QAA Podcast - Operation Puppet Master - A Pilled Government’s Investigation (386)

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Travis takes Jake and Liv inside Operation Puppet Master, Homeland Security Investigations’ months-long effort to uncover the supposed command structure and funding behind Minnesota’s anti-ICE protests. Undercover agents entered meetings and Signal chats, tailed activists, and searched union and nonprofit finances. Reports released in the case against 15 activists reveal the bizarre amount of government resources poured into surveilling people in Minnesota, including one instance in which 21 agents spent two hours staking out a “de-arrest” training session that had already been canceled. The crew examines what happens when QAnon-style paranoia acquires federal badges, undercover agents, and subpoena power. Sant et al Indictment https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1446251/dl?inline December 2025 Undercover-Agent Activity: ICEWatch, Upstander, Sunrise and Rapid Response https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.12.pdf January 1–26 Undercover Activity Operation Puppet Master Version https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.25.pdf February 1 TCDA “Art Club” Meeting and Fundraising Discussion https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.21.pdf February 22 Loring Park Surveillance of the Canceled “De-Arrest” Training https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.15.pdf March 28 Surveillance of Eventual Defendants at the No Kings Demonstration https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.23.pdf April 14 Surveillance Outside a DAMN Meeting at St. John’s Church https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.17.pdf January 31 Sunrise Movement Meeting at Minneapolis Public Library https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.11.pdf February 2 “50501 Minnesota” Meeting at Augsburg Park Library https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.16.pdf February 10 Virtual Panel: “ICE Brutality: Responding to State Violence and the Machinery of Fear” https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.13.pdf March 9 Whipple Watch Training https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.20.pdf March 15 Virtual DAMN Meeting https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.31.pdf May 28 “Left Jab” Anti-Racist Boxing Class https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.19.pdf Defendant’s Motion for Discovery https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.0.pdf Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

If you're hearing this, well done. You found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, episode 386. Operation Puppet Master, appealed government's investigation. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky. Liv Ekar. And Travis Vue. This is a tantalizing title, Travis.

I must say. I have no idea what's to come. I'm coming in totally blind. I don't know about you, Liv. Yeah, before we started recording, Jake was like, I wonder if this is good news or bad news. I wonder if this is going to be more information about it. Maybe one time we start recording an episode and it's actually good news.

I don't know. I'm also holding out hope. It's just like coming to work is like, and I use the word work very loosely because it's very fun and I am the most grateful every day that I get to do this for a living. But like coming to work, you really, it's a grabback. Like, you never know if you. you're going to be like very quiet afterwards or like kind of depressed or or shocked or like mad. Like some new way in which the world is deteriorating and reality is degrading, you know, one, one pixel at a time.

You know, I think that just for Fawn to switch things up, we should do an episode that's all sunshine and puppies just because, you know, it's, yeah, it is kind of unrelenting. But, you know, it's the kind of stuff I'm interested in. Yeah, I could think of something. And it's, of course, only, like, the people that you hate, lives are getting worse. That's the only thing that brings us, like, any joy is just we're like young siblings. And, like, one brother is, like, in a tantrum with the parents. And the other brother is like, oh, like, mommy dearest, can I get you? Like, can I get you something else?

Like, you know, just really needling it in. It's like being one of the three stooges when the other one gets poked in the eye. You're like, that's hilarious. Yeah, are they like the jackass, like, cast member who, like, doesn't have to get, you know, like, jumper cables attached to their nuts? Yeah. But we digress. Travis, please. What are we in store for this afternoon?

Well, yeah, I want to talk about, I think it's a most interesting topic, talking about conspiracism. It's about what happens when the people with, like, the power, you know, and the influence and, you know, and the mandate of government are kind of. of Pilled and then pursue investigations with these Pilled assumptions. It's like they're kind of Marjorie Taylor greening themselves. Yeah. For a certain respect. Yeah, it's not great. So, I mean, yeah, this is based upon a bunch of documents that have just been released

this past week. And it's, I haven't seen, I haven't seen anyone go through them that thoroughly. I'm going to try and do my, I've, I read through like a ton of them. So I mean, I want to summarize what they reveal about this Pilled government. Excellent. Yes, this was always my like greatest fear is that. that like when all else failed that the, that appealed government would create a Q&A. You know, they would use it as almost like a model and sort of, oh, God, there's a smart,

there's a smart term to describe this self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe, is what I'm looking for. Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. On January 8th of this year, press secretary Caroline Leavitt and vice president J.D. Vance held a press conference one day after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. During the press conference, Vance revealed certain assumptions of the administration when it came to how protests are organized. Vice President Vance, you just suggested that this woman who was killed, Renee Good, is part of a broader left-wing network. Who do you think is behind this broader left-wing network? Well, it's one of the things we're going to have to figure out.

But here's the way that I put it, when somebody throws a brick at an ice agent or somebody tries to run over an ice agent, who paid for the brick? and who told protesters to show up and engage in violent activity against our law enforcement officers? Who paid for the brick? Who paid for the brick? Is he literally doing the like brick pat? This feels like an old conspiracy and not even a very exciting one from like, I don't know, like eight years ago. It's a good example of like a fallacy in the conspiratorial, like, minded way of looking at the world of like, it can't just be that someone saw a nice officer and saw a brick and was like, I know what I have to do. Someone paid for the brick.

Look, look, look, in city areas, we don't have things like bricks. There are heavy objects just laying around. Everything is perfectly in order. No pieces are missing. There's not like you could pick up a piece of debris off a ground in a major city on a major sidewalk and chuck it, you know, in the direction of your choice. Yes, American infrastructure is not crumbling. There's no bricks laying around. There is no bricks.

If they're there, they must have been well organized. a palette as if they came from, look, I don't want to name any names. Let's just call him G. Soros. Wait, wait, wait, that's too obvious. We'll call him George S. That's an old Simpsons joke for you, Travis. Yeah, I think, yeah, he's like working on the assumption that, like, all of these left-wing agitators, like, man, I sure would love to do violence against federal officers, but there's just

no bricks. I don't have the brick budget. Yeah, how the hell am I supposed to knock this guy in the nagging with no bricks? You said three stooges and it just got me thinking. Now, later in the same briefing, Vance acknowledged that he didn't have any evidence that Good had been personally paid to protest. But, you know, that question, who paid for the brick assumes that criminal activity is receiving outside financing. And the question, who told protesters to show up and engage in violent activity works on the assumption that people in the street are just the visible part of a command and control structure. In other words, a well-funded and organized criminal conspiracy.

FBI director Cash Patel also expressed similar ideas during a October 8th Antifa roundtable. What we are doing at the FBI is simple. It does not require rocket science. We are following the money. Money never lies. And that's what is going to take to bring down this network of organized criminal thugs, gangbangers, and yes, domestic terrorists, because that's what they are. We, in this FBI, will go after it. the criminals with the vengeance. We will not rest until we find every single seed, money,

donor, organization, and funding mechanism that we have. Brother, this isn't an audition tape. You are the director of the FBI. Like, he doesn't sound like he has any idea what he's doing. Oh, my Lord. Now, this policy is consistent with Trump's presidential memo NSPM 7, which says this. This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge. merge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies, including the organized structures,

networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them is required. We will find the Foot Clan. Don't worry, there's somewhere in the sewers. This paranoia that protests is inorganic and violence is explained by a conspiracy has left many people concerned that the government would pursue investigations and prosecutions that are not proportional to any actual threats to public safety, but would instead lead to investigations that are more proportional to their paranoid fever dreams of a well-funded hierarchical Antifa organization that is carrying out a conspiracy to destroy the country. According to recently available documents related to a grand jury indictment, I believe that those concerns have been realized. Homeland Security Investigations formally opened an investigation into left-wing groups in Minnesota 20 days after Vance asked who paid for the brick. But as Vance no doubt knew, Homeland Security had already sent undercover agents to meetings of organizers a month prior to that press conference. A report later stated,

The objective of these activities was to gather intelligence regarding any organized networks of The official name of the investigation was Operation Puppet Master. Isn't the point of like an operation named so that like people don't know what you're doing? Oh my God. It would be like instead of Operation C-Line, it was like Operation Invade Britain by the Water. It's true. This one's a little on the nose. Yeah, who's the puppet master of Antifa?

You know what? Congratulations. They're never going to solve that investigation and it's going to keep them busy for a while. So I feel like that's a win for them. Yeah, just the name indicates that, like, Department of Homeland Security was operating on the assumption that the protesters in Minnesota were being pulled by puppet string. So they were tasked with going out and finding the puppet master.

Mm-hmm. Or as DHS put it in their investigation report. Homeland Security Investigations, HSI, St. Paul, has identified an organized network of conspirators operating through online and in-person who are providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators involved in impeding federal law enforcement, rioting, destruction of federal property, and assaults on federal agents and officers. HSI St. Paul is actively conducting a thorough financial investigation to uncover the funding sources used by these groups and to detect any illicit transactions

enabling further criminal acts. HSI St. Paul will use the results of this financial investigation to identify those responsible, disrupt ongoing and future unlawful activities, and pursue prosecution of the individuals involved. Undercover agents attended public training sessions, union meetings, library gatherings, church events, and an anti-racist beginner boxing class. The recorded meetings entered signal groups, photographed license plates, built dossiers on attendees and pursued financial records from unions and nonprofits. A grand jury would eventually indict 15 people associated with direct action Minnesota.

The indictment alleges that the defendants were involved in coordinated blockades, following federal agents, threats, vehicle damage, and in one instance, an alleged vehicle assault that caused bodily injury. All 15 defendants are charged with conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, and that is the only charge against 11 of them. Now, despite the name, the charge doesn't necessitate that the participants in the conspiracy were the puppets or the puppeteers of a vast scheme. A legal conspiracy can be decentralized or horizontally structured. Every defendant has pleaded not guilty. Nice. Now, the investigation eventually produced a PowerPoint slide with direct action Minnesota in the center

in 18 organizations radiating around it. There are unions and, like, teacher organizations, socialist organizations. There's Veterans for Peace. There's a gun club, and there's also the Greece Pit Bicycle collective. That's the center of biker clubs. Mm-hmm. It is kind of a shame that, like, this is fake, that they're like, isn't a conspiracy? Yeah. Like the federal government has to worry less than it does. I mean, you know, obviously the

overestimation is tactical. Yeah. This is just, I mean, to me, this seems like a group of people who hate the government and exercising their free speech. You know, to talk about how much they hate the government and where to mean and what to do and how to push back against it. I mean, which, you know, technically the right wing has always been fighting for the right to do, by the way. This is like the stuff like that when a tyrannical government is planning undercover agents in your community and trying to like pin you with crime so they can take you you know take you out of your life like i mean this this is exactly what you know i was told by right wing extremist to be afraid of if i'm not mistaken well it's because they knew it's like damn if i get in par i know i know

exactly what i would do so you know now now the title of the slides was just the conspiracy none of these 18 organizations have been charged as like entities the lines of the slide appear to like represent overlapping membership or affiliation, not payments or a chain of command or anything like that. A Homeland Security agent admitted that the chart depicts overlapping membership, not a conspiracy when they testified to the grand jury. This is kind of a breakdown. Like I mentioned earlier with members of Direct Action Minnesota being associated with other organizations through the course of the investigation. This is just a snapshot of some of the other organizations that members are affiliated with

that kind of comprise and make up Direct Action Minnesota. But when the chart became public through a defense filing, it was like reinterpreted by conspiracists online. The Twitter account amused said this of the chart. Hammer of justice. Through an operation called Puppetmaster, the DOJ has exposed 18 far-left groups, including the AFL, CIO and SEIU unions, revolutionary groups and Antifa. Again, it's like I fucking wish. Yeah. There's nothing here.

Yeah. Yeah, they're not as organized as you might think. We could be wrapped up in something like they could call us. They could say that we're like Antifa Radio, you know? So, again, this is nonsense. None of the groups were charged. This is just organizations that the defendants were allegedly affiliated with. Now, setting aside the fact that indictment is not a conviction.

It's like saying that the DOJ has exposed AAA because one of the defendants has a AAA card. Oh, I see. All right. So AAA is funding? Well, they would have. access to bricks potentially, dead batteries. The administration began with the premise that opposition to ICE could not be organic, and that premise authorized an investigation, and the investigation produced this conspiracy

chart, and the chart was then circulated as proof of the original premise. So today we're going to be talking about Operation Puppet Master, about what it looks like when a conspiracy theory acquires undercover agents and subpoena power. This all feels very late Russian Empire kind of coded, like the Akrona and just like absurd, I think that's how you pronounce it, and these just like absurd conspiracies. Only like here, again, like the actual activities of revolutionaries is way less than in that period. I mean, people are like, their response, this is the thing I feel like everyone involved in this.

I've heard of saying that like the response to ICE, like they're happy that there is a response, but that it's been inadequate that like if they really wanted to do a lot more, the actual institutions to push back are like not enough. Like civil society is not really reacting. American society in the contemporary period is very docile. Yeah. Yeah, they back to what. Essentially people back away when ICE execute somebody in the middle of the street instead of, you know, that move that you can do where you put your s over the -hs and sort of.

Okay. Well, all right. Now, we're going to have to censor you. As I say, it's like, Julian Zab censor taking his. All right. I just saw it in a movie recently, or maybe it was like a video game cutscene. I'm not sure. That is very video game cutscene.

you cared it for. It really is. Brad shared this account with me on Instagram that was like video game death scenes and it's wonderful. It's just like every death scene like across like multiple generations of video games. I absolutely love it. No, yeah. You're very proficient in like the god of war cutscene martial art. All right.

Sorry. Let's go on. I'm trying to make jokes because I'm so uncomfortable by all this. Defense attorneys through discovery. have made public several reports of investigation detailing the activities of undercover agents and Operation Puppetmaster and a related investigation called Project Whipple Shield. I was looking around. It's like, well, gee, is there like a difference between like an operation or a project when they

like open the case? And no, there's not a difference. It's just these dorks. They're just going. I was like, oh, right. We're going to call Operation Kickass. And it means nothing. There are 14 of these reports available by my count.

I read through all of them, but this is not all of the investigative activity associated with this operation. There are more that have not been made public yet for various reasons. Maybe we'll see them. Maybe we won't. But the ones that are public reveal a lot about how the government is going about trying to prove that all protests and resistance is the product of a criminal conspiracy. Now, I want to start by talking about the preliminary investigations that led to Operation Puppetmaster. It seems to have started with a single undercover agent who has surveilled online in-person activity. in December. They operated through the signal name peanut butter jelly.

Hold on. Come on. That's exactly what I call Teddy. Really? Yeah, I look at him and I go, oh, peanut butter jelly boy. Yeah, that's exactly so what? They got a tap. They got a tap on my dog. I am really curious how they came up with this is like, oh, this is exactly what Antifa would like. Yeah. I want to see how poorly they did at trying to look like an Antifa left us. Yeah, I want to, I can't wait. I hope there's lots of records. I wonder if it's related to. to peanut butter jelly time. That is something that like a Mormon, like a Mormon undercover FBI agent would think that's like hip and recognizable IP amongst a group of what I guess he believes are like communist terrorists.

Oh man, I don't know. Another example of how the Trump administration is a millennial occupied government. Yeah. They're referencing like classic old internet viral memes. Yeah. Yeah. I can has anarchism. On December 3rd, the agent attended a publicly advertised virtual ice watch training.

According to the report, they urged participants to observe non-violently and obey law enforcement commands while documenting themselves doing so. They also advised not to interview with law enforcement activities and maintain a safe distance as required by law. So this is their first attempt of infiltration. Kind of a bust. Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that's generally what you find is in these institutions, even if there are some radical people, that it's like, we do not have the strength or capacity to like, one also, it's like we know that there's going to be feds listening to these sort of things. Like if you just, to be able to attend this, you can just create a signal account called peanut butter jelly and go so, like, obviously they're not going to be telling you to kill federal agents. So this agent instead intended an in-person meeting on December 7th. This was the upstander legal observer training that took place at the Partnership Academy in Richfield, Minnesota.

This agent later reported at this meeting, they urged participants to observe nonviolently and obey law enforcement commands while documenting themselves doing so. All right. Another bus. Can't imagine. Fuck, yeah.

Very frustrating, I imagine, for this agent. Yeah, one of all. We're 02, but, you know, as the IRA said to Thatcher, we only need to be lucky once. Yeah, they only need to find, like, one violent, even if they're not Antifa, just one violent person in the area, maybe that they can. You know, pin it on.

On December 13th, the agent attended a meeting associated with the Sunrise movement. They reported this. Although one member of Sunrise explained that individuals who followed a nice agent home and shared their personal information caught a case and to not do that, another member of Sunrise explained that although she was not saying Sunrise would do this, it is harder for all participants to be charged with breaking the law. So this is what they got. They just a neutral description of the practicalities of how law enforcement works.

while being upended to, again, another explicit rejection of the idea that they should break the law. Yeah. Sometimes as an institution, I feel like that does a good job at kind of managing and pushing down like more radical younger, like climate activists. That's like, well, let's not do that. So this is not a surprise that it's like, oh, we're floating around to this idea insofar as you're speaking about it. Then being like, well, let's not do that.

That's, they're going to catch a case. Yeah. So I guess if this is like a fishing expedition to find evidence of coordinated, criminal activity, it's not going well so far. If you look hard enough, you're going to find people, maybe not. It sounds like they're having a really tough time in this case, but you're going to find people in every group that are willing to push things a little bit farther. Not because, like, there's somebody telling them to take it that far, but because they in

their own mind have decided that that's the action that they want to take. And it's really hard to sort of like re-engineer that to create some kind of conspiracy. I also do like the Sunrise member explaining, like, not that we should do this, if it did happen. It's like the in-person, the feds are listening version of saying in Minecraft. Yeah. Like, if we did follow them home in Minecraft, like, these are meetings where people know that the feds are listening or that they have to deal with with some sort of possibility that that's the case. After the meeting, the undercover agent was added to the group's announcement chat. After Sunrise canceled a demonstration outside of a hotel because it could not verify that ICE personnel

were staying there, the agent proactively contacted an organizer and offered to help verify hotels. The organizer explained verification methods and offered to train the agent to approach hotel employees. The agent declined. Doesn't sound like very good investigative work if you're declining. Yeah, don't you want to learn their methods?

They probably like, look, you just be really nice. Call them up, just ask and say hey, like, I don't know if you support ICE or not, but we're really trying to figure out, you know, usually you'll get somebody who's like, probably it's like, here's the best like most legal way to go about this. Like it won't always work.

they were like, ah, yeah, okay, oh yeah, I'm not interested in learning any more about that. I don't want to see the copy. On December 22nd, the agent attended a meeting of Sunrise Twin Cities via Zoom. There, the agent learned of a proposed noise demonstration and Egan Hotel, where ICE personnel were allegedly staying, and notified management at Homeland Security Investigations. The agent then volunteered for Sunrise's action team, entered its breakout session, learned about chats for use for hotel scouting and checking suspected ICE license plates, and was added to a related signal chat. According to a defendant's filing, peanut butter jelly said this to a signal chat that they infiltrated. Also, V interested in the financial organizing piece. I like numbers and data. And marrying that together with propaganda, so I would love to work on both sides of these groups,

exclamation point, exclamation point. One, I do love the zoomer cadence here. I think it was smart to get me to read these off. That's probably someone who looks like me is probably who they're using both sides of these groups like they are really not trying very hard yeah i like it's like oh could you tell me about like the financial stuff i'm like in the numbers it's not like anything like serious numbers and data i have numbers and data i'm autistic i'm autistic for paper trails peanut butter jelly also said this as part of a further effort to learn about the financial aspects of the group do you have a suggestion for a donation platform I believe open collective, and the idea of asking our own banks what the looks like was discussed.

So I don't know. I wonder if these typos were deliberate or there. It is actually this person's actually. Yeah, they just, it's honestly hard to know. Given how poor job they have done at trying to infiltrate these grooves. The agent, again, according to a defendant's filing, allegedly offered to design a protest flyer. I mean, this is also where it gets like really shady when they're like proactively like assisting

in the group rather than like, you know, passively surveilling, which is like bad by itself, but like, yeah. On December 26, after a message reported observers' arrests for allegedly following an ice vehicle, the agent followed a posted link into a daily rapid response chat. The agent observed plate check requests, identification of suspected ice vehicles, discussion of following ice vehicles, photographing personnel, and sheltering undocumented people. The report did not describe the agent independently witnessing a completed crime. So this agent worked for all December and didn't find direct evidence of criminal activity or any kind of like central conspiracy.

Yeah, just things that like you could know were happening if you looked on blue sky. Yeah, or like out of your head. Like being like like a nice vehicle. There they are. You know what I mean? Like that's not illegal. You can't you can't just tell people like not to notice the guys. Now it appears however that DHS decided that they just weren't looking hard enough

because they substantially increased their manpower and surveillance in general. No more like Zoomer girls who can't spell things properly. They're like bringing in the big guys this time. Yeah, yeah. They're like only large, bald men with well-groomed facial hair. You know, listeners, if you have that look, obviously, that wasn't meant to dig at you, obviously. All right. It's like, it's not a dig at you, but you look like a cop.

That's all. A report about surveillance activity in January describes at least three numbered undercover agents, plus several unnamed undercover agents, contains 12 episodes preceding the opening of Operation Puppet Master on January 28th. So they probably, the unnamed agents are like still at the like, what, bicycle club, hang around being like, does anyone else want to do you crimes? Yeah, like, there weren't that many organizations to begin with. Now that we find out that there are six agents, it's like, what one in each, did they plant

one in each spot? You know, they attended like a handful of meetings. For example, in a January 5th meeting of Sunrise Movement, participants categorize proposed actions by arrest risk, is saying like, well, if you do this, you're fine. If you do this, you might be arrested. If you do this, you'll definitely be arrested. But the report acknowledges that, like, no definite illegal action was planned. However, Homeland Security investigations interpreted mere discussion of activity that can lead to arrest as indicative of a possible conspiracy to impede law enforcement.

I mean, they do have enough brains to realize that. like, or maybe they don't, I don't know, that like obviously that at a sunrise meeting in relation to ICE of, they know that the feds are listening. Yeah. But like, you know, again, like, lack of evidence isn't an indication there is evidence somewhere further if you keep digging. It's more like this institution is probably not radical enough. Yeah.

They're really barking up the wrong tree here. Yeah, yeah. Also, like, yeah, what has this institution done that's warranted this much resources being poured into it? Like, they don't even have, like, a body count yet, really. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, what are these? You got a couple, like, a couple angry people that are getting together on Discord

and being like, all right, how do we, like, how can we combat this in a way that's satisfying to whatever, how angry you are about the situation? I do think these people just don't realize that people find ice apparel morally. And that, like, even if there is, like, not much on the ground institution or is relatively lacklester on the ground institutions to stop these sort of things, that, like, you will just get people who want to sign up. Like, where do I have to go to learn more so I can participate in ensuring that it's at least slightly harder for ICE to do this? They just cannot conceive of that being true. It's incomprehensible to them. So they're like, they must, you know, again, it's the conspiratorial mindset.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, they're treating just any kind of like organization to advance the interests of their community as suspicious. Because, like, the interpretation of this that makes the federal government a bit more competent is that, like, well, they're going to pretend there's a conspiracy to curtail civil liberties. And, like, there's a respect to which that's also true. but it really does seem like they probably also cannot comprehend that they are this, like, disliked. It's kind of a part of like the mega brain, I feel like that they both like hate and revile the fact that most people hate them, but also just think like, well, no, the silo majority agrees with us. And people actually love ICE and what it's doing in relation to immigration.

So surely the fact that people are outraged by this is it cannot possibly be organic. Yeah, you know, and just thinking about it, it feels like they sort of view ICE as like just like the sheriff's department. and they're like, well, you can't, like, do that to the police. Like, you're going to get killed if you try to run from the police or whatever. But it's like they don't understand that, like, from a civilians perspective, like, ICE is a new, like them being out in the street executing civilians, point blank, is like a new thing that people are seeing. Like, I'm sure Julian would have examples to, to bring up here that are not new. But, like, at least for me, as a casual, I would say average, like American, you know, observer,

I've gotten significantly more radicalized in the face of watching what ICE has done out in the open, I would say, over the last year. And I don't think that they can comprehend that that's happening to a lot more people. Yeah, there's this nuance with Renee Good being killed that like there's respect to which, particularly for more marginalized people, that this has always been the case. And yet like the fact that they are doing it to like opera class white people is a sign of an escalation. even if, like, morally speaking, this is the same despicable empire that's been doing this to people since it's an inception. And there's a through line of them doing this of having this moral character. This is still clearly an escalation.

Yeah, that's what it feels like. And so naturally, you're going to have people that are wanting to discuss that, and you're going to have people that are going to, you know, thank goodness they're going to want to push back against that. Like, you know, I don't have the puts but to sort of like be out in the street. You know, I did when I was younger, but like, I own an. anymore. And like, I'm, I'm grateful for people that are putting themselves in danger and putting themselves in harm's way to stand in opposition to, you know, ICE, including my, my own wife,

who broke the horn on our car, like, honking around a hotel where ICE was at in our neighborhood until, you know, in an effort to get them to leave. And, like, that's all I know about, like, Antifa, an organization and protesters. It's like people on Reddit and online and on social media being, like, let's go be, like, obnoxious in, like, a peaceful way that, like, doesn't hurt anybody. Like that's always the core. And so, of course, fucking dumb ass like Cash Patel and these pilled idiots come in and they're like, yes, this is the violent communism. See, because like it couldn't be more opposite. Yeah, they can't do with the idea that they are generally disliked.

They have to use conspiratorial cope. They're like, no, they must be, Doris must be funding this. Because it's not as if people just fucking hate us. Nobody likes these guys. Even like good friends of mine whose parents were traditionally Republican and maybe on board with Trump like early on have long since. fallen off. Like, it's rare, I feel like, I feel like I got to go online and just, like, read through the trash to find somebody that's still defending these people. People who are outside, like, you know, it feels like they've long grown tired of this bullshit. After several more fruitless

operations, they finally caught a break on January 13th. This was, like, after like a month and a half of undercover surveillance, they reported that they observed a crime. They found a crime. They found a crime. So on that day, five undercover agents were covertly deployed among protesters outside the Whipple building. One of those agents observed and recorded a woman throwing apparent rocks at government vehicles. The agent sent the video to a special agent and the woman was subsequently arrested. Now, I tried to identify the woman being referenced here. And there were, in an earlier announcement, there were 16 federal defendants who were charged with violently assaulting federal officers and property on that day at that particular event. But none of those 16 were described as throwing a rock at a government vehicle.

One woman was described as throwing a brick at officers themselves, but that doesn't match a description of what the undercover agent observed. So as far as I can tell, the DHS deployed five undercover agents to this protest, which led to one arrest and no charges. I'm sure maybe the identity didn't stick. It's just like woman in brown outfit throwing. Yeah, that's possible they got the wrong person. It's like she was planting explode. She was pulling a g- She was throwing a rock

Against a militarized police vehicle. These guys are armed with like, you know, ARs with fucking holocytes on them. And their non-lethal stuff can put your, you know, can make you go blind the rubber rounds. And she's, yeah, okay. I feel like this word is, this term is overused,

but it's a very spiritually Israeli situation. It really is. It's a real, it's a real David. It's a real David and Goliath, if you will. That is like characteristic of all the crimes reported by the undercover agents in these reports. As far as I can tell, there's like maybe four of them total. On January 14th, they reported seeing projectiles and fireworks directed at federal and local officers, but no perpetrator, arrest, or charge identified.

On January 17th, an undercover officer observed a tall man dressed in black, run from the crowd, throw a rock at a stationary federal protective service vehicle, and retreat into the crowd. The information was passed along, and the man was, reportedly arrested, but the report identifies no charge. Of course, like, all of these, I mean, that's it, but like, these are individual violent acts carried by people in public. It is far from evidence of a vast conspiracy that would require an investigation from

undercover agents. Again, once again, like, we also, with people throwing things that are very easy to find, just anyway. Just the most rudimentary weapons. Yeah, these people are just, like, reenacting the banks, you know, the famous sort of banksy sort of thing. A rock is like the first weapon you get in a, in the, you know, in an FPS. This is like the thing where it's like, is the rest spawn.

You can spawn with this and rest. Yeah, it's like use LB. Use LB to just throw a rock and distract the guard. I've been throwing rocks and distracting guards, zombies and stuff in tutorials for decades. You know, this is, come on. If this is what you need six undercover agents to go grab a guy who's throwing a rock at a tank. Oh. Oh, cash.

Cash can tell. Oh, sad. I mean, there is like a functional utility here of like they are trying to, you know, encroach on people's civil liberties and do fascism. And so you want to make sure that like the protest to that are as small as possible. So the bake here or their interpretation of where they're more competent is you really want to shut that down and make sure it doesn't happen. But again, as we see, there's no indication that that sort of escalation was in the books. We didn't have the institutional capacity or like the leftist, the resistance doesn't have the institutional capacity.

to think that that's a good idea. Because if you are just a couple hundred people who are, many of whom are not especially radical, who just don't want this to happen, you realize that, yeah, if you advise people, if you go to the sunrise meeting where anyone can attend and you say, like, we're going to buy guns and we're going to shoot the federal law or whatever, that that's not going to work. Yeah. What struck me through reading this documents is like the extraordinary amount of like

manpower and resources that were deployed for this for very little gain, And even assuming their turn, even if I have thought this was a worthwhile investigation, it was extraordinary waste. I think nothing illustrates this better than the single largest operation described in the documents. And that was HSI's surveillance of de-arrest tactics training that was to take place in Loring Park. So HSI assigned two special operations group teams to surveil it. So SOG 1 contained nine agents and SOG 2 contained 11 agents.

And in addition to that, there was one under-com. cover agent in the park itself. So that is 21 federal agents, surveilling one public event. Half of the people involved in this are feds. It's worse than that. So you might ask, yeah, like, how many people are, like, in this training session? Like, 21, they must have, like, they must have, like, had to be briefed. There was, like, a big meeting room where there was someone with a white board explaining

what they were going to do when they all loaded up in their cars and they all went to the park. I mean, there must have been hundreds of participants. to warrant the deployment of 21 federal agents to surveil them. But the true answer is, there were zero. So, unbeknownst to the agents, like, during this operation, the training had been called off. So according to the HSI's own report, it should be noted that it was later learned that this training was canceled due to inclement weather. So they just didn't get a text.

Yeah, they didn't. They weren't in the group chat for this one. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, their intel on this organization and associated with training wasn't great. This is what people are paying for. Like, they're taking money out of your paycheck to pay for this kind of shit. This is another good example of also why this operation was so stupid is that if they did have

the capacity to have an armed conspiracy, like, you wouldn't get it in on it going to the sunrise meeting. Like, this level of surveillance would not have detected any sort of, like, planned violent conspiracy to attack ice agents. There would be people in black masks who come up, do the violence, and then leave. And you wouldn't have a signal group chat that's easy to get into if you're like, you know, typing as we saw with peanut butter jelly, like that level of engagement, you wouldn't be in on the black block.

Yeah, it's because they're, I think it's because they're not actually looking for a crime. They just want to arrest leftists or self-identified leftists or commies, self-identified communists even. I think that's it. And so like, if they actually were cared about doing intel, somebody would absolutely know that the meeting was called off. The lady from zero dark 30 would have known, you know. She would have known that the meeting was off and all the agents are out.

How much money did that cost? 21 agents or however and however many people. Travis, like you said that we're behind the planning and doing the whiteboards and the, all right, guys, J-Sach's going to be, shit hits the fan. You want to get behind these guys, you know? I'm just quoting Sicario because I saw it the other night. But like, you know, you know, like that probably. happened for this and nobody was there. And if somebody was there, probably a couple yoga mats,

maybe, I don't know. It probably still would have been a bust. Yeah, again, like, what did they, this is like basic how to de-arrest someone 101 meetings. These are not like, you're not deep in the communist organization here. It's not like the guy from the other episode, Travis, who's teaching you how to disarm the two guns at once. It's not like they're even doing like any kind of combat whatsoever. Yeah. I'll say that it was a little surprising that, uh, Homeland Security investigations didn't consider the possibility that this event would be canceled because the temperature at the time peaked at 14 degrees Fahrenheit or, you know, 10 below Celsius for the metric heads out there like Liv.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. It was cold. Yeah, all the terrorists were like too cold. For the Kelvin heads, it's cold. It's very cold. There are also northwest winds of approximately 12 to 18 miles per hour with gusts up to 25. So not a pleasant day at the park. It's a beautiful image. is cold, very cold, very breezy, and they didn't think, it's like, is this event still happening? No, they just posted around this park anyway to try and figure out what was going on. I love the image of just 21 federal agents or however many, just freezing in a cold park, below 10 freezing. And the two Antifa leaders on like a nearby rooftop zooming in with binoculars and like clinking beers and like lighting up a couple of sickies, you know, to like see, you know, we got them.

Or not even. Because I don't think there's even that level of it's literally, they literally just call it. That's the joke. There's nobody there. There's nobody watching them. They're there for their own. They're there for purely their own energy and enjoyment. I want to know about the people involved in this as well, whether they're as stupid and pilled. Because they really do not seem, this is painting a bad image of the FBI. They are very washed compared to their like weather underground days. Well, I would say this. You have to remember, like, these people, they're not.

I feel like if you are, you know, a competent person who wants to pursue a career in federal law enforcement and like you're actually, you know, good at that. You might wind up at the FBI. You might become a special agent. You might join the U.S. Marshals. You're not going to the Department of Homeland Security. That's, that's, these are the C students. Right. I see.

Which is probably maybe why it was the DHS that's setting this as opposed to an FBI. Yeah. It's not real. It's very. So I'm going to summarize the investigation, this two-hour surveillance operation, the report beat by beat, to kind of like illustrate how the finest minds at the DHS are keeping America safe. So surveillance began at approximately 12.30 p.m. And the first report, the first incident reported, it was at 1255. So nothing happened at all for that 25 minutes.

At 1255, an undercover agent sent to the surveillance team a photograph of several parked cars. The agent said the black car behind a red SUV is, quote, possibly the organizer's car. This is like me in a video game when I'm like kind of unsure what the objective is. You know, you've got to like walking around the area for a little. bit trying to figure out what you're supposed to do, like how to unlock the next sort of like a scripted scene. Also probably how they were viewing it. I'm sure if you're a big video game oriented image of reality. Yeah, definitely. At 1258, an agent walked past the black car and reports that it has a temporary South Dakota tag. An HSI analyst attempts to run the tag but cannot obtain a

registration check because it is temporary. At when the wait, another agent sends more photographs of the car and the unidentified man sitting in his driver's seat. Now, at 114, there's a major breakthrough. The black car is identified as a Mitsubishi Mirage hatchback. They have the name, model of the car. They've been out here 45 minutes. Let's go. Black car possibly belongs to the organizers. We know the model now. Can we get an agent in here who knows what cars are? Yeah. Can somebody who's played the recent Forza Horizon 6 get in here and identify this particular model of Mitsubis? And whether it's unlockable. Thank you.

Over. At 116, an agent sees two men believes be associated with the Mitsubishi. One of them is carrying what the report describes as a Tupperware box containing radios. Now, this struck me as very boomer-coded because I, they call any kind of like plastic container Tupperware.

That's true. Tupperware, Tupperware box with radios inside. Not the best place to carry your radios, but. I don't know. At 205, an agent observes a person carrying an anti-ice sign walk to a blue Subaru, put the sign in the trunk, and drive away. HSI runs the Subaru's license plate. Other agents see three people get out of another Subaru carrying anti-ice signs.

Oh, my goodness. Come on, this is profiling. HSI runs that plate. Someone else leaves the pedestrian bridge and gets picked up by a Ford Explorer. HSI runs that plate. An agent decides that a silver Toyota Corolla is, quote, likely associated with the people gathering on the bridge. HSI runs that plate. At 229, with the operation nearly over, agents text in still more licensed plates from a white SUV and a black sedan.

And that's it. That's the end of operation. Nothing is reported about what came of all running all these plates, what the deal is with the radios. The report concludes surveillance was terminated and nothing further to report. And at no point does the report describe an instructor addressing participants or anyone practicing de-arrest techniques. That's what two-hour operation, 21 agents, this is what they got. What does that even mean de-arrest technique? Is that like in GTA when you have to slam Y really quick before the cops get you and you can kind of run away?

I mean, in this context, it means like it's an activist tactic to means to use the power of a crowd to help free a person who has been temporarily detained by police. Yeah, or if they're in the process of getting arrested, someone's kind of yanked out of a crowd and tried to be arrested, you pull them back, basically. Which, yeah, I guess is not a lot. That's illegal, I guess. You get close to finding someone talking about a crime. I guess, but it didn't happen. Yeah, exactly. But the amazing part to me is, like, even more amazing, is that according to the indictment, one of the defendants took part in this de-arrest training session, a paragraph one,

42 of the indictment says this. On or about February 22nd, 2026 at approximately 12.30 p.m., Kennedy and others took part in, quote, D-Arrest training at Loring Park in Minneapolis. So this paragraph is presented as an overt act supporting the alleged conspiracy. So, like, what's going on here? So was the training canceled as the report had investigation states, but despite that, the indictment alleges a defendant of participating in a event that did not happen? Or did the training actually happen per the indictment and the 21 man team at the scene failed to notice it and therefore didn't report any actual training take place? It's like is this shit for brains like HSI agents or shit for brains prosecutors because there's a clear

contradiction there. Is there like one of the plates being ran was owned by the defendant? So it's like they went to the canceled. Yeah, but but doesn't merely say it was it was present at a D-R-R-S training. It says they took part. Yeah. in the DRS training. But how could that happen when it was canceled? And nobody in that 21-man team observed anybody doing any D-Arest training. Yeah. There was another, like, I think maybe more minor discrepancy between, like, the undercover

reports and the indictment that I noticed. So on January 11th, an undercover agent attended an in-person meeting. And there, he says, people planned for an event that was to take place on the 23rd. And it says this. Everyone broke out into groups for the role they were interested in for 123, hard blockade, soft blockade, mass commuting, civil disobedience, and quote-unquote march. This is referenced in the very first overt act described in the indictment, which says this. During the meeting, attendees broke out into the following groups based on their assigned roles

for a January 23rd, 2026 direct action. It's like, you see the difference there? So in the undercover report, the attendees joined groups that they were interested in. But in the indictment, this changes to the attendees joining groups based on their assigned roles. That's good work, Travis. Like, I don't know if there's, like, a legally meaningful distinction between these two descriptions.

But the indictment, the participants are doing actions that they were assigned to do. It implies a kind of like a hierarchy, some sort of like someone following orders. It's much more conspiratorial language because it changes from the attendees individually volunteering to the attendees like doing what they're supposed to do based on their assignment. Yeah, the first text sounds like a group exercise in a class or something. Yeah, let's break out into smaller groups and we can choose which, you know. Yeah, this to me sounds like the guy reading the report was like, hmm, interested in. Like that's not really, he's like, can we say assigned?

Like that's, and the guy's like, but they weren't assigned. He's like, well, were there assigned areas for each of the thing? And the guy was like, well, yeah, they said, go over here for this one. And he goes, okay, you can put a signed in the report. Like, that's what it sounds like to me. It's a little bit of fudge. Yeah. And this was what was presented to the grand jury.

And it's like, yeah, it does sound a lot spookier when like, oh, this group of people went to this organized event and then they were assigned different roles. That's like, that implies a command and control structure. But again, what that says in the indictment is totally different from the idea that like, oh, people were just, they chose what kind of like, you know, role that they could take part in during this event on the 23rd. I wonder if there's no, like, legal distinction there, but then it just sounds spookier. So they're like, well, are they going to correct us on this? Is the defense going to correct us? Yeah.

I mean, I suspect that's, I mean, that's it. I mean, I get, I think part of this, of the point of these investigations and this indictment is to, like, make the conspiracy theory that the government beliefs seem real. So they're going for a rhetorical effect at the very least. Yeah, and doing a very poor job, I will say. Yeah, I mean, again, you can see how like a competent fascist government may try to make a conspiracy appear where there isn't to just like crack down on any dissent whatsoever. But they don't do it like this. This is a much less competent version of that authoritarian fascist plan.

There's another great report which describes how seven named HSI personnel surveilled three of the eventual defendants during the No King's demonstration near the Minnesota State Capitol on March 28th. So here's what a three-man HSI surveillance team observed when they followed one target. 0900 began surveillance. 0940, watch target leave home, enter his vehicle, and depart. Follow target to the state capital area. 0945, watch Target Park near a quote, no king's parking sign and walk toward a large crowd. Agents lost sight of him. 1015.

and in surveillance. All right. Okay. Yeah, so that was that. Then here's what a four-man HSI team observed when they trailed another eventual defendant. 0-900 began surveillance at Target's residence. 10-12.

Watch Target leave home and followed him to McDonald's. 10-20, recorded Target leaving McDonald's. All right. Eight-minute visit two McDonald's on the dots. It's efficient. These people are efficient. They're trying to, they really need to be there to kill all the ice agents. They know, they know they can't spend too much time at McDonald's.

I believe he ordered a McPhish. That's how they got Manji up. If he spent nine minutes with McDonald's, they wouldn't have got him. McDonald's is a fucking op. No wonder they put all those new screens in at once to order on. They're all tracking our locations and recording our fingerprints. Okay, back to the, back to the report. 1029

Watch target return home 1039 Observe two women and one man arrive outside Target's residence Target came outside and spoke with them 1040 One minute later Watch the four walk west and arrive at a bus stop

1045 Target put on a dark red scarf Or beanie covering his head and face Suspicious 1056 watched all four board a bus 1117 Watch them leave the bus near a redacted location.

1122 last observed target joining a large protest crowd where agents lost sight of him. Man, they can't even track these people in a crowd? You'd think that'd be the main thing you want to do is see what they're doing in the crowd. They've been trying to track people in crowds.

I mean, you don't need any technology to do that. Like, we've been tracking people in crowds for a long time. I mean, it's so bizarre. It's like, what the hell convinced, you know, people, somebody, some a manager or administrator at HSI that like observing these people walk around and park and go to the McDonald's was worth a seven-man team only to lose them well I think these guys just didn't want to go to the rally yeah I mean yeah go into the crowd yeah you could just like go into the crowd I think they were just like they didn't care enough maybe they know it's a bullshit op you like they're like I don't want to fucking like hobnob with these blue-haired you know like leftists like let's go home guys let's go

to make let's go back to macdonalds that looked good there may be a contrast between higher ups who are like desperate to find some paper trail here because they promised one at people on the ground who are like why are we doing this i don't i don't understand it's like they're like do you want us to go into the crowd after them and they're like wait and they're like nope nope don't follow so i also want to share one instance from the report of two named special agents in which they almost got made while they're conducting surveillance had a proxious approximately 1840, SA Marco Salterelli and S.A. Jason

Prasnikar were approached by an unidentified male while sitting in S.A. Salteralely's government vehicle. The individual stated that he was part of the community and asked if they were ice. S.A. Salterrelli pointed to a safety vass and hard hat in his vehicle and told them they were not ice. The individual stated, okay, but said he would make sure their license plates were

cleared. There was no further interaction with this individual. So, there was like someone that one of these meetings was at least appropriately suspicious. Nice. They definitely were better. at tracking the ICE agents than the ICE agents were at tracking the terrorists or so-called, I mean. Yeah, it's almost like one group of people wants this way more than the other.

It's just different stakes, different stakes for, like, tracking a group of people who are, like, you obviously know aren't going to be doing much, or they're just purely incompetent. To these people who are quite worried about ICE in their community. Of course, a major objective of this operation was to uncover how these protesters were getting paid, how their bricks were being financed. So what kind of cash flow did the operation on cover? So on February 1st and undercover agent attended a meeting sponsored by Twin Cities Direct Action that was held at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. There, an organizer said that $5,000 was raid for a blockade that was held on January 23rd. According to the report,

the organizer went on to say, out of the approximately 100 people that donated to the blockade, the majority of the funds came from only 20 to 30 people. So they really identified the financiers of this action. Sure, there are lots of people who give small donations, but they're also like 20 to 30 people who have like 100, maybe 150 bucks to spread. Believe it or not, that five grand raised by 100 people is the largest sum of money discussed in any of the reports or the indictment. The indictment also discusses a public go-fund me that had a $10,000 goal and raised 2000. Which, yeah, I mean, nothing that I've seen described in counter protests here

costs anything like more than just like a tank of gas, I feel like. They're not doing anything else. Like, you know, there's organizing. People are showing up because they care. Yeah. I wonder how much the operation, all these operations cost compared to the five G's raised. I mean, when it's all sudden done, it'll be millions. Because again, this is a month-long operation that involves like, you know, dozens of agents. So besides that, the indictment says that one of the defendants was spending his own resources and posted a fundraising link. Another defendant circulated a fundraiser for travel, and there's no mention of how much money was raised, if at all. So, I mean, it sounds like they found like, you know, the $20

of mutual aid that's passed around among anarchists in the area. This is, oh, my God. Talk about a waste. And they're just going to get, I mean, there's no way that they're going to be satisfied. with this level of nothing. I'm afraid that they'll just keep going until they eventually, most likely entrap somebody in some kind of crime and then become like a real nuisance.

Yeah, it wasn't like a small venture. Besides like, yeah, the dozens of agents, analysts and supervisors involved. Like they also involved like financial record searches. There were PayPal Venmo searches. There was facial recognition, vehicle registration workups, undercover electronics and extensive monitoring of signal groups and chat rooms.

And after all of that work, the best they could find for financing was like five grand raised by 100 people and a go-fund me that fell $8,000 short of its goal. Now, the investigation into the assumed financial puppet masters also included an administrative summons to the Services Employees International Union for Fedwire transfers from January 1, 2003 onward, clearly hoping to find that the SEIU was like secretly funding Antifa or something, but search term hits led to ordinary national like union transfers, like stuff like dues, pensions, health care, annuities, investments, strike payments, and strike supplies. HSI also sent administrative demands to the organization of Voices for Racial Justice for

information on their PayPal and Venmo transactions, but nothing from these summons made it into the indictment. So it's safe to assume they didn't find what they were looking for. Spoiler, there's nothing there to look for. They found what's going on, which is concerned people organizing to try to prevent ice in their community. And again, as Travis said, passing around the 20 communal dollars, that's about it. Yeah, I mean, like, I can't imagine that they're, like, actually, like, happy with what they found. I was like, again, I don't know if there's anything else, like, I guess, more dramatic coming down the pipeline.

But really, you indicted, like, a handful of, like, individuals that obviously not receiving any kind of. of outside financing at all. I'm going to follow this case kind of closely because I don't know, it seems remarkably flimsy to me. They're trying to portray and you're just sort of like, you know, general sort of like organization for the sake of their community because they do not like ICE into some kind of criminal conspiracy. Which they would love to do. I mean, if they could do that successfully, it would really nip any real resistance in the bud. So, yeah, this is a, this is a concerning case. How is it going? Do you think as a, no. This is, I mean, like I said, it was just filed last week.

Some of the defense attorneys have successfully requested discovery, and that's why we have all these reports, because we know kind of like the underlying basis for that is being presented for the indictments. But like, yeah, this is just happened this week. I hope these guys get their asses fucking handed to them, that this falls apart and that every single one of these people sues them for wrongful, wrongful prosecution or whatever the legal equivalent, whatever they're able to do, because this is just un-fucking believable. I mean, that seems to be the argument that they are going with that.

This is a nonsense based upon a conspiracy that the government believes. Well, this is, you know, looking forward, hopefully this is another way that we can extract money from the government is after they botched their ridiculous investigations, because they said something was true, before it was true. And so then they had to make it true, which, as we all know, we were all eight once. It doesn't go that well. These people can sue them into oblivion and get paid and make fools out of all of them

and force them to resign, hopefully to be replaced by another creature of Trump's choosing. Yeah. A light in the darkness. I mean, yeah, sometimes, like, you get the question of, like, whatever happened to QAnon

because, like, you know, people used to see it in the news all the time. They don't need more. And, like, for that, like, I usually offer two answers. Like, number one, like, they're still a very active community. of like true believers online. They didn't go away just because it became like too tedious to keep talking about them.

But the second answer is that like Q&on style thinking got absorbed into the government. And I think like Operation Puppet Master is a perfect illustration of this. And like my guess is that the leadership of DHS like got into their heads that there had to be a vast well-financed operation that was like a responsible for protests and criminal activity done response to the ice presence in Minnesota. And like maybe they got that idea because like they're pilled obsoles. or like they're acting on the directive of this pillion administration. And so like the DHS deployed this months long investigation. Didn't find a grand puppet master or some sort of top down funding, but they had to indict someone.

So they got this group of activists who were financing themselves and operating on their own personal initiative because they genuinely, in their bones, really hated ISIS presence in the area. Yeah, I guess I wonder, how much in the indictment itself does it specify that it's related to a grand conspiracy with like lots of money funding because if you specify that in the indictment it's going to be pretty hard to charge people who like no yeah the indictment the indictment is skips all that it doesn't allege like a conspiracy in the sense that this group of people receiving outside financing is more like the allegations that they're all aware of a conspiracy to impede law enforcement and

they willingly entered into it it doesn't say that there's any financing so yeah it's like even the indictment in that sense really it toned down compared to like what the administration was crying to claim what's happening yeah Yeah, I mean, there's nothing new with this insofar as, like, fascists and authoritarians have this conspiratorial way of thinking. But, yeah, a lot of the times when fascists are doing crackdowns, they will have, like, some leftist conspiracy to point to that exists. Whereas, you know, it really doesn't seem like that exists here. Yeah, it's really fucking pathetic. I mean, again, it's like how I'm like the, I can't imagine, I'm really curious what the hell is going on with the scenes.

It's like, someone like pounding their desk. He's like, find me the Soros money or something. I mean, probably that. I mean, it's like you nailed it when you were talking about in the intro of the episode. It's like what happens when conspiracy theorists, especially conspiracy theorists who've built large audiences on social media claiming that they're going to get to the bottom of it, actually get into positions of power. We've quickly discovered that these are not the types of people that are going to come forward

and say, you know what? Fucking actually, there's nothing there, except with the Epstein shit. They did it with that, which is fucking hysterical and terrifying. They were like, looked into it actually, guys. There's really, hey, you know. Yeah. But no, they're just going to create it and be able to say it. And what I think this does is it creates a paper trail within administrations,

creating a precedent of implanting undercover agents in these types of groups going after, or these types of meetings, I would say. It's not even groups. They're just picking organizations that are left-leaning who are angry about ICE invading their neighborhoods and potentially killing people, as they have done in many other neighborhoods. And there's a sense in which that's not new because you can even see. in like the sunrise meetings that it's clear the people talking know that the feds may be listening. The thing that might be new or extraordinary here is that like there was an indictment despite

the fact that they did everything knowing that the feds are listening and aware of what they're doing. So it's like even when you try to follow that rule, they're still going to attempt to charge you. The question is just whether that's going to work. I mean, yeah, I think I think there's a lot of like sunk cost fallacy going on here. It's like you can't if you're some sort of like, you know, a leader at HSI and you are responsible for dozens of agents doing a months-long investigation. You can't go back, you know, to the DHS and say, well, we didn't find anything. Not, yeah, it was like what you said we should look for, wasn't fine. So we're not going to indict any. I don't think we should pursue anything. That's not

going to happen. Again, they have to justify why they were out in the field doing all of this for months. I mean, there already has been like a horrible precedent, not, I guess, in the legal sense of people being charged for just kind of being vaguely involved in anti-ice protests. Like with Daniel, Sanchez Estrada, who was charged for 30 years for like functionally moving magazines, moving anarchist scenes in relation to a protest, wasn't actually present at the Prairieland like ice protest, but was involved vaguely with the people who were and got charged for 30 years as a result of that. Lusacris.

Yeah. I mean, it's like this is, I mean, I feel like this is a message to anyone involved in the activity. Like, the government is pilled and malicious and crazy. And they will, they will spend extraordinary resources to. peek in what you might think is a relatively insignificant meeting. No, they care. They give a shit.

They will be happy to spend like ungodly amounts of money and manpower to peek in on what you're doing. Have you ever walked to your car carrying an anti-ice sign written on a piece of cardboard or poster board? Newsflash hot shot. ICE is fucking watching you. The FBI is tailing you. They're surveilling you.

Like that's crazy to think about. Yeah. Just walking to a protest or being like, oh, you know, what, like, I guess nothing's happening today. Do you want to just go get, like, in and out or something? Okay, cool. And you're walking back to your car and you're, like, hitting the pen or whatever, folding up your sign, just ready to go about your day, being like,

oh, kind of bumped. Like, I was, I had gotten sort of, like, amped up to go out and fucking, like, chant shit. Got all these signs. And meanwhile, there's, like, some FBI agent that's looking at me through binoculars. Like, that's crazy. I'm not a threat. None of these people are.

There is some concern in relation to, like, what happens when we kind of, come to the discovery if this becomes the case that like peaceful liberal protesting it also gets you charged and put in jail for an ungodly amount of time, you know, for life. Like, does that increase how radical people are? If they're like, well, fuck it. If I'm going to, I'm going to get charged anyways. Might as well do something interesting. And is that something the government wants? Is that like, because it seems like they want the conspiracy and it seems like this is a point in which that sort of like anti-government power and organizational energy isn't powerful enough to resist. I mean, if the government has enough funds to pay 21 officers to go to a D-Arrest seminar

that doesn't even exist. Yeah, it's concerning. Yeah, the lack of crime is what's slowing them down, actually. It's like, it's slowing them down because people are like not doing anything. And they're having to manufacture these like kind of very small charges to even get any kind of result. Because I do think the government does realize, and it's pretty clear that they're pushing ICE as a secret police as the angle to devalue the components of the American institutions that are liberal, that care about human rights. And so they know that it's important to, if they want to do fascism, if they want to create a more authoritarian state, to ensure that ICE can do whatever it wants.

That's probably a certain component of why this sort of response is disproportionate. And to add to that, they're already planting multiple special agents into, you know, identified, you know, lightly organized groups. What's the, I mean, what's stopping them from taking it the very easy next step of just having the people that are planted in the groups do the violent thing that they can't get the actual, you know, the actual participants to do? Yeah. Am I getting conspiratorial?

I don't know. Like, I don't think so, given what we've just learned here, based on how far they're willing to go over, over nothing, like a total, a total wash. Yeah, it's not good for. It's not good. It's not good. But you know, what is good? This podcast.

It has been for eight years. We've started in August of 2018, and we're going strong thanks to you. Wow, that's crazy. Eight years? Eight years, yeah. Why does it feel like eight years of Trump somehow? There were four years of Biden in the middle of there somewhere, but I don't remember what happened? Where did he go?

Did we go? Okay. We've only been doing. And let's see, the podcast, well, I guess Trump had already been elected. He had been in office for about a year and a half, right, before Kim Ilan really came into the picture. And he's only been, he's only sort of halfway through his second term. Okay, so that makes sense. We've got four years of Biden and then four of Trump on either side of us.

We've got two and a half more of Trump. It's just, it's been Trump world since 2016. That's the takeaway here. I know. I feel so bad for young people that like all the only politics they know is Trump. There was a time when we didn't give like a fuck about shit. I mean, everybody was generally in agreement that Bush was like a piece of shit. And there was no real argument there.

There was no, everybody kind of hated the government. It was interesting not experiencing any of the like millennial hopium from Obama. Yeah, it's really like old kind of hated Obama when he was kind of toxic politically. True. And then just Trump. Yeah, you didn't experience like Obama winning and thinking that the world, you know, that we were heading on the path to, you know, the picture they use in memes, they're like, oh, if, you know, if markers had never been invented. Yeah, and it's like a futuristic society.

Canadians is slightly different because we had Trudeau in 2015, which was like kind of our Obama. And like, you know, first is tragedy, second as sparse, we get like the black face instead of the black president. Yes. And now he's what? He's like going to Coachella with Katie Perry. Yeah. And we have like functionally a conservative government. So I think that delayed millennial hopium year is also just firmly dead.

It's still better than what we've got going on. And I firmly have my eye planted on Jan 2027 because that is when the Canadian housing ban lifts for Americans. Americans can buy property in Canada starting in 2027, unless they reneg, which I would understand at this point. So that's where we are right now for however many years of Trump world. This podcast, Jake is thinking about buying property in northern BC. Yeah, I got a buddy who lives up in Mississippi. a saga and I went to visit them and oh it was so fun and just like oh it just it just was better somehow maybe it was just different from here and and anywhere different from here feels better right now

because once again you know like I asked at the episode I wonder what's going to happen if we're going to be happy or sad by the end and I'm feeling sad I will say visiting visiting America does feel like just a worse like a slightly off bizarrea Canada for someone who is like norm is Canada it's like you guys are evil in the same way we're evil at a structural level, but like, you see it a bit more, you know. I was at an estate sale the other day, and I went to go check out, and she was like, oh, I accept Zell, and I was like, oh, sweet, I have Zell. I've been using it for years. And I go to get her QR code, and it was like, which account would you like to use Zell for? And I was like, well, the account that I always use it for. And it was like, well, your email is already associated

with a different thing. And I was like, I can't even, I was like, I can't even buy this. What was it? It was a little TV. It was a little, like, tiny little CR, or not a, like, an old LCD TV to play little, little games on. I couldn't even get it because the Zell decided it had logged me out and it didn't want to log me back in. That reminds me of a story when I was on the, like, Coachella shuttle. The person who was, like, driving it had, like, posted the QR code for, like, their Zell or whatever.

And on the announcing thing was, like, if you would like to tip me any more. more, please send me money through my, like, personal money transfer account, which is like a very depressingly American sort of thing. Yeah, and a very nice Canadian thing of you to tick out your phone and be like, all right. I don't have it. The Canadians, we have e-transfer. We do not have any of the, any of the funky applications. Wait a minute.

We have a money sending thing that's nationalized. So I can't use any of the-. Wait a minute. So you can't do like QR codes and Zell or Venmo or like anything basically in America. You can't go to a, you can't go to a garage sale. in America. No, you can, not in America, no. You, you can send someone money if they have a Canadian bank as well and like their number or email, which is a much easier system, but also I can't, I can't send Americans money. But it's just, it's just slightly worse. There's a bit more individualism.

There's a bit less of a safety net. And subsequently, people are like more likely to ask you for tips because they're participating in a shuttle service. And they have to like wait to like two in the morning after everybody trudges out of Sabrina Carpenter, you know, sweat. and their drugs have worn off and oh god and then guys the guys oh god some of the worst guys on the planet live are you going to go back this year i think i'm going back i don't think so i was debating it but it seems like it was just a thing to do and i'm like that's enough america for a little bit enough america i'm so jealous see how things turn out i'm so jealous that you can close the books on america for a little I really wish that was something that I could do.

Travis has the right idea. He lives out in the woods, so maybe I'll do that. If they don't let me purchase in Canada, if things continue to go this route. That's also why I feel going to Hornby Island was like, I just need to live in the woods. Like, even here, you have the same feeling. I feel slightly more, you know, it's a time delay. Canada is just America on like a certain time delay. Like, we'll get our own Trump.

Right. And when that happens, I would like to be in the woods. Yeah, Walden Ponda life. Yeah, I think that's where we're all headed. We're going to the woods. We're all going to the woods. We will be at QAA Radio, Rebel Radio. We'll have a signal out shortly in the next eight years.

The next eight years of doing this podcast. Wow, it's crazy. Yeah, we did launch what, like August 20th, I feel like, something like that? It was actually, yeah, the very first episode was, If you check her Wikipedia page, it was August 11th. August 11, 8-11, better than nine. Listeners, what a joy it has been these past eight years. And we'll keep going until the wheels fall off, obviously.

And that's the falloff of society. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Not of the podcast. When I say the end, I mean, of everything. It won't be long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this show will be the final thumbs up, like, going into the lava. Yeah.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. You can go to patreon.com slash QAA and subscribe for $5 a month to get a whole second premium episode for every regular episode, plus access to our entire archive of premium apps. For everything else, we've got a website. That's QAApodcast.com. Live, where can people see more of your work? You can watch me on YouTube, live there got YouTube.

Louvegar YouTube and on Twitch, TwitchotTV slash Levegar. Hell yeah. Go, go subscribe, folks. And Travis, anything you've got to plug? No, I think I think I'm going to plug, yeah, stepping outside, getting some sun in your face because that's always refreshing to me. Absolutely, me as well. Get on your snakeboard, do a couple laps in the backyard, you know, reconnect with that skater, that former skater in you.

And until then, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. We have auto-kewed content based on your preferences. I think we know that this is not just a story about violence and chaos, as you alluded to, Mr. President. This is a money story. And at the Government Accountability Institute, my colleague and I, Peter Schweitzer, and I, and our team, we followed the money, and we followed it to the top of what we call the protest industrial complex, riot ink. and we found a network of NGOs.

It's not just the Soros network, the Open Society network, it's other funding networks, the Arabella funding network, the Tides Funding Network, Neville Roy Singham and his network, foreign cash, and it's also big left-wing funders. Some of them are not citizens of this country, Mr. Hans-Yorg-Vise of Switzerland. They're pouring money into this entire ecosystem.