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Jan. 6, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
47:12
Episode 21: Fedsurrection (feat. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Darren Beattie) – 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 hurting him.
If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, 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?
It's like a machine.
Matt Gaetz.
I'm a canceled 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.
Welcome to Season 2 of Firebrand.
We made 20 episodes in our first season.
It was fantastic.
You can go check those out.
Make sure to give us a 5-star rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
And in this new season, we're going to have even more in-depth interviews.
We're going to have multi-person interviews, some live features that we're going to be rolling out, some chat features.
So make sure you're subscribed with notifications turned on.
Now, it's January 6th and we've got two of the Firebrand Nation's favorite guests that we're going to be chatting with today.
First, Dr. Darren Beattie and then, of course, the great Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Now, on January 6th, Democrats are trying to seize the narrative and seize the day.
But know this, the game you are watching is not the game being played.
This was far less an insurrection and likely far more a fedsurrection.
And the most in-depth reporting, the best investigative news you could possibly get on this subject, you're going to find at revolver.news.
And I am here to announce that today, I took the body of reporting from Revolver News, from Stuart Rhodes to Ray Epps to Even those acting likely in concert with Ray Epps.
And I inserted those into the official congressional record.
So we're gonna get the truth out there.
No better person to chat with than Dr. Darren Beattie, the austere publisher of Revolver News.
Thanks for joining me, Darren.
It's a delight to be here.
Thanks for having me.
So, Darren, we're going to talk about the 6th and how that day unfolded.
But you revealed in your most recent reporting on Revolver News something that happened on January 5th that I don't think a lot of Americans really know about.
But it was this monumental event that unfolded literally almost on the steps of the Department of Justice.
Explain to the audience.
Yes, and there are several things on the 5th, but I believe you're referring to the so-called Trump hippie van, colloquially referred to by researchers as the Trump hippie van.
And this was a van with stop the steal insignia and at least presenting as people who would have an intention to go to the Trump rally the next day.
Well, on the 5th, This so-called Trump hippie van was stopped right outside of the Department of Justice, and the federal law enforcement authorities discovered there were explosives in this van and firearms.
What did you find in there?
Do you know?
Sir, I can't comment on it.
Is there anyone who's authorized to comment?
Nope.
And they made a big deal out of it, as you would expect.
They processed everyone in the van.
They wanted to take DNA swabs, the whole works.
And what's remarkable, well, there's a couple things that's remarkable about this.
One is that I would imagine most of your listeners who are generally very educated on these matters Have not even heard about this.
And what's strange about that is that the media would have seemed to have every incentive in amplifying coverage of a story of, oh, look, another van of Trump supporters with explosives right outside the Department of Justice.
This is a huge deal.
This is the next 9-11.
Like, they would have far more justification blowing that up than...
You know, the treatment that they've given to the subsequent event of 1-6.
And so why is this thing buried in local media coverage and something that nobody's talking about, nobody's covering?
That's an interesting story in its own right, and we can speculate on that basis and say, hmm...
If there was a threat of this magnitude right outside of the Department of Justice, it makes it yet more difficult to account for the fact that January 6th, the Capitol building and the surrounding environment enjoyed uniquely poor security.
It wasn't just that they didn't have enhanced security, which would have been entirely called for and justified and even expected given something like this, and simply given that there would be a big politically charged rally nearby.
But that it didn't even enjoy normal security on that day is something that is quite astonishing.
Darren, now, I've been to dozens of Trump rallies all over this country, and I have never seen a group called Hippies for Trump.
Yet all of a sudden on January 5th, they show up in this bus and we start to learn about one of the individuals who's on this bus.
We later kind of learn about him as black ski mask guy in your reporting.
But there's actually a little interview he does right there on the 5th.
Let's play that clip.
And then they tried to get us to take DNA swabs.
DNA swabs?
Yeah.
Let's see if our DNA matched the weapons that were found on the vehicle.
How many weapons?
I don't know.
How many weapons did they find?
I think one or two.
They were pretty quick at getting them out of there.
They were also hinting that there was a bomb on the bus.
You're absolutely right.
So the significance of this story goes far beyond the fact that there was this major terror scare, effectively, on the 5th, right outside the Department of Justice.
And even that couldn't justify normal levels of security on the next day when a major politically charged rally would occur within close proximity to the Capitol and other relevant buildings.
But this very person...
Who's on the hippies for Trump bus, who gives this interview, who is subjected to federal law enforcement questioning, then all of a sudden appears on the 6th.
They weren't detained.
They weren't held.
Yet again, black ski mask guy appears on the 6th.
What are we to think about the fact That this individual on the 6th seems to be animating violence, on the 5th has an encounter with law enforcement, and seemingly has faced no charge.
Well, you're absolutely right to point this out.
And so in the latest bombshellrevolver.news investigative report, we cover a handful of characters who were at the peace monument, near the peace monument at the very beginning, Well before Trump finished his speech,
by the way, they were all hanging out in the same spot early in the day, and they all went on to play decisive roles in creating the conditions for the Trump rally to turn into a riot at the Capitol.
And they did that by removing barriers, cutting down fencing, effectively creating a booby trap so that the people coming over to the Capitol from the rally had no idea That they were technically trespassing on Capitol grounds because the barriers had been removed.
And then, of course, you had various provocateurs ginning them up and we cover those people too.
And this individual black ski mask guy who was in the Hippies for Trump van is one of those key individuals who just showed up very early on and was methodically In a seemingly cool, detached, professional way, removing barriers and helping to create the conditions for this rally to become a riot.
And what's amazing about this individual is that we know that the feds know who he is because he was stopped in the van the previous day.
There's not even this plausible deniability excuse of, oh, they haven't found out who he is.
We know that they know who he is because he was stopped in the van literally the day before and what are the chances that this guy who was stopped in this bizarre Hippies for Trump van with explosives and firearms right outside of the Department of Justice and let free then just happens to be one of the key individuals removing fencing to allow for the riot to occur on January 6th.
We know that they know who he is and he's unindicted.
So there's an important element here of pattern recognition, Darren, where sometimes when there is a federal asset or a federal agent or someone who's acting in response to a federal handler, that there may be other people that are subjected to that type of control from the FBI or other federal law enforcement, and they don't necessarily know what each other are doing.
Now, we learned about this From your reporting from the sort of the phony Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, kidnapping plot that I think a lot of reporting has shown was animated by elements within the federal government.
But just talk about that dynamic where you can actually have multiple people acting in response to stimuli from federal law enforcement and they might not even know that another person, part of the plot, is doing the very same thing.
Absolutely.
And, you know, when you look at the history of these types of operations, federal infiltration operations, you know that the feds are very much like cockroaches.
There's never just one.
There are multiple.
And you see that in the incredible fed infiltration ratio of the Michigan plot, which, as I've talked about on your program and elsewhere, has a remarkable fed infiltration percentage increase.
12 out of the 26 so-called plotters turned out to have been informants or federal agents proper.
And this was essentially a dry run for 1-6.
Inasmuch as it was the same plot, it involved storming the Michigan State Capitol, it involved one of the three main militia groups imputed to 1-6, namely the three percenters, And just as the cherry on top, the head of the Detroit field office, who oversaw this Michigan Fed infiltration operation, was later promoted to D.C., where he went on to oversee the January 6th investigations.
Well, it is a false flag operation, in essence.
Right, precisely.
Van was a false flag.
Ray Epps was a false flag.
In a lot of ways, you know, Stuart Rhodes and his involvement raises many of these serious questions.
Precisely.
And what's brilliant in the revolver piece is you actually have some of the timestamped video that shows how these people were all doing very distinct things.
And, you know, in your prior coverage of Ray Epps, You raise the question, well, how did this person come all the way from Arizona to Washington, D.C., presumably to hear Donald Trump speak?
But as Trump is speaking, you've actually got video of Ray Epps at the breach site.
Let's play that video and get your reaction.
So can we come up?
Yeah, who's side are you on?
Constitution?
Constitution?
Or the government.
Because they're not the same thing.
I'm not picking on them, but you know what?
Noted.
All right, noted.
Okay, but one more thing.
Yeah, so can we go up there?
No?
When we go in, leave this year.
You don't need to get shot.
Can you arrest us all?
And so now, Darren, react to just sort of the methodical nature of Ray Epps being there at the breach site and the significance of that geography.
Right.
Yes.
So this is the initial breach site.
This is the fateful and first breach event.
It occurred on 1253 p.m., so well before Trump.
I've finished his speech, which is important to note, because the people who were there breaking down these barriers, cutting down the fencing, they weren't at the Trump speech, because Trump was speaking as this was going on.
They were creating the conditions such that when the Trump people The significance of Epps being right at that breach site,
literally two seconds before the breach, he whispers in someone's ear who goes and breaks down the metal barricades.
This needs to be understood in the context of Epps' activities for the previous 24 hours.
Because the most famous video of Epps is on January 5th, in the evening, going to all types of different groups, stating explicitly, we need to go into the Capitol tomorrow.
We need to go into the Capitol.
I'm going to put it out there.
I'm probably going to go to jail for it, okay?
Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol!
Into the Capitol!
Peacefully!
Fair!
The mountains of video documentary evidence on January 5th and 6th, this is the only guy we have on tape, dead to rights, explicitly calling for this bizarre mission to go into the Capitol.
And people treat it as bizarre.
They said, what are you talking about?
Going into the Capitol?
You must be a Fed.
What's going on?
But it turns out he wasn't just some random drunk guy who had a crazy idea and we never heard from him.
He followed up on his stated mission On January 6th, a Where's Waldo figure everywhere around the Capitol, reminding people, go into the Capitol.
After the rally, go to the Capitol.
That's where our problems are.
As soon as President Trump is finished speaking, we are going to the Capitol.
It's that direction.
That's where our true problems lie.
When President Trump is done speaking, we are going to the Capitol.
That's where our problems lie.
Okay, folks, we need your help.
As soon as President Trump stops speaking, we are going to the Capitol.
The Capitol is in that direction.
Let people know.
Spread the word.
And sure enough, right at the initial breach site, that fateful first breach event at 12.53 p.m., he's right there and whispers into someone's ear and two seconds later, we have the very first and decisive breach.
So and this guy, Ray Epps, he was originally, as I said, on the FBI's 20 most wanted list for January 6th.
They claimed to be so interested in him when the Internet identified who he was.
And the day after Revolver.News ran a report on his fellow former fellow Oathkeeper, Stuart Rhodes, the FBI scrubbed his name and his face from their public database. And since then, their only pronouncements regarding Ray Epps is to pretend like they don't know who he is. And this is the most sweeping investigation ever, right?
We've heard from senior officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI that they'll turn over every stone.
They were ransacking the home of some boomers in Homer, Alaska.
But somehow, Ray Epps, who methodically is trying to get people into the Capitol, doesn't seem to face those same tough questions.
But could Ray Epps's mission been accomplished alone?
I think your reporting suggests that it could not have.
It required people Like Blaskey, Mask Eye, and I want you to take a moment and talk about Fence Cutter, because right as you got Trump not even done with his speech yet, you have someone who seems almost emotionally detached from the circumstances around them, removing the fencing so that future people who would arrive at the Capitol would be unsuspecting of that having been a barrier.
What do we know about the Fence Cutter, Darren?
Exactly.
And look, so, I mean, people have different degrees of investment in this story, different degrees of knowledge in this story.
I think one really powerful thing about this latest Revolver.News report is to a large degree, the video evidence speaks for itself.
Like nobody can watch those videos And come to a basic, a common sense, objective conclusion that there isn't something severely off here.
But of course, we need to put together the evidence into a story, a narrative of what was actually taking place.
And as you suggest, there's no way Ray Epps was acting alone.
That's just not how the Feds do things.
There are multiple people in place.
And one tell that applies to Epps and these other people is the contrast, the profound contrast between the radical nature of what they're doing, demanding people go into the Capitol, cutting down fencing and so forth, and the emotional detachment, the cool, methodical, professional manner in which they conduct themselves.
It would be one thing for people to get caught up in the crowd psychology and just go angry and crazy and just flail about and do something wild.
It's another to see that cool, detached, professional, methodical manner of operating.
You see that in Epps and you see that in this other guy who, again, he's not at the Trump rally.
He's there at the Capitol cutting down fences methodically and removing the fences such that when the Trump crowd gets there at the direction of Ray Epps and others like him, they're not going to see any barriers and they're going to have no idea that they're technically committing a criminal offense.
And then you have this other individual that I think is a Ray Epps-sized scandal in its own right, scaffold commander, who's there with his bullhorn repeatedly and constantly saying, Move forward!
Move forward!
Please help!
Move forward!
Move forward!
Climb up over the wall!
Get into those bleachers!
Don't just stand there!
Move forward!
Move forward!
Help somebody over the wall!
Help somebody over the wall!
Move forward!
Now, when we go to the organizations, the front-end destruction and the people who run them, it becomes louder or better.
Just as the basic of crowd psychology, you get there with a crowd, you hear a repeated, continuous, authoritative voice from a bullhorn saying move forward.
You move forward.
You don't know if something happened in the crowd and they need you to clear up space.
You obey.
And so, it just...
All of these pieces are in place to engineer this scenario where there would be a riot, where people would be at the Capitol grounds and there would be ultimate breach of the Capitol.
And when the Capitol building itself was breached, the same guy with the bullhorn is saying, we need to fill up the Capitol.
Fill it up right now.
Come on.
We need more people.
Please help.
Fill up the Capitol.
Okay, we're in.
We're in.
Come on.
We've got to fill up the Capitol.
Come on.
We need help.
He's up on the top of the scaffold with his bullhorn, yet another person who showed up right at the peace monument early on before anyone else, along with these other figures, and yet another person who's unindicted completely.
And Scaffold Commander doesn't seem to just have a tactical role here.
He seems to have a leadership role commanding this group of people.
So you can start to see how sort of the different instruments of the Fed's erection start to come together as one orchestra.
The night before, you've got Ray Epps with this professional focus on entering the Capitol.
You've got black ski mask guy saying, we have to take that ground.
We have to go inside.
Then you've got the fence coming down, and then you've got this loud voice from the scaffold commander.
I don't even know how he gets up there, how he gets a bullhorn that seems to look a lot like the bullhorns that are elsewhere in the crowd.
What do we know, Darren, about the federal government's pursuit of scaffold commander?
Well, as far as I know, there's been no pursuit whatsoever.
There's been no arrests.
There's been nothing.
Which is remarkable because, again, it's not just that he happens to be a guy on the scaffold calling for people to move forward and go into the Capitol.
He fits that precise pattern of the key individuals who are just hanging out, loitering right by the peace monument, right nearby the site where that initial breach occurred at 1253. He's hanging out there,
provoking law enforcement very early on in the day I see a person around her Are you thinking about it?
We've got it!
We see you pacing!
Are you thinking about it?
And he, like the others who are hanging out at the same place at the same time early before everyone, before the Proud Boys contingent even arrived at the initial breach site, and it's the official story that the Proud Boys kicked everything off.
And yet, you have this collection of individuals hanging out at this very spot before the Proud Boys even got there, who all went on to play decisive roles in engineering The riot of January 6th.
And all of these people, unlike many of the Proud Boys, are unindicted and even unsearched.
So what's the motive, Darren?
I mean, if the federal government didn't just have one person, but had almost a cadre of people doing very specific things to ensnare a bunch of people who thought they were part of a rally or a march or a peaceful protest in this investigation, it seems like a lot of effort and resource was put into it.
To what end?
Well, that's a great question.
And before I get to that, I'd just like to very briefly state that not only is it overwhelmingly likely that there are multiple feds, that Ray Epps is not acting alone, that there are multiple feds, but I would suspect it's overwhelmingly likely that multiple different federal agencies had people in place And there very likely wasn't a centralized coordination and communication between those various agencies.
So I would not be shocked at all if, you know, when all is said and done, it turns out that the FBI had people there, the JTTF had people there, Army Counterintelligence had people there, DHS had people there, and they may not have necessarily known what the other people are doing.
In fact, just two days ago, Newsweek came out with a report That the DOJ, the acting Attorney General, unilaterally authorized this highly classified, top-secret, shoot-to-kill commando force.
To go to the Capitol on January 6th on the basis of some bizarre intelligence that they received regarding weapons of mass destruction.
I'm not even kidding.
This Newsweek came out with this piece a couple days ago, and they didn't communicate this to the Capitol Police or other law enforcement agencies.
And that's reporting from Newsweek, and we know that fairly well now.
There's a lot of different actors involved from a lot of different government agencies, I would say.
What's the purpose?
Well, the purpose is political.
I mean, we have to understand the broader context here.
The broader context is to feed into the agenda whereby anyone who is a Trump supporter or adjacent to Trump support or even in the most remote sense of being an objector to the agenda and direction of our corrupt regime, anyone who fits into that category doesn't completely comply and fall into line is by extension, by implication, a domestic tax.
And therefore the government can justify its movement to marshal the full weight and influence and force of the national security apparatus domestically in order to crush this alleged national security threat of people who hold political opinions that are inconvenient for the people who control our country.
It would be one of the greatest scandals in our nation's history, and it is unfolding before our very eyes.
Part of the Republican response to all of this concerns me, Darren.
Republican leadership tells our members, you know, we should spend January 6th talking about Pelosi's failures and not marshalling sufficient Defenses and why weren't there more National Guard on call and why didn't we protect the capital more?
What I worry about that is it seems to justify that enhanced utilization of the national security infrastructure against our people and far more productive to actually get to the truth.
Would be to issue the subpoenas to people like Ray Epps, to identify people like Scaffold Commander, to get to the bottom of any records created on January 5th for the hippies for Trump bus.
Do you worry that an overemphasis on, well, Pelosi just wasn't defensive and prepared enough might really miss the point and distract us from the pursuit of the truth that is so necessary in this scandal?
That's an excellent point.
I'm really, really happy that you raised that point.
And it really underscores the general proposition that the narrative matters so much.
Before Revolver.News is reporting, the narrative on 1-6 from the right It fit into two categories.
One category was, oh, you know, these are leftists.
These are Antifa infiltrators.
And the second category is, oh, the people are largely harmless.
Now, there could be truth to both of those narratives.
I'm not discounting those entirely.
But it was only when revolvers shifted the narrative to, wait a minute, This looks like the government doing exactly what it's been doing for decades now.
And it fits all the patterns and there's a tremendous amount of evidence that this is the best explanation.
It's not Antifa.
It's not the left.
It's not Nancy Pelosi.
This is the national security apparatus doing what it's done to the American people for decades.
That is an extremely subversive narrative.
It happens to be true, but it's extremely subversive because it can't simply be dismissed away or dissipated or neutralized in the bread and circuses performative nonsense of typical, you know, partisan politics narratives.
And that's why I think, like, the Nancy Pelosi stuff, I'm not a fan of Nancy Pelosi.
She may have had some idea of what was going on and just tacitly knew to keep out of it and to not call for more security.
But to make her a...
Primary figure of all of this, given the political avatar that she is, like, we might as well blame it all on AOC and her dress, because it's equally ridiculous, it's equally weak, it's equally a part of this universe of bread and circuses nonsense political discourse,
and if we do that, the actual perpetrators, the actual evil forces that We'll laugh all the way to the next plot against the American people unopposed.
And so that's why Revolver.News, myself, you, everyone who's been brave and discerning enough to focus persistently on this one narrative that they don't want you to touch.
The FBI involvement, the government involvement narrative, that's why we've got so much incoming, because the powers that be would love for nobody to talk about it at all.
The second best is for it to be caught up in the typical bread and circuses of dumb political discourse, partisan discourse.
What they don't want is for us to talk about it the way we're talking about it now, and that's why they've been so freaked out and pushed back so hard and tried to silence us so vigorously.
And it is uncomfortable.
And frankly, Darren, I think that if we talk to a thousand regular Americans out in the country, there probably wouldn't be too many of them that think about January 6th one way or the other as a principal element of their daily life or something that informs on their quality of life to a great degree.
And so there is this real binary question that will present to Republicans if we take power after the next election.
What to do with the January 6th committee?
There was certainly a time where I thought, just disband the darn thing.
Let's get to solving people's actual problems.
Let's get to making their lives better.
But after the most recent report from Revolver.News, I don't think we can disband the January 6th committee.
I think we have to take over the January 6th committee, issue subpoenas, bring Ray Epps forward, use the best technology to identify these people like Scaffold Commander, like Fence Cutter, like Black Ski Mask Guy, and put the truth, however uncomfortable it may be, before the entire and put the truth, however uncomfortable it may be, before the Do you think that Republicans need to make that commitment regarding January 6th to our voters and really just to the essence of the truth?
Absolutely.
I think...
There needs to be a real committee investigating this and using real authority to get to the bottom of this.
And we need to be able to take control of the committee in order for that to happen.
Until that happens, the committee is just a political clown show, an element of political theater that exists to obfuscate the truth about 1-6 and to aggressively promote the very dangerous political issues Narrative that was the purpose of the 1-6 setup in the first place, which is to demonize half the American people as de facto domestic terrorists.
Through the valiant efforts of yourself and other brave members of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey and others.
I think we can have some real progress on that side.
But until there's full control over the committee, my sense now is that a productive avenue to get to the bottom of things is actually through the various defense counsels for January 6th defendants.
Who can use their capacity as defense counsels to demand potentially exculpatory evidence, to demand evidence that could point to entrapment.
That's what the defense counsel is doing in the Michigan case.
And I'm pleased to report that a defense counsel for Kelly Meggs, who is an oath keeper who's been charged, has put forth I think we can start to see progress as well from the Defense Council,
who's also starting to take up this idea of, hmm, what really happened here was much darker than we ever expected, and they do have some power and authority in their legal capacity to get to the bottom of this as well.
We will be following that litigation closely, and I think we have to make a commitment to expose these uncomfortable truths wherever they may bring us.
You know what?
I've learned, if you give it enough time, three things that always show themselves.
The sun, the moon, and the truth.
Thank you for exposing the truth on Revolver.News.
I am proud to take the body of your reporting work, place it into the congressional record, So here we
are, Marjorie.
January 6th, we're in Washington, D.C., manning our post.
And I guess one thing that has always been kind of bizarre to me, why do you think Democrats are so obsessed with this day?
I mean, you know, back in Florida and Georgia, people are worried about their families, their jobs, their freedoms and liberties.
As they should be.
And Democrats in Washington act like this is the end all be all.
And I just I just wonder why that is.
Well, I'm pretty amazed with it too, Matt.
Actually, you know, if Democrats cared about riots, they would have done everything they could have done to stop all the riots over the summer of 2020. They would have rescued American businesses.
They would have protected federal courthouses.
They would have put the National Guard In front of police officers that were trying to stop all the violence in the streets from BLM, but they don't care about riots and they don't care about the riot that happened here at the Capitol on January 6 last year.
What they care about is they care about drama, they care about theatrics, and they care about creating an image That they can try to sell through the media who's completely bought in to convince the American people that an insurrection happened here in Washington when it didn't happen.
It wasn't done by the people.
There was a riot here.
It was violence.
You and I didn't like it.
But the real insurrectionists, I think, are the Democrats because of what they're doing to our country and how they are completely perverting The Constitution and Congress and what it's set up to be.
And I'm really glad I'm here with you today and I wish that there was more of our conference with us.
Well, and let's think about that because, you know, the standard Republican thinking on this day is, you know, hide under your bed, hope the day passes, sort of survive and live through it.
And there was a time I definitely thought, you know, when we take power, one of the things I'm most looking forward to is disbanding this stupid committee and getting on with the work of the people.
But the more we seem to uncover about the federal government's own involvement with January 6th, The more I'm thinking we might have to own this day, own finding the truth for our constituents.
So do you fall more on the side of this is dumb, this is a stupid obsession, let's get over it?
Or do you think we actually have to ask some very tough questions about what the FBI and DOJ were doing?
involved with people on those grounds.
We have to send subpoenas to people like Ray Epps.
We have to find out who the scaffold commander is.
I mean, you know, which side of this are you on?
Do we have to get those answers or do we just move on from this?
Well, you're asking at the right time.
I'm fresh off of being permanently suspended on Twitter.
So I'm ready to rip the whole thing wide open and expose everything.
I don't think we do away with this at all.
I think we dig deeper into it and find out what happened with Governor Whitmer and how was the FBI involved?
I think we go even further and go, how was the FBI, the Department of Justice, or any of our agencies involved in what happened on January 6th?
I want to know why on January 3rd, they were training, they had these groups, I mean, incredibly trained military So, you know, Matt, I think you brought up the right questions.
We want to know why didn't we see Ray Epps in the D.C. jail?
Why isn't he being held in solitary confinement for months on end when other people are?
And who is scaffold commander and why did he position himself at the top of that scaffolding right at the peace gate directly above Ray Epps where they were commanding people to go into the Capitol, go into the Capitol, and they were there before President Trump even finished his speech.
So yeah, I'm game on.
Let's rip it wide open and find out what's happening.
You mentioned the January 6th detainees, and there are a lot of Americans today who will think, gosh, you know, are these folks being treated unfairly, unjustly?
Are they being deprived of their constitutional rights?
And when all of the conventional thinking in Washington, D.C. was to have Republicans not talk about that.
You really took on civil rights and constitutional rights as your cause.
And you produced an oversight report for the entire Congress that now we've put into the congressional record that exposed a lot of stuff there.
What gave you the instinct to speak up for those folks when it seemed like everybody else was just willing to abandon them?
Well, you were with me.
Well, but you led it.
I mean, in all honesty, you led that effort and you were the catalyst for it.
Well, I'm grateful for the support you gave and you went with me.
I think you and I both care about our country and we care about our Constitution and we care about due process.
I mean, here you studied and you're an attorney, so it's something that you've seen up front and been involved in.
The due process, it's an incredible thing.
Being presumed innocent before you're proven guilty.
Pre-trial defendants, they have rights, but yet their rights are being completely abused.
And we're seeing a real two-tiered justice system in America that we can't allow to stand regardless of the crimes they committed.
Because we have an institution for a reason.
And we've got to do everything we can to protect it.
So this is important to me, but I think it's important to all Americans because everywhere I go, you know, people are angry about inflation.
They're really mad at it.
And people are so mad at the border, but they're used to it because it's been going on so long.
And they don't want to see any of the things that are happening.
But what they're very upset about is they're very upset about what's happening to these people in jail.
And they're so upset about what is happening to our country and who are the Democrats really?
And what are they going to do with COVID? And when does it ever stop?
And so these are the things that people care about most.
They don't care about, ooh, take back the majority.
Yeah, we want to take back the majority, but we want to do something with it.
Well, Jim Jordan has made the commitment on this podcast publicly that if he is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he will establish an oversight and investigation subcommittee that can review the border, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
I don't want to put you on the spot, but would that be the type of assignment that would be of interest to you, being that that is an issue portfolio you've already built out in the absence of that committee assignment?
Absolutely, Matt.
You know, I've been committee-less the entire time I've been here pretty much.
Yes, that would be the type of committee work that I would like to take on.
And I think the American people would like for me to be involved in that.
Oh, I think that you've really used a lot of the tools that committees have, even in the absence of that.
And frankly, a lot of people are grateful that the truth is coming out.
And speaking the truth is, I think, what got you banned from Twitter, admonished by Facebook.
And what's crazy to me, a lot of people are talking finally now about how unfair that was to you.
I think we had to encourage some of our Republican colleagues to speak out with particularity about you and how unfair that was to you.
But no one really talks about the substance of what you were saying that is, in many cases, fundamentally accurate.
You got a strike from Twitter for saying that if people were less obese, they would be less frail to COVID. Is that something that's really in dispute anymore?
Well, it's very offensive to Twitter, but I want to dig a little deeper into this because I've done some research and uncovered some things that really bother me.
You know, COVID misinformation, that isn't what Twitter is set up for.
This is a platform where people are supposed to be able to speak their mind, share their ideas, communicate, socialize even.
And for us, as members of Congress, this is a place where we debate political speech.
Now, here, me putting out information from the CDC.gov, the VAERS system, where people are self-reporting vaccine injury and death.
This is something that absolutely should be talked about, especially by members of Congress, because we provide oversight over all of our government, right?
This is what we do.
And so for me to be suspended for tweeting things like that, that is a huge red flag.
And I also want to point something out about my permanent Twitter suspension.
President Trump was kicked off before me and now I have been kicked off and we are both the same kind of Republican and we have the same type of support from the American people all over this country.
So what does that say?
That means Twitter hates a certain type of Republican They hate you too, Matt, and they're probably either going to come for an event.
Oh, I've been shadow banned, and frankly, they're dropping the shadow more and more each day.
But I think you were punished by that platform because you challenged the regime.
You challenged the regime's thinking.
And we ought to live in a world where we think enough of our fellow Americans to confront challenging topics and to review data and to discuss it.
And then have the best ideas and policies and practices emerge from those debates.
And, you know, you've never been afraid of that.
You would take on CNN your first day here at one of my favorite press conferences you've ever done.
And it just seems like we live in a world where the left wants to constrain that thought and constrain that truth and define the truth themselves.
You know, that legislatively, There are two different schools of Republican thinking on this.
One is we use the power of the legislative branch to break up these companies, to force them to abide by the values that undergird our Constitution.
And another is to simply serve up a series of questions to the judicial branch.
What branch of government?
And frankly, I had the perspective when Trump was president that we ought to have the FEC and the FCC kind of from the executive side go after them.
But like, is there a branch of government that you think is best suited to take on this challenge?
See, that one's hard for me because I'm not a big government person.
So I have a really hard time.
This is the rub.
That's the core issue.
Here's what I want to point out to you.
So there is something bigger going on with my Twitter suspension that we haven't had a chance to talk about You see, it's not just Democrats that work at Twitter that don't like my political speech, President Trump's political speech, your political speech, and then, gosh, the countless conservative Americans that have been kicked off.
There's Republicans there, too, that don't like it.
And we both know that in this town, in Washington, D.C., it's the Democrats and then those rhino Republicans together really are the worst enemy to the American people.
Something that's really important is to understand that Jack Dorsey was recently pushed out by someone that moved in there, and I think it's important for us to start digging into where do these donations go, these people that sit on the board, and who do they donate to?
Which Democrats?
Most of them donate to Democrats, but there's some people there that donate to Republicans.
And if so, what kind of Republican are they and why is their political speech chosen by the establishment media and by platforms like Twitter and Facebook?
And then if you challenge, say that kind of Republican, like I did when I tweeted about Dan Crenshaw just within an hour.
So you think that you being critical of Crenshaw from a policy standpoint, it wasn't a personal attack.
It was a dispute about the right way to use government to collect information, to administer vaccines.
You were making a policy point.
Yes.
Do you think that tweet informed on the punishment they dished out?
Well, Dan Crenshaw was on Fox News and he was talking about using FEMA to increase this testing for COVID, for coughs and sneezes and runny noses that President Joe Biden wants to implement on the American people just to keep counting cases.
And Dan Crenshaw was talking about using FEMA for that.
And then he was also talking about sending FEMA into hospitals Where they are very short on healthcare workers, but yet healthcare workers have been fired.
The ones that worked on the front lines that are unvaccinated.
Connect that to the punishment.
Okay.
So what I tweeted about was I disagreed with him.
I disagreed with that policy.
And as a member of Congress, I disagreed with my Republican colleague that we should be using government resources that way.
Most Republicans, especially Republican voters, Do not want FEMA testing sites and they do not want FEMA in the hospitals.
They want to see the unvaccinated healthcare workers hired back and these people to be able to provide for their families and do the job that they did, especially when people were really dying from COVID. I disagreed with him on that and I pointed out that his policies were not conservative.
That was hurting the conservative brand.
Within an hour, I was kicked off of Twitter You know, I've talked a lot about COVID on Twitter, but so have many others.
And I've noticed that a lot of their Twitter pages are still there and they've said the same thing I said about bears and other things about COVID. But when I looked further and checked into the donations and the people that sit on the board and the people that are so powerful that they're able to push Jack Dorsey out of his own company.
Are you talking about Paul Singer?
Yeah.
I found out he's a big donor.
The singerization of Twitter.
Yeah, and he's a big donor to Dan Crenshaw, but he's not a fan of me, and he's not a fan of President Trump either.
Well, we're not for everyone, but I think we should be able to make our point on matters of policy difference without getting the Twitter death penalty.
Well, you know what?
A message to Twitter.
When Nancy Pelosi took you off those committees, she made you one of the most powerful people in the House of Representatives.
Twitter kicking you off may make you one of the most powerful people on all of the internet.
Thanks for asking the tough questions.
Thanks for being here in Washington, D.C. on January 6th.
We're about to hop over and be on Steve Bannon's War Room Podcast and join us there.
We'll be answering even more questions.
Thanks, Marjorie.
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