Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/7/24 Steve Baker on the Stunning Failures leading up to the Trump Assassination Attempt

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Scott interviews Steve Baker from The Blaze about all the research and reporting he’s been doing into the hardly foiled assassination attempt on Donald Trump. After pouring over everything related to the attempt for almost a month, Baker has come to the conclusion that the likeliest explanation for the astounding level of incompetence we saw from the various agencies and departments tasked with protecting Trump was that it was purposefully allowed to fester by higher-ups in the government. He explains to Scott how he’s arrived there. They also discuss the ongoing persecution of January 6th protestors.  Discussed on the show: “Inspector general J6 report unmasks 'culture of failure' at US Secret Service, lawmaker says” (The Blaze) The Terror Factory by Trever Aaronson Steve Baker is an opinion contributor for Blaze News and an investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter @TPC4USA This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute. editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show.

Okay, you guys, on the line, I have Steve Baker from The Blaze. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Hey, Scott's good to be with you. Thanks for having me. Very happy to have you here. So on July the 13th, some kook tried to shoot Donald Trump in the head, and boy, did he almost do it. And it's the kind of thing that seems pretty obvious on his face and yet also extremely mysterious, too. And I was watching the YouTube's there, and I saw you explaining. your in-depth investigation

of what is going on here and what went on there and I believe that you even said that you were able to I don't know if you said FOIA or not but get your hands on a lot of public records before a gag order was issued and the clampdown

which would have prevented a lot of other journalists from doing the same so and then you just knew all about what was going on the division between the authority between the secret service and the local cops and all the rest so I just wonder if you could just give you the floor and help fill us in. What do you think is the story with the kid, the story with the cops?

How could this have possibly happened, Steve? Well, let me start by maybe correcting the record a little bit here. We didn't have time in the first 12 to 16 hours to do any FOIA requests or to get our hands on any documents. What we were really fortunate to do through our Blaze network is we were able to have contacts that were on the ground. I mean, with the actual law enforcement, including Secret Service. And then the gag came down the next morning, a hard, came right from Mayorkas's office, you know, the director of the Department of Homeland Security. And he basically told the

secret service agents that were on the ground that day to shut up if they wanted to keep their jobs. And that's exactly what he said. I see. I'm misunderstood when you said gag there. I was saying like it was an official thing, but you just meant he gave them an order to stop leaking, but you got a bunch of information before that. Okay. But it was, it was official. I understand. Yeah. It was as official as it can be. But what, what ended up happening is we ended up getting a treasure of firsthand witness information coming from not only sources within the Secret Service, but also from other local law enforcement that were on the ground that day before this gag order dropped, that most of what we were able to learn in that first, as I said,

12 to 16 hours has been confirmed by all, by so many other stories, as well as, you know, the press conferences that have finally begun to have begun to happen from whether it's been Secret Service or FBI. But most of what we learned was accurate in those early, those early hours. So that's the first thing. The second thing to your point is, is, you know, How could this thing happen? Well, look, there's only three possibilities. And you always go to government incompetency first. And as I like to always point out when I'm put in this position to discuss government in competency,

is that when you have the largest government in the world, you're going to get the most incompetency as well from just the sheer size of the government. But then in addition to that is we have a government that's not just been incompetent by virtue of its, you know, growing and ever, you know, overreaching size, but we have a government now that is corrupt and it is deliberately corrupt because it is a government that has no desire whatsoever to even pretend to look for the best of the best to head these agencies. And, you know, we always hear, when we're talking about Secret Service or FBI or any of these other agencies, we always hear about the DEI hiring standards. And this is absolutely true. It's irrefutable. They don't hide it. It is, all you have to do is look at their ex posts, their social media accounts. And you can see that they spend more time recruiting based on color or sexual orientation than they do on the skills and that can be brought to bear for the time.

types of agencies and the types of work that we expect our intelligence services to actually engage in. And so that's what we're up against. So we're looking at we're looking at competencies. We're looking at absolute corruption. We're looking at lowering standards, our complete lack of standards as it relates to the types of work that they should be doing. So we start with in confidences. How could it happen? There was layer upon layer upon layer of absolute failures that day. unlike anything we've seen. Second possibility, and a lot of people are going there, is they want to go straight to the conspiracy theory. If it was January 6th, it was Fed Surrection. If it was July 13th, it was, you know, this was a setup or a plot from within, from either the Secret Service or the government or some

deep state dark money element to take out President Trump. And so those conspiracies are out there, and we've seen them all. We've seen the videos. We've seen the videos of the guys doing the, you know, the ballistics analysis and the audio analysis of the bullets. And they're, I think they're up to, you know, Scott, I think they're up to six shooters now that some of these conspiracy guys have come up with. You know, originally there was two shooters and then four.

Now one of them is up to six different shooters. He's allegedly identified. And, and of course, that's nonsense in and of itself. But there's a third possibility. And this is probably where I'm at in my work and my research right now, as well as my partner in this, because at the blaze, both myself and another of our investigative journalist, Joe Hanneman, were assigned to the assassination case to get to the bottom of this. And both of us are coming to the frightening realization that this was not necessarily an assassination. attempt that was arranged and organized by this you know elements within our own government but that the what would we call would be the incompetencies were fostered and allowed to happen

so that these types of potentialities might occur think about that yeah well okay so let's start with just that right there. The Washington Post says that, hey, when they said that it was totally false that they had denied extra resources to Trump's campaign, the Secret Service, that was wrong. And the Washington Post had four sources that said, actually, on numerous occasions, the campaign was told, no, we can't do it. So that's correct. But now, so your interpretation is the more severe interpretation, which is that And look, I'm not disputing you or arguing, and I'm just trying to facilitate a conversation here, that they left his ass hanging out there because they're sort of hoping somebody would shoot it off. Well, let's just be perfectly honest about it.

I feel exactly the same way about January 6th is that January 6 was not necessarily an organized Fed's direction, but I've always written about it. I always called it a rope-a-dope. It was like, okay, let these guys in. Oh, they got through a, you know, we've, we've under deployed our forces on purpose today. Because that's exactly what happened. January 6th was supposed to be in all boots on the ground day for the Capitol Police. But instead of having 2,000 uniformed officers on duty that day, they had about 200, right, about 200 to 250. That was it.

And that was supposed to be a double shift, all boots on the ground, First Amendment protest day. The Capitol Police had issued six permits on the capital property that day for protest on the capital property. And yet, they did not staff appropriately for that. So it was like, okay, let us, let us, let us see how far they go. All right, let them, they got through one bearer, okay, let's, let's, let's, let's see if they go through another one. They let them in another one. This is, this is the type of gradual setup until we got them. And the same thing can happen when you're talking about a protective service like this is, look, we don't like the guy, there are elements that hate the guy.

As a matter of fact, when you look at it, Donald Trump's threat matrix, which, by the way, is supposed to be the most important calculation. Now, yes, the president, which was Biden or is Biden, is going to get the highest level of security from the Secret Service. but they also have to put into their calculations the actual threat matrix of the individual and the types of events they're doing. So in Donald Trump's case, he's not only the most revered guy by half of the country. He is the most despised man by half of the country. Then you add into the threat matrix the type of language that is spoken about him by the media, the negative, I'm talking about the negative language, the type of.

negative conversations that are had about him on social media that raises his threat matrix up even higher. Then you add to it the reality that he's doing these large 20, 30, 40, 60,000 people events outside rather than, you know, 500 people inside of a small school, high school gym or whatever. Not to be too redundant about it, Steve, but also he's the former president and he's the frontrunner. for president at the time that this is happening to. So he's not just a TV star who's one of seven in a primary back in 15 here. We're talking about a former president who ought to have just, I don't know, whatever the degrees are, but maybe one degree less protection than the sitting president himself anyway. Well, you're exactly right. First of all, nobody wants to kill the sitting president because

he's on his way out anyway. And they know he's not doing the work of the president anyway. We know he's not the president. So nobody wants to kill him. This has to be in the threat matrix. Jimmy Carter is still receiving, you know, bylaw, justifiably so, secret service protection, but he's in a hospice. Nobody's looking to kill Jimmy Carter. The number one threat matrix protectee by the Secret Service times 10, maybe times 100, is Donald Trump. And yet, not only does he not, did he not that day have the protection? that he needed by virtue of the correct types of calculations that a real security agency would be providing for him, it was in fact denied, requests were denied. Very, very lackadaisical

preparations in advance and on the ground. They, they mishandled virtually. I'm telling you, Scott, every single thing that those guys are trained to do, and I'm talking about when I say those guys, the Secret Service, are trained to do from every single division because the Secret Service aren't just the guys in the, you know, dark glasses and the suits that hang around the president. They have uniformed police. They have their counter-assault teams, their counter-sniper teams. They have their close-in surveillance, their outer surveillance. They have their undercover guys.

They have so many different divisions, and every single one of them failed that day. But the most important thing is, is they just didn't deploy. They didn't give him what he needed, so they had to bring in resources from what is called HSI. So everybody always asked, what is HSI? HSI is Homeland Security Investigations. Yes, we have yet another federal investigative agency. The problem with that is that HSI is referred to by the rest of the IC community, the intelligence community, as the short bus agency. uh-huh yeah they all right well okay there's so many things the issue here but uh well on that issue

were those the guys in in pseudo military fatigues they're paramilitary fatigues who jumped up on the stage with their rifles because i saw someone immediately criticizing that as the absolute opposite of statecraft that by doing that they're essentially making themselves targets if they're still an assassination anywhere they're now drawing fire toward the president by standing on the damn stage like that. And that sounded like some ATF idiot would do or some DHS guy who's not really in the bodyguard business. That was appropriate behavior, regardless of which agency that was.

But the HS guys were bringing in, were brought in for surveillance and to do the undercover work in the crowd. The types of guys that should have identified this shooter. The local cops are saying that they never even had a meeting face to face with the Secret Service who told them, okay, you guys are responsible for this, that, or the other thing at all. And, you know, I saw, I'm sorry, I forget the guy's name. There's a congressman who, I guess, is a former Special Operations guy who said,

come on. I mean, you show up at this thing. The first thing you do is you put a guy up on that water tower, never mind the roof. Right. And so this is the kind of thing where it's very elementary. So I can see. And I just wanted to make clear because I'm with you, too. If you're jumping, I'll go ahead and go, I don't care.

But you are essentially jump into a conclusion from there of how bad this was to that they must have really deliberately left him more vulnerable on purpose, not just because they suck. Well, no, well, I'll take you to another aspect of this. And we'll, I'll direct your listeners to a story that we wrote, came out last week on the blaze.com, where we actually proffered the idea that Thomas Crooks was groomed by a government element. Now, we took a big step out to talk about this, but why would we talk about something like that unless we had some pretty good intel on this? And I will tell you that the people that we talk to are the same.

people that actually train Secret Service, counter-assault teams, and counter-sniper teams. These are our most elite, retired, special operatives of U.S. military. We're talking about more elite than the SEALs, more elite than Delta Force. And these are the guys that train those types of people. And these individuals tell us that they recognize in the behavior. of crooks grooming by one of their own, because this is what they do overseas. We're talking to people that specifically working for our own government, ostensibly for God and country, groom disaffected young men in dangerous place locations all over the world,

Africa, Middle East, Asia, and groom these young men. to be ready in case they need them at any month time for a special operation. Well, now, I saw an interview that you did where you cited some data that you got from some companies that own the apps on his phone that traced him or someone around to Washington, D.C. So tell that story and then also explain. Was there any reason given for him to go to Washington or anyone in that household to be in Washington? Well, all right. First of all, we don't know that he went to Washington, but I'll bring you up to speed on that. So here's what we know from that. Heritage Foundation has a subgroup called the project, our oversight project. And we like to kind of refer to them as the dark heritage because they are the investigative team that goes deeper than typical, you know, political, you know, foundations will get into. what they did is they started putting together what is called an ad ID search and track on the

phones that were going back and forth between the Crook's family home and then also to the nursing home where Thomas Crook works. So by tracking these ad ID signatures, they were able to identify which phone was in fact Thomas Crook's because obviously he goes to work at a certain time every day, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. All right, we got him. Now, I'm sorry, Steve, what app was it and who was it doing this tracking again now? This was Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project. That's who is doing this tracking. Okay, but, I mean, it wasn't a Heritage app on his phone.

Did they say which data they're getting here? We all have this. Every single phone, every single phone in America has a unique identifying number. Oh, okay. So I'm sorry. I guess I had misunderstood that it was some particular, like a private company's app on his phone and they had gotten the information that way. No, it's called an ad ID. It's like your phone has a social security number. And so when you use your phone and you go somewhere, you can track somebody from their house or their place of business and then you can identify. So what they did is they start tracking all of the cell phone. identifiers at the actual residence of the crook's family residence so in so doing they're able to track okay which which one of those phones from the family is going to the nursing home where thomas crook was known to be employed and so by the time you show a consistent and a regular

back and forth okay that's his phone so now you can start following him to other places but you also are interested in how many uh different people that visit his residents and then you want to follow us to see where they go. So they picked up another unique identifier, another unique ID, ad ID they call it, on a phone that visited both the Crook's home and Thomas Crook's place of employment, but also the same unique identifier visited a location in D.C. that happens to house a very, has a very significant FBI office footprint. Now, that doesn't mean that that phone was visiting the FBI because there's tons of shops, there's a movie theater in this location, there's a concert arena.

It could have been somebody literally just going to a concert there. But in this massive complex in D.C., the FBI has two or three floors in that 11-story building. there. So it makes it curious, but it's not a conclusive piece of evidence that he had some connection to the FBI. So what we are doing is based on that piece of identity or that particular identifier, we've now taken that unique cell phone ID number, given it to another company who's now doing the research to drill down and to actually see, they can tell within basically three meters where that phone went to inside that building

and look I mean it sounds bad because of the degree of consequence that almost you know took place here but we could see where the FBI does this all the time not just CIA doing this in

Asia or whatever the FBI did this in Garland Texas at the Muhammad cartoon contest it was a guy that they were in trapping who got all the way to the front door and shot a security guard before being killed himself and he had been told

by the FBI informant tear up Texas. That was the last thing he said and then did the FBI make sure that they were there ready for him? No. They let some local guy get shot and almost killed and you know I think it was the same

thing with the guy that had shot up the grocery store in Buffalo that it turned out that he was on a list serve or whatever they call it now. an email list or discord or whatever it was with a bunch of cops and intelligence agents and stuff who were essentially egging him on actually i shouldn't blab too much about that because i don't really remember the details as much but well i you're on the right track though scott because here's what again we don't like to think about this but we have to understand that our special

forces including cia operatives have developed and have been doing this for decades they can develop young men. I personally spoke to in the development of our story on this, an actual operative that told me that during his 30 years in that community, that he could have and be developing anywhere from eight to a dozen young men at a time in different regions of a different country so that if opportunity ever presented itself, they could activate that. individual for a precise delivery of bombs or assassination. And that is what we do. Our government does this. I mean, it shouldn't be a secret to the American people because look, we've seen it in the movies. We see it in the movies. It's not just Hollywood. This is what these guys do. Well, now,

it's worth acknowledging to Steve. You know, it's worth pointing out that especially if Trump had not turned his head. And his brain had been blown right out and he'd drop dead on the stage in front everybody in 4K like that. That our need to have a better explanation than some loser did it for no

obvious reason would be much greater even though the facts would not be changing. Whoever groomed him or not be in space and time the only truth. But

Our need for a deeper cause would be much greater. And so in this case, we might even be more willing to let us slide because, after all, it just nicked his ear, or, you know, this kind of thing. But at the same time, that goes to show, though, that on that same basis, at least, our preference for an explanation shouldn't have anything to do with it. The reality is, as far as our opinions are concerned, he might as well have just been some lone kook who did it because he hates his dad or God knows what, right? Like, I don't know. But it's still, it's very worth considering, especially the part about their refusal to really protect him, someone calling the shot that, no, we don't need to cover that roof. And by the way, before we run out of time here, we still have never been told the name of the action. will boss in charge on the scene there that day who was telling who to go to what roof

to not go who called the perimeter what shape they still absolutely stonewall all those questions correct that's correct and look there's not the name of the agent in charge yeah yeah but they're not going to give us the names of agents on the ground for legitimate security concerns okay uh if you if you've if you've ever had any interaction with the IC community at any time, that's the one thing they're not going to do. You can get the bureaucrats names that are just above her. We know that it's a she. They did leave that.

They did actually, they didn't say they or them or Z or whatever, but they did say she. So we know that the agent in charge that day was a she, but they typically will not give us that name. Now, if she's dismissed from the agency and she's no longer than, you know, an actual employed agency agent we may learn learn what her name is at that point yeah well and now look

I'm sorry to say this and this is not a racial thing for me or even a sex thing because there are plenty of women and including black and Indian women and whoever who are badass at whatever their thing is but I'm just saying

like right now we have a lady who's fit to run a gas station maybe is going to be the president of the United States It's like 50-50 chance anyway. And so, is it possible that someone with essentially Kamala Harris's skills was in charge of protecting the president? And she's just basically standing around in her little sport coat, like playing a role like it's a TV show and doesn't really know what the hell she's doing? Yeah. I mean, that's very possible.

You know, I don't know. It's not just possible, Scott. It's highly likely because of the directed hiring standards that have existed since 2009, because this was, as we know, as promised during the Obama campaign of 2008, that he was going to fundamentally change America. Well, the first thing that he did is he started decapitating the leadership from our intelligence community. From our FBI, CIA, straight down the line, our DOD, he fired almost 200 conservative-to-conservative-leaning generals replacing those with activists, not necessarily because of their skill in the battlefield, but because of their skill at initiating the changes that he wanted to make to that community. And so to say that a special agent in charge that day, first of all, doesn't even necessarily, we're not even talking about a 20-year veteran. We're talking about somebody that may only have six, eight years of actual service with the Secret Service under her belt.

And she came in during the days of DEI hiring, where that was the emphasis over quality of performance. And look, by the way, I mean, you can see it on the stage where you have these small women who, look, and if you go back, compare it to when Reagan was shot, they did a lousy job protecting him that day too. But all the guys are clearly played ball at least in college, right? They are, they have a big upper body build because that literally is the job, is being a really big guy in order to, you know, if necessarily, if necessarily, If necessary, push or punch, but also if necessary to block the president from view or from actual rounds coming in. And so if you have a five-foot-six girl in a ponytail, I mean, you can see she's on her tippy toes trying to reach up to protect the president. She's doing her job as best she can, but he's a big guy. And so it's just not working, right?

You need a guy who obviously is, I mean, that's the job. You know what I mean? But, see, that's probably the most starkly visible example of incompetence that we had all day, other than the fact that they had a rooftop 130 yards from the president uncovered. I mean, that's catastrophic failure. And I saw you mentioned in another interview about the radios, too, that they truly were, like you have this information from insiders. They truly were completely siloed, maybe not even a single point of failure at some command.

Center where they have both radios? Does nobody have both radios? That's what, that is what is supposed to. This is 23 years after September 11th when the cops couldn't tell the firefighters to get out of the building because they had, because Rudy Giuliani had a ban in the command center that he stupidly had put at the biggest terrorist target in America at the time. Well, that is exactly right. And there's infinitely a larger number of examples of communications failures and where you have multiple law and enforcement agencies working together on an operation. And because their communications are siloed, which for those who don't understand what that mean, basically, you're only able to communicate

with somebody else in your own agency. But when that is the case, and that is always the case when you're dealing with mixing local and federal, because federal radios are digitally encrypted and they are purposefully siloed, especially those who protect important. people, VIPs. You don't want your communications being overheard or caught, you know, on a public radio ban. Whereas local cops, as you know, you can buy police radio and listen to your local cops radio traffic. And so they are federal, federal comms are purposely siloed. And so when that happens, it is standard operating procedure that you cross-pollinate between the command centers. And if you have somebody in a very important observational location or observation post or command center post,

you have a representative with the radios of all the pertinent agencies providing protection that day so that you don't get the problem that we had and we saw manifest itself on July 13th, which is the single most important failure that day was besides the fact that the kid even got there that's another story but once he's there there was a sniper team who had him in their sights 30 seconds or more before he took the first round shot the first round and they were trying to de-conflict and what that means is they were told that there would be coverage on that room and suddenly 130 yards or so away they see a man with a rifle on that roof now understand they were told there would be a counter-assault i'm sorry a counter-sniper team on that roof they see one he doesn't look like one of us he's not wearing the right gear we don't see his spotter and by the way they're always in twos who is this guy they're radioing that in and they can't get confirmation because the comms were siloed.

Yeah. Now, I mean, come on, me and my friends playing guns in the woods in fifth grade could have figured this problem out. These federal cops need to have their own secure comms, but they also need to be able to talk with the locals. So pass out another set of walkie-talkies. That doesn't mean the locals don't have to be able to hear your private federal conversations, but then you could still hear theirs. Come on, this is stupid. It is stupid, but again, this is the level of incompetency that we were dealing with that day, or we were dealing with deliberate incompetence.

You know, it reminds me of Oliver Stone was telling Putin about an anecdote that he asked, um, Fidel Castro, how did you live so long? And he said, I paid all my own security guards myself. And Putin's like, I'm sure my guys do their job well, but point taken, I think Trump needs to go ahead and hire Eric Prince to do his, or somebody, maybe bad suggestion, somebody to be in charge of his security rather than relying on a government program here. Well, I think Eric Prince is the perfect, you know, Blackwater never lost at Protectee. They had a perfect record. Yeah, well, they've kind of masquered a few crowds, too. So, you know. Their protectees made it.

Yeah, well. Yeah, those were just expendable Iraqis, not Pennsylvanians. But so listen, now what's this about Gab? The guy that runs Gab says he found this guy's account. But there's a conflict about just how right-wing or left-wing he was on there. So what can you tell us about that? Yeah. You know, I have no insights into the Gab story whatsoever.

I mean, we've obviously looked at it. I've not interviewed the founder of GAB in this. I will tell you that anybody who has ever been on GAB knows that of all the more right-leaning social media sites, there's a very, very high percentage of anti-Semitic, racist elements that populate GAB. I used to have a GAB account, and I left GAB for that very reason for just being associated. That doesn't mean because there's an anti-Semitic account on X, and everybody on X is anti-Semitic. You know what I'm saying. But there just seemed to be a high percentage, too high for my comfort level on GAB. But the point being is that it would not surprise me that some element of that attracted him,

but it also doesn't surprise me either that there would be somebody on there specifically as you know to kind of muck break a little bit to shit post or whatever you want to call it his own anti-Trump views on that site there's plenty of people on gab doing that plenty of people on um true social doing that yeah hey you guys coming up this october 7th through the 11th join mckel thorup host of the expat money podcast, the heroic Ron Paul, the great Tom Woods, Doug Casey, Mark Faber, Tom Luongo, myself and many other great speakers for the online expat money summit, 2004. My presentation will be on the subject of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia

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August 29th. Get tickets now. And there are plenty of liberals who vote Republican, and, you know, they say, oh, he's a registered Republican, but that just means he voted in the primary, but that could be for lots of reasons. That's correct. That's correct. I voted in party primaries before. I certainly was never a member of either party, no matter what the law says about it, yeah. I believe of my memory serves correct, is that Thomas Crook's mother is a registered Democrat, and his father is actually a registered libertarian.

Right. So, all right. And then, but it was interesting because I guess the leak was that, oh, he was posting all this right wing stuff. And then, but the editor of Gab, if I have it, right, the editor of Gab said, well, he was basically trolling a bunch of Trump people, not being one of them. So. Yeah, but he also, he did clarify and say that he had, there were hundreds of responses in posts as well that were very anti-Trump. Yeah, right. I mean, look, we won't know who this kid is. You know, people talk about a 20-year-old not having a big social media presence is in and of itself suspicious. I can tell you right now that my children, my daughter is 29, my son is 25, they have incredibly minimal social media presence. They just don't populate it. They have no interest in it whatsoever.

which is not uncommon, not every person and every kid in the world. In fact, my children laugh at me because I live on social media, you know. Right. But it's the, there's a lot of things that people think are suspicious about crooks that aren't, but there are a lot of things about his behaviors leading up to that day that lead us to be open to the possibility that he was a groomed element. and that when Trump then suddenly posted a rally date in his backyard, that he was activated. Yeah.

You got any more speculations along that line you want to get into there that I didn't give you a chance to talk about? I mean, the incompetence theory is really doing well here today, I think, you know. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, this is where I get in the most trouble. Even on social media is because I'm the guy who the first thing that I do is I always seek to dismantle the conspiracy theories. You have to. You're not an honest broker. You're not an honest journalist if the first thing that you do is not try to prove all that wrong.

Even try to prove your own preconceptions or your suppositions or your own, you know, kind of doubts and feelings and suspicion. you have to eliminate those first or you can't do good work you can't be looking for a specific end target in your investigations you have to be open to any input whatsoever and go and follow the lead wherever it takes you and i will tell you that i have been called online a thousand times times a I've been called a Fed because I will dismantle a single misconception or an internet rumor or a, you know, a fallacy or piece of disinformation about January 6th. Like, I'll just give you a quick, for instance, Scott. The idea of these magic switch for the magnetic doors at the Capitol in January 6th and that somebody flipped the switch and opened up all. of the magnetic locks and that allowed people to come in and that the cops were opening the doors.

No, I have spent more time in the Capitol CCTV viewing room looking at that video than any other journalist on the planet. I have more hours logged in that room than any other journalist, period. And I can tell you that I have looked at every single door, every single breach of the Capitol, the cops never one single time opened an exterior door to the protesters. Now, in a couple of places, and we've all seen it with our own eyes, and this is where that thing happens in people's brains that is unexplainable, they've seen cops holding doors open after it was breached, after the magnetic lock was tripped by a protester. from the inside, but cops never opened up a single door to that building. I'm telling you, with all authority, never happened.

Just me dismantling that misconception online, I have a thousand people will tell me that I'm a fed. All right, that was a long, that was a long diatribe to set up what I'm about to say. Even though I went into the July 13th investigations with this same person, purpose was to dismantle the emerging conspiracy theories, I can't shake the fact that something is amiss in this one. There are too many, there's too many incompetencies. There are too many catastrophic failures. It is beyond belief that that many law enforcement agencies with that many people on the ground committed that many catastrophic failures. Yeah. I don't know, man. You know, as we're talking about this, I'm thinking of some of these

images I've seen where the people are in, you know, such a, I don't know, panic, but they're extremely excited telling the cops over there, over there, there's more and more footage coming out. And you see the cops are concerned. There's two or three of them. They're walking around. They're walking around slowly. And they're walking around. And they're walking. walking around too close to the building to be able to see up there, and they're on the wrong side of the building. And there's actually an air conditioner thingy and an electric thingy where if any of them were not big, fat bastards, they could just climb up there. But they don't even consider it because they're like, well, I couldn't just climb up there. I'm not a kid anymore. I weighed 275 pounds. I can't get up there.

And with all my equipment, so they don't even try to climb up on the roof. And so to me, these are the same cops that if a kid reached to pull up his pants, they would shoot him and go, waistband, right? Because they're not good at what they do any more than any government employees are good at what they do. And they're not in a hurry, right? They know something important is going on, but none of them, clearly none of them are saying, oh my God, I'm the star of this movie, and now's my chance to swoop into action and save the day and stop the bad guy. None of them are behaving that way. They're kind of waiting for somebody else to do it, which is how people usually behave in those kind of situations, right? But see, this was a fit.

But see, you described a scenario that was a failure long before the fat local cop got to the point of not being able to crawl up the wall. True, right? Because one of the things that happens in these high profile events is that the, you know, is that the, advance teams come in and what they do is it's called they wedge all access points so in other words any access to any roof that is not going to be occupied it has that access has to be removed if there's a permanent ladder on a structure they literally take plywood and they they board up the the permanent ladder. If there's a, what do you call it, you know, a sewage, a manhole cover, they weld, they weld those shut.

They nail doors shut. They close windows. They board them up. Anything that is not going to be occupied by them and by law enforcement, by secret service, operatives, or contractors are going to be wedged. And that's all done in advance. The fact that that roof even had ground access was a failure. Yeah.

And despite, you know, my hyperbole about, yeah, they'll shoot some kid for pulling up his pants, which they do all the time. It also does make sense that they just as well might, as you say, in the case of the snipers, be calling into their radio. Who is that guy over there? Do I have permission to blow his head off or don't I? And nobody knows, because nobody's talking. Nobody's in charge, or whoever is in charge that he's asking permission probably doesn't have eyes on anything and doesn't know what's going on at all. Wherever the boss is, she's probably back in a tent somewhere or something, right? Well, and you brought it up earlier.

The failure of the Secret Service not having the morning briefing with all of the agencies. And by the way, there are a lot more agencies than people even realized that we're there that day, different police groups, policing groups. several sheriff's departments, local cops, obviously more than one federal agency. And then, of course, you had the short bus HSI guys out there providing assistance, manpower assistance, who had never even worked security events before. No experience whatsoever. And no briefing. They're just, yeah, you need to be here tomorrow at 9 o'clock in the morning.

You know what? And you're going to stand around and watch people. I got to say, Steve, I mean, I put 100% of their responsibility on the special agent in charge that day or whatever the, that's what the FBI calls them, whatever the Secret Service calls the boss on the scene. But at the same time, the special agent in charge. Yeah, I mean, the good thing about responsibility is it's a quality, not a quantity, so you can divvy it up however you like.

And I would also put 95% responsibility on every single deputy sheriff there that day. Because any idiot could have the imagination to say, well, somebody ought to be up on that roof and somebody ought to be up on that water tower. And if nobody's doing it, boss. I'm going to go ahead and climb up on that water tower, sir. And, right, like, somebody's got to lock this thing down and nobody does it. And that's the job. You know, you have people standing in the crowd yelling, somebody do their job.

Nobody's doing their job, you know? Well, the bottom line is that it is on the, it's on the desk of the special agent charge from the Secret Service. It is her fault. The failures are ultimately her fault. She is the one that needs to be removed from service. She does not need to be providing security at a, you know, at a convenience store, two o'clock in the morning and, you know, in the safest city in America. She, this is a catastrophic failure.

It is on her. And this is not something that they don't know how to do, Scott. This is something that they've had decades of experience in. They know how to wedge all access points. They know how to keep people. people from not being where they're supposed to be. They know how to cover rooftops. This is this is all Secret Service 101 training and they didn't even get that right on any level. They messed it all up, all up. Yeah, I saw an interview with a local guy who said, you know, Trump came here a

year ago or whatever it was and he spoke at the airport and he says he and his daughter went there and the first, oh, because of course there's warehouses, right, the hangers are essentially two or three story buildings right all over the place and he said the first thing he and his daughter noticed was that there were snipers on every single roof every single roof had a sniper on it even though you might think that geez i don't know one sniper could probably cover three roofs they weren't taking that chance and that was just a year ago but now all of a sudden they just leave him hanging way out in the wind like this that's exactly what happened that day then that's when you have to ask the question is this government incompetency it's because

Let's just let it, let's go there. As I said, you have to go there first. If it is, then what we have learned is that Obama's mandate and his goal and his mission to fundamentally change America by, first of all, replacing competency with DEI hires because that's what they've done. Yeah. And they've done that in all the agencies. Well, you know, it was Bush, it was Bush who moved Secret Service from Treasury to DHS. And that from the beginning was a problem because they were the big guys at Treasury above ATF. And then at DHS, they're just a bunch of bums along with everybody else. Well, that's exactly it.

But ultimately, at the end of the day, this has proven to us. us. If this was just in competency, the failure of that initiative. We have to have our best, our brightest, our most skilled, our most talented, regardless of skin color, regardless of race, regardless of sex. Yeah. At every one of these positions, we have to stop hiring to fill and meet quotas based on some, you know, social marketist, a cultural Marxism. Seriously. And look, I don't know. I can see how some people would think. Like, I don't know. On some inconsequential job, like, why not or something. But on who's your airline pilot or who's the president's bodyguard? Who is the president's bodyguard? You're telling me it's not a guy who played college ball. It's a lady and she's small. Huh? That is even just that part of it is so crazy. It's like a TV show. It couldn't possibly. be real. That's right. I mean, it's not, you're not going to put that girl as an offensive lineman protecting your quarterback in the NFL. It's never going to happen because the only

way you get that job is because of your demonstrated excellency from the time you started playing football in elementary school and all the way through the whole system and through college. And you were the best of the best. You were the cream of the crop. That's why you got drafted. Right. Yeah. And the job is hitting somebody really hard if you have to. Right. That's literally the job. And again, with the Hinkley thing, go back and look at those pictures. The guy that pulls out the Uzi, like, that's a big guy, you know? That's the job. And the guy who stands in front of Reagan and makes himself wide. Big guy. That's the job. And he took a shot in the belly. That guy took a shot right in the belly. That was the, that is the job. But that's the people that

you have to hire. And maybe, look, it's not going to change under this administration. It's not going to change if there is a Harris Walls administration to follow. But at least maybe people realize that if we don't hire people based on competency first before DEI quotas, that we're not doing the right thing for the country at any level, not just the protection of our president, at any president, Republican or otherwise. Doesn't matter. We're not getting the job done in our country because of our hiring standards. And now as

far as this kid, you know, 99% of time, I can't think of a time, really, where it wasn't this case, it seems like always when it's an FBI informant that entraps a right winger or a left winger or a Muslim into some stupid plot

that that's immediately in the paper that, yeah, what happened was an informant got a hold of what was going on and then help make it worse and this and that. And so, you know, especially from the FBI. I don't know. They keep a lot of secrets at the FBI, too. They kept a lot of secrets about how innocent they knew Trump was for three years

during that Russia Gate scam and all of that. So they sure can't lie their asses off a lot. But I don't know, man. I'll be interested to see if that... Go ahead. Go ahead. Did you see the report yesterday? The FBI put out on social media and everywhere else

that they interdicted a plot from a Pakistani, a Pakistani citizen with Arab, I'm sorry, Iranian ties to assassinate a high, you know, valued target here in the United States. Right. So says an informant and the FBI, exactly. Right, right. Well, this is the big problem with that. Something on the order of 60 to 70 percent of all of those cases are individuals, who did not have the inclination or the resources whatsoever to pull off a plot like that, except that they were recruited overseas, given the idea, yeah, I'm open to doing that. Oh, well, here's a plane ticket. Here's some training. Here's what we're going to supply for you when you get there. Yeah. Or recruited by FBI informants here. It happens all the time. You know, your mom is sick here. Here's $20,000. Say you love Osama.

in this microphone and then they give them life in prison. So suddenly, the FBI gets to come out with this story saying, hey, look what we did. I know Secret Service failed, you know, four weeks ago, but we just stopped an assassination plot right now. No, you didn't. You created the assassination plot just like you did in Michigan. Yep. Against Gretchen Whitmer.

Yep. And you know what? When it's a left wing like Earth First, Kami, you know, Antifa type, or if it's a right-wing militia guy or if it's a Muslim, whatever, I always suspect the FBI first. Because they're, I mean, just in numbers. They're the ones who do this the most out of anyone, conspire to blow up anything. I mean, they're the ones. And so, and almost always it comes out that it's government informants, whether it's, you know, Antifa types and I think in Colorado that got set up or obviously like the Grudgeon Whitmer scam in Michigan. And as Trevor Aronson, as Dr. Aronson,

documented up to 300 or more Muslims entrapped in this way by the FBI, especially in the Bush and Obama years. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's absolutely no doubt about it. And the sourcing that we have on this is absolutely impeccable. It's as reliable as it can be because it's actual agents telling us these stories that this is what they were put up to do. This is what they did. I mean, I just did an hour-long interview on the Blaze. It's on Blaze TV right now for streaming anytime with Kyle Sharifan.

And when he was hired by the FBI, the first thing that he was put on was, he said 60% of the cases that he was given, you know, dropped in his lap from the beginning, were just tracking American citizens to just learn what they do. They weren't tracking crimes, by the way. He said, you would think I would have been put on tracking people who had committed. crimes. No, I was tracking Americans just to learn what they did. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how verified this is. I'm sorry, I'm writing a book right now, so I'm off social media and I'm

missing a lot of stuff. But I did hear a thing about that the TSA had some air marshals following Tulsi Gabbard around on the theory of how subversive she is. But she is, I believe, a major in the National Guard right now. So if she's as subversive and an

officer in the military, somebody bigger, better figure out what's the hell's going on over there when obviously the answer is she's a patriot and what the hell do they think that they're doing? Right. Right. It's insane. We get stories like this every day. I had one

come in this morning. I had a guy that DM'd me this morning absolutely in a panic because he has a misdemeanor, January 6th charge, but he's now in the national criminal database, and he is now being denied commissary access as an honorably discharged service person. On a misdemeanor. He can't even go to the commissary anymore. Hey, by the way, Steve, you know what, I've been just terrible about keeping up with the story

of the persecution of the January 6 protesters, and I know there were some people there who really rioted and broke some windows, and I don't know if anybody pushed a cop down or what, but I know there's a lot of people who really didn't do anything. Maybe they came in the one entrance where there wasn't even a riot going on. They're on the other side of the building, and they still went to jail or even prison for this, but I've really just been terrible about keeping up with that. Could you give us kind of a rundown on that? Is that one of your specialties? January 6th? Well, the persecution of the average Joe's who got caught up in it particularly is what I'm interested in here.

I mean, we're up to almost 1,500 arrests now. We have, oh gosh, you know, it's over a thousand, quote-unquote convictions or plea deals. There are still hundreds and hundreds of pending cases. The federal government, the Department of Justice, has the intention of arresting at least another 12 to 1,500 people between now and the expiration of the statute of limitations, which, of course, is January 6th of 26. So they're hard at work. The numbers are up right now.

These people, when they tell you that this was a violent insurrection, by the Department of Justice own numbers. And you have to be very careful about the way you read these. They will say that there's been over 530 cases of people arrested for violence against law enforcement that day. That's not true. Department of Justice themselves, even Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney in D.C. over all January 6 cases, says that only about 225 Nerdy Wells actually did identifiable violence. The reason why they inflate that number to the over five. is because they they you were in the area you were aiding and bear and abetting because you were

next to a guy that did violence or you interfere so if you interfered with law enforcement maybe trying to get at somebody who was doing something wrong and you you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time you've got an interference charge and therefore it's a violence charge and that's how they inflate those numbers the reality is is that 99.99.98% of the people that went to the Capitol that day did nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. Some of them walked through an open door. They didn't see barricades because the barricades had been pulled down. The barricades were pulled down on the outer perimeter on the west side before Trump ever even finished the speech down at the ellipse a mile and a half away. There were thousands of people that arrived at the

Capitol that day that never saw a closed area or do not intersign, never saw a barricade, never saw a fence. And most of those people, if you were more than 25, 30 yards away, you didn't even know violence was going on because you couldn't see it. The sea of people was so incredible and depending upon your sight lines. And so suddenly, doors are open all over the Capitol, seven to the exact, and you see hundreds of people flowing in. And you look over whoever you were there with, your wife, your son, your best friend. And you go, hey, look, capital's open. Let's go see the rotunda, you know.

I've never been in there before. And that's what happened. And they're charging people with crimes and turning them into, like I call them misdemeanor terrorists is what they, because that's exactly the way they're being treated. Even if they were going in there to continue protesting and hope to stop the certification process, that doesn't mean that they were threatening violence or had, as you say, had knowingly crossed any line at all. So they don't have to just be sightseeing. I mean, they're part of a protest. But as you say, there's seven different doors. And I think most importantly

there on either side of this massive building. So there are some people riding pretty, you know, at a pretty high tempo. And some cops are getting beat up and stuff like this. on one side of the building, on the other side of the building, people just kind of moseying on in. We've seen the footage of it where, and you're the expert, but I believe it's the exact opposite side of the actual capital itself. They're coming in and they're staying within the velvet rope line and looking at the pretty paintings and stuff.

They don't know where they're going, so they're just kind of following the line, and nobody's rioting whatsoever. They're not even protesting. They're really just milling around looking for, you know, to find out what we're doing kind of thing, you know? But, Scott, there were people that walked inside for 10 minutes, took a couple selfies, didn't parade, didn't chant, didn't sing the Star Spangled Banner, walked out, went home, and weeks later were swatted by 15 or 20 agents with M4 rifles, red dots on their forehead or on their chest of not only themselves, but their family and their children for misdemeanor charges. And the 100 plus year history of the FBI before January 6th, the FBI never so much has investigated a misdemeanor charge, must less swatted somebody for a misdemeanor, a nonviolent misdemeanor.

How many people were rated on misdemeanors? I don't know that number, but it's way more than one, way more. We get testimony. We hear about it still happening. It's still going on. Okay. And then so, and then some of the people were held, you know, pre-trial in solitary confinement, this kind of thing. Can you describe some of that?

Because a lot of times, like we just saw with Julian Assange, the process is the punishment. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And there were, there's a lot of misinformation about that. there were some serious abuses of due process in the early days of the whole January 6 hysteria when they first dropped the dragnet and they were arresting people for virtually nothing. They were swatting people.

They were swatting journalists and arresting them. 25 agents show up at a journalist putting the red dots on him and his family. I mean, that's all documented. They were putting misdemeanor defendants in jail for four, six, eight months. And then they were also holding people because they were using the excuse of the COVID regime, because when all of this started happening, remember, we were in lockdowns and in D.C., worse than anywhere, just about were severe COVID regimes at all the federal agencies, including what they refer to as the D.C. Gulag, the detention center there, and they had a severe COVID regime. And so they were locking these guys up, putting them into solitary confinement because, well, first of all, they were conservative. So you had a high percentage of guys that, A, were not vaccinated. And so if you were not vaccinated, you were treated much worse.

And again, this is not, this is not rumor. This is not suspicion. This is by policy, stated policy. So they would separate and they would isolate and they would put into solitary confinement, which is torture. by the way, because they weren't vaccinated. They weren't allowed to, they weren't given hygiene utensils. They couldn't, they were, they were, these prisoners were having to pass around a single razor to, to shave or to do any grooming whatsoever because they weren't given anything if they

were not vaccinated. To protect from germs, that is. Uh-huh. Go ahead. Yeah. And so, and then worst of all, because. they weren't vaccinated, they were not even allowed to meet with their lawyers. They couldn't meet with their attorneys in person. They could only get a 15-minute call, which was being recorded and

monitored by the feds during those calls. So there was a tremendous amount of abuse. A lot of it, they were using the excuse of the COVID regimes to violate that, but some of those abuses still continue today, not nearly to the level. There's still a lot of people out there that think hundreds of J6 defendants are being held without trial for three plus years, and that's just not true. There's probably right now between a dozen and 15 people being held in pre-trial detention that have in some of those, there's a couple of cases of plus two, plus three years that that's been going on. But the only reason that it's been that long, is because those individuals have been delaying the trial themselves,

not because the government has kept them from going to trial. They keep filing motions and doing legal maneuvers. Look, if you're a guy that took a baseball bat to cops, you're probably going to get seven to ten years. So delaying your trial for three and a half years is no big deal because you're going to get time served anyway. Yeah, better to stay. in jail rather than going to the penitentiary for as long as you can.

Right. So there are reasons for that. But that's not to say that there's not a tremendous, I mean, literally, we're now over a thousand abuses of the federal government and by the Department of Justice and the FBI in particular to prosecute these cases. It's horrific. Yeah. All right.

Well, listen, I've kept you long enough. Thank you for the update on all of that stuff. And I do hope that you will stay, unlike the news cycle, that you will stay on the attempted assassination of the president and especially on the case of if anyone put this kid up to it in any way, who were they and what the hell was going on there? And I really appreciate your careful and journalistic take on controversial type questions. That's just my style. Well, thank you, Scott.

I appreciate it. Absolutely. All right, you guys. That is Steve Baker from the Blank. the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk ninety point seven fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org