The Daily Beast Podcast - Violence-Ready’ Militia Group Says Jan. 6’ers are Idiots

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, extremism and violent terrorism researcher Alexander Ritzman describes the new, male only movement infiltrating America–and their thoughts on Jan. 6. Plus! NBC News Justice reporter Ryan Reilly provides an in-depth look into the civilian sleuths who have been invaluable in identifying many of the culprits of Jan. 6. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Counter- Extremism Project Researcher and Policy Advisor Alexander Ritzman is here to talk to us about the growth of white nationalist active clubs and how this may be the next evolution of white supremacy. Then we'll talk to NBC News Justice reporter Ryan Riley about his new book, Sedition Hunters, how January 6th broke the justice system. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, over the weekend, Donald Trump, you may have heard of him. Mm-hmm. The one-time and future Republican nominee for president was speaking at a rally in Iowa, and he decided that it was very important for him to say the following. Joe Biden's got a consultant somewhere that thinks he looks good in a bathing suit, right?

He spends so much time at the beach. I mean, how do you do that? And you know, I have a much better body than him. But I'm not really sure that I want to expose it with the sun blaring down and the sand, the surf, the wind, you know. I mean, you know, it's not a pretty sight. I will agree with him that him exposing his body would not be a pretty sight. This is not what presidential campaigns used to be, I feel. Has he lost his mind?

I think he has. Like, this is the same person that is calling for some type of competency test because he thinks that he would pass. with flying colors. And I'm like, in comparison to whom? Right? Needs to be the question that is asked. Because passing with flying colors, sure, what are we measuring it against? A banana? The cast of cocoon. Right. Like, right. You know, but I'm certain that their brains were preserved. What is happening here? Like, what is happening here? Because the man is literally, his brain is melting before our eyes. And this is who the Republican Party is rallying around. And like, let me tell you something. I'm not an ageist, but I'm pretty sure just based on the way that Joe Biden's suit fits,

that he's going to look better in a pair of fucking swim trunks than whatever kind of masking tape trash bag situation can be put on Donald Trump. I don't even think you would see Donald Trump's swim trunks because it would just be. Oh my God. Ew. I just threw up. It would just be belly. So Trump said some other stuff over the weekend. And I know, Danielle, you were away. You might. might not have heard this. Jesse, can we actually, can we play the clip? I got you. Because that's a vicious thing. I said, that's Silence of the Lamb. You know what that is? Has anybody seen Silence of the Lambs? Hannibal Lecter. How great an actor was he? You know why I like him? Because he said on television on one of the, I love Donald Trump. So I love him.

I love him. I love him. He said that a long time ago. And once he said that, he was in my camp, was in his kid. I don't care if he was the worst actor. I'd say he was great to me. Like, first of all, first of all, does no one take a break on the weekends? Like, does Donald Trump not just go someplace and lay the fuck down? Because who were those people in the audience clapping? They know Hannibal Lecter is not a fucking actor, right? Like, they know that, right? And when was this said? Who ever said? Like, oh my God. We are the stupidest. place. We're in the stupidest, stupidest, most dangerous place ever. Stupid and danger. Not a good

combination. Not good. No, that's the problem. It's stupor. It's stupid. That has power. So it's a stupor. You're good. You were right. You were right the first time. I know. We're in a stupor. We're living in a stupor. I mean, look, yes, first of all, it's Anthony Hopkins is the actor. And second of all, Anthony Hopkins never said that. And Anthony Hopkins does not like Trump. And neither does Bads Mick Wilson. Right. My Hannibal. Thank you very much.

Mine too. From the great NBC show Hannibal. But I don't understand why we have article after article and sort of ringing hands op-ed after ringing hands op-ed about Joe Biden's age and mental acuity. Meanwhile, Donald Trump says more wrong and ridiculous things in one speech than Joe Biden. Biden has his entire life. Mm. Mm-mm-mm.

They want this man to have access again to security codes. They want this man who, I mean, and again, folks can make as many jokes as they, there is literally nothing funny that is happening right now with the things that are coming out of Donald Trump's mouth, with his obvious disconnect between what is fiction and what is real. And for every fucking New York Times, every. every fucking, every single one of these traditional institutional journalistic outlets that want to cover like Joe Biden tripping upstairs or Joe Biden like having a pause in his speech because he has a like, where the fuck are these people? Where are they when this is happening? Like this is actually

nothing to giggle about. He doesn't know fact from fiction. I mean, we know that he's a serial liar, But the fantasy is so fucking huge that the things that are coming out of his mouth don't make sense. But these fucking seals that are sitting in the audience just clap. I honestly, I really, it's so bizarre. It's so fucking bizarre. Yeah, it's insane. The insanity is not just the people sitting in the crowd. It's the other Republican elected officials who cover for Trump and put up with him and

and kiss his ring and kiss other parts of him that I won't mention. but they've got problems of their own. And let's talk about what's going on in the House. The House is speakerless and has been since last week when Kevin McCarthy was removed. And later this week, they'll begin voting on who should replace Kevin McCarthy. And the two leading candidates right now are Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. Both of these guys are, I think, awful is a good way to describe them. and they are both in a position of having to try to get both the crazies in the House

and what's left of the moderates in the House on the Republican side to vote for them. And it's going to be, honestly, I don't see how either one of them pulls this off. How long are we going to be able to not have leadership in the House? The fact is, is that even if Republicans were to come to some type of conclusion and agree on which fucking clown they want to have in charge, like there's no leadership anywhere. I guess I'm at a loss today because honestly, when you look at what this cult has become

and I don't say that like tongue in cheek, like it is serious. Like you have these people clapping mindlessly at something that they know is not true, right? You have these people wanting to appoint either one horrid person, right, who ignored sexual assault that we will get into or another horrible person. There is no leader in this party.

And so we're just, marching ahead over a fucking cliff and these people get worse and worse and worse. And all we're doing right now, as we look at this list of candidates, whether it's speaker or for the presidency, is like who has a marginal brain in their head? Who is somebody that can like, oh, I don't know, not tweet us into a fucking nuclear war. And just to be clear, not World War II. Because that's what Donald Trump thought that he was going to do. Right. We're in a situation where out of the two of them, Jordan and Scalise. Scalise is almost the establishment guy who, earlier in his career, described himself as David Duke without the baggage, and who voted to overturn

the 2020 election results. This is where we are now. That's the Republican establishment. That's the simple truth. Yeah, Jim Jordan is more of the quote-unquote bomb thrower, but it's not like Scalise is some kind of calm, logical, moderate, at least in temperament person. He's a guy who described himself as David Duke without the baggage and he may be the next speaker of the house. And it's just, it is absolutely, we say this all the time that how did we get here? Like, it is insane that this is where we are, that one party has fallen so far that David Duke without the baggage is a leading candidate to become the speaker of the house. I just want to remind people real quick. So Steve Scalise was shot back in 2017 at a congressional

baseball game, a man that has voted multiple times against gun reform. His life was saved by a black lesbian capital police officer, special agent Crystal Greiner. A woman whose life he has voted against, spoke out against with such fucking vitriol. And when I say her life, I mean the lives of LGBTQ people and the lives of black people. A black queer woman saved that white supremac ass. And I just like, I sit with that and again, coming out of that moment, out of that situation, you think that people can be changed by moments where they like face something like that. Not Steve Scalise, David Duke without the fucking baggage. This fucking gusting does not like go to encompass these people.

This is the choice between Jim Jordan, a man that just ignores sexual assault and abuse of over 177 fucking kids and this guy? And then there's Trump. My fucking God. If giving the Republican Party everything that they deserve wouldn't then provide us with the destruction of democracy and everything that we've known over the past 200 and close to 50 years, I would say let them have at it. Because I honestly, these people deserve everything coming to them, every single

fucking thing. It's true, but we don't. We don't. But at this point, the collateral damage is going to be so fucking deep. I know. Because Nikki Haley is the savior that we're looking for. Come on on. There is nobody in the Republican Party left in office who is doing anything remotely resembling covering themselves in glory. You know, we talked about Steve Scalise. And you brought up for Jim Jordan. He was a defendant in a suit against Ohio State University back in 2018 where a doctor abused. at least 177 students over the course of decades.

During part of that time, Jim Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach. He has claimed he knew nothing about this. There are many of the students have called bullshit on that. At least we have one student who said, Jim Jordan called me crying, crying, groveling on the 4th of July, begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for a half hour. That's the kind of cover-ups that's going on there. This is the kind of guy who, again, there's a very good chance we'll be Speaker of the House.

And then there's people like Nancy Mace who somehow every once in a while you see a little thing about how she's sort of a moderate and sort of a clear thinker. Let's be clear thinking about the fact that she is not a clear thinker. She is just another MAGA, blow hard, die hard, whatever you want to call her. And she was on Face the Nation on Sunday. And Margaret Brennan, the host, said to her, I know you've been outspoken. about defending victims of sexual assault. That part is generally true.

Nancy Mace herself was the victim of a sexual assault. And Brennan then said, do the past allegations against Jim Jordan that he turned a blind eye to sexual abuse give you any reservations? How do you square that? The reason she asked this question is because Nancy Mace has said

she's supporting Jim Jordan for speaker. Mace's reply was, yeah, I'm not familiar or aware with that. He's not indicted on anything that I'm aware of. I don't know anything and I can't speak to that. I just want to say how fucking ridiculous that is, this has been a big story for years since 2017, 2018, when the story first came out, everybody knows this. And for her herself to be a victim of sexual assault and for her to do exactly

what Jim Jordan did and to turn a blind eye to other victims is just, I cannot get over how disgusting that is. Peep something in this article real quick with me, which is in Rolling Stone. Because there's something that stood out to me as I was reading this. What she says, Nancy Mace, is like you said, yeah, I'm not familiar or aware with that. He's not indicted on anything that I'm aware of. She goes on to say this, though, Andy. What I do know is that I'm a very strong voice for women. I've talked to Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise about that.

I've been a very strong advocate for rape victims. The victims that Jim Jordan, and ignored. And so then participated and was an accomplice in their continued assault were men. Right. And I want to be very fucking clear about the distinction that she made, which was that what I do know is that I'm a very strong voice for women. So in her mind, her twisted, small, hollow mind. I believe that she believes that she is still an advocate.

That in her mind, well, Jim Jordan didn't have to do anything with the sexual assault of women. Right. So here's me. I'm untarnished in this by supporting him because I'm not a voice for those people that have been raped.

I'm a voice for those women that have been raped. So like, we have to unpack what it is that these people fucking say because they're being very clear. That's her clarity. And that is fucking sick. And then up top to also say that, well, he's not indicted on anything, which is to mean that if he was truly criminally liable, then he would be indicted. Well, ask me where the fucking follow-up question on Face the Nation was because Donald Trump is your Lord and Savior and he's been indicted four

times and is facing 91 criminal charges. So by your logic or lack thereof, you couldn't possibly support Donald Trump because, well, he's been indicted. And not once, not twice, not three times, but four times and counting. I'm telling you, it is not a secret what these people are saying and doing. They are telling us, we're just choosing to either look the other way or pretend that they're crazy or they don't know or blah. They're telling us. It's annoying that more. Margaret Brennan let her get away with that. And we talk about this all the time. And Danielle, you know, you were saying before we started recording, be ready with some clips.

Mm-hmm. Or even if they're not clips, be ready to read exactly what it is that these kids said about Jim Jordan and exactly why he was named in a defendant in the suit against Ohio State University. Because the thing is, part of me was like, okay, Margaret Brennan wasn't prepared because it's absolute, like, you don't expect someone. who's a sitting member of Congress to sit up there and say, oh, I'm not aware of that because it's such bullshit. But the thing is, you have to expect them to say that because that's what they do.

As you said, you know, they pretend they don't know about these things and then they parse their answers to say that, well, I'm an advocate for women, as you pointed out. If you're going to have these people on, if you're going to ask a question, you have to have facts at your command. And so when they say, well, I haven't heard anything about that. You can say, okay, let me educate you. Yeah. And then read off exactly what these abused kids said about him and about what he asked them to do,

which was to keep their mouth shut and to not report this stuff. I know we jump on the media all the time and maybe it's unseemly. But it's also like you can't have these people on and not be prepared for them to lie and to pretend they haven't heard of things that we know damn. well that they've heard of. I mean, at this point, having Republicans on, period, is a misstep, in my, in my humble opinion by journalists, because you know that they're going to lie, right? Having any current member of Congress on television, you know that they are going to lie. And to pretend otherwise and to be underprepared for that fact, that's journalistic malpractice at this point.

Like, oh, I'm caught off guard that so and so. was going to just totally brush over the fact that it's been known that Jim Jordan was an accomplice in sexual assault against over almost 200 young men. I want to connect this dot. This is also the party of toxic masculinity, right? So like, when you look at the way at the men that they put forward and the behavior that they allow and they applaud to come forward as a victim and to be a male and to be a victim of sexual assault, of course these fucking people are going to turn the other way. It's not within their ideology and context to do anything other than to ignore it. The one thing I will disagree with you on is I don't have a problem with having these people on and I would say look at what, was it Mehdi Hassan who did it with.

Oh yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's how you do it. Mm-hmm. Fair. But you have to be prepared to do that. And if you're not prepared to do that, then absolutely you have no business having them on your show to just sit up there and spout lies and pretend ignorance and to not be challenged on that. But if you're going to bring them on and they're going to lie and you're going to say,

okay, hang on, here's a clip where you did say this, even though now you're saying you didn't say it. Then yes, absolutely have them on and do that. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal. Alexander Ritzman, who is the researcher and policy advisor who leads the work of the Counter-Extremism project on violent right-wing extremism and terrorism in Europe that just released a 50-page report that was highlighted in Rolling Stone entitled, Hiding in Plain Sight, the Transnational Right Wing Extremist Active Club Network.

Alexander, tell us what this is and what you have uncovered in this report. Hi, Danielle. Thanks for having me. So I've been working on violent extremism for about 25 years now, looking at. it all kinds of different phenomena. And I'm mostly interested in new strategies in smart applications of violent extremism and terrorism. And this is why I looked at this so-called active club network, which is dressing up as a sports club for white men doing hiking and gym sports and combat sports, but actually is preparing to become a shadow militia, a violent group that is ready to

commit large-scale targeted violence in a so-called day-X scenario, which is not specific at the moment, but is the actual objective of this network. So the objective is to essentially train a white supremacist militia. Tell us the difference truly between what we have come to understand by virtue of what happened in the United States on January 6, 2021, when Donald Trump, the four, former twice impeached president of the United States told the oathkeepers and the proud boys who were very active in trying to violently overthrow an election and take over our capital building, told them to stand back and stand by. And so when we think about, I feel like we're always in this country in particular, conjure a specific look and identity of what a white supremac is.

So can you just tell us what you have found is the difference between this group and why, essentially what I figured in the article in Rolling Stone, why they're more dangerous? Right. Excellent point. So in a way, this active club network, and they refer to themselves as white nationalism 3.0, it's actually white supremacy, if you really listen to them, is basically a collection of lessons learned of previous attempts to organize right-wing violence. So they looked at what others did before. And there was a predecessor organization called the Rise Above Movement in California, which was also involved in violence and faced, let's say, a full response by the FBI and law enforcement.

So now they're saying, okay, how can we build a militia that doesn't look like one that will delay or withstand law enforcement intervention? Because there's right-wing extremists like you probably know the blood tribe, these guys in in uniforms, swastikis, zikiling all day, screaming, we are Nazis. So law enforcement would rather look at these guys. And when law enforcement looks at the active clubs, they would think, okay, this is a bit odd. White men doing sports, only white men.

But we have more important things to do. And that is the strategy. The strategy is hiding in plain sight by looking less threatening than other groups who are on the radar. So what have you found is truly behind their desire to be this 3.0 or 2.3 or whatever it is, this next iteration of violent white men. What is driving this faux fight club desire by these white men? So I looked for five months into everything that they have published audio in writing videos, as well as I've read everything that was published. published about them. There was no report like this one so far. So there was a gap to be filled. And the

core idea is that these guys have made an assessment of what they call white supremacy 1.0, which would be the skinheads, you know, like in your face, loud, violent. Then 2.0 would be the old right. And as one of the founders of this movement, Robert Rundu says, it's a bunch of white men who wear suits, meet in pups and talk about the Jews. But they don't do anything. So his point will be now we have to organize white men in a militant way, but we don't have national leadership in the U.S. at the moment. There's no furor figure, no leader, no structure, but we can build the militia, the army, for the time when that person or structure appears. So the idea is to be ready for that scenario, and this could be another day-x scenario in

terms of January 6, which they have discussed as being a bunch of idiots who don't know how to storm a building properly. And they discussed this in a, let's say, indirect way because they don't want law enforcement to focus on them. So they're not going to be publicly speaking about January 6 a lot. But they're saying this needs to be done differently to be effective. So I think this is what they actually have in mind. And everything I'm saying is based on communication from them. So this is not a theory that they are a militia hiding in plain sight, avoiding law enforcement interventions. This is basically what they are writing in their internal documents. I mean, it is just wild to me that in history, Alexander, it's like what is old is always new again.

And I feel like we fail to learn the lessons as to what breeds this type of hatred and what breeds this type of violence. So I want you to pull us outside of our very U.S. focused domestic mindset here and tell us why this kind of uprising, this kind of organizing is happening around Europe as well right now. Because what people in the United States, because we're very self-centered, very self-focused, is that what is happening in the United States is not new. It is new to us, meaning that we've never had a political party that has, overtly align themselves with white supremacy and violence. Not in the 200 and close to 50 years of this nation's founding have we had that kind of overt. We no longer believe in law and order type of

alignment. But this is something that has popped up all around Europe before and after World War II. So can you explain like what makes, I guess, countries ripe for this type of violence and extremism. So this is a very good point because it relates again to the narratives that the so-called active club network is pushing out. They reference a lot to the 1920s in Europe. The National Socialist Party, the Nazis, Hitler's rise to power, the creation of the stormtroopers, the storm up taillung, the brown shirts, and then of course the SS, the Waffen SS. And in a way, they're trying to copy this. They're saying, we need to build a movement, an extremist, and they would say a nationalist movement needs more boxers than thinkers.

So they are trying to build the muscle for a scenario where then this national leadership might occur. And they're trying to reach out to frustrated white men. This is a male-only movement in the U.S. at least, which is an interesting discussion to be had in itself. I mean, it was very interesting to read that part of that recruitment narrative that they're putting out. So what are they actually advertising?

They are advertising that they have suffered from humiliation. They're actually advertising something like fragile white masculinity and then empowerment through white supremacy. So one of the co-founders, this Robert Rondo guy, is extensively telling about his teenage years and his early 20 years where he was always suffering some sort of discrimination by people of color or abuse. or violence, but when he's joined and started such an extreme right violent group, then now he is respected and he's powerful.

And there are other key actors in this network that do the same, which is a bit uncommon. Usually this is more implicit. Here it is explicit. They're trying to attract fragile white men with a tendency for violence because they're also celebrating violence. It's not like, ah, we have these political ideas and maybe we need to use violence. violence to achieve them. There are podcasts where they are celebrating the violence they have been involved with, you know, hand fights, fist fights, knife fights, all kinds of fights. And this is, I think,

they're trying to grow this network by going back to these human needs and, of course, polarization, which is an issue in all Western countries and always has been, I would say, is a core part in this as well. That is fascinating to me, that they are advertising what, But many of us that have covered race, social justice, white supremacy issues as white male fragility, as this idea that you cannot succeed if you do not have your literal boot on somebody's neck. You will have the inability to rise if you do not clear the pathway of what you foresee to be other obstacles, which are other people being allowed inside of a process. Now, rather than, oh, I don't know, do something crazy like go to therapy and work your stuff out, you decide instead that the problem that you're facing is around your own fragility and so toxic masculinity is the answer.

Yeah, the toxic violent masculinity. It goes further because this guy Rondo tells in one of the many podcasts and audio messages that he enjoys working out with the boys and talking with them so he doesn't have. to take his problems back to his girlfriend. So this is actually, they could even advertise this as a form of extreme therapy by degrading others, by blaming others for all kinds of things that went wrong in their lives and they see wrong in the world, and by upgrading or glorifying their own skin color, right? Which is basically the only thing they agree upon because they try not to be political because they know when they talk about policy, there will be infighting and there will be splinter groups. So they are just organizing, in my understanding, a bunch of fragile, white,

violent men for the scenario that at some point there will be some event like January 6 or there might be national leadership. And then you need some sort of violence-ready militia. And we're in the early stage of this, right? There are more than 56 groups in the U.S. at the moment, more than 100 worldwide, but the network is growing. So this is something that needs to be dealt with by law enforcement and other actors in the field while it is growing and not when such a big violent event then has happened. And we're all in this, oh my God, thoughts and prayers. And let's find out what just happened. You know, Alexander, what makes me concerned when you just said, we need to have law enforcement do something about this is that what we found and historically in the

United States, what we've known about white domestic terrorism here is that the members of those groups, whether it be skinheads, the Ku Klux Klan, or other white supremacist groups, the oathkeepers, the proud boys, and now this, is that law enforcement is usually a part of it. It's why you can have so many signals that went out leading up to the January 6th insurrection in this country, and nothing happened, that there was no intervention made whatsoever. Now, we know that they monitor nonviolent black and brown groups that are fighting for justice, monitor their socials and what's happening, and will come out in force in full military regalia at a peaceful protest so that, I don't know, cops stop killing black people who are unarmed and not a threat. And so I wonder what it looks like

to truly have an intervention when in many places we have not excavated law enforcement's in these white supremacist groups? So what I can say is that January 6, I think, changed the perspective and priorities of a lot of law enforcement agencies in the United States, as well as policy makers that are involved in this line of work. So this report that was the foundation for this Rolling Stone article and other articles on it, actually, the report was well received. There's lots of interest in getting briefed on this issue.

I think in particular because the strategy of this network is to fool law enforcement, which is in a way what might have happened also earlier in previous violent attempts or violent actions of right-wing extremists. There might have been cooperation that you just highlighted. That's not my focus in my line of work at the moment. But what I can say is that it is very unlikely now that this network will be successful in its original plan of hiding in plain sight because there's actually a lot of interest by law enforcement and policymakers in understanding that strategy and seeing where an intervention can be successful because as long as there's no crimes, right, there's not much you can do. But the report highlights

some of the illegal activities these groups have been doing. So this could be starting points for law enforcement investigations. To your point, there isn't an overt illegal action that has happening at this time. But it is absolutely an alarm that should be going off and raised that where white, aggressive, violent men gather in groups that the escalation will follow. That this is not just going to be a white grievance fragility group where they beat each other up and yell explicitives about other racial groups or other marginalized communities. Like it will escalate. And so what is your, Alexander, your advice to those that should be paying attention to this, whether it be in all of the countries that you have listed out in your report that you're seeing this

network grow, what should lawmakers be doing to preemptively stop the growth of these networks? No, the first thing I would say is to exchange insights and analysis and maybe some good or bad lessons learned between law enforcement and policymakers in the U.S., the local level, state level, federal level. But since 15 countries face a similar threat, this is Canada and 14 countries in the European Union, this is really a transnational threat, which needs a international response based on this idea that it takes a network to beat a network. And then, of course, you, once you investigate such a group, because there are indications for illegal activities, you can then find out what they're actually doing. So because what I've been saying in the report

is that they are saying, we are building a militia, like the Minutemen, you know, of the American Revolutionary War, these white men with their guns at home that are ready to go to a place X for when the need arises. And what they want to pretend to, They try to look more like innocent white men doing sports together. So exploring to what degree this strategy of building a militia is ongoing already, or if it's still in its infancy, so to say. Because there are also, I found a couple of pieces of evidence that some of these groups are actually doing militia training.

So if some of them did not get the memo or didn't follow the handbook, they were posting pictures of themselves with semi-automatic rifles, saying, yes, we did this training, and there also some of them are doing tactical casualty care, which you don't need for boxing matches. This is if you have a shooting event, for example, and you try to evacuate injured participants or victims. So they're training also for that. So why would the network that says we're about sports practice with semi-automatic rifles and do tactical casualty care? So there's a couple of more indications that are in the report. And there's a another report that is not for the public, that is supposed to inform law enforcement and policy makers,

because we don't want to brief the network of what might be coming their way, right? So this is a bit delicate, and that's why I'm also not going to go into more details, but there are avenues to be explored here to disrupt the network now. Well, I can't thank you enough, Alexander, for your work, for your research, for raising the alarm. We have a ton of work that needs to be done, and people need not be taking this lightly. Really appreciate you making the time to join the new abnormal. Well, thank you for having me. For the past few years, NBC News Justice Reporter Ryan Riley has been covering the multitude of investigations and trials that have resulted from the January 6th riots. And as part of this

coverage, he's been reporting on the civilian sleuths who have been invaluable in identifying many of the culprits. He takes an in-depth look at these folks and why they became necessary in his new book, Sedition Hunters, How January 6th Broke the Justice System, out October 17th, and he joins me now to tell us about it. Ryan, thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me. So I want to start in the preface. You quote one of the sedition hunters, who, as most of them are in the book, is given a pseudonym, in this case, Alex. You quote him as saying, there's something that's so fundamentally broken. We're going to figure it out one day, and we're all going to be pissed that we allowed it to happen. And this, to me, this really describes

perfectly what you talk about for a large chunk of the book, which is the circumstances that led up to January 6th and more specifically how it was possible for January 6th to happen under the watch of the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, and why the civilian internet detectives became critical after it. Yeah, you know, there's a, there's a multitude of responses for that and we don't fully have the picture for how this came about altogether, but, you know, just I'll throw a few of the reasons out there that I sort of researched it and going through the book. One of them just kind of on the really dumb side is it was right after the holidays, right? So this was at the end of a hell of a year.

This was after in the middle of COVID and everything like that. It was this crazy, you know, presidential election. And the thought was sort of all aimed at the inauguration. And let's make sure nothing bad goes over on the inauguration. And then lo and behold, Trump sends that tweet on December 19th, which is sort of when, you know, federal employees typically began doing a half-ass job, so to speak, phoning it in maybe for ahead of the holidays. So that, like, I think that has more to do with it.

We are probably comfortable with. And that was, you know, definitely a factor in this. there's also just the politics of this, right? Remember how aggressively Donald Trump was going after the FBI, and, you know, no one really wants to upset the apple cart at that point when you're so close to bringing in this new administration. I mean, who wants to write the memo that says the president's event that he's holding on January 6 is a threat to national security and then have that distributed to every local law enforcement official, maybe do like some sort of joint memo with BHS, and then suddenly that leaks out and becomes this whole controversy. and suddenly Jim Jordan and whoever else is making this whole ordeal about like, gosh, all these people who just are trying to express their First Amendment rights are being, you know,

miscast by the deep state within the FBI. Also, there were just some really bad bureaucratic challenges. They lost access to this key monitoring tool that they used to actually look for really aggressive or really violent rhetoric online. That was sort of basically how they monitored Twitter, how they monitored a lot of these different things. And because of they opened this up for this contract. And then when they opened it up for the contract, as turned out that contract ended at the end on December 31st.

But the new system wasn't going to be ready until, oh, January 6th. So that was something that there was a lot of email traffic on behind the scenes, even from the head of the Washington Field Office being like, I don't understand we're paying for this product starting on January 1st. Why don't we have logins and why can't we get this set up ahead of time? The frustrating thing in the aftermath, when you've had all these conspiracies on the right about January 6 itself and some sort of FBI setup and what have you is just like, no, actually, the simpler explanation is completely in line with your underlying political ideology, or at least what it used to be, which is that government is ineffective, right? Like, the government isn't the best at doing them. The bureaucracy really was hampering them at this point. And it is the private sector, you know, citizens sluze who end up really bringing this all together and can just sort of blow

past all of these bureaucratic things like, oh, we have to, you know, put up, for example, that social media monitoring thing. That wasn't really a problem. They also don't have to worry as much about First Amendment considerations. They can monitor whatever the hell they want to. Right. There were two things in the book also that I noted along these lines. You have a line where you say, no further action was a running theme in tips the federal government received in the lead up to January 6th. In other words, they would get tips and they would look them over and they would say, you know, no further action necessary. At least in hindsight, that turned out to be a big mistake. Yeah. And checking that box was, you know, they would just sort of check that box and say, okay, this is someone who is just sort of spouting off or saying something they should have,

but there's not much we can do about it. But overall, there was this theme of them sort of a approaching this as though lone wolves were going to be the problem and not really considering the broader picture. And subsequently, actually just last week, I, as a result of a FOIA, got a memo that the FBI sort of put together before the actual election, in fact, a week before the election, looking at what the possible reactions could be. And their, you know, the most likely scenario was that people are going to be determined to act, but that law enforcement action and lack of organization is going prevent them from doing so. Of course, when you have a situation like, you know, Donald Trump organizing this anger at a specific date and time very late in the game and sort of calling everyone

to the Capitol, that's not something that they had really comprehended. But in fact, it is something that Donald Trump did before because not only in 2016 was he convinced that, obviously, he won the popular vote as well, but in 2012, he was convinced that Mitt Romney actually won, which, you know, sounds like we're in a different world when you have Donald Trump thinking about having people march to the Capitol on behalf of Mitt Romney. But that's what he said. He said, He said, you know, hey, we should be marching on Washington. This is a travesty, et cetera. Like, he actually uses the phrase, fight like hell, which, of course, then, you know, fast forward a few years. And that's one of the phrases that he used during that speech right before the capital attack.

Okay. So let's get to the sedition hunters. And let's move to post-January 6th. There's a line you use in the book that, you know, is sort of an internal FBI saying, offering yesterday's technology tomorrow. And, you know, meaning that for all of their budgets, all of their prestige, the feds aren't necessarily working with the latest and best technological tools. So enter these sedition hunters. And in particular, one named Alex, who I mentioned before, a pseudonym, he's sort of emblematic of what is a sort of disparate group the sedition hunters for. He was actually a Trump voter. But he also developed an app that made a lot of the group's work possible and gave them a huge leg up on the FBI's quote unquote yesterday's technology. Yeah, and I mean, the FBI, like, you have to remember how this is sort of stylized and how the FBI came up is that they're all sort of organized into these field offices. They're all about memos. They're all about documentation. It wasn't until less than a decade ago that they even started recording interviews. And even now in the year 2023, that doesn't happen all the time. They're more dependent on just these recollections by agents, which, you know, is problematic in its own because obviously audio recordings are much more reliable than human memory. But, you know, I think that

The enthusiasm that I think that these sluys really brought to this and the anger that they were able to sort of channel in this in this way is something that really set them apart in addition to all the technological advances that they were able to make in the way that they were able to track this. They just very quickly crowdsourced this. And I think, you know, one example just from the very beginning of this was when you had the sluze using these hashtags to organize and tracking people, even from the very beginning before facial rec even came into the picture, whereas the FBI like was putting out these one page, sort of PDFs where they would, all they would do is put 10 photos of individuals, not really say what they

wanted to talk to them for. Some of them were of not great quality. But, you know, they're approaching this as though the way that people were going to be caught was though someone's going to staple that up in their local post office and hope that they just so happened to have found it rather than online, which is really how this came about. Even now in 2023, the way that a lot of these ideas come about is when they go super viral, when they got a lot of attention. There was this one woman named Pink Beret, who was this big mystery for a very long time. And it just actually, it was only because one of the defense attorneys really put a lot of focus on her that the FBI said, okay, fine, we'll add her to the list. And then, of course, when you have the FBI, add a woman in a pink

parade to their most wanted list, suddenly that goes a little viral, right? So, and then because of that, it went super viral. There are a lot of jokes about it. And lo and behold, her ex-boyfriend was like, oh, yeah, I recognize that person. So sometimes even when facial recognition or a lot of these other technological solutions fail, just being able to make these things go viral in the way that we do today, is really important actually bringing these people to justice because there's so many people out there that are now these subjects of conspiracy theories that, in reality, have already been long identified by online slews, including more than 100 who are on the FBI's capital violence web page today, who have already been successfully identified, but just have not yet been arrested.

And you mentioned these various ways using hashtags and using names like Pink Beret and stuff like that. And then you have Claire, again, a pseudonym. She used the dating app Bumble to Honeypot guys to find out that they were at the Capitol. Yeah, she was a really fun one that sort of was this sort of different approach. She was just like, okay, what can I do to be the most helpful here? So that she just switched her profile to conservative. I think she had a photo of herself in a pink pussy hat from, you know, the woman's march in 2017 on her profile. Obviously removed that.

I made it some sort of generic recreational activity, probably I think a photo from a brewery or something like that. and then just started chatting up dudes and very quickly was able to talk to several of them who said that they were at the Capitol, including one of whom used a metal whip to assault officers that day and was able to get that information to the FBI. She didn't, of course, know what he had done, but she knew that he had bragged a lot about he was being on the front lines, getting it with pepper spray, etc, etc. And she was able to turn that all into the FBI. And the FBI was able to match that up with, you know, one of their suspects that they were looking for. So these things really do come about in a variety of really interesting ways. Yeah, it really was. And then there's the story of Joan. And she described herself to you as she said being a Facebook detective was her hobby, the way some people crochet or paint. And she's the one who identified one rider as Brent Bazelle the fourth, son of the conservative activist, Brent Bozell the third, right? That's right. And that was a really interesting one, too, because a lot of these finds are just, you know, very funny like that. So he, I mean, this was an individual who, you know, wouldn't have been that tough, I think, for the feds to eventually identify who this was because he was wearing a sweatshirt from the very small school, his shoulder. attended in Pennsylvania outside of Hershey. So basically this individual Joan just went to the Facebook page, looked through everyone who ever liked a photo from that particular school, and then very quickly found someone who I think had a snowman as his label.

But then it was, oh, Zeker Bozell, and then she just a little bit more Googling. And Brent Bozell and then, holy snokes, it's like this is a guy who's been this, you know, conservative lineage, I suppose. That family has played this major role. And then, of course, having someone in that family participate in the U.S. Capitol is just this really unique circumstance that you couldn't. There's so many things in this book that I'm just like you couldn't write this. And of course, having Brent Beaux-El's kid Storm the Capitol is one of those things. Yeah, there's one sedition hunter who does not use

a pseudonym in the book. That's Forrest Rogers. And his work helped lead to the arrest of Danny Rodriguez, who it turned out was the guy who tased DC Metro Police Officer Michael Phenone, right? Yeah, that was what sort of got me all kicked off on this at the start. I suppose it was all really start off with a Twitter joke for me where I was making a joke about a woman who's actually being sentenced next week on October 17th. Her name is Rachel Powell at the time she was known as Bullhorn Lady. And I think some listeners might have remembered the video of her sort of leading around people inside the Capitol saying, you know, if you want to break into the Capitol, we have to open up this way. It was sort of this tone that reminded me of, you know, an eighth grade field trip

chaperone or just a really frustrated parent. So, you know, I made a crack that, you know, 20 bucks says this ends in both an arrest and a PTA resignation. As it turns out, she's a homeschooler, so I was hitting the right theme, but, you know, she was like eight or nine kids. So, yes, that tone was very much so the same tone as you would use with young children. But that was sort of what got me kicked off on this. And I got a message from Forest. He was using the handle of that time, deep state dogs. And he said, you know, we've identified this person. We, you know, are sort of trying to wait to see what the FBI is going to do, et cetera, et cetera. It wasn't me, but it was Ronan Farrow from the New Yorker who was ultimately able to convince them. so I sort of tossed aside my feelings of journalistic jealousy there and said,

all right, I'll get the next one and kept up that relationship. And lo and behold, he identified the person who drove a stun gun into Officer Mike Phenone's neck. And it's unclear still kind of at this point, whether or not the FBI knew at that point that he had actually driven that stun gun in because they had released other photos from the same video, but not him in particular. And we ended up identifying him in February and he was arrested, I think, on the last day of March, as I recall, of 2020. How closely do the Sedition Hunters work with the FBI?

It varies. There are a few people who definitely have these ongoing connections, but they do sort of route them through the same sort of channel. Because on the early days, you're just sort of dumping it into this. It's like applying for a job online, right? If you don't have that connection often, you just, you enter all that info and then Sayonara, you never see it again. You never hear about anything back. I think that's one of the frustrations that some of the slu's had, especially in the beginning.

But after they were able to make some of these connections, then they have sort of direct targets. and at least it's an individual that you know it's going to, someone who's perhaps more likely to respond to you, that sort of thing. So I think that that was helpful for them in making those connections. But it does definitely vary where there's a ton of slews who just basically send their information through someone else. And I think the important thing about this here is that this is all open source information. So they can all sort of confirm this. This isn't as though the FBI is just like trusting anything, but they really do have a tremendous track record in these cases where, you know, the FBI has rated the wrong woman's house at one point in the course of

this investigation. And it's something that the slews would have never identified that person, or at least the sluys who really have gotten involved in this investigation later on would have ever identified that person because it just doesn't look similar. And I think they would have ran that through a facial check because even in that case, when the FBI raided the wrong home, they had someone the woman knows who would be like, oh, yeah, that looks like her. And it wasn't, right? So that's one of those checks that you can also just add on top. You know, they also could have looked into their database of all the phone numbers that entered the Capitol that day, which really would I think help eliminate a lot of these questions because, you know,

if the slews had access to those phone numbers, I mean, they'd just be checking these things off left and right. They're really careful about these cases before they send them in and really have some sort of other confirming attribute. You know, they don't just rely on a facial erect check. They rely on confirming information and, you know, whether it's an item of clothing or whether it's the person they're with, whatever they can to really confirm that this individual was actually at the Capitol that day. So if they had access to that database of phone numbers like the FBI did, I think we'd be in a much different spot where they could just, you know, be checking essentially that database. And that's, oh, okay, I think it's this person. Is their phone number there?

And it's like positive hit. That would really speed things up, I think. One Justice Department official told you, quote, I am so incredibly grateful to the sleuths for everything they have done. But what an egg on the face of United States law. enforcement. Can you ballpark just how many arrests and how many convictions the sedition hunters were at least partially responsible for? Is there a way to quantify this? Hundreds. They've for sure had involvement in the vast majority of these cases, whether or not they would have been arrested without the sluze. I think it's a little bit of a trickier question because oftentimes you'll have a situation where even now the sluze will like find an ID. And one of the frustrations is they'll

send it into the FBI and then, oh, we'll find out, lo and behold that this person, you know, they got a tip about this person in the beginning of 2021 that nobody ever really followed up on. So I think that's on the frustrating end of it for them. The biggest example to me of something where the sluys were able to find something and just how this crowdsourcing can really work and why it's better for the FBI to put out as much video as they can in these cases is that in the trial of the Proud boy is the seditious conspiracy trial. You had someone testifying, Zach Real, he was the head of the Philly Prowboy chapter there and testifying and insisting on the stand that, you know, I didn't assault an officer that day, some sort of incredulous test.

testimony. But the truth was is that the FBI didn't have any evidence that he assaulted an officer that day. But what happened was his defense attorney was trying to kill some time because she didn't want the prosecution to take over just before the long weekend. She wanted the last thing that the jurors to hear was her questioning of her own client rather than letting them sort of mollet over over the weekend. So she dragged out, you know, for an entire day what could have been an hour of testimony. And ultimately, that gave the slew some time to look back. And because of the way that they're able to organize these things, they were able to find video. the government had previously released in connection with another case that actually showed Zachary Real pointing a chemical weapon at officers in spraying. And so that's something that he ultimately played a huge role in obviously his sentencing memo, but he wasn't actually charged with that crime directly because it was something that they didn't have in hand when they actually went forward with this trial, despite the fact that this was an investigation that went on for more than two years into the proud boys altogether with, you know, just all this concentration of the FBI focused on this case except they missed this critical assault. Amazing. The book is Sedition Hunters,

how January 6th broke the justice system. And it's filled with stories like that, like from start to finish. It's just a fantastic read. It's out October 17th. Ryan Riley, thanks so much for being here. And hopefully we'll have you back soon. Thanks so much for having me. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Danielle kick off this week with your fuck that guy. for it today. Well, I just giggle because we are, as you said, Andy, we are over people at this point. We're coming for entire states, entire movements, entire parties. And so my fuck that guy is going to the state of Alabama. And for what, I mean, there are so many things, but this one, this one takes the fucking cake. So according to AL.com, you know how Alabama is one of those.

Red Red States that is so big on book banning and fucking book bonfires and the like that they have taken their desire to censor knowledge to the 10th degree. So let me read you this real quick. Read Me a Story Stella is a children's picture book about a pair of siblings reading books together and building a doghouse. However, because the author's name is Marie Louise Gay, the book was added to the list of potentially sexually explicit books to be moved from the children's section of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library System. Folks, when I say that the fucking link between stupidity and dangerous, we are living in what Andy called the stupor, right, with stupidity and power, this is what you would look up in the dictionary to see what is the definition of stupor. This is it. The book, so we now associate the word, right? Don't say gay, because I'm assuming in the state of Florida, if Marie Louise lived there, we would just know her by Marie Louise.

because you wouldn't be able to say her last name in that fucking state for fear of expulsion from the state. Her book has nothing to do with diversity, equity, or inclusion. It has nothing to do with LGBTQ people. But because her

last name is gay, the fucking dumb-dums in the state of Alabama have tried to ban her book. And this is what gay's publicist, not a gay publicist, but gay's publicist has said, although it is obviously laughable that our picture book shows up on their list of

censored books simply because the author's last name is gay, the ridiculousness of that fact should not distract from the seriousness of this situation. And I couldn't agree more with Kristen Brassard, who is Mary Louise Gay's publicist at Groundwood Books. Wow, wow, Alabama, Wow. So I guess we should assume then that anyone with the last name black, they can have those books ban as well. But you know what? All those last people, people's last name white front and center. Fucking dummies. And for that reason, the state of Alabama is my, fuck that guy, fuck that state. Fuck those people. I wonder how they'd handle black people whose last name is white. Ooh, Andy, good one. That would be one of those, like a movie scene of someone's head just exploding.

Mm-mm-mm. A black-white supremac. Anyway. Andy, how are you kicking off this week? So I am going to do a person, but it's a particularly awful person. She is a person named Chaya Rachik, and she goes by the online handle, Libs of TikTok. And what she started out doing was she posts videos from TikTok of what she thinks are liberals saying stupid things.

But what she is in reality is she's a bigot. She's a straight up bigot. She is a homophob. She is a homophob. And she is just generally an awful person. And what she does a lot of is posting notices that certain schools are having certain events or like anything that even smacks. of diversity, equity, or inclusion. And then what happens is her followers send in bomb threats to those schools. And this happens repeatedly. And it's happened time after time after time. And she takes no

responsibility for this. And it's just she's an absolutely gross and disgusting human being. We have an expression, we Jewish people, someone is a Shonda. And it basically means they're a disgrace or a stain or a blemish. And she is a Shonda. And if she were a rapper, her name would be Shonda rhymes. Yes, I said it, I said it, I said it, and I stand by it. Anyway, this last week, she posted a picture of the communications director for the secretary of the interior is a guy named Tyler Cherry. And he has a very interesting look. He has a hoopie earring in each ear. He has a, what looks sort of like a mulletish haircut. He's got a mustache. He's wearing some funky clothes. He looks like a guy. An interesting guy. But she, of course,

she thinks that dressing like this or a guy wearing earrings is the end of Western civilization. So she posts his picture, mocking him, calling him a total weirdo, and basically just being an awful person. And the White House, to its credit, stood up for charity with a White House spokesperson saying, no one should be targeted simply for being themselves. It's cruel and unacceptable. But this is what she does. And she's an awful person. Unfortunately, this is part of the stupor. She has what is really an insane amount of power because she is very active on social media and has a ton of followers. And it's just, I'm so sick of it and I'm so sick of her. And I don't know that we've even talked about her on the show before, but I decided it was time

because she is truly, truly just a heinous human being. So for all those reasons, fuck her. Let me tell you something. Like, there is no one who can come out post a picture of somebody and say like you shouldn't look this way you shouldn't act this way like no one is above repro like i just don't understand the fast you know that we are experiencing the end of fucking like western civilization but it ain't because of that yeah right like it's because of people like her fuck her fuck all them honestly i have no i have no other thing to add nope hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal we're back every tuesday friday and sunday if you enjoyed it please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going.

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