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Dec. 2, 2021 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
27:12
Episode 18: Insurrectionist Bennie Thompson – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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The embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz.
Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
So we're going to keep running those stories to keep working.
If you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
You are in the right place!
This is the movement for you!
You ever watch this guy on television?
Like a machine.
Matt Gaetz.
I'm a cancelled man in some corners of the internet.
Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
They aren't really coming for me.
They're coming for you.
I'm just in the way.
Insurrectionist Benny Thompson.
Bet you won't see that on the mainstream media, but it very well may be true.
Justthenews.com is an entity that has breaking news, investigative reporting, and its publisher, John Solomon, is on the show today.
Spoke with him earlier regarding their really illuminating reporting regarding Benny Thompson.
The guy who's leading the January 6th committee and his prior associations with an insurrectionist group known as the Republic of New Africa.
But first...
Breaking news that is just coming in tonight.
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has been suspended indefinitely.
Breaking tonight, CNN is suspending anchor Chris Cuomo.
Chris Cuomo suspended indefinitely by CNN for his role in advising his brother and then Governor Andrew Cuomo during his sexual harassment scandal.
The details from documents that the New York Attorney General released just yesterday They showed how Chris Cuomo would use his press connections to prepare the then-governor's team as accusers started to come forward.
CNN. What a corrupt organization built on lying to its viewers.
They lied about the Russia hoax, lied about Trump, lied about me.
And the breaking news today is that they are even lying back.
Chris Cuomo specifically.
Some of these lies may have been criminal, under oath, taken during the investigation into Cuomo's brother.
Just to get a sense of how the CNN propaganda machine works, listen to what a CNN technical director said on a Project Veritas secret recording.
He's discussing the network's coverage of now-debunked allegations against me.
If the agenda, say, is to, like, get, like, Matt Gaetz right now, he's a Republican, he's a problem for the Democratic Party because he's so conservative, right?
And he could cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
So, it's...
It would be great for them to get hurt again.
So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again and make it so that it can't be buried and settled outside of court.
If we keep pushing that, it's helping us.
That's propagating.
It's helping us in some way.
One way CNN kept running these stories to hurt me was through their flagship primetime program, Cuomo Primetime.
At the time, I was alleging that the lies about me were rooted in a criminal extortion plot.
To refute my allegations, Chris Cuomo gave one of my extortionists, former intelligence officer Bob Kent, the opportunity to explain that this was no crime.
It was all on the up and up.
Here's a portion of that interview.
One of the guys who you were working with on this and approaching the gates has a criminal record for being a fraudster.
Why would you be associating with somebody like that?
So I was contacted by David McGee in October and he asked me to meet with somebody, with Stephen Alford, because Alford wanted to help with Levinson and believe that he can get him out.
Now, after the rescue attempt fell apart in July, I had no contact with Dave after that.
I said, sorry, it didn't work out.
We went forward.
He wished me, you know, best of luck in my future endeavors.
And then when he contacted me in October, he asked me, is it possible to rescue?
Is Levinson still alive and is it possible to rescue him?
So I went back to the network and I asked a question.
And they said, yes, we think he may be alive, but you can't do it the way you did it last time.
You have to go from the top down this time.
And when Dave vouched for Stephen, that was good enough for me.
Bob Kent paints the picture of at least three people working together to try to get my family to give them $25 million.
Or else.
Kent is the former intelligence officer.
He was working with former Department of Justice official David McGee, who is identified as Attorney A in the indictment of the third man they were working with, Stephen Alford.
After the airing of this interview that I just showed you a part of, Chris Cuomo declared my claims of extortion fugazi.
Just a deflection, he said.
He had solved the case and there was no extortion of my family.
Here's Cuomo again.
And the misdirection play by Matt Gaetz I think blew up on this show tonight.
I think Bob Kent is credible and I don't see anything in his suggestions to the father that would qualify under any legal reckoning of extortion.
Listen, yes, with that story I like to proceed with caution.
I believe in innocent until proven guilty.
We've already established that.
But there are two different things.
So I don't know.
The investigation of what Gates did, you've got to wait for the facts.
Right.
We don't know them.
The whole thing about- The extortion thing?
Extortion, yes.
One might be fact, this extortion thing, fugazi.
This may be classic CNN propaganda, but it's trash journalism.
Stephen Alford has pleaded guilty to his part in a very criminal fraud that Chris Cuomo deemed legitimate.
Facts matter, they tell us.
CNN has issued no correction to their reporting that the extortion of my family was Fugazi, despite someone pleading guilty to that very crime.
And CNN didn't even cover Stephen Alford's guilty plea.
Now, Chris Cuomo finds himself in the news for, again, lying to his viewers.
Recently released documents from the New York Attorney General's investigation into now disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo show that CNN brother Chris was not, quote, most often peripheral to the crisis communications strategy.
Lying on TV may be your job, but lying under oath is a crime, Fredo.
Here's what Chris Cuomo told us when he was originally busted, abandoning journalistic ethics to protect his brother.
I never made calls to the press about my brother's situation.
I never influenced or attempted to control CNN's coverage of my family.
And as you know, back in May, when I was told to no longer communicate with my brother's aides in any group meetings, I acknowledged it was a mistake.
I apologized to my colleagues and I stopped and I meant it.
It was a unique situation being a brother to a politician in a scandal and being part of the media.
I tried to do the right thing, and I just want you all to know that.
This is also what Chris Cuomo said under oath to investigators, this according to Politico New York.
Quote, Chris told investigators during his sworn testimony that his media knowledge brought a unique perspective, but characterized his role as most often a peripheral figure.
Testimony from others painted this attempt to be significantly involved in the crisis management effort.
Somebody is lying.
And of course that somebody is Chris Cuomo.
Just look at the documentary evidence that was developed during the investigation run by the New York Attorney General.
One series of March 2021 text messages between Chris Cuomo and Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, revealed that there was an absolute dynamic of collusion between CNN and those affiliated with Governor Cuomo.
At a time when sexual allegations against Governor Cuomo were fomenting, his little brother asked Melissa DeRosa to quote, Let's think about this for a moment.
A news organization, at least what purports to be a news organization, communicating and strategizing with the office of the governor of the state of New York before a story went public.
Corruption.
Corruption.
Cuomo even tapped his network of journalism sources to put his brother in better position to respond to reports that Ronan Farrow was developing regarding Governor Cuomo's ties to an event where he allegedly forced a woman or tried to force a woman named Lindsey Boylan to kiss him at a wedding.
I don't know if any of this is true or not, but what we do know is that Chris Cuomo was directly involved.
Cuomo to DeRosa on March 4th, 2021. Quote, I have a lead on the wedding girl.
You know, I mean, the guy said under oath he wasn't doing any oppo, but a lead on the wedding girl?
Then again, DeRosa to Cuomo on March 9th.
Rumor about Ronan getting ready to move.
Then Cuomo responded, If Ronan has nothing better than Boylan, that's a great sign.
Ugh.
Another panic text from Chris Cuomo.
We are making a lot of mistakes we can't afford.
I can't say I'm surprised by this, but even Alec Baldwin gets a supporting role in this wicked saga.
Cuomo of CNN apparently was coordinating an effort through a friend to get Alec Baldwin to put up a rant on Instagram against cancel culture as a frame for the allegations against then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.
As for the notion that Chris Cuomo is some truth-telling journalist?
Or that CNN is an actual news organization?
I think blew up on this show tonight.
And now, our interview with John Solomon, publisher of Just The News, regarding January 6th committee chairman and possible insurrectionist, Benny Thompson.
Take a listen and enjoy.
So I'm here with John Solomon.
And John, you've got a very big piece up on JustTheNews.com regarding the chairman of the January 6th committee, Benny Thompson.
How did this story come to you?
What have we learned about Chairman Thompson and the Republic of New Africa?
Yeah, so this takes us back in history.
We've got to go back to 1970. But back in those days, Benny Thompson was known as an alderman in a small city outside of Jackson, Mississippi.
And he was sort of on the radical side of politics at that point.
He was a supporter of this group, Real New Africa.
And he went to their defense, even though this group had, on multiple occasions, engaged with police.
They were accused of killing at least two officers that we know of and a third that they were suspected of.
And he was defending them, saying that the police were the problem, that they deserved to be killed because they were picking on this poor group.
Now let's tell you who this group was.
This group wanted to secede from the United States.
They wanted to take Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and turned it into its own republic called the New Republic of Africa.
And they wanted to do so by force if the government wouldn't do it willingly.
And they were engaged in a lot of criminal activity.
There's all sorts of stories.
The FBI considered them a terrorism group at the time.
And this was a group that Benny Thompson, as a young alderman before he joined Congress, was trying to defend, blame the police for picking on.
And we learned about this because some old FBI agents, retired FBI agents, saw that Benny Thompson on television with the January 6th committee said, I wonder if that's the guy that used to defend the RNA? And they gave me a call and I went and got the records under the FBI's FOIA site and some other places and literally got to tell the story of his support of an insurrectionist group, a violent group, long before he was suddenly for cops and against insurrection with this current set of hearings.
So that's the story behind it.
It's pretty remarkable that he was on both sides of insurrection over the course of his career.
Well, we really get a sense of this group by analyzing their goals.
And like you say, the goal of the Republic of New Africa was essentially to take the SEC states, make a different country, and then use that country to wage war on the rest of the United States.
Some of the FBI documentation that you're citing in your piece on justthenews.com talks about the assembly of weaponry.
And other equipment that someone would use in guerrilla warfare.
How did you get a hold of that information and what does it tell you about the means that this group that Benny Thompson had some association with was willing to go to?
Well, listen, they had a stockpile of weapons, and that was one of the tragic incidents that occurred in the summer of 70, I believe it was.
A combination task force of the FBI and the local Jackson, Mississippi police went to arrest some people at one of their compound houses in Jackson.
And as they were coming out of their cars, they were ambushed.
This group opened up fire on them.
With all sorts of weaponry, the sheriff talks about all the weapons they found, a huge arsenal of weapons, and tragically, a police officer was killed.
I was able to locate the police officer's son, who later went into law enforcement himself and then became a judge In Jackson.
And he has very painful memories.
He'd forgotten a little bit that Benny Thompson, the man now on stage at the January 6th riots, was the same guy that defended his father's group.
And one of the amazing things, a week after that tragic episode where a police officer loses his life, he is ambushed.
There's not any doubt about that.
Eight to nine people went to prison for the shootout that occurred that day.
Benny Thompson joins a bunch of activists and holds a news conference.
And during that news conference, these activists blame the cop for getting shot, saying they should have just left this group alone.
They got what they deserve because they dared to enforce a lawful warrant that had been issued by a court.
That's the sort of Benny Thompson that people don't know.
They see this affable old man, you know, who's on the stage there now.
He looks like he's very experienced, very wise.
But that is the same Benny Thompson that 40, 50 years ago was advocating for a group that the FBI considered a major threat in the 1970s to national security.
One question that arose after I read your piece on justthenews.com is the association between Benny Thompson, the chairman, and this group that initially doesn't seem to have much of a geographic nexus to his area of public service.
He's an alderman in the small town of Bolton, Mississippi, and the Republic of New Africa gets its origins in Detroit, of all places.
It did.
Ambitious politician is giving this type of advocacy for an ethno-nationalist secessionist group with roots far away.
But then I guess the Republic of New Africa makes the decision to move from Detroit to Bolton, Mississippi of all places.
What does that tell us about really the early and pervasive connection that seems to exist between Benny Thompson and these insurrectionists?
Well, all throughout Benny Thompson's career, he has remained close to some people.
One of the former members, I think he was the vice president of this group because they treated themselves like they were a separate nation, later goes on to run for Mayor Benny Thompson, campaigns for him.
This is Congressman Benny Thompson endorsing Jackson mayoral candidate, Attorney Chokwe Lumumba.
When I see Republicans from Rankin and Madison County supporting the other so-called Democrat in this race, I know that something is fishy.
He stayed in contact with a lot of the people associated with his group, particularly that former vice president.
But they came to his backyard in the summer of 1970. They wanted to make the capital of the new republic in Benny Thompson's hometown in the shadows of Jackson, Mississippi.
So, yeah, they started in the Malcolm X movement down in Detroit or up in Detroit.
But very quickly thought that the place to set up their headquarters just happened to be the place where Benny Thompson was a young alderman.
And then he carries out these friendships.
He keeps these friendships throughout his whole life.
And it's really never gotten the attention that it deserves.
When you talk to that Now retired judge and how painful the memory as a young child seeing his father killed that day.
And then watching a week later, he said, I remember the news conference where they were smearing my dad's reputation saying he deserved to be killed.
He should have left that group alone.
He was just doing his job.
He was executing a warrant.
And it's a very different Benny Thompson in 1970 than the guy that seemed to express some Sympathy for the Capitol Police on January 6th.
I think everyone has sympathy for the officers that day and what happened.
But Benny Thompson has not always been pro-police and he's not always been anti-insurrection.
Earlier in his career, he was on the opposite side of both issues.
And I think that's why this story is so important.
Yeah, maybe whether or not Benny Thompson is for an insurrection relates to the politics of the alleged insurrectionists more than the act of insurrection.
So we know from your reporting that this was a violent group.
We know from your reporting that the FBI deemed it a terrorist group.
We knew that their goal was to create this division from the federal government.
What I don't get the answer to definitively in your reporting, are you able to confirm whether or not Benny Thompson was a member of this group, or was he just someone who advocated on their behalf and against police when they were trying to accomplish their political goals, which were buttressed by, it sounds like, a great deal of violence and bloodshed?
So the story that Benny Thompson crafted throughout his career is that he wasn't a member of the group, though they were in his community and he had this nexus and he was defending them.
He was someone who sympathized with them, felt that they were getting an unfair shake despite their What many of us would consider in America a hideous thing to secede from America and maybe take land by force, which is what some of their documents are called.
Certainly they killed some police officers.
That's something that all of us reject.
But we're doing some additional records work.
We have heard from some FBI Officials who worked undercover at that time in these groups that there may be more to this story and even more to Benny Thompson's connection to the events just before that fatal shooting in Jackson.
Now, again, we haven't found those records.
We have FOIAs in.
We're talking to people.
If we get more, we'll report it.
But at this point, the public evidence is that he sympathized with the group.
He stood up for them, but he wasn't a member.
If that changes, we're going to let the American people know right away.
And they just so happened to move their headquarters from Detroit to his little town in Mississippi as this advocacy is developing.
And a key threat as well is that it didn't end in the 1970s.
This isn't something where somebody can say, oh gosh, this was all the way back in the 70s.
I've developed, I mean, your reporting suggests as recently as 2013. He was out there really creating additional political ties to people who were at the highest levels of this organization.
Any suspicion that Benny Thompson's staff, consultants, people that have been around him politically, others he's endorsed or supported, have the same sympathies or membership in this insurrectionist domestic terrorist organization?
Not that we found.
Listen, his rhetoric over the years, he's not always been very pro-police.
He's often been harsh and critical of police, not just in the 70s, but in the 80s, in the 90s, in the 2000s.
So this role that he finds him in now as reaching out and feeling terrible for those officers that went through that terrible day, January 6th, is a different sounding Benny Thompson, even a few years ago.
He is much more in the Black Lives Matter sort of Suspicion of police power and the relationship between police and the black community.
He's a member of the Black Caucus.
He's spoken out in the past.
About the need for reform and the belief that black communities are disproportionately mistreated by police.
So he's been on that side of the fence for a long time.
The connection to this group surprised a lot of people.
Listen, some Democrats called me and said, no, that can't be the Benny Thompson we know today.
I'm like, it is, absolutely is.
Look at that.
We found video footage in the Mississippi State Archives and we put it out there and you can literally see him advocating for this group.
In the case of the Republic of New Africa, They are charged with obstructing justice.
This, I believe, is an attempt on part of law enforcement officials to stop the Republic from building its community.
I think the real question comes down to what else don't we know?
And so what we're asking for are the intelligence files of the Jackson Police Department, because they had 1970s intelligence files on extremist groups in Jackson, and some more FBI documents.
And then we've asked the family of the officer who was shot and tragically and killed.
They got a lot of information in discovery.
Has Benny Thompson replied to your inquiries?
I know as the time of your reporting, you hadn't gotten a response, but have you posed the direct question about his membership or involvement in criminal activity?
And any denials?
Did you get any denial from him?
What we got were crickets.
The communications director said, we'll get back to you.
And he never did.
And we made multiple calls, multiple emails.
We've even tried to Stake them out at events and eventually we'll be able to have a conversation with him.
But meanwhile, we're going to track those records because the great thing about 30, 40, 50 year old documents.
They're frozen in time.
They capture what police knew at that moment.
Hopefully we'll get some more documents and try to get you answers to these questions.
You know, John, one of the allegations that Benny Thompson makes against police and law enforcement is that they're ginning up obstruction of justice charges against the Republic of New Africa for politics You and I were all over the Russia hoax and the way that the lack of a foundation really for the underlying allegation that Donald Trump was a Russian agent then morphed into this politically motivated obstruction of justice
allegation.
Did you find hypocrisy in that?
I found that particularly rich that here's a guy who is overseeing an entity You know, that seems to be trying to create process crimes around people like Steve Bannon or Mark Meadows, and yet that's what he was accusing law enforcement of back in the 70s.
Well, there is an irony to that.
And this story actually originally broke before the ban in contempt citation.
But think about it.
Even from, take Benny Thompson even out of it for a second.
Take a look at our Justice Department.
This is the same Justice Department that refused to find Eric Holder in contempt of Congress 10 years ago when he refused to provide evidence in the Fast and Furious investigation where a Border Patrol agent was killed, where guns were illegally crossing the border.
At the Obama-Biden ATF's own direction.
Our own government was trafficking in guns, and it wasn't important enough for that Justice Department then to compel Eric Holder.
They let him off the hook.
They wouldn't take that contempt citation to court, so Congress had to do it.
Now, all of a sudden, the same Justice Department finds the vigor and the speed to do it against Steve Manon.
I think the story of hypocrisy and double standards, which we saw all throughout the Russia case, right?
Look at the difference between Mike Flynn and Andy McCabe.
This idea that there are two systems of justice only gets solidified more and more with every story that occurs, whether it's Steve Bannon in contempt versus Eric Holder getting off the hook or Benny Thompson being able to advocate for an insurrectionist group and now be against it.
I think the American public are keen.
They have figured out that there's a double standard in Washington and it pervades everything from the Justice Department to the politics in Congress, and they're smart enough to see through it now.
Well, there may be a double standard at the DOJ, but there is only one set of facts.
You know, what happened, happened.
And I know that you and your great team at JustTheNews.com get to the bottom of it.
It sounds like this is very much a developing story and that your team continues to work.
John, how can folks follow this reporting?
And also, John Sullivan's got one of my absolute favorite podcasts in the world.
I love it when I get to join you as a guest on Just The News.
So let folks know how they can follow that and how they They can keep up with your reporting.
Absolutely.
JustTheNews.com is our website.
Easy to remember.
We have news 24-7, breaking news and investigative news all day long.
And my podcast is called John Solomon Reports, because that's what I do.
I like to report.
And we do that daily, Monday through Friday.
And thanks, Matt, for mentioning that.
It's a good, and we have a lot of fun doing it.
I never thought I would do a podcast.
Now that I've done it, I love it, and I know you love it, too.
It's a great medium to have a conversation.
Well, and a lot of the stories that you're breaking at JustTheNews.com, frankly, a lot of the stories that you've been breaking throughout your career face a lot of headwinds with corporate corrupt media.
And if the American people are wondering what they can do to be more engaged and to push back a regime that they think is harming them, Seeking out independent, uncorrupted, straightforward news is the best way to be informed.
And, you know, it was Madison who said that, you know, the citizen was the highest role in our democracy, but that means we need an informed citizenry.
You guys are doing a great job of that at Just the News.
And I appreciate you bringing to light the double standards, the hypocrisy, and the really troubling associations of Chairman Benny Thompson.
Can't wait to follow the story, John.
Thanks for joining us on Firebrand.
Thanks, Congressman.
Great to join you.
Thanks.
Thanks for joining us on Firebrand.
Make sure you give us that five-star rating, write a review, and make sure you're subscribed with notifications turned on.
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