On January 6, 2021, a single shot was fired during what the media and the Biden Democrats have dubbed an “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. That shot, fired at close range by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd, struck and killed unarmed, 35-year-old Air Force Senior Airman Ashli Babbitt. Video of the shooting shows that Officer Byrd gave no warning before firing, and fellow officers testified that they heard him give no warning before shooting. 

Babbitt, who had served 14 years in the Air Force, with eight deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Qatar, was soon branded an “insurrectionist” and a “terrorist” by media commentators. FBI Director Christopher Wray gave cover to these charges by claiming that the January 6 actions were “behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.” The Biden Department of Justice, which had previously shown its harsh anti-police prejudice by hammering local police over their responses to rampant crime and violent riots, was suddenly indulgent of the Capitol Police, declining to prosecute Officer Byrd. The House January 6 Committee set up by Speaker Nancy Pelosi was uninterested in looking into the shooting of Babbitt (or any of the many other troubling aspects of January 6) because that would detract from the committee’s partisan objectives of prosecuting President Trump and demonizing — and then criminalizing — his followers as “insurrectionists,” “white nationalists,” and “domestic terrorists.”

Infuriated over the defamation of her dead daughter and the unwillingness of the government to investigate her death, Ashli Babbitt’s mother, Micki Witthoeft, has repeatedly protested outside the Capitol. On January 6, 2023, the second anniversary of the Capitol melee, Witthoeft was arrested by Capitol Police for “jaywalking” while memorializing her daughter’s shooting death.

In the two years since his inauguration, Joe Biden’s administration has sent federal SWAT teams into homes and offices to drag nearly 1,000 Americans off to a Soviet-style gulag. Hundreds of them still languish in pre-trial detention, where they have been denied due process. They are being treated as if they are foreign combatants, as enemies of the state, rather than American citizens with constitutionally protected rights. In many cases they have been denied medical treatment and have been subjected to beatings, torture, and inhumane treatment that has even drawn criticism from liberal-left icons such as Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Dick Durbin. 

Now President Biden and his Deep State handlers and minions are doubling down, vowing to step up their attacks on “domestic terrorists.” In his public statement on the second anniversary of the January 6 riot, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “This investigation has resulted in the arrest of more than 950 defendants for their alleged roles in the attack.” But, he added, “Our work is far from over.” CBS News reported that “Prosecutors have estimated that the total number of defendants accused of participating in the Capitol breach could reach 2,000.” In other words, we can expect the DOJ to send FBI SWAT teams to terrorize and arrest, in total, double the number of those already arrested. 

Seeking justice: Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran fatally shot by police during the U.S. Capitol riot, was arrested by Capitol Police on January 6, 2023, while protesting on the second anniversary of her daughter’s death. (AP Images)

And to help make that happen, Congress passed the 4,000-plus-page, $1.7 trillion year-end federal omnibus spending bill, rewarding the DOJ with a budget increase of $212 million (nine percent) over fiscal year 2022, to “further support prosecutions related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and domestic terrorism cases,” according to a House Democratic fact sheet. The same bill gives the FBI a five-percent boost, or $570 million, over last year, which House Democrats earmarked “for efforts to investigate extremist violence and domestic terrorism.” 

The federal interpretations of “domestic terrorism” are slippery enough, but “extremist violence” and the even-vaguer designations of “white nationalism,” “domestic violent extremism (DVE),” and “militia violent extremism (MVE)” — along with President Biden’s vilification of “extremism” by “MAGA Republicans” — make it even more likely that millions of law-abiding Americans can be, and will be, subjected to investigation, arrest, and prosecution for disapproved speech and peaceful assembly. Recall that on October 4, 2021, Attorney General Garland sent a memo to FBI offices directing them to go after those who commit or threaten violence against public-school teachers, administrators, and school boards, as well as those who commit “other forms of intimidation and harassment.” In the brouhaha that followed, it came out that the Garland memo had been initiated by connivance of the Biden White House with leftists at the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to criminalize and silence angry parents who are besieging school-board meetings over LGBTQ grooming of their children and school indoctrination in hate-filled critical race theory. The NSBA suggested that angry parental opposition to these things should be considered by the Biden administration to be “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Only a massive public outcry caused the Biden DOJ to back off from this course — at least temporarily. 

So, don’t think that just because you are not a “J6 insurrectionist” — because you didn’t go to Donald Trump’s J6 rally — that you’re safe. And don’t think that you are below the surveillance-state radar because you’ve had your Covid jab (and two boosters) and haven’t opposed the mask mandates and lockdowns. Or that you are in the clear because you haven’t protested the transgender propaganda in your child’s public school or retweeted any “election disinformation” or politically incorrect memes. There are now a million ways to run afoul of the thought police. Their crosshairs are fixed not only on J6 insurrectionists and MAGA Republicans, but also parents, gun owners, military veterans, farmers, ranchers, business owners, Christian pastors, pro-lifers, border-control advocates — virtually everyone who represents real or potential opposition to our nation’s mad rush toward dictatorship.

New Reign of Terror

Last September 23, dozens of heavily armed FBI agents in military gear descended on the Pennsylvania home of peaceful Christian pro-life activist and author Mark Houck. With guns drawn, they terrorized his wife and seven children as they shackled him and dragged him off to jail. His “crime”? The Biden/Garland DOJ decided to resurrect a baseless claim against Houck by a Planned Parenthood activist that had been dismissed by the Philadelphia district attorney a year earlier. Last spring, in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Merrick Garland announced the formation of a Reproductive Rights Task Force at DOJ “to protect access to reproductive health care.” Since then, the DOJ has stepped up its prosecutions, reaching back to 2020 and 2021 to prosecute more than two dozen pro-life activists on federal charges. In October of 2021, the DOJ announced that it was earmarking $21 million to step up its investigation and prosecution of “hate crimes” under the new Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which makes it easier for the federal government to prosecute “hate crimes” allegedly committed because of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Students of history will recognize that everyday citizens being branded as “enemies of the state” by would-be tyrants is nothing new. During the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, merely being accused of disloyalty to the revolution by Maximillian Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety was sufficient to guarantee a death ride in the tumbrils to the guillotine. Similarly, one of the first orders of business of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1917 was the creation of the dreaded Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counter-Revolution, otherwise known as the Cheka (which later transitioned into the GPU, the NKVD, and finally the KGB). Hitler, of course, had his Gestapo. Mao had his Revolutionary Committees. Fidel Castro set up his Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. It’s the same in every dictatorship: political opposition (or even potential opposition) is declared a “public enemy,” vilified, defamed, criminalized, arrested, and eliminated. Due process? Ha! If a “trial” is held at all, it is a “show trial,” with prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner all representing the regime and stacked against the defendant, who gets no legal representation. 

It is not an exaggeration to say Team Biden has headed down this dangerous path and that the lives and liberties of every single American — Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative — are in grave peril as a result.

The Biden administration is systematically destroying due process and shredding the rule of law. It is methodically demolishing the constitutional guardrails that were crafted to protect all Americans from the tyranny of omnipotent government. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and the FBI have been thoroughly corrupted (at least at the higher levels) and transformed into instruments of terror to be unleashed against the regime’s political opponents. That means you, me, and millions of liberty-minded fellow citizens. 

The riotous melee at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 that followed President Trump’s Stop the Steal rally has been turned into a pretext to demonize and criminalize “MAGA Republicans,” which means anyone who resists genuflecting before the baby-killing/pervert-grooming/tranny-mutilating/CRT-indoctrinating/gun-grabbing/border-destroying altar. Thus, the Biden DOJ has sent forth swarms of militarized FBI SWAT teams to descend upon communities across the country and arrest hundreds of our fellow citizens who attended President Trump’s rally, even though most of them did not engage in any violence or destruction, and many never even entered the Capitol. Unlike the Antifa/BLM mobs that rained death and destruction on dozens of our cities (but which media reports repeatedly dubbed “mostly peaceful”), most of the January 6 “criminals” have no previous criminal records and are law-abiding, patriotic citizens, their only “crime” being to attend President Trump’s rally. 

A Conspiracy Theory Desperate for Credibility

On November 29, federal prosecutors succeeded in getting a guilty verdict of seditious conspiracy against Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, and Kelly Meggs, the leader of the Florida chapter of the organization, for their actions related to the January 6 Capitol breach. They could face up to 20 years in prison for that charge alone, and face additional prison time for lesser crimes for which they were convicted. Their defense attorneys say they will appeal the decision. Three additional defendants — Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell — were also convicted, but the jury rejected the prosecutors’ most serious charges of seditious conspiracy. All three were found guilty of lesser felony charges.

Patriot or agent provocateur? Oath Keepers founder and leader Stewart Rhodes, who faces a possible 20-year prison sentence related to the J6 Capitol riot, is a controversial figure in conservative circles, with many critics believing him to be a federal agent provocateur. (AP Images)

The convictions were roundly celebrated by Merrick Garland and DOJ officials, along with the members of Pelosi’s January 6 star chamber and its media cheerleaders. 

“Attorney General Merrick Garland took something of a victory lap on Wednesday, a day after the Department of Justice secured convictions in one of the Jan. 6 investigation’s highest profile prosecutions,” ABC News reported on November 30. 

“Our work yesterday marked significant successes,” Garland said. “Today the jury returned a verdict convicting all defendants of criminal conduct, including two Oath Keepers leaders for seditious conspiracy against the United States,” he remarked. “The Justice Department is committed to holding accountable those criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy on January 6, 2021. The prosecutors and agents on this case worked tirelessly, with extraordinary skill, and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice.”

Biden, Garland, and the DOJ desperately needed these convictions. After nearly two years of “investigation,” the DOJ/FBI and the farce known as the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol had come up with zero evidence to support their conspiracy theory that President Trump and members of his staff had conspired with the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, Republican members of Congress, and other “white nationalists” to engage in “insurrection.” 

The “insurrection” charge was ludicrous from the get-go. Has anyone ever heard of an insurrection in which all the “insurrectionists” simply forgot to bring their guns? Really, does it make any sense that in the United States of America, which boasts the world’s largest armed citizenry, we would have an insurrection with unarmed insurrectionists? The fact is that the only firearms at the J6 “insurrection” were in the possession of the Capitol Police and other federal law-enforcement officers.

Nevertheless, from Joe Biden on down to members of Congress and members of the media, the charges of “insurrection” and “seditious conspiracy” were leveled again and again not only at those who engaged in violence and vandalism on January 6, but also at President Trump and even those peacefully attending the rally that day. The Pelosi-run House of Representatives, remember, voted (with the connivance of 10 “Republicans”) to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” However, even though the massive saturation propaganda may have convinced many members of the public that the J6 defendants truly were involved in seditious conspiracy and insurrection, when it came time to charge the defendants, those charges were not in the charging documents. 

There were plenty of J6 defendants who, like Eduardo Alvear Gonzalez, were charged with “Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building.”

But that doesn’t quite have the ring of gravitas needed to justify the highly publicized hyperventilating about “violent insurrection,” “treason,” “attempted coup,” and “seditious conspiracy” by the politicos and media talking heads.

The DOJ and FBI were under heavy pressure to find the crimes to fit the narrative that America is under siege from domestic extremists, domestic terrorists, insurrectionists, racists, and white nationalists wearing red MAGA caps and following orders from Donald Trump. After all, we were told repeatedly that the J6 “insurrection” was comparable to (or worse than) the War of 1812, the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11. However, poll after poll showed that few Americans saw the J6 “threat” as a serious concern and the J6 Committee hearings, despite heavy media promotion, turned out to be an embarrassing bust that no one was watching. 

Merrick Garland and FBI chief Christopher Wray had to deliver serious drama and serious convictions or face total discrediting. Thus, the arrests of Stewart Rhodes and 10 other members of the Oath Keepers and their subsequent charging with seditious conspiracy. 

Seditious conspiracy is defined in 18 U.S. Code 2384 as “two or more persons” who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” It is a charge that is rarely employed, the last time being the 2010 case against nine members of the Hutaree militia of Michigan. All of the Hutaree defendants were acquitted at trial.

Merrick Garland is not about to let a repeat of the Hutaree fiasco happen with regard to the J6 witch hunt. He made sure that the trials would take place in Washington, D.C., which boasts the most liberal-left jury pool in the nation, and under DOJ-compliant judges. Julie Kelly, who writes for American Greatness and The Federalist and has provided some of the best coverage of the ongoing J6 saga, wrote on September 24, “It is clear, after six months of jury trials for Capitol protesters, i.e., Donald Trump supporters, that no one charged in this sprawling criminal investigation can get a fair trial.” “Judges on the D.C. District Court have denied every change of venue motion, absurdly insisting residents of a city that voted 93 percent for Joe Biden in 2020 can be fair and impartial,” she continued. “Further, judges claim nonstop news coverage in addition to the televised performances of the January 6 select committee do not further taint a demonstrably tainted jury pool.”

How tainted is the D.C. jury pool? Super-tainted, by all responsible accounts. Multiple independent surveys, including one by the Federal Public Defender’s Office, show that D.C. is so biased that it would be impossible for J6 defendants to get a fair verdict from “an impartial jury,” as guaranteed in the Sixth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. A jury pool bias study by Inlux Research and Analytics found, among other things, that: 

• “the DC Community is saturated with potential jurors who harbor actual bias against Defendants”;

• “91% of DC Community respondents who answered all of the prejudgment test questions admit making at least one prejudicial prejudgment on issues related to the case(s)”; and

• “This bias is not only more prevalent in the DC Community, but it is also more intense.”

But, for the trial of J6 defendant Matthew Bledsoe, Chief Justice Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (an Obama appointee) could not allow herself to be bothered by the district’s obvious supercharged jury bias. According to Gabriel Garcia, a court observer at the Bledsoe trial for The Gateway Pundit, “The final 12 jurors and 2 alternates got sworn in yesterday in the late afternoon. It seemed like I was looking at a panel that would sit around the table at MSNBC along with some ANTIFA personalities.” “The most shocking thing I noticed,” said Garcia, “was how Chief Justice Beryl Howell kept pushing forward potential jurors that clearly answered that they cannot remain impartial to ‘put their feelings aside’ and ‘make a decision based on the evidence clearly presented by the government.’” 

Agent Provocateur and Victim?

Judge Howell is far from being the lone radical on the D.C. District Court. Of the court’s 15 judges, 11 were appointed by Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden. One of the most important judges on that bench is Obama appointee Amit Mehta, who is also one of the most activist judges when it comes to opposing Trump and siding with Trump’s political opponents. He also is known for his scathing verbal attacks on J6 defendants and for retailing the talking points of Joe Biden and the J6 Committee regarding the January 6 events.

The die was already cast for a guilty verdict in the Oath Keepers trial when Judge Mehta was chosen to preside. Stewart Rhodes and his confederates had the deck stacked against them; there was no way they were going to get a fair trial. Nevertheless, not everyone in the “J6 community” or the “MAGA community” was in Rhodes’ corner. Next to the infamous Ray Epps, Stewart Rhodes has been one of the most controversial figures in the events surrounding the January 6 Capitol breach. Epps, remember, is the tall, commanding figure in a red cap caught on video urging rally attendees on January 5 that “Tomorrow we go into the Capitol, into the Capitol.” He was so suspiciously emphatic about getting people to go into the Capitol that rally-goers shouted “NO” and began pointing at him and chanting “Fed! Fed! Fed!” (For more on Epps, see "1/6: Two Years Later".) 

Republican members of the Senate and House — including Senators Ted Cruz (Texas), Mike Lee (Utah), Tom Cotton (Ark.), and Josh Hawley (Mo.), and Representatives Thomas Massie (Ky.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), and Matt Gaetz (Fla.) — have grilled Attorney General Garland, FBI Director Wray, and other DOJ/FBI officials regarding Epps, as well as demanding to know whether the FBI and/or other federal agencies had agents/informants embedded in the J6 demonstrations and, if so, whether these federal operatives initiated, led, or participated in any of the criminal activities of January 6. In response to these crucially important questions, Garland, Wray, and their underlings offered evasive responses, refused to answer, or claimed not to have knowledge. It’s called stonewalling, evasion, or outright lying. 

The concerns about Ray Epps and other suspicious J6 actors being federal agents provocateurs are not wild, partisan speculations — particularly in light of revelations concerning the FBI’s central role in planning, orchestrating, and financing the highly publicized “kidnapping plot” of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a plot that also included a planned takeover of the Michigan State Capitol and bears an eerie similarity to what occurred at the nation’s Capitol less than two months later. It turns out the FBI had at least a dozen paid “informants” inside the Michigan plot who, at the direction of FBI agents, recruited and coaxed reluctant (and not too bright) “militia” potheads to be pawns in an FBI/DOJ theatrical production. Put simply, the faux Whitmer kidnapping was an FBI political stunt created to smear President Trump weeks before the 2020 presidential election and advance the propaganda narrative that America is awash in MAGA extremism. The Michigan FBI official in charge of that criminal operation, Steven D’Antuono, was not prosecuted or punished. Instead, he was promoted to head the FBI’s Washington, D.C., office, just in time to oversee the events of January 6. 

Double standard: The Biden DOJ sent FBI SWAT teams to raid former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, allegedly to obtain “classified” documents. No such drama occurred when Biden was found in possession of classified docs from when he was vice president. (AP Images)

Was the Whitmer “fednapping” plot an FBI/DOJ dress rehearsal for the J6 drama, as abundant evidence seems to indicate? If so, then the scale of the J6 production would point to dozens of federal agents and operatives actively participating in (and leading) the criminal actions on January 6 that the Democrats and their bubblehead media herd have relentlessly flogged. We have previously pointed out that there are dozens of key J6 players (both identified and unidentified) whom the FBI/DOJ seem curiously uninterested in arresting and prosecuting. Are they federal operatives? Is Ray Epps one of them? What about Stewart Rhodes? Darren Beattie and the reporters at Revolver News have amassed a substantial dossier on Rhodes that persuasively argues he is a federal asset. 

Revolver’s articles focus not only on Rhodes’ role on January 6, but also on his very troubling role in the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada and the 2016 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff in Oregon. Participants in these and other events point out that Rhodes has a record of inserting himself into these situations, taking command as a leading agitator, acting as the protesters’ liaison to the FBI, urging others to take aggressive action (for which they are later prosecuted), and then escaping prosecution himself.

But, doesn’t Rhodes’ belated arrest and his subsequent prosecution and conviction lay to rest the suspicion that he may be a federal asset? Not at all; he wouldn’t be the first informant/asset to be burned when it became politically expedient to do so. And the stakes are very high in the Deep State’s J6 gambit, so sacrificing a useful operative is a trifling matter. 

The FBI and DOJ have a long history of using agents provocateurs to “discredit from within” and to set up unwary patriots for prosecution. They now have a virtually unlimited arsenal of carrots and sticks to use for enticing or strong-arming recruits into their agent provocateur army. And they have plenty of strategically placed corrupt judges to rubberstamp their illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral actions. 

Seeking truth: How many of the J6 rioters, especially those leading the criminal activities and goading protesters on, were federal agents? Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) demand answers at a January 6, 2022 press conference.

Meanwhile, despite repeated assertions by Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that they operate on an absolutely nonpartisan and even-handed basis, it is obvious that those assurances are blatant gaslighting. Consider that the Biden/Garland DOJ took the unprecedented action of making a high-profile FBI raid on the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump, supposedly because he was in possession of classified documents (which he, as president, had authority to declassify). However, when it came to light that classified documents were discovered in Joe Biden’s possession (from when he was vice president, an office that doesn’t have authority to declassify) we saw no drama, no FBI raid. It was the same double standard for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who not only had illegally taken classified documents but had sent and received them via her unsecured, personal email account. Consider also that while the DOJ/DHS/FBI is going after J6 defendants, MAGA Republicans, and pro-lifers with a vengeance, it is:

• Ignoring the firebombing and vandalism of more than 100 churches and pro-life offices and pregnancy-resource centers;

• Ignoring violence in the deadly BLM-Antifa riots that resulted in 19 deaths and more than $2 billion in destruction, including many attacks on federal buildings;

• Ignoring criminal leaks of information by federal employees, including the leak of the Supreme Court draft of the majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision;

• Ignoring the protesters who targeted the homes and families of U.S. Supreme Court justices in violation of the law against intimidating judges;

• Ignoring the J6 Committee’s criminal release of Social Security numbers and other identifiers of Trump allies and Republican leaders;

• Padding the statistics of “domestic violent extremists” — as FBI whistleblowers have revealed — to support the Biden jihad against “MAGA Republicans”;

• Colluding with Twitter and other Big Tech platforms to censor American free speech in violation of the First Amendment; and

• Colluding with Deep State intelligence-community operatives and Big Media to label the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.”

America is descending to a very dark and dangerous place, and it is starkly apparent that the Deep State operatives running the Biden administration intend to plunge us ever deeper into the totalitarian abyss. To succeed, they are using J6 and other pretexts to characterize ordinary Americans as enemies of the state in an effort to stoke fear in and silence those who might otherwise speak out and resist. Yet there will be no freedom or safety if we allow them to succeed. It will require the supreme effort of every American of good will to rescue our nation — while there is still time and opportunity to do so.