UNLOCKED Premium Episode 159: QAnon VS Butterfly Sanctuary
A butterfly sanctuary in South Texas accused of "human trafficking" by redpilled lunatics. We spoke to Marianna Treviño-Wright, the head of the privately owned, non-profit National Butterfly Center about the unhinged confrontations on her property and how it all started with a government plan to "build the wall". On team redpill, we've got a cast of awful characters including Pennsylvania congressional candidate Kimberly Lowe and Brian Kolfage, the grifter behind an organization called "We Build The Wall".
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Episode music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
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Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 159 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the QAnon vs. Butterfly Sanctuary episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rogatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
The last time we heard about butterflies on the podcast, it was a couple of years ago when QAnon influencer Liz Grogan posted a video claiming the arrival of butterflies in her backyard was a sign from God that Trump was freeing the child sex slaves.
All of this because they looked like monarch butterflies, which in her mind connected to a supposed mind control operation called Project Monarch, which she claims to have been a victim of.
And folks, butterflies are back, and Travis is going to be exploring how the owners of a butterfly preserve were harassed into closing by a truly demented cast of red-pilled weirdos.
Including Pennsylvania congressional candidate Kimberly Lowe.
The harassment campaign was stoked by Brian Colfage, founder of an organization dubbed We Build the Wall.
All because Trump's stupid border wall was supposed to be built right through the Butterfly Sanctuary.
This is like a Captain Planet episode or something.
Yeah, it's like Captain Planet mixed with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It's a nice little mash.
As part of the episode, Travis spoke with the person in charge of the privately owned National Butterfly Center, Mariana Trevino-Wright, who was subjected to the sustained campaign of abuse and, in QAnon style, accused of supporting child sex trafficking.
So, pretty dismal stuff, just another episode about lepidopterology from your friends at QAA.
In the south of Texas, you can find the National Butterfly Center.
This is a privately owned, non-profit butterfly sanctuary.
20 years ago, it was just a big onion field.
But over the past two decades, the center has painstakingly restored the 100 acre area into a habitat with Flowers and trees for the more than 200 species of butterflies.
Their visitors could come and marvel at the diversity of the most dazzling of insect species.
You could see the monarch butterfly, the Mexican blue wing, the red-bordered pixie, and dozens of other natural marvels.
Wow, Travis is really taken by these butterflies.
You know, butterflies are very pretty.
They are beautiful, I agree with you.
Now, you would hope that, you know, this is simply one of the most wholesome and inoffensive sort of locations, destinations that you could hope for.
But if you're a conspiracist, then you may have allowed your brainworms to convince you without evidence that the National Butterfly Center is a hub for human trafficking.
And further, that the leaders of this non-profit are somehow in on these horrible misdeeds.
Yeah.
Now, the Butterfly Center has been the target for conspiracy theories for years.
Most of these conspiracy theories were promoted by Brian Colfage and his associates, who were associated with the We Build the Wall efforts.
So the theory here, of course, is that they took the machine from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, they're shrinking the kids down, they're putting wings on them, and they look a lot like butterflies.
Yeah, well, no, they make the kids ride on the back of the butterflies across the sanctuary, I assume.
Okay, that's amazing.
They can fly, not we can fly.
I'm down.
This harassment campaign culminated recently when a long-shot congressional candidate had a confrontation with the director of the National Butterfly Center.
These baseless and damaging accusations can be rooted in the Butterfly Center's conflict with the Trump administration and Trump's allies over the construction of the border wall.
In order to better understand what happened, I spoke to Mariana Trevino-Wright earlier this week.
She told me that her organization has a straightforward mission of conservation.
The National Butterfly Center is a 100-acre botanical garden, and it's located on the banks of the Rio Grande River down in Mission, Texas, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Conservation Corridor.
I have been here for 10 years now as the Executive Director, and I am charged with making this nonprofit a sustainable enterprise through The programs we offer to the community, the native plants that we sell, and memberships, grants, and other things that support our mission.
And our mission is environmental education and conservation to help people understand the critical role that native plants and butterflies play in healthy ecosystems and the survival of the planet.
Travis with the solemn butterfly nods, is what I would say.
What's going on in that interview?
I was listening rapt at... Yeah.
Oh, they stole your apes?
They stole this woman's butterflies.
But Trevino Wright told me that in 2017, contractors working for the government showed up unannounced at her property and started going to work.
This led to the National Butterfly Center suing over the intrusion.
I went over the levee at our property and that morning, July 20th, 2017, discovered five workmen, three with chainsaws, one driving a brush boom, and the other with a brush hog, and they were Cutting down our trees, mowing down our vegetation.
And I said, who are you and what are you doing here?
And they said, well, the government sent us to clear this land for border wall.
And that was more than nine months before any congressional vote authorizing or appropriating funds.
For border wall construction.
And besides that, there had been no legal exercise taken to give contractors a right of entry to the property or any waiver of laws.
Most people don't understand that the government itself has given themselves the right to waive every single U.S.
law for border wall construction.
And they waive every law they know they're going to violate in a particular area for this project.
So that had not happened.
There had been no lawsuit filed against us for imminent domain for the land seizure.
And so we publicly spoke out about this.
The government publicly denied that the contractors were there, which was funny because obviously we had photo and video evidence.
The news crews came, even Border Patrol came to see what was going on.
And shortly after that, Chief Manuel Padilla, who was head of the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol sector, came to see me.
No appointment.
He was in plain clothes with a uniformed agent and his, uh, secretary, his attache and, uh, came to tell me that indeed the government had sent the contractors and they would be back with green uniform presence.
So armed federal agents, you know, protecting for-profit, uh, private contractors, uh, on private property.
And we filed suit against the government in 2017.
But that's not really when things went sideways.
My God.
Just like the most villainous possible thing.
Just armed guards destroying like a butterfly sanctuary.
Yeah, it's like something out of like a Mike Judge satire.
Yeah.
You know, it's insane.
Awful.
Fucking Daddy Warbucks with a giant cigar laughing and riding in with the first, you know, machine.
Yeah, this is Avatar, actually.
Try to stop me this time, you bisexual teens!
According to a CNN report, President Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner himself was aware of this lawsuit.
In 2019, Kushner was reported as saying in a White House meeting that, quote, we solved the butterfly thing.
Yeah, it's sort of this kind of a strange statement.
The government lawsuit actually wasn't resolved.
I mean, I'm not sure what that means exactly.
I mean, it's possible that Kushner was just arrogantly claiming victory when there was none.
He was winning.
In 2019, the National Butterfly Center filed another lawsuit against a privately funded effort to build the border wall called We Build the Wall.
So, We Build the Wall is the brainchild of Brian Colfage, an Iraq war veteran who lost both of his legs and his right arm in a rocket attack.
We Build the Wall started as a GoFundMe that made headlines when it raised $25 million in a very short period of time.
With all that money, they turned it into a nonprofit organization.
Its advisory board included Steve Bannon and the private military entrepreneur Eric Prince.
Unfortunately, this We Build the Wall did not end with a fully built wall, but actually it ended with federal charges.
In August of 2020, Colfage and Bannon were indicted for defrauding hundreds of thousands of We Build the Wall donors by diverting money for personal use.
Federal prosecutors said that despite the fact that the donors were repeatedly assured that Colfage would not be paid in fundraising literature, the defendants engaged in a scheme to pass $350,000 to Colfage.
Now, before Trump left office, he pardoned Bannon for his role in the scheme.
Colfage, on the other hand, was not.
In fact, he got more charges piled on top of him.
Colfage was separately indicted in May of 2021 on federal charges for defrauding the IRS and filing false tax returns.
I mean, you know, that's funny.
That's, I mean, that's gotta sting a little because it would, it would, it would cost, um, it would cost Trump nothing to like just do one extra signature to get Colfage, uh, off the hook as well.
But, um, he didn't feel like it.
Well, because that would allow the story to be printed, like Trump pardons guy who ripped off the wall, like who literally, even if you're a kind of patriotic MAGA supporter, you're like, that's not, that's not cool.
You stole from our communal hate project.
No.
No, instead they pardoned Bannon and just threw coal phage to the wolves.
Now, before We Build the Wall was exposed as a criminally fraudulent operation, it received glowing coverage from mainstream conservative news outlets.
Fox News, for example, gave We Build the Wall free airtime on supposedly straight news programs like America's Newsroom, as well as opinion shows like The Ingram Angle.
Here's a montage of We Build the Wall coverage on Fox News that was compiled by Media Matters.
There is a private group now putting up sections of the border wall in the El Paso area, and it's using private donations to fund it.
Enter Brian Colfax.
He's a triple amputee Air Force vet who started a GoFundMe page for the wall, you know, the wall that the politicians don't want to fund.
And he started this just three days ago.
In that short time, he has already raised more than $9.7 Million dollars.
In just five days, it's raised over $13 million due to donations from Americans.
And in only 10 days, it has raised close to $18 million.
Today, Trish, I spoke to Brian Colfage, the Air Force veteran who lost three of his limbs in combat.
This is the man that started the GoFundMe page.
In three weeks, Trish, he's raised $19 million.
The private GoFundMe group called Build the Wall Raised $20 million in 20 days.
We Build the Wall has been raising money for their project online so far.
Some $22 million has been raised.
Colfage himself appeared on Fox Business to promote his GoFundMe.
During this appearance, he helpfully warned people that there was another different We Build the Wall GoFundMe, which was just a scam.
Alright, well, so how do people donate?
If they want to contribute to your fund, how would they do that, Brian?
We set up a website to control everybody because there's a lot of fake sites popping up.
So if you go to WeFundTheWall.com, that will have all the links for our official pages in there.
Like I said, there's other GoFundMe's setting up where people are trying to scam.
Just go to WeFundTheWall.com and that will have all the links for the GoFundMe and all our social media.
Alright, $13.5 million and still counting.
Brian, good to see you.
Congrats on your effort.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Don't fall for these other scams.
Fall for mine.
Yeah, I mean, this is consolidated scamming, you know?
It's like, don't go for the little guys.
Pitching tents around the big event.
Pay your fucking ticket.
It was my idea to scam people into paying for the wall first, you know?
Don't fall for any of these copycats.
Yeah.
I also love that he said, um, we set up a webpage, not, he didn't say we set up a webpage to help everyone.
He didn't say we, we set up a webpage to direct everyone.
He actually said we set up a webpage to control everyone.
To control everyone.
So, so he has, maybe it's a little Freudian slip there, but kind of exposes how much contempt he has for the people who are like sending him money.
Donald Trump Jr.
even expressed his support for Colfage and We Build the Wall during an event in New Mexico.
Thank you guys for being here.
Brian, thank you so much for all your sacrifices doing this and showing really what capitalism's all about, right?
This is private enterprise at its finest, doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else.
Correct.
And what you guys are doing is pretty amazing.
Great analysis.
Started from a grassroots effort, and it's just doing some wonderful things for an important issue.
Oh my God.
I like that.
Thank you for including that, Travis.
Thought you'd like that.
Now, before Colfage got involved with We Build the Wall, he had a tendency for directing targeted harassment towards anyone he didn't like.
This included progressives, fellow veterans, and even former conservative allies.
In one instance, Colfage directed his trolls towards a completely innocent person.
Here's from a report from the Texas Tribune.
Massachusetts resident Jan Fratsos would get on Facebook to play games, wish friends happy birthday, and keep up with their lives, she said.
Okay, so that's the beginning of every article we ever cover.
That is the setup, the origin story.
You're like, ah, this formula again.
Ah, fucking Farmville again.
This is shitty recycled QAA plot points.
Oh man, once again, Bedazzled has led a generation of boomers to far-right radicalization.
But a 2013 post offering a family her condolences for losing their little girl to cancer, an illness she said she was then battling herself, placed her in the middle of an internet rabbit hole of fake pages, trolls, and cyberbullies she knew nothing about.
It turns out, Vrotos had commented on a fake page Colfage and others had set up to catch the administrator of a satirical liberal page called Republican Family Values that had used a picture with Colfage's baby as part of a meme making fun of his family.
Someone It's unclear who.
Then posted a fabricated comment to Colphage from Wroecos calling disabled veterans worthless.
The fake message said, quote, I hope you die a miserable death, you worthless fake hero.
You and your family will be a burden on taxpayers your entire life.
The post went viral.
It was shared by Colfage and his followers along with Rozo's picture, email, and home address, as well as the phone numbers of her and her mother.
Colfage wrote on social media, quote, This lady is enjoying her freedom at the expense of my legs and hand and enjoys bashing wounded warriors.
Expose her!
It was liked by nearly 1,300 people and shared more than 12,000 times.
By the way, wounded warriors, that terminology is the same used by the group that Ron recently has been kind of interacting with.
Jesus.
Almost immediately, Vrotsov's then 81-year-old mother started getting calls to tell her daughter
to get her affairs in order.
Vrotsov's received hundreds of threats, including one that said that they hoped she got "mugged
and raped at gunpoint by a AIDS-ridden piece of filth."
Jesus.
Hey.
But what bothered Vrotsov's the most, she said in a recent phone interview, is that
the harassers found out where her dad was buried, and that they threatened to dig up
the World War II veteran and "piss on his grave."
Before all of this, she said she had no idea who Brian Colvage was.
Wow.
He's a true piece of shit, man.
Incredible.
years before she stopped looking over her shoulder, afraid people would recognize her.
Before all of this, she said she had no idea who Brian Colfage was.
He likes the feeling of being able to, like, point to anyone and knowing that their life is going to get worse because there are lots of people who are insane and immoral who listen to you, who will do, you know, awful things just constantly towards whoever you target.
Yeah, drunk on the power of posting.
Yep.
Facebook eventually barred Colfage from its platform for his online behavior, which includes creating multiple fake accounts and linking to ad farms.
However, Colfage continued his strategy of targeted harassment as the We Build the Wall project started.
The organization's first construction project was a half a mile of fencing in Sunland Park, New Mexico, but local officials halted the construction due to lack of building permits.
That inspired Brian Colfage to send this tweet.
Here we go!
Liberals trying to intimidate us.
Sound the alarm!
The governor trying to flex.
City of Sunland Park said we had no permits trying to shut us down.
Bullshit!
They were on site on Friday and gave us green light to build.
Under that tweet, Colfage sent another two-word tweet that simply said, keep donating.
Never stop donating.
Never stop.
Just quick reminder, make with the money.
Yeah, but it's pretty clear that like Colfage was like he was pushing this narrative of being under attack and being a victim and being the one who's being pushed down because it's a fundraising strategy.
Colfage also tweeted baselessly that Sunland City officials are paid off by the cartels.
As a consequence, the mayor of Sunland Park, Javier Perea, said he received several death threats and thousands of other messages.
They told Perea to watch his back or that they were going to release his personal information.
A similar incident happened after We Build the Wall constructed a part of their wall on federal property without permission.
This caused the International Boundary and Water Commission, or the IBWC, to open a gate on that wall.
The IBWC is an international agency that applies the rules for determining the location of the U.S.-Mexico boundary when meandering rivers transfer tracts of land from one bank to the other.
In response to this agency opening the gate, Brian Colfage sent an email to his followers asking them to contact the agency and specifically ask for IBWC Commissioner Jane Harkins, who, as it so happens, is a Trump appointee.
Here's what the email said.
Dear Patriot, This is an urgent call to action.
The globalists at the International Boundary and Water Commission, IBWC, just showed up at our wall to lock the gate open.
They even invited the media to join them as they make another attempt to keep the flow of illegal human trafficking open that our wall has shut off.
Our legal team at We Build the Wall has done everything we can to work with the IBWC, but this latest media stunt has gone too far.
We aren't going to let a bunch of UN globalists trample on the rights of the Americans our wall is protecting.
I need you to call IBWC's office and tell them to close the damn gate!
Why are they doing the bidding of smugglers and human traffickers by keeping the gate open?
You could ask for Jane Harkins.
If you can't get through, keep calling and leave messages.
What a fucking asshole.
I mean, this guy really, he really does just love directing, you know, directing his sort of troll army, you know, wherever he sort of points the finger.
And, I mean, a lot of heavy QAnon coded languages.
I mean, you know, globalists and, uh... Trafficking smugglers.
All the multiple references to, you know, dark human smuggling, all that stuff.
I mean, he knows what he's doing.
He's kind of like a normie Facebook version of a Chan troll.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
The commission received hundreds of calls.
According to IBWC spokeswoman Sally Spencer, the typical call involves someone saying, open the gate and then hanging up.
She also said that the torrent of calls made it difficult to handle other business related calls.
The National Butterfly Center's lawsuit accused Colfage of defamation after he tweeted several baseless claims.
Of course, in Colfage's tweets, he always tagged the National Butterfly Center Twitter account at Nat Butterflies so that his followers knew where to direct their harassment.
For example, Colfage sent this tweet in 2019.
Criminal illegal aliens caught in butterfly zone again!
At Nat Butterflies enables cartel activity every day.
Yesterday a high-speed chase ensued from a drug runner who crashed his vehicle into the Rio Grande at the Butterfly property.
We are building it!
There was also this tweet which referred to a non-existent sex trade and dead bodies at the National Butterfly Center.
What's not funny at Nat Butterflies is how you declined to comment on the rampant sex trade taking place on your property and the dead bodies.
Any comment?
Colfage also sent this tweet.
We won't be bullied by left-wing thugs with a sham butterfly agenda, Nat Butterflies.
The fence just got 10 feet taller.
Winky face.
Hashtag triggered.
Oh my god.
He's the worst.
This is fucking worthless.
You fucking loser.
You loser.
You absolute fucking loser.
LARPing like there's bodies buried under the fucking butterfly preserve.
My wall's gonna be ten feet tall.
Now what do you say to that?
You triggered?
You triggered?
These people fucking suck.
Imagine explaining to the civil engineer that due to the levels of liberal triggering and rage, he has to now account for a 10-foot taller structure.
Like, how ridiculous is this?
Essentially, what I'm getting from his narrative is that the Butterfly Sanctuary is a liberal front for which the cartel can move easily and freely through the bushes.
The butterflies provide excellent camouflage for nefarious activities.
You know, endorsed by the Center's organizers.
Like, have you nothing else to do?
No.
Have you not lost enough already for this, like, shitty country?
Like, I just... Jake, it makes sense.
Man, this really pisses me off.
It makes sense.
The Coyotes are now basically training them in interpretative dance, and they dress them in these kind of colorful outfits, so as they cross the Butterfly Sanctuary, they look just like other butterflies.
Just yeah, much bigger one.
Prehistoric butterflies.
And it's like, you know.
Oh boy, here we fucking go.
I'm fucking pissed.
I don't know.
I don't know why this pisses, maybe because I, in my imagination, somebody who is like willing to devote their time to like running any kind of nature preserve center is probably like the least toxic kind of person that, you know, you could find in, you know, this country.
And it's like, man, okay, it's like you're trying to, okay, build a wall to, like, keep your country safe, but, like, most of your time is spent attacking people who live within the country.
It's just like, I don't know, it's just... Hashtag triggered.
Yeah, I'm triggered.
I'm triggered.
I'm unloading the clip, I'm uncocking the hammer, I'm settling back down, and I'm ready to continue the episode.
Thank you, because it was pointed at your own head.
As per usual.
Colfage's Twitter account has since been suspended, but these wild accusations led to harassment and threats both online and in person.
Intervenial rights telling.
The harassment that she and her organization has suffered were part of a Steve Bannon-connected operation to target anyone who criticized these wall-building efforts.
So, you know, there's all of these lies, but they need a straw man.
In Sunland Park, when The city said, wait a minute, you don't have building permits for this construction project.
And the International Boundary and Water Commission, the IBWC, which is the treaty organization with the authority to enforce the international boundary and regulate what happens on the Rio Grande River, when they also spoke up and said, you cannot build this on the international boundary to Mexico.
There are easements and other restrictions, etc.
We build the wall.
So Steve Bannon and Brian Colfage and Ben Birkwam, all of their content creators.
These are not journalists or correspondents.
They're propagandists.
They're content creators.
They're paid hitmen and women.
They accused everyone who spoke out against them of being on the cartel payroll or an operative or a smuggler themselves of having some vested interest in preventing this private fence from going up and deterring
Human trafficking and drug smuggling and other illicit, you know, activity when they were actually the ones breaking the law with this project.
When we saw what was happening in El Paso, I told my husband, I told my boss, I told our, you know, our coalition of environmental activists and others that we build the wall would be headed to Mission Texas next.
And that they would try to buy the land right next door to us.
And that's exactly what they did.
They came to mission and we now have in court testimony from Tommy Fisher that they tried to buy the land next door to us.
And I then became their their piñata.
Part of this operation in support of Rebuild the Wall involved the creation of a fake news website called The Rundown News.
The rundownnews.com, which has since gone offline, was operated by a one-time congressional candidate and book author named Peter D'Abrusca.
While Peter D'Abrusca ran in the Republican primary for North Carolina's 7th Congressional District in 2020, he promoted a platform of stopping all immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, for 10 years.
He wound up being disqualified for running in the primary because he did not meet the 90-day requirement for affiliation with the Republican Party.
So what does that mean?
He was independent and then filed at the last minute to be a Republican?
Yeah, basically yes.
He filed his party affiliation too late to actually run the primary, basically.
To give you an idea of what the rundown news was all about, the news categories were Exclusive, Campaign 2020, Illegal Aliens, and Political Violence.
Hmm.
Very narrow breadth of topics.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it was, you know, basically if like, if you were like a MAGA dad and after a long day of work, you like to relax by reading articles that made you angry and terrified about brown people, this would be your go-to website.
The articles in the Rundown News primarily focused on stories of immigrants being arrested, and they also included the propaganda in support of We Build the Wall.
Now, these articles, they frequently included original quotes from Brian Colfage, indicating a close relationship between the website and We Build the Wall.
One 2019 headline from Rundown News, which was categorized under "illegal aliens," read,
quote, "Exclusive! We build the wall fire back at Catholic priest Nature Preserve for
promoting human trafficking." Incomprehensibly badly written.
Yeah, it is. It is. It is.
But it's basically so that that Catholic priest being referred to there is Father Roy Snipes of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, who is also a proponent of the wall construction, and was targeted by a spear campaign.
How can you go, I don't know, how do you go like a Catholic priest in a nature preserve and then like think that, you know, even like to the right, that you're the good guys, you know?
I don't know.
I think these are, you know, realists.
In this article, Mariana Trevino-Wright was described as a vocal wall opponent.
Another article from January 4th, 2020 mocked the sympathetic coverage that Trevino-Wright received from the media.
The headline reads, Local border reporters hammed it up with far-left activists during Friday hearing on private wall construction.
They were yuckin'.
They were just there having a good time, and ooh, it made me so steamed.
Dude, okay, that's amazing.
the butterfly people have media friends.
Dude, okay, that's amazing. The butterfly people is a great new,
you know, word for the triple parentheses.
Trevino-Wright told me that she believes this smear operation was intended to inspire
socastic terrorism.
She cited the example of the gunman who fired into the Comet Ping-Pong Pizzeria in DC in 2016 because he was radicalized by Pizzagate.
She also cited the 2019 El Paso shooting in which a gunman radicalized by the White Replacement Conspiracy Theory killed 23 people and injured an additional 23 in a Walmart.
After they unleashed this torrent of false, malicious, defamatory statements online and via their channels, fake news sites like therundownnews.com, which has since disappeared.
It served its purpose already.
Once they started saying all of these horrible things, we got death threats, They assaulted our Facebook page in such a way that Facebook suspended their activity.
We weren't even aware we were under attack on Facebook.
They were giving us zero and one-star reviews and saying horrible things.
But they came after us by phone, by messaging, by email, and in person.
And that continues basically to this day.
I've been targeted by the neo-Nazis.
They put out my photo, my name, my workplace with a call to find out my home address and everything they can about my children.
So this, you know, this has not been limited to the Butterfly Center.
It is very specifically being, been aimed at me and my family.
And their goal is to have me killed.
Their goal is to incite A stochastic terrorist in the same way they did in El Paso.
Most people may not recall that they hosted a three-day wall-a-thon fundraiser in El Paso with these same operatives, Ben Birkwam, Steve Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Tommy Fisher, Dustin Stockton, Jennifer Lawrence, Brandon Darby, and about three weeks Two to three weeks after that event, one of their followers, one of their true believers drove from Plano to El Paso and massacred 22 people at Walmart and dozens more were shot and injured.
And that is what they are trying to do to us.
This is the Pizzagate formula, and they keep recycling it because it works.
So that's the background.
And I think that's important to know because like these more recent incidents, they come out of nowhere.
There is part of a long-running, years-long harassment campaign that So that brings me to the most recent incident against the National Butterfly Center, which was instigated by Pennsylvania congressional candidate Kimberly Lowe on January 21st.
Lowe was in the area to attend the three-day We Stand America rally, which Lowe promoted on Twitter.
That event took place in nearby McAllen, Texas, and featured the Speaker, General Michael Flynn.
The rally ran from Friday to Sunday, culminating in a caravan to the border where attendees held the rally.
While in Texas, Kimberly Lowe frequently live-streamed herself on Facebook Live.
The point of these live-streams is essentially to go hunting for people crossing the border, or if they're lucky, to find evidence of human trafficking.
But in practice, these live-streams rarely find anything interesting.
They usually consist of her driving or walking around at night and pointing to dark areas where she claims she saw migrants.
They wind up looking like a ghost hunter trying to find something spooky.
Here's from one of her recent streams.
Hey everybody, it's Kimberly Lowe.
I am in La Jolla, Texas at the border and the Poor Border Patrol have been out for a really long time trying to find the number of people who are out there in the woods right now.
And there's lots of paths in the woods and I guess they're out there trying to find them.
So we're actually probably going to head out right now and we're going to go to a bunch of different locations tomorrow.
Tomorrow I'm going to be in Hebronville.
Oh, you're safe?
Prowling the border in the middle of the night for huddled masses yearning for freedom?
Alright, see you guys tomorrow. We are safe and good. Thank you. Good night.
Oh, you're safe?
Prowling the border in the middle of the night for huddled masses yearning for freedom?
You fucking loser.
Yeah, it is strange behavior, but Kimberly Lowe didn't come up with this concept of,
like, you know, stalking in the dark for people.
A few Republican politicians have produced videos of themselves at the border so they can observe and report on the conditions themselves.
For example, last year, Senator Ted Cruz tweeted a video of himself standing in the dark and telling horrifying tales of being mocked by men standing in Mexico.
Mira el hombre gordo!
Mira, es muy feo!
We're at the edge of the river.
On the other side of the river is Mexico.
The other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members, human traffickers, right on the other side of the river, waving flashlights, yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the border patrol.
Yeah, they love that.
They love to draw the fire of the severely underarmed Americans.
Yeah, I mean, this like on the ground hunt for migrants.
Insane.
It reminded me of this QAnon related incident in 2018.
You know, you may remember that in Tucson, Arizona, there was an armed group called Veterans on Patrol, and they spent their days live streaming themselves searching for evidence of human trafficking.
And it In June of 2018, this group's leader, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, wandered into a wooded area of private property on an old cement plant and stumbled upon an abandoned homeless encampment.
Of course, Meyer instead decided that actually he had found evidence of children who were imprisoned at the site.
Now, authorities responded to these accusations.
They went to the area to investigate, but they found nothing suspicious.
But despite that, Meyer's baseless claims circulated through far-right outlets like InfoWars and Gateway Pundit.
But of course, back in 2018, there was just fringe weirdos who were out like, you know, on the dark, baking reality, trying to pick up little scraps that they see on the ground and trying to Act like they're Sherlock Holmes, that they can make an elaborate story of why it actually involves, you know, mules carrying the adrenochrome children across the border.
Now it's like, you know, congressional candidates and a sitting senator doing this bullshit.
I always kind of, yeah, figured the adrenochrome children would be like kind of over the counter.
You know, I mean, I don't think they have to bring them in by night.
Do we know if there is even one instance of these basically what I would call just militias actually capturing a criminal or even finding a criminal?
No, but there's lots of footage of them standing around with guns around like groups of migrants, essentially.
I mean, you could consider them criminals if you're talking strictly under American law, so...
It's all just a psychotic LARP, but it's very much backed by the state.
That's what they do, is they round the people up, they stand around armed, they make them sit down, and then they call the cops on them, or the border patrol, and have them come out.
Yeah, so essentially people who are just trying to seek asylum, but no record of actually stopping some sort of child trafficking operation in motion?
If I claim that there's none, then someone's going to send Some example in, but it would be very Prince.
Now, so what happened was, is that Kimberly Lowe, no doubt inspired by tales about the nefarious goings-on at the National Butterfly Center, arrived at the site unannounced.
And she was accompanied by a woman who claimed to be a secret service agent.
The pair spoke to Marianne Trevino Wright's son, Nicholas.
According to an affidavit Nicholas later prepared for police, the supposed secret service agent, who went by Michelle, said that they wanted to see the immigrants crossing on the rafts.
This is, again, more conspiratorial nonsense not based upon anything in reality.
Nicholas went to get Trevino Wright, who quickly googled Lowe before approaching the woman.
Here's how Trevino-Wright told me how her confrontation with Lowe went down.
So I was in the conference room on a call when my son, who does not normally work at the center,
He was just filling in because we were hit by COVID like everybody else.
He came into the conference room to interrupt me and he said, we've got two women here who have said they are not going to pay admission to the center, but they want us to open up the property for them to go back to the river and see all the illegals crossing on rafts that come across you know, at our property, and that one of them claimed to
be running for Congress, and the other one claimed to be her secret service agent.
And so I took a couple of minutes to look up her name online and saw her Facebook page and her campaign
site, and saw immediately that they had just posted a Facebook live stream of trying to access our
property, where we have no trespass signs posted.
Anyway, I immediately knew what this was all about, but we have people show up all the time that, you know, are not friendly or don't share our views.
My job is to be professional.
So I got two business cards and I went out into the reception area to meet them.
And, uh, when I told them that they were not welcome and this was private property, they needed to leave.
They immediately started with the tripe with the, so I guess you're okay with all the illegals and the babies being raped and the blah, blah bullshit.
And I said, if you refuse to leave, we'll call the authorities, at which point I signaled to my son to call 911, which he did.
The women then began moving toward the front of the building.
When they got outside the front doors, they stopped.
So I went out behind them.
Keep it moving.
Trevino Wright made a recording of her attempt to expel Lowe and her supposedly secret service companion.
And here it is.
Well, I did go to your Facebook page.
I saw that y'all tried to drive back there on your own.
That is private property.
It is posted by fare.
We were told when we drove back there, we were actually not on your property.
No, that road isn't.
No, this road, where the pavement ends, and that's where there's, well, there's a big sign at the gate that says, no trespassing.
I'm sorry for the confusion.
We stopped to ask, so we're not here to cause any problems.
I'm sorry.
No, you are here to promote your agenda.
And your agenda is not welcome here.
Okay, thank you so much.
So you're not for keeping the illegals out?
So you're not for helping all these poor people in the humanitarian crisis?
That's what we're here for.
That's our agenda.
So you're okay with children being sex trafficked and raped and murdered?
No, that's not at all what this is about.
We have Girl Scouts spend the night here.
That's how safe it is.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah.
I have children in the car.
I think it's safe here.
Anyway, we're not here to offend you.
No, you're here to make a show and to promote your agenda.
So, you can leave now.
Thank you for leaving now.
Thank you so much, but I'm sorry that you're okay with children being raped.
No, I'm not okay with any of that, and you're bullshit!
Is a big problem.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm not the one who tried to enter private property.
That's hilarious.
I'm not the one who tried to enter private property.
The border patrol stopped and told us we could access, but I'm federal.
I work for Secret Service, so nothing is off-limits for me.
That's hilarious.
She works for Secret Service.
[laughter]
Yes, this woman, she said, "I work for Secret Service, so nothing is off-limits for me."
Like, why is everyone LARPing all the time about everything?
I know, and we all know that Secret Service travels alone with one non-government personnel, you know, down to the border on recon missions.
That's, yeah, well documented.
I mean, this is like nothing is off limits for me because I'm Secret Service.
That's like a seven year old's conception of what Secret Service does.
Well, I can go everywhere because I'm with the government.
Then Lowe started to try to record Trevino Wright.
Now, Trevino Wright has had her photo posted online.
She's been harassed.
So she didn't really want Lowe to record her.
And so she reached up to block Lowe's phone.
Then Trevino Wright says that Michelle pushed her to the ground.
Now, Lowe, for her part, says that Trevino Wright fell.
However, I have difficulty believing Lowe's account because one of the women on the audio,
which is also part of the recording that Mary Ann captured, on the audio you can hear either
it's either "stay the fuck down, bitch" or "get the fuck down, bitch."
Damn.
So we're here with a woman who's not a very nice person who's okay with children.
You did not take my phone!
Get the fuck down, bitch!
Hey!
She just stole my fucking phone!
[BLANK_AUDIO]
[INAUDIBLE]
Nicholas then came running out at this commotion.
What is it? It is my phone that you have.
She has hers in her hand.
My God, man. Just pathetic stuff.
Nicholas then came running out at this commotion.
Here's what Torvino-Wright told me what happened next.
And then my son is like over me and in between me and Michelle.
He had dropped the 911 call.
He said he just dropped the phone.
and came out the building because he feared for my life.
Uh, Michelle's a big girl, and she was wearing boots, and she's standing over me.
And my son said he feared she would, you know, stomp on my throat or my head or who knows what.
And, um, Kimberly at this point has disappeared.
We then see she's in her red Range Rover filming herself and this, you know, Michelle and me.
And at this point, I realized Michelle has my phone.
Somehow she had taken my phone.
And I'm telling her, you know, I'm standing in front of her.
Saying, you can't take my phone.
You can't leave with my phone.
You have to give me my phone back.
And Kimberly's in the car screaming, get in the car, Michelle!
Get in the car, Michelle!
I got other things to do today!
My son ran for the front gate to close the gate so that they could not leave the premises.
You know, he's just called 911 about the assault and said, my mother's being assaulted and expects Mission PD to arrive at any minute.
Michelle walks toward the car, says, she's not bothering me, gets in the car, then says, oh my God, I had her phone, I took her phone.
So we've got all these admissions of what actually happened on Kimberly's own Facebook Live video, which she has now deleted.
But we recorded it, and she has edited it and sent it to media.
Of course, omitting the parts that incriminate her.
I asked Trevina Wright if there was any follow-up from police about the incident, but I got the impression that she doesn't have very high hopes that the police actually care that much.
Yes.
Yesterday, the chief of police came to visit me.
He was utterly uninformed concerning We Stand America.
When he realized retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was the host, he said, oh, the decorated hero?
And I said, you mean the pardoned criminal and traitor to America?
He informed me that the incident was still under investigation and that a new investigator had been assigned, although he did not tell me why the Investigator initially assigned was removed or give me a name for the new investigator.
He was completely unaware.
Davino Wright told me that Lowe isn't the only candidate who was filming at the border.
This is part of a broader electoral strategy.
When the races start to heat up later this year, we get closer to November, candidates will try to use their time filming at the border as proof that they're tough on immigration.
So while we were waiting for Mission PD to respond to the calls, I went back to Kimberly Lowe's Facebook page and there I saw a photo of her with a former Texas state rep, who is somebody I know, who is currently running for office as a Republican candidate.
So I called him and I said, hey, you know, this is just what happened to us.
I see you have met this woman.
There's a photo of you with her.
Who is she?
And what is this about?
What's going on?
And he, he's actually the father of the Hidalgo County GOP Chairperson, in addition to a GOP candidate, he said, well, there's an event happening next weekend that you should be aware of.
It's called We Stand America, and it is the MAGA inaugural kickoff event for their Take Action Tour to Save America.
He said they've invited people from all over the country to come to the border to McGowan, which is the.
The neighboring town to Mission.
And this is how they intend to own their opponents in the midterm elections.
By saying, I went to the border, I saw the dead bodies, I witnessed the cartel trafficking, and I touched the Rio Grande River.
Have you?
And this is exactly everything that we saw Kimberly Lowe live streaming on her Facebook page.
Dumbest country.
Servino Wright told me that because of credible threats related to that We Stand America event, she decided to close the National Butterfly Center for the duration of the event.
This former state representative then told me that I should be armed at all times, or better yet, out of town, or close the center for this three-day event because they had planned border tours and their own caravans to the border to participate in real time in immigrant apprehensions.
And all, you know, like citizens doing this.
And so we started looking at the We Stand America site.
All of this was there, including their hosts and the hate groups that are organizing it.
And Including Christo-fascists like
women fighting for America who were promoting their biblical worldview.
And then, you know, so we did it provoked us to close for three days for the safety of our staff,
our visitors, after being told that we were literally targets of this event.
Since I spoke with her, it's been reported that National Butterfly Center is
closed indefinitely because of these kinds of threats.
You know, I don't know what else to say.
It's awful.
It's just like this absolute insanity, imagined threats, imagined sex traffic children across a butterfly sanctuary has made the world a little uglier because people can't enjoy this and they can't help upkeep this preserve.
However, even after the incident with Kimberly Lowe happened, some right-wing content creators continued to smear the National Butterfly Center.
Now, one person who is really aggressively defaming the organization is Ben Berkham, who's a correspondent for Real America's Voice.
So, Real America's Voice is like a MAGA news network in the vein of OAN or Newsmax.
Real America's Voice also happens to be the network that hosts Steve Bannon's highly influential podcast, War Room.
Ben Berkman posted several videos on Twitter fairly recently in which he calls out the National Butterfly Center.
In one very windy video inviting people to attend the We Stand America conference, Berkman basically accuses the National Butterfly Center of allowing drug smugglers and cartels to travel across their property.
The left does not want this event to happen.
They've been attacking it, making up all kinds of lies about it.
The same radical environmentalists that use their property to allow drug smugglers and cartels to go across it, they don't want it to happen because they know they're going to be exposed.
In another video, Berquam baselessly accuses the Butterfly Center of helping the cartel smuggle.
Now, so whether they're witting or unwitting accomplices, the radical environmentalists that are running these places are helping the cartels.
Smuggle.
And this is what it ends up looking like.
Even after the National Butterfly Center closed in reaction to the harassment instigated by the kind of baseless conspiracy theories that Birkwem himself pushed, Birkwem did not let up.
In yet another video, Birkwem stands outside the National Butterfly Center and mocks the seriousness of the threats.
Now, while doing this, he holds up a child's shoe, kind of a prop, which he claims came from a trafficked child, even though, you know, there's really no evidence of that.
I can get you a child's shoe by 6pm, no problem.
We're down here, we're actually heading down to Benson State Park to look at the end of the wall where Joe Biden stopped building the wall.
And this place, the Butterfly Center, they said they were afraid, they had some credible threats that something was going to go on.
So we came down here and we want to join our voices with the Butterfly Center and say we stand against the credible threats of the cartels trafficking children through the Butterfly Center.
And we demand, we call on Joe Biden, To close this border down to protect the butterflies.
Because we all care about butterflies.
I mean, you know, the children that are being sold these shoes are from one of the children that was trafficked across.
This wristband was from one of the children that was trafficked across.
Smaller than my four-year-old daughter's arm.
But what really matters...
To the Democrats are the butterflies.
And so we unite with them.
If that's what it's going to take to shut this border down, we unite with them and say, protect the butterflies, Joe.
Close down the border.
Because we know you don't care about the kids.
Okay, just his usage of props should put this man in jail.
Yeah, it's, it's really, you know, it's really horrifying.
I mean, you know, when I spoke to Marianne, she said that she believed that the goal of this campaign was to like, have her killed.
And it's like, it's tough to call that an exaggeration, when you see like someone like Berquam continue to push these smears, even after they became so intense.
That the National Butterfly Center had to shut down for their own safety.
Now, this organization doesn't want to shut down.
They lose revenue.
It's not great.
You know, these conspiracy theories, they're causing emotional pain and financial hardship and now even physical confrontation.
And then Birkwem sees that pain that these narratives are causing, and then he continues to push them even further.
Now, how do you explain that unless Birkwem is at least indifferent to whether someone is killed as a consequence of his rhetoric?
Yeah.
Yeah, this is a real rat's nest of psychos and a cruel, indifferent state underlying it all.
So it is so depressing, you know, especially to hear, you know, the cop kind of come and he's like, Michael Flynn?
Well, he's a damn hero!
That is the moment in the horror film where you realize, like, the cops are not going to save you.
They're like, they're like, uh, yeah, this man, uh, Alan, he's trying to, trying to kill me.
And they're like, Alan, you mean the chief of police?
That's exactly it.
It rules.
Oh, I love it.
I mean, you know, on the plus side, it is very easy now to film horror reality shows in the United States.
You just have to follow almost anything and film it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's too bad.
It is arbitrary.
And it's like, I don't know.
I don't know why they pick someone is is is the incredible cruelty of the whole thing.
You know, because like Marianne, she's like a she's a nice, normal lady.
She isn't, you know, one of these broken brained weirdos who work in like media or technology or academia.
She's just someone who, like, worked, you know, doing nice things and nonprofits for a long time.
I mean, Julian, I would argue that, like, you deserve a far-right harassment campaign more than she does.
And it's just really, really awful.
That seems a little, you know, I mean, unnecessary.
But if I get butterflies in exchange, I'm into it.
I want to become the king of the butterflies.
Yeah, they're neat.
Thank you for listening to another premium episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Your support helps us stay advertising-free and editorially independent.
For everything else, we have a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
Listener, until next week.
May the butterflies bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto-Q.
I think that everybody should know that every area of the country has its own native plants, plants that grow just in that soil, in that climate, and they have butterfly species that are intimately connected to those particular plants.
If butterflies could consume every plant to reproduce, if their caterpillars could eat We would have no vegetation on the planet because, you know, insects are so prolific in laying eggs.
So we have this obligate relationship between butterfly species and plant species.
So people across the country need to know butterflies are critical pollinators.
They pollinate the majority of all the green stuff on the planet, the stuff that prevents erosion, that filters the water going into the soil that helps produce clean air that reduces radiant heat from the sun hitting the earth.
We need our native plants and to have them we need butterflies.
The National Butterfly Center is located in the Rio Grande Valley because we have 11 biologically distinct ecosystems in one Four-county region.
This four-county region would fit inside San Diego County in California.
So we're not talking about a huge geographic area.
These distinct environmental areas have their own native plants, which means they have their own butterflies.
So you can see more butterfly species in the lower Rio Grande Valley than anywhere else in North America.
That is incredible.
And that's why the National Butterfly Center is here.
We are a demonstration garden.
We literally exist to show and tell people what they can do at home, in their own communities, across the landscape, to benefit the health of their ecosystems, And the planet.
And, you know, it doesn't hurt that butterflies are beautiful.
You know, everybody is enchanted by them, enjoys watching them.
And it's good for your own health to get outside.
You know, it's proven that it reduces your blood pressure, that it helps you relax.
