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Sept. 22, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz

29:54

Episode 71 LIVE: The Ray Epps Inquiry (feat. Dr. Darren J. Beattie) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

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	Thank you.
	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 the laws.
	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.
	We are live simulcast streaming out of room 1721 of the Longworth House Office Building on the Capitol Complex in our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. I'll be joined today by the publisher of Revolver.News, Dr. Darren Beatty.
	Dr. Beattie's investigative reporting, curating of key pieces of video evidence, really drove a lot of the key questions that members of Congress have been asking about the true story of January 6th.
	And that sets the stage for a massive debate about the Ray Epps inquiry that just occurred in the House Judiciary Committee.
	I'm going to have the clips, the sound, And we're going to get Dr. Beattie's reaction to the Democrats trying to do everything they can to block access to information about Ray Epps and others who may have been acting at the direction of federal law enforcement or in concert with federal law enforcement on the grounds during the riot of that fateful day.
	We have to talk about the tools that are available to the minority.
	So in the minority, we don't get to call the witnesses, set the hearings, demanding votes on many things.
	But there is an exception to that.
	One of the tools in the minority in the House of Representatives is that you can present a resolution of inquiry demanding documents or information from the executive to be delivered to the Congress and because it speaks to the privileges and rights and responsibilities of the Congress itself there has to be a vote by the body if a committee does not take action.
	And so Nancy Pelosi got a demand from Dr. Paul Gosar, Congressman from Arizona, to get information from the executive branch regarding Ray Epps.
	And for the full background on Ray Epps, you've got to go to revolver.news.
	You're going to want to read.
	Part 1 and Part 2 of the series that Dr. Beatty put together, all with the key video evidence that really is convincing a lot of people that there's more to this story.
	So Dr. Gosar files that, and just last night in the House Judiciary Committee, we had to take action on it.
	We're going to give you a brief look at what occurred in the House Judiciary Committee and get Dr. Beatty's reaction on the other side.
	Let's go ahead and roll our clip of the highlights from Judiciary.
	It baffles me.
	Here's a man who you say assaulted democracy and the other side has no curiosity.
	No curiosity whatsoever.
	And if you want to disprove a conspiracy theory, as one of my colleagues already said, the best way to do it is release the truth.
	And the one person who seems to...
	There seems to be more information, more video of than anybody else that can be identified positively...
	And who is the only person that we see the day before urging protesters to go into the Capitol.
	The only person who's told the FBI that he thought there were going to be bombs on side streets.
	And that's one of the reasons he came.
	By the way, it seems like every time he talked to the FBI, he had a different reason for saying why he came to the Capitol that day.
	But why is nobody on the other side of the aisle interested in that?
	Why is the FBI not interested in that?
	Why are you rushing to his defense?
	Defending who?
	Ray Epps.
	I literally have no idea what you're talking about.
	Mr. Epps does not work for the FBI. Mr. Epps is not an FBI agent.
	It is perfectly clear he's just another conservative right-wing person who participated in the mob violence.
	He was one of tens of thousands who participated.
	You know, one thing you kind of notice is that, you know, feds are like cockroaches.
	You see one outside the walls, there's probably ten behind the walls that you don't see.
	And in this particular case, we deserve the truth, the answers about what the federal government's involvement was, as Mr. Massey has correctly chronicled throughout this debate When the Department of Justice has been given the opportunity to say that nobody associated with the federal government, prompted by the federal government, encouraged by the federal government, working for the federal government, increased the criminal acuity of January 6th, they have demurred in doing so.
	All they would have to say is nobody associated with the federal government increased the criminal acuity of that day.
	And I think that A lot more Americans would have comfort that at least on that day, in that moment, assets of their own government weren't weaponized against them.
	But what we do know is that there were a lot of people who may have committed some technical violation of federal law because they crossed over a barricade that they didn't know had been erected, you know, half an hour, 40 minutes earlier, and then saw their lives destroyed and ruined.
	And it's just, it's quite something to hear like the crocodile tears from Mr. Epps on the left, When he is the only person that we have direct video evidence that's encouraging folks to go inside the Capitol, that's what we need answers on.
	We're back live, and joining me now is Dr. Darren Beattie, publisher, founder of Revolver.News.
	Dr. Beattie, you watched all of the debate.
	You saw Democrats vote against this inquiry, but it certainly sets the stage for Republican control in the next Congress.
	Your reaction?
	Well, unfortunately, I wasn't able to hear the clips that you just played, but I have watched the hearing, and so I'd be happy to comment on that.
	Please.
	Yeah, please do.
	As far as my general impressions.
	Well, I mean, for one, I think it's important that this hearing took place, even if there's no kind of realistic possibility of actually getting these documents yet, because I think it's important to emphasize Public interest in this topic is absolutely critical.
	The number one thing that these corrupt and illegitimate authorities in the regime who have perpetrated this lie on the American people, the number one thing that they want is for a short attention span public just to move on to the next distraction and forget about re-ups, forget about the pipe bomber, and forget about really one of the biggest crimes and scams That the regime has ever perpetrated on the American people.
	So anything that keeps this front and center in the public's attention Is absolutely a very critical thing.
	And Darren, the January 6th committee has not shied away from sharing their own perspective on this, albeit somewhat shielded from the public in terms of the actual work done.
	There was a tweet, let's get that tweet up, that was sent by the January 6th committee, and I'm quoting it now, the committee has interviewed Epps.
	Epps informed us that he was not employed by working with Now, that was discussed at great length in our debate last evening, and to me, it seems like such a couched denial.
	It's almost an admission because they use the term law enforcement.
	And remember, There are a lot of people who do things at the behest, direction, encouragement of the federal government, who are engaged in collection of intelligence or information, but not necessarily for a law enforcement purpose.
	And so it seems like a hyper-couch denial, but what was your impression of sort of the committee trying to tamp down this interest in Epps, while at the same time not giving us access to the transcript?
	Yeah, they don't want anyone to know Epps' name and that's why frankly the New York Times really, you know, it was such a devastating unforced error on the part of the New York Times to out of nowhere release this bizarre puff piece.
	All it did was invited, you know, very reasonable but absolutely devastating counterattacks basically from Revolver News exposing what a sham it was And sort of reigniting the very pressing, very damning question centering around this individual Ray Epps.
	And you're absolutely right to point out the very particular, very peculiar legalistic denials being put forth through legal intermediaries representing Ray Epps.
	You know, really emphasizing saying, oh, REIPS had nothing to do with law enforcement, any law enforcement agency and so forth.
	And it's especially suspicious when you contrast it with Ray Epps' lawyer, who incidentally, Ray Epps' lawyer is a nine-year veteran of the Phoenix FBI field office that actually once denied knowledge of Epps' existence, which is even more remarkable, but that's a story for another time.
	But Epps' lawyer, when asked by an Epoch Times reporter as to whether Epps, barring law enforcement, was an asset or a representative or was acting at the behest of some other government agency.
	Epps' lawyer had a very different kind of response.
	His response was, not to my knowledge.
	And so it is quite interesting to contrast the very specific, very affirmative, very confident denial on the part of Epps' lawyer that EPS was not involved in any law enforcement agency to the bizarrely cryptic and ambiguous response of not to my knowledge when it comes to any other agency.
	Bet anything that there were some kind of discussions about this in advance.
	And if the lawyer was in a position to issue the same kind of precise and emphatic denial as to blanket association with any federal agency, he would have done so.
	So the fact that he didn't only adds to the mounting suspicions and really damning There's an avalanche at this point of evidence pointing to the fact that Epps was not an authentic actor on that day,
	and it just stands to reason that the January 6th committee doesn't want to talk about him, they don't want to put any evidence out, and they certainly don't want our side, the Republicans, the American people, to be able to conduct an independent review of the information available on Ray Epps.
	We heard House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler say last night that Ray Epps' life had been shattered, that he was the victim of a right-wing conspiracy because there were reasonable questions about him being so fervent and insistent and almost militant in his drive to get people to go into the Capitol, as the Revolver.News pieces famously show.
	What's it like when you hear these Democrats lament The pain caused to Ray Epps because Revolver.News has shined a bright light into one of the very uncomfortable crevices of the January 6th story.
	Well, again, it just doesn't add up.
	It's clear that there's something off.
	It's clear there's something off with Epps, and it's clear that they know it.
	I mean, it just doesn't make sense that the only January 6th riot participant For whom the Democrats have exhibited any degree of sympathy, but in this case, it's to the level of actively defending him and getting the New York Times to run a dedicated puff piece cover story for him.
	January 6, quote-unquote, riot participant, who's enjoyed this level of sympathy and protection, also happens to be the only January 6 riot participant who's caught on video as early as January 6, repeatedly, emphatically, vigorously urging people to go into the Capitol.
	And when the buying temperature of the surrounding crowd is so low, so abysmal, that they think that they need to expose a guy as a Fed and immediately start chanting Fed, He's not even dissuaded by that.
	And he's there on the morning throughout the entire day on January 6th, directing crowds to the Capitol.
	He just happens to not attend the Trump speech that he claims he traveled all the way to DC for, at least initially that's his reason.
	He skips the speech and instead he's positioned at the exact place at the exact time of the initial and decisive breach on the western perimeter.
	And by the way, another fascinating detail, the timing of the pipe bomb's discovery was so precisely aligned with that initial Ray Epps assault on the western perimeter that the prevailing theory among many officials, including the head of the Capitol Police at the time, was that the pipe bombs were planted for a diversionary purpose, to divert from that very breach.
	And here we learn from Epoch Times reporting that they managed to obtain all the information of the FBI interviews.
	You guys in Congress can't have that.
	Epoch Times gets it.
	The FBI gets it.
	You guys can't have it.
	But according to the Epoch Times reporting, Epps is sitting down there in an interview and they ask him, Hey, so why did you think to go to DC in the first place?
	And Epps says, you know, I just was a little bit worried that somebody would plant explosive devices on side streets.
	Weird.
	And sure enough, they find these pipe bombs on side streets by the Capitol and the timing of their discovery is such that the theory is it diverts from the breach in which Ray Epps was an active participant, if not an orchestrator.
	And guess what?
	The FBI doesn't even ask Epps a follow-up question about the pipe bombs.
	That really says more than anything how much they want you, how much they want everyone listening to this, how much they want the American people to forget who Ray Epps is, because they know it's dirty, they know they don't want to touch it, they know if they pursue the question of Ray Epps, it will unravel one of the most embarrassing and damning crimes in the history of the U.S. government.
	MAGA blood libel was a piece you wrote regarding the death of Officer Brian Sicknick.
	There were reports, false reports, that the mainstream media just echoed endlessly that Brian Sicknick had been bludgeoned by a fire extinguisher.
	That turned out not to be true.
	He died after January 6th, and of course we don't mean to minimize that.
	The death of a Capitol Police officer is certainly a tragic event No matter the circumstance, it is unequivocally tragic and undeniably we wish it had not occurred, but to go and say that he had been bludgeoned to death on January 6th was false, no matter how much we honor his service.
	And what's interesting is that at times, Darren, the Democrats get catfished by their own lies.
	They tell the lie so many times, the media repeats those lies, that then they actually believe them.
	And astonishingly, what viewers are going to hear, a clip from Mondaire Jones repeating the lie that someone, that had been a Capitol Police officer, had been bludgeoned to death on January 6th.
	Something that never happened.
	Play the clip.
	138 Capitol and D.C. police officers were injured.
	A Capitol Police officer was bludgeoned to death.
	That was Mondaire Jones saying a Capitol Police officer was bludgeoned to death.
	You know, Darren, what was your analysis of the anatomy of this lie?
	And are you surprised that a Democrat member of Congress would still be stating it as truth today?
	No, I'm not surprised.
	And frankly, I can't even say with confidence that that particular congressman repeated the lie maliciously and intentionally.
	I think the unfortunate reality is that that lie was spread so widely and so vigorously that it almost kind of achieved a Albeit fictional, it achieved a place in the permanent lore of January 6. Now,
	Revolver News, we tried to get on this lie as early as possible, and to some degree, we were able to get in there and challenge it before the lie became absolutely sacred.
	But there's only so much you can do, and the anatomy of this lie is quite remarkable.
	In fact, the first lie was bludgeoned to death.
	They said Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by MAGA. Revolver did a big report on this, showed this was not the case.
	The New York Times changed the story, but the second version of the story is just as important.
	The second version of the story was that he wasn't bludgeoned to death, but he was Killed by bear spray.
	Okay?
	And Revolver News did it, and actually they charged two people with big charges.
	It's noteworthy that they never even thought to go for a murder charge, but they did charge two people with spray with the implication that their spray resulted in Brian Sicknick's death.
	Revolver News did a subsequent, very detailed, comparative image analysis using heat maps and so forth, and we showed that the spray didn't even come from the people that they claimed it came from, and in fact, it's very likely that Sicknik wasn't sprayed by them at all, ever, and that the videos that they were using were totally, you know, factually misleading and so forth.
	That turned out to be true, and the final and official version Is that Brian Sicknick died of natural causes.
	But it took so long for the truth to come out on that, or for the media to recognize the truth, that it had already been seeded into the public consciousness that January 6th was the deadly day, the deadly this.
	Yes, other people died.
	Yes, Ashley Babbitt died.
	The term deadly to describe it when it came from the media was really referring to Brian Sicknick and that aspect of the MAGA blood libel so-called because to say that the MAGA crowd, the MAGA mob bludgeoned a guy to death or bear sprayed him and then he died from that.
	It really feeds into this false narrative that the mob was a bunch of domestic terrorists.
	And if they're killing Capitol Police officers, then people might think, oh, then it is justified for the government to weaponize the national security state after them.
	They really are domestic terrorists and so forth.
	So it's a very dangerous lie, not just in relation to the people who were there at January 6th.
	It's a very dangerous lie to the entire So far as it casts everybody who's a Trump supporter as basically adjacent to those who would murder Capitol officers.
	And it's not by accident.
	Dr. Beattie just made the critical point there that I want to underscore.
	The reason that they have to continue to talk about the MAGA blood libel and officers being to bludgeon to death, which never happened on January 6th, Well, you know, then you get to a circumstance where you can justify the utilization of these tools of anti-terrorism and national defense against our fellow Americans.
	And that should never happen in this country.
	It is not justified by these actions.
	And frankly, where you saw a lot more bludgeoning And a lot more pain and a lot more death was during the 2020 summer riot season, encouraged by the very Democrats telling lies about it today.
	Revolver.News is the website where you're going to get all the information on EPS. It's not just a reading exercise.
	You're going to get the video.
	You're going to see documents.
	You're also going to want to check out the MAGA blood libel piece because these very issues are reemerging and it is all setting the table for Republican control of the Congress in January.
	I hope we make it worthwhile.
	Thanks for joining me, Dr. B. Great to be here as always.
	Thank you so much.
	Now we just heard votes called here in the Longworth building, and so I'll be heading down to cast a series of votes against legislation that I believe over-federalizes our state and community law enforcement.
	I'll tell you more about it in a segment we call Today in Congress.
	Today in Congress.
	Today in Congress, Democrats know that they have a big problem associated with their activist base encouraging the defunding of police.
	And in fact, we are seeing the defunding of police in communities that really are eroding safety.
	In places like Chicago, Detroit, in California's largest cities, you see police budgets Totally slashed.
	You see prosecutors like Gascon in Los Angeles unwilling to bring charges against people that are engaged in crime, against regular law-abiding citizens that just want to go about their daily lives.
	This is one of the major issues driving the midterms.
	Inflation, immigration, crime.
	And this crime thing is real, and it's driving a lot of voters that went Democrat in the 2018 midterms to Republican candidates and so what are Democrats doing today in Congress to deal with it?
	They're putting forward a series of bills that purport to fund and help law enforcement but my worry is that this legislation increasingly addicts our state and local police to the mores and whims and desires of people inside the beltway of Washington DC and that is wrong.
	It's wrong constitutionally.
	The police power is expressly reserved as a state power.
	We should not be in the policing business in Washington DC. I care deeply about many of the mental health programs and outcomes.
	Reflected in the legislative package that I'll be voting against today, but I believed in those things as a Florida lawmaker.
	I'm the former chairman of the Florida House Criminal Justice Subcommittee, and so I've dealt with law enforcement.
	I see the need for mental health support, for victim support, for breaking cycles of violence, but that should all be occurring at the state level.
	Federalism still matters.
	And if you don't think it does, just look at what the violations of federalism have done to our education system.
	Our schools used to be laboratories of learning.
	There were great field trips and projects and rockets you built.
	If you have great leaders and great teachers, you had an enhanced educational experience because it was unique and different and there weren't these constraints of all having to be so systematized.
	But then, George W. Bush and Republicans and Democrats joined together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which functionally federalized education as an enterprise in the public sphere.
	And now you practically see every kid in the same grade, on the same page, in the same book, and that is a delivery system for wokeism more efficiently than if they had to go town by town, community by community.
	So I don't want to see the federal control over law enforcement any more than I want to see federal control over our schools, because I've seen the negative consequences, it crushes creativity, and it It really takes the mentality of people inside the beltway that is often the most corrupt and corrosive and it injects that throughout our whole country and it ties money to it.
	And that is wrong.
	So while we support law enforcement, while we unapologetically call out the Democrats like those in the squad who have gaslit violence against law enforcement, We don't believe that the answer for law enforcement is to become more reliant on Washington D.C. Matter of fact, we ought to have law enforcement that's even more responsive to the communities throughout our land.
	And in that light, my friend Dan Bishop had a good idea recently.
	He suggested that maybe Instead of the FBI having so much of a nexus to the Washington media, the Washington lifestyle, that they ought to be under the control and command and direction of the over 90 U.S. attorneys throughout our country.
	That way there is more of a community connection to policing.
	And that will do far more to keep us all safe than centralized federal programs.
	Thanks so much for joining us today.
	Thank you to Dr. Beattie.
	Remember to make sure to give us that like, give us that subscribe button.
	It's the best way to make sure that you always see our content and that we're able to share it with the broadest audience possible.
	See you soon.
	Roll the credits.

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