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Jan. 30, 2024 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
31:17
Episode 145 LIVE: Who Is The J6 Pipe Bomber? (feat. Rep. Thomas Massie) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
of the House of Representatives.
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 Gates, for holding the line.
Matt Gates is a courageous man.
If we had hundreds of Matt Gates 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 Gates.
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!
and send in the firebrands.
- Can you tell us how the second pipe bomb was found at the DNC?
- Again, I'm not gonna get into that here.
900 days ago is when this happened, and you said you had total confidence we'd apprehend the subject.
We've found video that looks like somebody, a passerby, miraculously found this pipe bomb At the DNC and then notified the police.
Miraculously, I say, because it was specifically the same, the precise time to cause the maximum distraction from the events going on at the Capitol.
Can you show this video that we have, please?
I'd like to know if the director has seen this.
This is somebody with a mask on, wearing a hat.
They're walking in front of the DNC, which is out of the view on the right-hand side.
You'll see him come into view.
He goes to one police car.
He goes to another police car.
He's holding a backpack.
He's got a mask on.
He's talking to the police.
And within a minute, they start scrambling.
You'll see the camera turn to the pipe bomb, the location of the pipe bomb.
By the way, that's, I believe, the Metro Police are now getting out of their car.
And that's Vice President-Elect's detail in the black SUV, I believe.
Parked about 30 feet from the pipe bomb, eating lunch.
Okay, now we go over to the location of the pipe bomb.
The cameras are scrambling.
It appears to me that that's not a coincidence, that the person with the backpack who walked by that bench and then went up to the police and the detail didn't do that accidentally.
They had a purpose in mind and then what transpired after that was the result of information that person gave to them.
If that person found the pipe bomb, would they be a suspect?
Well, again, I don't want to speculate about specific individuals.
I will tell you that we have done thousands of interviews, reviewed something like 40,000 video files, of which this is one, assessed 500-something tips.
Have you interviewed that person?
We have conducted all logical investigative steps and interviewed all logical individuals at this point.
It's 900 days.
You need to tell us what you found.
Because we're finding stuff you haven't released into the public.
We are live.
That was Kentucky's Thomas Massey.
He joins us now on Firebrand.
You asked Director Ray these questions about the person who found the pipe bomb because you believe that that could tell us more about this really exquisite event on January 6th that was unlike anything else that happened on January 6th.
There were no weapons that were found on people that were around the Capitol.
But before we get into...
This person who found the pipe bomb, the work of your staff above and beyond to go and ascertain these video movements.
Just for a moment, talk about the significance of the pipe bomb in the overall January 6th narrative and how it's been used against people.
Well, I mean, the narrative they're trying to push is this was an insurrection.
The problem is there were no weapons.
You would think to bring a weapon to an insurrection, but the only weapons there were were weapons of mass destruction, these two pipe bombs, right?
It heightens basically the chances that you're going to get indicted.
These pipe bombs are mentioned in the statements to indict people.
It brings up the overall tenor Of what was going on that day.
And so it's significant if these were real or not.
And there are theories on why they were there.
Were they diversions?
Who wanted a diversion?
Who wanted to make it easier to get into the Capitol that day?
And when the government wanted to have higher criminal acuity and charging documents, the pipe bombs were referenced, even probably factoring into the sentencing decisions of some judges for people that were blocks away and had nothing to do with these pipe bombs.
So you have been like a dog on a bone.
You've been questioning the director of the FBI and others about Yeah, it looks identical to the training pipe bombs they build or train with that the FBI uses.
So I just want to draw a fine point on it.
The very type style function that the FBI trains on is substantially similar to what was found.
Right down to the 60 minute kitchen timer.
Now here's the problem with the 60 minute kitchen timer on these bombs.
Both of them had identical 60 minute kitchen timers.
The FBI claims that these bombs were placed 17 hours before they were discovered.
And so that begs the question that I asked the assistant director in charge of Washington, D.C. field office, because he still claims, they all still claim these were viable pipe bombs.
I said, how does a 60-minute kitchen timer set off a bomb 17 hours later?
And he said, it can't, it won't, it doesn't.
Right, so they essentially set a 17-hour fuse with a timer that was only an hour.
Right, because I guess the training manual only shows you how to build one with a kitchen timer on it.
So your staff then goes to look at the video, and you send your team to look at the different angles, and you come up with what we're showing on the screen now.
And you see a very specific person who ends up finding this pipe bomb and ends up reporting it.
Was there anything about these behaviors you're seeing that immediately piqued your curiosity?
Well, first of all, the lackadaisical response To the notification that there's a bomb nearby.
In that video that I showed Christopher Wray, we had to speed it up and take out parts of it to get all that done in a testimony because they mill about, they finish their lunch in their cars after the guy with the backpack Comes up and says, hey, there's a bomb over here.
They sit in their cars eating lunch for a while.
It looks like the Secret Service had got in the MPD car and was having lunch with them.
And it takes about four minutes for them to get out.
By the way, in the meantime, there are school children walking past what they've been told is a bomb sitting there.
So you're immediately taking note of the lack of sense of urgency around this...
You know, belief that an explodable bomb has been discovered.
Right.
And then one other thing, Matt, you know, when I first saw the video, we didn't have as much information as we have now.
We've got more information.
My first thought is, who is that person who found the bomb?
Like, because...
And I asked Dan Tuano in a transcribed interview, wouldn't that be a suspect?
And he said, that's Investigation 101. Dan Tuano is the Assistant Director in Charge of Washington, D.C. Field Office.
The guy in charge of this investigation for two years.
And so you recently met with Capitol Police?
Correct.
Today.
Today.
And what did you learn in that meeting?
I learned that backpack guy, January 6th backpack guy, not to be confused with January 5th backpack person, backpack guy was a non-uniform, you know, plainclothes police officer in You know, in the employ of the Capitol Hill Police.
The person who found the pipe bomb, the person who, D'Antuano, who was leading the investigation, say, oh yeah, the person who found it, it'd be Investigation 101 that they would be a suspect initially, until ruled out.
You're saying that person was an undercover, plainclothes Capitol Police officer, and the Capitol Police confirmed that to you today?
They confirmed that to me today, yes.
By the way, what does that mean to you?
Well, it heightens some of my concerns and reduces some of the other concerns.
One of the concerns that's heightened was trying to give the Secret Service and the Metro Police Department the benefit of the doubt when they took four minutes.
They finished their lunch before they went and dealt with this pipe bomb.
I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and think that Well, if it's just some random passerby and he said, hey, there's something shiny over there, could be a lawn sprinkler, you know, not sure, maybe you want to check it out.
But that's not what it was.
It was a person who was, you know, they say, again, when I relate this to you, I'm relating what the Capitol Police have told me.
They say it was a Capitol Police officer who found this bomb and that he told them it was a bomb.
And he radioed it in, said, We've got the device.
We found another device.
Remember, here's the other just amazing timing, is that the first pipe bomb, the one at the Capitol Hill Club, now they call it the RNC pipe bomb, but they really should be calling it the Capitol Hill pipe bomb.
I mean, the two buildings are next to each other, but it was like...
The Capitol Hill Club, which is an entity where Republican members of Congress socialize and fundraise.
Right.
The reason I'm making that distinction is Darren Beattie, who's done amazing work on this.
He's the guy who's said, hey, you should be asking some of these questions.
And I said, you know what?
You're right.
I will be asking those questions.
He points out that the RNC-DNC narrative was made up after the fact.
It was really the Capitol Hill Club DNC narrative that they should be talking about, but it just sounds a lot better that, oh, we knew to go look at the DNC once we found one at the RNC. Interesting.
Well, if you thought somebody was going to blow up the RNC, don't they hate Republicans?
Why would they also want to blow up?
Anyways.
So, you know, they come down.
This plainclothes police officer who had been in the vicinity of that one, they had just found that.
The timing is remarkable because...
It was found five minutes before the breach of the bicycle racks at the perimeter of the Capitol.
Just a miraculous timing that would have provided exactly the right timing to distract.
After sitting in an alley for 17 hours, found by somebody who says she was going to go do her laundry, then within...
They respond to that.
They secure the area.
And 15 minutes later, they find this other bomb.
Like, what miraculous timing.
Well, I definitely don't believe...
That the Capitol Police would purposefully go and set a bomb anywhere that could potentially blow up and do anyone harm.
I am not there that they would do something like that.
However, you seem to point out in questioning with the ATF director that this wasn't an operational bomb that was going to blow up and hurt anybody.
Remember that?
Right.
The assistant director in charge, he went on TV and said these were operable bombs and offered a reward, put out a message that they played on TV. And so in the beginning of my transcribed interview with him, he still maintained that they were operable.
Well, hold on.
We're going to get the ATF director's take on that.
Questioning from Congressman Massey.
Take a listen.
Also, I see that you're cooperating with the FBI. The ATF is on the January 6th pipe bomb investigation.
What can you tell us about how that's going?
Obviously, that's a significant matter.
It is an ongoing criminal investigation, and so I'm not going to comment on an ongoing criminal investigation.
Were those pipe bombs operable?
Again, again.
The ATF is the expert.
Again, it's an ongoing criminal investigation, and under long-standing policy, I cannot comment.
And we've just had a whole committee for two years that investigated an ongoing investigation, so I'm not accepting that answer from you.
We need to know these things.
Do you know how the pipe bomb was discovered at the DNC? We've been told how it was discovered at the RNC. And according to a press release from the FBI, you're working with them on this investigation.
Respectfully, I understand your disagreement, but I cannot comment because it is an ongoing criminal investigation.
It's an ongoing cover-up.
So helpful!
It's their policy not to comment on ongoing cover-ups.
Yeah, it seems like it.
Here's what I've come to know since that interview, too.
You chase some leads.
I believe, based on discussions with police, with FBI, and with former ATF, who now works for Capitol Police, that the bombs went to Quantico for inspection, not to the ATF. Now, he could have just told me that in the hearing, right?
Oh, interesting.
He could have said, well, we didn't look at the fragments after we blew these things up.
It was actually FBI, Quantico looked at them.
But he wouldn't even tell me that.
So he either doesn't know it or just is so stuck on it like a broken record on our longstanding...
Policy not to comment.
So we're in this meeting last night and one of our Republican colleagues turns to you as you're explaining how long it's been that this has been an open investigation.
These videos that show the strange behavior of a person we now know was a plainclothes Capitol Police officer.
And one of our Republican colleagues kept pressing you and saying, but Thomas, why would they do this?
Why would anyone try to How do you plant these phony, fake devices in order to create confusion that day?
And, you know, we don't know the answer to that question in all honesty.
Do you have a working theory?
Yeah, well, again, I don't know who did it, but I can tell you a consequence of this.
Because this is buried in the back of the January 6th committee report that...
There was a call to bring more bike racks to the Capitol.
They had hundreds of them loaded up, ready to bring to the Capitol to reinforce the Capitol.
And it turns out those never made it because this DNC pipe bomb was discovered and they set up a perimeter and blocked them from coming.
So if there was a booby trap intended to have people commit a technical violation of federal criminal law with no intent to break the law, that was facilitated perhaps by the very interestingly timed discovery of these two devices.
Yeah, whether there was intent or not, the result of this, according to the January 6th committee, Was that it made it easier to breach the Capitol because the reinforcements couldn't be brought to the Capitol.
There's a report in the Daily Wire.
I don't know quite what to make of it.
It says, FBI tied January 6th pipe bomber to MetroCard of ex-government official but blocked interview of him, former agent says.
This former agent, Kyle Serafin, very outspoken, has been someone who's facilitated other whistleblower testimony and the head The lead here is a former FBI agent says the Bureau quickly believed that it tied the person who planted the pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee to a particular Metro fare card and license plate but did not allow him to interview the person of interest and pulled his team off the lead.
When you hear that, again, any claim that we see has to be corroborated, investigated, reviewed, but what's your reaction to a former FBI agent saying when they had more questions, when there were leads, that there was an impairment to that factual development?
It's all fishy.
I mean, I'm sure they had several leads.
Why they decided not to pursue that one, I don't know.
But let's talk about why they don't have this person in custody right now and why they're not sure.
I asked Antwano in this transcribed interview, what about the cell phone data?
Because...
D'Antuano, and this is the narrative that the FBI has put out there, is that the night before, somebody walking around past the DNC and the Capitol Hill Club slash RNC alleyway, they say that person planted those bombs the night before, walking around.
Now, we don't actually have video of that person placing the pipe bomb.
We have video of that person walking around the neighborhood with a backpack.
And sitting on the bench where it was found and reaching down.
But the camera angles, which we believe they should have at the DNC that would show the placement of that pipe bob, have never been released.
But we know that camera angle exists because they released a still frame of it.
But they haven't released that.
Anyways, I'm going through all that just to get to this point of what I asked Antwano.
We saw that person on January 5th use their cell phone a couple times.
Did you geofence that area and use that to find the person?
And Dan Tuano, I want to...
I probably should read this, right?
So I don't get it wrong because we've got this right here.
Oh heck, I'll just tell you.
He said that the...
Let me see if I can find it.
It's in there somewhere.
I'll just tell you what he said and then people can look it up later.
You'll put it on your site.
Sure.
He said that he didn't want to start any conspiracy theories.
He used the word conspiracy theory, but that the cell phone data for one of the providers was corrupted that night in that location.
Oh, what a coinkydink.
And not all cell phone data, but cell phone data for one provider, and they suspect that provider.
And by the way, cell phone data was used in prosecutions of January 6th defendants quite frequently.
So in the geofenced area, there's a whole lot of cell phone data applicability, but then it turns out...
Just in the instance of this suspected pipe bomb planter, the cell phone data is corrupted.
But we don't want to start any conspiracy theories.
No, he didn't want to either.
So you have been the leading investigator on this.
What are you going to evaluate?
Today you broke major news here that this person was Capitol Police.
Lay it on us.
Okay.
The Secret Service, now this may already be in public knowledge, and you may have already covered this, but I confirmed it today, that after five preservation requests, the Secret Service deleted all their cell phone texts for that day and destroyed the phones.
Yeah, we had seen those reports, and the January 6th committee tried to act as though that was some effort to cover up reactions to Trump's behavior.
Right, it's been covered in that context, right?
Whether the Secret Service were wrestling or something.
Somewhat of a fantastical story.
Right, a crazy story.
It's all been in that context.
But regardless of that context, in this context, it means we don't know what they were saying to each other when they had Kamala Harris.
By the way, it took nine minutes to get Kamala Harris alerted and out of the building after they knew the bomb was there.
Like...
Matt?
Yeah, there's no way that if they believed there was actually an explosive device, they would have left the incoming Vice President of the United States in a building.
What if you hired somebody to be responsible for your health and well-being, and those people found out there was a pipe bomb between you and them, but they wanted to finish their lunch, Before they got out of the car, and then they let some school kids walk by this pipe, Bob.
And then they thought to get you out of there five minutes after that.
Like, okay, there's a bomb, and I'm supposed to keep the incoming vice president from being hurt, but this is a really good McDouble.
And they just nailed it on this McDouble, and I just can't let this one sit and go cold.
That seems to be what happened there.
Who is the witness that you would want to interview next, have before our committee next?
What is the next kind of round of document demands or video demands that you think advance this investigation?
Well, I don't want to...
Matt, I have an ongoing congressional investigation.
But seriously, there are some obvious leads to follow up here.
We need to ask, for instance, the cell phone providers.
Now, the FBI won't give us their communication with the cell phone providers.
But if you're a cell phone provider and you're watching Matt Gaetz's podcast here, consider this as a preservation notification that we need to ask those cell phone providers for their communication with the FBI. Like, the FBI is telling us the dog ate their homework.
I want to go talk to the dog that ate the homework.
Did you eat this homework?
At what point did you tell the FBI that you had eaten their homework?
You know, i.e.
the cell phone data was corrupted.
Like, that is...
Anything, anywhere what the FBI is doing or anybody else touches something that's outside of the FBI, we need to go corroborate that.
So this cell phone data, that's something, an artifact that we can go corroborate.
Talking to the Capitol Police like I did today, that is something that we can corroborate.
I haven't actually talked to a backpack person yet.
I want to talk to that person.
I do believe that that person was a Capitol Hill police officer based on what these other Capitol Hill police told me today.
Isn't that the next key witness?
Now that we know that it was a plainclothes Capitol police officer who found the pipe bomb, we have to get a transcribed interview of that individual, right?
I mean, we have to.
I think that person...
Well, those people gave statements to the FBI. We need to look at those statements.
There are a lot of places you can go with this.
Some things...
Some suspicions will be shut down and others may be heightened.
And we just, like you say, go where the facts lead you.
Amen.
All right.
I want to get your take on just a couple of the things that are in the news right now.
Senator Wyden released documents confirming that the NSA is buying Americans' internet browsing records.
He's called on the intelligence community to stop buying data that is obtained around the Fourth Amendment.
You and I have worked on the Fourth Amendment is not for sale acts to try to stop the government from doing an end run around people's rights to buy commercially available data.
I consider this a really strong piece of evidence in support of those legislative efforts.
Why don't you have the chance to react to it?
Well, I mean, give them credit.
They're taking the easiest route to invade our privacy.
Just go buy it.
I mean, it's disappointing.
When people see you're getting chat scrolling by here on your screen, the one thing I hear most frequently is, what are you going to do about it?
What are you going to do about it?
Quit tweeting about it.
Quit going on Matt's podcast.
Stop talking about it.
Do something.
We've got the bill to stop this.
The Fourth Amendment is Not-for-Sale Act.
I think, is Warren Davidson the sponsor of that, and we're co-sponsors of it?
Yeah, great congressman.
Yeah, from Ohio.
So, that was part of our FISA reform package that got thrown in the trash when FISA was expiring in December that should have been put on the floor.
But it was not.
And so, you know, FISA didn't get fully reauthorized.
They punted it for a while.
They kicked the can down the road.
But that legislation needs to be in place to stop this.
And some of our colleagues on the intelligence community are actually wanting to expand surveillance authorities.
They want enhanced authorities to be able to soak up information that they collect on public Wi-Fi.
And I think when you see the abuses that are existing and the end run around the Fourth Amendment, it should give us grave cause for concern.
This week they're hammering out the details on this tax extender bill.
I've got grave concerns about that bill.
I would not vote for it as I see it now.
What's the Thomas Massey take on where we are on the tax bill?
The Thomas Massey take is when you give people tax money back that they didn't pay in, That's called welfare.
This is a welfare expansion.
I think they call them refundable tax credits.
It's just a giveaway.
It's welfare.
When you give people tax money back that they didn't pay in, those are cash payments.
Why would we put cash payments?
How does that fix anything that's wrong in this country to give people cash payments for having kids?
I can't imagine it's going to advance our economic interests and probably won't help us from a debt standpoint.
He's the smartest member of Congress.
He's been the most dogged on the January 6th pipe bomb investigation and many other investigations.
Thank you for joining me again on Firebrand Thomas.
Thank you Matt.
Roll the credits.
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