Dec. 14, 2023 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
27:46
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| Thank you. | |
| You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay? | |
| Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero. | |
| We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight. | |
| I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line. | |
| Matt Gaetz is a courageous man. | |
| If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around. | |
| It's that simple. | |
| He's so tough. | |
| He's so strong. | |
| He's smart and he loves this country. | |
| Matt Gaetz. | |
| It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you. | |
| We will save America. | |
| It's choose your fighter time. | |
| I'm sending the fire brains. | |
| Owen Schroer was at the Capitol on January 6th. | |
| He was subject to federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment. | |
| As we have talked about many of the civil rights issues that January 6th defendants have faced, whether it's been access to counsel or treatment during incarceration. | |
| Many of you have asked questions about how Owen's doing and what his conditions are. | |
| He's out now, and so I welcome him to the podcast. | |
| Owen, I want to get into this full experience you had, but maybe first, just for people who don't know you and your story, explain why you came to the Capitol on January 6th and what your goals were that day. | |
| Sure, and the individuals responsible for my incarceration know that what I'm about to tell you is 100% true because they've had complete and unfettered access to all electronic data that they have requested, including multiple cell phones. | |
| So, as many people may or may not be aware of now, there was a procedure on January 6th where members of Congress and the Vice President at the time, Mike Pence, can take a second To review the election process, the electoral process, and take a pause to see if all laws were followed before certifying the election of Joe Biden. | |
| And we were there that day to support that legal and lawful process, which, by the way, has been done before in America's history. | |
| By Democrats, multiple times even by Democrats. | |
| So I was there as a journalist covering that proceeding in support of it, hoping that we could review some of the laws, some of the changes of the laws and some of the process that went down in the electoral process that winded up electing Joe Biden. | |
| And I don't know, maybe getting a question answered like, How Donald Trump was leading in five states at 3 o'clock in the morning of election night, and then Joe Biden won those states at 3.30, but perhaps that's another issue for another time. | |
| So that's what I was there doing that day. | |
| It is interesting that we see that pattern play out, right, where you get a lot of early returns from some of the precincts with lower vote totals, and then at the very end, It's almost like you see ballots willed into existence in some of these jurisdictions that don't have the type of tight ballot custody, chain of custody, and transparency regarding votes cast. | |
| You really drew a fine point on this fact that people have made these arguments and offered these contests to electors quite frequently. | |
| Not just In distant history, but in recent history, the last Republican to be elected president in the absence of some Democrat objection to electors was George Herbert Walker Bush. | |
| So you show up as a journalist, you show up as someone interested in that process, and when did you first become aware that what you were doing there was going to have consequence in the federal criminal realm? | |
| Well and let me just get one thing clear before I answer that question as well. | |
| I never went into the Capitol. | |
| I never touched a police officer or any other law enforcement agent and I'm on record trying to stop people from going into the Capitol and trying to work with Capitol Police to try to stop the entire thing from happening. | |
| So I just want to make sure that that point is clarified here. | |
| Now as far as when did I realize that I was going to be Continued to be persecuted by the Department of Justice. | |
| And I say continued to be criminally persecuted because this actually started in 2019. And you may or may not be aware that when Jerry Nadler was holding a sham impeachment hearing of Donald Trump, I stood up during the hearing and I said, Donald Trump is innocent. | |
| It's the Democrats are the real criminals. | |
| The cops escorted me out of the building. | |
| As I'm sure you're aware, this happens all the time in the Capitol. | |
| This happens all the time in congressional hearings. | |
| The one difference might be that I'm actually a conservative. | |
| Usually it's liberals and Democrats that do this. | |
| And they just get detained for a minute, escorted out of the building, and that's it. | |
| And that's what was going to happen to me. | |
| But somebody got on the Capitol Police's walkie-talkie and said, no, you're not going to release Owen Schroer. | |
| You're going to arrest him and charge him. | |
| And so I've been dealing with this since 2019. Now, there's also other false reports out there that I violated a standard of my probation. | |
| I didn't. | |
| There are false reports out there that even the prosecuting attorneys tried to argue to the judge inaccurately that I didn't complete my community service. | |
| I did! | |
| But because of everything being shut down for COVID, they could never clear and complete and get this case off of the docket. | |
| But as far as myself and my legal counsel were concerned, this was all done. | |
| It was all a done deal. | |
| We were just waiting for all the COVID stuff to get the courts back open. | |
| And then one day, my lawyer inquires to the Department of Justice saying, hey, when are we going to get this case off the docket? | |
| It's been months now. | |
| My client has finished his probation. | |
| He's completed his community service. | |
| Why isn't this off the docket? | |
| And then to his suspicion, they said, oh, we can't clear this off the docket. | |
| There might be something else going on. | |
| Now, this was in the early summer of 2021. And then late in the summer, in August of 2021, I received an indictment from the FBI for my arrest for four completely bogus charges related to January 6th, and then an allegation that I violated my probation, which they argue I did, but we never got to defend that. | |
| I didn't. | |
| I would argue that I didn't violate my probation, and I think it's very clear In the wording in my probation that I did not violate. | |
| But again, these are just false reports that we get from our corrupt Department of Justice, its workers, and the mainstream media. | |
| I think there are a lot of people who were at the Capitol grounds on January 6th who didn't go inside, but were there because they wanted to observe this process. | |
| Some, like you, wanted to record it in some way for Journalistic purposes. | |
| Some wanted to have their voice heard, that they didn't believe that the electors were properly certified and they wanted the benefit of these objections to prevail in the legally contemplated constitutional system that you described. | |
| And so really it must have been crazy when you then get the news that this is going to result in this really enhanced federal application of criminal law against you. | |
| As we have observed some of these cases, we see prosecutors trying to overcharge or Get even more draconian punishment that you would ever anticipate associated with these types of charges. | |
| You know is that something that having gone through this process you think that we ought to investigate and is it is it something you've observed? | |
| This is actually a very important point that you bring up here Matt because We are now aware of this, and if there is a silver lining in my case and maybe some of the other January 6th defendants that have just been completely abused by this Department of Justice, perhaps this is the silver lining. | |
| What I've realized here is there is no incentive for justice in the Department of Justice. | |
| The incentive from prosecuting attorneys and U.S. attorneys is convictions, and the incentive from the judge is prison time. | |
| you notice i didn't say justice so what happens is the u.s attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys they will vastly overcharge you six seven charges many of which are just completely ludicrous but they'll wildly overcharge you at the hopes or the assumption that you're going to take a plea bargain and most people do who can trust a jury of their non-peers because this isn't a jury of your peers This isn't a jury of people that know you or live in your area or work in the same field as you. | |
| I would have been in a jury in D.C. I would have had no chance. | |
| That's not my peers. | |
| So you don't really get a jury of your peers and you basically get, oh, are you going to be facing six, seven charges that could completely destroy your life? | |
| Or do you want to plead to the one charge that might be like a slap on the wrist? | |
| And then you hope you can get back to some semblance of your normal life. | |
| Well, let me interrupt you there because I think this is where the pardon power is really going to be important because you had so many people who were confronting this avalanche of charges that you would normally never see applied to a circumstance like this and then people fearing really long incarceration periods Would plead to something for a diminished sentence or a diminished consequence. | |
| And now that is something that people are carrying with them. | |
| And I want to get to how you think a lot of folks might have been used as political pawns then. | |
| But I think that the only way to remediate the dynamic you're talking about, the power dynamic, where people pled guilty who never in their hearts believed they intended to commit a crime and certainly didn't want to violate federal criminal law, those people need to be remediated and restored. | |
| And I think that the pardon power could be used effectively by the next president to restore those folks. | |
| And Vivek Ramaswamy, as far as I know, is the only candidate that has promised to do so. | |
| I think maybe Donald Trump has alluded to that idea. | |
| I don't know if he has specifically said in so many words, but The reason why I talk about this now and we're aware of it now is because of the blatant political persecution that's been going down in what I think should be described as the Democrats' Reichstag moment, like the Nazis burned the Reichstag to blame on their enemies. | |
| Well, the Democrats either let January 6th happen or who knows, maybe they had the provocateurs in there. | |
| To get it to happen and then they use that to destroy their political opposition and ultimately they'd like to use that to destroy Donald Trump and everybody else is kind of just cannon fodder. | |
| It's like a never let a crisis go to waste moment for them where like people who had no men's rea to commit a crime had to be overcharged, had to be incarcerated because those people then became a symbol to others of danger and malcontent had to be incarcerated because those people then became a symbol to I can't believe we're applying those terms to like MAGA grandmothers who crossed over a barricade that was ripped down hours before by a Capitol Police officer. | |
| But that seems to be the case. | |
| Is it your experience, because I know you've communicated with others who've been in these circumstances, that people understand that their case is potentially part of a broader mosaic of Democrats and the political left and the mainstream media to try to scare Americans and to try to make people think that anyone who is associated with the MAGA movement or for Second Amendment rights or who wants to build a wall or have paper ballots is some sort of extremist? | |
| Well, let me just tell you from my experience what it feels like. | |
| As a journalist, as a talk show host, I now have this looming cloud over my head in the back of my mind with everything I say. | |
| I mean, just coming on your show and talking to you, I can't help it. | |
| It's like an involuntary muscle movement. | |
| Maybe call it an involuntary thought process of self-preservation. | |
| Am I gonna get arrested? | |
| Am I gonna get imprisoned? | |
| Am I gonna get thrown in jail for speaking to Matt Gaetz? | |
| Am I gonna get thrown in jail for telling Matt Gaetz and telling the world my story? | |
| This is something that I can't shake since I've gotten out of prison. | |
| Now, maybe with time, if I go a month or a year or five without the Democrats throwing me back in jail, maybe I can finally shake it. | |
| But that's what it feels like now. | |
| I have to live with this now in the back of my mind that just for speaking and doing my journalistic duties that I'm going to end up in prison. | |
| And while this hurts me, I can't even imagine the next generation of Americans living like this. | |
| This is what it's like in North Korea. | |
| This is what it's like in China, where people are afraid to speak. | |
| Is this what the next generation of Americans is going to have to grow up with in the back of their mind? | |
| To me, that just breaks my heart. | |
| And, you know, again, I think it's worth mentioning here because I witnessed this. | |
| Not only do the people that are in there defending their political views realize that they're part of a larger picture of the Democrat Party trying to oust their political opposition by making examples of the people they're throwing in jail. | |
| on a much more broader scale and scope this is what the department of justice does to everyone Matt whether they're facing charges for one thing or the other this is what they do to everybody you know when you spoke at the BOP hearing with Miss Peters you know they're asking for two billion dollars and and you know I can understand where they're coming from they do have a problem with employment they do have a problem with staff and they do have a problem with their facilities I | |
| had to shower in showers that had black mold all over them But here's the thing. | |
| You and I both know that they could get $2 billion, they could get $20 billion, and nothing is going to improve in this system. | |
| What needs to happen, if they were serious, what needs to happen is they need to find out what a prisoner costs annually, Equate that to $2 billion and release that many people back to their families. | |
| Because most people got railroaded by this Department of Justice because justice is not their incentive. | |
| It's convictions and incarceration. | |
| And I learned this firsthand. | |
| And what would be your message to those who are still carrying the weight of that with their own freedom being surrendered? | |
| I think about the vigils that are held outside the DC Gulag on a nightly basis and the people there who tragically are just trying to have a minute or a moment on the phone to believe that something better is going to emerge from all this. | |
| What can you say to them? | |
| It's really hard to say anything because my sentence was mere inches compared to the miles of wrongful convictions that people like Enrique Tarrio or Joe Biggs or many others are facing. | |
| There's really not much... | |
| To say other than I would just like the American people to know that the one thing that helped me get through it in the worst times when I was thrown into the hole and disappeared. | |
| In fact, I was in jail for being a speech crime and then I got thrown inside the jail in the jail for speaking too. | |
| I can elaborate on that further if you would like. | |
| But, you know, what they need to know is that people on the outside still care about them. | |
| The letters that I received, the books that I received, was some of the most meaningful things that helped me get through some of the worst times when I was in solitary in there. | |
| And they just need to know that people haven't forgotten about them. | |
| They need to know that the American people's hearts and minds are still with them. | |
| Because, I mean, really, It's dark. | |
| It's tough in there. | |
| It's psychologically damaging. | |
| It's physically damaging. | |
| And I've seen firsthand how people that have long time deal with it and there's highs and there's lows and there's good times and there's mostly bad times. | |
| But there's really nothing you can say to a man whose life has been stolen. | |
| There's really nothing you can say or do to a man who has been thrown in jail as a political prisoner by the Democrat Party. | |
| There really isn't. | |
| But what you can do to maybe make it a little easier is to just let them know you care. | |
| You know, there's some projects out there. | |
| I got some mail from them, like the Patriot Mail Project. | |
| And others where just getting a letter, just getting a letter from the outside telling you that, hey, we're praying for you. | |
| We haven't forgotten about you. | |
| You know, Americans are out here still thinking about you. | |
| We're still trying to get your stories in front of Congress so that people can know what's going on. | |
| I mean, just that helps you get through the day. | |
| Just putting 20 bucks into their commissary fund so they can buy something at the store that isn't prison slop to eat. | |
| Get a shirt that isn't a gift from the BOP that comes with sweat stains or underwear that comes with poop stains. | |
| Just little stuff like that can help their time a little easier go by. | |
| But I mean, there's really nothing you can say to a man who's had his life ripped away and thrown in a hole wrongfully. | |
| There's really not much you can say, but there's some actions you can take to maybe at least make it a little easier on them while they're down. | |
| Undeniably, we need to take more action as Republican leaders to see that the violations of civil rights are remediated to the extent that you can at this stage of the game. | |
| And this is time that a lot of people aren't going to get back in the event that... | |
| I mean, you mentioned Enrique Tarrio wasn't in Washington, D.C. and has some multi-decade sentence. | |
| It's really something that appears more... | |
| Like what you'd see in an Orwellian novel than what you'd observe in a free country. | |
| Owen, how can people follow your journalism and your work as you continue to offer commentary and analysis on what's facing the country? | |
| Well, I appreciate that. | |
| And let me just make one more point before I do. | |
| When the FBI indicted me, there was a magistrate judge, Judge Faruqi, who issued a motion to the Department of Justice saying, hey, wait a second, you've just illegally charged a journalist. | |
| And Matt, I'm sure you're aware of this, but Barack Obama wrote special standards and procedures for charging a journalist. | |
| There's different hoops and things you have to do when you charge a journalist. | |
| They didn't do any of them. | |
| And when this magistrate judge said, hey, wait a second, you just broke the law doing this, they just threw it away. | |
| They just didn't even care. | |
| They completely ignored it, even though everybody knows I'm a journalist. | |
| Now, thankfully, because I have been one of the most censored men in America, censored on all the mainstream social medias, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, everything else. | |
| Why? | |
| Because I'm a conservative that tells the truth. | |
| But thankfully, now that Elon Musk has taken over X, I'm back. | |
| I've got my political media account at Owen Troyer, 1776. I've got my personal account back at All I Do Is Owen. | |
| But you can follow my show. | |
| And what's amazing about this, because, I mean, in a way, it's an honor that the Democrats are so afraid of me. | |
| That they throw me in jail for my speech. | |
| But in the 30-page sentencing memo, they took speech from my talk show, which is the Infowars War Room. | |
| And because we get banned everywhere, you have to go to band.video slash war room to find it. | |
| I'm on 3 to 6 p.m. | |
| Central Times. | |
| They, 30 pages, and almost the entire memo was things I said on my show, nothing to do about January 6th. | |
| They quoted me calling Joe Biden a Chinese Communist puppet, and they put that in my sentencing memo, calling it relevant conduct. | |
| So apparently my show is so dangerous to the Democrat Party that they use it in sentencing memos against me to throw me in jail. | |
| So in a way I'm honored, but like I said, that thought is always there in the back of my head like an itch I can't scratch. | |
| Every day I go on air. | |
| Are they going to throw me in jail for going on air today? | |
| Are they going to throw me in jail because today I said that there's a Biden crime family that needs to have this impeachment inquiry going forward, which thank God the good Republicans in the House made move forward. | |
| But that's where you can find me. | |
| You can find me on X. You can find me at band.video. | |
| You can also find me on rumble.com slash Owen. | |
| So really the response here, Matt, has to be like what you've done. | |
| And with your podcast, Firebrand, and even when you were going through all the swords and arrows coming after you for ousting Kevin McCarthy, which I think you did the right thing, in times like this, we have to take the bold steps. | |
| And at times like this, where people are trying to minimize you, you have to become a maximalist. | |
| No, you're absolutely right. | |
| Every one of us has a node of power that we can influence in American politics. | |
| And what the left is trying to do is they are trying to erode that, diminish that to the greatest extent possible. | |
| And I think that using people as pawns as part of this The grand January 6th narrative is a really dangerous feature of that, but we see features of it from the censorship to the demonetizing to the deplatforming. | |
| And you're right, the only way it works is that we band together and that we become maximalists. | |
| And there are more of us than there are of them. | |
| And I think they know it, and I think that's what frightens them the most. | |
| Owen, there were so many people that were concerned about you. | |
| They were watching this podcast and many others. | |
| And so many folks are glad to see that you're free now. | |
| And while it is a terrible thing that you had to go through, and it seems to be kind of littered with retaliation and retribution that is tied to constitutionally protected expression, you wonder, you know, like, Does God put us through these trials and tribulations so that we can be maximalists, so that we can go beyond it and help others? | |
| And certainly with the slings and arrows I've taken, I firmly believe that builds our calluses so that we're even more prepared for the next fight. | |
| And I know you will be. | |
| So I'll give you the last word, but thanks so much for joining me on FireBrain, man. | |
| I completely agree with that. | |
| I can't express my gratitude for all the care and concern and prayers for me while I was in. | |
| I will promise those people in your audience that I'm never going to give up in the good fight. | |
| And I won't speak for you, Matt, but I know that I'm sure you feel the same way as we're both fighting for the future of not just the United States of America, but really I see it as human freedom of existence on this planet. | |
| Amen. | |
| Amen. | |
| Thanks for joining us, Owen. | |
| Give this guy a follow. | |
| And thanks for joining us on Firebrand. |
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