Episode 148: The Australian Prime Minister's QAnon Friend feat Karen Stewart
We speak to the sister of 'Burn Notice', the QAnon influencer and long-time friend of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison — who is accused of inserting his buddy's QAnon beliefs ("Ritual Sexual Abuse") into an official apology speech for Australia's long history of institutional sexual abuse and coverups.
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Welcome, listener, to Chapter 148 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the Might Guy Revisited episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
This week, we're heading down under once more to examine the ongoing saga of the Australian PM, Scott Morrison, and his red-pilled buddy, professional town planner Tim Stewart, whose Q Influencer moniker was Burn Notice, or Burn Spy, before he was banned by Twitter.
The scandal first surfaced in 2019, when it became apparent that their friendship had influenced words chosen by the PM in one of his speeches, specifically a reference to ritual abuse, which will be a familiar term for those following Q. Now, Mategate, as it's been dubbed, is back in the papers again, this time with Stewart's own family members speaking out against his beliefs and proximity to the Prime Minister.
We'll be walking you through the story, and then we'll be sitting down with Karen Stewart, the younger sister of Bern Notice, or Tim Stewart, who has been tracking her brother's redpilling and its potential effects on national politics in Australia.
But before we get into all that... For my first story, the FBI warns Congress that QAnon followers may turn violent.
I think some of them already know because they were in the Capitol on January 6th.
In a June 4th bulletin distributed to members of Congress, the FBI said that its experts believe that some QAnon followers will no longer trust the plan and engage in real-world violence.
This is not the first time that the FBI has warned about the threats posed by QAnon followers.
In early 2019, the Phoenix Field Office of the FBI issued a warning about the threat of conspiracy theory-driven extremists, and then named QAnon specifically as a possible source of that threat.
In this newer statement, I thought it was kind of strange, not because it was, like, wrong.
In fact, much of the bulletin echoed things that I and other researchers who study QAnon have been saying for many years.
But I thought it was strange because it didn't seem to add much of anything new, and it didn't give any concrete reasons why we should be especially concerned right now.
I mean, I guess I kind of always assumed that the Feds were more on top of the threat posed by QAnon than the rest of us schlubs, but I guess maybe that's not the case.
No, and like, what are we supposed to make of any of this?
I mean, yeah.
It's like, thanks for telling us that our houses are on fire.
It's very strange and worrying where it's like, oh, hey, hey, just so you know, bad things may happen.
They may not, can't predict the future.
I mean, that's always been true.
That's been true since, I mean, like I said, there have been, you know, QAnon murders and terrorist attacks before, and so this isn't, New information.
I just wish it wish wish they could be a little bit more specific rather than bad things are gonna be have might happen Be afraid, you know rest assured that when these bad things happen, they will be there on the sidelines taking notes diligently So this was a key passage from that intelligence bulletin We assess that some domestic violent extremist inherits of QAnon likely will begin to believe they can no longer, quote, trust the plan referenced in QAnon posts and that they have an obligation to change from serving as, quote, digital soldiers towards engaging in real world violence, including harming perceived members of the cabal,
such as Democrats and other political opposition.
Instead of continually awaiting Q's promised actions which have not occurred,
other QAnon inherents likely will disengage from the movement
or reduce their involvement in the wake of the administration change.
The disengagement may be spurred by the large mainstream social media
deplatforming of QAnon content based on social media companies' own determinations
that users have violated terms of service and the failure of long-promised QAnon-linked events to
materialize.
Some domestic violent extremists have discussed how to radicalize new users
to niche social media platforms following QAnon inherents' migration to these platforms
after large-scale removals of QAnon content from mainstream sites.
Adherents to QAnon by some domestic violent extremists likely will be affected by factors such as the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, The level of societal polarization in the United States, social media companies' willingness to QAnon-related content on their sites, and the frequency and content of pro-QAnon statements by public individuals who feature prominently in the core QAnon narratives.
That last line about pro-QAnon statements by public individuals who feature prominently in core QAnon narratives, I think that almost certainly refers to General Michael Flynn.
What are you talking about, meat boy?
I think what the feds are saying is that, like, Listen, we can't really predict exactly how far Flynn is going to go in his promotion of QAnon.
Flynn right now is a bit of on a road tour about QAnon.
He was at the Dallas QAnon Rally.
He was at Q Adjacent's Reawaken America Tour in Tampa, Florida.
So I think that, I guess, like the rest of us, we're thinking, like, how far is Flynn going to go?
Because he's a hero in QAnon world.
For my next story, dozens of QAnon followers are running for the 2022 congressional election.
Now, you may remember that during the lead up to the 2020 election, friend of the show Alex Kaplan over at Media Matters kept a running list of QAnon congressional candidates.
And two people on that list, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, wound up actually getting elected to Congress.
Well, he has been back at it again for the congressional elections that will take place late next year.
And to date, the number of QAnon congressional candidates is 35.
So off to a great start.
So Florida is currently the state with the most QAnon candidates, unsurprising.
So there are eight QAnon congressional candidates from Florida and six from California.
There are two each from Arizona, Nevada, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Ohio.
You just said six from California.
Are you trying to get over that just because you're from the state or something?
That's pretty high.
That's pretty good.
We're second.
You know what?
Honestly, I think by next year we're going to catch up.
California is going to be number one.
We can beat Florida at their own game, except in a drier manner.
Not content-wise, though, to make the distinction.
That'll be nice and moist.
Climate-wise.
The content will be very clammy.
The content is going to be downright moldy by the time it gets to us.
One such candidate from Florida is Anthony Sabatini, and Sabatini is an incumbent member of the Florida House of Representatives, so he's already an elected rep, and he is now running for Florida's 11th congressional district.
And back in May of 2020, he tweeted a link to QMap.pub, which was once the largest QDrop aggregator site.
Incredible.
There are people who are straight up tweeting Q-drops and shit, who are running for Congress, possibly going to expand the QAnon caucus in 2022.
For my next story, a QAnon follower who participated in the January 6th insurrection now says that it was a pack of lies.
One of the most famous images to come out of the riots on January 6th depicted a man wearing a beanie and a Q shirt that said, trust the plan.
And he was shown chasing a Capitol police officer up a flight of stairs.
That man is 41 year old.
Douglas Jensen, who traveled all the way from Iowa to participate in the riot.
Jensen later told police that he purposely jumped to the front of the crowd because he wanted his QAnon t-shirt to be prominently seen on TV so that Q would, quote, get the credit for the insurrection.
I have to say, mission accomplished.
I mean, if that was the goal, then when a lot of people think about the events of January 6th, they also think of QAnon.
I mean, this looks like the right is identifying that Q can open revolutionary possibilities for their movements.
So, Jensen was arrested on several counts, and according to a recent legal filing by his lawyers, he claims that he had a change of heart.
His lawyers say that he feels deceived, recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies.
That legal filing goes on to say this.
For reasons he does not even understand today, he became a true believer and was convinced he was doing a noble service by becoming a digital soldier for Q. Maybe it was midlife crisis, the pandemic, or perhaps the messages seemed to elevate him from his ordinary life to exalted status with an honorable goal.
In any event, he fell victim to this barrage of internet-sourced info and came to the Capitol at the direction of the President of the United States to demonstrate that he was a true patriot.
No, this is, I think, an interesting strategy that has been employed by a few people representing people who were arrested as a consequence of January 6th.
It's basically blaming the president, blaming internet radicalization.
I mean, I guess it remains to be seen how successful these strategies are.
I mean, it worked okay for Anthony Comello, who was deemed unfit to stand trial for that murder charge.
He was a QAnon follower who And so now that's legal?
you the mob boss but yeah interesting legal strategy. Yeah it's the
brainwashing strategy you know essentially these people were brainwashed
by the internet and it caused them to you know commit violence. And so now
that's legal if you get brainwashed by the internet you get a free crime.
What free crime?
Don't make it Storming the Capitol, you dipshit.
It's like the Purge, but not all on one day, just kind of staggered throughout the year for different tiers.
It's like when your group gets called at the fucking airlines, you know?
I mean, most of them would just use it to bump everybody in the Starbucks line aside.
For my next story, QAnon followers dismayed that Donald Trump will be touring with Bill O'Reilly in December.
So it was announced that former President Trump is going to tour at the end of this year.
He's going to be participating in a series of paid ticketed events with Bill O'Reilly in Florida and Texas.
Now, one might suspect that this would be good news for QAnon followers.
You know, they finally get to see Trump again about a year after he was kicked off of social media.
But it turns out that some of them were disappointed because this contradicts the widespread belief in QAnon world that Trump will return to the White House, possibly in August, you know?
Sir, how did you find time for the tour?
You're going to be president!
One QAnon follower on Telegram named Peace Lily wrote this.
She wrote this in all caps, by the way, so I'll try to read accordingly.
Okay, I guess my question is Trump coming back?
Why would he be doing a tour through the end of the year with O'Reilly?
Hmm?
Something doesn't feel right?
Another Telegram user named Tammy B wrote this.
Is this a false flag to take the sting out of President Trump's declaration that he'll be back sooner than we think?
Kind of keeping the MSM guessing.
I mean, they're still doing the same thing where it's like, oh, we have no idea what the hell is going on, therefore...
The MSM and the Norways don't either, therefore our confusion is good.
Yeah, well, this faith that because we don't know what's going on, he must.
Well, they're used to Q just asking questions, so they're like, maybe my state of confusion where I'm non-stop asking questions is actually positive?
Still another QAnon follower on Telegram named Jeff P wrote this.
So now we know the plan isn't August.
I'm feeling more and more like we've been fed a lot of disinformation.
Right.
Go with that feeling, Jeff.
Really examine it.
Nurture it.
You can do it, buddy.
Really, that feeling of discomfort, don't run away from it.
Lean into it.
However, others still kept the faith.
I saw one QAnon follower named John who said this.
All just before Christmas.
Maybe via remote from the White House to tell us of all the good things happening?
I see.
Tell us the good news.
Yeah.
I want my president.
I want it to be Mr. Trump and he goes and he's the president again.
I know.
Won't Santa Claus do this for me?
Yeah, we talk about it a lot, but it's so sad how much Trump losing the election has dampened the ambition of QAnon followers.
Before it was like, worldwide revolution and peace and freedom and prosperity and Hillary and Gitmo.
Now it's like, I just want Trump in office again.
I demand the new Funko Poppy Trump.
But I mean, look, they're being realistic, right?
I mean, at first they were expecting, you know, a new world, you know, a utopian society where the libs are crushed and sent to, you know, rehabilitation camps.
But now, you know, maybe, you know, in the face of him kind of, you know, not publicly winning the election, they're going to settle for, you know, secretly taking back over the office at some point this year.
I like the idea that Trump privately won the election.
But I mean, I do wonder, Julian, if... I think you were talking about it on an episode from a couple weeks ago, where it's like, maybe Trump, like, will kind of fade from the sort of hero status of, you know, the sort of general, you know, QAnon believers that push forward that are, you know, waiting for the storm.
You know, maybe they want the storm so bad That they are willing to sort of let Trump kind of fall to the wayside if say a Michael Flynn or somebody that's you know more directly sort of responding to them kind of takes the forefront.
One thing to take into account is that people realize they have no more political control, so they just want to change the products, right?
So it's the same thing with this.
It's like, well, at least I want him on TV.
At least I want him to be honored in some way.
You're going to keep falling back on smaller and smaller things to demand.
But the cycle of Trump having political power can best be compared to a huge TV show like Game of Thrones.
I think that's going to be seeing the same half-life.
From the day it stops airing, even if, you know, there's spinoffs or even if the actors talk about it or there's shows or whatever, you will kind of be losing power over time.
But not because people turn their back on it, but just because it becomes less relevant, time moves on.
I think Trump will exist like that in culture.
Yeah, yeah.
Because political culture and entertainment culture exist exactly the same way.
And look at what they're demanding.
They're demanding his return to the spectacle.
Please put him back in the fucking television where he's telling me, you know, the things I want to hear, which is essentially just a product change demand.
It's just, they're just doing like, they're just doing like a survey.
Which makes you wonder why Trump doesn't do his own TV network where he can be on.
He's not that good at it.
He needs, like, a network to work for him.
That's why Bill O'Reilly.
That makes sense.
It's almost like, you know, people saying, it's like, ah, I don't like this Jay Leno character so much.
I like Johnny Carson better.
I wish he would come back.
You know, it's like this.
I like this change.
This new host isn't doing it for me quite.
Mike Gaik, revisited.
MateGate is a story that was reported by The Guardian and the Australian news outlet Crikey in 2019.
That year we also talked about it for an episode with our friends at the Bunta Vista podcast.
MateGate concerned the fact that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was longtime friends with a QAnon influencer named Burn Spy or Burn Notice, whose real name is Tim Stewart.
Now, Stewart had been a family friend of Morrison since the 90s.
He and his wife regularly hung out at the official residence of the Prime Minister, where Stewart's wife was even employed as a helper, and the two families went on holidays together.
Burnt Spy at one time was like a mid-level QAnon influencer.
He at one point was even queued, or he had a post of his on Twitter that was linked to in a queue drop.
So he was, you know, he wasn't totally irrelevant.
He wasn't like a huge, he wasn't Jo-Em level.
But he was, he did have a few tens of thousands of followers.
He had some sort of, some pull in the QAnon community.
Now, this in isolation isn't necessarily concerning.
You know, sometimes you go through life, you discover that your friends or family are pilled.
You obviously can't be held responsible for what your friends believe.
But the more troubling revelation, was that it appeared that Tim Stewart had the Prime
Minister's ear, even to the extent of influencing what he said in a speech. The specific incident
happened in late 2018, when Prime Minister Morrison issued a formal apology to
victims of child sexual abuse in Australia. During that speech, Morrison used an unusual
phrase, "ritual sexual abuse."
The crimes of ritual sexual abuse happened in schools, churches, youth groups, scout troops,
orphanages, foster homes, sporting clubs, group homes, charities, and in family homes as well.
That raised eyebrows because the phrase ritual sexual abuse isn't commonly used by sexual abuse victims or their advocates, but QAnon followers love it.
Probably because it invokes images of elites donning robes and tying children to stone tablets so they can be drained of their adrenochrome.
Scott Morrison's office claimed that they got the phrase from victim advocates, but that doesn't quite comport with interviews conducted by the publication Crikey.
When they asked one person who consulted with the Australian government about the speech, they said this about the phrase.
We were consulting with victim groups, and if that had come up at all, we would have got rid of it.
If anything, it would have been, don't use this.
Also originally reported by Crikey was that in the hours before Morrison's address to Parliament, Tim Stewart sent a text to a colleague that said, I think Scott is going to do it.
And then shortly after the speech, Tim Stewart posted a tweet that called special attention to the phrase.
That tweet said this.
What a great speech.
At Scott Morrison MP, acknowledging the victims of ritual abuse.
View it 606 in clip below.
Now, when this story broke almost two years ago, I thought it was, like, insane.
Especially insane it wasn't getting the attention I thought it deserved.
Like, a major head of state appeared to be getting advice from a QAnon follower.
Now, despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to draw sufficient attention to the story.
However, the controversy reignited thanks to a report from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation television news program Four Corners.
I wasn't familiar with this particular program, but apparently it's like the Australian 60 Minutes.
The airing of this report was delayed for weeks, apparently.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the story was originally set to run in May and had been approved by the corporation's legal department and its head of investigations.
However, management at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, or ABC, delayed airing the episode.
This was seen by some as an attempt to dampen tensions between the national broadcaster and the federal government.
However, management at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation delayed airing the episode.
This was seen by some as an attempt to dampen tensions between the national broadcaster and the federal government.
However, the episode did eventually air, and it added...
Yeah, I thought it was really good.
You can see it for free on YouTube, and I think it added a really welcome human element to the story.
The program interviewed the relatives of Tim Stewart, and they revealed that they were so concerned about his beliefs that they notified the national security hotline several times.
The report also revealed that there were a lot more messages from Tim Stewart suggesting that he was pressuring Morrison to include the phrase, ritual sexual abuse, in that speech.
Elihi Priest showed Four Corners messages he says Tim Stewart sent him, referring to his attempts to get the words ritual abuse into the apology.
I am organising an intimate strategy for the PM, re the ritual phrase.
Ok mate, I'm just preparing a message to Scott now, re Monday.
Once he's awake mate, he will kick ass.
A priest says he also received a text message Tim Stewart said he had sent to his wife, Lynelle.
An army of victims and therapists would specifically love it if Scott's apology referenced ritual abuse victims.
This exact wording is a key phrase for victims.
Think of this like a code that sends a direct and clear message that they have been heard by Scott specifically.
The airing of that Four Corners episode apparently intensified the degree of scrutiny on the prime minister for his relationship with Tim Stewart.
Morrison was asked about the report during a press conference and he offered a testy response.
Well, you've seen that report that Fairfax 9 newspapers are reporting that the ABC bosses blocked a Four Corners episode linking you to a QAnon figure.
Are you concerned the ABC is involved in so-called vigilante journalism?
Were the allegations put to you and what is your connection to the man at the centre of that story?
Well, I find it deeply offensive.
That there would be any suggestion that I would have any involvement or support for such a dangerous organisation.
I clearly do not.
It's also just very disappointing that Four Corners in their inquiries would seek to cast this aspersion not just against me but by members of my own family.
I just think that's really poor form.
Thank you very much.
When he says "organization," it almost feels like that's a pilled statement, right?
You're saying like, "No, no, there is a thing. It's called QAnon. It's like a set of like military leakers, and I know
they're dangerous, and so I will not associate myself with them."
Right. He's not calling it an extremist movement or something. It's like an organization, you know?
That report was even referenced in the Australian Parliament.
Member of Parliament Chris Bowen denounced Morrison.
Now let us be clear, Mr. Speaker, what this is not about.
Who the Prime Minister is friends with is entirely a matter for him.
He is not accountable for the political views of his friends.
But when this Prime Minister gets input from a conspiracy theorist for an important speech in this chamber, he is accountable to this House and to the Australian people.
He is accountable to this House and the Australian people for who is employed at taxpayers' expense at his direction.
He is accountable to this House and the Australian people for who is invited to an important part of our national estate, i.e.
Kirribilli House.
He is accountable.
Last night, Four Corners presented credible and indeed compelling evidence that this Prime Minister has been getting input from a conspiracy theorist for statements in this House.
Ministers and the Prime Minister cannot just smear Four Corners.
They have to answer the serious allegations that have been made.
Whoa, this guy.
Awesome.
Alright.
Yeah, man, I love the parliamentary system.
Everyone's just like, whenever someone gives a passionate speech, they always have your buzz.
Yeah, give it to them!
Ours is basically like, the gentleman Chuck Schumer is a living, breathing, satanic pedophile.
And Chuck Schumer's like, I object to the gentleman's categorization of me as a pedophile.
Such ridiculous statements are immature.
The gentleman from New York's time is up.
I yield the floor.
Meanwhile, Tim Stewart and his son Jesse are still full-on Q influencers.
Here's the segment in the ABC documentary describing their recent appearance on the Patriot Transition Voice QAnon talk show.
Tim Stewart and his son, Jesse, have become increasingly well-known in the QAnon world.
In November, they were interviewed on a YouTube QAnon talk show.
Both appeared using their online personas, Burn Notice for Tim and Negan HQ for Jesse.
The hosts applauded the father and son duo.
It was actually kind of good, We could really start looking at things together and exploring stuff together once we knew who we were.
What a great bond.
I mean, that's just a great thing.
You're both like separate patriots that found out you were patriots in the same war, in the same troop, in the same battalion.
Yeah, yeah.
You didn't answer a question, Burn, who Q was.
Who do you think Q is?
But whether it's a cosmic social experiment on humanity or a really clever person from the NSA that's just gone out on their own and gone rogue, whatever the case is, it's worth keeping an eye on.
You'll notice that his son went by Negan in that clip.
That's because before he got banned, he had festooned his Twitter with references to the Walking Dead villain.
Here's his bio.
So it's a photo of Negan with another photo of Negan.
The username is Negan underscore HQ.
The name is Negan.
And Jake, please just read us this wonderful bio.
I wear a leather jacket.
I have Lucille and my nutsack is made of steel.
I hope you got your shitting pants on.
Kekistani Intel.
Aussie.
So...
It's as usual we're looking into something awful, but at the core of it there's my nutsack is made of steel I hope you got your shitting pants on which I mean This is why I hate doing this podcast because we don't even have any dignity like we Why can't the fascist threat be a little bit more respectable Cooler, right?
We could be, like, fighting, like, epic villains, not someone who says, hope you got your shittin' pants on.
This, I suppose, was better than his previous handle, which, if you remember, was Jesse Anya Mate, which makes little sense even for something an Australian wrote.
Meanwhile, his father, Tim Stewart, has also destroyed his relationship to the majority of his close family, who appeared in the ABC News in-depth piece to describe what happened.
The first voice you'll hear is Tim's mother, and the second is Karen Stewart, his sister and this week's guest.
We've watched the change over these last years be quite dramatic.
That's what raises our concern, that we do have family members who are involved.
The Stewart family in Sydney are among those deeply concerned over QAnon's spread, as they've watched their son and brother, Tim Stewart, become immersed in its beliefs.
Tim believes that the world has really been taken over by satanic pedophiles, or luciferian pedophiles they call them, and that that is represented by the left, so the radical left.
And if you don't believe in the QAnon perspectives, then you're a pedophile enabler.
We are sitting with Karen Stewart, the sister of Tim Stewart, aka Burn Notice or Burn Spy, Now, we've been talking for maybe almost two years, Karen.
So, thanks so much, you know, for finally accepting to speak with us and welcome to the show.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
My father and I have listened to a few of your podcasts and find them very, very amusing.
I was going a fair way back and hearing all of those things when QAnon hadn't made it far in Australia.
So, it helped us a lot understanding what we were dealing with.
Excellent.
And, you know, over the course of the last two years, obviously, we've been discussing the ongoing situation between your brother and the Prime Minister and the QAnon beliefs that seem to kind of have floated between them.
And you've also just been sending me news of Australia to remind me that, you know, the country is dealing with these issues in an ongoing way.
Can you describe to us how you first became aware of Tim's beliefs over the course of the last few years and even
maybe before QAnon?
Yeah, I certainly noticed some strange things in the 2016 American election.
So he would refer to Donald Trump as being anti-establishment and I would think quite the opposite.
But that was when Barack Obama's birth certificate and all that sort of stuff came around.
There was a piece of legislation that was done in the Australian Parliament and the British Parliament at the same time back in 1986 and so that severed the legal ramifications between Australia and Great Britain where anything that they passed in their Parliament didn't affect Australia and that our highest court in the land was the High Court of Australia.
So that was quite significant because it was important to Australia's sovereignty.
But as part of that, Tim certainly believed that that was the moment when we became a corporation and we were sold to America.
So I think he got that confused with when we floated our currency, which was in 1983.
But lots of people were saying, oh, when you're born, America starts up a corporation and they operate on your behalf, whether you want them to or not.
So then that was When I started to think, yeah, these are pretty outlandish.
And anything the conspiracy theorist, the professional conspiracy theorist in England, it's David Icke, anything he said, even if it was a Queens, a shape-shifting lizard, then Tim and his son were onto that and believed it.
And so Tim and his son, like this always was kind of a package.
I mean, did they like feed off each other to get into these sovereign citizen beliefs, these birtherite beliefs?
They eventually did, but not not initially.
So not till about 2018.
Everything was prior to that.
So I think it was really Tim came off a low benchmark from a conspiracy theory angle.
So he had prior to 2016 believed there was a secret banking system.
You could give him $10,000 and he'll turn that into a million dollars in virtually overnight.
And there was this secret banking system that only the Rothschilds could access, but now he had access to it, and please give us some money and I'll sort that out for you.
So when he changed beliefs and realized that the secret banking system probably wasn't real, we were all really happy that he'd moved on to something else, only to find out it was QAnon and think, oh no.
Right.
So they became more and more outlandish.
It wouldn't matter what you said, he was likely to disagree with you.
What he'd claim would be so specific that you couldn't argue a point anyway because you'd never come across anything like that when he was searching, you know, the nether regions of the internet.
You couldn't dispute anything because it was so monumentally specific and ridiculous.
And so around this time in the documentary, you described that these family dinners had QAnon as a central topic of conversation.
So does that mean the dinners that you would have without Tim?
I mean, at what point was it difficult to continue getting together and having a kind of normal or relatively normal conversation?
Towards the end of 2018 was when the relationship started to really break down.
But prior to that, we'd been having family dinners and we would listen to Tim's theories and things like that.
He wasn't really open to having them critiqued even.
So he would say, no, you've got to be free from your beliefs and open your mind and things like that.
So it was very, very hard to argue against.
At the end of 2018, in September, He'd had a few drinks, I'll give him that.
But he was certainly really, really angry at me because I refused to say that Donald Trump was a good guy.
And I said, Donald Trump doesn't care if I think he's a good guy.
It doesn't matter whether or not I say it, but I don't think he's a good guy.
And so that was a really explosive night.
And he was screaming, you know, shouting at me for being judgmental and all sorts of things about Donald Trump, but I don't have I didn't have to have a view on Donald Trump I can't vote in America.
So yeah, I can just watch and be Entertained by his oddities so it was really then when we all started to break down and he Refused he often then didn't come out to see us because he lives about an hour away so that relationship even with my parents sort of started to I become quite strained and I realized too that then he would
talk to mum for sometimes hours and hours on the phone and so I sort of had
a chat with her and said you may well be enabling some of these beliefs
because he thinks that you're listening and agreeing just by uh-huh uh-huh because
you can't get a word in.
Right.
And so, as it became more volatile, then, as a family, we had to make some decisions as to how we dealt with this, because we felt it was becoming obsessive.
We couldn't talk about anything else.
That was it, if he was there.
And so, I mean, this is something that we've seen with many families.
We have a recent episode called Cue a Mom, where we spoke to somebody who's, you know, who spoke to the media with her mother.
But it turns out that with your family, it also has other repercussions beyond that pain and that damage, which is that his relationship with the Prime Minister became a meaningful public story, a debate in Australia.
Yeah, it's really only become mainstream media just in the last month, really.
So Guardian Australia covered it back at the end of 2019.
But Tim and Scott Morrison and Tim's wife, Lynelle, are friends with Scott and Jenny Morrison, and they have been for 30 years.
There is a strong relationship there.
I guess the problem that came about was when we realised that Scott had changed a word That Tim had told us Scott had changed a word to include the phrase ritual sexual abuse in a nationally, it was a national apology to people who had been abused by institutions and had it covered up over a period of time.
So we had a Royal Commission which is our top level inquiry and we realised after those findings that it was systemic across many institutions that child abuse had been covered up quite in quite to the highest degree. It was terrible. So some of
that therefore matched with that Luciferian pedophile concept. So okay, there's going to be
a Satanist around every corner.
And you know, these people that claim they were abused and trafficked and things like that,
we need the word ritual in there to ensure that that covers off anyone that was abused by Satan
and Satan's followers and things like that.
Despite the fact that a lot of these were in religious institutions.
Yeah, quite the opposite.
And so that was, it became so outlandish, you can't ignore it.
But there was one woman in Australia who's made some very big claims that she was trafficked as a youngster.
Um, traffic to people like Richard Nixon and then famous cricket players here, former prime ministers from the age, almost from baby to age 15.
I think she's made these claims.
Now they have been looked into by police.
They don't seem to be well-founded and a lot of people don't believe her, but she has a big following, especially from people in the US, but it was her that really wanted that word ritual.
Included in the speech because she felt that that would cover off all of those people like her that had been trafficked by Satanists in some sort of weird cult and so Tim and my brother Tim and a couple of other people in including this one woman went out of their way to say, you know, how can we make this happen and Tim then spoke to his wife who was at that point she had access to curability house and by virtue of her friends, Scott and Jen.
Her Curabilly house is where the prime minister often resides in Sydney.
She was a longtime nanny even before being employed in that capacity as well, right?
Yeah, that's right.
She was good enough friend.
And so she was often looking after the prime minister's kids and dog in order
to have them some normal life and she'd take them to school and things like that.
That was her help.
So it was not an unusual thing for her to be employed in that capacity because she was already doing it.
But it is unorthodox that then information was passed to the Prime Minister and so in his national apology speech spoken in Parliament, it was a huge event, and he popped that word ritual in there so that Ritual sexual abuse, that was the shout out to QAnon and they all went crazy on Twitter as a result of that.
But there was a blogger in Australia who also recognised that that was likely to be a shout out to the QAnon world and so it wasn't only our family that recognised how big that word was in QAnon circles.
So, speaking about this apology for decades of abuse and the cover-ups within these institutions in Australia, you are yourself a victim of sexual assault as a child, and you watched this apology, and at the same time, you knew of your brother's beliefs.
So, kind of, how did you take that apology?
I took it initially in the sense I believed it was given.
So we just had a bit of a kerfuffle with the Prime Ministers at that point.
And so Scott Morrison overthrew the former Prime Minister and took leadership.
So the bulk of the speech would have been prepared probably by the former Prime Minister, who is quite, I believe, a lovely man.
So at the time I took it in a positive way as being an apology to me for what had been covered up, as all the other survivors did too.
When the word ritual came along I thought okay that stood out as being odd but at that point I didn't know that was deliberate.
So then suddenly I was getting messages from my nephew who was saying Ritual abuse.
Ritual abuse.
No one else in Parliament has ever used those phrases.
This is the first time.
And so I realised that they had then colluded and coerced the Prime Minister, I believe, to include that word.
So that was a shattering moment for me because suddenly The National Apology that should have been about my child's sexual abuse became about QAnon.
I guess my brother had inserted his cultish beliefs into my emotional healing as a result of that National Apology speech being affected by that.
I felt that was a betrayal, but also just a lack of gravitas.
How to not realize this is a somber situation and cults don't have any place in affecting that outcome.
So yeah, it was really shattering for a long time before I worked out how I was going to deal with it, which is sort of how it's come into the mainstream now.
What I noticed also in the ABC reporting is just how much more information and clarity has come out about their relationship.
They really are very close.
The Prime Minister will make happy birthday comments under his photos, and they'll go back and forth with jokes, and another family member will jump in.
But also, it made it clear just How much he had alienated everyone else.
So you received this text from his son, Jesse, and Tim is thinking about all of these beliefs and he's, you know, until the break happened in the family and you got together less, I'm assuming you had time to hear a lot of his beliefs.
So could you just tell us a bit about how Tim viewed the world and what QAnon meant to him?
I'll just preface that with the fact my father was a public servant in Canberra, which is our capital city, and so he worked at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Attorney General's Office, so he was very politically savvy and then he became a minister so then he was savvy,
his knowledge was savvy about religion.
So we were raised on the politics and religion conversation that most other families would
probably avoid.
So Tim then decided he was going to throw away mainstream beliefs and broaden his mind
and that's really where he found himself in the fringes of the internet.
So they always believed Satanists had taken over the world.
That underpins the whole QAnon concept.
He believes the number 34 is something special.
And I think it is in numerology circles and the occult.
And that's why he called himself Burnspy34.
And a lot of his other Twitter handles included the number 34 as well.
So I don't know what that number means.
I really don't care one way or the other.
But the whole Clinton Foundation, they believe that.
The red shoes concept.
Now we had our deputy leader of our Liberal Party in Australia had red shoes and she handed those to our museum in Canberra.
Right.
And so for them, suddenly, okay, well, she's a cult leader.
She's a pedophile because she had red shoes.
Then they believed that Trump at the border with removing the kids and putting them in cages, now I'm never sure how accurate some of those are, but Jesse believed that at that point Donald Trump was organizing DNA testing on all the adults and the children to make sure that they weren't their children and so they were really helping by removing the kids from their family.
Oh wow, that's a stretch.
As I understand it, in your medical system, lots of things aren't covered by the government, so I found it fairly outlandish that Donald Trump was going to fork out for DNA testing for all these kids, but that was one of them.
The Queen being a shape-shifting lizard, and apparently the photos are there to be found.
I didn't unearth any myself.
Then you've got just the basics that have hung around for a while, like the flu ride in the water, the chem trails from the planes.
Then we had anyone affiliated with Epstein, except for Trump, of course, is a pedophile.
Then you have the celebrities, so Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Probably Meryl Streep.
Anyone who spoke out against Trump, straight away they were pedophiles.
Isaac Cappie also, now I had no idea who that guy was.
I thought I saw a call where Isaac Cappie was actually on the same call as Tim, or was I dreaming?
No, no, they were corresponding online, but Isaac Cappie came out and stayed with Tim for a couple of days, and so they did a lot of live stuff on Periscope, which I watched.
I think most of them were just stoned and ranting, that's how it looked to me.
So Isaac Cappie Brought with him that Hollywood element that anyone who donated to the Democrats was a pedophile.
There was a clear line between Democrats and Republicans and every Democrat was a pedophile.
Maybe the Bush family, they might have been pedophiles as well.
It was really just building their own world.
And so Isaac Cappy, who later took his own life and is now kind of broadly considered as a martyr for the QAnon cause by them, of course, it doesn't appear that that's, uh, like, you know, stands up to reality check.
But, you know, how did your brother take that death and does it, does it kind of, you know, make him want to keep fighting for this, this stuff?
Yeah, it had a big effect on Jesse more so than Tim, I think.
And he'd really become enamoured, I guess, with the Hollywood hype that Isaac Cappie came with.
But in Australia, I don't think I had any idea who he was.
So yeah, I think Jesse felt that that was a horrible thing.
And he was... CIA killed Cappie, of course.
It wasn't a suicide in their minds.
So it was probably Jesse that...
With him, he's probably likely to keep fighting for Cappy because he was murdered by, I don't know, probably the same person that killed Seth Rich is what I am assuming.
The deep state, taking people out if you're too close to the truth.
And so, you know, the journey of both Tim and his son, Jesse, as QAnon influencers had led them to meet a guy called Elijah Priest, who claims publicly that Tim, who went by Burn Spy, was bragging about his close relationship with the PM and bragging about inserting specifically the ritual sexual abuse words into the speech.
So can you tell us a bit more about that aspect?
And is he still an influencer now that Twitter is gone?
I think they're still pretty functional over on Gab.
I've had a bit of a look over there and it just looks like a far right place to air any
sort of grievance about the lefties and normies, that sort of thing.
So I've stayed away from Gab, but yeah, they're still pretty big over on that platform.
But Twitter, pretty much that was all kicked off there eventually.
Now Elijah Priest, he was never, I don't believe he was ever a QAnon believer, but he had his beliefs by way of, you know, pedophile rings and things like that.
He probably agreed with some of that.
I think he comes from a place of wanting to improve the world.
I've never spoken to him, but I have received some messages.
I believe that came about In relation to Isaac Cappy, I think Isaac Cappy must have spoken to both Elijah Priest and Tim and Jesse and said, oh, you two should get together.
Which then Isaac Cappy came out and introduced them all and off they went on their merry little jaunts on, you know, smoking however many doobies they could get down that day.
And so, yeah, I don't understand that relationship with Elohi Priest and I'm not even sure why it broke down.
But that was where Elohi Priest then published a lot of information relating to Tim and I mean, who wouldn't brag a little bit if you were friends with the highest office in the land?
So I can understand that, yeah, but I think that's been exploited by a number of people, and certainly in the story that was covered by Four Corners recently with our family, they found quite a number of sources where Tim had mentioned the friendship and what had happened, and so it's certainly He hasn't helped by choosing some friends that then ended up falling out with, but they're going to come out with all the info.
So that's really what Elohi Priest has done.
And I think he has quite a big following, so it did come to light.
It really did take a while though.
And so, you know, today, does Tim still hang out with the Prime Minister?
And my other question, I suppose, is what do you think the Prime Minister makes of him?
Like, oh, this is my, you know, kind of my friend who rants a lot and is into conspiracy theories, but he's still my friend.
Or, oh, I love how he thinks, but maybe he's a bit extreme.
I mean, obviously this is, we're just kind of speculating here, obviously, but I'd love to know your opinion on that.
Yesterday on one of our radio stations, Scott Morrison said that He hadn't seen Tim in a long time and so he sort of said, well my relationship is with Lynelle rather than Tim and so he's definitely distancing himself from Tim at the moment.
There was a source to the Four Corners story who actually said that Tim had told him, I'm going to have to disassociate myself from you until this Blows over now, that's not verbatim, but so he's definitely not acknowledging that
That they're friends and he had this crazy belief, which would have been quite the simplest way to acknowledge it.
So no, he's backing away saying, I don't know that.
But even by saying, well, I'm still friends with Lanelle, that doesn't get him off the hook because it was Tim was using Lanelle to get the messages to Scott anyway.
And so that was all being passed along.
So I think Scott's going to double down on this and say that he It had nothing to do with it and the word ritual came from elsewhere.
But from all the recommendations and the findings from that Royal Commission, the word ritual was never there.
And so I think Scott's probably got some answers that he has to provide because it's now been mentioned in Parliament as well.
So that's going to require some answers.
He's not one for giving very good answers at any time, let alone over something like this.
Often with figures like Tim and Jesse online, you wonder whether they believe in what they talk about.
But Tim has been writing papers, if not what he calls books, on his blog, ranging back to 2017, very early days of Q. What do you think?
Do you think that both Tim and Jesse are truly waiting for the storm?
They really believe those gallows are going up?
Or is there an element of finding a community and a fun game to play?
I think the sense of community was first and foremost because I was just looking back now over messages Jesse had sent me.
And he was saying, oh, it's so loving and supportive in this environment.
So that might have been where it becomes a little bit of an online family.
Certainly as time went on, they started to believe more and more.
And I would say Jesse has become quite fanatical.
So I believe they genuinely think that pedophiles have taken over the world.
And I think they would stand by those beliefs.
Tim has not disavowed QAnon in any interview that he was subject to probably 18 months ago.
He's never denied his beliefs with QAnon by any stretch of the imagination.
So I believe they are both sold out on this.
It's not just a game.
Tim views this as his destiny.
And that this is going to be his mark upon the world.
And, you know, one of his partner who has a job or had a job and this is kind of, you know, is now being propelled into the news.
Is there a sense that Tim is a liability to his own, even his own kind of family?
Or, I mean, how does she take having a husband and a son that are so profoundly red-pilled?
Yeah, I don't know that she knew initially what was happening, but she couldn't have missed the conversations.
Now, Tim and Lanelle support each other so firmly that it's They won't critique each other.
That's what I've watched.
Whatever happens behind closed doors, different story.
But they will always back each other up on whatever claims made.
And so I think she probably had to leave her position as employed at Kirribilli House, where the residence is, because of Tim.
Because everyone has to pass national security checks.
So if you've got someone who's Partner and son are really hardcore proponents of QAnon.
You shouldn't pass those security clearances.
So the fact that she did is of extreme concern.
But I think there's been times where she's promoted those writings of Tim's, that blog, and has used the hashtag The Great Awakening.
So I think she must be aware of what's going on, but it would align with her religious beliefs as well, because there's that big evangelical-Christian overlap from QAnon to your old Just your standard churches.
And so I think that's where the confusion could come from, even with Scott Morrison.
So he's a, you know, Pentecostal Christian.
And so they're always talking about this spiritual warfare, armor of God.
And so that really does overlay the whole concept of QAnon.
And I think that is the reason why it would be believable to other Christians, because they do want to fight the Satan and send him back to hell and, you know, read the
Bible, God wins, as though it's a novel.
So that whole concept could underlie her beliefs, and therefore, she would support Tim to a certain
degree, definitely. What do you make of the own prime minister's belief system, having been so
close to Tim, having kind of distanced himself, but also coming from this Pentecostal background?
Look, I hate the concept of church and state being intertwined, and at the moment, there is actually
As a Pentecostal Christian, no one really understands what that means.
Are these just the God-botherers, the happy clappers, and they dance and speak in tongues?
I think the Prime Minister spoke recently at a Pentecostal convention, and he said, well, when I'm shaking hands with people, that's when I'm praying for them and laying on of hands.
And that in itself is an imposition of his beliefs upon anybody else.
So I think it's quite worrying that that's what he's going around doing and God put him in this position.
And so I think that Pentecostal religion has only been around since 1901 really.
So this is a new denomination in the Christian circles but it's established itself so neatly into the fabric of society and these are big, big organizations now.
Hillsong and C3.
I think you've got Hillsong now in America and Justin Bieber was a member of it or something like that at some point.
So they certainly are a behemoth and I worry about that because I find Pentecostalism to be somewhat superficial.
As a person who has gone through your own life experiences of abuse and cover-up by institutions, what do you make of this claim of saving the children that is at the core of a lot of QAnon beliefs and certainly your brother's beliefs?
The Save the Children That was very clever marketing from their standpoint, as horrific as it has been, because all they're doing is giving unfounded or ill-founded beliefs onto the organisation in America whose acronym escapes me, who look for missing children.
They're getting all of these tip-offs that are absolute rubbish and so they're becoming clogged in the system as to whether or not it's a real lead and it is a missing child or whether it's just a QAnon missing child.
And I think I've run into enough people online who will say, well you were sexually assaulted, you should be on this, you should want to make sure that That you're helping.
And I said, well, because I'm a sexual assault survivor, that's the opposite.
If I started hanging around QAnon people and hunting pedophiles online, then I'm creating a fixation that's unhealthy for me.
And so I see other people saying, well, I've been sexually abused as a child and that's why I want to fight this.
And I thought, no, that's it's damaging that that level of propaganda is going to give them or create that hyper focus on a topic that is damaging to anyone who's a survivor in reality.
And so I found that what I found strange was there was the the church where my assault happened was the minister was retiring.
And so My mum and dad were going over there and they were expecting that one or both perpetrators were going to be there.
So mum sort of said, okay, I'm going to say something.
If I run into them, I'm going to have a say.
And it's mum's pretty daunting when she gets up a full head of steam.
So she was talking with Tim about this and Tim then said, well, don't expect me to back you up.
Now, if you're QAnon, isn't that what you would be doing?
If you're faced with someone who had sex with a minor, yeah, you're probably, that's, isn't that the shining moment for a QAnon supporter?
That they go, yep, guess what I did today?
I got, I left my keyboard and I actually approached someone and had it out with the fact he'd abused my sister.
But he just backed away and said no, which is really, really peculiar.
And for what reason?
To salvage his relationship to that church or to all of these churches or what?
I would say to that church.
He'd never given a reason, and Mum was somewhat perplexed as well.
But it could have been because Scott and Jen Morrison were likely to be at that same church retirement party, so he wouldn't have wanted to do anything that could be construed as unorthodox while they're there, I guess.
Because the Prime Minister was actually an elder at the church where I was abused.
That's another complicating factor.
Strangely enough, when I go back to 1990, when my abuse happened, Tim was the youth
leader at that church and so he did inform the minister at that point in time.
So he acted in good faith back then and they were some of his best years where he was very
supportive.
So back then that was the action he'd taken, but now, um, suddenly sought to not, to not do that, even though, you know, it had been a police matter.
And so that was more what mum wanted to come at him and say, well, you, you ruined my daughter's life.
Uh, only one of them that was there cause there were two perpetrators.
So dad ended up chatting with him about it, but it is strange that, Tim and or Jesse, I'm not sure if Jesse attended, but you would think that's the the highlight and I don't know whether he's acting in a certain way because most of the QAnon people I've experienced have been online.
So you don't always get a sense of what they're up to and how they think.
It's quite a bizarre... I know they have this mass mindset but then you have sort of within that hive mind you have some weird people believing that the earth is flat and things like that.
It's hard to predict what anyone QAnon follower is actually believing or what their truth is on any given day.
Yeah.
Because they change so much.
Yeah, yeah.
And they even claim, oh, well, actually QAnon doesn't even exist now.
There's a million techniques to obscure, you know.
Oh, yes.
And that was one of the weird things.
So Tim, I remember he was saying, no, no, there's no name.
We're not called QAnons, but there is someone online that calls themselves Q that does have a place in our lives, was sort of how he made it into that airy-fairy thing.
Until Mum heard him on the YouTube clip where he was, I can't remember the other guy, but Beer at the Parade was his, one of the Twitter handles, that they interviewed Tim and Jesse.
And even in that, they were referring themselves, to themselves as QAnon.
So clearly they're underneath that label, no matter what, they can't deny that.
I can't thank you enough for sharing your story with us, Karen.
And next time we will speak more clearly about what time zones are and how they function.
So you don't get up at 5am.
I'm so sorry.
No, don't worry.
Thank you so much.
And I'd love to know if you have anything to plug, you know, where people can find you if you want them to.
I do run a blog called karenthinksaloud.com.au, and that's where I critique most religious beliefs, but I would classify myself as an anti-theist rather than an atheist, so I certainly pick up hypocrisy and things like that and write about it, so that would be the only thing I could plug.
Well, thank you once again for coming on the show.
Thank you so much, Karen.
Lovely.
Thanks for chatting and inviting me.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
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Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's a fact.
And now, today's Auto-Q.
Tim Stewart told Four Corners I am too busy to read questions relating to the nonsense that's been put out there, which are just hit pieces.
I don't promote or support any kind of violence.
Four Corners has learned that Lynelle Stewart stopped working at Kirribilli House at the end of last year.
