Consider This from NPR - NPR Traces California Yoga Teacher's Alleged Path To The Capitol Riot

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

NPR's Tom Dreisbach reports on the story of Alan Hostetter, a former police chief and yoga instructor from California who's now facing conspiracy charges for his alleged role in the U.S. Capitol riot. Hostetter is one of more than 500 people facing charges related to January 6th. Hear more about how prosecutors are proceeding from NPR's Ryan Lucas and the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen via Apple, Google, Spotify, or Pocket Casts.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's now been more than six months since insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol. And in that time, Republicans foiled a plan for a bipartisan commission to investigate what happened that day. Now Democrats have moved to Plan B. We have to get to the bottom of finding out all the things that went wrong on January 6th. At least that's what a House Select Committee, chaired by Democrat Benny Thompson of Mississippi, will try to do. Democrats voted to establish that committee last week. It will have 13 members, eight of them appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Another thing the committee will have? Subpoena power. The question is, will Democrats use it on their fellow lawmakers? There's nothing sacrosanct in this review that won't be brought out in the end.

Some Democrats in Congress would like to hear from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who has never revealed the full details of his phone call with President Trump on January 6th. One GOP representative later claimed that when McCarthy asked Trump to call off the riot that day, the president replied, quote, Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are. Now, there are also plenty of people from the Trump White House who have never spoken publicly about January 6th. But we don't know how soon the committee could get started. As of Wednesday afternoon, Nancy Pelosi was still waiting for Republicans to appoint five members of their own.

Well, we'd hope that they would choose them expeditiously. The goal, she said, is not just to find out what happened on January 6th, but to paint a clearer picture of what motivated the insurrectionists in the first place at a time when the FBI has warned about the growing threat of domestic terrorism. Their purpose is not any phone call that McCarthy made or something like that. It's about protecting our country from the negative forces that provoked that attack on the Capitol. Consider this.

Democrats are just beginning a push to learn more about January 6th. In the meantime, NPR dug deep into the past of one man charged with storming the Capitol to understand the forces that allegedly brought him there. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Wednesday, July 7th. Support for this podcast and the following message come from TrackPhone Wireless, It's Wednesday, July 7th. Learn more at trackphone.com. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Keap. Grow your business with sales and marketing automation for serious entrepreneurs. Keap has everything you need to organize client info, follow up fast, and automate sales. Learn more at keap.com slash NPR.

Capitalism touches every part of our lives. Capitalism is a giant force that i don't understand i feel that it's a very safe system i am constantly in fear of losing my job it is our biggest success and our biggest failure on this special series from through line capitalism listen now to the through line podcast from npr it's consider This from NPR. The FBI said this week it's still looking for about 300 people believed to have committed violent acts on the Capitol grounds, including more than 200 who assaulted police officers. Hundreds more have already been charged. We have close to 500 arrests. We have all of our field offices fully engaged, and the amount of manpower devoted to it

is extremely significant for one attack, absolutely. FBI Director Christopher Wray made those remarks three weeks ago. Since then, the number of arrests, well, it's climbed above the 500 mark, which means investigators are still arresting and charging more people every week. The handful of defendants who have already pleaded guilty provide a roadmap for where the hundreds of those other cases are likely to go. Take the case of Anna Morgan Lloyd, a 49-year-old grandmother from Indiana. She spent around 10 minutes in the hallways of the Capitol on January 6th, a day she described as, quote, the best day ever.

An Indiana woman avoids jail time as the first defendant sentenced for the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. She pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of picketing, parading, or demonstrating in the Capitol. She received three years of probation and 120 hours of community service. Her attorney, Heather Shaner, told NPR it was a fair outcome. I mean, I think 120 hours of community service and a long period of probation will do a whole lot more for the community where she lives than putting her in jail for six months. On the other side of the January 6th spectrum are people charged with criminal conspiracy.

Those include alleged members or associates of far-right groups, the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, the Three Percenters. The FBI says that last group is born of the myth that only 3% of American colonists took up arms against the British during the American Revolution. They believe that a small force of well-armed and prepared members with just cause can overthrow a tyrannical government. Prosecutors say Alan Hostetter went to the Capitol on January 6th trying to do just that. He's a former police chief turned yoga instructor from Southern California. NPR's Tom Dreisbach tried to learn more about the path he took to Washington, D.C. Less than two years before he faced a sweeping criminal indictment for alleged conspiracy, this was Alan Hostetter. Take a slow, full breath in through your nostrils.

Hold it at the top and then open your mouth and let the breath go. In the last several years, Hostetter has been a yoga and meditation teacher and self-described sound healer in Orange County. His life had actually taken several turns before then. He was in the Army in the 80s, a cop in the 90s and 2000s, became a police chief in 2009, and retired less than a year later in the small beach city of San Clemente. It's the kind of place with benches engraved with sayings like,

May every sunset bring you peace. And Hostetter seemed to fit in. He had long salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a ponytail, big beard, and in his videos, he would wear these flowing white tunics. One person who went to a Hostetter sound healing class in 2019 told me, quote, He was like pure love.

But that person did not want to go on tape. They were afraid of backlash because of what happened next. But I've never in my wildest dreams thought that I would actually be in a position to have to defend my fellow countrymen and women from domestic enemies. That's right.

But damn it, I'm doing it now. When COVID-19 broke out, Orange County saw a surge of anti-lockdown protests, and Hostetter was there from the beginning. Most people I spoke to, on the left and right, agree that the moment that turned Hostetter into a leader of this movement came in May of 2020. And I'm going to attempt to enter into that fence with a socket wrench and a 9-16 socket. And I'm going to begin the process of dismantling that fence. San Clemente had put up a chain-link fence by the city's pier to discourage people from congregating.

So Hostetter grabbed a piece of that fence and held on. Sheriff's deputies eventually had to cut a hand-shaped hole in the fence so they could handcuff him and arrest him, while protesters cheered him on. The Orange County Sheriff's Department says eight people were arrested that day, including one man in his 70s. That man told me the experience made him view Hostetter as a hero. To others, it was a reckless act during a deadly pandemic. Now more than 5,000 people have died of COVID in Orange County. Some people protested lockdowns because of the effect on their jobs, but Haas at a record show earns about $150,000 every year from his government pension.

He was more focused on what he viewed as tyrannical government overreach. One of his protest targets was the Democratic mayor of Costa Mesa, Katrina Foley. He and others showed up at her house, where she was leading a city council meeting by Zoom. You could hear them, you know, yelling, fire Foley and no mask mandates, mask kill people. COVID isn't real. In all your career in politics, have you ever experienced something like that before? Never. Foley said that during another protest outside her home, they harassed her son.

Foley's family wasn't the only target. In the middle of a pandemic, Orange County's health officer resigned after receiving similar threats. This area has a history of far-right activism, but locals told me Hostetter is a uniquely compelling figure. He could bring together disparate groups, yoga students sometimes skeptical of mainstream medicine, and pro-police conservatives. And Hostetter's rhetoric seemed to get increasingly violent. At a rally in July 2020, he said if the founding fathers were alive, they would violently overthrow California Governor Gavin Newsom. They would have dragged that bastard out by his hair.

They would have drug him into the town square. They would have given him a choice. They would have said, Gavin, you can be hung or you can be torn and feathered and banished. Pick one. One audience member yelled, hang him. Hostetter then said that he was not actually endorsing violence. After January 6th, this type of language got the attention of federal prosecutors. But at the time, Hostetter campaigned alongside and introduced major candidates

and officeholders for city council, school board, state assembly, and even Congress. After Joe Biden won the presidential election, Hostetter's focus turned from COVID to overturning what he viewed, against all evidence, as a stolen election. That's not hyperbole when we call it tyranny. That's f***ing tyranny. And tyrants and treason, traitors need to be executed as an example. This is from a video Hostetter posted last November while driving to a pro-Trump rally. Prosecutors alleged that around this time, Hostetter was participating in encrypted chats with members of a far-right militia group called the Three Percenters. They allegedly discussed plans to bring body armor, hatchets, and guns to D.C.

for January 6th. It's unclear whether Hostetter actually did bring guns. We are at war in this country. We are at war. Tomorrow a million... On the day before the insurrection, Hostetter spoke at the Rally to Save America in front of the Supreme Court. He was wearing a fedora with an American flag on it. I will see you all tomorrow at the front lines. We are taking our country back. Thank you all for being here. Infowars host Alex Jones and Trump advisor Roger Stone also spoke at the event. One speaker said Hostetter's group helped pay for the event and said it could not have happened without him.

We're on the march heading from the hotel to the Ellipse. We are not actually going to be going into the Ellipse because we have some personal protective gear and backpacks and things of that nature that they won't allow in. So we're going to get as close as we can. On the morning of January 6th, Hostetter watched Donald Trump's speech and then marched to the Capitol. Right now, patriots dominate the city of Washington, D.C. Prosecutors say Hostetter pushed along with the mob into restricted areas on the West Terrace of the Capitol, but did not go inside. He did post a photo of himself outside the building, along with a friend who was wearing body armor and a knife.

Hostetter called the insurrection, quote, the shot heard round the world, and said, we are just getting started. Five months later, Hostetter was arrested on charges of conspiracy. He remains free pending trial, and he has pleaded not guilty. He said he actually never met the militiaman he's been charged with and says the whole insurrection was a setup by the so-called deep state. So I stopped by his apartment in San Clemente to try to talk to him. I rang the doorbell twice.

Okay, no answer. So I stepped away to write a note and leave a business card. Then Hostetter came out. Oh, sir. Mr. Hostetter. Wrong guy. The former police officer turned yogi, turned protest leader, turned Capitol riot defendant is very recognizable.

I know it's not the wrong guy, but if you don't want to talk, I understand. He got into an SUV and before leaving, he rolled down his window to say something. The world's about to change, my friend. He said, the whole world's about to change, my friend. What do you mean by that? Watch the news. Things are about to get real interesting. Then he said, watch the news. Things are about to get real interesting. And he drove off.

When I sent him a message later, he declined an interview because NPR is, quote, fake news. He sent a link to a clip from a movie called Law Abiding Citizen. I'm going to bring the whole f***ing diseased corrupt temple down. The movie's about a guy who goes on a vigilante rampage. It's got to be biblical. The guy tortures and kills police, prosecutors, and even a judge. It's popular among believers of QAnon. I asked Hostetter if he was trying to imply something by sending it,

and he did not reply. That's NPR's Tom Dreisbach. You also heard reporting this episode from Ryan Lucas, Justice Department correspondent for NPR. He's been reporting on prosecutions related to January 6th. You can hear more about that and about the House committee probe correspondent for NPR. He's been reporting on prosecutions related to January 6th. You can hear more about that and about the House committee probe in the NPR Politics podcast. You can look for a link in our episode notes.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.