Episode 149: The January 6th FBI Inside Job Theory feat Trevor Aaronson
Tucker Carlson's theory distorts work by Trevor Aaronson, a journalist for the Intercept and the author of 'The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism'. He joins us to explain why the idea that the January 6th storming of the capitol was an "inside job" by the FBI may not hold water. We explore real cases of FBI undercover stings targeting Muslims as part of the "war on terror", "Black Identity Extremists" (their words) and, increasingly, far-right extremists as well.
↓↓↓↓ SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH SO YOU DON'T MISS THE SECOND WEEKLY EPISODE ↓↓↓↓
https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous
Follow Trevor Aaronson: http://twitter.com/trevoraaronson
Chameleon High Rollers podcast: https://apple.co/368Z5pn
QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com
Episode music by Max Mulder (http://doomchakratapes.bandcamp.com) & Pontus Berghe
Welcome, listener, to Chapter 149 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the January 6th FBI Inside Job Theory episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
After the events of January 6th, right-wing conspiracy theorists immediately went into PR mode, coalescing around the belief that the violence in the crowd, and perhaps even the Capitol Police, was caused by Antifa agitators, and not good-faith, Trump-supporting QAnon followers.
Unfortunately, they were thin on evidence, mostly garnering support from the likes of Newsmax and OAN.
But for a refined outlet like Fox News, the bullshit would have to be spun in subtler and less cartoonish ways.
And so, inevitably, Tucker Carlson used something very real, the FBI's long history of entrapping Muslims, civil rights activists, etc., to claim something more flimsy, that the FBI had somehow engineered the January 6th storming of the Capitol.
We'll be dissecting the issue with the help of Trevor Aronson, a journalist for The Intercept whose book, The Terror Factory, Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism, was recently brandished by Tucker Carlson to make his point.
Aronson, however, found Tucker's discernment on the matter lacking, accusing him of distorting the reporting to promote what is essentially a conspiracy theory.
But before we get into all that, QAnon News!
For my main story, John McAfee's Instagram feed posts a queue after he reportedly commits suicide in a Spanish prison.
For those who don't know, he's an anti-virus software pioneer, cryptocurrency enthusiast, alleged murderer, alleged rapist, alleged tax evader, self-purported whale fucker.
Last week, a Spanish court ruled that McAfee was to be extradited to the United States, where he faced charges for tax fraud.
Hours after that ruling, he was found dead in the prison cell.
He was 75.
Now, this by itself should be enough to inspire a whole lot of conspiracy theories, but it gets worse because shortly after his death, his Instagram account made one last post, and it just consisted of a large black Q on the white background.
That's a sign off for the social media manager running his account, you know?
Just one last perfect troll.
Might have even been told by John to do it himself.
Right.
I have one scheduled tweet far into the future, so that's just a cue.
So if I die before then, then it will inspire a lot of conspiracy theories, I'm hoping.
People are like, the Deadman Switch is incredibly complex.
It's part of the blockchain, and then it's just like a single post on Instagram.
Yeah, it's like the count from Sesame Street holding up, like, the letter Q!
And it ushered in Nisara, which is cool that we have that now.
Yeah, I'm a billionaire.
I don't know about you guys.
I've been slowly buying in.
So as friend of the show Marc-Andre Argentino has pointed out, there are a few reasons to think that this was just a troll post by someone who happened to have access to McAfee's Instagram account and it wasn't planned by McAfee himself.
First of all, the Instagram account was rarely used in contrast to his much more popular and active Twitter account.
There's also a July 2019 Instagram post which indicates that somebody besides McAfee had access to the account.
It said, However, it's worth noting that this is not the first time that McAfee's social media accounts have referenced Q. For example, McAfee tweeted this in October of 2018.
However, it's worth noting that this is not the first time the McAfee social media accounts have referenced Q.
For example, McAfee tweeted this in October of 2018.
"Important announcement.
My presidential campaign manager authorized me to offer the following..."
If Q will identify themselves, I will offer them the running mate position for my presidential campaign.
If you're hearing this Q, then please give this thoughtful consideration.
In March of 2020 McAfee also tweeted this.
The difference between Q and McAfee.
No one knows who Q is.
Everyone knows who McAfee is.
No one knows where Q is.
At the Mrs. McAfee knows where McAfee is.
McAfee is an anal fisting master.
Q refuses to divulge his own mastery.
But I know Yep.
I know.
That's a really good last point, I have to say.
I mean, you know, not many people approach it from this angle.
Yeah.
So, I mean, he's just a troll, and then he, you know, he used Q to troll, and apparently someone who had access to his account decided to troll with Q after his death.
Didn't say rip our good friend John McAfee, you know, which would be, I think, a little bit more respectful thing to do.
So, this whole incident is further complicated by the fact that McAfee, again, notorious bullshitter, had previously claimed that he had a dead man switch that would supposedly release 31 terabytes of incriminating information on powerful people if he ever died or disappeared.
For example, he said this in a 2019 interview.
The fact that I have it and I'm still breathing means that those people in the U.S.
government and other governments around the world can breathe safely and sleep soundly
because that data has not been released.
If I am murdered, if I commit suicide, which is highly unlikely, I like my life, I love
my wife, I love my circumstances, I'm a happy motherfucker.
If I did choose to commit suicide, you must know it was not suicide."
He also posted a picture of a tattoo he received with the words "$WACKED"
It was accompanied by this tweet.
Getting subtle messages from US officials saying, in effect, "We're coming for you,
McAfee.
We're going to kill yourself.
I got a tattoo today just in case.
If I suicide myself, I didn't.
I was whacked.
Check my right arm.
Dollar whacked.
Available only on McAfeeDex.com."
So I mean, this all sounds very exciting, but I think, to put it in the appropriate
context, I think these claims are disproved by the fact that, number one, there was no
dead man switch that revealed terabytes of incriminating information after he died.
And also, he talked a lot of shit.
It was like kind of his thing.
He liked bringing attention to himself by saying things.
For example, he once claimed in 2017 that if Bitcoin wasn't valued at half a million dollars within three years, he would eat his own dick on national television.
Now, he did not eat his own dick.
He's just a bullshitter because he just says outrageous things.
That's kind of his brand.
Well, at least it was.
John McAfee also had a lot of relationships with conspiracists.
He, for example, was friends with Alex Jones and also Robert David Steele, the ex-CIA agent, allegedly, who had appeared on several QAnon promoter channels and promoted Adrenochrome a lot.
So he was just a bullshitter who hung out with other bullshitters.
And so a lot of people were trying to compare this whole situation to Epstein, but it's just, it's not the same.
I mean, I remember the day that Epstein died.
You know, obviously it was quite magical.
I texted you, Jake.
I was willing to inform you about how that was going down.
John McAfee is not a person who is capable of keeping secrets.
If he actually had incriminating information about Hillary Clinton or whoever, he would have tweeted it out immediately.
You know who would call the day Epstein died magical?
Someone in his little book.
I mean, it was magical in the conspiracy theory world.
It was a momentous occasion, and probably will be for— The one wrinkle with McAfee is that he did speak to his wife earlier that day.
And seem to be in good spirits.
That's the one thing.
But you never know, and suicide is a complex thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
QAnon followers also recently tried to tie McAfee's death to Tucker Carlson's recent evidence-free claims that a whistleblower told him that the NSA is spying on him.
I mean, the NSA is maybe spying on him in the sense that they're spying on everyone.
But Praying Medic asked his 90,000 Telegram subscribers who they thought this whistleblower was, and the common answer was McAfee.
They thought that, you know.
But it's all bullshit.
He's a bullshitter.
Another one was The Joker, and the third one was Willy Wonka.
The saddest thing is that McAfee Antivirus Software, the company named after him, did not acknowledge his death after he passed.
Really?
He was such a piece of shit.
I mean, he literally made a video where he talked about McAfee and told people he didn't know how to uninstall it either, and did cocaine with, like, women and, like, basically simulated sex acts and stuff, so they must not be delighted with him from a PR perspective.
No, no, bad branding, certainly.
It really does suck because you're just trying to sell a piece of shit useless software that everyone buys for years without thinking like Microsoft Word or some shit like that and you've got a guy like jacking himself off like in a circle of like dogs like out front and it's like that's not great for business.
For my next story, Arizona Audit Leader Doug Logan stars in conspiracy theory movie The Deep Rig.
So, The Deep Rig is a conspiracy theory movie your pilled friends and family will probably be talking about a lot this summer.
Not if they keep it at 45 fucking dollars.
You have to pay 45 bucks to watch it right now or 500 for a license to show it to others.
So guess what?
Guess what I did, boys?
Even the new Disney releases that they release on streaming only cost like $19.99.
Yeah, no, this is the price of, like, a personalized cameo from, like, a minor celebrity.
Come on.
Right.
And also, the new Marvel movies, they don't expose the deep state, so not quite as valuable.
And that's why I may or may not have f***ed it.
OK, so that's great.
Go ahead.
Keep confessing to committing federal crimes on the podcast.
Perfect.
I f***ed the movie The Deep Rig.
My name is Julian Field.
All right, so the Deep Rig movie is based on a book by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and it pushes several theories that essentially claim that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
It's the same shit.
You're familiar with it.
It recently had its premiere at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona.
It shows, I think, a reoccurring convergence between conspiracism, Arizona, and religion we see going on a lot right now.
Arizona's a messed up place.
You attended this church?
Yeah, this is the church that you almost got kicked out of.
This was the main campus.
I attended sort of a satellite church, but this was the main sort of megachurch.
So, The Deep Rig was directed by Roger R. Richards, who previously directed the UFO conspiracy theory movie Above Majestic.
Now, it's perhaps best known for featuring longtime QAnon promoter Jordan Sather, and pushes the claim that aliens were somehow involved in the attacks on 9-11.
So, some of the most pilled shit of the modern era.
Mm-hmm.
Nice.
That's some pilled alien shit.
It's one thing to be like, well, aliens exist, and then the second tier is like, oh, aliens have been working with the government.
And they're like, control the Catholic Church and shit.
Yeah.
And they don't mean, like, greys, because the cover of that has, like, a reptilian alien or some shit on the front of it.
Well, the reptilians are the bad... Well, there's apparently two races of reptilians.
One good, one evil.
Okay.
You know the names of them, or are we just... No, no, it's just the good reptilians and the bad reptilians.
To the surprise of some, the Deep Rig film included Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, which is running the dubious audit.
The audit has been called like an election lie factory in that its main purpose is simply to, you know, create this sort of source of disinformation.
And the fact that Doug Logan has devoted some of his time to appearing in this movie I think really drives home the idea that it's just a big dumb stunt focused on messaging rather than getting to the truth.
But Logan is apparently introduced in the film in a weird way.
For most of the deep rig, he is only identified as a non, and his identity is obscured through blurring and a voice modulator.
While he's disguised like this, he argues that the CIA was behind disinformation around the election.
However, towards the end of the film, the non is revealed to be Doug Logan the whole time, according That's their arc.
It's like we hid his identity, and in the third act we reveal it.
This is like some Scooby-Doo shit.
I know!
Now, according to Will Sommer of the Daily Beast, the crowd gathered at Dream City Church exploded in applause when this revelation is made.
Like, what's the point of anonymizing someone The idea is like anonymizing someone, it's like they're revealing such deep, hidden, explosive truths that we can't even tell you who they are, but then that doesn't make any sense when you just reveal them at the end.
Well, from a pilled standpoint, you know, you're watching and you're going, who is this deep, mysterious figure who's got all this insider information on the CIA, election disinformation, all this stuff, like who is this guy?
And then at the end you're like, it's the guy running the audit!
Then you're like, yes!
Somebody as pilled as me actually has some kind of official function to perform.
The film also features an appearance by Michael Flynn, who seems to be, like, just wherever QAnon bullshit is nowadays, he is highly, highly active.
There was another QAnon connection at the premiere, which already had a lot of them.
During that premiere, a brief speech was given by Austin Steinbart, and you may remember Steinbart.
Who made that choice?
What a choice!
Just great, perfect.
Yeah, he's known as Baby Q by his followers.
He claims to be Q from the future who is sending messages to the president.
Steinbart pled guilty to a felony back in April, but was released on time served and is now right back to promoting QAnon.
Well, and I mean, isn't it part of his release conditions that he's not allowed to post?
This is what I'm told.
He's not supposed to have a social media account.
He has the Steinbart Media Group who's posting on his behalf.
I would expect many more live appearances than by Steinbart, because if he cannot post online or he's worried about violating the terms of his parole or whatever, they haven't said anything about live events.
Yes, that's right.
And Austin, as we know, just can't stop posting, so I wonder if we'll see him sort of spring up, you know, in person more and more at these types of events.
Steinbart's presence at the premiere proved to be controversial among QAnon promoters, because most of them don't appreciate the fact that he claims to be Q. One QAnon promoter named Truthhammer said this on Telegram.
Well, inviting Austin was a brilliant move if the goal was huge separation from the real Q community, but will now give the MSM great ammo to associate it with quote-unquote QAnon.
So I don't know what that shit was about.
Wait a minute, you guys hired the pilled guy we don't like!
Well, no, the problem is that, like, the guy goes up there and claims to be Q. That is his whole fucking thing.
So, like, you can't invite him to a QAnon event unless you want to endorse the fact that he's Q. Otherwise, he's a fucking weird liar.
Yeah, and if you endorse him as Q, you also have to endorse time travel.
And I think some QAnon promoters maybe aren't ready quite to, you know, make that commitment.
No, they're not woke enough.
They're still asleep.
There are a few reasons why Steinbart participated in the event.
Steinbart's team apparently helped find the venue for the film premiere.
Steinbart also is going to appear in an upcoming film that's also made by the director of the Deep Rig.
As the premiere went on, a Patrick Burns group attempted to distance themselves from Steinbart in a post on Telegram.
That post said this, As live events go with so many moving parts, we did notice that Austin Steinbart was somehow put into the lineup last minute by an unknown party.
To be clear, Patrick Byrne, General Flynn, and The America Project have no affiliation with Austin Steinbart, and he certainly has no part in the Deep Rig movie.
Again, the director is making an Austin Steinbart movie.
This is all bullshit.
Steinbart Media Group, for their part, are fired back in a post that said this.
Austin Steinbart and the team at Steinbart Media Group made every effort to help the Deep Rig movie succeed.
From securing the venue for the premiere, to contributing marketing personnel, graphic designers, camera operators, voiceovers for commercials, and even a team of dedicated volunteers who tirelessly passed out promotional flyers in 117 degree weather.
Oh my god, they're Corey and Trevor.
We are confident Patrick was unaware of the divisive messages being posted on his behalf, so we hope that moving forward, his staff will keep Joe Flynn's idea of, quote, network of networks in mind, discontinue fanning the flames of this counterproductive sideshow, and focus on the extremely important task at hand, spreading the message about the election fraud.
Signed, WWG1 WGA.
Where we go one, we go Austin.
Yeah.
Hey, come on, Patrick.
We've been out siphoning gas all day.
Yeah, shut up, Sigs.
Let's go.
Corey, Trevor, let's go.
I mean, this is like the whole JFK Jr.
live sex stuff all over again, where it's like, yeah, we have this great conspiratorial movement, and we're coalescing, and they're all on one message, and then these other fuckers, they come along, they make us look bad.
They make us look so dumb.
Look, QAnon works best in obscurity.
When somebody comes along and says, I'm definitely doing this, or I definitely am Q, or I'm definitely part of the team, Everything falls apart because all of a sudden this is a fact that can be verifiably checked to some certain degree.
For my next story, The Intercept details how Michael Flynn nurtured and profited from QAnon.
Now, for a few years on this podcast, we've talked about how Michael Flynn has both featured in core QAnon narratives and amplified QAnon.
In fact, our episode on Flynn and his family's promotion of QAnon was released all the way back in July of 2019, which also happens to be the debut of The Florida Flynn Adventure.
So happy two-year anniversary, The Florida Flynn.
Wow, that's crazy.
Yeah, congrats.
I'm sorry, boy.
Things are still shitty.
Fortunately, The Intercept tasked an actual journalist to explain the history of Flynn's involvement with QAnon as best as it can be explained with the currently available evidence.
That report, which is titled The Digital General, and is authored by reporter Candace Rondeau, details the network of LLCs and websites that Flynn used to promote the idea of digital soldiers and raise funds for his massive legal bills.
It ties together a lot of previously reported information and some new details to paint a more complete picture of the money-making operation that Flynn built on the back of QAnon.
One interesting detail in the report was about the website called DigitalSoldiers.us, which called itself a project of General Flynn and UncoverDC.com.
I don't think this is technically new information.
Late last year, the Daily Beast reported about the connection between UncoverDC, DigitalSoldiers.us, and General Flynn.
But it's notable in part because Uncover DC is run by Tracy Diaz, who happens to be one of the people who helped bring QAnon onto mainstream social media networks all the way back in November of 2017.
And that connection has always been a bit sus, as the kids say.
So it's a great read.
I recommend checking it out.
January 6th was an inside job.
The original narratives in right-wing media about the events of January 6th seemed to split between those who believed that it was good and those who believed it was, like, dangerous and bad.
For people who believed that it was good, there was a righteous revolt against a corrupt Congress who were certifying a fraudulent election.
For those who thought it was bad, the events were actually instigated by Antifa, or possibly Black Lives Matter protests.
So one of my favorite illustrations of the split happened when I was in Sacramento on January 6th and I heard QAnon promoter Buzz Patterson announce to the crowd that protesters had breached the Capitol in D.C.
When he first made the announcement, the crowd cheered, but then he quieted them down by saying that we don't yet know if the protesters were Antifa.
Man, you can never celebrate anything good in QAnon because you never know if the thing that you want to happen ...are actually Antifa infiltrators.
Well, this is what sucks about, like, oh, we want a revolution, but also we love order and law.
And we're nonviolent.
It's like, wait a second, we haven't figured out if anything illegal was, you know, done during this revolution that will lead to the hanging of Hillary Clinton in Guantanamo.
There was also a brief moment where people tried to claim that the QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley was Antifa, which is a surreal experience for me, I'm sure for you too, because watching just thousands of people online try to push the idea of that enthusiastic QAnon follower, a guy who loved Trump.
People, someone that we had met in the flesh months prior, that this guy was Antifa or a Black Lives Matter protester.
It was, I don't know, just a real, you could sort of see the way in which the online world tries to just absolutely invert reality.
So unfortunately for some, the Antifa narrative quickly became untenable.
I mean, you just look at photographs of the event, you look at, you know, court records of who's being charged for participating.
It's absolutely ludicrous.
In fact, it was so ludicrous that even Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said
this.
"Some say the riots were caused by Antifa.
There is absolutely no evidence of that.
And conservatives should be the first to say so."
I mean, I think it's adorable when McCarthy tries to police his caucus.
Absolutely futile.
Yeah.
But this meant that conspiracists needed a new narrative if they want to exonerate the participants in the events of January 6th.
So recently, they settled on pushing the claim that the FBI instigated the riot.
Now, I have no interest in giving up blanket defense of the FBI.
There are plenty of shitty things they've done, plenty of criticisms.
There's just no evidence that they had a role in making January 6th happen.
So where did these claims come from?
They originated with a report from the conservative site Revolver News by Darren Beattie.
And Darren Beattie, for those who don't know his background, was a one-time speechwriter for President Trump.
But Beattie left the White House in 2018 after it was revealed that he participated in a 2016 white nationalist conference.
So this is a guy who was too white nationalist for the Trump administration, and he had to go.
Yeah, the guys who had Stephen Miller on their payroll.
Yeah, the guys, yes, the administration that had Stephen Miller throughout the entire administration.
Amazing.
Well, some people play the Game of Thrones well, and others do not.
The article from Revolver has headlined unindicted co-conspirators in 1-6 cases raise disturbing questions of federal foreknowledge.
The June 14th report says that the federal documents charging numerous alleged capital rioters with crimes mention upwards of 20 unindicted co-conspirators, all playing various roles in the conspiracy.
Of all the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the charging documents of those indicted for crimes on 1-6, how many worked as a confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the federal government?
The article suggests that FBI Director Chris Wray should have to answer this question.
Of all the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the charging documents of those indicted for
crimes on 1/6, how many worked as a confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the
federal government? FBI, Army Counterintelligence, etc.?
Wait, hold on a minute!
Don't they want the army to, like, be secretly performing the coup?
I mean, isn't that- doesn't that directly sort of coincide with, like, the QAnon narrative is that the army will kind of- Anyone you would support within the army would have succeeded.
The issue here is that it just didn't fucking work.
So the article further says, "If it turns out the federal government did in fact have
undercover agents or confidential informants embedded within the so-called militia groups
indicted for conspiring to obstruct the senate's certification on 1/6, the implications would be
nothing short of seismic, especially if such agents or informants enjoyed extremely senior
level positions within such groups."
Actually, Enrique Tarjo didn't show up that day.
Right, yes, yes.
You make a point.
This is one of those things where you can't dismiss these sorts of things out of hand, which is probably why Revolver and Tucker Carlson are running with it, where it's like, oh, it's not quite as ludicrous as Antifa did it.
Now, the article from Revolver hedged a bit, saying that there was just a strong possibility that it happened, but, like, others treated the suggestion as, like, a confirmed fact, which is just, again, absolutely nonsense.
The claims from that article were amplified by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
We know that the government is hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers who were present at the Capitol on January 6th, not just the one who killed Ashley Babbitt.
According to the government's own court filings, those law enforcement officers participated in the riot, sometimes in violent ways.
We know that because, without fail, the government has thrown the book at most people who are present in the Capitol on January 6th.
There was a nationwide dragnet to find them, and many of them are still in solitary confinement tonight.
But strangely, some of the key people who participated on January 6th have not been charged.
Look at the documents.
The government calls those people unindicted co-conspirators.
What does that mean?
Well, it means that in potentially every single case they were FBI operatives.
Really.
In the Capitol.
On January 6th.
In a June 16th Facebook post, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said, quote, We need names and answers about the FBI operatives who were involved in organizing and carrying out the January 6th Capitol riot.
And in a June 16th letter to FBI Director Wray, Matt Gaetz and three other Republican lawmakers asked the FBI director to answer three questions that the Revolver News article posed, including the one about how many unindicted co-conspirators were operatives or informants for the government.
Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert, who recently attended the three-day Patriot Roundup QAnon conference in Dallas, also got in on the action.
On the floor of the House, Gohmert repeated the claims from the Revolver News article and called them troubling.
This is really disturbing and this is something that I know from my time here in Congress has disturbed Democrats and Republicans alike across the aisle.
Because we don't like to see government agents stirring up trouble or find that there are criminal acts that would not likely have occurred had not the federal government been participating.
Whether they were actual agents or undercover agents or Informants that were working for the federal government.
But this is scary stuff.
This is this is kind of third world stuff.
This is not only third world stuff, but this is like Putin kind of activity.
It's so funny because it's like, this is stuff we normally do to, you know, Nicaragua or it's like something Russia does.
It's like, OK, man.
All right.
I mean, I think there are arguably more evil members of Congress, but Gohmert, I think, is the most empty headed.
It's he's just a just a doddering guy.
He just seems to walk in wherever he's told.
It's very weird.
He's such a fucking putz, like he's a piece of furniture and he just puts you to sleep with his words, too.
Now, the argument seems to rest on a pretty simple question.
So why have some alleged participants of the riot not been named and charged, but some have been granted anonymity?
From my understanding is that charging documents frequently reference unindicted co-conspirators.
When the government describes a crime, they will often anonymize people who are not yet charged.
And the reason is that basically is that someone who has been charged with a crime has the opportunity to clear their name in court.
Right?
But someone who has been described as committing a crime but has not been charged at all, they can't clear their reputation in the forum at all.
So it's not a nice thing to do.
Carlson, in his monologue, cites a book by Trevor Aronson, who happens to be our guest today, called The Terror Factory, which focuses on the FBI's use of informants and sting operations in the so-called War on Terror.
We should have seen it earlier.
Trevor Aronson wrote a book on this called The Terror Factory, and it analyzed every terror prosecution from 2001 to 2013.
sometimes even the ideas.
They suggest that in many of these cases, the targets only committed a crime
because of the FBI's encouragement.
We should have seen it earlier.
Trevor Aronson wrote a book on this called "The Terror Factory,"
and it analyzed every terror prosecution from 2001 to 2013.
Aronson found that at least 50 defendants were on trial because of behavior
that the FBI had not only encouraged but enabled.
FBI agents were essentially the plotters in these crimes.
They made the crimes crimes.
Aronson, like we mentioned, objected to these characterizations of his work or at least the use of his work in sort of defending this conspiracy theory, which he will go into more detail in our interview.
Now this whole this whole account is like frustrating because it's just really more gaslighting about who is responsible for the January 6th attack.
And it's obviously this is like this is like higher level conspiracy theorizing, which is, you know, which is different than the Antifa did it stuff, which is, I guess, too dumb for Fox News.
I mean, the thing is that there are legitimate avenues of investigation if you want to talk about who's responsible for January 6th.
You might start with President Trump.
He pushed baseless lies about the election, which riled people up, and then he invited people to come to Washington, D.C.
for a wild protest, and they gave a speech and then sent them off to the Capitol, where they proceeded to wreak havoc.
You might also look into Roger Stone, who was spotted with Oath Keepers.
Uh, that day, you might also look into Ali Alexander, who organized the Stop the Steal event, and is quite overt in his approval of what happened that day.
You might also look into Representative Paul Goksar, who might have played a role, since according to reports, he communicated with Ali Alexander prior to the event.
So, I mean, there's still a lot of unknowns, and we don't know who the main organizers are, and it's frustrating that now they're just picking up, like, you know, the Q-shamans of the world, rather than the people who are actually responsible for pushing these people into the situation, organizing it, and whatever role that there is, but we just don't know yet.
So it's all very, very frustrating that we even have to deal with these bullshit conspiracy theories.
Trevor Aronson is a reporter for The Intercept and the author of The Terror Factory, Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism.
Welcome to the show, Trevor.
Hey, thanks for having me.
You recently published an article for The Intercept rebuffing Tucker Carlson's claims that your book strengthens his case for this pet theory he's got, that the FBI entrapped participants in the January 6th storming of the Capitol.
Can you explain why you weren't too pleased with Carlson's take?
Yeah, so I have to admit, I'm not a Fox News or Tucker Carlson watcher, and I happened to get it from a Google News alert that the next day told me that Tucker Carlson had cited my book as part of this argument he made in his monologue that the January 6th storming of the Capitol was some sort of FBI-engineered or FBI-led plot.
Using undercover agents and informants.
And, you know, my first reaction—I mean, just because I just don't take Tucker Carlson seriously and I don't think a lot of people should—was like, I was going to ignore it and not say anything and, you know, whatever.
Tucker Carlson said something stupid.
He does that every night, right?
But at the same time, though, it kind of took on—the conspiracy theory seemed to take on a life of its own.
Like, it was getting trafficked in right-wing media.
I was getting a lot of interview requests from these right-wing radio shows.
The New York Times and the Washington Post both felt compelled to write these debunking stories.
And so in the end, I was like, OK, I just felt like I can't really ignore this any longer.
And, you know, the argument that Tucker Carlson made was based on this revolver news story that was all just like based on a clear misunderstanding of how the government and the FBI and the Justice Department Word things in indictments and complaints.
And they were referring to this older gentleman who was charged in his role in the insurrection or the storming of the Capitol.
And the FBI complaint or the indictment listed his conversations with two people that were identified as Person 2 and Person 3.
And they were these conversations that, you know, seemed to suggest there was some sort of planning between the three people.
And Revolver made the argument that this was actually undercover government agents, whether they're informants or actual FBI agents, and that this was proof positive that the January 6th storming of the Capitol was somehow influenced by the FBI and engineered by the FBI because of this reference, right?
And Tucker Carlson then, you know, cites a bunch of stuff in reciting this argument, including my book, which looked at the way that the FBI would, you know, during the War on Terror, find young, impressionable Muslim men who, you know, whether, you know, due to economic circumstances or mental illness, were more easily influenced by undercover agents to get involved in bomb plots.
And that's like, There's a well-documented history of this happening over the last 20 years.
So Tucker Carlson makes this argument like, well, look, this happened to Muslims over the last 20 years.
Isn't this what exactly happened to this man in the Capitol?
And doesn't this prove that the January 6th storm in the Capitol was, in fact, an FBI-engineered plot?
And in reality, it's all bullshit, right?
Because, you know, the significant thing is that the FBI doesn't identify cooperating witnesses or informants or undercover
agents as person two and person three in an indictment, right? So the entire argument was just
based on a misunderstanding of how the government's terminology. But I think where it's dangerous
is the way that a lot of conspiracy theories are dangerous, in that it takes this kernel of
truth, and which in this case is the fact that the FBI has, you know, for the last 20 years, run
these very questionable sting operations that have entrapped Muslims in terrorism plots that they
had no capacity of by themselves.
And it wraps it in this idea that because this happened, then this January 6th thing must have happened too.
In truth, I have no doubt that some of the people involved in the January 6th storming of the Capitol probably were under some sort of FBI surveillance before then, or probably had informants sent to them at some period of time.
But there's absolutely no evidence that the FBI was involved in any sort of grand plot to push people into the storming of the Capitol.
And it's just a ridiculous argument.
So I just felt the need to say, OK, if Tucker Carlson is using me as the expert source to say this is possible, to justify his argument, I felt this requirement to basically say no.
As the guy who literally wrote the book on this, that's not true, what Tucker Carlson is saying.
So yeah, to be clear, in your book you analyze more than 500 post 9-11 federal terrorism prosecutions that occurred over a 10-year period.
And then this led to the Intercept's Trial and Terror Project, which continues to keep the data you examined current.
Can you tell us a bit about both?
So my initial work started, you know, for the book where I looked at the first 10 years of terrorism prosecutions.
And by terrorism prosecutions, I mean like international terrorism prosecutions, where the government, you know, alleges that someone was part of an Al Qaeda plot or an ISIS plot or an unnamed, roughly jihadi kind of plot, even though there might not be a specific terrorist organization behind it.
I was looking at specifically was like of the number of terrorism prosecutions that occurred,
how many involved a sting operation where the government poses as a member of al-Qaeda or ISIS,
whether as an informant or an agent, and provides everything that the person needs? Because in a lot
of these cases, you know, the FBI was providing, you know, the bombs or the guns or the transportation.
You know, there were even particularly egregious cases where the government would provide,
you know, not only all of the money and all of the weapons, but like the idea for the plot itself.
And many of the people that they were getting, you know, either had diagnosed mental illnesses
or behaved in a way that suggested, you know, they certainly had some mental issues. And so
my book examined the first 10 years of that. And then with a colleague at The Intercept,
Margo Williams, we've continued to track this data and have expanded on it to some degree.
I mean, the other things we're looking at are, you know, whether the defendant ultimately
became a cooperating witness or became an informant, you know, whether the government
used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as part of its investigation.
And where we are now, you know, there have been more than, I believe the current number
is a little over 900 total terrorism prosecutions involving international terrorism charges
in the United States since 9/11.
And about 370 people have been caught up in undercover sting operations where the government
either provided the idea and/or provided the means and opportunity.
provided the idea and/or provided the means and opportunity.
And so this isn't like a fringe phenomenon, but it's only happened maybe a dozen times. I
And so this isn't like a fringe phenomenon, but it's only happened maybe a dozen times.
I mean, this is part of a government program to find would-be terrorists.
mean, this is part of a government program to find would-be terrorists. And what the
government and the FBI say to justify it is they have two kind of goals with it. One is to, they want to
And what the government and the FBI say to justify it is they have two kind of goals
with it.
One is to, they want to find the person who wants to bomb a building before an ISIS operative
find the person who wants to bomb a building before an ISIS operative or an al-Qaeda operative
or an al-Qaeda operative gives that person the bomb, even though there's never been a
gives that person the bomb, even though there's never been a situation where like some, you know,
Yahoo has no capability, like, meets an ISIS operative and he's like, "Here's a bomb, son,"
right? Like, this never happened.
And then the other thing that the government alleges or says is their goal is that they want
to kind of create an environment that is not conducive for terrorism. So the idea would be that,
like, if people who are plotting terrorist attacks in the United States know that they run these sting
operations, then anyone they might plot with, they'll be thinking, "Well, is this guy an informant?
Is he an undercover agent?" And that in turn just kind of creates an environment that's hostile to
So that's their argument.
I mean, what I argue and what other organizations like Human Rights Watch have argued is that, like, this isn't really stopping terrorism so much as it's just finding really impressionable people that can kind of justify these really bloated post-911 counterterrorism budgets.
I wanted to get a little bit more specific and examine some of these cases.
One of the ones that I found fascinating was your coverage of William Keebler, who had been involved with Cliven Bundy during his group's armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management.
So can you tell us what happened there?
Yeah, so this really relates to part of what made Tucker Carlson's conspiracy theory seem like it's possible, right?
Because one of the things that we have been seeing in recent years is the, you know, the use of these kind of sting tactics that had been almost exclusively aimed at Muslims in the post-911 era being used in other groups, right?
You see it in both, you know, kind of left-wing and right-wing circles.
And we have seen the kind of increase You know, starting shortly after Trump's election, but even a little before then.
This is not necessarily related to Trump.
There was certainly some relation.
You know, one of the things that we see is that the FBI is, you know, turning up and turning more aggressive in these groups.
And so prior to Trump's election, this would have been, I believe, 2014, 2015.
There was the standoff in Nevada involving Clive and Bundy, you know, over these ranching fees.
As a result of social media and kind of organic reach, you know, a lot of these anti-government people, militia people, came to Clive and Bundy's aid during this standoff.
And the federal government investigated a lot of the people that were there, thinking that a lot of these people are anti-government militia types who might be domestic extremists in some way.
One of the people they found was this guy named William Keebler.
There was a lot of anger around Cliven Bundy and his supporters toward the Bureau of Land Management, which for a lot of people that don't live in the Western United States, they may not even know what the BLM is, right?
But the BLM is this federal agency that is tasked with managing federal government-owned lands in the Western United States.
And there's a huge swath of federal government-owned lands in the United States.
And so the BLM was the one that confiscated Clive and Bundy's cattle during this dispute.
And so a lot of anger as a result of the standoff was geared toward this otherwise obscure government agency
that most people never really know or hear about.
And so William Keebler, after the standoff, goes back to his home in Utah,
and the FBI, through an informant and an agent, engage him.
Basically they're like, "Hey, we should do something about this BLM stuff."
And they come up with this plot to bomb a BLM cabin in this remote area of Utah.
And of course, William Keebler, like a lot of the people that supported Clive and Bundy,
he's got a rifle, he's got some guns.
A lot of the people that live out West have guns, but he doesn't have a bomb, right?
And so the government gives him this bomb, and then he places it in the BLM cabin,
and abracadabra, he's arrested and charged with explosives charges.
And they didn't charge him specifically with terrorism, but they used the same types of tactics
that they used for Muslims in similar cases.
And so we are seeing more cases like that, where the FBI is targeting people of right-wing ideologies.
And I do think it's as problematic, obviously, as the targeting of Muslims in the post-9/11 era.
That's the other part that made, I think, Tucker Carlson's argument seem plausible.
And again, as you guys will know, how sometimes conspiracy theories are able to take root because there's this grain of truth behind it, even though they're distorting the actual real thing that they're talking about.
I think there is this well-founded concern in right-wing circles that the FBI is going to start targeting them more aggressively.
And that's what feeds into that.
And again, because of cases like William Keebler, it isn't a fantasy.
I mean, that is happening.
It just isn't evidence that anything happened with the January 6th storming of the Capitol, obviously.
The Intercept has also covered the FBI's targeting of, quote unquote, Black identity extremists during the BLM, not Bureau of Land Management, Black Lives Matter, movements of these past years.
So how does this fit in with what you wrote about in Terrafactory and Carlson's recent claims?
What we are seeing is an increasing interest by the FBI and the federal government in general in looking at any kind of ideologies that they view as somewhat extreme.
And so that includes, you know, Black Lives Matter movement or, you know, more specifically, the FBI term of what they use is the Black is Black Identity Extremists or BIE.
And, you know, they have pursued pretty aggressive investigations
related to people that they associate as being Black Identity Extremists.
I take issue with the larger tag that the FBI uses for this.
So they seem to, in my view, like lump together a couple of different ideologies
that are not necessarily related, but are only related by the color of these people's skin.
So one example of this is, you know, there is a movement among young Black activists
to know how to use firearms, to get firearms, to defend yourselves,
in ways that are no different and no more...
illegal then, because they're not illegal, then, you know, you see white communities
doing this, right? But because you have these like black gun clubs, and they're often very
kind of critical of police power in black communities, you know, the government has
kind of categorized those, those people, that group of people as being black identity extremists
to some degree. And we've seen investigations by the FBI of people who, you know, black
activists who are in these black gun clubs. And then the other part of it that you see,
there is a pretty substantial part of the whole sovereign citizen movement has been
kind of co opted by a black, black communities in kind of this banner of the Moorish Science
Temple. And you know, what's interesting is, you know, the the FBI identify sovereign citizens
as a potential extremist ideology on its own, but they really kind of identify it as being
almost like a white specific right wing ideology, which in many cases it is.
But there's also this other layer to it, which is the ideology and the idea that you can opt out of your mortgage and, you know, all of these things that sovereign citizens believe.
A part of the Black community has identified this, and it's often referred to as the Moorish Science Temple.
And, you know, the FBI lumps all of these groups together as this kind of Black identity extremist.
Again, I think it shows the FBI's lack of sophistication in realizing that these are two very different kind of types of ideology that they're grouping under one.
And at the same time, I think there's criticism you can make of it that, you know, the FBI is just basically saying, OK, well, we've got these black people that we view as extreme, whether they're anti-police gun activists or they're sovereign citizens, and we're just going to lump them all together into one group.
And that's effectively what they've done.
And whether it's fair to consider those people domestic extremists, which the FBI does, is really debatable.
So do you think the Gretchen Whitmer case, wherein the FBI arrested multiple people in Michigan for plotting to kidnap her, the governor, how does that fit in with all of this?
For lack of a better term, the jury's a little bit out on this one, only because the government has held the evidence pretty close to the vest on this, and so we don't really know fully what happened.
A number of media organizations have petitioned the court to get video and photographs and evidence released, and there's been a small portion that's been released, but there's a much larger portion that we don't know about.
Based on what we do know, the informant and undercovers were acting in a significant way in the plot.
It is true that these guys had arms.
You know, a lot of people living in rural Michigan have guns, so it's not necessarily surprising.
That does take it maybe a step above a lot of these, like, Muslim entrapment cases, where usually the men don't have any weapons at all.
But in this particular case, it does appear, you know, I've seen the videos of these guys, right?
I mean, they're pretty hapless morons, indoctrinated with crazy conspiracy theories during the whole COVID lockdown.
I think there's a lot of reasonable questions to ask whether they would have gone forward with this at all, as with these Muslim plots, were it not for the FBI's undercover encouragement and being part of that plan.
And I think as it goes to trial, we'll find out more about it, but I definitely think it's not It's not above criticism.
I think this is also another, in kind of wrapping together this theory about how the government was involved in January 6th, this case was also something Revolver News, which Tucker Carlson regurgitated, that's part of their kind of conspiracy.
And so again, it's like another example where you have these things that are disparate and true and problematic.
You roll them all together and then you make this argument about January 6th that isn't true, but it kind of seems like it feels true because these other things are true as well, or at least, you know, questionable.
You know, and as I mentioned in the article I wrote, I mean, I do think a challenge for the press, including places like The Intercept, is going to be continuing to cover critically the FBI's activities in right-wing communities like the Whitmer plot and questioning, with the same veracity and same tenacity, whether this was kind of a government-engineered plot and whether this is appropriate for the government to be doing in the same way that we've been doing for cases involving Muslims over the last 10, 15 years.
So some domestic terrorism is not aided by the FBI, so I wanted to take a look at one of those cases.
Michael Harry, and you wrote about him and how you thought his violent actions were linked to Trump and his rhetoric, so can you tell us about that?
To me, the more logical explanation for what happened January 6th is that, you know, we had seen over, you know, the building previous years that there, you know, Trump was very effective at encouraging violence with his rhetoric, right?
Whether he intended to or not is something, you know, we can debate.
I live in Florida.
Not too far from where I live was that guy, Cesar Sayoc, who had his van all plastered in pro-Trump and anti-CNN images.
And he was sending bombs to Soros and the Clintons and various Democratic officeholders and funders.
And he did it because he felt like Trump was telling him that's what he needed to do, right?
And Michael Harre was this guy who was this Anabaptist guy and really struggled to find an identity in life.
And finally, after years and years of kind of personal and professional failure, finds his identity
in kind of the Trump make America great again brand, right?
Like we're gonna bring back America to its roots, to like white conservative culture.
He ended up forming this company that tried to build Trump's border wall
and submitted this application, even though he didn't have any building experience
to build this wall.
Submits a proposal for millions of dollars and ultimately gets involved in this plot
where he and two associates bomb a mosque in Minnesota and then later drive to Illinois and bomb a women's clinic.
And it was clear that, you know, he was, you know, and people I talked to, you know, described him as being this guy who, you know, Trump's rhetoric just flipped the switch.
It was this idea that like, the country I believe in, the culture that I identify with, is being stolen away from me by these various actors.
And that's what inspired his violence. And, you know, he's not alone. I mean,
there was a case where these people plotted to bomb an apartment building that was populated
largely by Somali immigrants. And their lawyers have argued that, you know, look,
the reason they did this is they were basically inspired by Trump's rhetoric. And, you know,
there have been a number of cases. There was a there was a case out West where, you know,
this guy with a Make America Great Again hat body slammed this teenager and cracked open his skull
because he didn't put his hand on his chest for the national anthem.
And, you know, he identified, like, you know, this kind of Trump, like, you need to respect our country.
And, like, how much of this is directly related to Trump, you can debate.
But what happened January 6th wasn't all that surprising.
I mean, I was surprised it reached the level it did, and they breached the Capitol, certainly.
But the idea that Trump, you know, saying, like, hey, they stole this election from me and We need to do something.
Obviously it was going to inspire violence because we'd seen it for years in these other cases.
It's more surprising that the FBI was like, oh, we didn't see that coming.
Everybody saw that coming, right?
And again, this is the insidiousness of someone like Tucker Carlson, where like the most logical argument is like, yeah, You know, people were fed this lie that the election was stolen and that the country is being stolen away from them.
And what other recourse do they have than to commit some sort of violence and storm the Capitol?
That, to me, is a whole lot more plausible than this idea that the FBI, through government agents, is able to somehow rally together, what, hundreds of people to do the same thing and commit this, you know, attack on the Capitol.
It just makes no sense.
I did still want to address this idea of terrorism's double standard, which you've written about.
What has changed with the FBI's approach?
Is it just more people getting trapped now, less clearly discriminating against left-wing activists and minorities?
Where are we heading, and what does it mean, this double standard?
One of the things I think it's like important, you know, kind of historically to go back, if you go back to like 2016, and you think about like Trump running for the presidency, I mean, one of the things he had made a big deal about was this idea of like, you know, the Muslim ban, and we need to close the borders to see what's going on because like, we have these, you know, terrorists in the United States, right?
And it wasn't that Trump kind of created this kind of culture of Islamophobia.
I mean, really, he had tapped into this narrative that the Justice Department had been writing for 15 years at that point, which is that, you know, because people who get involved in acts of terrorism or kind of bombings of some sort, if they are Muslim, they are charged with terrorism charges.
So terrorism charges being like material support for terrorism, you know, using a weapon of mass destruction.
And various others, those two being the most prominent.
And so what we'd seen over the last 15 years was if a Muslim got involved in that, they would get one of those charges, it'd be splashed on the national news, and you would hear all about it.
If a white guy bombs an abortion clinic, which is the same type of crime, right, than say
bombing a building, they're not charged with using a weapon of mass destruction, even though
they could be charged with using a weapon of mass destruction.
Instead, they're charged with explosives charges, right, which not only carry a significantly
lesser sentence if they are convicted, it ends up not getting the publicity in the media
that it does because it's not a splashy charge like weapons of mass destruction.
What Margaret Williams and I looked at the intercept as part of terrorism's double standard
was like, we went back over DOJ prosecution data over the previous 20 years and tried
to examine like how many of these cases were like the ones that get charged as terrorism
if it involves a Muslim, but they didn't.
And you know, it was amazing how many there were, like there were so many that were ultimately
charged with like explosives when they used the bomb, whereas a Muslim with the same crime
would have been charged with weapons of mass destruction.
This does a couple of things.
One, obviously, it benefits the white domestic extremist who's going to get a lesser charge.
But in a more corrosive way, it inflates the perception of terrorism from Muslims while decreasing the perception of terrorism from right-wing extremists.
And so that allows Donald Trump in 2016 to be like, we need to figure out what the hell is going on with these Muslims, because the perception was that this was a predominantly Muslim problem, because those are the cases you hear about.
What we are seeing, though, happen, and it's happening slowly, is that DOJ is moving in a direction now where they are beginning to charge right-wing extremists with these offenses that they hadn't in the past.
So an example of this would be Cesar Sayoc, right?
The guy in Florida who had the van and mailed the bombs.
They charged him with, you know, use of a weapon of mass destruction, which was notable because they hadn't been doing that.
And then the other is the Michigan-Whitmer plot.
They had charged some of those guys with material support for terrorism.
Which in the past had largely been unheard of in right-wing cases.
This raises an argument, I think, that should we be using terrorism charges at all?
And that's probably for a separate discussion.
But I think at the very least, what we are seeing is the double standard is not as great as it was.
I'd like to think that our pointing it out in the story was kind of helpful in pushing DOJ in that direction.
But for whatever reason, they have moved in that direction.
And we are seeing gradually, you know, DOJ being more willing to apply the terrorism, you know, banner and charge to So we have, on this podcast, long speculated about the FBI's policy regarding QAnon.
The first thing was like a leak, then they had a statement, and just all their broadly far-right conspiracy theory movements.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
We won't hold you to any truths.
I have to admit, I don't really think the FBI quite has a plan for QAnon.
I think that they are concerned about them in the way that they're concerned about sovereign citizens, but they've never really had a plan for sovereign citizens either.
To be honest, I've not talked to any FBI agents in the know about how they are taking on QAnon.
I don't get the impression this is something that they are taking very seriously.
I think they see it as a threat, but I think they kind of aren't sure what to do with it.
Probably that's how a lot of America feels, right?
Yeah, the statements from the FBI are always weird because it's all something this is bad and it may cause problems and it's like all shit.
I mean, I could have told you that aren't you people supposed to have like a sophisticated Intel apparatus or something a little bit give us something a little bit more detailed than that.
Yeah, that's the thing.
It is important to recognize that there is definitely like a CYA aspect to all, you know, FBI documents.
Like, you know, after the storming of the Capitol, you may recall, like, the next weekend, they were like, you know, all 50 state capitals need to be on high alert because they're going to get stormed, right?
And like, no one was stormed, right?
And I think, you know, to some extent, there's these communications and memos that the FBI comes out with are a bit CYA and just reactionary.
But yeah, it's hard to know what they'll do.
I mean, I think definitely like, you know, it's on their radar.
I mean, they, you know, as that memo stated, they've had investigations related to QAnon.
But, you know, I haven't seen any evidence of them really kind of using informants to get into these groups.
I mean, we haven't seen any court records that suggest that yet.
So the extent to which they're investigating QAnon and the various people involved is unknown.
That's really sad because a lot of QAnon people match the profile of people they've been trapped in the past.
Mentally enfeebled.
Right, it's like fish in a barrel, right?
Precarious.
It's like, boys, you know, you have this whole reserve and you haven't been hunting at all.
This is out of character.
Certainly, like, you know, if you did run these kind of under kind of a sting operations on, you know, the QAnon folks, I mean, yeah, I think you would easily have, you know, people getting involved in bomb plots that were, you know, questionable of capacity, but, you know, in the same vein that you see, you know, the FBI pursuing Muslims.
I'd love to get your take on this, but it seems like a lot of the time when you kind of get someone worked up and give them the means, you can't really predict how they're going to go off or where or when.
And we've had, you know, terrorist attacks on domestic soil now from people where there seemed to be a potential FBI, you know, connection.
I'm thinking the Tsarnaev brothers.
What is your take on that?
Yeah, it's hard to know.
I mean, definitely, like, the Tsarnaev brothers, you know, were—was later revealed that they were recruited to be informants, and, you know, the extent to which the FBI can, you know, push people in a direction and then lose track of them, I mean, it's—it's always something that's—it's hard to track, right?
But there is a concern, obviously, that you have informants going into communities and saying, like, you know, hey, we need to do something about this, right?
So, like, you know, if it's QAnon, it's like, hey, you know, we need to, like, You know, overthrow the government because they're, you know, involved in keeping us unfree and we need to, you know, help Q do what he needs to do or, you know, whatever the details of their ideology are.
And then you walk away because you didn't get them to get involved in the bomb plot, but then later they get involved in something and it's partly because the government was, you know, through an agent was inciting them.
I mean, that's...
That's always possible.
There aren't a lot of cases about that that we know of.
But, you know, that is, you know, that is something that I think is part of, like, the criticism here.
To a certain extent, like, you know, using the example of Muslim communities, generally speaking, Muslims would always joke if you ever meet someone at a mosque and they're like, hey, we should do something.
What about this Palestine issue?
Like, we should get bombs.
You know, it was like red flag, yeah, FBI informant, right?
Like, you know, it was easy to spot them.
And so, to a certain extent, I think, you know, in investigating Q, you would probably have, like, similar things.
But, you know, it is a worthwhile question.
Like, you know, to the extent that they are finding would-be bombers or violent people, are they later, you know, inspiring them toward action?
Okay, so that's all pretty heavy stuff.
I wanted to get to something that's, I mean, still heavy, but kind of weirder and funnier.
You're the host of season two of the Chameleon Podcast, which, you know, this specific season covers a two-year FBI undercover sting in Las Vegas that went bust.
Can you give us an overview of this endeavor known as Operation Botox?
Yeah, so I mean, obviously, you're seeing a theme with my work, which is that I'm really fascinated by the government's use of sting operations and whether, you know, the FBI through these sting operations are making crimes possible.
And so, you know, on the extreme end, right, we have these terrorism cases that we've just talked about, but that isn't exclusively what the FBI does, right?
They run stings on all sorts of people like drugs, fraud, money laundering.
And money laundering is this investigation.
And so what this looks at is this so-called Operation Botox.
And the FBI used an informant and an undercover agent to investigate money laundering within
Las Vegas' health and beauty industry.
And so these were, the people they investigated were selling like rapid weight loss plans.
There was a guy that sold an injection for erectile dysfunction.
And you know, what the FBI ultimately did was try to make it possible for these people
to launder money.
And they did ultimately launder money.
But there was no evidence that like they would have ever laundered money were it not for
the FBI getting involved.
What the podcast...
looks at are the two agents involved and their history of using sting operations to justify
their partying around the world.
And so, you know, what ended up happening in Operation Botox was the informant and the
undercover agent were going to strip clubs and nightclubs and partying on the government's
dime, not really furthering the government's investigation, and all while wearing their
undercover recording equipment.
Season 2 of Chameleon, which is called High Rollers, tells the story of this case, which ultimately didn't result in any convictions despite two years of FBI work, and uses the FBI's undercover recordings to show how this case just went absolutely off the rails.
And I mean, is this, again, the case of someone who was just kind of a low-level grifter, dishonest, and then they push it into a full-blown thing they can explain why they spent two years on?
Yeah, so the main subject is this guy named Emil Buari, who owns a weight loss clinic.
And, you know, he was, you know, arguably a snake oil salesman.
He sold what's called an HCG diet, which means that, like, he would give people this hormone and they would go on a calorie deprivation diet and, you know, lose weight.
And some people swear by it, although all of the medical research says there's nothing
to support the idea that HCG diet is effective at weight loss.
And so he's this guy that kind of operates in the gray areas of commerce in the United
States.
Not a criminal, but a potential steak oil salesman.
And he's kind of a hustler, right?
So ultimately, the FBI comes to him and says, "We want to invest in your business."
And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, let's invest, right?
Like, who wouldn't be up for that?
And then the FBI, through kind of a bit of a sleight of hand, makes it about money laundering, and suddenly he's wrapped up in this money laundering sting.
And the FBI guys are like, act as tough guys.
They're like, well, like, if you have any problems, you know, let us know, we can take care of it.
And, you know, he feels like he's wrapped up in this, like, mafia shit.
And then suddenly, you know, he's introducing them to friends, and it just gets totally out of control.
But ultimately what we look at and examine in the podcast, which I don't want to give away too much because it's still kind of coming out week by week, is kind of the origins of this case and questions about whether, you know, there was personal animus involved in how the FBI got in.
Because, like, you know, it is significant, right?
Like, I think a lot of people... One of the things to keep in mind is that, you know, when people think of the FBI, they often think of these, like, undercover stings, right?
Like, there was American Hustle and there's been all these, like, you know, stories you hear about the FBI running these, like, elaborate undercover stings.
But, like, that is actually, like, a small minority of the total number of cases that the FBI investigates.
And so, you know, for the FBI to take this undercover sting and go two years without convictions, like, it's just such an extraordinary thing, right?
Like, if you...
you know, if you were running any business and you're like, I'm going to do this for two years
and ultimately come up with nothing, like people will be pissed. Right. And like, that's what
happened in this case. And so, you know, what we're looking at is like, how did this case get so bad?
At one point in the in the case, as it's being prosecuted, a former FBI guy comes gets involved
and starts realizing, like, how screwed up the cases and becomes an expert witness for the
defense and explaining, like how things went off the rails.
So I think it's a it's a fun story.
I mean, it's one of these things like as a podcast series, it really works because it is something that's deadly serious.
This idea that, you know, government agents can come into your life and really just ruin your life, right?
But at the same time, it's like got this kind of Coen Brothers feel in the sense that it's like, you know, you're in Las Vegas, it's like the weight loss industry.
And it's just got this like, kind of absurdist dark comedy element to it, where like, everybody that they target is kind of the character in their own right.
So where can people find you and your work?
I write for The Intercept, so a lot of the national security stuff is there at theintercept.com.
And for Chameleon High Rollers, you can listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts.
And so just search High Rollers or Chameleon on any kind of podcast platform and you'll find it there.
Thanks so much for coming on the show and elucidating this stuff.
Yeah, no problem.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
When you subscribe, you help us stay advertising free and editorially independent.
We usually stream twice a week at twitch.tv slash QAnonAnonymous, and other handles you can follow on there, Julian Field, Liv Agar, and Florida Flynn.
For everything else, we have a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
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.
Oh, hello there.
My name is John McAfee.
I'm the founder of the McAfee Antivirus Software Company.
Although I've had nothing to do with this company for over 15 years, I still get volumes of mail asking, how do I uninstall this software?
I have no idea.
Depending on which edition and version of McAfee's anti-malware software is installed on your computer, you may have to click on remove, uninstall, or a similarly named option to begin the uninstall process.
Um, when finished, reboot the system.
John, are you getting this?
Yeah, yeah, yes.
You may have to download McAfee Consumer Product Removal Tool.
John?
Huh?
Yes?
Uh, does that sound about right?
Well, not completely, you know.
I mean, it's always there.
It's watching.
It's been watching me for years.
Every time I turn on the fucking computer, it's there looking at me.
You know, something went wrong.
Fifteen years ago, I had some beautiful software and they took it over.
I don't know what they did.
It was like the time I hired that Bangkok prostitute to do my taxes while I fucked my accountant.
