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July 4, 2023 - Viva & Barnes

02:15:07

Interview with Jan. 6 "The Lectern Guy" Adam Johnson - Viva Frei Live!

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	Did we go back into session?
	We did go back into session, but now apparently everybody on the floor is putting on tear gas masks.
	Look at this performative rubbish.
	Performative rubbish.
	They're putting on their tear gas masks.
	They're putting on their what?
	Oh my.
	Can you believe this?
	Oh, we can believe it, Nancy.
	But the fact is, on any given day, they're breaking the law in many different ways.
	Look at this.
	It's like...
	It's like the real war.
	Quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the President of the United States.
	Oh, there's nothing.
	This is not set up at all, people.
	It could at least somebody.
	Yeah, why don't you get the President to tell them to leave the Capitol?
	He did, you dumbass.
	Your law enforcement responsibility.
	He did.
	A public statement they should all leave.
	Yeah, he did.
	USA!
	That's very loud.
	He did Chuck.
	Is that Chuck Schumer?
	That was Chuck Schumer, right?
	Oh, I get mixed up between Schumer.
	That was Chuck Schumer.
	They did.
	But then they took his video off of, you know, they banned him from social media.
	Hold on, there was another great one here that I came across.
	Lectern guy.
	The Tampa Bay man who became infamous for this photo carrying Nancy Pelosi's lectern during the Capitol.
	It's like, where's Waldo?
	He's been sentenced to 75 days in prison.
	75 days.
	He took a flea agreement.
	He also has to turn over any profit that he could make from books and interviews.
	It will serve a year of supervised release and pay $5,000 in fines and $500 in restitution.
	Did he go to court in flip-flops?
	Now, I've got one more question to ask everybody.
	All right.
	Good afternoon, East Coast.
	Good morning, West Coast.
	Good evening, Europe.
	And bonsoir, la France.
	Qu 'est-ce qui se passe là?
	This is going to be amazing.
	This has been one that has been on my checklist for a very long time.
	The lectern guy.
	Adam Johnson, he actually has a name.
	It's not the lectern guy, like, you know, the I didn't do it kid when Bart Simpson went viral for I didn't do it.
	Adam Johnson went viral at the worst possible time for the worst possible reasons for a photograph of him stealing a lectern.
	And I wonder, actually, before we even get started, do I do a poll before we get started?
	I'm going to.
	Before we bring him in, does everybody think...
	He stole the lectern.
	Let me just put this in here and see if I can do this.
	Did Adam steal the lectern?
	How do I put a poll in?
	Heck, it's my problem here.
	I don't know how to put in a poll.
	Okay, start a poll.
	Did Adam steal a lectern?
	Ask your community.
	All right, we're going to get into it.
	I got a lot of questions.
	I watched him live on Timcast when he was there.
	Oh, and I'm glad there are a lot of questions outstanding.
	They didn't really delve into his childhood.
	I made sure that we could, because I'm going to, because there's a story that needs to be told to understand who Adam is.
	Before we get started, no medical advice, no election fornication advice, no legal advice.
	We are going to move into Rumble after we get Adam's, you know, childhood upbringing.
	And that's not so that we can discuss things that we can't discuss on YouTube.
	It's because I've got exclusivity with Rumble.
	I'll put this stream up on YouTube afterwards.
	YouTube gets the leftovers.
	Now, Rumble is the primary platform because it's the best place for free speech.
	If you want to support the channel, you know all that stuff.
	You've got Super Chats on YouTube, but YouTube takes 30% of those.
	Rumble ordinarily takes 20%, but for the rest of the year, they take 0%.
	But it's better to support the creator on Rumble, better to support a platform that supports free speech, and we are simultaneously streaming on Locals at our wonderful community where everyone is above average, vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
	The link, I tweeted that out earlier.
	All right.
	This is good.
	We're going to do this, people.
	All right, Adam, I'm bringing you in.
	Three, two, one and a half, one, and he's in.
	All right.
	Sir, I'm going to ask the question I always ask.
	How goes the battle?
	Well, the battle is all but over as far as the legal repercussions for trespassing.
	But there are some social consequences we're still dealing with.
	I'm having a hard time getting back into college.
	I've applied a couple of times, and they still say no because I have a misdemeanor for trespassing.
	We're going to get into that, and we're getting well ahead well too early.
	Sorry.
	No, no, don't worry about that.
	What the heck was I just about to say?
	Bringing you in, how goes the battle?
	I forgot what it was.
	Oh, no, you do have a name.
	It's Adam Johnson.
	It's not lectern guy, but my goodness.
	That is, until you shave your head or it goes gray, that is how you will be forever known on the interwebs.
	Adam, 30,000 foot overview.
	I mean, we're going to get into the whole, we're going to get into everything.
	And one of the things is going to be the lingering consequences of...
	Your newly discovered freedom, despite.
	You had your first 4th of July free since the event yesterday, correct?
	That is correct, yes.
	Okay, we're going to get there too.
	Before we get ahead of ourselves, 30,000 foot overview, before we get into the nitty-gritty of your childhood upbringing, who you are, who your parents are, what type of life you had that led you to that moment where you stole a lectern, and we're going to get to that as well.
	Who are you?
	I'm Adam Johnson.
	I am 38 years old.
	I'm a father of five, happily married for 12 years.
	Five are boys, so I'm raising a bunch of boys, trying to raise them to be men.
	Five kids, and they're all boys?
	They're all boys, yes.
	Ranging from 16 down to 8. 16 down to 8. Five kids in 8 give or take years.
	All right.
	Not to draw similarities, because it's not always a question of bringing it back to the interviewer.
	I'm the youngest of five.
	Five kids, eight and a half years from first to last.
	Four boys, one girl.
	My mom was set on having kids until she had a girl, but then she had the girl at the third, and then continued to have two other kids, one of whom was a mistake.
	Okay, that's a joke.
	I'm the youngest.
	Five kids, man.
	Congratulations.
	Fantastic.
	We're going to get there.
	Are you from Florida?
	I was a Navy brat growing up, so I kind of went around, born in Tennessee, lived in Virginia, and then came down to Florida when I was probably eight or nine years old.
	So I claim to be a Floridian now, but it's been the majority of my life.
	You said a Navy brat.
	Yes.
	What does that mean for a schnook Canadian who's never served?
	So both of my parents were in the Navy.
	So Navy brat is a kid that gets to travel around with their parents.
	Actually, I want to explore that a little bit in a second.
	How many generations has your family been in America?
	Oh, good Lord.
	I think probably four.
	I'd say four generations, five generations.
	My grandfather, he was adopted, so I'm not really sure what his lineage is.
	My mom did the whole 23andMe thing and tried to figure out where he was from, but we're guessing mostly Italian from his side.
	But we also have all the classic Anglo-Saxon roots that most of us have.
	And did your grandfather or grandparents serve as well, as far as you know?
	My grandfather did, and I believe my great-grandfather did as well.
	Great-grandfather would have been, I don't want to be totally stupid here, World War I. Grandfather would have been World War II?
	Or is your grandfather Vietnam era?
	He would have been World War II era.
	And both of your parents are in the Navy.
	Did they meet in the Navy?
	They did.
	They did.
	My mom served 10 years, and my father served, I want to say it's 25 years, 20, 25 years.
	I gotta keep asking with these questions.
	I mean, this is a joke.
	Not a joke.
	I'm very curious.
	Do they actually meet on a Navy ship?
	And if they did, have they ever explained to you what love in the military on a vessel on the ocean looks like?
	Like, I presume you're not allowed doing certain things on a boat?
	Well, they were actually both in the band.
	So my dad played the French horn, and my mom is a woodwind.
	She plays clarinet, saxophone, all of those ones.
	Flutes, piccolos.
	May I ask what your parents did?
	What did your parents do in the military?
	They were not in the military to be on the band.
	That's sort of like a side hustle when you're in the military?
	They were actually in the band.
	That's what they did.
	There's a whole Navy band.
	They do marching parades.
	My mom did the ticker tape parade in New York when she was younger.
	She was, oh, what do they call the person with baton out front?
	I should know this.
	I did the marching band for a little bit.
	The twirler, I think, is the non-technical term.
	Yeah, they do the thing where they, you know, march the band down the streets.
	They're good.
	My mom still plays in bands now.
	That's kind of her full-time thing.
	So they're in the military as part of the military band, which means they travel with the military for military purposes, for performance purposes.
	That's wild.
	They meet in the military.
	Are they allowed having a relationship or relationships frowned upon when you're in active service?
	So I want to say that my father was a couple of ranks higher than my mom when she joined.
	And my father already had two kids on his own, so he's raising two kids, you know, by himself.
	And they met, and I'm pretty sure they had to report they had a relationship, but the Navy's, you know, it's okay, as long as you're still serving and doing your performance duties and things like that.
	That's totally wild.
	So you are born out of this relationship.
	Of the five kids, where do you position yourself?
	Out of this relationship?
	So there were two that were from my father's side.
	Then my mom and he had four kids from themselves.
	So I am second in line of the next batch of kids.
	Okay.
	I was actually getting just confused between your five kids and how many siblings you had.
	So there are four siblings from the second marriage, two siblings from a first marriage.
	Yes.
	And what does the military brat lifestyle look like?
	When you're moving around frequently, are you living in...
	Military barracks?
	Or do you live in residential areas that they sort of rent out for military people?
	So I was pretty young when this happened.
	You typically live on base.
	They give you housing every base you go to.
	So I've actually got a couple of family members that are in the military.
	We get to visit them occasionally.
	And it's like normal houses.
	They have three bedrooms, two baths.
	You're living in a neighborhood, cul-de-sacs and everything.
	So it's actually very normal.
	But I was probably eight or nine years old when they divorced.
	So they separated.
	The last space they served at was at Pensacola.
	And that's where my dad still lives in Pensacola.
	And my mom moved to Orlando for a bit with us.
	All right.
	Interesting.
	So your dad was prior divorced, then gets divorced again with the second marriage when you're eight or nine with four siblings.
	And what did you say you were with the four siblings from the second marriage?
	I was second in line.
	So I have two brothers and one sister, and I was second in line.
	Alright, now after the divorce, who do the kids live with?
	Do they live with mom or do they live with dad?
	We lived with my mom for almost our entire existence.
	Didn't actually get to meet my dad again until I was probably, I want to say, 12 or 13 years old.
	But there were some disputes going back and forth.
	You know, divorce is an ugly thing.
	And sometimes people just, you know, can't get over themselves to do what's best for the kids.
	Interesting.
	So from your development age of a child to a...
	Troublemaking teenager, I'm maybe presuming things.
	You didn't see your dad for three to four years?
	That is correct.
	Was there not to get Freudian?
	Was there any male fatherly influence in your life?
	Or was it just you guys and your mother?
	My mom dated for a few years.
	She did eventually remarry when I was, I want to say, probably 13 years old, 12 or 13 years old.
	He was a great guy.
	He was a pharmacist, you know, really hard working, 60 hours a week.
	He had four kids from his first marriage, and his wife had since passed away, so he was a widower.
	His four kids were older.
	He was an older man.
	But my mom met him in church, and he was in the choir, and she was playing in the band.
	They hit it off.
	They were married for, God, I want to say 10 years, almost 10 years, before they eventually got divorced.
	But great guy, raised us, did a great job, super giving, super willing to step in and raise four kids, you know, that were older.
	I mean, do you have memories of what it's like to be 8 to 12 years old?
	Like, you haven't forgotten about that part of your life?
	Oh, sure.
	Oh, sure, yeah.
	What is it like for a kid who's watching his mother bring back, I'm not saying bring back like shacking up type thing, I'm just like dating men who are not your father.
	Is that...
	Do you receive that well, or does that always strike you as being something of an offense coming from you, a family offense?
	I think it has to deal a lot with how present the biological father is or not.
	You know, how not present he is, how the kids take it.
	For us, I hadn't seen my dad in years.
	And boys, when they're growing up, they're very thirsty to have a male role model.
	They want to be led.
	They want to be instructed.
	They want to feel proud of the things they're becoming, the things they're doing.
	So for us, I was excited to have a male role model.
	And the man was, you know, he went to college.
	He was educated.
	He was things that I wanted to be myself.
	So it was actually great.
	I actually really, I love that man.
	He was a great man.
	All right, now getting into teenagehood, what kind of kid are you?
	Are you a troublemaker?
	Are you law-abiding?
	Are you a rebel?
	Let us know so we can compare it to the rebellious moment of January 6th.
	So there was definitely a divide in the house, whether education was important or whether just you can play instruments, and that'll be the only thing you need to do.
	My mom was very heavily invested in the arts.
	I grew up, you know, in theater.
	I grew up playing instruments.
	And my father was very heavy into education.
	But part of the issue of being a stepfather sometimes is that you don't have the same amount of authority that maybe the biological parent that comes in has to, you know, direct the kids in a direction that you think might be best for them.
	So for us, we were very heavily pushed into the arts and things like this.
	So education was kind of secondary.
	Now, in that, in the arts community, there is a lot of flagrant behavior, we can say.
	You know, I'm sure we've seen these things happen across the world.
	And I did start smoking pot and things because, you know, that's what you're supposed to do when you're in the arts and a musician.
	And things got off the tracks for a couple of years, I will say that.
	Around, I think it was a little bit after I was 18 years old, they ended up getting divorced.
	I ended up, you know, just not having a good go, suffered with some depression, ended up in a halfway house for about a year, got clean, got sober, you know, but it was a difficult time that I went through.
	But I don't think I'm a terrible person, just, you know, a teenager going through some struggles.
	Well, I mean, if anybody's gotten through adolescence without some struggles, I think that might be more suspicious than the reality for most.
	But that's it.
	The boat ending up in a halfway house.
	And what's the path towards getting your life on track and to getting clean?
	And if I ask the obvious question, have you adopted like a zero consumption policy since then?
	Or have you managed to work things out?
	Well, the path there was pretty simple.
	I wasn't forced to go there, you know, by any stretch of the imagination, not court ordered or anything.
	It basically was, you know, you're not a good influence on your brothers and sisters.
	You know, you're always high and you're not having a, you know, a good positive effect on the family.
	We can't have you here anymore.
	And you're 18 and we think you need to just go find a way through this and you don't see no one else in us.
	So here is an opportunity that may help you.
	So I was in the halfway house for about a year, stayed sober, got a job as a cook, you know, learned, actually had a really good time doing that.
	And after the fact, I didn't adopt a zero, you know, I still enjoy a single malt, but there's this idea within the AANA community that, you know, once an addict, always an addict, and they do, they have all these sayings and things they do, but I'm more of a, I'd rather be a conqueror than a quitter, you know, is kind of where I landed.
	And I look at addictions, I look at these things, and all of it really stems from, have you dealt with the issues that put you in that place to want to abuse these things?
	Have you actually processed the emotions that you have?
	And are you dealing with them in a healthy way?
	And I think if you look at those things and decide to deal with your drama or trauma in a healthy way, you can be a conqueror and not live in that place where I can't even be around these things because I'm too weak to exist in those spaces.
	Very interesting.
	You mentioned church.
	Growing up, a religious upbringing or not so much?
	Southern Baptist, actually.
	Now, explain to me what that means.
	I was having a discussion with someone yesterday as to what Methodists are.
	I don't know the subdivisions within Protestantism, within Catholicism.
	Southern Baptist, I think I know from the movies, that's uber-religious, correct?
	They do get a bad rap.
	They don't condone alcohol consumption or drug consumption.
	You know, I will not sit here and pretend to know all of the different sects of religions, but they get a bad rap.
	Mostly the good things, though, is we really, really do like having cookouts.
	We are very interested in getting to the restaurants first, so the sermons are typically a little bit shorter in Southern Baptist churches, which is great.
	But I didn't really ascribe to any type of set, you know.
	It was basically, I do believe that Jesus Christ walked the earth and that he died for our sins and that grace abounds.
	And if you don't know him, you should try to find him.
	Our community, they don't struggle with me.
	But I have recently, but maybe not so recently, developed, I love biblical verses.
	I follow Jack Posobiec.
	And since I've been following him, he posts verses which are like, that's wonderful insight.
	And I think there's no inconsistency in saying, Jesus existed.
	There are incredible teachings, which I think, religious or not, people should know.
	But then I have my issues with the religious aspect of anything, Judaism as well.
	But the teachings, I can wholly appreciate.
	And they become, obviously, more and more important as time goes on.
	You see the debauchery, the degeneracy, and the depravity of the world.
	Okay, now hold on.
	So, not religious, but religion was there.
	You go to church, Southern Baptist, it's kind of a stronger religion.
	Politically, chat wants to know there's some predictions that, you know, the arts, they're predicting Democrats, but now you throw in the Southern Baptist and you might be confusing people.
	Politically speaking, growing up, what was your mom like?
	What was your family like?
	Well, politics really weren't discussed growing up.
	I'm pretty sure my father was a closet conservative.
	You know, he's an older guy in his kind of group in that era.
	And my mother, again, being in the arts, we always had, you know, gay friends.
	And, you know, we were going to places.
	And, you know, the arts community, especially in theater, it's very, very, very flamboyant.
	And those things are very widely expressed and very widely accepted there.
	So I grew up with the impression that they're just normal people that just...
	They have different activities they do in the bedroom, or at least with different orifices.
	So I didn't really have a take on it.
	I was like, oh, there's normal people.
	And most people who don't know them just don't know they're normal people.
	So politically speaking, I was kind of divided because we would go to church.
	You'd hear these sermons, you know, these people are sinners and, you know, they should repent and not do these things.
	And then I would go to, you know, the theater or go play in these bands and it would be a completely different mindset and setting.
	So it was a lot of just cognitive dissonance growing up.
	Okay, fascinating.
	The halfway house has a very, very heavy baggage to it.
	But after that era of your life, you work as a chef.
	Were you working as a chef or working in the kitchen?
	I was working in the kitchen.
	So I worked for a guy.
	His name is Michael John, super nice guy.
	He actually trained with Emeril Lagasse.
	So he's got like really good training.
	And I started doing dishes because I just needed a job.
	It was hard to get a job because I got arrested for smoking pot.
	So, you know, you have to go work in a kitchen.
	So I started working on dishes.
	Eventually, he allowed me to start cooking breakfast.
	Then eventually, he started letting me cook dinner.
	So it was a really good experience.
	I was given an opportunity and I was just thankful to have it.
	This is at roughly the age of 21, 22, or is this later on?
	This is around 18, 19. He was there through all of this stuff that I was going through and always very supportive.
	I remember there was a time I showed up to the restaurant.
	I asked him, I was like, hey, I need a loan.
	And he knew that I was messed up.
	And he's like, man, are you ever not messed up?
	When are you going to get your life in order?
	I can't keep giving these chances.
	And I think it was in that moment where it really affected me because here is this person that I greatly respect who obviously cares about me giving me a chance.
	And he tells me, man, you should do better.
	You should be better.
	And that was one of those moments that really changed me and made me want to get my shit together.
	I'm going to...
	Pry a little bit.
	Would you say messed up now?
	Is it like marijuana type things or is it harder stuff?
	Just marijuana alcohol.
	I'm not really into the rest of the stuff.
	I haven't tried it, so marijuana alcohol.
	Not that I have not.
	Let me think.
	I don't have to tell the truth, but I can't lie.
	I'm convinced if I do cocaine.
	I will immediately die.
	I'm convinced heart will immediately explode and forget anything that has to go in with needles.
	I had friends that overdosed and stuff, so I've always been a little hesitant to get into those things.
	Because when you're growing up around those people, lots of people do lots of things in those communities.
	And I had a friend that actually overdosed when I was young, so it always just kind of like, nope, not even once, no thank you.
	It's an amazing thing.
	I only understood this as an adult, that we had a teenage friend who This was died suddenly, but not the same died suddenly now.
	And they just said it was an aneurysm.
	But it's only in retrospect that we understood as an adult what had actually happened to this person.
	They weren't a kid so much 16, 17, and it was a tragedy.
	But it wasn't a spontaneous aneurysm, or so we think in retrospect.
	Do you go to university after the kitchen?
	Do you study?
	What's the next?
	After the kitchen, I met a girl.
	I was sober for about a year and a half.
	I met this girl in church.
	We ended up getting married about three months after I met her because I'm young and I feel like what I'm supposed to do to make sure my life is on the right path is to get married, have kids, settle down, go to work, do all those alpha male things.
	So I met this girl.
	We ended up having three kids together across five years.
	These are my oldest kids.
	Divorcing, because we're just young, and the pressure of being young and having kids and not really knowing each other and understanding relationships kind of turns out that way sometimes.
	So we ended up divorcing, and I met my second wife, who I'm married to now for 12 years, a few months after we divorced, and we just, we really hit it off.
	You know, we had a lot of the same similarities.
	She was also divorced.
	She always wanted a big family.
	We ended up getting full custody of the kids.
	She adopted them almost 10 years ago now.
	We have two together.
	So now we have five kids we're raising together, and it's just been a great ride since.
	It's fascinating.
	In our cultural milieu in Montreal, where I'm originally from, 50% of families got divorced.
	My parents have been married for a long time.
	They've never been divorced.
	What year is 1967?
	55 years?
	They've been married a long time.
	They're old.
	I've seen a lot of it, and it's not a shocker to me.
	From your perspective, you get married young.
	This is not a judgmental observation.
	It's just an observation.
	You've seen marriage break up after marriage break up.
	Do you think you either not learn the right lessons or learn the wrong lessons from having lived through that experience?
	I think not learning the right lessons.
	I've definitely discussed this with our kids.
	And I discussed this with my wife, that we have to be such an example for our kids, that the new career family is the thing that is going to, I think, save the world.
	I really, truly do.
	And if we're not giving them an example of what it means to love someone deeply, unconditionally, through our relationship, it's the biggest disservice we can do for them.
	And almost everything is going to be, almost everything is going to be, you know, fall in line after that, if they see a good relationship and a good model of it.
	No, I didn't mean to bring that up.
	I wanted to flag that comment as a joke because it's funny.
	In Jesus' name, when Moses invested.
	I was like, is there actually a Jewish joke that I've never heard?
	I'm keeping that one.
	Okay, so let me see here now.
	That's 18 years ago because you're 36. What year are we in now?
	We're in 2013.
	So that's 2023.
	So we're in like 2005.
	What do you do for vocation?
	What do you end up studying, doing as work?
	For the next decade plus.
	So when I met my wife that I'm married to now, I was actually a beer vendor.
	So I was selling beer for a living, just stocking shelves, having a good time.
	Great company.
	You know, it was a lot of fun.
	Had a lot of friends.
	And anyone who's a vendor knows it's a really good time.
	You constantly get to just talk with people and meet new people.
	And it's a really good time.
	And after I met my wife, we decided that, you know, I have better potential than I've been allowed to or have the opportunity to seek out.
	So I started going to college.
	The idea is my wife's a physician, so she's very into higher education and wanted me to get an opportunity to pursue that.
	So I went to college.
	I went for pre-med, and then towards the end of pre-med, I was told it would be near impossible for me to get a residency after I finished med school because I had a drug charge when I was 18 for smoking some marijuana.
	That just the paperwork involved in this is absolutely just, you're not going to get through it.
	So, I mean, you can become a doctor and have multiple drug charges and keep your licenses, but you can't have one going up to it.
	It's just a red flag for them.
	Now we need to backtrack 18 years.
	So maybe 10 years.
	What happened?
	Okay, what happened?
	You get arrested for marijuana possession?
	Are you dealing?
	Do you have like a kilo?
	Possession.
	Possession.
	It was actually the end of a joint.
	We're talking about less than a gram.
	I need to know this.
	You're smoking outside and cops come up to you?
	I'm actually smoking in a pool bathroom in a community.
	It's a community that I live in, you know, and we're a bunch of just young kids and, you know, we're smoking some pot, just having a laugh, you know, thinking about maybe going for a walk and going fishing at midnight.
	And some cops walk into the bathroom and, you know, someone threw it on the ground.
	They ended up finding it and it's...
	It's like a roach.
	It's like a little roach.
	This is like out of a movie where you don't believe that cops would ever do this.
	Although in the movie it would be racialized immediately and they'd say the only reason the cops are doing this is because the perpetrators are black.
	This happened to...
	Where is it?
	This is in Florida?
	This is in Florida.
	And you're smoking a doobie, as the children call it, in a bathroom of a community pool.
	Cops come.
	And this is 2000.
	This is a long time ago.
	But it's still in the modern era.
	This is not like 1960s where marijuana is...
	No, I can't do my math properly with this.
	It's after 2000.
	Yes.
	Oh my god.
	This is modern history and it's still happening.
	And you throw the dube on the ground and then they find it and the guy smells and he's like, who's is this?
	What is it, a misdemeanor charge?
	It's a misdemeanor charge.
	It's a misdemeanor charge.
	So they put me on probation.
	And so they put me on probation.
	It was like six months of probation.
	And I had missed an appointment because I'm 18. And I just don't keep appointments because I'm still young.
	And so they actually violated me for, you know, not showing up to an appointment.
	I got pulled over.
	I had this old Civic, like 1995 Civic.
	And it had like a body kit and all this stuff on it.
	You know, the Fast and Furious movies were very popular back then.
	And I had this five-point crown on my hood.
	I just thought it looked cool.
	Turns out it's actually a gang sign for Latina Kings.
	I had no idea.
	So I get pulled over because they think I'm a gang member.
	And I'm very white, if you can't tell.
	I'm a very white person.
	If you get a 10, maybe you could pass for South American.
	I don't know.
	But they pull you over because you have a gang symbol of hood.
	Apparently.
	Apparently.
	And they're like, do you know what the sign is?
	And I'm like, I have no idea what that is.
	It's actually a gang symbol.
	And I'm like, well, I'm not in a gang, so why would I know that?
	So they end up searching me.
	Turns out I violated probation.
	And there was another, I think, six months worth of probation added on to it.
	So all the stuff that I went through, it was just my life was kind of falling apart.
	It's unbelievable, because I'm not necessarily a proponent of legalizing marijuana so everybody can smoke it, because I think it's much different than people think it is.
	Like, hey, just take whatever, but that's me.
	But the idea of ruining someone's life over that is exactly the problem, and there's probably a middle ground in there.
	The people that I met in prison whose lives were ruined over just some weekend cocaine, oh my god.
	We're going to get to that.
	So 18 years later, you are doing pre-med, and they say you're never going to get a residency, but how far into studying pre-med do you discover this?
	Oh, I'm at the point where I'm taking my tests to get into med school.
	So I took my MCAT already.
	So I'm taking my MCAT.
	I'm in organic chemistry, too.
	Physics, too.
	I'm taking all the things I'm supposed to take, and I'm trying to apply to USF at this point.
	And they told me, like, listen, it's just probably not in the cards.
	You may want to try to change your...
	The direction of your degree.
	So I do that.
	I end up going into psychology instead because you're not, you know, around all the dangerous drugs that they give everyone.
	And I changed to that.
	I ended up getting my AA.
	I go to USF and I got like a few point nine GPA there.
	I'm a great student.
	I'm doing all these projects for professors and everything.
	And it got to the point where my kids are kind of young.
	They're in daycare and they're just not.
	Getting what they need from us because she's working 50 hours a week and I'm at college 40 to 50 hours a week as well.
	So they're being raised by other people.
	So we decided that the best thing we can do is have me take a break and just raise the kids for a few years until they're all in school and at least have that foundation to where they're able to kind of fend for themselves and take care of themselves a little better.
	I'm not going to make the joke that I know lots of people do make because when I took time off work...
	When we had our first kid, in Canada, you have maternity leave, you have parental leave.
	And I took parental, because I said, first of all, I'll take some time off from my wife.
	And, you know, the jokes, you're taking Matt leave, or you're the stay-at-home mom type thing.
	It never gets old.
	That's incredible.
	Okay.
	What do they say, like, when a woman is a stay-at-home mom, it's the hardest job in the world, but when a guy does it, he's unemployed?
	There's another more sick twist to that.
	It's like, women's liberation is going to work, and then somehow it's a regression for men to do it.
	I guess that does make kind of some logical sense.
	Okay, so you stop.
	By the way, what was AA, did you say?
	Alcoholics Anonymous, and NA is Narcotics Anonymous.
	Oh, so you go into that in terms of the psychology degree that you're studying.
	Okay, very interesting.
	And then you go home.
	Have you since gone back to the workplace?
	Are you still raising the kids?
	I'm still raising the kids.
	I'm trying to get back into college.
	I applied last year to go back because my kids are all in school now.
	And I have like one semester left to finish my degree.
	And then after that, we're considering grad school, but something online so I can finish it and still be here for the kids.
	But when I applied, they told me that I couldn't go because I had a misdemeanor.
	What are they going to tell you now?
	Sorry, I don't mean to make light of your misery.
	They actually allowed me in with my first misdemeanor for the marijuana.
	They allowed me in no problem.
	But they said this next misdemeanor of trespassing, because I was on supervised release, they couldn't allow me in, that I was dangerous or something, and I should reapply later.
	But we're talking about college, where multiple people are on probation, I am sure.
	So I don't know why my case was so significantly different.
	Let's just compare it to competitive athletics in university.
	The question I had, what kind of doctor is your wife?
	She is a physician.
	She's a general physician.
	So she does all the primary care stuff.
	I've got questions for you.
	I'll ask afterwards.
	I'm joking.
	One thing we have enough connections to are lawyers and doctors.
	Adam, now is going to be the time when we're going to move over to Rumble because we're going to start getting...
	We know you now, but I still got more questions.
	I'm going to send everybody the link one more time to go to Rumble because we're going to do this there now.
	Bring it on over, and it's going to get interesting.
	Everybody, move it over to Rumble.
	You can go to Locals if you want to watch it there as well.
	I'm competing.
	Robert Barnes, we do our weekly streams.
	We're crossing streams today, so to speak.
	He's live with the Duran right now.
	Talking Russia, and we're talking this, so people are going to have a full day's worth of information to digest later on.
	Come on over, Rumble.
	I'm ending it on YouTube right now.
	Three, two, one.
	Done.
	Okay, now hold on.
	There were jokes, and there were not-so-jokes.
	There was a super chat.
	Ah, I should have done this earlier.
	Adam, you're looking great.
	Former Apollo Beach resident here, almost moved to Parish.
	When people ask me what's in Parish, I tell them lectern guy and public.
	There's publics everywhere in the States.
	That's incorrect.
	This was about my Bible comment.
	That's incorrect thinking, Viva.
	If Jesus was just a good teacher and a moral man, you need to consider him stark raving mad for the things he claimed.
	Oh, I can understand that now because now saying boys have penises and girls have vaginas makes you stark raving mad in today's day of intellectual depravity.
	C.S. Lewis was an absolute treat to read.
	Absolutely.
	And here we go.
	Leading cause of divorce is marriage.
	That was the joke.
	Okay, now get that out of here.
	Hold on one second.
	All right, so we are now, you go home as a stay-at-home dad, which is going to be uber-relevant for the 75 days you were, I don't care that you're not in prison, you're not at home.
	Let's back this all up now.
	I know from your Tim Pool interview that apparently you had never voted until 2016?
	No.
	My voting record shows that I voted, I think, in 2008, but I've never voted before.
	A lot of people are going to say, that's terrible.
	It's your civic duty to vote.
	And I'm sitting here like, I'm judging you.
	I voted all the time.
	I voted for Justin Trudeau because I didn't think.
	I don't know what's worse.
	Voting like a brain-dead idiot from your commercials you see that are sponsored by the government or not voting in the first place.
	And then the question becomes, do you only feel comfortable to vote once you've done sufficient research?
	Because then, I don't know, maybe how do you vote at the municipal level?
	So you had never voted.
	You're not a political man.
	As an adult?
	No.
	I'm too busy.
	I'm too busy raising kids.
	I don't really have the time to...
	A lot of people these days struggle with the phrase, I don't know, but wants to be aficionados on everything they talk about.
	I didn't know enough about politics to be involved in them or speak on them, so I didn't feel like I should be voting because I think that's gotten us in a lot of messes that we see today, is uninformed voters getting out and doing things that maybe they shouldn't be doing, like voting.
	But now, what is the wake-up moment for you as far as voting goes or as far as getting involved goes?
	Is it the Trump 2016 election?
	So that one definitely started waking me up.
	It was leading up to that, right?
	So you have this man who is a reality TV star, very bombastic, kind of fun to listen to, and he's saying things like, I'm going to lock up politicians, which to me sounded like a good time.
	It sounded like, well, I could get behind that.
	So, I'm watching Trump...
	I'm watching Trump speak, and I'm watching this whole system just lose their shit about what this man's saying and what this man's doing.
	He seems very anti-establishment, and...
	You have people like rap stars talking about politics now.
	You have, you know, and movie stars kind of always did, but just the vitriol you saw from this system we know exists coming after this man, it definitely made me interested in politics.
	I'm like, wait a minute.
	Is there actually something to voting?
	And then the dude won.
	And that really made me think, like, maybe there really is something to vote in.
	Maybe we really do have an opportunity to change things.
	And, you know, maybe Trump wasn't the best thing to vote for, At least it means that we can make meaningful change at this point.
	You say that your voting record shows you voted in 2008.
	You don't really recall it.
	2012, you didn't vote for Obama?
	No, my wife did.
	I don't...
	Don't throw her...
	Doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter.
	We forgive and forget.
	But all that to say is 2012, you hadn't voted.
	And I'm trying to think...
	I'm trying to position your family life now.
	In terms of how many kids you have, you're living in Florida now?
	You're still in Paris?
	Yes, still in Florida.
	Okay, and is it built up, or is it sort of countryside?
	It's rural for the most part.
	We lived in Bradenton, which is about, I don't know, about 20 minutes.
	South of where I am now, it's a little more built up.
	We had a couple of car dealerships and at least an outback.
	All right.
	And is it, well, I guess 2012, I forget who it was in 2012.
	It wasn't McCain.
	Was it Romney in 2012?
	Romney was 12, yeah.
	So is it Republican country?
	Is it sort of Democrat country?
	2012, Florida looks a little different than it does in 2023.
	Oh, yeah.
	Florida was still very much a purple state.
	It was, most counties were pretty split.
	You know, we still kind of had a lot of church.
	You know, going people in the area, but it was pretty split at that point.
	And I don't really think anyone had anything against Obama at that point.
	I think a lot of that vote was about proving that, you know, we don't look at the color of people's skin.
	See, we're good people now and kind of want to push through that.
	Yeah, okay, very interesting.
	And then it was Hillary versus Trump.
	I mean, 2016 was...
	The eye-opening moment for a great many and the brain-melting moment for a great many others.
	And it's a very bizarre thing to even look back at retrospectively seven years later.
	People are still out of their freaking minds.
	Yes.
	And others really have gone through a wonderful transition to live through from my personal perspective and to witness, you know, as I've seen in others.
	So 2016, you didn't vote.
	You didn't vote 2016.
	No.
	And you see what happens.
	I guess now, like, run us through the next four years leading up to COVID.
	Well, after he got voted in 16, you know, I started looking at some of the policy he was putting in place.
	He was ending foreign wars or trying to get out of all of them, and that really made me excited because I am completely anti-war.
	I'm very libertarian on that issue.
	There's no reason we need to be on any foreign soil at all, and we especially don't need to send our kids to make a profit off of war.
	Very much in that corner.
	And then having kids that are approaching draft age made that very big point for me.
	And then I saw things like gas prices coming down, grocery prices coming down, the housing market thriving.
	Wasn't a fan of his gun policy.
	He had bump stock bans, things like this.
	But the majority of it was things that were kind of pro-nationalism.
	And I'm very much in love with my country.
	I love who we are.
	I love what we stand for.
	And I kind of saw the...
	I don't know, the heart of America turning back to that, just we want to be the Americans that the world think we are, you know?
	Were you as, I mean, I was flabbergasted because I'm a Canadian, I'm still Canadian, but at the time I'm like, I was never, not involved in politics, but I didn't even like talking politics.
	Parents always brought us up with, you know, don't talk politics or religion to parties.
	There's no point.
	And even on my, whatever channel I had at the time, I never touched politics, never wanted to.
	Then Trump starts running.
	And I'm like, and I remember having a Twitter account.
	I'm going to tweet something.
	He's like, nah, stay away from politics.
	Then he won.
	But it was even leading up to his victory.
	I had never understood that the media was like that if they were like that before or to the degree that they were.
	And then I realized, holy crap, I'm starting to follow things a little bit.
	They're lying to us in real time.
	This man who was a hero to everybody, to every community.
	Ellis Island Award back in the 80s, superstar on reality television, donor, you know, hanging around parties, became public enemy number one.
	And I was like, it doesn't make sense.
	He didn't just change overnight.
	What the hell is going on?
	And then I had my discovery of how we are, in fact, always being lied to and probably have always been lied to.
	Did you have the similar experience living in the USA?
	Well, I think the Overton window shifted a lot across the past 15, 20 years.
	So where Trump would have been a, you know, an old school Democrat with the same, you know, ideas that old school Democrats had, I think that just it shifted so much that, you know, Trump is actually more of a moderate than anything else.
	But a lot of Democrats were moderates.
	They didn't really want to get in the way of people's rights.
	You know, I think he's one of the first presidents that I think he was the first president that actually had a gay speaker at the RNC, which was just mind blowing for a lot of people.
	And I think he, I think the reason Trump took off is because he scooped up a lot of the Libertarian Party, a lot of the Independent Party, and a lot of the old school Democrats who just, I can't vote for what, you know, Democrats have become, and I can't vote for what Republicans want to be.
	So I think he kind of took, I think he kind of took it and ran with it.
	This whole, my political, not my political, but my blue.
	What is it?
	Red Pill Awakening also has enlightened me to the libertarians.
	I studied philosophy.
	I know what libertarian philosophy is.
	But my goodness, I never knew what the libertarian political party looked like, acted like, and tweeted like.
	And my goodness.
	Okay.
	It's an interesting gang.
	Some good principles.
	Maybe some strategy that I would not adopt.
	Okay.
	So 2016 happens.
	Trump gets elected.
	Your kids now should be, give or take, in the 11-ish range.
	So 8 to...
	Yes.
	Are we 8 to 14 now?
	Give or take.
	Anything momentous happen before the world goes fucking crazy in 2020 COVID?
	Or is there anything of developmental relevance for your story between 2016 and 2020 pre-COVID?
	Not really.
	My kids were thriving.
	Our family was thriving.
	We were saving money.
	We were having a good life.
	We were going on vacations.
	Everything was about as normal as you would want it to be in America.
	You were kind of living that dream.
	And then it was such a shock when everything came to a close, when they sent my kids home and said, hey, by the way, we're not going to educate them, but we'll be happy taking your taxes to keep the schools closed.
	Do you remember where you were when they announced the first two weeks to flatten the curve?
	Oh, yes.
	So at this point, I'm consuming a lot of podcasts, listening to a lot of people.
	I'm really saying it.
	I thought you were going to say I'm consuming a lot of pot.
	Okay, don't mind.
	Consuming a lot of podcasts.
	I'm staying very informed.
	You know, we're hearing about these outbreaks, and then people are getting sick, and then we have this death count that starts on every single mainstream media news network.
	And I'm like, this is all for show.
	This can't be real.
	And then we started seeing things like, well, it's good to wear a mask.
	It's not good to wear a mask.
	Hey, you should wear two masks.
	We're watching all this stuff unfold, and I just couldn't deal with the lies anymore.
	And then they sent the kids home and said, listen, we can't have them in school, even though they're not really at risk to catch COVID or even have a bad go with COVID.
	And they sent them home and said, we're not going to take care of them.
	And I'm thinking about all the people that I know, the single moms who, what are they supposed to do with their kids?
	They have to go to work.
	Are they supposed to leave their six and seven-year-old at home?
	Do they get a babysitter?
	Do they pay for that?
	How do they pay for that?
	It was the ultimate stupidity of the policy where Robert and I were talking at the time.
	He was so much further ahead of the curve than me at the time.
	He's like, what are they going to do?
	They're going to get granny and pops to babysit the kids when the old people are the ones who are most at risk and the young people are not?
	I mean, it makes absolutely no sense.
	What was the biggest lie?
	What was the most shocking twisting of the truth that you discovered and when do you recall having discovered it?
	Oh, man.
	That's a big one.
	I would say, for me, it would be when the Fauci emails started getting leaked, when we saw what the man behind the curtain was actually saying and believing him.
	I had always assumed that I try not to just say things are facts because I heard them from someone that I believe, to be honest.
	I actually want to see evidence of it before I start saying things like, you know, Fauci should be prosecuted.
	He lied to the American people.
	He lied to Congress.
	And he should be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity.
	Because now we have all this evidence and the man is just still making money doing it.
	He's the victim because people harass him and threaten him after he does.
	Well, he is the science.
	You know, he is the science.
	And how dare you question the man?
	I always question the man who can't throw a baseball.
	I don't know.
	For me, that was kind of the...
	I'm going to go record myself and see what I look like.
	I got a rotator cup thing in my right shoulder, and I don't want to throw with my left.
	All right.
	So the world shuts down.
	You're now at home.
	Your kids who had been at school are now at home.
	What do we know?
	It was March.
	Was it March 20th?
	Give or take, was it March 2020?
	It was March 2020.
	They shut everything down.
	You start, you know, you're living, we're all living this isolated, sedentary, what's the word?
	What's the word I'm looking for?
	Like a form of imprisonment.
	We're living it as a life.
	Yes.
	And at the same time, the 2020 election is going on.
	Coincidence?
	Well, now, hindsight is 2020.
	I just said the other day, I remember at the time people were saying they want to shut down the economy, they being Democrat politicians, the experts, they want to destroy the economy so they can use it against Trump.
	They want to shut everybody down so they can use it to benefit from the election.
	And I don't think I was more optimistic then.
	I just don't think I was quite as blackmailed.
	They would not literally kill people for politics.
	And boy, was I wrong.
	I think we were changing the profit model from war to industry, like back to industry.
	Let's bring jobs back to America.
	Let's get people back to work.
	Let's start having USA products.
	Let's look at these trade deals we're doing with China, who is obviously ripping us off.
	Let's talk about investing in our own fuel, right?
	Instead of having to broker deals with these countries that I just don't think we should do business with.
	Like he was changing the whole business model of how we ran our country.
	And I think that's really what upset everyone.
	Because you have these politicians that have been for 20, 30 years where all they want to do is invest in Raytheon and they want to invest in Lockheed Martin and make their millions.
	Okay, now, so the lockdown in the world has gone off the deep end.
	Did you get involved politically and did you vote in 2020?
	I certainly voted in 2020.
	I showed up in person, happy to do it.
	It actually was one of the best experiences of my life because I felt like I stood a chance at making the country a better place.
	And you, I suspect, like everyone else, went to bed on, what was it?
	It was November 20th.
	You went to bed that night.
	It looked like it was going to go one way, but Stevie Burns, what's his name?
	Stevie Burns, what the hell's my problem?
	Bernie Sanders.
	He told us what was going to happen.
	It's going to look like Trump won the night of, and then votes are going to keep coming in and coming in and we're going to count them, and then he's going to lose, and then he's going to throw a hissy fit and destroy the democracy.
	When did you...
	I won't presuppose that you got blackpilled.
	What was your reaction the evening of and then in the coming weeks?
	Or in the coming week, I should say.
	I actually had an election night party, so we ordered pizzas, you know, we had some beers and stuff, and I had a bunch of guys over and their wives over, and we were watching election night, and we saw every single mainstream media, you know, news sites say the same things, like, it looks like Trump's going to win.
	CNN is reporting this.
	If you remember that long ago, I haven't forgotten, everyone was saying Trump's won this damn thing.
	And then you wake up in the morning and somehow they found 170,000 votes here all going in one direction, 200,000 votes there.
	But it still wasn't enough.
	It was when they kept counting for an entire week afterwards.
	And then you start asking questions like, is this normal?
	Have we ever seen this?
	Is this what happens?
	And it does happen in countries like Venezuela.
	But this doesn't happen here.
	It's never happened here.
	Oh, but it was COVID.
	There were too many mail-in ballots and they were accepting them after deadlines and they had to go litigate whether or not they could accept them if they weren't postdated.
	My favorite one was the waterline that broke in Georgia.
	Do you remember this one?
	I remember the stories, but then the problem is it is the deluge of information and disinformation where some of it is exaggerated and then you don't even know what is true, but please refresh our memories.
	They said there was a waterline break in the place they were counting the votes, so they had to stop counting everything and just shut it down for a while.
	Well, it turns out they kept counting all night long.
	All night long.
	So they kicked everyone out except for a handful of people and just kept counting.
	And it's things like this that bother me.
	And I don't know what happened.
	I wasn't there.
	I don't see how they counted or where the votes went.
	I know the total count when they were done, but where's the work order for the pipe?
	Where's the work order for the burst pipe?
	Right?
	Because we should be able to go see that.
	Was it Atlanta?
	It was Atlanta.
	It was in Georgia.
	A delay in processing absentee votes in Fulton, Georgia, Lardis County, will affect how quickly...
	I mean, it's like...
	It's Steve Bannon who said there are no...
	What did he say?
	There's no coincidences, but there are no...
	Oh, geez.
	Chat, what is Steve Bannon's...
	He says there are no coincidences, but there are no accidents.
	I'm going to go look in the chat until I get it.
	Okay.
	You're seeing the same news stuff that we're seeing.
	Oh, Adam, is this radicalizing you?
	Is this why you went to Capitol Hill on January 6th?
	I mean, I was patient.
	You know, I was definitely vocal about it.
	I discussed it with my friends.
	I was very vocal on Facebook and Instagram about, you know, this is ridiculous.
	If you can't ask questions even, like, what are we even doing as a country?
	We're no longer a real country.
	So I'm chatting about these things.
	I'm bringing up questions with my friends.
	All of my liberal friends think I'm crazy in this.
	You should just accept it.
	You should just accept it.
	I'm like, look.
	You're the same person who accepted, you know, things like vaccines are good for you without longitudinal studies.
	So I don't trust your opinions.
	I just won't do that.
	And as I'm discussing these things, I'm thinking to myself, like, man, what happens if they are just usurping the country?
	What happens if there is this nefarious plot to, you know, take over our country and the last remnants of power that we had are now being taken away?
	We'll never again have fair elections.
	And this is the mindset, I think, that most people on January 6th had.
	And I try to tell the people that aren't on my side the same thing.
	If you believe what I believe, that the country was being usurped, that there was nefarious people in charge, that they really did do this thing where they took your country from you, and you weren't there, shame on you.
	Shame on you.
	How does this work?
	So January...
	It was January 6th was the day.
	There was a big event planned.
	It's in Washington, D.C. You're still in Florida.
	Do you drive or do you fly?
	I flew.
	I made a decision about two weeks before January 6th to purchase some plane tickets and head up there with my friend.
	It's my first rally I've ever been to.
	I've never been to a Trump rally before.
	I've never been to a protest before.
	So this is my first encounter in this scenario.
	Very interesting.
	Now, do your Facebook or social media posts come back to haunt you at any point during the trial?
	I presume they do.
	No, there's no trial.
	During the prosecution.
	My Facebook and Instagram was scrubbed.
	It was completely deleted, I think within 24 hours of my picture being released.
	By whom?
	By Facebook?
	It's by Facebook and Instagram.
	So in my plea deal that was written by the AUSA, they said that I deleted them, which is not true.
	I brought this up several times.
	I said I didn't delete them.
	I put them on...
	I suspended the accounts until I reactivated them.
	It's an option for your social media.
	You can say, oh, just put it on pause for a minute so people can't message you and things like that because it was just getting really bad.
	And I woke up the next day and everything had been deleted.
	They said my accounts violated some standards they had, so everything was gone.
	Okay, very interesting answer.
	I'm just taking a note.
	We're going to come back to that.
	You buy your plane ticket.
	A couple weeks in advance.
	I'm going to go down.
	Because what was planned was the speech.
	Was it the speech that was planned was on the 5th or the speech on the 6th?
	So we showed up on the 5th.
	It was probably around noon-ish, 1 o 'clock-ish.
	We had like three connecting flights to get there because you just couldn't find tickets to get to this thing.
	Really?
	Mm-hmm.
	So on the plane there, God, it was crazy.
	They actually threatened to land the plane twice.
	The pilot had to come out of the cabin and threaten all the passengers.
	Sorry.
	Hold on.
	Is this the first leg or the third leg?
	Like coming to D.C. or leaving from Florida?
	This was, I want to say it was coming from Boston into D.C. Okay, because that at least you know everybody on that plane or a lot of them are there for the event.
	What was going on on the plane that the pilot has to come out like a chaperone?
	What happens on the plane?
	People were refusing to wear masks.
	Shut up!
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	Okay, so you're on a plane.
	This is now in the heat of COVID.
	After Trump has lost the election and he's getting ready to turn over power or whatever, they're going to count the electorate.
	You're on a plane and they still have a mask mandate policy in effect?
	Yes, but if you're actively eating, you don't have to keep the mask on.
	So the majority of people have things like gummy bears and peanuts or just kept a straw in their mouth for an hour.
	Were there other non-Trump event attendees on the plane?
	Or was it the staff that are complaining?
	By the third leg, it was probably 70% Red Hats that filled that cabin.
	That must be the most unpleasant thing for the Red Hat haters.
	Put up your mask.
	By the way, I was on a plane, and there was a particularly...
	What was the orderly's name from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
	Nurse Ratched.
	There was a very Nurse Ratched-y flight attendant who was making my kid pull up her mask over her nose even when she was eating.
	I said, you're not sipping?
	Put your mask over your nose and put it over your nostrils.
	Nuts.
	It released the inner tyrant in everybody or in a lot of people.
	Absolutely.
	So you're flying to...
	I mean, that's got to be a ruckus of a flight.
	They threaten to land.
	You make it to your destination.
	The captain comes over to the PA and says, I'm hearing from the flight attendants that a lot of you are refusing to put your masks on.
	And if you do not comply, I will land this plane.
	There will be local agents to arrest you.
	Where the hell are you going to land?
	The whole plane erupted in laughter.
	So about 10 minutes later, the pilot comes out.
	And he's sitting there like an angry dad.
	I'm not kidding.
	I'll land this damn thing.
	Did anybody get this on video?
	This is the type of video I would love to see.
	I'm sure it's somewhere out there.
	I'm sure these things are out there.
	I'm going to go look for that.
	Okay, this is hilarious.
	This reminds me of when you go on an overnight school trip and you're the troublemaking kid like I was and the principal comes up.
	Oh my goodness.
	So you land in D.C. and by the time you land in D.C. I imagine it's a buzz.
	It's like everybody knows there's a big event happening.
	Oh, yeah.
	So we're in the airport and it's just, it is full of Trump shirts and red hats and, you know, people just excited to be there.
	And it's very, it felt like a fair.
	You know, it's not like this.
	People aren't angry.
	They're not shouting.
	They're just, they're excited to be there.
	Everyone's traveling.
	They're on a trip and they're all kind of unified under the same banner of, you know, we don't like what's going on and we're going to go protest.
	It's so, I want to swear, but I won't.
	It's not a necessary time.
	It's so flipping cool.
	It's like, When I documented the Ottawa protest and it was...
	Canadians descending on the Capitol and you could tell how it pissed.
	I'm living this having lived the experience through Trump and what people said.
	How dare they come to Washington?
	You're saying you flew all across the country to come to our Capitol and you saw that same arrogance, pomposity, elitism for those lowly Canadians who came from Nova Scotia and descended on Ottawa.
	It's exactly what you're describing here and I'm reliving it in retrospect.
	And you guys did crazy things too.
	You banned gas tanks, wasn't it?
	You couldn't have gas tanks.
	They were confiscating jerry cans for a little bit.
	And also they banned honking, right?
	This was also the thing.
	That was the thing they couldn't deal with was honking.
	It was even after there was an injunction where they were not honking at nighttime.
	They prohibited honking for...
	There was a qualifier to it so that you could honk for an emergency, a traffic emergency, but not to show support.
	And then there was a video where they were arresting this clearly Infirmed elderly man who had honked his horn and then refused to show ID.
	So it's festive right from the airport.
	Yes.
	And do you get a hotel?
	Did you have to pre-book or did you not even think about where you were going to stay?
	I booked everything ahead of time.
	I got a hotel in Georgetown.
	It's in NBC Suites because they give you free breakfast.
	So I definitely recommend those.
	So you land on January 5th.
	What do you do?
	There was an event on January 5th?
	There was.
	So there was a meeting in one of the parks down near the Capitol, and Alex Jones was speaking.
	They had all these big names.
	Owen Schroer was there.
	And I'd never seen these people, but I kind of knew them the periphery of politics.
	Everyone knows Alex Jones' names, but I don't watch the dude.
	So we go show up to listen to Alex Jones speak in the park because that's what we're there to do.
	We're there to go watch some history and be a part of this damn thing.
	So we go there, you know, we hear him speak.
	We get towards the end of it.
	My buddy are like, well, what now?
	I'm like, I don't know.
	I've never been to D.C. I'll walk around.
	So we end up finding this group of people.
	There's a guy with a megaphone.
	They're marching down the street and they're saying things like, you know, stop the steal.
	You know, whose country?
	Our country.
	So I'm like, oh, it's a protest and we're on a march.
	So I'll go march with these people.
	Well, about five or six minutes in, I start chatting with some people because I just like meeting people.
	And it turns out they're Proud Boys.
	I had no idea.
	I knew who the Proud Boys were.
	I'm saying this non-judgmentally.
	Even from what I've seen, the Proud Boys, as far as I'm concerned, did not deserve getting designated as a terrorist entity in Canada, which they have been.
	No comment on anything else, but they certainly seem like they were more agent than Proud Boys at some point in time.
	Do you know who you met?
	Not Enrique Tarrio, but maybe some of the other members?
	Enrique wasn't even there.
	He had already been arrested and told not to be in D.C. So he wasn't even there for this whole thing, but somehow they're still charging him with January 6th.
	It's actually a pretty crazy thing.
	Look into it.
	I'm marching with them.
	We end up stopping in front of this police barricade line.
	It's probably like, you know, 15, 20 cops are sitting out there.
	And, you know, they start protesting, you know, same rhetoric.
	And I look across the way and there is this Black Lives Matter rally that's about, you know, just down the alley, you know, one cross street over.
	And they're having their thing.
	Went to talk to one of the cops.
	And I'm like, oh, what's going on?
	And he's like, oh, well, they have a protest.
	And we're making sure, you know, you don't interfere with them because they have a right to be here.
	But you guys can be here.
	You know, stay on your side.
	So 10, 15 minutes go apart.
	I'm talking to, you know, all sorts of people just figuring out, you know, what's going on.
	And then I notice that the police line, they let this protester from the other side come through and start agitating everyone on my side.
	And it's getting kind of, it's getting very verbal back and forth.
	And they end up having to bring her back because people are getting very upset.
	And then at some point, one of the guys broke the line.
	Oh boy, did we lose connection here?
	I think it's just me now.
	All right, sorry.
	Robert Barnes knows this happens to me.
	Canadian internet is sketchy.
	I was like, what's he going to do when he's all alone on the screen?
	Sorry, so I missed what you said there for a few minutes, but Black Lives Matter protest, and that's where I lost you.
	Well, they told us to stay on our own sides, right?
	So everything's fine.
	A couple minutes in, they allow one of the protesters from BLM to cross their police line into our side of the protest.
	And she's shouting explicitive.
	She's trying to rile up the crowd.
	Crowd gets riled up, mission accomplished.
	And they pull her back onto her side.
	Now, at that point, the people in that group kind of lose their stuff.
	They're like, this is unfair.
	You're allowing her to come agitate us.
	You're trying to get a rise out of us.
	One person decided.
	I'm not okay with that.
	Ended up jumping the police line.
	They chase him down, tackle him, and mace him on the ground, right?
	Put him in cuffs and take him off.
	And I'm watching this unfold, and I'm like, did they just allow that to happen?
	Did they just really make that situation just come and happen in front of all of us?
	Is this politics in D.C.?
	Because why would you allow an agitator onto the other side if that's not the goal of what you were trying to do?
	And this is on the 5th now.
	This is on the 5th.
	A lot of the things that I think we saw...
	Was it the 5th or the 6th that Alex Jones was saying do not go down to the Capitol?
	That had to have been on the 6th, right?
	That was on the 6th.
	Okay.
	So on the 5th, that's when we saw the infamous video of Ray Epps.
	It was an evening video telling everyone you have to go into the Capitol and they start calling him a Fed, which is hilarious on its own.
	That was Baked Alaska, a good friend of mine.
	He's also on Twitter.
	He's the one that recorded all of that.
	I think he got into big trouble, too, if I'm not mistaken.
	He did.
	He served 60 days as well, and he's going to have to go back and serve another two or three weeks now on top of it.
	Are you walking around all day on the 5th?
	I presume the hotel is of no interest.
	You're just walking the streets talking to people?
	I'm just walking the streets talking to people.
	I actually ended up running into Owen Scheuer, who works for Alex Jones.
	Yep, exactly.
	And he also caught a charge.
	He didn't go inside.
	He was just outside.
	But the night before, he was talking about Enrico Tarrio, who was just arrested for burning a Black Lives Matter flag.
	So he got arrested for this.
	He took it down from a church and set it on fire.
	So they got him for destruction of property.
	Well, Owen had his own BLM flag.
	Had a group around him.
	There were probably like six, seven cops watching.
	Set it on fire.
	Cops came over immediately, you know, stomped it out and said, you know, go on your way, go on your way.
	But again, one more example of these things were all staged.
	All of this, and this is what I'm seeing the night before, is everything seems to be planned, you know?
	Like, why are the cops sitting here watching it happen?
	Were they alerted he was going to set a fire to a plan?
	Just so you know, Adam.
	I don't think you're crazy.
	I think it was absolutely allowed to happen, facilitated, or even staged with agent provocateur that we now know were heavily embedded, both in the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, had infiltrated, knew about the seditious conspiracy, and yet somehow didn't know what was allegedly going to happen on January 6th.
	It happens all the time, apparently.
	And I've seen in Canada how I went to document a protest, a gendered protest, and the cops literally...
	What's the word?
	They don't kettle people, but they get the protesters so that you have one group that is flanked by the two counter-protesters.
	It's as though they want to have a conflict so they can say how violent it was.
	No question.
	So you're witnessing this the night before.
	It's my first-hand experience.
	And half the reason I showed up January 6th is because I wanted to see it first-hand.
	We're talking about some things we've never seen in our country before.
	Happening day at a time, you know?
	And it's the reason I wanted to be there is to witness it firsthand because I don't know who I'm supposed to trust.
	We just went through COVID.
	I'm just finding out that the mainstream media does nothing but lie to us.
	And I wanted to see it.
	And then what I'm seeing when I show up is exactly what I thought it was going to be.
	When you're walking the streets on the 5th, is it like shoulder to shoulder?
	Is it mildly crowded?
	Are the streets closed off?
	Is there traffic that's stuck among the crowds?
	How many people are out on the 5th?
	I would say for the Alex Jones speech, there were maybe 300 to 500 people there, so not a huge crowd.
	The crowd I was walking with, maybe 50 people, maybe less.
	But there was National Guard all over the place.
	They had their Humvees out and stuff, so they were definitely present the night before.
	Lots of businesses were boarded up.
	And that's D.C. Maybe they stay boarded up because they have so many protests.
	I do remember that in anticipation for this, they were boarding everything up and saying it was going to be cataclysmic.
	Unless I have false memory syndrome, which is entirely possible.
	How late do you stay out on the 5th?
	Oh, probably 11, 12 o 'clock.
	Not super late.
	You know, got some food.
	Went back to the hotel room and, you know, just kind of chatted with my buddy and went to bed.
	All right.
	And now, D-Day, Adam, so to speak, and no pun intended.
	You wake up on January 6th.
	Walk us through the day.
	Well, we woke up probably around 7 o 'clock, 7.15.
	Went down for the free breakfast.
	And they, uh...
	It's supposed to be like this entire buffet where it's omelets made to order and, you know, it's a nice hotel.
	But instead what we had was this COVID line you had to walk through, you know, and it was like just this styrofoam thing you were commanded to take back to your room.
	You couldn't even eat in the breakfast section where they had tables.
	So, you know, we took it back and I was like, all right, well, let's get going.
	As we get out onto the streets, and again, we're in Georgetown, so it's probably a solid 40. 45-minute walk to get down to the Washington Monument.
	The streets going all the way there are full.
	The entire way.
	I mean, street by street, just shoulder-to-shoulder people.
	There are vendors out everywhere.
	I've never seen such a large collection of people.
	You have hockey up there, right?
	So you've been to a couple of hockey games where you kind of walk in and it's just shoulder-to-shoulder.
	It's that.
	It is that, but on the streets of D.C. I've also been to a couple of hockey riots where they get out of hand and you had cops doing the same thing that I saw during the Ottawa protest.
	I was not a participant.
	I was a documentarian.
	Okay, so this 45 minutes.
	I mean, that's amazing.
	So you're walking.
	Everybody is congregating like, I don't want to say moths to a flame, but maybe it was.
	Like magnetic attraction.
	Everybody from all arteries are coming down on the Washington Monument.
	Yes, everyone's kind of going to the same place.
	We all know what's going on.
	We know that's where the rally is.
	And there was a real sense of just community between us.
	Everyone's super polite.
	Everyone's super friendly.
	You could ask anyone, you know, for directions, you know, or, you know, what time you're supposed to be there.
	If you need to know something, everyone's super polite.
	And the destination point at this point in time is not the Capitol Hill, not the Capitol building.
	It's where Trump is giving his speech.
	Well, not where he was.
	He was giving a speech at the White House, but the rally itself was being held at the Washington Monument.
	Okay, that's the big phallus-looking thing.
	Yes, yeah.
	And what time was that starting at?
	What time did the rally start at?
	I want to say we got there around 8 o 'clock, 8.15, and it started, I want to say, at 9. We got there, they were playing some old-school classic rock hits.
	You know, just people were kind of hanging out and people I brought.
	It was really cold that day.
	So everyone's kind of bundled up and just kind of sitting around waiting for things to happen.
	Was there a big screen so that everybody could see Trump talking?
	Oh, yeah.
	Giant screen.
	Giant screen.
	So now you hang out there.
	Trump spoke at around...
	Jeez, I'm going to test my memory here.
	Did he speak at around 11 o 'clock?
	It was around 11, yeah.
	So what happens for the first two hours?
	And then tell us when the shit really hits the fan.
	Well, the first two hours was just kind of, you know, guest speakers that were kind of filling gaps until he was ready to speak.
	They had, like, Mayor Giuliani that spoke.
	They had, I don't remember the list.
	I actually got kind of bored while I was there because I had heard this rhetoric leading up to it for, you know, six, seven months now.
	And we had, there was, I'd never been to DC before, so I went down to the World War II display where they have all these stars.
	You know, commemorating all the people that lost their lives during the World War and, you know, the Lincoln Monument.
	So I just wanted to kind of check those things out.
	So I hung out there for a little bit and came back when Trump was speaking and heard him speak.
	And he finished off with, we're going to march down there and we're going to do it peacefully, but let our voices be heard.
	And then we started marching down towards the Capitol.
	And how long, for those who don't know, how long or how far a walk is it from the monuments to the Capitol?
	It's a couple of miles.
	It took us probably 20-30 minutes to get there.
	Okay.
	And it's hundreds of thousands of people marching from the monument.
	The monument is at the end of that long field thing.
	And then you have to walk all the way back up.
	I've only been to Washington once that I remember twice that I know of.
	So hundreds of thousands of people are marching up to the Capitol building.
	Is anybody, as far as you know, expecting to see Trump there?
	Or does nobody really think Trump is actually going to make it there?
	I don't think that's what we're...
	I don't think that's what they were anticipating.
	I think they really just...
	I don't think it was marching orders or something.
	I think it was more or less they were there to protest, they showed up to show support, and they were told this is the place that we're going to go show our support.
	And what I've heard is that Trump actually had already arranged to have a secondary location that he was actually going to show up to.
	There were permits pulled forward.
	I think the Secret Service is well aware of it.
	So he had planned on actually being down at the Capitol that day to continue, you know, leading the rally.
	All right.
	And by what time do you get to the Capitol building or the Capitol Capitol?
	I don't remember the exact time, but by the time we got there, people were already inside.
	On the march down there, people from the crowd said Pence didn't do it.
	The election's over.
	Pence didn't do it, and that was pull the Pence card to count the alternate electoral slate or slate of electors.
	He didn't do it.
	The interesting thing is that he had left it ambiguous as to whether or not he was going to do it in the days leading up to this, and then the announcement comes he's not going to do it.
	He's not counting the alternate electors.
	It's over.
	They're going to count the electors, and Trump is not going to win this election.
	And then is there a palpable shift in the zeitgeist?
	I'm not sure if that's the right word.
	Is there a palpable shift in the mood of the crowd?
	They definitely sped up.
	It definitely came more of a speed walk getting down there before it was just kind of, you know, walking casually down towards the next location.
	And then when these things started being shouted from the crowd, and we also heard things like, you know, oh my God, they're attacking the Capitol.
	And I think at this point, it's more of less like a car accident.
	If you see a car accident, you know, you're going to go look at it.
	If you hear something is happening, it's common human behavior.
	You're going to go witness it firsthand.
	And I think that was kind of the energy that was in that crowd that hadn't made it to the Capitol yet.
	And now you get there at some point, however long it took, and then we've seen those iconic images.
	And I say iconic is that they were the ones that the media was running with.
	The noose.
	That big new statue outside in the front of the building, the smoke coming out, the people climbing the walls like ants.
	What do you see when you get to the Capitol and what part of it do you enter from?
	So I'm on the west face of the building and apparently this is where the majority of violence happened.
	And I tell people the same things where I try to be just as neutral as possible.
	There were people that were attacking cops and there were cops that were attacking people.
	Now, whether the people who were attacking cops were CIs or antagonists or accelerationists or actual protesters, I guess we'll never know.
	But I know a lot of them are in prison for doing things like covering the bodies of people who were being beaten.
	And every time they put their arm up and made contact with the weapon, that was a charge of violence.
	So these are the things that we know now.
	As far as what I saw when I got there, there were people that were scaling the walls.
	There were people that were, you know, trying to get inside.
	These are limited to a handful of people.
	This is not the general, you know, energy of the crowd that is there.
	Majority of people are just sitting back watching what's going on, having the same questions I'm having, what the hell is even going on?
	Yeah, and I likened it also to my experience at the Ottawa protest where they said it was defined by elements of violence, vandalism, and you get there, and whether or not there were one or two, it certainly didn't define the tens of thousands that were there.
	It's just that, you know, the acts of violence or vandalism...
	It seems to be more undeniable.
	Do you arrest everyone in the stadium or just the people who are acting stupid?
	You get there, you see some of the bad stuff going on.
	How do you end up either making the decision or following the flow into the Capitol building itself?
	Well, for the first probably 10 minutes I'm watching the violence happen, it's more or less I'm in shock at this point.
	I've not seen these things.
	I'm a pretty...
	Pretty normal dude.
	And I don't go to riots.
	So as I'm seeing the crowd and the police fight, I'm watching it, trying to take it all in, trying to figure out what is going on.
	When it gets to the point to where they're throwing flashbangs at us, concussion grenades, when they're macing everyone, when they're teargassing everyone, it's at that point I say, well, you know what?
	I don't think this is where they want us to be, so we're going to let them exist over there.
	I'm going to go find where the peaceful people are that are here to protest and just go exist with them.
	So that's when I leave, is when they start, like, physically assaulting people.
	And you end up, like, the door that you went into, was it opened?
	Was it a busted barricade?
	It was completely open.
	It was a door that exists.
	It was not a window that was broken into.
	It is a door that people go through.
	And the door was wide open.
	So I follow a crowd that is going inside.
	It's probably 20, 30 deep at this point.
	And I say, oh, well, the protest is going inside.
	And my thought is, I'm here to protest.
	The next step is to go inside and protest, so that's where I'm going to go.
	Any cops at the entrance that you went in through?
	No, not a single one.
	Now, I had another question.
	I think it's something you said during the TimCast interview, but you say the people who went in, at least where you were going in.
	So there's no cops, the doors open, not busted open.
	You don't know how it got open.
	Did I understand from the interview that you said like...
	There was almost a sense of, is reverence the right word?
	The people who went in, when they got into the Capitol building, they weren't, you know, desecrating the building.
	They were actually sort of quiet and admiring their surroundings.
	Yes.
	So we walked down through a narrow corridor, and there were the chants, you know, stop the steal, whose country, our country.
	But when we got into the Rotunda, just the sheer opulence of it, just, it is a room that I hope you get to go visit one day.
	I'm sure we're going to go back.
	I hope that...
	I take my kids there, too.
	When we got there, it was just, it's beautiful.
	You have all this American history around you, surrounding you, and if you're there for the reasons that I'm there, which is to protest your country being taken from you, you stand and you look at it and you think, man, there's a reason I'm here.
	It's worth defending.
	So the crowd got very quiet.
	They were very respectful, and they kind of just filtered out taking pictures and taking it all in.
	It was like they entered a museum.
	And you're still not seeing any cops yet?
	No, not at all.
	There are no cops inside the rotunda.
	I don't see anyone.
	And I go around, I kind of take my pictures.
	At this point is where I found the lectern.
	The lectern was out in the open, under some stairs, not in a closed door, not in a closet, just sitting out.
	And I moved it from where it was sitting in the same room to the middle of the room, about 20 yards for a photo.
	This is what some people...
	Hold on.
	Oh, I didn't go back to see what the results of the poll were.
	80% say, no, you didn't steal it.
	End poll.
	You didn't steal it.
	I'm going to ask you the leading...
	You had no intention of stealing it.
	Absolutely not.
	I mean, it's not something you slip under your jacket, even if you were a shoplifter.
	So you move it into the center.
	Is it something of a gag so you can pretend to be a politician, pretend to give a speech?
	Yeah, just LARPing politics.
	I gave a speech in the center of the rotunda because that's what you do when you're behind a lectern.
	That's what you do when you're in the Capitol.
	And then you leave it there.
	Yes.
	I'm going to spoil the surprise for a lot of people.
	You were charged with theft by moving an object more than 20 meters, correct?
	Yes.
	Because everyone has to appreciate, you can't...
	Like, as a joke, steal something.
	So taking something and saying, oh, it's a prank, bro, doesn't work.
	So they set, you know, if you pick up someone's kid and you run them a few feet, that's kidnapping.
	You pick up an object and it's a joke.
	If you move it past 20 meters, it's not a joke.
	It's theft under the law.
	So that's one of the charges.
	Okay, but before we get into, just spoiler alert.
	Now, before we get to the charges, so what happens next?
	When do you leave?
	And when is the first time you see any cops in the Capitol building?
	So the first time I saw the police in the building, I was down by the Senate doors or with a group of people, and there's a guy up front with a megaphone, and he's saying things like, we're going to go inside, we're going to sit down quietly and peacefully, and we're going to vote no as they bring their votes in.
	We're going to say, send them back to the states, and we have a right to be here.
	If our politicians who we elected won't take a stand and do the right thing, we're going to do it for them.
	And this was kind of the vibe of the people there.
	Probably a couple minutes in, there's a guy in the front.
	I think it was the same guy who said, you know, open up, open up, let them out.
	And the crowd just opened up, you know, parting of the Red Sea.
	And two cops came out, and they were kind of sitting in a corner.
	And that's the first two cops that I saw inside.
	And after a couple of minutes, we got tear gassed there.
	That's when I realized, hey, I should probably not be here.
	This is the first sign of them telling me leave.
	So after I got tear gassed, I went and talked to the two cops who were let out and I asked them how to leave the building because I wasn't, I'd never been there before and I wasn't sure how to leave.
	And I wished them to stay safe.
	I said, you know, you know, stay safe and, you know, take it easy and hopefully everything turns out.
	And then I left.
	I'm trying to bring, I just want to bring up the picture because it's, I mean, it's iconic is not the word.
	It's insulting to the elites is what the better word.
	And it reminds me, hold on, let's bring it up.
	Just the iconic photograph.
	You took a picture of the lectern.
	So this is as you're transporting it from wherever it was to the middle?
	Or is this picture right here?
	Are we looking at it?
	Yes, that's the one.
	This is as you transport it to the middle of the room for your mock LARPing political speech.
	Yes, that is correct.
	I want to zoom in on your face because you look like the happiest man on earth.
	And I'm not saying that as like you're doing something.
	It's just like...
	Actually, you remind me of in the movie Memento.
	Have you seen the movie Memento?
	I have, yes.
	Remember the picture that he took after he finally accomplished his goal.
	I mean, that's sort of what...
	But it's such a...
	I mean, it's iconic, but it's embarrassing to the elite, which is why they had to make one hell of an example out of you, which is what we're going to get to.
	Yes.
	That picture gets snapped.
	Do you know who the person that took the picture is at the time?
	But you only discover afterwards.
	I didn't know who was taking it.
	I assumed it was a professional photographer because that equipment's very easy to spot.
	Okay.
	So that was not a point-and-shoot iPhone.
	That was like a telephoto lens or something of a Nikon.
	There were actually two photographers there at the same time that were taking my picture.
	I think there's one or two that didn't make it viral.
	I want to know who they work for now that I think about that question out loud.
	It doesn't matter.
	Getty Images.
	No, no, no.
	Because what they do is they license it through Getty Images.
	Oh, do you know how many times they must have sold that picture?
	Whoever had that picture, they got licenses up the wazoo.
	His name was Wynn Mickamy?
	Mickany?
	There's probably an easy way to determine how many times that picture got licensed.
	I occasionally sell photographs with this website called Alamy, which is the other stock photo website.
	But I've given up stock photo photography for video licensing stuff.
	So you take the picture and then you go on with your day.
	You say cops, the pepper spraying inside.
	Now you say time to go.
	How do I get out this way?
	Have a good day.
	And you're out.
	When I remember that video going viral the day of, when do you discover that that video has now gone like ultra super duper mega viral?
	It was on the walk back to Georgetown.
	I think it was in my phone.
	It died inside.
	So I had it on the battery pack in the backpack.
	And when I turned it on, my phone, I just couldn't use it.
	There were so many messages coming in.
	So I ended up putting in airplane mode just to kind of read what was going on.
	And I had people I hadn't talked to in years messaging me like, bro, what did you do?
	And I was like, I don't know.
	What did I do?
	And then I get recognized on the street on the way back within 30 minutes of leaving the building.
	So within an hour, I was getting recognized on the street.
	And what time of day is this?
	Is this 4 o 'clock now, give or take?
	This would have been probably around 2 or 3 o 'clock if I had to guess.
	It was really quick.
	It's amazing.
	It happened so bloody quickly.
	So you're getting recognized.
	And then when I'm watching this from...
	Where was I at the time?
	I don't remember.
	I remember I did a live stream with Robert the night of, and we're like, everyone was declaring this insurrection within an hour or two.
	I remember Alex Jones saying, don't go down to the Capitol.
	It's a setup.
	And my goodness, Alex Jones was right again.
	Now you're on the way back and you're like, is your stomach sinking?
	Is it funny, like I've gone viral?
	Or is it, holy shit, I've really stepped into that.
	I'm actually not that worried.
	Because at this point, I think to myself, like, well, what are they going to do?
	Tell me I can't come back again?
	I didn't hurt anyone.
	I didn't break anything.
	I didn't take anything.
	I walked into a building that is a public building that was open that day, and then I left on my own accord.
	So I wasn't really that concerned at all.
	And when I got back to the hotel room, I had been talking to my wife, and she was more concerned than I was because she had been watching the news.
	And she's like, you've got to turn the news on and see what they're saying.
	So I got back.
	I turned on CNN because, you know, they're going to say the worst things possible about me.
	So I turn on CNN and they start using those words, insurrection, terrorist, all of these things.
	And that's when I started, you know, losing my cool.
	You seem like a pretty chill guy, like, you know, non-panicky to begin with.
	But did you actually see yourself on CNN?
	I did.
	How surreal is that?
	What is that like?
	It's like...
	I take for granted CNN is the enemy.
	CBC is the enemy.
	If I saw myself on CBC, it's not such a big deal.
	CNN, and especially if you're not in that limelight, what does that feel like?
	You are on the news.
	It didn't feel great, I'll be honest with you.
	Maybe if it was on CNN for something better, like curing cancer or something, it would have been great.
	But the words they were tying to it, you know, 20 years worth of prison that I'm looking at because I walked into a building and left.
	That was daunting.
	That was really difficult to take in and realize.
	And you're in that place where I'm thinking, I've got kids that I'll never see get married or graduate high school.
	Who's going to teach them how to drive?
	Who's going to be there for them?
	So I'm dealing with all of that while also dealing with this is never going to go away.
	This is going to be forever.
	This is the day of, this is before you lawyer up.
	This is now the moment of absolute panic attack.
	Like, holy crap.
	Okay.
	You get back to your hotel about what time?
	This would have been probably 3, 4 o 'clock.
	What do you do for the rest of the day?
	Well, they put us on lockdown, so I was super hungry.
	Breakfast was disappointing.
	And we were looking for a place to eat, but we couldn't leave the hotel.
	We ended up ordering some wings and just kind of chatting with people in the hotel because everyone was at the rally, so everyone knew what was going on at that hotel.
	In the hotel, like almost every window, it's embassy suites kind of builds to where there's like a center and then all the rooms are on the inside facing each other.
	And almost every window had like a Trump flag in it.
	It was very, everyone there did the same thing that day.
	So we're chatting with people and I don't know if people in the hotel know who I am, but I start asking questions, you know, like, how about that one guy though?
	Like, you think he's gonna be fine?
	Oh, they're like, oh, no, he's fucked.
	He's going to jail forever.
	Oh, God, this is like asking for legal advice from the crowd.
	Oh, it's hilarious in retrospect because you survived.
	I shaved my beard.
	I pulled my hair back and wore a hat around.
	I'm like, so that guy, though, he's going to be fine, right?
	Tell me he's going to be fine.
	Oh, man.
	All right.
	You're in lockdown at the hotel.
	How long is that lockdown for?
	The lockdown was all night, so you weren't allowed to leave the hotel until 6 in the morning when they lifted it.
	So the hotel actually got crazy.
	So everyone started filtering back in.
	People were out, and we were all singing the national anthem as loud as we could for, God, probably 20, 30 minutes straight.
	And the hotel staff was coming across the intercoms.
	They'd actually pulled the fire alarm in the building because people wouldn't go back into their rooms.
	They were concerned that we were just singing the national anthem too loudly.
	They had threatened to call the fire department and the police and have us arrested, to which we laughed because we knew that they were probably preoccupied with other things that day.
	So the hotel becomes basically the after party of the protest.
	Oh my goodness, I can imagine.
	It's like camp for adults.
	And they can't kick you out.
	You pull the fire alarm, nobody's leaving.
	You're on lockdown in the hotel until 6 in the morning.
	When's your flight out?
	My flight was supposed to be on Friday, but Thursday morning I rented a car super early and I drove home because the conversation that I had with a couple of my friends who were in law enforcement, a couple of attorneys that I chatted with, they were like, you got to get out of D.C. You can't be there.
	You don't want to be arrested in D.C. It's not a town that will treat you well after what happened yesterday.
	So go home, get your affairs in order.
	There will be charges coming very soon because everyone knows who you are.
	You've been doxxed.
	They know where you live.
	So it's time to go now.
	So you rent a car.
	Logistically, how do you rent a car one way?
	You just say, I'm going to take it and leave it in Florida?
	There's a surcharge for leaving it.
	So I think it's like $200 or $300 for going one way.
	Well worth it.
	So you leave.
	You drive back.
	It's a decent drive.
	By the time you get home, are there reporters hanging outside your house?
	My family actually had to flee our house.
	We had death threats coming in.
	We had been doxxed.
	So my wife, who is here with my five kids, Shut up.
	Shut up.
	Shut up.
	This was on Friday, 1 or 2 o 'clock in the morning.
	Crawled in bed with my wife, hugged her.
	She was a mess.
	I was a mess.
	We went back to the house.
	And at this point, they had scraped the numbers off my house because they were trying to get people not to know where I lived.
	There were vans everywhere up and down the block.
	We had to come inside.
	I got all of my firearms together.
	I gave them to a friend because I didn't want the government to take them.
	It was on the advice of the attorneys to get everything out of your house.
	We went through and just...
	I cleaned the house, actually, because I didn't know if we were going to be raided.
	And the last thing I needed was pictures of a house that was dirty.
	So we spent time wiping our counters down and making sure the toilets were clean.
	This is nuts, actually.
	I don't think I knew of this aspect of the story.
	The people who are saying it'd be a shame if something happens, do you know, are they prominent accounts?
	Or do you know who they are?
	Not to name them, but...
	The FBI told us they were going to investigate all of them, and nothing ever happened with that.
	So take that as you will.
	A lot of these counts have been deleted since, and things have been taken down.
	But we have screenshots.
	I'm not going to talk about it just yet, but we have receipts.
	I'm going to ask you the question.
	This is going to be my projection.
	Is it the scene of the movie where your wife is hugging you, but also slapping you?
	What the hell did you get us into?
	We have a very, very good relationship.
	We pride ourselves in it.
	And the moment that it happened, we knew that, you know, if they come take me, we might see each other for a decade or two.
	We're not going to spend it fighting.
	We're going to spend it loving each other and loving our kids and just pushing through it because it may be the last time we see each other.
	Holy crap.
	Okay, so the drive back D.C. to Florida is, don't tell me, is it 12 hours?
	About 15, 16 hours.
	Or we love.
	You get there.
	You're somewhere else because your whole family had to move.
	Okay, Friday morning, what happens?
	This is now Friday morning.
	So what happens Friday during the day?
	Friday during the day, we go collect my family from where they're staying.
	The kids were staying with a really good couple of ours, and we can't thank them enough for what they did.
	And my wife and I said, look, we're not going to run.
	That is our home.
	We're not going to leave it.
	We're going to not put our kids through this.
	They're going to wake up in their beds tomorrow.
	And we have a lot of friends who stayed with us and made sure they were protected.
	And we just, we came home.
	When we came home, there were news vans everywhere.
	You know, people wanting to get interviews.
	And we barricaded our door because our youngest at the time was very young and he still liked to, you know, leave occasionally on his own accord.
	So we had to put like coffee tables and heavy objects in front of the door so they wouldn't leave.
	And you're obviously, you've been told not to do any interviews.
	You're not talking to anybody.
	No.
	The attorneys, I stopped in Atlanta on the way home.
	This was probably around 9, 10 o 'clock at night.
	And I discussed with them, you know, what was happening.
	They told me the charges that would probably be brought and the ones that could be brought.
	And they told me the same thing, like, go home, stay home, we'll come and see you.
	So they came down Friday evening, and we sat down, and they were in contact with the AUSA, which is the Assistant United States Attorney's Office.
	And they said, they told me the charges they were bringing.
	They're like, they're going to charge you for theft at the lectern.
	And they asked me, do you still have it?
	I'm like, no, how can I bring that home?
	Did you see the size of that damn thing?
	Like, what am I going to, am I going to carry that all the way to Georgetown?
	Did you see how many people that were there?
	The National Guard's going to wave back at me as I'm carrying this thing.
	These are the lawyers saying these are the charges they're going to bring.
	Theft is one.
	It's so preposterous that it could be this, at least with respect to you, blown out of proportion, but it was to make an example and not to seek justice.
	Hold on, sorry.
	They say this is what they're going to bring.
	What do they tell you to do?
	Contact them and then receive the charges, or do you get them the day after?
	We get them on Friday.
	So one of my attorneys, his name is Dan Eckhart.
	He worked for the government in the beginning of his career, FBI, BOP.
	So he knows how the system works very, very deeply.
	And he told me very early on, like, look, they're going to crucify you unless you talk with them, tell them where you are, tell them what your plans are, just be as completely transparent as possible.
	And he was right every step of the way.
	I look at people now who are serving three to seven years because they get bad advice from attorneys or they just don't understand that you're not going to win against D.C. prosecution.
	Sorry, I don't mean to kvetch there.
	No, no, no.
	There's going to be people out there who say, don't bear false witness to yourself.
	The only issue is whether or not you even can...
	Whether or not you recognize, you may have broken some minor law, but you didn't get the four to six years that Jacob Angeli got.
	Okay, so they bring the charges the same day.
	It's fantastic how fast they can work when they really want to find out.
	Did they ever find whoever left the pipe bombs in front of us?
	I think it was a Fed.
	I think I know where he lives.
	Yeah, he's on payroll.
	So they bring the charges the same day.
	Are they misdemeanor or are there any felony charges in all of this?
	It was felony theft because they said the lectern was over $1,000.
	I'm a carpenter.
	There's no way that lectern's over $1,000.
	This goes back to the marijuana charge when you're 18. This is why these bullshit laws are bullshit to begin with.
	This is how you get people.
	You see the scene in the movie.
	I stole a television from Walmart.
	Felony charges.
	Strike three.
	You're in jail for however long.
	It's preposterous.
	Okay.
	So felony theft for moving the lectern more than 20 meters.
	Is it 20 meters?
	They don't do it in meters in the States.
	No, it's not even the statute.
	The statute they have it written under is if you convert the property to your personal use.
	So they said by me taking it and giving a speech that I converted it to my personal use.
	All right.
	That's pretty good.
	I'm sorry.
	Good.
	This is why people hate lawyers.
	Although those are good defense lawyers.
	And why people hate politicians.
	There were two misdemeanors.
	One was violent entry.
	And the other was entering and remaining in a restricted building.
	So two misdemeanors and a felony.
	They had me go to a local prison for the weekends.
	They didn't want me to just show up on court on Monday.
	They thought I might flee.
	So they made me do a weekend at Pinellas.
	Put me in isolation.
	Because of COVID or because you're a risk menace to society?
	A risk menace to society.
	The psychiatrist there that they make you see when they put you in these units, the special housing units, actually said that she was afraid that I was depressed and I may not be safe to be left alone.
	So then they put me in one of those Epstein cells where you're under constant observation.
	This is the type of stuff that makes me angry beyond words.
	They want you.
	I mean, they want you to hurt yourself and they want you to kill yourself or they want you to hurt yourself so that they can then say, well, now we need even more protective custody over this individual.
	Yes.
	You go from your family.
	Well, you go from Washington, but you're in a family, you're a family man, to how many days in isolation?
	It's Friday or Friday night to Monday morning?
	Monday morning.
	Isolation.
	Yep.
	And this, again, my charges were nothing violent.
	I don't have a history of any of that.
	And I told the psychiatrist or psychologist or counselor, whatever the lady was, that I have five kids and I'm very happy with my life.
	I'm going to get through this.
	Everything is fine.
	I'm actually just cold.
	Can I have a blanket?
	Like, these are the conversations.
	No, you're going to hang yourself with it, Adam.
	You cannot.
	Here's some papers.
	Crumple them up and make them soft.
	What did they say?
	Did you get a blanket?
	No, no, no, no.
	And they keep it like 50 degrees in there.
	It's ridiculous.
	But it's, you know, they do these things to try to break you.
	It's psychological warfare.
	They want you to break.
	They want you to admit things that you're not guilty of.
	They want to break you first before they bring you to trial.
	I'm going to ask you the question.
	Nobody knows how they react until they're there, whether or not they'd be courageous or cowardly or break.
	What did you do?
	Like, this is 2448.
	This is like 70 hours alone.
	How do you deal with it?
	How do you cope?
	And what do you do for the two and a half days?
	A lot of push-ups.
	A lot of squats.
	You can't read or anything, so it really is just a lot of boredom.
	I slept a lot.
	I tried to eat the food.
	It was not great.
	I don't recommend it.
	They can definitely do better.
	And shower clothes?
	Change of clothes?
	So it wasn't until I think Sunday afternoon where one of the COs that worked there came by and was like, have they let you out yet to shower?
	And I'm like, no, I haven't been able to brush my teeth or anything.
	And he rolled his eyes and he's like, they're supposed to let you at least brush your teeth twice a day and shower once a day.
	You're actually supposed to have an hour to walk around and call your people.
	They haven't done this yet.
	And I said, no, I've not been allowed to call my family.
	I've not been allowed to call my attorneys.
	I've not been allowed to brush my teeth or shower or leave this little, you know, eight by eight cell.
	So he was one of the only good people there that actually allowed me to do those things.
	So I got to have one shower and brush my teeth twice.
	This is a fucking outrage.
	I'm sorry.
	It's outrageous.
	And it's not because I like you.
	This is outrageous.
	This is the problem with the system.
	Period.
	Alright, so this is Sunday now.
	Monday, you go to court.
	You go in front of a judge.
	Yes.
	And you've taken a shower, or are you smelly and still wearing the same clothes?
	I got to take a shower, and the clothes that I went in, so you actually brought this up in your intro, the flip-flops for court.
	I didn't take into account that I would have to go to court on Monday.
	I probably should have put that together.
	But I went to prison in a white V-neck, a pair of khaki shorts, and flip-flops.
	So those are the clothes that allowed me to go back in court and the ones that I showed up in.
	And they won't give you a blanket, but they allow you to wear a shirt?
	When I leave prison, yes.
	So the U.S. Marshals were in charge of transporting me from the prison to the courthouse.
	What clothing do you wear that you would not be able to do something harmful to yourself with if you were so inclined that you would otherwise need a sheet for?
	You have clothing on while you're in there?
	Yes, but the clothing is short-sleeved, and the way it's stitched, you can't even put your arms inside of your shirt because it's sewn so tight on the inside, so there's really no warmth that you can even find in there.
	I meant more in terms of like, if you want to kill yourself, take your shirt.
	If you have clothes, you can do something that you could otherwise do with a sheet.
	Even that's hard.
	So there's no place to actually, so the Epstein thing, there's no place to hang yourself.
	So even the shelves they have, and it's called the shoe or special housing unit or the isolation observation units, the only shelf they have, maybe you could probably do it in, it collapses under the weight of like 10 pounds of pressure.
	So there's no real place to even fix something to do it.
	Okay, that's outrageous.
	All right, now you get in front of a judge on Monday.
	This judge is a Florida judge, so at least it's not a D.C. judge?
	Yes, it's Florida.
	It's still federal because it's a federal case.
	Yep.
	And what is this judge looking at you?
	Like you're a domestic terrorist?
	Or is this like, I can't believe what's going on?
	I still think it's very early on because I think I'm one of the first that got arrested, at least one of the first 20 that got arrested.
	So a lot of people were still dealing with the kids' gloves, not trying to get in the way of what the government said it was going to be.
	So the judge decides that, based on my lawyer's evidence, I'm a nonviolent person.
	These aren't violent crimes.
	He's not a flight risk.
	He's turned in his passport, turned in his firearms.
	All those things are gone.
	He needs to be home with his family until we figure out exactly what's going on.
	And the AUSA also agreed to those terms as well, but they stipulated things like, I wasn't allowed to go to the inauguration for Biden.
	They really wanted to drive that point home.
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	It's ridiculous.
	$25,000 bond, and then I couldn't leave the middle district of Florida.
	Which, as far as I understand, you could not leave for two years.
	You ended up not leaving.
	It's not that Florida is geographically so beautiful that you can keep yourself geographically entertained anywhere in that panhandle.
	You couldn't go to the Keys.
	You're stuck.
	Oh, my goodness.
	Okay, so they send you home with a bunch of conditions.
	And then, I guess, walk us to the plea.
	I mean, first of all, so you're home and that's a massive relief.
	Death threats, I imagine, are still coming in in as much as...
	Yep.
	I'm wearing the ankle monitor.
	I can't do things like it in my hot tub.
	It was an actual tragedy.
	You know, the things they took from me.
	I never even thought of that with an ankle monitor.
	Is it a hot tub or is it swimming in general?
	Swimming in general.
	You can't get it wet.
	How do you take a shower?
	You're supposed to put a bag over it.
	Shut the...
	I've never even thought of this in my entire life.
	They don't have the technology for waterproof tracking devices.
	No, it's...
	It's meant to make you feel like you're not a human.
	It is.
	It's meant to make you feel that way to embarrass you, you know?
	And I still went and did jiu-jitsu with it.
	I don't care.
	I was still allowed to go train.
	So I wore an ankle monitor and still trained.
	So that was kind of fun.
	I am going to get to that afterwards because I know that community service was teaching jiu-jitsu to police officers.
	And I want to know what your jiu-jitsu experience is.
	Okay, so they send you home.
	You got an ankle monitor.
	You can't go swimming.
	You can't get wet.
	And in Florida, that's also a bit of a problem.
	How does it end up with the plea deal?
	So we actually got the ankle monitor removed.
	We actually had a better Florida judge probably about four to five weeks later.
	We got our secondary hearing, and that judge was just completely upset with the initial ruling that I even had one in the first place.
	He's like, it's a nonviolent crime.
	This guy's a family man.
	He is not a threat to the community.
	He actually pointed out even that the AUSA said...
	He's not a threat to the community.
	That's why he doesn't need to be imprisoned.
	But then they also said I had to wear an ankle monitor because I'm a threat to the community.
	So it seems like this whole thing seems contradictory.
	So take the damn thing off.
	You don't have a curfew.
	Come and go as you please.
	Middle District, Florida.
	Best of luck to you.
	Okay.
	It took about eight months to get to the plea deal.
	I did two proffers with the FBI and the AOSA, about six hours at a time, being grilled about my associations, who I knew, what I was up to.
	You know, they went through all of my social media accounts, or they were all gone, but they went through my email, my messages, my phone, talked to all of my friends, all my pictures.
	They were not happy about my memes, you know, but, you know, they got to get a sense of humor for those.
	Oh, not happy with your memes.
	Yes.
	Okay, I thought you said memes, as in how you're going to pay for all this.
	Okay, no.
	And by the way, the proffer, so I'm just trying to think of it.
	The proffer is you sit down, you agree to give them evidence so long as they agree not to charge you, or basically you get some immunity for talking, but your immunity is not going to go past the charges that you've already been, that you're already facing.
	Yes, unless they find you did more things than...
	They initially got you for.
	It's an interesting proffer.
	But as it turns out...
	I would not have felt comfortable doing it, period.
	But I'm neurotic.
	It was that or go to court and cop five or six more charges they would add on with the grand jury that would completely agree with the charges and go to prison for seven years.
	So, you know, rock and a hard place.
	I chose to stay home with my family.
	Okay.
	So I do these proffers.
	And as it turns out that I don't know shit about shit because I'm a stay-at-home father who has a nonviolent history.
	Who really is just a good person who loves his family and is trying to do the right thing for most of his life.
	So they didn't give me any credit for doing the proffers, both with the plea agreement and sentencing.
	They actually wrote that I had no...
	I can't think of the exact word.
	Basically, I had no information that was useful to them.
	That there was nothing I could provide.
	So I couldn't stitch on anyone because I don't know anyone.
	They decided that, oh my God, he really is just a normal dude.
	So we signed the plea deal, the initial plea deal.
	Said that I couldn't profit off of my likeness, either directly or indirectly, on podcasts, on making songs.
	I can't write books.
	I can't sell merchandise for a lifetime.
	They want an entire lifetime ban on it.
	And I said, I can't sign a lifetime deal with the government.
	I can't do that.
	I won't be under your thumb forever.
	So we got it talked down to five years, and then we signed that.
	It's unbelievable.
	It's so obvious what they're trying to do is just prevent you from telling your story of what happened.
	And they want to set an example that no one who ever does this will ever be allowed to market it, market or monetize it later on.
	The media sure as hell can monetize all of their misrepresentations.
	It's fascinating.
	And they're also doing things now with a lot of these people who are raising money.
	And a lot of people are saying things like, Trump should be paying for all of these attorney fees and startup GoFundMe's for these people.
	The government's coming by with these cases and saying things like, well, you had $60,000 donated to your defense fund, so we're going to fine you $60,000.
	This is what they're doing.
	They don't want these people to have help.
	And most of these people are normal people who have misdemeanor charges who they're throwing into prison.
	Like, the way they are treating their own citizens, it's not a shock, but it's definitely jarring.
	And hopefully it's waking people up.
	They press charges and then they want to deprive the person of the ability to even defend against those charges.
	I know the answer, but how much did you spend on lawyers in all of this?
	$100,000.
	Say that again.
	It glitched out for me for a second.
	$100,000.
	$100,000.
	And you still have ongoing legal expenses?
	We are paid off now.
	God is good.
	We had some things happen that just really were unexpected.
	And we are very thankful to be where we are now.
	I'll give you credit for perspective here.
	I'm not sure that I would ever not be pissed off about having...
	Spent what would have otherwise been $100,000 that you could have put into a house for your kids' education.
	Stolen from you by a malicious partisan prosecution.
	But at least, you know, it's paid off and now you have your freedom.
	So, okay, so eight months...
	This is what keeps me sane, though.
	If I'm this person who's angry and constantly woe is me and look at what they did to me, how is that going to be good for my family and kids?
	I can't live in that headspace.
	No, you're right.
	But you're right.
	And people need to take that away.
	But that doesn't mean that I'm thinking it.
	I'm upset.
	So eight months to get to the plea agreement.
	And so that's eight months.
	You're sitting down for proffers, hours on end with people who cannot be trusted further than they can be thrown.
	And you get to this agreement, run through the terms again.
	You can't monetize any of this for five years, whatever.
	75 days in jail.
	Well, so in the...
	Tell you how long they're going to ask for or how long you're going to go.
	So it just said we're going to drop the felony charge.
	So I got my firearms back.
	So I was very happy about that.
	And they said they were going to drop the violent entry, which is a ridiculous charge in the first place because I walked through open doors.
	Yeah, whoop-dee-doo.
	You're dropping a bullshit charge.
	Thank you very much.
	Two bullshit charges, if you ask me.
	But what are you going to do?
	But apparently you can buy, you know, you can lie on.
	You know, forms to buy guns and get away with it with slap on the wrist.
	It's a massage on the back is what he got.
	So a coke party in the White House two weeks later.
	That's not his cocaine.
	It's not his cocaine.
	My joke is their defense is going to be it's not Hunter Biden's cocaine.
	How dare you?
	Addict shame.
	It was somebody else's cocaine.
	Okay.
	All right.
	What were the terms of the agreement of your plea?
	Because it resulted in you were in jail for a long time.
	You were behind bars away from your home for 75 days.
	Yes.
	I'm sorry.
	It's atrocious.
	It's atrocious.
	The terms was plead guilty to a misdemeanor for entering and remaining in a restricted building and not being able to profit for five years.
	And they put you in jail for 75 days for entering a restricted area and not leaving, although you left when you were there.
	Yes.
	That is correct.
	Okay.
	Now, I understood you made a distinction.
	It wasn't prison.
	It sure as hell wasn't summer camp either.
	And some people would not want to go to summer camp for 75 days in any event.
	Some people don't want to be away from their family for 75 days.
	What were the conditions like where you spent 75 days incarcerated?
	So technically it was 71 days because the first four days you got credit for.
	So if you spent, well, 71, 75. So the conditions were less than great.
	That's probably the best way to put it.
	The people there that run it, they run it with...
	It's not all of them.
	There were a handful of people who actually cared about the people that were there, actually believed in reforming them and helping them.
	But the majority are just power-hungry people that want to do things like take your commissary that you buy and throw it away because, oh, I don't see a receipt for this, so you obviously stole these or you had them brought in.
	Commissary is candy stuff?
	It's, well, commissary is lots of things.
	It's shoes.
	It's coffee.
	It's stamps to write your family letters because sometimes they just shut the phones off for weeks and sometimes they shut the email off for weeks because they just aren't having a good go.
	This is like an open sleeping quarters, bunk beds of multiple people in the same room?
	Yep, cinderblock dorms, like knee walls, bunk beds.
	What are other people in for?
	A lot of it is white college.
	It's one of three things.
	It's either it's drugs, it's some type of fraud, financial fraud, or you trespassed at some point.
	People were confused.
	I were there.
	They were shocked.
	I was there like, no one even goes to prison for 70 days.
	That's not something they do.
	Because most people there caught at least a year charge or worked their way down from low to get into the prison camp.
	Because this is not how the federal government has ever acted before.
	71 days in this place.
	And from what I understood from your interview with Timcast, they make people do work like fix fences, gardening, clean up, and you did not do any of it?
	Refused to.
	Nope.
	Absolutely not.
	I said I shouldn't be here.
	This is a gross miscarriage of justice, and I'm not going to work for you.
	You can't make me.
	And what do you do day in and day out?
	It's two and a half months.
	What do you do every day?
	I read a lot.
	I had such a great support system when I went in there.
	I had books and letters coming in every single day.
	So I read 37 books across 71 days.
	I ran 250 miles.
	And I lost 20 pounds and just, you know, got a tan.
	This is amazing.
	I mean, first of all, it's amazing.
	I was listening to Bruce Bryan.
	Let me just make sure that Bruce Bryan was convicted for wrongly convicted sentence of 29 years.
	He just did a podcast with Dro Rogan.
	And he said you can allow the experience to make you bitter or you can allow it to make you better.
	And the idea, go in, you read 37 books.
	I won't ask you for all 37. What were your favorite three?
	Oh, man.
	1984.
	Say 1984.
	So my wife was in charge of getting the books that I got, and she refused to send me anything of the political nature.
	So the notebook is your favorite?
	No more jokes.
	What's the most memorable book that you read?
	I read a lot of Jack Carr books, actually.
	He was actually very popular in prison.
	People really liked his books.
	So we did a whole series.
	Oh, it was actually just on Amazon.
	Who did it?
	Chris Pratchett just did it.
	I can't think of what it was called.
	You know, I've shoved down a lot of the memories of what happened there.
	So the recall for books that I read is limited.
	Okay, so you read books, you exercise, and you drop 20 pounds.
	What did you weigh going in?
	What did you weigh coming out?
	Well, I put on a lot of weight before I went in because a lot of people, I've been asking, you know, what do you do in prison?
	Because I had no idea what to expect.
	And I said, well, you're going to lose a lot of weight.
	So I put on 20 pounds before I went in.
	So I went in at 180 and came out at 160.
	Okay, that's good.
	How tall are you?
	I'm a 5 '8".
	Still taller than me.
	Damn it.
	One day I'll get...
	One day I'm going to interview Danny DeVito or Joe Pesci and I'll be taller.
	Okay, it's a joke.
	I really don't care about that.
	It's my stuff.
	Okay.
	Now you say you shut out a lot of the memories.
	Is it two months of psychological trauma?
	It is.
	And it's not...
	I try not to...
	I try not to soapbox my experience because I was treated really well by all the prisoners there.
	I was kind of treated like a celebrity because everyone, I knew who I was before I even came in because you get a transfer list and the guys who run R&D are also prisoners.
	So everyone knew I was coming.
	So the day that I got there, people were bringing me trash bags of like ramen and shoes and, you know, wanted to ask me who I was.
	So I try not to soapbox too much my personal experience.
	For me, the worst parts about it were the people that were there.
	And what they lost and what they went through and what they're still going through now.
	I still spend a significant amount of time chatting with them.
	A few of the guys there, we still send them books on a monthly basis because they have nothing.
	I'm in contact with a handful of their families, just relaying messages like they're doing fine.
	They shut their phones off again, but everything's going all right.
	It's what they're doing to those people that really, I think, really broke me.
	Before I forget, I don't mean to be glib, but what does soapboxy experience mean?
	Does it mean make...
	You know, get up on my high horse and say, woe is me, that my experience is...
	Because it's nowhere near as bad as what those people are going through.
	And it's nowhere near as bad as what the majority of J6ers went through.
	I consider myself very blessed and fortunate for what...
	For the little lot that I had to go through.
	The people there that are in there.
	For longer periods of time...
	You know, miscarriages of justice that go unknown because it wasn't a highly politicized event.
	It's just individual abuses of power or individual miscarriages of justice that, you know, become a statistic.
	The question that I had was mental illness among the, do we call them inmates, among the people there?
	Was mental illness rampant?
	Were drugs rampant even within?
	Yeah, so drugs were definitely a very large thing in prison.
	A lot of people did them, a lot of meth, a lot of things called K2, which is basically smoking poison.
	And I don't think a lot of these people were broken when they first got there, but I think you spend any time long enough in a box like that, you know, five or six years away from your family and loved ones, you will become broken.
	They actually call it, they call it being burnt.
	And it takes, they say it takes about three or four years for anyone to get there.
	And most people don't ever get better.
	And a lot of these people, they go to places like Medium, which is a lot worse, a lot more restrictions and a lot more violence than Low is.
	And then you work your way down to a camp, but by the time you make it to a camp, you're broken, you're spent, you're burnt.
	You become institutionalized.
	You have a hard time existing in a different way like you did outside of prison.
	The five years, where does it run from until?
	Five years for my...
	For the non-profit or whatever.
	From the time the plea deal was entered, which was November.
	So I'm down to like three and a half years now.
	All right.
	Now, okay, so you're in there for two and a half months.
	The day comes when...
	Well, first of all, is there one particularly noteworthy, memorable experience that has stuck with you from the two months in there?
	They made me get vaccinated while I was in there.
	The choice was either to go to isolation and stay there the whole time or take a vaccine.
	So I considered the left and right of that, and I decided to get vaccinated because in isolation, someone had just been murdered a couple months before I got there, which is fascinating to even consider because it's isolation.
	And the options were to go to this place where the guards that run that place are not as nice as the ones that are in the camp and sometimes allow things to happen just because they don't like you.
	So that definitely stuck with me.
	And then even after I got my vaccines, they still tried to throw me in there for the last two weeks that I was there.
	And I threw an absolute fit.
	I started throwing planters around and making it known that when I get out, I'm going to be someone who knows a lot of people and I will remember your names.
	So that's kind of stuck with me because I was forced in duress to make a decision that...
	I never would have made outside.
	Did they make you take two shots?
	Yes.
	You had to have Pfizer.
	And I consulted my wife on this.
	She's a physician.
	And she said, we're seeing the least amount of VAERS reporting from Pfizer.
	So if you don't have a choice, I recommend that one.
	And did you get a batch number?
	I mean, did you do the bad batch search up thing?
	It's on a card and the stuff I brought home with me.
	So that is, as far as I'm concerned, it's a form of physical violation.
	I'm not going to use the R word, not for censorship reasons, just not to equate it to sexual assault.
	That is, it's a violation of your bodily integrity.
	Absolutely.
	And they say you had an option, but there's not an option in that.
	But what is the option?
	Like, forego my safety?
	Forgo my safety?
	Or forego my safety?
	Forget the murder part.
	Set murder aside.
	Let's just say it's proper solitary confinement.
	You forego your sanity.
	What does two weeks of solitary or two months of solitary do on the heart?
	Exactly.
	I'm trying to remain optimistic.
	We'll get back to humor at the end of this.
	Sorry.
	I don't know that people know this.
	I did not know this, and I think I've done my homework on you.
	I did not know this, and this is enraging.
	It is, but they do it to everyone.
	And no one there wants it.
	No one there wants it.
	Prison's probably the most racist place I've ever been.
	They definitely have...
	Everyone kind of stays within their own race.
	They have the white TV room, the black TV room, the Mexican TV room.
	And they do have one sports room where everyone's allowed to watch sports together.
	But you don't communicate.
	You don't break bread together.
	It's very, very isolated.
	I would imagine it's almost like that would be where fights would break out if there's a rivalry between ethnicities or sports, whatever.
	Sorry.
	And what were you saying?
	The one thing they all kind of agreed on, though, and all kind of were on the same ground was the vaccine.
	They shouldn't be forced to take it.
	They all agreed on that.
	And they were all forced to take it in there.
	Yes, they were not given options.
	So before I got there, when we were at the height of the farce of COVID, it was a lot worse for them.
	They were locked inside of their units for...
	Months at a time.
	They were reduced to two meals a day because when COVID hit in prison, in the camp, all of the inmates, they cook their own food.
	They work in the kitchen.
	Well, when COVID hit, they weren't allowed to leave their dorms.
	So the COs had to do their meals.
	So instead of getting the three meals, which they are supposed to get, they were reduced to two meals a day.
	I mean, the shit they put them through.
	I mean, I will forever speak about that.
	I plan on getting involved in some type of prison reform, some type of outreach program, starting one when I'm allowed to be a part of something like that, because we have to do better.
	We have to do better for our citizens.
	Actually, I'll flip you Bruce's interview with Rogan, because he talks about this as well, because he was there for 29 years and talks about using inmates for what is nothing other than slave labor.
	Yes.
	Unicorn.
	It's called Unicorn.
	You make 10 to 14 cents an hour at this place, and there's no AC.
	It's a warehouse.
	There are no fans.
	OSHA won't even touch it.
	Like, they won't even come and do an inspection because they have to shut the place down.
	We have people passing out from heat exhaustion, you know, being told, well, too bad, you know, I hope you show up tomorrow, because if you don't show up, you're not getting your credits to leave early.
	And they're supposed to have other programs you're supposed to be a part of.
	You're supposed to be able to get certified in things.
	None of those programs exist.
	You know, that's like, oh, you know, you can get certified in these things and by the time you get out, you know, you'll be able to get a job.
	Well, outside of the realm of, well, you're a felon, you're never getting a job again because, you know, even though you served your time and you, you know, made your events, you will forever be known as that on every application ever.
	You're also not getting certifications they say they're supposed to be giving you.
	So they create an industry of people that just cycle through their doors.
	Cycle through or get stuck behind and perish behind.
	Holy shit, Ed.
	I'm sorry.
	And this is at the lowest level where you're describing.
	Yes.
	All right.
	So suffice to say, I don't know if I'm projecting, but there will be lingering trauma.
	Do you wake up in the middle of the night still thinking that you're in your bunk bed in this hellhole?
	I wake up when I first got home and I met my wife again and we hugged.
	We talked.
	I did break down.
	I didn't cry in prison.
	I was trying to get through it.
	But when I came home and I sat there in my closet with her, I lost my shit because I said, everyone's still there and I'm out.
	Everyone is still going through what I went through and they're not leaving for years and there's no help for them and they have no rights and there's no one there that will speak on their behalf.
	And I lost my shit.
	So it's not that I wake up in the middle of the night and I lose it.
	It is that.
	I know what they're still going through, and I know they don't deserve it.
	10 years, like some guys served 19 years for having some cocaine.
	Not a dealer, not a distributor, but he copped the charge when we were just sending people to prison for decades over it.
	19 years.
	His whole family grew up, all of his kids.
	When he went in, his oldest kid was four, his youngest was one.
	They're all grown now.
	Like he lost the entire experience of raising his children over cocaine.
	It's...
	It's insanity.
	And it's not what these people need.
	Like, if you want to say, you know, I'm not sitting here advocating for drug use, but what I am saying is there's a better way to help these people.
	They don't need prison.
	They need reform.
	They need help.
	They need therapy.
	They need better friends.
	They need better outreach programs.
	All right.
	Sorry.
	No, no, no.
	I'm still so upset about that.
	No, I mean, people don't understand.
	I think...
	A lot of people don't take the time to actually feel it, like psychologically feel it.
	And the other reflex is that some people say, look, a lot of people in there are violent criminals and deserve to be punished for the rest of their lives.
	Even if they are in fact bona fide violent criminals, there's still a certain degree of humanity that you have to have.
	But the amount of people that are in there for...
	Exceedingly ridiculous sentences for, if it's not innocuous, disproportionate to the violations.
	And we're seeing this with the January Sixers, and they're just political criminals, but there are just other victims of a broken system that have been there for decades, rotting away in silence.
	And a lot of them are victimless crimes.
	A lot of them are...
	You know, a victimist.
	I mean, so you defrauded someone out of some money.
	Well, you need to pay that back, and I don't think you should go to work in that industry again.
	You should be red flagged, right?
	But 20 years in prison for fraud, it seems pretty ridiculous.
	Like, that's your entire life.
	I met a man who was there.
	He was an engineer, worked for a company that he just, you know, was supposed to engineer some roads, electricity for him.
	It was a big developer.
	The developer, turns out, was defrauding the bank.
	Bank gets involved, says, you know, we're going to go after this.
	Well, none of the developers end up with sentences.
	They get slaps on the wrist because they're developers and can lower you up really damn well.
	Well, this guy who's an engineer who had no idea what was going on because he worked with them, right, Rico, this guy ends up getting 25 years, 25 years just for being a part of this company who was defrauding banks.
	And he was guilty of just being associated with them.
	His whole family is raised, and this man has had three heart attacks.
	He's had a triple bypass in prison.
	He's going to die in prison.
	He will die in prison never being able to see his grandchildren or his kids grown.
	Yep.
	This is not to reduce it to a glib comparison.
	I don't know if you've seen the movie Interstellar, but the horrifying moment in that movie is when they get stuck on another planet, and one hour to them is...
	A decade.
	And you realize this man just had a decade.
	I mean, that is the psychologically, emotionally interesting part of that whole story.
	That people go through this.
	It's a sentence.
	It's 10 years of someone's life for what it had better damn well be justified.
	And even then, you don't stick him in solitary.
	You don't stick him in cells.
	You don't coerce prisoners to experimentations because I thought we had, you know.
	Learned our lessons from past eras.
	It's not a, you know, let everyone out of prison speech.
	It's not that.
	There are people who definitely deserve to be in prison.
	Absolutely.
	Right?
	There's absolutely like a very large population that is there that you did that crime.
	That crime was really bad.
	Multiple victims.
	You have to serve some type of sentence.
	It is the people who get set up by CIs, by the FBI.
	The J6ers are a great example of that.
	We're talking about nonviolent people who walk into a public building who are now serving multiple years in isolation without even charges being brought or court date set.
	It's an affront to what the American justice system is supposed to be.
	And I had no opinion of this going into this, going into prison.
	I have such a strong opinion now.
	And people who have not been there, go talk to someone who has.
	Go talk to someone who has, and you will change your mind overnight.
	Now, you get out, and it's not a breathing the fresh air.
	It's survivor's guilt, and you come back to your family, which is, I mean, obviously what you wanted and what you need in life, and yet this is...
	All right, now, what have you been doing with yourself since?
	You got out.
	When did you get out?
	I got out.
	This would have been a year and two or three weeks now.
	About a year ago.
	So I had a year of supervised release.
	We're still in the Middle District of Florida.
	Okay, so that's right.
	So even after you get out, you still can't travel out of the Middle District of Florida?
	Yes.
	I can ask permission.
	So I went through two different probation officers.
	The first one, he was really nice up front, and then I asked for permission to go talk to Tim Poole.
	Tim and I had been chatting for almost the entire thing.
	I think I messaged him about a week after the incident happened.
	And, you know, he's like, let me know when you can speak.
	So I finally got out of prison.
	I'm like, well, I'm going to go talk.
	So I tell my probation officer, hey, I'd like to go speak with him, and you can ask permission to travel.
	And he says, sure, shouldn't be a problem.
	Let me go ask my superior.
	A week later happens, and he calls me in for a conference with his boss, and he's like, we just don't think it's a good idea for you to be speaking.
	And I said, well, I'm not sure what you mean by that.
	I'm allowed to speak.
	There's nothing in my plea agreement that says that I can't speak, and this is a great opportunity.
	And they started saying things like, well, you know, consider what's going to happen afterwards.
	They're going to come after you again.
	You'll be in the news.
	You know, your wife may lose her job.
	They'll come after her.
	Think about your kids.
	You don't really want to talk, do you?
	And this is what the federal government is telling me, even after I serve my sentence.
	And the only crime I'm guilty of is misdemeanor, nonviolent trespassing.
	It is, you were the jester that made the king look like a fool.
	I mean, that picture, how dare that filthy rabble be touching my lectern?
	That was Nancy Pelosi's lectern.
	The king is a fool, I just pointed it out.
	You sullied it with your filthy, dirty cast hands.
	And now they're thinking like, oh, maybe we shouldn't have gone for the monetary side.
	Maybe we should have just shut him up for two years so that the world doesn't know what we did to him.
	Absolutely.
	And you ended up on Tim Pool, and it was a great podcast, but this has been two hours.
	A little more thorough, but maybe some people don't even like the fact that it's so thorough.
	When do you get your freedom to go out of the middle district of Florida?
	This was two and a half, three weeks ago.
	I just got it back.
	We went down to...
	God, where did we go?
	Went and saw my father-in-law, took the kids down there, so they got to see their grandpa.
	And jumped in the pool, had a bunch of food.
	It was a really good time.
	Trying to see what the middle district of Florida looks like here.
	Hold on a second.
	I'm going to bring this up.
	Not that Florida geographically is any more interesting down south than it is up north, but you're stuck in a flat.
	Okay, so you can't go to the Keys.
	Nope.
	Let me see here.
	We're looking at the same map.
	Okay, you can't go to the Keys.
	I got Orlando.
	You get the border of Georgia there, right?
	Yep, yep.
	I got St. Louis.
	St. Augustine, which was nice.
	Love St. Augustine.
	Okay, so look, it's better than prison.
	Better than prison.
	But you ain't going to the Rocky Mountains.
	Now you can go to the Rocky Mountains.
	What are the lingering things left over?
	So you have the profit ban for five years, and other than that, you're a bona fide free man.
	Yes, and I am going to continue to speak and cause as much rhetoric havoc as I can because people need to know that this is not okay.
	I'm not okay with it.
	No one should be.
	I mean, this is not to plant a seed.
	Your wife has no lingering resentment or anger for anything that you've done.
	No.
	We've talked about this, and there was the initial kind of shock and awe of, like, you told me you were going to stay out of trouble.
	And I was like, I didn't really do anything bad, though.
	I walked in a building and left.
	And there was definitely some, you know, back and forth of that, but, you know, eventually we got to the point where she was more focused on...
	Holy cow, I can't believe it's this bad.
	Because she was kind of apolitical through all of this.
	But when her eyes got opened for all of this, she very much got on board with some of the things that I was saying.
	So we are very much akin with our ideas and we want the future to hold.
	We are raising our kids to understand how delicate our freedom hangs in the balance.
	And that if we don't raise our children to speak up and be those people who are informing.
	Their peers at school and re-instructing their teachers and the lies they're telling them, then our country will be lost within a generation.
	Generation.
	It can happen faster than that.
	Adam, do you have another 15 minutes?
	I do, yeah.
	Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to end this on Rumble and just go over to Locals exclusively.
	I'm going to get some questions there.
	And I'm just trying to think, have I held back on any questions that I thought might have been too intrusive that I might ask over at Locals?
	Your story is amazing.
	Your kids are going to grow up.
	And I think they're going to...
	I mean, I don't know.
	They're old.
	Maybe they already appreciate...
	Not that it was a cool moment to have participated in, but that you are...
	You have been made into a hero because of the abuse of this...
	This bullshit.
	You'll come out as spokesperson for those who can't speak for themselves and they and everyone else will appreciate that.
	I'm going to thank you on Rumble for everything but we're going to go over and have a few more minutes to discuss on Locals where I can get some of the questions there.
	Where can people find you but they can't contribute to you?
	Are you allowed working?
	You're allowed working, correct?
	That's a sticky issue.
	We're not sure because the way the plea deal is written is direct or indirect.
	So let's say I get a job and I get promoted at that job.
	Well, you have to know who I am.
	The second you do a Google search or a background search, you're going to know who I am.
	So did I get the job because of my name?
	Did I get the job because of who I am?
	Do I get the salary because of who I am?
	If you go into social media, if you go into political commentary, are they hiring you?
	Yes.
	So it's, we don't know.
	And I've tried to get a straight answer to the AOSA.
	I have sat down with the attorneys and they're like, look, it's so ambiguous that you could be within your rights, but it doesn't mean they won't come after you and try to take it from you.
	And they'll find a DC judge that'll read that plea in the way that he wants to interpret it.
	And everything you work for across the next three and a half years can be taken from you.
	So at this point, I'm just doing it for free because it's fun.
	All right, now we're going to end this because I'm going to pursue this line for two more minutes.
	I'm going to end it on Rumble, everybody.
	Come on over to Locals.
	We're going to continue this discussion where everyone is above average.
	Adam, thank you.
	But let's continue this.
	Ending on Rumble now, come on over to vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
	Go.
	No, well, let me ask.
	I don't want to plant any seeds of ideas in the heads of the devil.
	The punishment for violating the non-monetizing of this.
	I don't know if it's contempt is not the right word.
	Can it result in withdrawing of the plea deal?

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