Hey guys, I'm giving speeches.
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I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2011.
Almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show All right, you guys introducing Ken Bensinger from BuzzFeed News at buzzfeednews.com and this is a follow-up on the Michigan kidnapping plot of 2020 of October 2020 It's called the FBI knew exactly what its double agent was doing Says a defendant in the Michigan kidnapping case.
Welcome back to the show Ken.
How are you doing, sir?
Very good.
Thanks for having me back Happy to have you here I really appreciate you covering this important story for us here and um Of course we did a previous episode where we covered your original Great reporting on kind of the background of the story here and the different groups involved and how they were infiltrated by the FBI and everything so Is it possible maybe do a little thumbnail of that?
Is that within the realm of?
Of even uh being conceivable that you could kind of give us a thumbnail of that before we get this update here Yeah, sure.
So, um, this is a case that that Made a big big splashy news everywhere on October 8th 2020, which was the morning after the FBI arrested a bunch of people that We learned the following morning we're being accused of conspiring to kidnap the sitting governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer and um You know, it's a really big story coming less than a month before the presidential election and with growing fear It's about right-wing militias and about political violence from the from the right.
So It it touched a lot of hot buttons and um, uh Starting sort of after January 6th when we saw a lot more of what appeared to be political violence.
Um, Myself and a colleague got interested in digging deeper into the Michigan case and so we spent a long time looking into it to sort of look beyond just the press releases from the DOJ and really pull apart the case and I think our original intention was to sort of understand what makes these these You know guys who would do something as as kind of horrific as plot to kidnap and potentially even murder a sitting governor What makes them tick and where where that those feelings and anger comes from?but as we as we begin to Spend time looking into the documents and looking at documents in other cases and interviewing tons of people and finding all kinds of other um materials to review uh A more complicated picture.
I wouldn't say a different necessarily picture a more complicated picture emerged which we found out that The fbi, you know far from just being a passive observer sort of on the wings watching these people develop this plot was in fact, um very heavily involved, um in sort of every every step of the way and they used a lot of informants, um, At least 12 informants and a couple of them two or three of them were very heavily involved in in a lot of the planning and organizing of events where according to the to the Federal prosecutors major sort of plotting events happened and surveillance was happening all this and it As as we dug further we realized that many of those were sort of instigated By by government representative agents of the government who were you know working as confidential informants um so That came to light and that's we wrote a big story about that in july just sort of To what degree the government wasn't had his hands in the whole in you know, the whole business um And that's what that's what led us to talk the first time and now there's been quite a bit that happens since then too Well, it's very hard to quantify that as we talked about I think It's from your reporting.
We got the number was it 12 out of 15 were federal informants Is that correct?
Well, that's that's not quite right There was 12 informants, but there were and there was 14 people charged in the case Um, but it doesn't mean 12 of the people 12 to 14 charged were informants That means there's 12 informants and separate to them.
I got there were 14 additional people who were charged.
So i've seen people What 12 out of 24 or 25 then or what was it?
Well, it's it's hard to say because we don't know the role of all the informants We know some of them pretty well what they were doing But there was all kinds of the people that the government's calling informants where they were informants But they might have had a more tangential relationship.
They might have been at one meeting or they might have Uh, you know, uh been in one series of phone calls.
That's actually what I was getting at right was yeah It sounds on the face of it man that many informants the whole thing was cooked up and we know how the fbi do it The terror factory is trevor aronson the great journalist trevor aronson calls him in his great book.
Um and yet also people are individuals and make decisions and I Guess you could have that many informants and have people not necessarily completely entrapped Maybe the most guilty here were the ones who were not the informants Maybe the informants were just observing and along for the ride rather than instigating, but I don't know you tell me Well, I don't know either and we'll tell we'll know more of a time What we have seen is that the informants played and certainly two of them that we're aware of, you know, we're We're we're very much recruiting people putting people together in rooms that never had met before people who later were are being called by the government as Sort of co-conspirators people who cooked this up together to you know people that that literally didn't know each other before this It's very unlikely They ever would have met but then were put into the same I think I used the word crucible in one story They were sort of mixed putting the same melting pot together where sort of bad things, you know may have happened.
So um one of the things i've learned in this and one thing that's tricky is that um that the government has a lot of flexibility from a legal standpoint when it comes to This kind of this kind of case building right that's saying that that ultimately the only thing the government has to prove Is that somebody is predisposed to commit the crime?
And the government has a long track record of getting convictions on people when it does similar things when it Brings them into situations.
They wouldn't have been in when it gives them money when it gives them other things to sort of um, uh You know assist in these plans that the government itself more or less dreamed up right and all it requires is showing to a jury That the person you know knew what was going on and was willing to do it Whether or not it was their idea originally whether or not, you know They ever would have been capable of doing this themselves Ends up being less material than whether they would have sort of pushed the proverbial button when the time came also the difference between Whether they can get a conviction, especially a plea bargain type guilty plea Versus whether we have to consider it Legitimate or simply bs put on pr show for you know The way they did in the bush and obama years with all the fake terrorism cases But those are also separate things, right?
Well, but they're but no it's a good point there and the more I spend time in this the more connected I see it which is that you know that There's decades.
I mean going back.
Excuse me to the 60s the content probably even late 50s you had FBI programs involved involving heavy use of informants and undercover agents infiltrating Groups that were considered marginal or suspect or dangerous and often promoting people Into crimes that they otherwise it's hard to imagine to ever would have committed.
This is not a new technique It predated 9-11.
It was going on for many years within groups like the black panthers or the weather other underground Groups on the on then what we consider kind of the left, right?
But it but it's also happened a little bit with groups in the right and then it happened Very heavily after september 11th when going when they were going after muslim groups and we have cases like the one in newberg that you've probably heard about or there's the one outside of miami that that um, Uh recently was I think a frontline documentary You know where they take these kind of people that are are basically kind of dummies, right?you know people that are sort of like You know, maybe like maybe not like the cream of society But kind of people who are a little bit hapless people who don't know what's going on people who are easily led and they lead them down the path and they get them to You know to to be willing to do the bad thing and then they these people end up in jail for a long time And those same techniques seem to be at play in this case.
What's different about this case is that the defendants are not You know dispossessed 19 year old muslim men who immigrated from another country or something.
These these are sort of you know, um, uh corn fed corn fed american guys living in in the upper midwest, um, and Because of that they've you know, people are asking harder questions than they were when the person's name was, you know Muhammad or something.
Yeah, I was just gonna say although then I decided to bite my tongue But what the hell you brought it up again good for frontline for finally covering the liberty city seven what 15 years later?
These poor schmucks were entrapped into this thing, you know point the camera at them and give them $20,000 say you love osama and then lock the guy away for life And you know, it's funny because I have a friend from miami who writes for us at anti-war.com And she said if you're from liberty city, that is the ghetto in miami The sears tower is not the same sears tower that we're thinking of in chicago.
It's a three-story building They're in the ghetto in liberty city the sears tower And that was what the fbi tricked these guys into saying and then they put that on tv that these guys were going to bring Down the biggest skyscraper in chicago when they're a couple of numbskull Nobody's completely entrapped from beginning to end by the cops there and then it's true and as trevor aronson See, I was gonna write a book about this but couldn't find a publisher and sort of all fell through but then trevor wrote the book for me anyway, and there's 250 of them or something it just goes on and on And I won't like I won't go down that rabbit trail because I I like it so much But I just wanted to point that out that as you said People then they didn't even pay attention.
In fact You're the one who's doing this I mean, I think you're giving the other rest of the media too much credit about asking good questions about this because these guys are You know corn-fed white guys from michigan the way I remember it was.
Oh my god.
They caught some nazis everybody Oh some nazis slash kidnappers slash trump supporters in october right before the election The same fbi that framed him for treason with the kremlin are the same ones that frame these guys For kid plotting to kidnap a democratic governor.
Yeah, right to me and maybe to you but well and as you said it took you a little while to catch on here, but for the rest of the Narrative on tv.
I mean this was a success as far as the public relations department at the fbi is concerned I mean they scored a major win here and this may have been quite a few percentage points in this state and that one you know, well, I mean so I agree with something that I can't go as far nearly as far as you and that stuff.
I mean, well, that's true I'm, sorry about that because i'm editorializing and you're reporting here, but yeah, I can't go I I haven't seen no evidence that this was a politically motivated operation by the fbi I also there's been a lot of people particularly this the guy who runs revolver news who wanted to say that This is a was a training like a sort of a test program for what happened on january 6th.
I have seen zero Let me repeat zero evidence connecting what happened in michigan to january 6th, and I don't i'm Remain unconvinced that there's a connection uh, and I don't frankly to be very clear do not believe that uh, january 6th was an undercover false flag operation by the fbi That's I just have never seen any evidence to suggest that well I want to ask you about stewart rhodes and your other piece and those questions in a few minutes, but go ahead But but i've never seen so evidence But what I do believe is that sometimes people are motivated by very prosaic You know boring things and it reminds me of the great book finality of evil sometimes People do things that that in in retrospect don't look great not because they're evil schemers But just because they're looking to advance their careers or they're looking to impress their boss or whatever the case may be FBI agents are there to bring good cases Prosecutors are there to bring good cases if prosecutors bring a good case They have a good chance of getting out of the doj and getting a job at a white shoe law firm and making a million bucks a year FBI agents if they bring good cases They get a lot of attention stand a chance of getting promoted Going up the chain and when they and when they retire with a full pension Opening a security firm and bragging about all their exploits in the fbi and getting big contracts to me Some of the evil motives or the or the or the conspiratorial Motives we assign to things um are actually more easily explained by simply the fact that we all do one of you know We all want to advance ourselves in different ways It's the reason that people on social media Often say outrageous things because they want the clout and they want the clicks not because necessarily they're you know They're thinking of some grand conspiracy, but you keep chasing that clout and those clicks and pretty soon You're in pretty weird territory and I think the fbi well motive aside.
I mean framing a guy is framing a guy, right?
Well, the next question is do they think they're framing themselves because of course i'm framing them, you know, sometimes people I mean, I will I will tell you that there are Prosecutors who really believe that people did these things?
I mean, I think it helps them get out of bed every morning.
They actually convince themselves They did it and I think it's also important to remember that these guys in michigan It's not like they were the nicest dudes you ever met in your whole life, right?
These guys were even before the fbi got involved talking nasty talk about killing cops um, they were sharing memes that were not I mean Perfectly protected by the first amendment don't get me wrong But not particularly nice about sitting with elected officials gretchen whitmer and others, right?
I mean, you know rape fantasies violence, um killing pretty pretty nasty stuff.
These are not like Necessarily the dudes you want to get a cup.
I could get a beer with at the bar Um, but I also firmly believe in this country You can have strong opinions because that's the first amendment protects without you know, and that's that should be allowed It doesn't mean That you you know, you're you're a terrorist and it doesn't mean you should be put into a dragnet trying to Push you into being a terrorist So sure, you know I look all things being equal to if somebody's threatening the life of an elected official Then the fbi's got at least look into that and I guess it makes sense that They should maybe lay out some bait and see if some guy will take it and take the next step Maybe but they seem to take it quite a bit further than that here, right?
Yeah, I mean I think this is beyond what we we think the fbi I think the general public consensus of what Law enforcement should be doing in terms of looking at for bad for bad actors.
This seems beyond it This is not observe and report right?
This is get involved in the mix So I just I I mean, I don't want to hammer the point too too hard, but I want to say no There's a there's a bit of a there's there are no angels kind of thing to these are not these guys are not super awesome Wonderful upstanding people they have strong political beliefs and they talked a lot about violence and they're you know, and But but I think there is a larper element to it which is that they talked a lot more when they really Were able, you know were able to do it They don't have I don't think any of the defendants in this case With maybe one exception have any kind of history of any kind of criminal Criminal background that involves weapons or violence or anything like that, right?
I mean, you know One of them was a junkie and got arrested for like stealing from his uncle and another You know had a lot of moving violations and got caught with an open carry in a car, but wasn't using it So mostly, you know, they have criminal backgrounds.
They're not terrifying and they're mostly stupid kind of stuff So that's that's the guys Yeah, ken from your point of view knowing the case as well as you do now.
I mean in your familiarity with the different people involved in the Alleged plot here and that kind of thing I know it's hard to explain it all because there are quite a few people involved in all of this But yeah with your level of familiarity Does it look to you like the kind of thing that this would have or could have happened at all without the feds facilitating it?
I mean, I think there's elements that would have happened Anyway, one of the famous elements of the whole case, uh, which isn't which is only sort of tangential of the case but it seems important and it's been talked about a lot is that um in the spring of 2020 uh men with long guns and you know and boogaloo shirts and um And sort of tactical gear on stormed the michigan state capitol in lansing and were walking around the hallways with with long guns in the hallways Of that state capitol and then after january 6th The parallels seemed kind of shocking and many of the people who were in the building that day ended up being people who were Uh charged in this in this conspiracy case.
Um, that said and so I brought that up because I don't think I don't think that that event was of the fbi's manufacturer at all.
I think that was going to happen organically anyway But also the fbi doesn't hold that but ultimately as part of the kidnapping conspiracy, right?
That was an event that they didn't they didn't necessarily Uh, you know, we weren't able to to to gin up so to speak Um the other events, you know, it's we'll see a trial which is coming up, you know If you hear that the feds tell it on september 12th, you know to 2020 a dozen dudes Drove up to northern michigan and drove around the lake where the governor lives and they're they're casing it out and they're making Plans to blow up a bridge and then how to extract the governor from her home and get her out into lake michigan And then get her out of the state and try her for treason that's how the fed feds tell that night and um The defense has a different story and everyone agrees that they did go up there and they did drive around But the defense will say they were confused about why they're going up there The fed the guys who ultimately end up being feds or you know informants orchestrated the whole thing No one no one none of the defendants really knew what was going on Some of them thought they were driving around looking for pedophiles because they were chasing some kind of a q and on crazy conspiracy Others were just kind of out for a late night ride.
Not really sure what was going on And then later months, you know a month later, they're shocked to discover the government was calling that Surveillance and they point out they couldn't even find the home and they were confused and lost it was raining and dark and then What happened?
So, you know whose story do you believe the story that they?
Had planned surveillance and they were just kind of a bunch of dudes goofing around in the woods Um, you see that based on the evidence the government can strike one case the defense can construct another but I can certainly say That is not crystal clear that this was this beautifully formed conspiracy that these guys were acting on step by step Right.
All right.
So tell us who's steven robeson?so steven robeson is one of the two primary confidential informants in the case and when I mentioned earlier what What we had found leading up to our our big july article we knew about him We wrote about him a little bit, but a lot more has happened with him since then He's a he's what you might call a recidivist criminal.
Um, he's someone who's been getting busted for moderate to serious crimes dating back to the 1980s, um everything from uh, you know, um theft to Receiving stolen property to forgery to sex with a minor to assault and battery a lot of Sort of a hodgepodge of every kind of crime Um, I think he bail jumped a few times as well Um, and and throughout that whole time he's managed a way to get to lessen his sentences by being an informant So he was there's documented evidence that he was a informant in the 80s for the local local prosecutors and district attorneys in wisconsin where he's from Um, and he did it again in the 2000s.
There may be other instances We don't know about but he seemed to serve as a as a jailhouse snitch Um, and then he pops up in in the end of 2019 meeting in 2020 On on facebook message boards reaching out to people with pretty strong critical group views of the government people who are members of the patriot movement some some anti-government or at least anti-current government views um, and he's talking to them and recruiting them to go to different meetings and Um, he becomes uh, one of the principal orchestrators of some of the key meetings He's traveling from wisconsin all over the place to try to gather people in michigan and ohio And virginia and south carolina trying to get them to to join the the national movement of three percenters, which is a uh Constitutional That's sort of a constitutionalist based right-wing movement um similar but different to the oath keepers, um and He claims to be a leader of them He's naming people commanders of different regiments of three percenters and the civil war is coming and they're going to be at the forefront So he plays this role.
He's very heavily involved He's talking to the defendants some of them are the ultimate defendants I guess at the time there were suspects talking to them almost on a daily basis visiting many of them, etc Only later does it come out that while he's working for the fbi He's also committing crimes under the fbi's nose without without permission without their knowledge So he's he's a multi-time convicted felon, of course in this country felons can't own firearms But he's buying and selling firearms all over the place.
I'm aware of I think four or five different firearms.
He buys while working for the fbi Ultimately the fbi indicts him for for one of these felon for these firearm purchases Um, and uh, and he cops a plea deal, which is an incredibly favorable plea deal, which they give him no time no additional time and like a Two hundred dollar fine something really minimal it's in probation Which for him it's like no cause it's like water off a duck's back because he's already a convicted felon He doesn't lose anything by getting another felony in his record Um, and now it's recently come out that he also defrauded um appears to have defrauded a couple in wisconsin by claiming that they were donating he convinced him to donate a SUV to a charity That was supposed to protect children that he runs but it turns out that the charity was a lie doesn't exist and he was just basically Stealing their car by a fraud um so this is the kind of guy that's out there on the front lines of the fbi investigation trying to Convince these people to take part in a criminal plot to go after a governor and maybe other stuff in other states That's robeson in a nutshell.
Give me just a minute here Listen, I don't know about you guys But part of running the libertarian institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors And who wants to stand in line all day at the post office, but stamps.com?
Sorry, but their website is a total disaster.
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Go to scotthorton.org slash easy ship Hey y'all scott here, you know, the libertarian institute has published a few great books mine fool's errand enough already and the great ron paul Two by our executive editor sheldon richmond coming to palestine and what social animals owe to each other And of course no quarter the ravings of william norman grigg our late great co-founder and managing editor at the institute Coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarist handbook Edited by keith knight a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons One more collection of essays by will grigg and two new books about syria by the great william van wagening And brad hoff and his co-author.
Zachary wingard That's libertarian institute.org books And then the department of justice is saying oh man, well me and him broke up a long time ago and so We're prosecuting him and he's not a protected informant.
He's With the rest of them and and as you're reporting here he and his lawyers are saying well, that's not true They gave us all this free rein for a purpose and now they're stabbing us in the back.
Do I have that narrative right there?
Yeah, they are of it.
No, that's right.
The government now desperately wants to wash its hands of steve robeson um Because he's become a big problem for them.
He's he's not credible he's a bad witness for them because he's clearly a liar but they should have known that beforehand because His past criminal convictions involved multiple crimes of what you would call moral turpitude Meaning fraud and lying and kiting bad checks and that kind of stuff that doesn't work doesn't play super good against the jury, right?
So they brought in a guy knowing he had that history and now they're saying well He's a liar so he can't take the stand which is a little bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it too with them they just don't want him anywhere near the courtroom trial begins in march because they're very worried that he's going to Describe things about the investigation that they don't want out there about to what degree there was instigation to what degree Um, he and others were pressured to push the case beyond where it should recently It's come out that there was an fbi memo from I think april 2021 So this is months after the investigation concludes or at least the takedown happens in which the fbi agents are saying This is a guy who went beyond, you know He he did not just observe and report he went far beyond and was pushing things and seemed eager to try to push things Beyond where they belonged so there there is Internal fbi communication and chatter worried that this guy was an instigator and I think they want to keep him off the stand So they've they're trying to disown him.
They're calling him a double agent and they're washing their hands of him Yeah, the double agent charge is ridiculous because you know We've seen enough spy movies a double agent is someone who you think works for the u.s but actually is a russian spy right like he's he's but but That that implies sort of to that in this construct if he's a double agent, it means he actually did want to You know kidnap the governor and there's no evidence whatsoever that he actually wanted to kidnap the governor He was doing what the fbi wanted him to do which is to jam up a bunch of guys And and prove that they were they were bad dudes who wanted to commit terrorism And the truth is the only double agency he did is he was out for steve robeson And he was out to cover up his own crimes and to commit crimes while under fbi protection um, so so he's he's a huge thorn in the side of the fbi now, but they use them and they They're really trying to clean the record of him.
Yeah All right, forgive me for reading part of your article out loud here, but I have to cover how much I like it Okay All right, actually, it's two paragraphs Prosecutors argue the defendants were predisposed to take action But they've also asked the judge to sharply limit the evidence That can be admitted into court when the trial begins march 8th They have for example said that they will not call three lead fbi agents in the case And argued that many of the statements those men made during the course now We're not that didn't say informants unless your editor screwed you up there You said three lead fbi agents In the case will not be called to testify and the statements those men made during the course of the investigation Should not be allowed as evidence and last week They said that because of his misconduct statements by robeson should also be kept out of the courtroom This is the one the primary instigators of the plot who as you said is pretty clear He wasn't trying to kidnap any governor.
He was doing this for them And they want to exclude his whole story from the prosecution and the three cops who led the case say it ain't so So I i'm glad you read that because that stuff really stood out to me as well.
It's you know You can't I think there's there's pretty good case law.
I'm not a lawyer So someone else should check this but there's fairly good case law that an fbi agent or the confidential informant working for the fbi Is is essentially an actor for the government?
He's a representative of the government and what that person is doing to some degree is this is the actions of the government the the speech and the acts of the government, but the Prosecutors in this case want to disown not only this confidential informant, but also um, you know This uh, these three fbi agents now it's interesting because they haven't made the same arguments for their other confidential informant who they seem to love and are eager to Get in the stand his actions seem to in words do seem to represent the government because it's convenient to them But the uh, the three fbi agents they want to wash their hands of them as well And the reason is because these three fbi agents have lots of problems one of them Who actually despite a lot of reports Had a fairly minor role in the whole case As a fellow named trask and he made a lot of headlines in july and or i'm, sorry late summer Uh, because he got caught beating up his wife.
That's a pretty nasty domestic violence situation and he uh I guess involved in a swinger scene or something They had a drunken fight and he was beating her head against the nightstand pretty gruesome He got picked up and charged and ultimately fired by the fbi and he in december, uh Pled guilty to a misdemeanor in the case and he's no longer an fbi agent and can't Be involved in professional law enforcement in michigan anymore.
So the feds weren't going to call him anymore And then another fbi agent was charged or accused in another case with perjury now Some lawyers who have looked at the charges think their accusations think they're thin But nonetheless, it's hanging over his head this question whether he perjured himself on the stand in a different case and Apparently that was worrisome enough for the feds and they decided not to have him testify either and that's the guy who justified In a related state case already, but he's not going to testify.
They don't want him on the stand and then the third agent Who truly probably would call the lead agent in the case?
We revealed in in late august that he um in 2019 secretly opened a Security company with apparently without informing anyone at the fbi who's doing it which goes against fbi policy the fbi Requires its agents to get permission to do sort of extracurricular business activities and things like that I mean, I think even if an fbi agent wants to go to a trade show and promote something They've got to get permission and he did this without permission It turns out in fact that it appears he got into business with an internet troll who's famous for um, very loud and Nasty anti-muslim rhetoric anti-democratic rhetoric anti-antifa rhetoric just a continual sort of fount of really nasty speech on twitter He appears to have gone into business with this person in this or individual Appears to have been tweeting about the michigan case before it went public Um, which is a bad look because it's a private It's a it's a secret case until they bust people and here's this person tweeting about it in these kind of veiled ways and then it subsequently we found out that Um, he in the past had been promoting his business um by by with a resume that included mentions of cases he'd done in the past and some active cases so it it looks like the potential for conflict exists with this guy because He seems to be trying to make you know, uh personal profits off his track record as an fbi agent Which you know could lead to the idea that he had an incentive To bring more cases and to bring more cases and make more headlines because that could help promote his business more but none of the three agents here Or have their behavior in this case in question.
It's all side issue stuff.
Is that correct?
Well, well, we don't know I mean again with this case We have this this internet troll tweeting about the michigan case So it suggests that he's maybe got loose lips and telling his his business partner Whoever this person is about the case while it's happening.
So that doesn't look very good um, uh and um And you know their their their conduct in this case is questioned more along the lines of the entrapment claims by the defense which is That these guys were specifically directing the informants and others to push the case further, right?
So there's text messages and voice recordings of them saying, you know Try to get that person involved invite that person we want it to be as broad as possible and there's a now a notorious text message sent by the one I was just Rattling on about the fbi agent with the security firm In which he says mission is to kill the governor specifically, right?
So he's directing the informant to tell the suspects that that's what they should be focused on is killing the government which Governor which smells a lot like directing them rather than sort of letting them take their own decisions Um, the government wants all that kind of talk out of the case They don't want the defense to be able to bring it up.
And um, so the motions, you know You know are pending to whether whether or not the judge will permit those things in court Yeah, we'll see what happens there.
And now I think you said there were two major informants and robeson was one of them So who's the other guy and what's his status here?um The other one is an informant whose name I know but we've decided not to reveal and he's known in court records only as dan Or sometimes big dan his code name with the fbi was thor um, and he um Uh, he's a army veteran who served in combat in iraq.
Yeah Uh in in some of the more intense fighting in iraq, um in sort of this the second surge and that kind of stuff um And by all accounts had a pretty, you know, pretty intense um traumatic role to play in infantry um, and he came back, um And according to his testimony, you know years after out of being out of the service doing Working different odd jobs and security and things like that um, uh big big, uh, um The second amendment guy he's on the internet looking for second amendment groups to hang out with and chat with And according to him gets invited to join this group called the wolverine watchman.
This is in march of 2020 um so he it's a private group he applies to join he answers their questions and he Passes through one level of sort of vetting and then there's a second one to get into their encrypted wire chat wires a encrypted messaging platform like signal or other ones like that and he gets into the group and What he quickly discovers is these people are talking about killing cops and doing really nasty things And so he has a friend who's a cop He tells a friend and the friend tells the fbi and within a few days He's meeting with the fbi and they're asking him if he'll stay Embedded in this group and be serving as an informant for the fbi So that's what he does and he begins recording hundreds of hours of tape of these guys Um, you know as they allegedly plan to to build this plot to kill the governor or to kidnap the governor Excuse me.
Um, and he more than anyone is close to a lot of the guys who have been charged in the case Um evidence has since shown that he also went well way beyond the wolverine watchman and was talking to other people in michigan Um people in other parts of the state and ultimately people in other parts of the country people in virginia and maryland and elsewhere he becomes one of the people who's constantly on them trying to get them to To you know join up in this group or join other conspiracies to to take violent action against the government crazy all right, well, so I guess we'll see then whether the judge goes along with the government's plan to use him as their star witness instead of the other Guy and and completely exclude the other guy robeson now Well, I mean the government doesn't want to call robeson and they've been very careful in in all the evidence They've presented in the different charging papers and affidavits and everything they put out there.
They've never mentioned uh Well, they've ultimately lately they've been mentioning it but in the charging stuff the stuff they talked about what happened in the case They didn't cite his evidence evidence He was gathered or mentioned that he was gathering that is they always had backup Other informants who could provide the information they needed so they've kind of written They tried to write him out of the story essentially because they had other people who'd made the recordings They had other people they rely on and they didn't want him to be part of the official story um The other informant dan is another story.
His his fingerprints are all over the case.
You can see references to him Um, they call him chs2 frequently chs stands for confidential human source Which is the fbi jargon for what we call a confidential informant um So chs2 is dan and their stuff mentions about him all throughout the court record and they quote him heavily and he the michigan attorney general Trotted him out for a full day of testimony last march.
Um, and he testified for a full day about the case in the state hearing um, so he's the government has pushed him forward as the guy that you know, they They want people to pay attention to and i'm I have little doubt that he'll he'll be one of their star witnesses The other star witness, of course is a guy named ty garvin Ty garvin was one of the men arrested on october 7, 2020 Um, and he flipped he pleaded guilty and flipped in january 2021.
So very relatively soon after the arrest he agreed to cooperate Operate so he's been a cooperator with the government and the government has indicated that he's likely to testify so that's a pretty serious arrow in the quiver for the government is to be able to Trot out one of the guys that that was originally accused and say look Don't just trust us trust this guy.
He was part of the group.
He was part of the world green watchman He was friends with these guys and he's here to tell you that there was a conspiracy and they didn't want to do it So that's almost all we had to do was hold the supermax sellover.
Is that Yeah, exactly.
I mean, there's there's some reasons why he might want to say that But but again, you know, I mean that's it's it's kind of a playbook, right?
Yeah, it's got I mean that's you know You get you get some people to flip and and that's for instance your case now I think where the government's been really surprised in this case is they thought everyone else would flip I think they thought very few people go to trial maybe one or two guys instead They're facing all but one trial.
In other words, I think that's the defense lawyers are pretty confident here.
You're saying I don't know if they're confident because I think the defense lawyers are also realistic about how judges feel about this um And and you know judges tend to favor prosecutors in in criminal cases and particularly these kind of cases so, you know whether the government the judge will limit evidence is it remains to be seen but the prosecutors are sort of like uh Maybe 50 50 on that.
They're hopeful that the judge will will let these things fly But he may not um, then, you know, they're they're starting to appeal in that case if the judge doesn't let them Bring in this evidence.
They're going to say we weren't allowed to mount a good defense Are any of the defense lawyers, you know the johnny cochran type, you know famous No, you know tassels on their jackets kind of guys who get up there and well, they're not you know, it's funny I mean i've been um following the uh Some of the january 6th cases particularly the oath keepers cases and there you have a weird hodgepodge Of kind of like very quiet but down public defender type people and then very attention-grabbing Uh kind of guys who when they're not defending oath keepers, they're like filing Completely insane lawsuits against like the federal government, you know in every single sitting sitting member of congress um, so you have a lot of those who are filing just Completely nutty briefs and I guess I was thinking more like dick daguerrean who's not enough It is very flamboyant and attention-seeking but also is probably the Most successful defense lawyer in texas at the same time, right?
I don't know but you know what?
Those kind of people are real like are like real serious lawyers no, this case has attracted a mix of uh Fairly quiet public defenders a few of them and a lot of what we call panel attorneys which are Um attorneys in private practice who also part of their business is picking up criminal cases that the public defenders for one reason or another Can't take either there's a conflict or because they're short-staffed or whatever And so there's a bunch of those guys and for the most part They're they're pretty buttoned down not too exciting not too flamboyant Definitely not like hunger for the hungry for the the tv camera kind of guys.
There's one defense lawyer in the state case who um is uh kind of stands out because he's very very it's like Quite far right and has like a full like some people call like a militia beard Like he's got a full a very which is pretty unusual to see among buttoned-down lawyers he's got like the beard down the middle of his chest kind of thing and um, uh, basically only defends like far-right defendants, um, But other than that, it's it's not it is not a uh, it's not a saber-rattling group Yeah, jerry spence.
That's the name of the one I was trying to think of with the tassels on his jackets Yeah It's not like that or no it's not like these guys who who swoop in on cases like this I suspect some of those guys try to get into this but There hasn't uh, there hasn't really been a lot of movement around attorneys in this case.
It's been pretty quiet Sorry, hang on just one second Hey guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of patreon will be invited to join the reddit group And i'm gonna start posting stuff over there more.
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This is so cool.
The great mike swanson's new book is finally out He's been working on this thing for years and I admit I haven't read it yet I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it It's called why the vietnam war nuclear bombs and nation building in southeast asia 1945 Through 61 and as he explains on the back here All of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the american war there in say 1964 through 1974 But how do we get there?
Why is this all harry truman's fault find out in why the vietnam war by the great mike swanson available now Uh, they even did a caricature of him on the simpsons.
This is funny checking.
Anyway, he got randy weaver off That was a tough case.
That's a pretty good lawyer.
All right now listen, um, do you have time?
We're already over half an hour, but uh, I got more questions for you if you want A few more.
Yeah, and then I got then I got a scoot.
Okay, so you got this important story about um, Stewart rhodes being arrested here.
So I want to say that uh, I interviewed darren beattie back a few weeks ago Yeah, and from revolver news who you mentioned earlier and i'm not i'm not familiar with his coverage of the michigan case But we talked about this and what was clear from the video and from his pieces was that there's You know five or six or eight guys who really know what they're doing that day and we don't know whether they know each other all of them and whether they're you know, who all arranged what but and That much is clear and then secondly They seem to all be getting away with it The ones who are maybe the most guilty of kind of being the ringleaders seem to be getting away with it And the department of justice wants us to forget about some of them apparently And so it was still, you know open-ended and speculative, you know, he wasn't coming to You know crazy conspiracy theorist conclusions, but he was saying sure looks like these guys might have been agent provocateurs In this case, you know, but then it seems like Something's really changed and I haven't had a chance to follow up with him since then But they went ahead and indicted a lot of guys.
Of course, they would argue they were about to anyway He might think that well, maybe he got a reaction out of them.
We'll see what happens with the case, but um It seems important right that roads is being prosecuted Does that mean that he definitely wasn't an informant because I gotta say it seems like a guy Who talks that big for this long?
About providing an armed alternative to the current state's power would be Either in prison already for something wire fraud or mail fraud or something or he would be working for the fbi and Uh, so I wonder if you can comment on whether you think it's certain now that no They're really going after him and you're pretty sure they were going to do this Anyway, and maybe darren beatty just jumped the gun here on what was taking the doj so long it was just because These were maybe more significant charges for them to build those cases.
Although epps is still not indicted So, I don't know.
But anyway, i'll turn it over to you now.
See what you think Okay, so I I want to say I don't know darren beatty And and never dealt with him.
So he does sometimes try to throw me on twitter and I just don't respond um Uh, I don't I don't think what he's written has very much proof in it.
It is a lot of conjecture I've read some of his stuff not all of it, but i've read a number of pieces and um, he is not connecting dots He's showing you where there's dot lines between things and saying that proves it doesn't prove it not arresting Someone doesn't prove that they're an fbi agent um, and um, and you know, and The ray epps thing.
I don't like that's another example.
I mean, I I i'm sorry to say I don't I don't support those theories I think that stewart rhodes Took a long time to indict because they're ultimately indicting him for seditious conspiracy seditious conspiracy, which is a very serious charge that is Very rarely used and also very rarely successful The government has got its fingers burned a number of times over the years trying to get people in sedition and it failed and I Think they're extremely hesitant to do it and we're going to take their sweet time You know dotting every i crossing every t before they consider doing it The facts in his case are different than the other earthkeepers charge because he did not physically enter the building Um, he was outside and he did Trespass onto onto the grounds, which is itself a misdemeanor But he didn't go in the building and they were reticent I think would have had a difficult time saying he's part of that same conspiracy because he wasn't in the building um the fact that they took You know a year to charge him To me doesn't prove that he's an informant or that it's a cover-up and when bd says things like that I think it's because he's moving to goalposts because for the longest time he said Clearly he's informant because they haven't charged him and then they charge him So now he's got to find something else to explain what he said before.
Otherwise his whole story Clearly, I mean, I think it was this seems to be a strong indication, right?
But it is in the realm of speculation No, why is it as strong?
I mean look, you know me enough to know I base things on facts I don't just write speculative things.
I think pure speculation and just asking questions can be quite dangerous It's a way that sometimes people get you know slammed For committing crimes.
I never committed.
I I gotta say I gotta say I I would I would put his Journalism in the same category of actual journalism and not truth tourism uh with you I think what he does in those pieces is he shows a lot of evidence That these men were not just kind of strolling around between the velvet ropes these few men Removing the fences and picking specific fights with cops at specific times and urging the crowd forward in this way that they clearly had If not something going on with each other there was something going on That you know behind that and then the question was why are they not indicted and one of the Possibilities is because they were actually working for the fbi and doing that in one form or another which I agree with you There's another very plausible explanation and that is just the doj was preparing much more significant charges against some of those people Although i'm not sure You know if it's every single one we're talking about here But I when I talked to him I didn't get the idea that he was just a truther and saying we know that they did it.
He was saying You know essentially there's a history Of cointelpro type ops And it seems suspicious that it's been a year and they're not indicted yet So what gives which I think was fair?
I don't think that's much different than what you do You know It's not like prison planet where you go.
Aha.
Here's what we know based on just total speculation Look, I if you read his articles on when he talks about the michigan thing His reporting involves reading my articles and pulling information from it.
He's not getting new material He's not finding new information He's drawing other people's reporting and then using that to make speculative questions About what what might that might mean and that is a big difference for what I do.
I'm interested in original materials original sourcing interviewing people looking at documents and pulling information from those to present actual facts i'm not interested in speculating on what What things mean it's just a different kind of journalism than what I practice.
That's that's part a part b Um, well, I guess I didn't mean to say that you speculate Forgive me for that because what I really meant to say was that I think that he's honest about the parts We don't know.
I think he can say seems like maybe this is one of the answers that maybe you wouldn't say that but I don't think he says we know that this must be the answer when it's Not clear yet.
You know what I mean?
I mean, there's also a history of him with sewer rose, you know, he he they both were at the bundy standoff in nevada in 2014 Rhodes famously left hightailed out of there when things got icky, which is a very classic roads technique, right?
Rhodes likes to bring people with a lot of bravado into tense situations And when you know the stuff hits the fan, he likes to be the first guy out of there Because he doesn't want to get in trouble.
I mean, he's a he's a crappy I met him one time and that doesn't surprise me at all He's a crappy leader because he gets people fired up He exploits them financially or emotionally or all kinds of other ways and then when it's dangerous for him, he's out of there, right?
He didn't go to the capitol because he was smart enough Well, he thought he was smart enough to know that he would get in trouble.
It worked out.
He got in trouble Anyway, but that's the kind of guy he is and the story goes that bd was very angry with roads for hightailing out of there and was upset that he abandoned the movement and that There's been a garage match between them since 2014 because of that and then he has a personal axe to grind against roads Um, but there's lots of people who were in dc I mean ali alexander hasn't been you know, hasn't been charged.
Is he a fbi informant?
You know, there's there's tons of people Roger stone was in dc and he's all the place.
He didn't get charged Was he an fbi informant the fact that someone wasn't charged doesn't is not you know Necessarily even even midway a strong evidence that they're an fbi informant Um, I I said earlier in the program.
I don't believe and i've seen zero evidence To show that this was an fbi setup january 6th to me january 6th was a complete total failure of Federal law enforcement of the u.s.
Capitol police, which I think is a ridiculous Organization on so many levels extremely overfunded you tell me why they have an office in tampa and one in san francisco What does that have to do with protecting the capital?
I mean these guys especially in the post 9 11 era you would think there's Some kind of ready team in case a mob tries to storm Something or another the capital or anything else in dc, but no apparently not we'll just sit around but they're just to me they're a classic example of like Of like bureaucratic bloat and like people dipping their hand in lack of accountability and dipping their hands in the public trough They're answerable only to congress.
They're not even the foyer laws don't apply to the u.s.
Capitol police They don't have to tell anyone anything what they do.
They have a budget larger than the detroit police department um to protect two square miles They already had the office in san francisco and then for reasons I still don't understand After january 6th, they convinced congress to fund them opening an office in tampa What I mean, that's a it's a ridiculous bloated organization that was ill prepared for anything and what is that so you can learn counterinsurgency from the special operations committee or the CENTCOM Probably down there.
What is even supposed to be the benefit of that?
I don't know.
It deserves more more poking and I don't want to speak out of school, but it just seems ridiculous So you have an ill-prepared kind of ridiculous organization um You have bad communication in the national guard and u.s.
Capitol police You have a series of like a comedy of errors of stupidity and ill preparedness right and um, and you know, it all it all leads to a crowd that has been in my opinion incited but also It's one of these organic things that something small gets way out of hand And different elements were all required for it to happen You needed groups like oath keepers there Because they have they offer they offer a bit of organization and a bit more aggressiveness But they don't get in without the crowds and the crowds don't get excited and riled up enough unless you have the oath keepers there and it all comes together in a way that you know, I don't think was some massive plan either among the crowds or From the fbi or trying to run some secret op Um, you know, i'm a very much of an occam's razor kind of guy and the simplest most clear explanation is generally the truth and not some incredibly contorted That applies to my analysis of michigan as well.
I don't think that the fbi was trying to undermine trump by doing this.
I mean Some of the agents appear to have maybe democratic tendencies, but some of the agents are very far right wingers So I don't I don't see that kind of political motive, but I see much more boring and prosaic Motives that lead people down the primrose path.
Sure well I mean It's the same thing in both cases at least potentially right like here you have especially as you said coming into the case He said well, I want to find out what's with these militia notes that they would do such thing and they go Oh a lot of informants So you look at the capital and if you found a bunch of informants, you'd probably go.
Ah a bunch of informants With about the same level of shock, right?
I mean Maybe not to put that whole thing on but maybe And and this is something that I think has been a problem as as we just described with robeson here Um, and it's certainly been a problem with the fbi in the past Is they have somebody who's an informant who goes off and does whatever they want?whether it's blow up a federal building or you know murder whoever they want for decades like whitey bulger and all that kind of thing or um You know, it could be that protected people uh people who are embarrassing for their relationship with the fbi Could get away with being part of something like this or you know, that kind of thing's not outside of the realm of Possibility or fair speculation.
I don't think Right, but I mean, let me just let me just give you I agree in theory, but let me give example robeson or the other informant dan I mean there we know they're government informants because the court record shows it like we have documents We have that that prove that they work for the government So when we say the government's trying to hide them it doesn't want them out there It's because they're definitely government informants The government is not happy with how their behavior doesn't doesn't think it'll play well in front of the jury, right?
They're gonna hide it from the jury But but that's the newspaper still knows.
Yeah, right, but that is documented evidence That they were an informant, right?
That's not the same as stewart rhodes wasn't arrested So he must be an informant and the government doesn't want anyone to know and that's why they're indicting him now Because they want to keep his mouth shut because what's missing from that is the part where we have the document showing to be an informant We know that stephen robeson's informant.
It's documented.
It's proven.
There's actual court papers showing We don't have that with with rhodes and that's a huge difference I mean, but I just think that that just means that was why I was just a question was right Is this guy an informant or not?
Do we have documentation?
Let's see if we can find some It's why it's a good question for a reporter to tackle Because don't you think it is kind of interesting that rhodes has been free all these years that they didn't get him for something all this time Look, i've heard rumors about him being an informant long before Even before january 6th ever happened, right?
Okay, and i've been interested in it and i'll tell you i've done reporting on it and i've never seen anything And I spent a long time reporting it and i've never found evidence to anything beyond random speculation That he did it and so therefore I never wrote it.
So that's to me a really important thing Have I thought it have I looked into it 100?
Do I think it's plausible?
Absolutely, right?
Do I have anything to sustain it?
No, and therefore I didn't go and publicly ask the question because the problem is when you publicly ask a question like that Some people are going to take the next step and say it must be true and i'm That's not the world.
I want to live in i'm not going to Put things out there just because i'd sort of like want them to be true or I think that might be true I need some kind of handhold and I don't have it.
Yeah All right, well and so now this uh seditious conspiracy charge they've charged him and how many others with this uh Remember, this is a dozen total.
It's 11 total.
Yeah um and then uh And as you said, this is a they rarely charge people with this because it's really difficult to get a conviction Yeah, if their last several cases they've done this with I think they've lost the government is lost and the government as you probably know That isn't accustomed to losing they have a really high batting average in federal court and so Uh, and it can it can be a career ender for a prosecutor to lose a big case like that So they're they're very hesitant to bring sedition anything close to sedition up in court so now I saw that The idea was that they have these text messages and all this that show That they had brought weapons to dc that they had teams kind of on the periphery prepared to come into the center with the weapons Uh in the event that they were going to try to lock down the capitol building or seize it or some kind of thing um that obviously didn't happen, but that that was part of the plan and that's I believe the conspiracy that they're being charged with there, but then I wonder um, was there much in there or do you know much about Rhodes and the and his men's role on the ground there that day as compared to say for example This guy epps who whispers in the ear of a guy before he picks up the bicycle rack and throws it at the cops and starts that riot and You know breaches the original perimeter there Well, yeah, there's a ton.
There's an enormous amount of evidence The government is holding forward about what the oath keepers did that day And leading up to as far back as november 5th.
So two days after election rhodes is sending He's creating an encrypted leadership what he calls an oath keeper leadership group and he's saying we're going to need to Violence is coming.
We're going to need to take action.
The civil war is coming.
It's inevitable We need this blood's going to run this all from the indictment.
Is that right?
Uh, correct.
Okay, go ahead.
But these are not this is this is you know, these are quoting actual messages They have copies of right and that kind of rhetoric is going on And he's helping people plan specifically for going ultimately to plan to go to dc on the 6th He's organizing people to go he's creating teams He's naming people to be leaders and sub leaders and they're specifically planning for going there and to create The vip protection force but also his quick reaction force which took was across the potomac in virginia He's designated people to To set that up one of them picks a hotel rents three hotel rooms Each room was assigned to it to oath keepers from a different state who were there to stow their weapons The government has evidence in the form of messages, but also video of people bringing weapons into these rooms Um, there's an enormous amount of evidence showing that they plan to be there They were orchestrating a plan to be there to be prepared for violence for what they consider to be civil war And to find different ways to get weapons into dc, which obviously has very restrictive gun laws Um when the time calls so they were all prepared There's other evidence cited in other documents where rose is talking about what non?firearm weapons and defense things they can bring in into dc that day he's talking about what Kind of armor to wear and what kind of things they can bring that's legal.
Um I can't remember exactly what they were but they were different things you could use to club people and things like that I think he said get one of those like long police maglite Flashlights that you can whack people with things like that So there's there's an enormous amount of evidence about them planning and preparing for this And and they're planning to have weapons at the ready if they're needed And then as far as what they did on the ground there that day was did he cross the perimeter at all?
Or he stayed out in the street or what?
He was in the he was on the grounds meaning he wasn't inside that building or even on the on the balconies or whatever but he was um he was In in restricted area and do you know about his five best guys or whatever?
Were they involved in breaking windows and climbing in and all that kind of thing?
They were involved in pushing through a door That was open.
They didn't break windows, but they were and they had two they had two stacks of oath keepers There's audio of them saying push push push and pushing into the building and there was this zello chat They were on this this sort of radio emulation Online thing called zello works like a two-way radio, but it's close to the internet Someone to their bad luck recorded their two hours of conversation that day and so you can hear them saying let's push through Let's get them calling people traitors saying we're in the capital.
Excuse me.
I said a bad word.
We're in the capital That sort of thing so there's there is really a quite a bit I mean, this is of course one of the things that's unique about um uh About this case is there's so much evidence that the government can look at right?
That's not that's not the normal thing, but these people recorded themselves committing what the government thinks are crimes So but that's awkward when you're trying to defend yourself, right when when you actually provided The evidence that the government is going to hold up against yeah, and boy you think about all that cell phone footage there must be a Thousand angles of different time periods of that day of what was going on there and just forget about it I'm, glad that's not my job being a federal cop um You just looking through that stuff I'm, sorry, you mean looking through that stuff, right?
Yeah.
Yeah um, all right, man, well uh Thanks very much Great to have you on the show really appreciate you joining us here today and uh all your great journalism ken It's it's my pleasure and I appreciate you reading it and calling me to do this and I hope you don't mind me Pushing back a little bit in some of this stuff.
I mean, I oh no, absolutely I mean, that's the point of it.
Uh, I ain't always right I'm, just trying to get you to you know, give you a platform to say the right thing.
What uh as far as Uh from your point of view, so it's all good.
Yeah, and I just don't I just I you know, I I i'm waiting for someone to show me any scrap of paper any piece of evidence anywhere if it shows that that ray apps or um Stuart rose are informants show me that and maybe my opinion will change but Beyond that it's just pure speculation All right Well, thanks very much again Take care.
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