Tucker Carlson - Ep. 82 Joe Biden has put hundreds of his political opponents in jail. Here’s the latest, a working journalist who’s exposed the fraudulence of the January 6th myth.
Steve Baker, an independent journalist for The Blaze, was arrested and brutalized by federal agents—leg-shackled, processed with violent offenders—while covering January 6, despite mainstream outlets like AP and NYT also present. His two-year legal nightmare, from Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Dreher’s 2021 threats to Judge Christopher Cooper’s contempt rulings, reveals a system weaponizing misdemeanors against critics, with over 1,350 January 6 arrests targeting nonviolent individuals. Baker’s humiliation—including a U.S. Marshal calling charges "bullshit"—exposes Biden’s selective enforcement as political repression, where even journalists face SWAT raids and Zoom hearings under judges hostile to free press. [Automatically generated summary]
Among the many thousands of Americans who came to the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, were an awful lot of journalists, working journalists.
And they were there because, among other things, it was a news story in progress.
So they went to what we call cover the story.
And the overwhelming majority of them worked for various organs of state media, the Associated Press, Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News.
And their job was to bolster whatever the people in charge But there were also some independent journalists there that day.
One of them was called Steve Baker.
He now works for The Blaze.
And he was there for...
The same reason everyone else is there, to watch the protests play out and to cover it.
And like so many reporters that day, he eventually moved with the crowd inside the Capitol building, and he did so peacefully to cover the story.
We're not guessing about this.
He did not show up to break windows or poke anyone with a flagpole.
He was there to cover it as a journalist.
And we have footage of it.
Of Baker in the Capitol.
We're going to put it up now.
You can see he's not rioting or attacking police.
He's standing there watching what's happening around him, covering the story.
But because Steve Baker wasn't wise enough to get a job with the Washington Post or the New York Times or any other news outlet that works for the Biden administration, the FBI singled him out, not as a reporter, which he is, but as an insurrectionist.
And then they charged him with crimes for being there.
The charges include disruptive conduct and restricted building.
Parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol building.
And they meant it.
They weren't joking.
By the way, no one defended Steve Baker.
None of the free press organizations that exist to defend working journalists stood up for him or said a word when Baker was arrested at the FBI office in Dallas.
Here's a video of Baker turning himself in.
As you can see, he was humiliated.
They cuffed him behind his back not because he posed a threat to anyone, but because they wanted to make the message crystal clear to everyone else.
Only regime media will be treated as legitimate.
Others will be crushed.
Steve Baker joins us now to recount his experiences with the so-called justice system.
Probably not as shocked because I had been dealing with this for about two and a half years.
I initially had a threat of prosecution going all the way back to November of 21 when my attorney received an email from an assistant U.S. attorney out of Philadelphia in which she said, your client, meaning me, is going to be charged within the week.
And so after we did a bit of a media pushback, kind of an offensive against that threat, Then we didn't hear from them again for 20 months.
Now, after 20 months, I was starting to feel pretty good about it.
During that interim time, I actually spoke with you.
And then in August of last year, we received a grand jury subpoena.
My attorney calls me back, says, all right, we've got a grand jury subpoena for your work, your actual videos that you took on January 6th.
We complied yet again.
Then we didn't hear from them for another four months.
Well, during this time, I'm now working for The Blaze.
And so I was actually in D.C. As a matter of fact, I was sitting in Representative Thomas Massey's office on December 14th, just this past December.
And I get a text from my attorney, which is never a welcome thing, an unsolicited text from your attorney, which she said, I think this is the one, the big one.
So I stepped out into the hallway there at the Rayburn building and...
I called my attorney and he said, they want you to self-surrender next week in my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina.
So the blaze went into high gear.
We did another media offensive, had millions of views of this story that we were telling about me having to self-surrender, and they backed off yet again.
We got another call the next day from the FBI saying that they were going to put that off until sometime after Christmas.
Once again, we didn't hear from them for two months until...
Two weeks ago, we got the notice that I was going to have to self-surrender this time, and this time it was for real.
They actually said that it was only going to be for misdemeanor charges, the four basic misdemeanors that all the low-level January 6th offenders get.
And because I happen to be working here in Dallas right now, where Blaze is headquarters, we decided to go ahead and do my self-surrender here at the FBI. So they didn't raid me.
They didn't come out to my hotel or to the Blaze Studios.
We went down to the FBI field office and submitted myself.
The interesting thing, Tucker, is that in the notice from the assistant U.S. attorney to my lead attorney is that they wanted me to show up at the field office, and I quote, wearing shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops.
And I knew what that meant.
That meant that they were probably going to change me into the orange jumpsuit and that I would then be leg shackled because the plan was for the FBI to process me there at the field office, put me in a car, take me downtown to the courthouse where they would hand me over to the U.S. Marshals and then I would wait in a cell until I was marched before the magistrate in front of.
In front of the whole court.
And so what ended up taking place is that my attorney negotiated with the two FBI agents in advance of me surrendering.
I did not have to get into an orange jumpsuit.
I showed up with a jacket, tie, slacks.
They made me take off my shoelaces, my belt, my tie, and then hand my jacket over to my attorney.
Then they allowed me to wear my own shirt, my own trousers.
They handcuffed me, fingerprinted me, marched me out to the car, which has been seen on camera, took me to the courthouse, handed me over to the U.S. Marshals, and that's where they put the leg chains, the belt chain, chained my wrist to my stomach, and then sat me in a jail cell with a meth.
It's not a threat, but I think we deserve to know who is doing this.
I mean, the state of Texas has more than a million illegal invaders in it right now.
There are also an awful lot of murders in the state of Texas.
And so this is what they're spending their time doing.
I have to ask, did any of the FBI agents, we always hear that, you know, the line agents are good guys, did any of the U.S. Marshals say to you, you know, I'm embarrassed that I'm chaining you to, you know, chaining you to your own stomach on a misdemeanor charge for something that isn't actually a crime?
Did anyone betray any acknowledgement that this is like all a farce?
I have received messages from retired whistleblowing agents all over the country apologizing to me for the behavior of the agency they were once proud of.
I will tell you that while they were patting me down and going through the process, I did chat with them and I asked them, point blank, I said, so how often do you do this to...
Misdemeanor defendants.
The first time there was a little bit of mumbling.
And then I kind of reiterated, I said, is this, is it, is it normal?
Or do you get, do you do in process misdemeanor defendants on a regular basis?
As they're patting me down, they went, they were dead silent.
And of course, that's because we know the answer, Tucker.
In the 100-year history of that agency, 100-plus year history of that, they never processed misdemeanor defendants of any kind, particularly nonviolent misdemeanor defendants.
That's not what they do.
I mean, every single FBI agent will tell you that when they joined the agency, they were told that they were on this planet and in this country to go after the whales, not the tiny little...
I've been analyzing the answer to that question for quite some time now, and the only answer I have is that we're now into a generation of special agents, and even special agents in charge, that came in after the Patriot Act, that came in during the Obama administration, that came in after the politicization was overwhelming at the top.
In the leadership.
And in fact, now, you know, in most of the field offices, those in charge are political operatives by and large, Tucker.
And so that's the answer.
Now, we'll tell you this.
When I got to the courthouse, one of the U.S. Marshals processing me down there, he actually looked at my paperwork and he said, point blank, this is bullshit.
I mean, we've had quite a few people speak out on my behalf.
We've had some congressmen speak out on my behalf.
We've had current presidential nominee, nominee apparent, as well as those couple of others that were running, Ramaswamy, DeSantis.
And then in addition to that, we've had a host of other friendly media, but as you can probably surmise and as you...
Obviously stated earlier, nobody from the mainstream media has come forward yet and said, hey, you know, we probably better stick up for this guy, even though he's not necessarily one of us because pendulum swing.
And more importantly, Tucker, whether the pendulum swings or not, if it continues to swing far into the tyrannical left, they purge themselves eventually if you've read a history book.
Well, for two and a half years, I didn't have to set my alarm clock because every morning at six o'clock, I would wake up because I've been following these cases.
I've been following these trials.
I've followed hundreds of these cases.
There's over 1,350 of these arrests so far, all manner of defendants for January 6th.
Most of them, of course, are nonviolent.
And I've been following these cases.
And believe it or not, many.
I mean, far, far too many to even recount of the simple misdemeanor defendants, including other independent journalists, have been SWAT raided at their home.
Some of them have been imprisoned and did nothing more than walk around in the Capitol.
With a big camera rig, no parading, no picketing, no chanting USA, USA or anything else of that nature.
And they did their job professionally.
And when they got back home, they were SWAT rated by 20 agents with the red dots on their chest and on their wife and on their children and then hauled off, convicted, sent to prison for months.