Gerald Butts’ resignation as Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary follows accusations of pressuring Jolie Wilson-Raybould to quash charges against SNC Lavalin, which paid $48M in bribes and lobbied aggressively—50+ meetings—while Butts denied wrongdoing. His history includes undisclosed WWF payments ($300K+), inflated taxpayer expenses ($127K for a short move), and approving Trudeau’s lavish spending, like a $200K Aga Khan-funded vacation. Meanwhile, the United We Roll convoy’s Kian Bexty faced Antifa assaults on Parliament Hill as police stood idle, yet organizers secured donations and rallied against carbon tax bills (C-48, C-69), with Maxime Bernier and Andrew Scheer attending amid divided cheers. Butts’ resignation and the convoy’s defiance expose systemic Liberal corruption and the left’s escalating violence, normalizing attacks on conservative dissent while ignoring their own scandals—like Sajjan’s $161K taxpayer-funded photos. [Automatically generated summary]
You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Ezra Levant Show.
Today we go through Gerald Butz's resignation.
I say two things.
Number one, I don't think he really resigned.
I think he's still going to run this show.
In fact, the Liberals say he might even run their campaign.
And number two, if he did nothing wrong, why did he resign?
I go deep on that.
I hope you watch it.
As well as listen to it.
And that's the thing.
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Without further ado, let me present to you today's free audio-only version of my show.
Tonight, Gerald Butts, Trudeau's right-hand man, says he did nothing wrong but resigns.
I don't believe either part of that, do you?
It's February 19th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Gerald Butts, Justin Trudeau's principal secretary, resigned yesterday.
Here's a tweet by Trudeau's Executive Director of Communications and Planning, Kate Purchase, with Butts' full statement.
It was a lengthy, self-serving statement, as you can see, saying he did nothing wrong, and he was a saint, and he never had an impure thought, and he didn't know anyone else in the government who ever has.
But he's resigning anyways because of some anonymous accusation.
Yeah, sure.
Let me read part of it.
Recently, anonymous sources have alleged that I pressured the former Attorney General, the Honorable Jolie Wilson-Raybold, to assist SNC Lavilam with being considered for a deferred prosecution agreement.
I categorically deny the accusation that I or anyone else in his office pressured Ms. Wilson-Raybold.
We honored the unique role of the Attorney General.
At all times, I and those around me acted with integrity and a singular focus on the best interests of all Canadians.
I love me.
Oh, I added those last three words, sorry.
Is that really what happened?
This was all just an anonymous rumor, all this stuff we've been talking about for weeks now.
It's all fake.
There was no pressure on Jodie Wilson-Raybold.
No, no, no, no.
The former Attorney General?
No, no.
Everything's fine.
The Federal Lobbyist Registry actually shows that in fact there was enormous pressure brought to bear.
SNC Lavalan, a corrupt Quebec engineering firm, caught paying $48 million in bribes in Libya to scam government contracts.
They really were being prosecuted, and the lobbyist registry really shows that SNC Lavanan lobbied just about everyone in the Liberal government, including a bunch of cabinet ministers, including Gerald Butts personally.
And they say right there on the lobbyist registry that they are lobbying to have the criminal charges dropped against them.
50-plus meetings.
Yeah, that's pressure.
And remember, Trudeau never denied putting pressure on Jodie Wilson-Raybold.
He just used really weird, lawyerly language to say he never directed her to take a particular decision.
Remember this?
The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false.
Neither the current nor the previous Attorney General was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.
The allegations reported in the story are false.
At no time did I or my office direct the current or previous Attorney General to make any particular decision in this matter.
But not necessarily direct, Prime Minister.
Was there any sort of influence whatsoever?
As I've said, at no time did we direct the Attorney General, current or previous, to take any decision whatsoever in this matter.
That was Trudeau's first alibi, and I don't think anyone in the country believed it.
So he went through a whole bunch more alibis, you'll recall.
He said Jody Wilson-Raybold was obviously fine with everything, because after all, she was still in his cabinet.
In our system of government, of course, her presence in cabinet should actually speak for itself.
Well, the day Trudeau said that, Raybold Wilson quit.
She obviously saw it and said, yeah, no.
And she hired a former Supreme Court judge as her lawyer.
So fancy that.
Now, Trudeau tried out several more weird excuses.
He said it was all Scott Bryson's fault.
See, Scott Bryson was a cabinet minister who quit because of another scandal that actually involves interference in the courts, too.
And so obviously Trudeau had to move Jody Wilson-Raybold out of the Justice Department because of the cabinet shuffle.
I mean, obviously.
We moved forward with the cabinet shuffle.
One of the senior members of our team stepped down and we had to move things around on the team.
If Scott Bryson had not stepped down from cabinet, Jody Wilson-Raybold would still be Minister of Justice and Attorney General.
Really?
Did anyone in the country believe that?
So it was essential that Scott Bryson remained in cabinet or Jody Wilson's whole career was there.
That doesn't even make sense.
Who wrote that?
Did he come up with that?
I bet he came up with that by himself.
It's that dumb.
And then there was this gorgeous question and even gorgeous answer.
I've tried this question out when I'm asked about chores around the home.
Look at this and tell me if you think this is an excuse you might put in your personal repertoire of excuses.
Prime Minister, can you just tell us the reasons that Ms. Wilson-Raybold gave you for why she decided to resign from cabinet?
Do you want me to answer that question in English?
I'm just trying to remember.
Okay.
As a government, we take very seriously our responsibility to grow the economy, to invest in jobs, to invest in a strong future for Canadians.
That's exactly what we do.
Oh, that is so perfect.
Sweetheart, it's 11 p.m.
You're just getting home from work now.
Where the heck were you?
You weren't answering your calls.
Do you want me to answer that in English?
Have you been drinking?
It's 11 o'clock.
You're just coming.
Have you been drinking?
What's the line?
I've been working at, like, that's just so amazing, that excusology from Justin Trudeau.
I have absolutely got to.
Ezra, you didn't take the garbage out this week.
We missed garbage pickup day.
Now it's going to stick around for all the week and stink.
Why didn't you take the garbage out?
Do you want me to answer in English?
What's my line?
That is so amazing, that excuse.
Would you not say that is the best answer you've ever seen in politics?
And Trudeau, after going through all these alibis, after first denying that he talked about this with Jody Wilson-Raybold, and then admitting that, well, okay, maybe, okay, fine.
Okay, fine, we did talk about it, but I didn't pressure her.
His story seemed to change again and again.
Do you want me to answer in English?
He was asked about a parliamentary investigation, and he said, oh, yeah, it was up for MPs to decide.
But then the Liberals shut that down at his direction.
Can I show you this?
Look at this.
Some Trudeau liberals started telling journalists, off the record, they were so brave, that Jodi Wilson-Raybold was getting a bit uppity for an Aboriginal woman.
And that maybe that's really the problem here.
And they moved in to blame the victim, attack the whistleblower mode.
One of Trudeau's Montreal cronies, some idiot, I'm sorry, I got to say it, named Anthony Housefather, he got really weird.
And he thought he'd help the boss.
Because do you want me to answer in English?
Wasn't really working.
So Anthony Housefather said, Jodi Wilson-Raybold was fired because apparently just a month ago, they discovered, and no one had detected this, that she doesn't speak French too well.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Remember this?
There's millions of reasons that people can be shuffled from one position to another, including the fact, for example, that there's a lot of legal issues coming up in Quebec, and the Prime Minister may well have decided he needed a justice minister that could speak French.
Hmm.
So they apparently didn't know that she didn't speak French when they hired her.
And they apparently didn't know she didn't speak French until, amazingly, she rejected their pressure to drop charges against SNC Lavalan.
And then they really needed to fire her because she didn't speak French.
And I guess all the translators are gone for the day.
Yeah, the Liberals have not had this bad a week since Trudeau's India fashion show.
But that's the thing, that India fiasco was bad.
And of course, they brought along a convicted terrorist and Trudeau's entourage to India.
So it was bad.
It was embarrassing.
Probably costs us dearly in terms of trade and diplomatic allies.
Same with the current China fiasco.
China still is holding two Canadians hostage over there.
Sounds like they're going to execute a third Canadian.
So that's awful.
But other than some fashion crimes in India, there were no crimes committed there by Justin Trudeau.
No crimes that I know of.
But how about pressuring an attorney general to drop criminal charges against SNC Lavalan?
Is that a crime?
I mean, to remind you of the obvious, SNC Lavalan is a company that's used to bribing their way through any problematic politicians in Libya, 48 million.
Oh, in Canada, too.
Look at this clip of our friend Solomon Friedman, a senior criminal lawyer in Ottawa, explaining to CTV's Don Martin that SNC Lavalan is so corrupt and does this so many times that they are legally not eligible to be let off the hook in any special remediation agreement.
It's just not applicable.
That's what SNC Lavalan was lobbying for to be let off the hook for a prosecution.
But that's not what the law allows, according to our friend Solomon.
Well, one of the reasons that all of this smells so much is that, I mean, first of all, the deferred prosecution regime in and of itself smells.
But if you look at it and you look at what does it take to qualify, you start going through their list of factors.
So one of the things is, has the company or its representatives been convicted in the past?
Guess what?
They have.
How high up in terms of the company hierarchy does the corruption go?
On the case of SNC Lavalin, to the very top.
How serious are these allegations or previous convictions?
Well, they're bribing officials to get the Montreal hospital project, right?
So when you look at this list of factors, have reparations been made, really?
Have the people of Libya been made whole for the hundreds of millions of dollars that were stolen from the citizens to enrich the Qaddafis?
Of course not.
So SNC Lavin would never qualify for one of these arrangements by the letter of law.
Huh.
So it would take friends in high places to make that happen.
Maybe a little undue influence, maybe some pressure, maybe some directing, all those things that we're hearing about.
It's not a surprise when you look at the law.
This is not a law that a company like SNC Lavalin, given their past track record, could ever qualify for.
So was there any corruption here?
I mean, criminal corruption.
I mean, we know there was unethical political behavior.
We know there was cronyism.
But was there an actual crime committed?
Well, we had a two-year criminal trial of Mike Duffy over some expense claims that Nigel Wright, Stephen Harper's chief of staff, voluntarily paid back to the government for him.
Would you say that this SNC Lavalan business is more or less severe than that?
And by the way, Mike Duffy was acquitted, of course.
Here's a question that I haven't seen asked by any media party journalists.
Has anyone in the prime minister's office been contacted by the RCMP about any of this?
Any staff?
Have they asked any questions of the 50-plus people that SNC Lavalin lobbied, including, by the way, David LeMetti, the Montreal MP that Trudeau just appointed as its new Attorney General and Justice Minister?
Now, I ask that because I'm not sure if it makes sense that Gerald Butz would just resign for no reason, that I did nothing wrong and so I must resign.
Would he do that?
We know he's the de facto prime minister.
Just weeks after the government was elected, Liberal MPs reported that Trudeau himself told them to take anything coming from Gerald Butts as if it were from Trudeau himself.
Huh.
Trudeau said, do what Gerald Butts says as if I myself said it.
That's incredible.
That kind of blank check delegation, Stephen Harper, would never have said that about anyone.
There's only one prime minister who has that authority, but Stephen Harper would never have delegated that to his staff, and Trudeau did.
Because with Trudeau, it's just a shortcut because Butts is micromanaging and making all the decisions anyways.
And remember, Justin Trudeau himself later confirmed this with the Ethics Commissioner when he was taking the bribe from the Aga Khan for that secret $200,000 family vacation on Billionaire Island in the Bahamas.
I don't actually think the Aga Khan was trying to bribe Trudeau.
I think it was sort of the other way around.
Trudeau was trying to get free stuff.
Trudeau's excuse was that he couldn't have been lobbied or subject to corruption or a bribe because Trudeau actually never knows what the substance of any details of anything are.
He's just there to shake hands and slap backs and build relationships.
The real work is done by others, as in Gerald Butts.
As in Justin Trudeau said, I can't be guilty of a conflict of interest because I go through life so clueless.
He actually made that argument.
You can read that yourself.
So back to Gerald Butts, Butts, the de facto PM.
Why did he resign again?
If he did nothing wrong and nobody did anything wrong, then why leave?
And why was Jody Wilson Raybow fired as the justice minister and the attorney general if nothing was wrong?
Sorry, I don't believe that Scott Bryce in line.
Gerald Butts' Lobby Group00:11:39
And then why did she quit as veterans minister if nothing was wrong?
And why is she still consulting with a former Supreme Court justice as her lawyer if nothing's wrong?
Sounds like a lot's wrong.
And why Gerald Butts himself?
He was one of those lobbied by SNC Lavalan.
Sorry, this resignation doesn't actually answer any questions.
It asks more questions.
And like I say, the Liberals will brazen anything out.
They're not weak like conservatives.
They don't fire cabinet ministers for drinking $16 orange juices like Stephen Harper did.
Today the news is that Harjit Sajam, the defense minister, who's the new veterans minister too, he racked up 161 grand worth of personal photography.
As in, that's how much tax dollars he spent on having people take handsome pictures of him on the job as a politician.
Our veterans have to sue for benefits, but apparently the Department of Defense has all the money in the world for selfie shots for that glory hound.
Do you think Hajit Sajan will quit over it or be fired over it like Bev Oda and her $16 orange juice?
That's $10,000 $16 orange juices if you're canon.
Of course not, because liberals never explain and never apologize.
So why would Gerald Butts quit?
No apology, of course.
No contrition, no taking responsibility, adamant that he says, pure as the driven slush.
Then why?
Why did he quit?
We know that Gerald Butts is pretty much the opposite of clean when it comes to graft or grifting.
As Vivian Krause herself has documented, Gerald Butts literally stayed on the payroll of an anti-oil lobby firm called the World Wildlife Fund even after he went to work for Trudeau.
He got paid more than a third of a million dollars U.S. As in he was taking money from an anti-oil lobby group and not disclosing it publicly while he went to work for Trudeau in Ottawa.
That's shocking.
Imagine if someone was working for a party leader and being paid a third of a million bucks on the side by an oil company and keeping it secret.
Or even moving from Toronto to Ottawa to officially become Trudeau's principal secretary.
Gerald Butts billed taxpayers $127,000 just to move down the highway.
It's a four-hour drive.
$127,000.
And he hid that from the public and he covered it up when people tried to find out through access to information and then he attacked reporters who reported it and then he grudgingly repaid part of it, so he says.
Do you see what I mean?
He wasn't clean.
He wasn't above corruption.
He was the ambassador of grift.
He was the leader of entitlement, personally.
He was the one who approved Trudeau putting not one but two personal family nannies on the public dime.
Who does that?
Trudeau's a millionaire.
Why can't he pay for his own nannies?
Gerald Butts approved the trip to Billionaire Island and then he quarterbacked the legal defense.
It lost, of course.
Trudeau has been convicted of breaking the Conflict of Interest Act again and again and again with no consequence of course.
So if the Prime Minister's best friend since college, his personal buddy, and his principal secretary, look at them with their sandals there.
If Gerald Butts was personally on the take in the ways I've just described, if he's cashing checks from lobbyists in the manner I've just described, if he's paying himself 127 grand moving expenses, would he get moved by Rolls-Royce or something?
If he's approving Trudeau's personal indulgences, he is the one who set the tone for corruption, set the standard for corruption, showed the tolerance for corruption.
Is it any surprise that SNC Lavalan thought they could play with the Canadian government just like they played in Libya?
Oh, and the moral preening.
I just have to read you one more excerpt from his self-serving letter.
Gerald Butts says, I also need to say this, and I know it's a non-sequitur, our kids and grandkids will judge us on one issue above all others.
That issue is climate change.
I hope the response to it becomes the collective, nonpartisan, urgent effort that science clearly says is required.
I hope that happens soon.
What?
What?
Well, you know he was a global warming lobbyist, right?
You know he was paid to take that position by the World Wildlife Fund.
You know they kept paying him even when he went to Trudeau's office.
But what a bizarre thing to put in a resignation letter, except, number one, to switch the subject, and number two, to show how moral he is.
And sure, if maybe he broke a few eggs along the way, well, you have to to make an omelet.
Except, of course, the only thing his Global Warming Crusade has done is lay off Canadian workers.
It hasn't changed the weather.
It hasn't moved the dial on Canada's global warming emissions, if that's what you care about.
They're flat.
Donald Trump has reduced America's far more than Canada, and he's not even trying.
This is just more moral preening from Gerald Butts that excuses everything.
Yeah, he's throwing a bone to his lobbyist friends.
Gerald Butts will do anything for his lobbyist friends.
I mean, I've shown you this document before.
It's the U.S. Rockefeller Brothers Fund campaign against the oil sands.
They call them the tar sands.
And you can see all the Canadian front groups that they were paying.
You can see the World Wildlife Fund in the top right corner.
That was Gerald Butt's lobby group.
And you can see Greenpeace at the bottom, and you see the Sierra Club in the bottom right, and the Pembara Institute in the bottom right.
Butz placed all of his fellow lobbyists from these groups in high places in Trudeau's government.
He appointed Marlow Reynolds, the head of Pembara.
That's the chief of staff to the Environment Minister now.
Butts appointed the head of the Sierra Club to be the chief of staff to the Minister of Energy now.
He appointed the former president of Vice President of the Tides Foundation to be deputy director of policy for the PMO.
So he's all about placing lobbyists in high office.
They are his personal friends.
They all took foreign money together, as you can see in that document.
Oh, and they were all being investigated together by the CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency, for violating the Income Tax Act by laundering political donations through their charity numbers for political work.
And then one day, Gerald Butts simply ordered the Canada Revenue Agency to stop their audits, just order them, just stop it.
Hey, guys, just stop auditing my friends, he said.
And the CBC cheered this news, of course.
And Gerald Butts later proposed to change the law, of course, but his friends had all broken the law.
They were being audited and found to have broken the law.
And the law, I mean, the Income Tax Act, but Gerald Butts simply told the CRA to back off, and they did, and the media cheered.
And that's your saint.
That's your innocent as a lamb public servant.
Gerald Butts was corrupt.
Oh, it was gross how many conservative insiders were on Twitter praising Gerald Butts today for being such a hardworking public servant.
Oh, we salute him.
But he wasn't a public servant.
He was a very private servant, very highly paid political partisan who double-dipped as an anti-oil sands lobbyist even when he worked in Ottawa.
He was the chief corrupter of Ottawa personally and for his friends and for his allies.
But look at this from the newspaper today.
Along with chief of staff, Katie Telford, Mr. Butz, has been at Mr. Trudeau's side since he ran for the Liberal leadership in 2013 and was a key architect of the party's election victory in 2015.
The two top aides had planned to take a leab's absence from the PMO this summer to run the October election campaign.
A senior government source said no decision had been made on a replacement for Mr. Butz.
The source did not know whether Mr. Butts would now play a formal role in the campaign.
Oh, so Jericho Butts was going to leave the PMO anyways in just what, three months from now?
And he was going to run the campaign.
He was going to quit anyways.
And he still might.
So this resignation thing, it's not even real?
Everything with these people is a lie.
They've changed their alibi a half dozen times about Jody Wilson-Raybold.
Now I hear that Wilson-Raybold met with the cabinet today, but she still won't talk to the journalists outside.
Who knows what they've said to her, what they've offered to her.
We probably won't ever know.
The media's attention span here is almost spent.
I mean, take this just for an example.
Here's just an example.
Here's Bill Mourneau, the finance minister who was also convicted of violating our ethics codes.
Here he was today commenting on Gerald Butts.
Well, what I can say is I have an enormous amount of respect for Jerry Butts, and I know Jerry has an enormous amount of respect for Canadian institutions.
My sense is that he's decided, and I think appropriately, to defend himself against people saying things that just aren't true.
Well, hang on, Gerald Butts said he doesn't have anything to defend himself about, that he did nothing wrong, but Bill Mourneau said Butts quit to defend himself, which is it?
What did that mean?
But hang on.
Bill Mourneau himself was personally lobbied by SNC Lavillan just a few months ago with his chief of staff in the room, as you can see.
He was personally lobbied.
And they went more than once.
Why didn't a single journalist ask Bill Morneau that?
What did Bill Mourneau do after that lobbying meeting?
Did he follow up with anyone?
I mean, you can't blame a guy for taking a meeting, but did he do anything?
Did he follow up with the Prime Minister, with the Justice Minister?
Did he act?
Did he run an errand for SNC Lavalan?
Zero curiosity from the media party.
We're almost done, this whole story, aren't we?
They're almost through this.
The media is getting sleepy.
You're getting sleepy.
Unless the RCMP does something, I think Stephen Harper probably would have lost the last election, or at least lost a majority, whether or not that Mike Duffy trial had happened.
But the RCMP's showy trial against Mike Duffy, which resulted in an acquittal, was enough to feed the media to destroy Harper and give Trudeau a majority.
Harper's corrupt.
Harper's a scandalmonger.
No, he's not.
Oh my God.
The RCMP could investigate these fiascos, and they might lay charges if SNC Lavalan did what they normally do, which is to bribe people and corrupt the system.
If Trudeau's cronies act like they normally act, if Gerald Butts took the same fond view of corruption as he usually does, but unless that happens, unless the RCMP investigate and lay charges, and it might, but unless it does, I'm not sure what else would have spooked Gerald Butts so badly, but unless that happens, this story's done, folks.
And if you think for a moment that Gerald Butts isn't going to continue to run the whole liberal operation, both in the party and in government, I don't think you've been paying attention to him or his cronies.
Stay with us for more from Parliament Hill.
Can you tell me, are you a white supremacist?
Ah!
Look at me!
You're in the back of white supremacist!
No!
United We Stand00:06:14
I'm a Canadian!
And that's how we roll!
All right.
And United, we stand.
Thank you.
There you have it.
That's our Kian Bexty, who has been riding on the United We Roll convoy all the way from Alberta.
Today they reached Ottawa.
Now, I see that the usual suspects on the left are denouncing the convoy as racist or Nazi or whatever, which is just baffling.
I think Kian made a great point by going to that black supporter and saying, are you a white supremacist?
Because after all, that's what Bob Ray says, the disgraced former NDP Premier of Ontario.
That's what McLean's magazine says.
That fellow there seemed to disagree.
Well, joining us now live via Skype from in front of Parliament Hill is Kian Bexti himself.
Kian, great to see you, and welcome to Ottawa.
Thank you.
It's good to be here.
It's a little cold, though.
Now, you have made the lengthy journey all the way from Red Deer.
How long was it in terms of days and hours?
And do you know how many kilometers it was, too?
We left last Wednesday, I believe it was, and it was over 3,000 kilometers.
I was checking Google Maps every now and then.
It was basically several thousand kilometer long parade.
It was one of the most spectacular things I've ever witnessed.
The support across the country for this convoy was unbelievable.
People lining up and down the streets to see this parade, basically.
It was great to see the supporters, but it was also great to see people who were neither supportive or unsupportive of Alberta's oil sands and the West oil and gas industry.
They just came out to see the message, and I think they heard a lot of clear.
Yeah, I mean, we were just playing some of your footage from along the way.
I saw some fireworks.
Was that just coincidental?
Those fireworks, or was that actually in support of the convoy?
It was absolutely in support of the convoy.
I couldn't believe it.
I was in the bus for the first half of the trip, and in the second half of the trip, I was in what they called the rover vehicle, which was leading the convoy by about four kilometers, scouting out what the road looked like so that all the truckers could be aware and prepared, and also was picking up donations along the way.
And we got to, I can't remember what the name of the town was.
It's on my Twitter.
And there was just a crowd of about 20 people standing there in the total dark, and they were holding boxes of Apple fritters.
And we just pulled over.
I said a few words to the crowd about how important Alberta's oil and gas industry was to the West and also to the East.
And we took some pictures, got back in our car, and got ready to go.
And then all of a sudden, fireworks started going off.
And there was flares set off on the sides of the roads lined along the snow ditches.
And then the convoy came through and we got some video there.
It was honestly one of the most amazing moments of my life, actually, to see that happen.
It was beautiful.
Well, that's incredible.
And there's some mighty impressive trucks there.
Now, you guys actually arrived on Parliament Hill today.
And then it got a little bit strange.
I saw on your Twitter feed that police cordoned off Parliament Hill, said you could only stand in the snow drift, but the hard left, violent, masked Antifa thugs had this well-protected, well-shoveled place to stand.
We'll show a picture from your Twitter.
It was so weird, and I thought, since when is that a thing?
And then I want to show a clip.
You were safe across the entire country.
You went in small towns and big cities, but on the most policed square mile in Canada, Parliament Hill, you were assaulted.
You personally were assaulted by Antifa, and police just sort of let it happen.
Here we'll play a clip of that right now.
Can you tell me why you're here?
Hey Get that guy!
Get the police!
That guy just f ⁇ ing assaulted me.
He just threw my phone on the ground and smacked my arm, and my phone's busted.
Kian, what did police do?
I mean, thankfully you weren't actually hurt.
I think you were more sort of startled, and maybe your phone is damaged.
But like, there were a lot of cops.
There's a lot of cops right there.
They would have known the convoy was coming.
I know the convoy was in touch.
Did the police do anything?
There was about 40 police officers on the street right there, right around me.
Was heavy police presence, and right next to me, within four meters of this happening, there was a female police officer who's standing there.
As you can see in that video, I approached her immediately after, and they stood there as this thug sunk back into the crowd.
This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me.
It's the first time I've ever been up close and personal with these Antifa thugs.
I was a little bit unimpressed, but what I was really disappointed with was the inaction from the police officers.
I went and spoke to them afterwards and asked how I go ahead with filing a report to them.
And they said, do it over the phone.
I understand it's busy, but what's the point of having this heavy police presence there if they're not willing to go into this middle of this Antifa crowd and pluck that little juvenile delinquent out of it who damaged my property and punched my hand?
It's hundreds of dollars of damage, by the way, to replace my phone.
It's a little bit disappointing.
So, you know, the police did a good job keeping the party separate after that happened, actually.
They kind of kicked it into high gear after that.
But when that event went down, there was just no action.
I was kind of disappointed.
Well, we'll cover the cost to fix your phone.
And if folks want to chip into any of the costs, including obviously you had to pay for your own hotels along the way and cell phone service and meals.
The ride itself was provided by the Convoy, but we cover those things.
If folks want to see all your footage and if they want to chip in, we'll obviously cover the damage to your phone, Keyan.
Karen Writes: Thanks, Andrew!00:07:32
Folks can go to rebelconvoy.com.
Who met and spoke with the convoy?
I saw a few clips today.
It looked like both the Conservative Party and Maxime Bernier in person attended.
Did Andrew Scheer attend also?
Andrew Scheer was there.
He gave, I only caught the first section of his speech there.
It was a, you know, they both did a good job.
Maxine and Andrew, Maxime and Andrew Scheer both spoke to the crowd and talked about scrapping Bill C-48 and 69, scrapping the carbon tax.
You know, they're sort of on the same team with that.
They both rallied the crowd, but you could actually see a line of division in the crowd.
Some people were berating Maxime Bernier, saying that he's destroying the conservative movement.
A bunch of, well, that's their own opinion, I suppose.
And then the other group was so happy to see Maxime, very excited.
Andrew Scheer, like I said, I wasn't there at the end of that speech to hear how he was received, but they both had a very similar message, and the crowd was applauding and cheering all the way through.
Well, I'm glad both were there, Maxime Bernier and Andrew Scheer.
To be candid, Andrew Scheer in the past has turned his nose up a bit at grassroots events like this.
And in fact, Scott Moe, the premier of Saskatchewan, has been a big booster of this convoy.
Jason Kenney, a little bit of a reluctant supporter.
In fact, he made one tweet and then he chided the convoy.
I don't understand what's going on there.
But it looked like a great trip.
Now, obviously, those trucks have to drive back.
I understand you'll be flying back from Ottawa.
What happens next?
It looked great.
You did some great coverage.
There was a little bit of mainstream media coverage.
The CBC smeared it, of course.
What happens next for this movement?
Well, the convoy is departing Ottawa, I believe, tomorrow.
There was initially planned that this rally would be held twice.
I haven't heard confirmation.
And it's going to be held today.
Well, it already was held today.
And tomorrow it will be held again.
That was the initial plan.
I don't know if that's going to happen again.
Today was, from what I talked to the convoy leaders, today was a success for them.
I mean, it was a huge success.
I don't know if they need a repeat tomorrow.
Maybe they will.
Maybe they won't.
I have to confirm that.
But after they leave, they're going to, they told me they were going to be traveling back through every town that they came to originally, thanking them for the thousands of dollars of donations that they provided, the apple fritters, the pizzas.
There was one town that just set up an impromptu barbecue.
It was donated by a construction company in Sault Ste. Marie.
So they're just going to go say thank you on behalf of all of Alberta, on behalf of all the oil sands and oil sands employees.
On behalf of the entire, all of Western Canada, really, they're going to go pay their respects and say thanks.
Yeah, well, listen, we're so glad that you were on the trip, not only for your journalism, but also representing the rebel, because we, of course, support the oil and gas industry.
I think we helped light the fire on this issue even two years ago when we had our big stop the carbon tax rally at the Alberta legislature in December of 2016.
I think that's when the center of gravity in the conservative movement was, well, maybe we better go along with this carbon tax.
Preston Manning was talking about a carbon tax.
Michael Chung, Patrick Brown were talking about carbon tax.
So I feel like we have a little bit of a role that we've played here, and you're continuing in that good tradition.
So thanks very much for that, Kian.
No problem.
It was a pleasure.
All right.
Well, and by the way, I want to let our viewers know, and I told you this personally on the phone earlier, Kian, if we can find the identity of that Antifa thug who assaulted you, we will sue him both in civil court and we will press the police to press criminal charges against him because it's unacceptable.
And I think it's really gross how the left wing thinks that they can just punch conservative reporters, conservative activists, just as a matter of course.
And by the way, I think that the political left has normalized that.
Even Gerald Butts and these critics implying that the convoy was Nazi or whatever they said.
They've basically given license to people to be violent.
If we find the identity of that thug who hit you, I promise you we will hold him to account.
I appreciate that, Ezra.
It means a lot.
I think we have some leads.
I took a lot of footage and there was cameras rolling everywhere.
I saw a few Ottawa Press Gallery reporters taking pictures of the exact alternation.
I'm going to follow up with them.
To be fair, I looked at his Twitter and it's almost entirely in opposition to this convoy calling this convoy racist.
So I don't have high expectations, but there was a lot of convoy attendees that had their cameras out, so we'll follow up with them.
All right, good luck.
Thanks so much for taking the time.
That's Kian Bexty, who joined us via Skype from a cell phone, as you can tell.
Right there on Parliament Hill, you can see the center block in the background.
Well, I'm delighted that we covered that and Kian gave up the last four or five days on that convoy.
You can see all of his reports at rebelconvoy.com.
Stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back to my monologue yesterday about the CBC story that 9 million troll tweets influence Canadians on politics.
Karen writes, exclamation points.
Yeah, that's exactly what Gerald Butts said.
Paul writes, it's the Canadian version of Russian collusion.
These Trudeau liberals are getting desperate.
Yeah, well, I followed up with one of the CBC reporters who did that story.
I was very surprised that he answered me.
And maybe I should do a follow-up video.
He sent me every single name he tested for what the trolls engaged with.
And the only journalists he tested were on the right.
The only scandals he word-checked were ones that would suit the narrative that Russians are trying to interfere.
Like the whole thing was a setup.
The whole thing was a setup.
I should probably go deep on the subject, but neither the CBC report nor the Twitter data are accurate.
Both are fake news spin.
And Twitter still hasn't gotten back to me about why they won't let me see my own data.
I think they're liars.
I'm sorry.
On my interview with Joel Pollock, Robert writes, I think Joel Pollock has the right take on the border wall.
I tell you, if that thing's not built, Trump's done.
Not only is he done from his base, it will be demoralized, but obviously millions more illegal migrants will come in and they vote Democrat for all the free stuff.
On the resignation of Gerald Butts, Jan writes, I think Butts is taking the fall for JT.
They need to keep JT in there.
Butts is on the speed dial.
Yeah, don't think for a second that Gerald Butts is going to retire now to, you know, the island of Elba or something.
This is not going to happen.
On the Venezuela videos, Marg writes, I was very interested in Venezuela, but I couldn't find any meat in the videos the reporter presented.
No background info, just fluff.
If there was more in-depth coverage, I didn't find it.
And the two-minute clips didn't draw me to search for it.
Marg, I appreciate your criticism, and I think there's some truth to it.
Videos Lacking Depth00:01:09
The lady who was down there, Annika Herrnstein Rothstein, if I'm saying her name right, I actually haven't had the pleasure to meet her in person.
I've interviewed her via Skype before.
When I saw her down there, I contacted her online and said, whoa, give us some vids.
I think she was a little new at it.
And I think she was sort of figuring it out.
And she didn't know, go too long, go too short, go too deep or not.
I think it was just nice having someone there.
And she certainly had the right attitude.
But I do agree with you the videos were a little bit short.
And hey, grounds for improvement.
And maybe that's why our people didn't really support that crowdfunding initiative.
But I give Annika full marks for the courage to go to Venezuela in the middle of what could be a civil war.
I mean, it's one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Caracas, even in peacetime.
So I was really glad she went, and I'm glad she did videos for us.
But I think you're right.
I think the videos could have been a little meatier.
Speaking of which, this morning, our new British reporter, Janice Atkinson, had an exclusive interview with Maureen Le Pen of France.
So we should have that up for you in a couple days because you just got to make sure we got the translations correct.