The Five Must-See Insurrection Videos
The next wave of January 6 arrests is coming. These damning videos highlight the actions of several people who orchestrated many of the events of that horrible day.
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Thus far, over 320 Trumpists have been arrested for their actions on January 6, 2021, and the DOJ says that more than 100 additional arrests are coming. But what many of us are most anxiously awaiting is not more arrests of lower-middle-class and middle-class Donald Trump supporters—though the massive video archive published by ProPublica confirms that many of these richly deserve indictment and incarceration—but rather the as-yet unaccountable elites who orchestrated the events of January 6.
For instance, we’ve yet to see what sort of accountability, legal or professional, awaits politicians like Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), or Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), all of whom helped strategize and/or incite the events of January 6.
Likewise, one wonders what will become of those civilians who allegedly organized and/or funded many of the events of January 6, among them staunch GOP allies like Julie Jenkins Fancelli, Bianca Gracia, Caroline Wren, Cindy Chafian, Hannah Salem, Maggie Mulvaney, Arina Grossu, Kyle Jane Kremer, Amy Kremer, Rose Tennet and—most critically—Stop the Steal organizers Ali Alexander, Roger Stone and Alex Jones.
And of course America still waits eagerly for the first signs of justice for the Trumps themselves, along with their closest allies and advisers, a list of insurrection-adjacent figures that includes Trump himself, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump, Trump Jr. girlfriend and Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, Katrina Pierson, Corey Lewandowski, Peter Navarro, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Lindell, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn. We know, by and large, what these men and women did on and before January 6; what we don’t know is why the FBI has apparently yet to speak with any of them or seize and search their electronic devices. We don’t know why we are told to cheer the arrests of Trumpist peons even as the powerful, wealthy, and/or influential people who guided their conduct are ignored by federal law enforcement.
As we await the next round of January 6 indictments—hoping that, in the coming weeks and months, we can track advances in the work of the FBI and DOJ by tracing the “operations level” of the defendants they indict (e.g., it is a hopeful sign that more and more conspiracy charges against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been unveiled lately)—here, below, are five videos every American should watch.
In the first video, Roger Stone appears to—shortly after meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in late December 2020—commit the same crime that Proud Boys “sergeant-at-arms” Ethan Nordean, a Stone associate, was recently arrested for: trying to raise money, via donations, for “protective gear” for groups at the forefront of the January 6 insurrection. The money Stone raised is believed to have gone towards armaments, tactical vests, communications equipment, and other essential military-style gear for the men and women who assaulted the U.S. Capitol, paramilitary-style, on January 6. Many of those who both entered the Capitol by force and have since been indicted on conspiracy charges relating to the insurrection have in the past been associated with Stone as personal bodyguards or political associates, so frankly there’s little mystery left about who Stone was raising money for in the video below and what was done with that money by the people it went to who are now federal defendants.
In the second video, Stone’s fellow Stop the Steal co-organizer Alex Jones concedes that in the days before January 6 he was directly coordinating with the White House about the logistics of the January 6 White House Ellipse event that became an armed insurrection. Indeed, Jones says that the White House was micro-managing the march on the Capitol to such an extent that it was determining who would lead the march and how Trump could swell its ranks by appearing personally at a Stop the Steal event on the Capitol steps (an event billed as the “Wild Protest” in honor of Trump’s harrowing December 2020 promise that on January 6 it’d get “wild” in Washington). Trump’s false promise that he would go to the Capitol on that day—a lie he told publicly to the mob, and privately to Stop the Steal organizers—successfully led to hundreds or even thousands of Trumpist irregulars believing that not only did they have the U.S. president’s blessing in trespassing on federal grounds, but that he’d be present with them (or about to be) as they sought to access the Capitol for the express purpose of delaying a joint session of Congress.
In the third video, Ali Alexander, the third key Stop the Steal organizer leading that domestic terror movement—an entity singularly dedicated to either overturning a democratic election or, as Alexander once put it, “light[ing] the whole shit on fire”—can be heard confessing, mere hours after a January 5 D.C. rally in which he led a chant of “Victory or death!”, that he’d “schemed” the January 6 insurrection alongside three of Trump’s top Congressional allies: Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs. {Note: As the insurrection was unfolding, Alexander posted an extraordinary video in which said calmly, “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this.”}
Brooks was invited to speak alongside Trump on January 6 by White House Political Director Brian Jack, according to Brooks himself. None of Stop the Steal’s three co-conspirators in Congress would have proceeded with their plans for January 6 without green-lighting them with the White House, first. Alexander’s video—actually a run of three videos, all filled with vile confessions—are more direct than you’d ever imagine:
But it’s not clear that Alexander needed Gosar, Brooks, or Biggs to get in touch with the White House. On December 19, 2020, he claimed at a rally that he was in contact with “people from the White House”, and he has since said that he spoke to Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle on January 5—just as Guilfoyle was at a strategy session at Trump International Hotel focused on Team Trump’s game plan for the next day.
In the fourth video, the supposition above—about contacts between Alexander’s co-conspirators Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs and the White House—seems to be confirmed, as we see newly elected Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia exiting the White House in late December after what she refers to as a “planning session” focused on stopping the “stolen” 2020 election (an echo of the rhetoric from Gosar, Brooks, Biggs, and their allies in Alexander’s Stop the Steal group). The New York Times confirms that Gosar, Biggs and Brooks were at the White House with President Trump that night alongside Greene.
In the fifth video, one of the attendees at a 20-person January 5, 2021 meeting inside Trump’s “private residence” at Trump International Hotel, Txtwire CEO Daniel Beck, describes the attendance, at that meeting, of “several” United States senators:
While Beck lists just a few of the attendees at this war council–like pre-insurrection event, Charles W. Herbster, a Nebraska gubernatorial candidate and another attendee at the January 5 event—also, critically, a Trump administration official at the time—has listed many more attendees. To be clear, there is no indication that Daniel Beck was involved in any wrongdoing, nor that Herbster was; but the same cannot be said of Stone, Jones, Alexander, or many of the others who attended the January 5 meeting Beck speaks of above either in-person or (like Alexander) via telephone. At least one of the attendees has already been caught lying about his presence at Trump’s Washington hotel that night.
If you’re familiar with these videos, you’re ready for what’s hopefully coming eventually—perhaps even in the coming months—from the Department of Justice and the FBI.
The jackals are still roaming free. Do we, will we, can we summon the courage to hold them accountable? If we do not we are asking for a repeat performance. That it is taking so long to bring indictments against those public officials (Trump, Guiliani, Brooks, Tuberville, Cruz, et al), those notorious performance characters (Stone, Jones, Guilfoyle, et al) as well as the idiot tools that did the actual deed, is very troubling.
With all due respect Seth, I am sometimes perplexed, given your knowledge, expertise, and analytical perspective, that you do not speak to how past complicity of the FBI, as evidenced by betrayal of country by Mueller, Comey, and perhaps Wray, is not also current complicity. Could this not help to explain the reluctance to investigate the top of this crime ring? Meeting the events of 1/6 with silence. To proceed with no significant communication with the public about the ongoing investigation? Quite the opposite compared the FBI response to 9/11.
Speaking of, why did Mueller stall the 9/11 investigation of the FBI? Why did Mueller retreat from investigating Trump?
Why did Comey play into the hand of Russia to steal the 2016 election? Why did he advocate for Biden to pardon Trump in the name of unity? I don’t think so.
Why is Wray virtually silent?
It seems to me, and a lot of people much smarter, that American intelligence must investigate themselves and no one is willing to step out of line to do so. They fear that the truth would ruin them, the elite, and that’s true.
For instance, the vast majority of recommendations following the 9/11 commission were sidelined. How is it possible to believe the FBI (as an institution not individual skilled people of integrity) hasn’t faltered further?
On one hand, I appreciate that you speak with optimism with respect to the prospect of justice and accountability. I feel the same about others who do. Perhaps, there must be at least an attempt at hope. On the other, I do not find it realistic. Why would I believe justice will come to fruition when a long series of events doesn’t lend to that conclusion?
Please know my comments are not a criticism of you, the human Seth, nor of your work, but a request for clarity and understanding.
Thank you.