for "local DC mainstream media reporters." Lewis did not elaborate on which reporters or outlets received protection from 1st Amendment Praetorian. In previous statements, he has expressed scorn for the mainstream media. As an example, during his Dec. 15 interview, Lewis told Kielan that the "media" had been "corrupted" by foreign adversaries.

RELATED: BUSTED: ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer Amy Kremer hit with another big campaign finance fine

While dozens of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — far-right groups whose members stormed the Capitol or were allegedly involved in planning the attack — face charges, no members of 1st Amendment Praetorian have been arrested to date. In November, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack subpoenaed Lewis, noting that it is examining “how various individuals and entities coordinated their activities leading up to the events of January 6, 2021, as well as the influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American representative democracy while engaged in a constitutional process.”

The subpoena noted that Lewis has publicly discussed coordinating with Flynn and Powell, and that in an interview the day after the attack on the Capitol, the 1st Amendment Praetorian leader said he was participating in “war-gaming” with “constitutional scholars” as part of an effort to keep Trump in office. The subpoena also noted that Lewis had claimed to be in contact with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes prior to Jan. 6. Following the committee’s subpoena to Lewis, Rhodes was indicted for seditious conspiracy.

Lewis’ comment about “one more plan” came four days before President Trump issued his infamous tweet summoning his supporters to Washington, DC on Jan. 6 for a “wild” rally. During Dec. 15 interview, Lewis said, “We were asked by a very high-level person to do one of the highest-profile events of the year, potentially next year. And that’s just all — I’m gonna leave it at that.”

Lewis told Raw Story that 1st Amendment Praetorian has been investigated and "that the FBI, NSA, DOJ and other actual law enforcement agencies didn't find any involvement in [criminal activity related to the Jan. 6 riot] after very close examination."

However, Lewis did not respond to a detailed set of follow-up questions outlining the findings in Raw Story's reporting.

On the day Trump issued his “wild” rally tweet, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander rallied a crowd outside the Arizona state capitol in Phoenix.

[RELATED: Former Roger Stone aide urged Trump supporters to 'descend on the Capitol' -- and martial law would be declared

“One of our organizers in one state said, ‘We’re nice patriots, we don’t throw bricks,’” Alexander said, according to a report by the Daily Beast. “I leaned over and I said, ‘Not yet. Not yet!’ Haven’t you read about a little tar-and-feathering? Those were second-degree burns!

“We’re going to convince them to not certify the vote on January 6 by marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patriots, to sit their butts in DC and close that city down, right,” Alexander continued, uttering a coded threat of violence, according to the Daily Beast. “And if we have to explore options after that… ‘yet.’ Yet!”

Paul Kamenar, an attorney representing Alexander, told Raw Story that his client's speech in Phoenix was protected under the First Amendment.

"Ali Alexander has never advocated that violence replace his political organizing," Kamenar said. "He disavows any violence."

1st Amendment Praetorian provided personal security detail for Alexander during the Nov. 14, 2020 Millions for MAGA rally in DC, and for a series of “Stop the Steal” rallies at the Georgia state capitol the following week.

Alexander recently disclosed that he is cooperating with the Department of Justice’s expanded investigation into potential planning and coordination for the violent effort to disrupt Congress’ certification of the electoral vote on Jan. 6, according to a report by the New York Times. Alexander has also cooperated with the January 6th Committee, sitting for a deposition in December.

While pledging to cooperate with the Department of Justice, Alexander issued a statement saying, “I did nothing wrong, and I am not in possession of evidence that anyone else had plans to commit unlawful acts,” according to the Times.

Closely following the weekend rally in Phoenix in which Alexander vowed to mobilize “millions of patriots” to come to DC, President Trump, his chief of staff Mark Meadows and Giuliani reportedly met with lawmakers, including Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), on Dec. 21 to discuss a legislative strategy for blocking electoral certification.

Alexander credited the three lawmakers with helping him conceive of the Jan. 6 rally in a Periscope video that has since been taken down.

“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we couldn’t lobby we could change the hearts and minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside,” Alexander said in the video, which has been copied and preserved by reporter Jason Paladino.

Biggs and Brooks have said they have no recollection of meeting Alexander.

Gosar had previously hailed Alexander as a “true patriot” and tweeted out a video of himself with the “Stop the Steal” organizer at a rally in Phoenix on Nov. 30. An email and phone call to Gosar’s press aide for this story went unreturned.

:{Statements by Rhodes, the Oath Keepers leader, reflect a similar posture to those of Lewis and Alexander.

“We have no representation any longer at any level of our government because it’s been stolen,” Rhodes told the conspiracy theorist Mike Adams in an interview published between the Dec. 12 pro-Trump rally and Christmas, in late 2020. “So, we’re gonna have to separate from this atrocity. We’re going to have to overthrow it, alter it, abolish it.

“We’re in the middle of a civil war right now,” he added. “We’re in a civil war-slash-revolution against this cancerous puppet regime that’s taken over — the Deep State, the people who are in bed with communist China.”}:

To his fellow Oath Keepers on Christmas day, Rhodes said in an encrypted chat cited in a government court filing: “I think Congress will screw [Trump] over. The only change [sic] we/he has is if we scare the sh*t out of them and convince them it will be torches and pitchforks time is [sic] they don’t do the right thing. But I don’t think they will listen.”

Audio of a Dec. 30 conference call between Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger Stone, that was published by the New York Times on Tuesday, sheds light on a multi-pronged, inside-outside strategy to pressure Congress.

“You have to create leverage where you don’t have it,” said Sullivan, a social media strategist. “Right now, we can do a lot of these things. I like the idea of — let’s do the indictment. Let’s go through the process. But it’s going to be a process. It’s not going to be the Gordian knot solution, so to speak. But it can certainly be a hell of a nail in their coffin, especially if the process runs through, okay. But at the same time, there’s gotta be a multiple-front strategy.

“And that multiple-front strategy is, I do think, descend on the Capitol,” Sullivan continued. “Without question. Make those people feel it inside, okay, so they understand the people are breathing down their neck.”

In a statement provided to the Times through his lawyer, Sullivan denied responsibility for the violence that took place on Jan. 6. “I only promoted peaceful solutions where Americans could raise their voices and be heard as expressed in our First Amendment,” he said. “I in no way condone the violence of any protesters.”

During a rally in Washington, DC on the eve of Congress’ meeting to finalize the electoral vote, Flynn struck a martial tone,telling Trump’s supporters that they were standing on “soil that we have fought over, fought for, and we will fight for it in the future.” He urged those members of Congress “who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don’t have the moral fiber in your body — get some tonight because tomorrow we are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie.”

A tweet from the 1st Amendment Praetorian account on Jan. 4 also likewise braced the security forces that would be deployed to protect lawmakers to prepare to pick a side.

“There may be some young National Guard captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours,” the tweet read. “Pray with every fiber of your being that their choices are Wise, Just and Fearless.”

===

world soc

...

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.

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4 22 an

no lnx twt

Newly released text messages show Oath Keepers discussing Jan. 6 security for Trump allies: report

An Oath Keepers billboard in Pine River, Minnesota in July 2015, Wikimedia Commons] 10 in logo? bill of r?]

Alex Henderson April 21, 2022

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is among the 11 members of that far-right militia group that is facing federal seditious conspiracy charges because of their January 6, 2021-related activities. According to Politico reporter Kyle Cheney, a “newly released trove of text messages” shows that “top members” of the Oath Keepers who have been indicted “chatted for days about providing security for some of the highest-profile figures associated with Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election.”

Rhodes and Florida-based Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, Cheney reports, “discussed plans to provide security for figures like Roger Stone, Alex Jones, Ali Alexander and Michael Flynn on January 5 and January 6, (2021), describing potential partnerships with other groups and security details.”

“While several members of the group now facing charges notably flanked Stone on January 5 — including Joshua James, who has since pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy — the extent of the Oath Keepers’ work for other figures has been murky,” Cheney explains. “For example, Alexander indicated, in a recent statement, that the Oath Keepers never ended up providing security for him because his own January 6 event was canceled amid the chaos on Capitol grounds. But the group’s conversations reveal an easy relationship among several of the groups and entities now under scrutiny by federal prosecutors and the January 6 select committee.”

Cheney adds, “In one exchange, Meggs — identified by his handle ‘Gator 1’ — indicates he attempted to call Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, after hearing reports he had been arrested on January 4, 2021.”

The text messages, according to Cheney, were “posted” by Ed Vallejo, one of the Oath Keepers facing seditious conspiracy charges.

“Vallejo was stationed at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, VA, where prosecutors say he oversaw the group’s cache of weapons and was prepared to drive it to the Capitol if the fighting grew more intense,” Cheney reports. “Vallejo is seeking release from pretrial detention. Evidence that Meggs had a direct line to Tarrio — whose phone was confiscated by law enforcement and has now been accessed by federal prosecutors — adds new heft to the evidence of coordination among the groups. Prosecutors recently highlighted their interest in a January 5 meeting between Rhodes and Tarrio in a parking garage in Washington, D.C., shortly after Tarrio was released following his January 4 arrest.”

Federal prosecutors, Cheney notes, had “previously disclosed” text messages from Meggs that described “efforts to forge an ‘alliance’ between Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and other groups like the Three Percenters.”

“In the newly released cache of messages,” Cheney reports, “Oath Keepers discuss the possibility of joining Flynn’s security detail. Rhodes noted that he had previously worked with First Amendment Praetorian, a group linked to Flynn, to protect Flynn, as well as with a group assigned to protect pro-Trump broadcaster Alex Jones, who has described relying on a group of retired police officers for his protection on January 6.”

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/proof-congressional-republicans-subvert-election/

a recording made by a disgruntled election conspiracist is the strongest evidence yet that operatives in Donald Trump’s orbit summoned supporters to Washington on January 6 for the express purpose of coercing lawmakers into overturning the 2020 election.

News broke late Tuesday afternoon, whereupon this bombshell of a story was promptly buried under an avalanche of other news.

The main characters aren’t household names, but this story is every bit as important as the earlier revelation that Donald Trump, Jr, was pushing a detailed plan for a coup to his father’s chief of staff before the election had even been decided. And it’s even more important than the late-breaking news that Sen. Mike Lee talked up Trump lawyer John Eastman’s plan for a procedural coup in late November.

The star of the secret recording is Jason Sullivan, one-time aide to dirty trickster and longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone.

Sullivan told the Times he was invited to speak by a group of anti-vaccine activists, who were planning a permitted event in the capital on J6. (By amazing coincidence, Stone was scheduled to speak at an anti-vax event on the afternoon of J6, an engagement he missed, for reasons that are surely of great interest to the J6 committee.)

The call was made a week before the insurrection.

Sullivan repeatedly urged the other callers to intimidate the lawmakers who were meeting to certify the election. He told them they needed to make them feel like the people were “breathing down their neck.”

“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” Sullivan said.

“We have to put that pressure there.”

This recording was made by a woman named Staci Burk, a former school board official turned election conspiracist. Burk filed an anonymous affidavit supporting one of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s many election conspiracy theories. Whereupon heavily armed paramilitary operatives calling themselves the 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP) moved into her homefor several weeks, ostensibly to guard her.Burk told the Times a 1AP member joined the call, and she made the recording because the armed men were making her feel unsafe. Members of 1AP were in the capital during the insurrection and members of the group have been subpoenaed by the J6 committee.

This recording partially corroborates previous claims by Ali Alexander, another one of Roger Stone’s associates. He said he schemed with members of the Congress to gather a crowd to pressure lawmakers into overturning the election during the certification ceremony.

In a video made before the insurrection, Ali Alexander claimed that he and US Reps. Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar “schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”

The video circulated on social media but was later deleted. The plan was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” Ali Alexander said.

The Sullivan call proves there was an inside-outside game on J6.

The inside game was the procedural coup devised by John Eastman that was unfolding inside the Capitol on J6 as GOP legislators raised spurious claims of election fraud to overturn a free and fair election.

The outside game was the mob deliberately assembled in order to pressure legislators to go along with Trump’s illegal scheme.

===

https://www.rawstory.com/1st-amendment-praetorian-2654817031/

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in his letter to the National Archives on behalf of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol on Wednesday, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), signaled that the committee is interested in learning more about a man namedRobert Patrick Lewis.

The letter requests "all documents and communications concerning the 2020 election and relating to Lewis and others as part of a probe into "recruitment, planning, coordination, and other preparations for the rallies leading up to and including January 6th and the violence on January 6th."

A Special Forces veteran and author with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lewis founded a group called 1st Amendment Praetorian in September 2020 that provided security for three Washington DC rallies that helped build momentum over the two-month period building to Jan. 6. Lewis has described 1st Amendment Praetorian in an Oct. 11 Facebook post as a "group of military, law enforcement and intelligence community veterans" who "provide pro bono intelligence and security services to patriotic and religious events."

Beyond 1st Amendment Praetorian's role as "demonstration marshals" for the DC rallies that built momentum for Jan. 6, Lewis was also tapped to provide security for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn during the "Jericho March" from the National Mall to the Supreme Court. A former intelligence director for US forces in Afghanistan who briefly served as national security director under President Trump and was later pardoned after lying about his contact with the Russian ambassador, Flynn emerged in December as a major figure in the campaign to thwart the transfer of power. He endorsed a public call on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and order the military to conduct a new election.

Flynn's name is also on the list of Trump allies whose communications are sought by the January 6th committee.

"Being on the Personal Security Detail today for many of our personal hero and motivation in this fight — @GenFlynn — takes the cake," Lewis tweeted on Dec. 12. "This man & his family have given so much for this Republic andit's an honor to even share the air he breathes as he keeps us driving the 2nd American Revolution forward."

Lewis voiced similarly militaristic rhetoric elsewhere that day in an interview with Epoch Times affiliate New Tang Dynasty. Commenting on conservatives who felt that their ability to voice support for Trump, express religious feelings and watch an election process that was supposedly rigged, Lewis said, "A lot of people are angry. And so, we've been tracking this on the intelligence side for quite a while as a low-level conflict."

The event permit for the Nov. 14 Million MAGA March at Freedom Plaza, which was secured byCindy Chafian on behalf of Women for America First, notes that 25 1st Amendment Praetorian members wearing black T-shirts would act as "demonstration marshals."

The group won the praise of Tracy Diaz, an early QAnon promoter who spoke at the event.

"There aren't any words to explain how absolutely life saving the guys of @1st_praetorian are," Diaz tweeted. "They protected us during the March. These are absolute heroes." Diaz's Twitter account has since been suspended.

1st Amendment Praetorian's performance on Nov. 14 appears to have caught the attention of Flynn, who retweeted Diaz, writing, "Thank you @tracybeanz for all you do & @RobertPLewis for your team of professionals." Flynn went on to make a fundraising appeal on 1st Amendment Praetorian's behalf, taggingconservative media personalities Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.

Lewis returned the compliment to Diaz in a late-night YouTube video filmed from his hotel room, in which he also mentioned providing security for Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander.

"I get to hang out with Tracy Beanz often, which is pretty cool," Lewis said. "We gotAli Alexander — we were tight at the hip with him all day today — and a lot of different conservative influencers."

1st Amendment Praetorian also provided security at the Jan. 5 "Rally to Revival"— likewise listed as 25 "demonstration marshals" wearing black T-shirts in the permit application.The event was organized by Cindy Chafian, apart from Women for America First, which is headed by Amy Kremer. Chafian obtained the permit for the Jan. 5 event, but partnered with Alexander and Brian Gibson, a Kentucky pastor. The eight-hour event was divided into three blocs emceed by the three partners.

Chafian, Alexander, Gibson and Diaz are all on the list of Trump allies, alongside Lewis and Flynn, whose communications members of the January 6th committee want to examine in their effort to understand preparations for the rallies that set the stage for the violence at the Capitol. Others include Trump confidant Roger Stone; InfoWars host Alex Jones; Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio; and Tom Van Flein, chief of staff for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). Two individuals on the list — InfoWars host Owen Schroyer and #WalkAway organizer Brandon Straka — face federal charges related to the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol.

Although Lewis had cultivated a prolific social media presence across multiple platforms, Jan. 5 was his first time stepping into the spotlight as a speaker during the series of rallies that mobilized Trump supporters behind the false claim that the election was stolen.

Chafian mentioned 1st Amendment Praetorian as an "organization [that] is near and dear to my heart" in her introduction of Lewis, also giving shoutouts to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, at the Jan. 5 rally on the eve of the storming of the Capitol.

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

Following his public appearance alongside Chafian, Lewis' public profile receded considerably on Jan. 6. But at 2:18 p.m. that day, the 1st Amendment Praetorian leader tweeted: "Today is the day the true battles begin."

Whether Lewis was aware of it or not, only five minutes earlier, Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola had used a stolen police riot shield to bash out a window, breaching the Capitol to allow the first wave of rioters to stream into the building. The incident was live-streamed on Twitter and widely shared.

Lewis told the Daily Beast that he was at the Willard Hotel, which is several blocks away from the Capitol, at the time he made the tweet.

By 5:32 p.m., Lewis had joined a brace of far-right influencers, including Rep. Gosar, in promoting a conspiratorial view that the mayhem at the Capitol was not the work of unnamed bad actors rather than Trump supporters.

"Getting a lot of reports that the Capitol bum rush was staged & not MAGA," Lewis tweeted. "Fits the color revolution play book to a T. Going to look at the @1st_praetorian intel shed, but seems pretty likely — we've already IDd some people we've been tracking."

Lewis could not be reached for this story.

While distancing himself from the assault on the Capitol, Lewis' rhetoric before and after Jan. 6 has remained consistent, reflecting a view that "patriots" need to be prepared to fight against sinister foreign actors that have supposedly infiltrated the US government and civil society.

"Americans are standing up," Lewis announced in an Oct. 11, 2020 Facebook post. "We're taking our country back. We've activated the counter-insurgency."

In a Fox News interview a couple weeks later, Lewis specified a logical adversary in his promised domestic "counter-insurgency."

"Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they are planning a massive 'Antifa Tet Offensive,' bent on destroying the global order; they are not beholden to any one party," Lewis said. "Their sole purpose is to create havoc, fear and intimidation."

In his Dec. 12 interview with New Tang Dynasty, Lewis vaguely alluded to foreign interference in the 2020 election while warning about potential violence.

"China, Iran, Pakistan — we saw some other outside adversaries that had a part in this — that's my biggest fear is that if they try to do that , if we do come to a point where there's violence in this country, our adversaries will start to come in, and it will be a battleground — the United States," he said. "That's what really worries me the most, because that's when chaos — I was in the Army, I was a Green Beret, so I've been in warzones. I don't want to see that here. I've got a family. I've got kids. I hope we can stop it before it comes to that point. But if we don't, there's a lot of people, they're not gonna go back to sleep, they're not gonna sit down, and they're not gonna allow it to happen."

Lewis' articulated fear in his interview with New Tang Dynasty echoes the central theme of his fiction writing in his 2019 book The Pact II: Battle Hymn of the Republic, described on Amazon.com as following "Rob and the men of ODA 022 from their battles against the invaders (China, Russia, Iran & Hezbollah) in Colorado to joining the resistance to take back the nation."

Meanwhile, Lewis has remained in contact with Flynn.

1st Amendment Praetorian provided security at the QAnon-organized "For God & Country Patriot Roundup" in Dallas on Memorial Day weekend, in which Flynn appeared to endorse a Myanmar-style coup in the United States.

Lewis commemorated the event by tweeting a photo of himself flanked by Flynn and former congressman Allen West holding an "Appeal to Heaven" flag.

1st Amendment Praetorian is actively recruiting military veterans and former law enforcement on its website. The site also includes an "Intel" page that cites "corruption as one of the greatest threats to our Republic," while directing visitors to visit the group's Telegram channel and inviting them to "stay tuned if you want to see the dirty underbelly of the current war for our Republic." But the group's Telegram channel mainly reshares content from QAnon accounts ("TheStormHasArrived17" and "They Praying Medic"), one that promotes Invermectin ("The Library"), and Flynn. A recent Telegram post by "The Library," meanwhile, praisesDiazfor "doing groundbreaking reporting on Covid, Invermectin, vaccines & more."

On his personal Twitter account, many of Lewis' posts address the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Reacting to the Kabul Airport bombing on Thursday, Lewis reflected on the advance evacuation from Bagram Airfield, hinting darkly at betrayal by the US military command.If the decision was the result of malfeasance, Lewis tweeted, "get the engineers working on the gallows immediately."

In another tweet in late June, Lewis invoked the idea that an elite force must be willing to deploy "wrath" and "destruction" to "take back" the republic.

"Do you really want to take back and keep this Republic?" Lewis tweeted. "Truly? Because the answer is relatively simple…. But it will require Sunday school, turn the other cheek American Christians & Patriots to turn into Old Testament, full wrath of God, destruction of their house and salt the earth beneath them Christians.

"And it won't take that many of us," he added. "Just the ones who understand & have the temerity to do what needs to be done."

Jordan Green covers right-wing extremism for Raw Story. A Kentucky native, he now lives in North Carolina, where he spent 16 years writing for alt-weeklies and freelancing for the Washington Post and other publications.

Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.

===

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4avnxn/qanon-militia-of-ex-cops-and-soldiers-is-training-patriots-for-revolution

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after 15 hours on his feet protecting the attendees at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Robert Patrick Lewis was tired.

But then the former Army sergeant, who did two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, heard disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn speak. Flynn, who himself took the QAnon pledge and has become part celebrity and part spiritual leader to the QAnon faithful, called for a military coup in the U.S., and suddenly he felt invigorated.

So he fired up a YouTube livestream and spoke straight to camera: “We need to talk about a revolution.”

Lewis is a full-fledged QAnon believer and founder of the 1st Amendment Praetorians, named after the elite Roman soldiers who protected the emperor. The group consists offormer military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnelwhose stated mission is to provide pro bono security for “patriotic and religious events across the country.”

The group was founded last September and has since acted as security for more than a dozen events, as well as providing security for Flynn himself. The QAnon conference—called “For God & Country: Patriot Roundup”—was a perfect fit.

The Praetorians are a new paramilitary organization that Lewis says has grown to “hundreds” of members in just nine months, in almost complete secrecy. It is part of a growing network of right-wing extremists groups who are pushing baseless conspiracies about election fraud, and has direct links to violent militias, notably the Oath Keepers. Now Lewis, a QAnon believer, is helping establish a nationwide network of survivalist training camps to prepare patriots for the coming revolution.

In Dallas on Memorial Day weekend, Lewis’ crew of a few dozen Praetorians didn’t have any threats to deal with other than a couple of journalists—including one from VICE News—who were ejected from the event. But the conference helped boost the Praetorians’ profile, and it helped Lewis make some new friends.

During the event, he posted a picture of himself with Flynn and then-Texas GOP chair Allen West, holding aPine Tree flag, a Revolutionary War-era emblem that has been appropriated by the far right.

While Flynn called for a military coup, what Lewis says he wants is not bloodshed but a grassroots revolution.

“I feel that we are going through a revolutionary country right now. It doesn't always have to be a kinetic revolution, it doesn't always mean bloodshed in the streets. Revolution can mean a completely different emerging viewpoint for a way of doing or a way of acting, I think that's what we're at,” Lewis told VICE News from his home near Los Angeles this week.

But Lewis’ so-called peaceful revolution is at odds with his rhetoric on social media posts, in online articles, and in interviews on right-wing news stations. His vision of a new American revolution is also infused with conspiratorial thinking and linked to known violent extremists.

In addition to his QAnon activism, Lewis is a COVID-denier who believes that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. He also believes that critical race theory is bogus, and that the mainstream media is in league with the deep state. He believes that Antifa is the greatest threat to U.S. democracy and firmly believes they were behind the Capitol riot on January 6. Lewis says he was in D.C. on the day of the Capitol riot, but there’s no evidence he was part of the group that attacked the Capitol.

Most worrying of all is that Lewis and the Praetorians are coordinating resources and information with more violent groups, far-right militias, and extremists. Lewis says he’s been in contact with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right, anti-government militia who provide personal security to Roger Stone and whose members have been charged with conspiring to storm the Capitol.

His contact with Rhodes has stopped since Jan. 6, which is when Lewis claims “the FBI started to frame the Oath Keepers and they went to ground.” While Rhodes has yet to be charged in relation to the Capitol insurrection, he has been named in documents filed by prosecutors, who have charged several other Oath Keepers with conspiring to attack the Capitol.

Lewis says he is in contact with several groups similar to the Oath Keepers, not to coordinate actions but to "share information amongst each other: ‘What are you seeing? Are you seeing what we're seeing ramping up? What are you guys doing?’ It's not coordinating together; it's more like sharing information.”

[News

The Militia That Allegedly Plotted to Kidnap Gov. Whitmer Had a Massive Stockpile of Weapons

TESS OWEN

04.01.21]

The Praetorians also work with a veritable who’s-who of conspiracy theorists, including renowned anti-vaxxer Sheri Tenpenny, who made headlines last week when she claimed COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic.

And now Lewis is using that network to launch survivalist training for “patriots” across the country, to prepare them for when the revolution finally arrives.

"The people that came to this continent, and were able to form what became the United States of America had to be extremely resilient,” Lewis said. “They came here with what they had, and then everything else to survive had to be created. I feel like we've lost that in our country. My big worry is that if things ever do get really bad, it will be compounded by the fact that people don't know how to take care of themselves.”

Lewis said that as well as working with sheriffs across the country on this project,he is coordinating with Scott Kesterson, a prominent QAnon promoter and podcaster who stole $12,000 from a cancer charity campaign for his dying friend.

Tenpenny and Lee Merritt, an osteopath who is a member of the conspiracy-driven groupAmerica’s Frontline Doctors, are also part of this network, which Lewis said would teach people skills like basic medical training and farming.

Lewis’ conspiracy-infused “revolution” is being echoed by conservative groups across the country, including QAnon and the Republican Party, who are using the lie that last November’s election was fraudulent to rally people to action.

As QAnon conspiracies become subsumed as mainstream talking points by the GOP, right-wing figures have begun to amplify calls for followers to leave their computer screens and get involved by infiltrating school boards, joining local Republican parties, and even running for Congress.

[The FBI’s New QAnon Report Is Scary as Hell

DAVID GILBERT

06.14.21]

“It seems like we are going through a great awakening in this country.” Lewis said, echoing one of QAnon best-known phrases.

After Lewis finished his military service in 2009, he tried his hand at writing, publishing a trilogy of titles called“The Pact,” a fictional account of a joint Chinese-Russian-Hezbollah attack on the U.S.

Over the next decade, he also held a number of corporate roles, including working for UCLA Healthcare, and several marketing roles, including with several veteran-owned companies, according to Lewis’ LinkedIn profile.

During this time he was not in the public eye, but in 2019 he said he felt compelled to do something after seeing Vietnam veterans attacked for holding Trump signs.

Lewis couldn’t provide specifics for the incident, but in June 2020, an 82-year-old veteran was pushed to the ground at a Trump supporters’ rally in Fall River, Massachusetts. He was kicked in the ribs and legs by a man who had ripped the sign from his hands, according to the Herald News, a local newspaper.

Lewis initially planned to attend Trump rallies and provide additional support to the private security inside the events by focusing on protecting the people outside the rallies who camped out for days ahead of Trump’s arrival.

Lewis claimed people were being attacked going to and from their vehicles at these events or while they were waiting in line outside, but there are very few reports of incidents like this, and Lewis didn’t provide specifics.

[News

QAnon Follower Who Tried to Steal Arizona for Trump Is Running For Senate

DAVID GILBERT

06.15.21]

But as the pandemic hit, and the rallies were cancelled, Lewis pivoted and launched the Praetorians.

In September, he published his first video talking about the Praetorians, describing them as “a group of military, law enforcement and intelligence veterans who refuse to stand on the sidelines and watch as your countrymen and women are intimidated from expressing their First Amendment rights.”

In the nine months since that video was published, the group has recruited “hundreds” of volunteers to provide security at events, though Lewis would not say what the exact figure is. He also refuses to name any of the individuals who’ve signed up, citing privacy reasons.

While he’s recruited a number of civilians, Lewis says he wants to focus almost exclusively on people from military, law enforcement, and intelligence backgrounds.

“Each of these people have kind of an inculcated foundation of professionalism, and we can depend on them to do the right thing if the pressure ratchets up,” Lewis said. The vetting process is rigorous, according to Lewis, and conducted by a group of private investigators—or “digital ninjas,” as Lewis calls them—who he says thoroughly review people’s backgrounds, including their military records, looking for histories of violence and brushes with law enforcement.

“We don't want people in our group that could possibly cause trouble or be prone to violence or anything like that,” Lewis said.

Lewis says the group is entirely crowdfunded and covers the cost of flights, food, and accommodation for all the volunteers, as well as the purchasing of equipment such as radios, surveillance cameras, and the uniform: black shirts with the white Praetorian logo on them.

The group’s first event, in October 2020, was organized by the Walkaway Campaign, an activist group led by Brandon Straka, a MAGA activist who was once a curtain-raiser at Trump rallies and was arrested for allegedly breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Including that initial event in Washington, Lewis says they provided support for 15 more events before the end of the year, while the Dallas conference was the group’s first of this year.

And at pretty much every event, Lewis had one enemy in mind: antifa, whom he sees as the biggest threat to the U.S.—together with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Lewis has a wild origin story for the anti-facist group. He believes it operated first in Germany before many its way to the U.S. in the last decade, where it has been funded by money from the U.S. government as well as directly from countries like Cuba and China.

Lewis believes there’s a “cadre” of powerful people directing the movement, such as prominent 1970s feminist activist Susan Rosenberg, while the front lines of antifa are often populated with “useful idiots,” such as students or the children of wealthy families.

Like many conspiracy theorists—and many within the Republican Party—Lewis is fully convinced that the attack on the Capitol was conducted not by pro-Trump groups but by antifa.

“We saw at the Capitol on January 6 where they were trying to push people to do violence,” before citing a video he claims shows antifa activists “being led by Capitol Police magically to a door where the magnetic locks were unlocked at the right time.”

Lewis’ entire worldview appears suffused with conspiratorial thinking and he has long expressed support for the QAnon movement, dating back to at least 2018 when he wrote an article called “What is QAnon, Q, and the Great Awakening are Real?” for the Heroes Media Group.

And despite none of Q’s predictions coming true, Lewis’ outlook has not changed. “I think there's more to it, so people are willing to consider,” he said, calling QAnon “profound” and ”enormous.”

[Over 30 Million Americans Believe in QAnon’s Most Outrageous Conspiracy

DAVID GILBERT

05.27.21]

Piling conspiracy on top of conspiracy, Lewis also believes that FBI agents are infiltrating the QAnon movement to spread extreme conspiracies that were not based on Q drops, as part of a plan to discredit the movement—and this, of course, is all being aided by the mainstreammedia.

Lewis believes QAnon could be a U.S. government-funded operation, but he leaves open the possibility that it’s a disinformation campaign being run by a foreign state—though that, too, has a silver lining.

“If it was a disinformation campaign, it was an abject failure, because you have up to 20% of the population [who have] learned to research on their own and they learned not to believe anything they hear from the media at face value, which is proven very valuable given the large-scale lies we’ve seen from the media.”

TAGGED:

MILITIA DR. SHERRI TENPENNY PARAMILITARY MICHAEL FLYNN SCOTT KESTERSON DISINFO DISPATCH LEE MERRITT PRAETORIANS ROBERT PATRICK LEWIS

===

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Missing: 1a ‎| Must include: 1a

(11496556) Would-be militia members are feeding into Mike ...

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Dec 22, 2021 — "What is 1st Amendment Praetorian? A brief explanation of our team of military, law enforcement & intelligence agency veterans whose mission ...

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