The Wild Chaos Podcast
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The Wild Chaos Podcast
#47 - Storming The Capitol - Jan 6th Insurrection w/Patrick Montgomery
What happens when a life spent in the wild takes a dramatic turn into the heart of one of the most controversial events in American history? In this episode of The Wild Chaos Podcast, we sit down with Patrick Montgomery—an experienced hunting guide whose path led from tracking game in Alaska and Colorado to standing inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
Raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Patrick grew up with a passion for the outdoors, following in his father’s footsteps as an avid hunter. By the time he was in high school, he was already guiding in the unforgiving landscapes of Alaska. But nothing could have prepared him for what came next. His participation in the January 6th events resulted in a federal conviction and a 37-month prison sentence—one that took a shocking turn when he was pardoned by President Trump and released the very same day.
Patrick opens up about what really happened that day, the legal battles that followed, and the impact it had on his life and family. He shares raw, unfiltered insights into the prison system, house arrest, and what it’s like to go from an average American to a national headline. This episode isn’t about politics—it’s about one man’s personal journey through chaos, consequences, and ultimately, redemption.
No matter where you stand on the events of that day, Patrick’s story is a gripping account of risk, resilience, and how quickly life can change in an instant. Tune in for an unforgettable conversation.
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Patrick, I'm really excited for this episode. Yeah, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself, but just a kind of a quick overlook is you grew up wild, crazy outfitting from Alaska to the eastern plains of Colorado and unfortunately you got tied up in the January 6th insurrection. You've been on house arrest for the whole entire time and you just got a presidential pardon and we're going to dive into what in the hell that was like being a prisoner in your own home for several years. So, yeah, we got a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to this one because I have so many questions and to talk to somebody that was there that day. Boots on the ground and you actually made it inside the Capitol. I've seen the pictures of you standing there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no doubt that I was inside the Capitol building. That's pretty much undeniable.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I guess let's just jump into it. Give you a little intro about yourself and we're going to roll right into it, just how we normally do it here. So, yeah, no it's all good, you know.
Speaker 2:Those of your viewers that don't know who I am, my name's Patrick Montgomery. You know I was born and raised in Albuquerque, new Mexico. My name is Patrick Montgomery. I was born and raised in Albuquerque, new Mexico, grew up within an outdoor-loving family. My dad was a big outdoorsman. That's just the way that me and my brothers were raised. I started working in Alaska at the age of 16, working as a fishing guide up there.
Speaker 2:As my life progressed, I just assumed the role of, you know, as a guide. You know more than anything, you know. I think it kind of chose me more than I chose it, and that's just what I, what I ended up doing and along the way. You know my life is. You know it's had its ups and downs and it's had its challenges. Um, and you know that's it's all part of the process, you know. You know it's all part of the process, you know.
Speaker 2:You know there's things that you can say that you regret about life, but there's not. You know, and even with this January 6th, you know scenario people ask me a lot of times do you regret? You know that you were involved in it, do you regret that you went there that day and from that standpoint I can say I regret the consequences of some of the decisions that I made, but I can't say that I regret the whole experience, because that's part of my story and it's part of this nation's story and it's just something that I want to share the truth with people about so that they have a better understanding yeah of that day and how, and for me it's all about, you know, healing as a nation and moving forward.
Speaker 2:You know, this is the united states of america and when we act that way, we're a better nation because of it, for sure so childhood, what was albuquerque like?
Speaker 1:because it is a wild city. Now, how was that? As a kid growing up?
Speaker 2:um, I mean old Burka. It was wild growing up yeah you know, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting dynamic that you have there in Albuquerque. Just because you've got a lot of mixes, it's a. It's a cultural mixing center. You have a lot of mixes, it's a. It's a cultural mixing center. You have a lot of Native American. You know people within the um. You know Native American Indian culture, if you will, um, there's a lot of. You know there's a military presence there that you have. You know, between Kirtland Air Force Base, you know Los Alamos National Laboratory, white Sands Missile Range, you have a large Hispanic cultureic culture. Um, and then you, you do have, you know, african-american culture there's, there's white anglos and it all comes together in the mixing pot that is, that is burka and uh, yeah, no, it got pretty wild even back in the day I bet were you like in the heart of albuquerque or whereabouts did you grow up?
Speaker 2:I grew up in what they call the Northeast Heights, you know which is. You know upper middle class. You know white community for the most part. You know they're in Albuquerque Went to a big high school. My graduating class probably had 650, maybe 700, you know graduating students. So I was a product of the public school systems for the most part. Uh, I did a turn attend school during middle school. There was a private, private Academy, Albuquerque Academy. It was a parochial, you know league school that I went to for for middle school and just kind of decided that you know that wasn't for me. It was a little bit more on the uppity end, you know, out with the rich kids and I just didn't feel comfortable really in that environment.
Speaker 1:So I went back to public schools to finish out high school so from high school to Alaska, how do you go about going from Albuquerque as a kid to as a fishing guide to alaska?
Speaker 2:that is complete polar opposite yeah, you know, for me I was. I had a unique opportunity in that my, my dad was really good friends with a big time outfitter new mexico is an outfitter by the name of rick martin, I believe. In 1988 he actually won safari club international professional hunter of the year okay, which is an international award given to the top outfitter in the world by safari club international. So my dad was really good friends with him. Yeah, so that outfitter happened to have the lease on a big giant ranch in new mexico. That was at the time it was called the baka location. Now that ranch has been bought by the federal government and it's called the Valles Caldera. A lot of people are well aware of the elk hunting that occurs on the Valles Caldera. So I had the opportunity to grow up, you know my dad was good friends with that outfitter. He took me up there, you know, to the Baca Ranch. You know I hung out with that outfitter.
Speaker 2:That outfitter was part owner I think he was 50% owner of a fishing lodge in Alaska with a guy by the name of Lynn Castle. Lynn Castle was a master guide there in Alaska. He kind of pioneered the hunting around Denali. You know Wood River Lodge is the lodge that he owned. Again, he was another outfitter that went on to win. You know, wood River Lodge is the lodge that he owned. Um, again, he was another, another outfitter that that went on to win. Um, you know Safari Club International. You know, professional hunter of the year. So I grew just kind of grew up in that circle, okay, um, when I was a sophomore in high school, rick Martin basically called me and asked me if I wanted to go go up to Alaska and work for him that that summer and he kind of did that. We kind of did this on the sly behind my parents back.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so back in the day it was old, you know phone, we didn't have cell phones so he called, and it wasn't unusual for him necessarily to call and talk to me, he was kind of like my second dad. But he called and asked me if I wanted to go to alaska. And well, of course, rick, yeah, I want to go to alaska. But absolutely, you know, I'm too young, you know how am I? How can I go up there? Mom and dad, you know, are never going to let me go up there to alaska.
Speaker 2:And he said well, you know, I've got this already all figured out. He said here's what we do. He said I'm going to buy you a plane ticket. I'm going to set you up an account with Cabela's to where you can order everything that you need. You'll have that shipped. We'll either have it shipped here to my house or you can ship it directly to the lodge up in Alaska. And your part is you can't say anything to your brothers, you can't tell your parents until right before it's time for you to go. And the purpose of that was that he was worried that if we told him too soon that they would deny it, they would say no, there's no way you can go yeah so it literally came down to.
Speaker 2:I already had everything set, had a job. I wasn't originally hired to go up there and to guide, I was just going to be working kind of as a camp gopher, you know, working in the kitchen doing dishes. They had position. Basically they called it a river runner. Our lodge sat about 10 miles up the Unalakleet River from the main town of Unalakleet.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And all of our supplies. You know our freight, our food, avgas for the planes, diesel to run the generators all of that came into town and had to be hauled by boat up to the lodge. That was going to be my job. I was going to help out around the lodge, help move freight, get gas, just be an all-around gopher. We didn't tell my parents. It was literally probably two weeks before I was going to Alaska.
Speaker 2:At the dinner table, mom and dad are having the conversation. I just turned, turned 16, so I had my driver's license and you know the discussion came up. You know, what are you going to do this summer? We you know parents expectations were that if you're going to be here, you're either a going to be working or, b, you're going to go to summer school, and so I brought up that. Well, you know, I kind of plan on working. You know, the summer. To them it was all great. Well, great, that's awesome. What are you going to do? Are you going to go work at the McDonald's? You know the local pizza joint, and I think my answer at the time was no, I think I'm going to go to Alaska.
Speaker 1:How'd that go over?
Speaker 2:Well, Mom particularly thought that was pretty hilarious. Oh, really over well, mom thought mom particularly thought that was pretty hilarious and oh really, they didn't take you serious. No, no, I mean. At first her reaction was oh really, how are you going to get to alaska? We're not buying you a plane ticket yeah, well, I already got one. Yeah, I got one, ma yeah, um, and then she kind of started seeing that I was serious about it well we're not letting you go up there.
Speaker 2:we're not sending you up there to work with a bunch of grown adults by yourself. You're only 16. And I started to raise some objections. My dad kind of gave me that look across the table, like you know, son, easy, you know, don't say too much, don't go past that point where there's no coming back from. And so I kind of shut it down there.
Speaker 1:but you know, at the end of the day they talked about it and they let me, you know your dad grew up in that life, you know, yeah, he knows the outdoors, he knows the outfitting world and what it can do and how it can change a 16 year old kid real quick. I mean, I'm sure he was. He's probably pretty excited about it well alaska's big boy country though too, so it is a dangerous place, you know yeah, I mean it's, it's the real deal.
Speaker 2:Um, still is the real deal, absolutely. There's a lot of trouble. You can get up there if you go up there, you know, unprepared. Um, my dad had lived in alaska. My parents, both of them, um, my dad was in the air force, okay, so he they paid for his dental school. My dad was a dentist, so once he got out of dental school from Baylor University, him and my mother moved to Anchorage, alaska. That's where my dad served his time in the Air Force, got it.
Speaker 2:So he had already been there before. My older brother, Mike, ended up being born in Anchorage before they finally left Alaska and returned to New Mexico, which is where my dad was born and raised in the state of New Mexico. So, yeah, he knew what it was and what it was about.
Speaker 1:So you get to Alaska. 16-year-old kid, what the hell is going through your mind at this point? It's a pretty big leap to do for a 16 year old kid for the summer to go up and and venture around alaska for a little bit yeah, it's not something that probably would happen today.
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't know many parents that would, you know, trust sending their kid off to work at a fishing lodge thousands of miles away from home. Back then it wasn't like it is now, where you have this constant communication with cell phones. We were in a place where it would probably be a couple weeks in between time periods when my parents would even hear from me like so where did you guys have communication at your lodge or was it when you went to town?
Speaker 1:the reef resupply? Did you get a phone call there? We could use a radio you'd like a Motorola.
Speaker 2:You know radio that could sometimes, you know, you could make calls on it, but yeah, it was a delayed process. It was, you know, like maybe once every couple of weeks you'd get a phone call out, you know. But it was, you know, mostly you know the original way of communication. You know writing letters and that's how we we stayed in touch, you know, with family and friends. But yeah, so they sent me up there, I started working and it was just, you know, chance of circumstances that I ended up, you know, becoming a guide, you know, at the age of 16. You know a couple of the other fishing guides that were there working. They got hurt in two separate incidents accidents, if you will to where they couldn't fish anymore. And the other guides that were around the lodge, you know, kind of vouched for me and stood up for me and said, hey, let the kid you know start guiding. And they did. They took a chance on me and I started guiding at 16. What was it? It was all downhill from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what did you enjoy about it? I mean being a 16-year-old kid. What are you guys fishing for? What were you guys targeting up there?
Speaker 2:The river that we were on, you know it had the main species of salmon, you know. So the first to come in would be the kings, or the chinooks, you know. However you refer to them. So the kings would come in and they would be followed. You know, in the month of July was mostly, you know, the pink salmon, the chum salmon or dog salmon as they call them, and then August, first part of september, is mostly silvers. We did have a fly out fishery where we would take a plane about, we'd fly about 200 miles over to some tributaries that were coming off the yukon river. Really that held giant northern pike really, and that was, you know, I love northerns, oh, and these, these were big northerns, you know we weren't. We'd catch 100 pike a day and I'd say 20 of them would be over 40 inches, you know we were catching some pike up to, you know, breaking that 50-inch mark. We were catching some 52, 53-inch, yeah, northern, I mean 37 to 42-pound northerns.
Speaker 1:And catching most of them on topwaters.
Speaker 2:You know Zara, spooks and big buzzbaits and you know. So that was always something that we look forward to doing. I've been volunteering for that trip every time, yeah, each week. There was one day, you know that, as a guide, you got to go over there with your clients. We had one guide that you know. He had to stay at the pike camp. We had flown a couple boats over there two boats and had a little, basically a spike camp there, you know where. One guide we all rotated in. We each had a week that we had to stay out there by ourselves and guard the boats and the gas, and each day the beaver would come in two with four, four clients and another guide and we'd go catch these big giant pike. But damn, um, the guides got hurt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two different accidents, one accident. Um, you know this tight the the pike they're real toothy. You wear a steel mesh glove a lot of time just because you're using steel leaders handling those pike. And one of the one of the guides went to release a big giant 40-inch fish. Well, that pike had one tooth that was hung up in a little loop of that steel mesh glove and when he let that pike go.
Speaker 2:It started spinning and anyone who's fished pike before they know how they spin, you know right at the boat. Well, this pike spun and he spun the steel mesh on that finger, that guy's glove, and when it got tight enough it just spiral, fractured that guy's finger all the way up into his hand. So he was done literally two days later another guy went to release the northern pike and, um, a pike's got a real bony jaw, um, and so when he let this pike go, the pike swung his head and it didn't cut his hand, it didn't cut the tendons, but he, that pike, swung his head, hit the guide's hand against the side of the boat and just the force popped all those tendons across the guy's hand and of course all the muscles retracted up into the lord into hand, and so he was out. Guides took a boat and I was in that was it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was it. I started guiding fishermen at the age of 16 in Alaska. You were just up there for the whole summer yeah, for the whole summer. You know I'd go back at the end of August and literally the day after I got back from Alaska was back to school.
Speaker 1:You flew back from Alaska, was back to school.
Speaker 2:You flew back from Alaska the day before school, so you waited to the last minute?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, was it did it? How was that transition coming back? I mean, for people that don't understand Alaska, it is, it's one of the most amazing, incredible places you can ever go to explore anything, and it doesn't matter what part of Alaska I feel like it's all very intimidating it is. You can get in trouble very quick out there and you realize how ready you are or how ready you're not for those situations, and so it's. But it's just so consuming and there's just something about Alaska that just draws you back every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no doubt about that, and especially for a 16-year-old kid. You know, when I first started going up there, I was pretty green, but even by the first year that I, when I came back, I felt like I had grown leaps and bounds. And I was. I was doing a grown man's job, um, and that's the way I was treated, you know, at the lodge. You know that was kind of their, their philosophy that if I can work and and do the job of a man, that I deserve to be treated that way. And you know I was good and bad because at the end of the day I was still a 16 year old kid. Yeah, you know that that felt like I had earned the status of being an adult, but I didn't quite have that adult mentality, that adult mindset yet. So, so, while it was good, it also started some behavioral issues that caught up with me later in life, and by those I mean addiction issues.
Speaker 2:I started drinking in Alaska when I was 16 years old. Okay, that carried on into my life. And getting back from Alaska and being back to high school now and having $20,000 in my pocket, you know that I just made, you know it changed the dynamics of my life. It changed the family dynamics within my household Really. Your parents noticed quite a difference, or it's probably your mom Well, it's probably my mom and my dad. You know that I came back and I felt like I had the right to maybe challenge some of their you're growing now their authority or that I had the right to decide for myself what maybe the rules should be.
Speaker 2:And that's just part of the growing pains of growing up. But looking back on it now, yeah, I definitely challenged the authority within my own parents' household, I bet.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean're, you're free, it's. You got no supervision. Besides, obviously, if you're doing your job, you're left alone. You get the like you said. You're treated as a man, so you're able to drink and camp as long as you're probably not acting a fool. You're getting trusted with a lot of gear and equipment and people's lives because you're out on the water and things could turn quick out there, not to mention the wildlife that you're protecting them from as well. And then you come home and now you got your mom telling you to clean your room and do the dishes.
Speaker 2:You're probably headbutting with her really quick yeah, you know, there was a lot where I, just like I said, I thought I was a lot more grown up for sure than I was and, yeah, I didn't have the proper level of respect that I should have had for my parents, you know, at that time. But yeah, you know, it's hindsight, 2020, you know, looking back, you know how many years did you do that for um?
Speaker 2:I did that three years in a row. So, yeah, every summer. So my sophomore, junior and senior year. After my senior year I graduated high school and the plan was for me to stay on at the end of the summer. And then he had a little plan I think it was maybe a 205, you know, on floats he had a. He had a hunting lodge over in Denali, what they called the Wood River Lodge, and he was going to fly over at the end of August. He had to pick up some stuff and supplies from the fishing lodge at Unalakleet. I was going to jump in with him, fly back to Wood River, denali and start apprenticing to be a hunting guide.
Speaker 2:The day he came to pick me up, we literally loaded his plane. I got in the plane with my stuff, we took off and you know it's a kind of a common occurrence. You know, if you've done much flying in Alaska, the pilots will decide man, we're too heavy, we got too much gear, too much stuff, and that's the way it was for us. We were trying to get off, couldn't get the plane off the water because it was too heavy. So he made a last-second decision. He kicked me out of the plane. Some of my stuff, said he'll be back in a couple of days to pick me up and he flew away.
Speaker 2:And you know that was the last time I saw Lynn. Really, it was literally the next day. He had another one of his guides flying with him in a little Super Cub. They were flying their hunting camps dropping off horse feed and supplies. Um, they were flying their hunting camps dropping off horse feed and supplies and um got into a plane accident that day and piled a super cub into a bank. Um ended up.
Speaker 2:You know, he ended up dying from that accident. The other guy that was with him, lee, who was in the back of the plane, got busted up back and a bunch of other broken bones, but he was able to survive. No kidding, that was probably the first I shouldn't say first moment, but another moment in life where God made his presence clear and known by acting directly in the affairs of my life. I feel like if I hadn't been taken out of that plane at that moment, there's a good chance I probably would have been flying around in the plane with Lynn the next day dropping off feed and could be a you know, just like a different story than what it is today, for sure.
Speaker 1:So after he passed were you pretty much done with Alaska.
Speaker 2:Yeah, once he passed away, everything was up in the air. So I wasn't doing the Alaska bit. I did still have the friend that owned the not owned but leased the big elk ranch in New Mexico. So that's what I transitioned to instead of going and staying in Alaska and working, called that outfitter. Let him know what was going on. He said well, you know, just come back to New Mexico, you can guide for me this fall and then you can decide what you want to start doing. If you want to go to college, you know you can go. It makes sense. You know you could go the spring and summer semesters and you could still guide for me in the fall if you want to do things that way. So that's what I started doing started going to school at New Mexico State, you know spring semesters, fall semesters, and then I would, you know, guide hunting in the fall.
Speaker 1:So how is that? I mean you go from being a young kid coming home with 20-30 grand in cash from tips and getting paid out in Alaska, and then now you come back and you're in college. Did you pick up a job right away? Or were you just living off savings because it's the guide life, especially if you're young and you don't have a family?
Speaker 2:I mean it's, it's lucrative, you can come home with a pocket full of cash oh yeah, I mean then, now you're back to reality, you know no, and the reality of the situation was that I wasn't mature enough at that point in my life to be able to handle that, that influx of cash, especially when I was in a position where I was upset with my, my family situation, not because of anything that my parents had actually done, but just my perception of reality, you know, at that time was that, you know, I wasn't being accepted for who I was and the way that I wanted to live my life and and therefore I was, I was forced, you know, to kind of provide for myself and take care of my own, which was which was fine, but the reality of the situation is that my parents shouldn't have been enabling me, you know, to continue. You know, at this point in time I was starting to drink heavily. You know, I was getting into doing other drugs, you know, smoking weed, you know doing. You got to remember this was the late 80s, you know, cocaine was big on the same scene back then and, you know, and I started getting involved in all those things and it was just, you know, a combination of too much money, not enough maturity, resentments that were probably not valid.
Speaker 2:You know, looking for reasons, yeah, looking for reasons, just to be a rebel. You know, just to. You're not going to control me. You know you're not going to tell me what to do. You know I'm a big boy, I'm working, I'm making money. I can decide for myself what my best life is. I'm working, I'm making money. I can decide for myself what my best life is.
Speaker 1:And you know, I proved very quickly that I was not capable of making those decisions, which is such a natural. I mean, you know it's like us in the military. I mean you get a young kid and you got a guaranteed paycheck and you know you get sent to these different countries and you party like a rock star and you just you don't know any different. You know and it's, I get it, man, I've been there especially and then you feel grown, you got a job, I'm an adult now and but even at 20 you still don't know shit. Well, that's the.
Speaker 2:You know, that's the biggest thing is looking back at it. Now I, I can't even imagine, you know the military, you know with 18-year-olds and stuff, you know being drafted, you know back in Vietnam and being expected to go and do these things. You know, for me I can look at that and say man, I was not ready at that time. I understand everybody else matures at a different rate, but yeah, it's wild, it's wild getting being drafted to.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously, you know, I don't know how it's different when you're forced, you know. So I don't know how I would feel being drafted. It's got to be such a terrifying feeling to get a phone call or a letter. However, they were doing it back in Vietnam Like, hey, you got to go to war. I couldn't even imagine being some kid just fucking off at home and all of a sudden, now you're drafted and you got to go and serve your country. That, to me, is fascinating. I would love to talk to somebody that got drafted and went through the whole entire process, because it's it's hilarious.
Speaker 1:I'm one of those people. I feel like everybody in our country should at least, if you're not doing college or guaranteed college, you should do two years in the military just right out of high school. Two years of military, cool, you know, just just to get some maturity, some life experience. You serve your country. We have numbers, we got a strong military and if you want to extend and you want to continue a career after that, cool. But I mean, you got all these kids sitting around home and they're not accomplishing anything, they're not providing anything to their community or you know, their, their home, and I I'm one of those. I would 100 vote that everybody should do two years in the middle, just just for the experiences. If you're not guaranteed college and you're not pursuing a college career in your job field, why not? You know a lot of these countries do it. But yeah, being drafted though, oh man that's. I can imagine just sitting on your couch one day and getting a call.
Speaker 2:You know, and I would agree with that, I think that's probably a very wise, you know policy. You know that maybe we should think about moving towards. You know, two years in the military. Like I said, a lot of other countries do it.
Speaker 2:When I look back at my life and where it comes to things, I may possibly have some regrets, it's probably in that time period.
Speaker 2:You know, I do regret that coming out of high school, you know, maybe I hadn't gone into the military Just for the, just for that discipline, you know, and maturity, and you know, just allowing two more years you know of age, you know, to catch up with me, I think that would have been, you know, probably would have been good for me, absolutely. The other side of it is I probably would be dead. Probably would have been good for me, absolutely the other side of it is I probably would be dead because for me at that time, and just the person that I am and my personality is, if I'm going to do something, you know I'm going to be wholeheartedly involved in it. You know, and being a big hunter, I was also involved in the Olympic shooting sports growing up as a kid. So I shot competition, small bore, you know Olympic style, you know four position, you know 22s, 50 feet open sights and you know and.
Speaker 2:I was good. You know I was in when I was 14. I think I won the southwest uh regional, you know, junior olympic shooting shooting championship. So I would have gone into the military, probably highly recruited, to be a sniper. I think I probably would have liked that game enough to the point where I probably would have been like one of these guys, chris Kyle or somebody that just kept signing up and kept signing up, and there's a good chance that I wouldn't be alive at this point in time.
Speaker 1:So everything happens for a reason that it does and you know this.
Speaker 2:This is just the way my life's ended up.
Speaker 1:Yep, so you talked about. Obviously things started the spiral in college, you know, getting into the drugs and alcohol and everything. How did that play out, as far as you know, over the years? How long did you stick it out in college before transitioning out?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean to be honest with you, my, my addictions landed me in prison. Really, yep, not as a, not in a direct manner. You know, it wasn't selling drugs, wasn't buying drugs, but for me, um, I ended up, you know, being convicted of, of robbery. Really. Yeah, I was, you know, at a bad point in my life making stupid decisions. I was pulling some you know kind of point break, kind of shit you know, like robbing stores to get money to, to fund. For me it was hunting trips. You know I would it's, you know I try not to.
Speaker 1:I try. I don't need the laugh, but I was not expecting're going to be robbing stores to go on trips. It's usually not that. No, but that's what it was for me Okay.
Speaker 2:I respect it At that point in time I got used to having money from working. When I didn't have money anymore, when I was going to school, my parents kind of cut me off, said that if you're going to be drinking and partying, you know we're not going to support that behavior as well they should. Yeah, you know, but at the time I didn't like it that much, you know. I became rebellious and I'd, come you, become used to having that money. I was entitled, if you will, you know, felt that I, you know, deserve to continue living that lifestyle. So when I wanted to go hunting or take a trip, I would you knock over a store or something and get the money and go to Kansas and shoot pheasants for Thanksgiving. Or, you know, go to Turkey, go Turkey hunting in Texas. You know just different things. And, yeah, it eventually caught up with me, you know, and I got caught.
Speaker 1:How were you not knocking these stores over? Were you, were you armed or what? What was your? If you mind me getting into details about this, how were you going about this, like, what was your thought process?
Speaker 2:Well, obviously there wasn't a lot of a thought process, you know, behind it. But my thinking at the time was you know, I was using a fake gun, you know. So it wasn't real. I knew what my intentions were and that was, you know, was not to really hurt anybody. To me it was kind of a joke. It wasn't that big of a deal.
Speaker 2:I would go into a store, I'd act like I was buying something so that they would open the cash register, and then basically it was just use of threat or intimidation. Sometimes I'd think I'd show them a fake gun and, you know, just tell them hey, you know why that drawer is open. You might as well put the rest of the money in this backpack, you know, were you getting a rush from this? I don't think I was getting a rush from it. There wasn't anything. I knew it was wrong. Okay, you know. So that's not the way I was raised. There was nothing in this whatsoever that I felt was right about doing it. I justified it in my own mind is because I wasn't. I wasn't gonna hurt nobody. You know, it was just a joke, and if I could trick them into giving me my money or give me their money then it wasn't that big of a deal, but you know it was a big deal. Yeah for sure it was a big deal to them. They didn't know what my intentions necessarily were, absolutely, and you know. So I do take it very seriously and it's not something that I'm proud of.
Speaker 2:I was convicted, you know. So I do take it very seriously and it's not something that I'm proud of. I was convicted, you know, went to court, you know a judge sent me to prison, you know, for basically I was sentenced to six years. You know I got found guilty on three counts of robbery. He gave me three years on each one ran, two concurrent and one consecutive. So I had a total of six years to do. And you know, and I went and I did it. You know I went to New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe.
Speaker 2:You did six years in New Mexico. Well, it was a six-year sentence. I did three and a half years of it. You know, like I said, I started off in New Mexico State Penitentiary, which is not a good place, you know, especially for a 22 year old white kid from an upper middle class family. You know, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:I was thrown right into the wolf's den, you know yeah and people that don't know much about the history of the santa fe riots or the state penitentiary. But there were some riots that happened. I believe it was in 1984 where the, the inmates, took over the prison there in santa fe and held it, you know, captive and hostage for like a week and I think 37 or 40 people died. You know were killed. It's still to this day, one of the most violent prison riots in the history of our country occurred at Santa Fe. And here you are and that's where they sent me.
Speaker 2:You know how did you get caught? Just being dumb, you know, just being arrogant and thinking that you know I was above the law and that I couldn't get caught. Basically, what I was doing is robbing these stores. Then, you know, using a mountain bike, you know I'd ride back to my dorm room at the time. You know I'd change my appearance If I had a goatee. I'd shave my goatee or do something, and I just assumed that I wasn't going to get caught.
Speaker 2:I'd change my appearance and you know I was walking across a parking lot, you know, a couple hours after a robbery, and I was going to my friend's apartment building and there was an undercover detective, you know that, saw me walking and felt like I looked like a very good I guess liar or something, because I caved pretty quick, did you? Yeah, once I was confronted with what I had done, I knew that it was wrong and I admitted to what I did and I stood up in front of a judge, you know, and accepted responsibility for those, you know, for those robberies. And it's just part of my life that happened and, you know, not something that I'm proud of, but I feel like I've been, you know, redeemed from that point in life and have moved on and, you know, tried to make the best of the rest of my life. Yeah, it's all part of it's all part of the journey you know. Try to make the best of the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all part of the journey, you know. Those types of things I feel is what's sculpt us into who we become as a person. Yeah, you know, some parts of the journey are better than others. That's a fact. So you end up in prison with a six-year sentence. You don't know what you're doing. You could just slide that forward. You go. So you end up in prison, got a six-year sentence at 22 years old. What's going through your head at this point, going walking into this prison for the first time?
Speaker 2:well, above and beyond everything is just survival. Okay, you know, I could not comprehend doing, you know, six years. You know you get out early if you get good time, but walking in, you know, and going behind bars, mexico State Penitentiary it's just I don't know how to explain it other than it's just an overwhelming sense of loss. Okay, I could not believe that I had allowed myself to do the things that I did, to justify doing the things that I had done, you know, shamed myself, shamed my family. You know, shamed myself, shamed my family. And then, you know, you wake up and you're at new mexico state for an attention and you realize, man, I've got to figure out a way, you know, to get through this and survive. You know, in order to get out. You know, because I'm 22 years old, yeah, this is gonna suck, but it's not the end of my life, at least I don't want it to be. You know so.
Speaker 1:So you adapt, you change, you learn, you pay attention to what's going on around you you know, did you get pulled into any groups or anything, or did you kind of roll solo while you were there? Um, I mean, how do you survive at 22 years old as a white boy in a new mexico state prison?
Speaker 2:yeah, for me it was, you know, kind of being a chameleon. You know, learning how to adapt. You know that's also been one of my. You know, strong points, you know, in my life is that I can meet people from all walks of life and get along with them. You know I can identify. There's usually something with every person I meet that I can identify with and that's where I try to, you know, spend the most of the time, you know, in conversation, and so I'm able to do that.
Speaker 2:I didn't really click up, I didn't belong. I didn't join the AB or the Peckerwoods. You know those prisons, new Mexico, it's all. You know. Mexican cartels you know, for the most part, that are controlling them. You know Sindicato de Nuevo Mexico, the Mexican mafia. You know those type of people and you know, for me it was just about treating people with respect, absolutely. Also, you know not letting people treat you with disrespect. There comes a point in time, I think in every prisoner's career. You know where they've got to make a decision on what they're going to, how they're going to do their time and how they're going to react. You know when people come to you know there's going to be people that are going to try to bulldog you and try to, you know, you know, be a predator and take advantage of you. And you know, and for me it was just about every time, you know, that type of situation came up. Man, you just gotta whether you win or you lose.
Speaker 2:You know you've got to fight. You know you've got to make a decision that you're going to defend yourself. You're going to let other people know that you're going to defend themselves and if they're going to mess with you, hey, there's a potential for them getting hurt. You know, and that's just. That is the way of the world. You know. That reverts back to the laws of nature.
Speaker 2:Yep, um, you know we're at the most primal, primal point. Our most primal instinct is our ability to defend and protect ourself. That would be our number one inalienable right. You know that exists in nature, that comes from God, is we have the right to protect ourselves. For me, another big one you know being within the hunting industry, and we can talk about this later or not is I believe that my right to provide for myself through hunting or fishing is every bit as much as an inalienable right as my right to self-defense. There's some governments, state governments within the United States, that will try to tell you that you don't have a right to hunt and provide for yourself. That's some sort of privilege that the government decides that they're going to allow you to have or allow you to possess, and that's not the way that you know that I see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel you. I'm with you on that one. You know the fact that they have to. They can control how we do it when we do it. I've always had like a problem when it comes to providing for your family. Now, if you're out trophy hunting and you're doing, you know, shooting shit with spotlights and after dark, okay, like that I can't get behind. But if you're out there and you're providing for your family, like we need to make adjustments for that for people to be because I know a couple of families and like they depend heavily on the fall to be able to shoot an elk or two cows or bulls, whatever it is, and that's that helps their, their family big time throughout the year, because it just comes down financially and obviously hunting is not an a cheap sport. But I mean they're not out there, they're not buying the top gear. You see these guys when they're in jeans and a flannel and some old, whole worn out muck boots and they're just trying to put meat on their table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and there's obviously got to be some laws and regulations and rules and seasons that we have to follow. But to flat out just tell somebody that they don't have a right to hunt, even if it's because you know like, okay, so a right to possess a firearm has now been reduced down to a point Well, well, if you're not a felon, you can possess a firearm. Well again, there's nothing in our US Constitution that says that. You know, the government doesn't get to decide. You know, well, you violated the law time. You know, give me stricter penalties, you know, for maybe violating, you know, the use of a weapon, then that's one thing. But I don't think you ever lose the right to defend yourself or provide, you know, for your family through hunting or fishing. There's rules we got to follow, but to just come out and flatly say you can't do it, I don't think that is beyond the that goes above the scope of what the government's authority is.
Speaker 1:For sure. So after you get caught up and then you do your three out of six years, correct?
Speaker 2:Correct You're talking about on the state time.
Speaker 1:Yep, so I did three years got out, so you come out as a felon. I did. So, you can't hunt anymore. Nope, how was that?
Speaker 2:well, you know, in different states have different laws, but the way that it works in new mexico is I was actually allowed to still hunt within the state of new mexico, even because they have it in their constitution that you know, regardless of your felon status, you, you don't lose your right. Yeah, so it's like that in the not regardless of your felon status, you, you don't lose your right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's like that in the United States? Not a lot of states like that. No, not a lot of states. But they say that, even as a felon, you have the right to you know, remain hunting.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, the also the way that the New Mexico law operates um is that they say that after 10 years from the completion of your sentence, that New Mexico no longer considers you a felon. That's because your rights are fully restored. They refer to them as what they call your mains rights. Mains was a court case, court case, but what they've established is that once you possess your right to hold office, sit on a jury, to vote and to possess firearms, as long as you possess those four rights are fully functional and restored, you are restored to full citizenship. So, by New Mexico law, after 10 years from the completion of my sentence, I am no longer considered a felon.
Speaker 1:okay which will come into play later on.
Speaker 2:It will come into play later.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm sure, uh, I'm sure you got your whole entire life pulled once everything went down. So, after I mean so then what are you doing for the next 10 years? Are you just guiding, or because now, obviously you don't have.
Speaker 2:Oh, you were able to still hunt, but I mean so you were only limited to new mexico yeah, so I left, um, you know, I worked in new mexico, lived in a little town called chama, new mexico, for a bunch of years. You know, um coming out of prison, uh, I went back to work there. I was working for a big lodge there, a place called the lodge at chama okay, used to be chama land and cattle company. Um, again, I was working there basically full-time as a hunting and fishing guide, you know, guiding fly fishing all summer, elk hunts in the fall, and in new mexico at that time we had a super long elk season, so we were. We could start hunting on private land september 1st and we didn't quit hunting on private land until march 15th. Really, yeah how was?
Speaker 2:that, yeah, it was a lot of killing. You know we hunted, I guess. Yeah, so the way that it would work, you know, as a guide I basically worked for three different outfitters. So I'd work for an outfitter during the archery seasons and octery seasons and october seasons and we'd start basically at the top of the mountain where all the elk were, and then later in the season when the elk started migrating down, then the other landowners that's when they would hold their hunt. So you know, go down to a couple thousand feet in elevation and elk hunts from december through jan. Finally they would migrate off of there and they would end up in the flats on another set of private ranches and those guys would be hunting them February, march, I mean. Sometimes you were shooting bulls and you'd go to pick them up and their horns would pop off.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, you say, if you're killing them that late, was it just cows?
Speaker 2:No, we were hunting bulls and stuff there Really In, or were you, I don't know? We were hunting bulls and stuff there. I think my in the heyday of when I was guiding I think my record was in one year, I believe I killed 23 bulls really yeah, that's a lot of, that's a lot of pounds on the ground.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, a lot of, a lot of guiding, a lot of hunting, a lot of experience. You know you learn a thing or two about hunting elk when you can hunt them from september 1st through the 15th.
Speaker 1:That's the best part with guiding is, if you want to learn something in a new area, go guide, yeah, and you will learn a lifetime experiences in a season or two and you have it mastered I mean not mastered, but you've got it figured out rather than just going and spending a week of your vacation trying to learn out how to hunt this timber or how to hunt the plains, and you go out there for a full season, you, you get completely just engulfed in it and learn so much well, there's, you know, a lot to be said for, like I said, for guiding and the experience that you gain.
Speaker 2:Um, you know there's always going to be the back and forth between guided hunts versus do it yourself. And yeah, I don't know I mean, for everything has its purpose. You know people that are fully capable of doing their own thing and know the animals and the habits can go to another state and have the time to be there for two weeks and get immersed in that. You know environment and do it on Great, that's awesome. Well, not everybody has that benefit. You know there's people that work their whole lives, you know, provide for their families. You know that's more important to them, um, being, you know, the caretakers and making the money and paying those bills that when they do have. You know, some of these guys maybe they only get two weeks vacation. So if they've got five days that they want to go and hunt someplace, man, to me it only makes sense you know, to hire a guy.
Speaker 1:I was one of those guys for a while, like oh, you've got to go out and grind it on the public land and all that bullshit. But once I really got into the guiding side of things, it's I still have some clients that they they work their ass off, they save up all year, they have five days off and they they get their ass to wherever as fast as possible and that's their time, that's what they want to enjoy and and that's that's all they're offered for that season. And I have clients that they got more money than they'll ever know what to do with and they spend the whole season going outfit to outfit to outfit, chasing it, and they get a ton of joy out of that. And once I realized I was like who gives a shit what it is? If you're having fun and you you have the means to do it, do it like I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know why there was like this big rift between you know, guided hunts and it's even the same thing with, like a high fence. If. If you want to go shoot something high on a high fence, go fucking do it. You know, don't claim it as some public land shit. And now you're out grinding it out. But if that's your thing and you want to go down and hunt something, by all means teach their own. But I mean, yeah, as far as guided stuff, I have no problem. This guy comes out or wants to bring his wife and kids and they've got a certain amount of time to get it done and get back home before they've got to get back to work or before a project starts, all for it.
Speaker 2:Well, you know and that's for me, at the end of the day, you said it best what does it matter? Who gives a shit? Exactly, was it the way that somebody else wants to do something?
Speaker 1:Yeah, who gives a shit? I?
Speaker 2:used to be. You know I'm guilty of it. I'm not going to deny that. I mean I used to be one of these keyboard warriors. Sometimes you know that felt it was my, my responsibility to call everybody out on their bullshit or what they were doing wrong. Or, you know, even when you can just tell you know some people you know just straight up making up lies, it's not my duty, it's not my responsibility to call everybody out and hold them accountable. It's not even worth the time. It's not.
Speaker 1:It's not worth the time. If they want to do it, give us a shit. If somebody wants to follow it, they'll figure it out soon enough.
Speaker 2:Scum always rises to the top, and my like for me, my cross to bear it, it still probably is the thing, and I know I'm gonna make some guys mad when I start talking to it but the? For me it's the, the shed hunters that you know they're all about the sheds and for me I couldn't understand it. You know it didn't make any. Why do you want to go pick up? You know dead sheds, you know kill it on a deer's, you know head. You know dead sheds, you know kill it on a deer's, you know head. You know if you and that for some reason it just irked me that these guys found so much enjoyment out of picking up sheds and I couldn't understand it. But guess what? It doesn't matter If they want to pick up dead calcium and they want to spend thousands of dollars doing it and that's the way that they get enjoyment. Fine, who?
Speaker 1:cares. I was right there with you. I used to work in an office with these two kids and they were hardcore. I'm talking they're trying to save up money to get a guy in a little, a little plane to fly them so they can. They can glass certain areas and figure how to get in the new areas and I'm like for for horns and they're man, oh my god, I gotta gotta chase the brown, gotta chase the brownie.
Speaker 1:And I'm I'm sitting in my office listen to these kids talk and I'm like these guys are out of their fucking mind. And then finally I was like they'd come back. I mean, I'm talking they were the happy they'd go and put on hundreds of miles in a week, hiking around carrying hundreds of pounds of sheds on them, and and they would come back the happiest guys ever. And I'm looking and I'm like they're fucking retarded. This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen in my life. And then finally I realized I was like God, these kids, who cares? They're so excited. It's just like the guy, the bicyclists on the side of the road they're in their little spandex suits that everybody hates. I think we can all agree that everybody hates. What is the saying? A motorist hates a motorcyclist. Motorcyclists don't like motorists, but everybody hates a bicyclist, yeah right, but if that dude.
Speaker 2:They're not my favorite, they're not mine either.
Speaker 1:But if that dude wants to spend 10 grand on a bike and put himself in some little spandex and pedal around with his friends on the weekend, who gives a fuck? Yeah, who cares? It's not my thing. You're not gonna see me putting, putting on some little grape smugglers and peddling around on the weekend up and down a mountain.
Speaker 2:Not for me, but hey, to each their own, I'm all for it well, and that's also a philosophy that once I started realizing that within my hunting community and then I started applying it to my worldview and the way that I looked at you know what was going on within our country and with our culture. That's when I started realizing that again, it doesn't matter to me. You know the way that you want to live your life or what you choose to do.
Speaker 1:It doesn't affect you at all.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, and as long as it doesn't affect me, I really shouldn't have a say in the way that you decide to live your life. Now, that being said, there are some common things. You know there's for me at least, you know there's some absolute rights and there's absolute wrong. There's good and there's evil in this world, and you know, I'm going to try to align myself as much as possible with the good, yeah, and sometimes that puts me on the other side of evil. And you know, sometimes, when those two things get together, you know, sometimes that puts me on the other side of evil. Sometimes, when those two things get together, you've got to make decisions about what you're going to do, what you're going to support, what your values are going to be and how you're going to defend and support those in your beliefs.
Speaker 1:So I guess we can. I want to get into the juice, the juice, unless we want to go into some guide stories and talk some hunting.
Speaker 2:Oh man, we can talk hunting and we'll probably make our way back to it, but you know, I, I do want to. You know, let's get into the the details of you know, what happened on january 6th and, yes, you know, I want to share as much as I can about that, um, you know, in a transparent manner yes, that's.
Speaker 1:That's a big reason why I I wanted to get you on, because I want to hear directly from somebody that had boots on the ground, that was there january 6th from start until your presidential pardon, that just just happened. And and just hear it from somebody because, obviously, with the mainstream media and everything that we've been fed through the social media platforms and news, I think the majority of it was all complete bullshit and it was all set up in my opinion, and so that's where you know. As soon as I think we were talking while you were still on house arrest, I'm like the second you're free. Let me know, because I wanted to know this. So I guess let's just start. What even made you want to go to Washington and protest, and have you ever protested anything before?
Speaker 2:No, that's just it. I've never been to a protest in my life, I think that was your first and last. January 6th was my, you know, was my cherry, if you would.
Speaker 1:What a one to pop it on, huh yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and obviously you know that wasn't you know what we had planned on or what we wanted to get involved in. For me, you know you got to rewind a little bit and you know, go over to the question being okay, how did I end up in Washington DC on January 6th, long and skinny of it is? You know I had a friend that was going and my friend invited me to go. You know, my friend later became my co-defendant. You know he called me sometime around Christmas time and said hey, you know I'm going out to Washington DC. You know there's going to be this rally.
Speaker 2:You know, for Donald Trump, a Save America rally. There's going to be a bunch of other American citizens there, you know, just kind of showing the support you know for the government. And you know wanted to know if I wanted to come and at the time, you know I talked it over with my wife. You know politics was not something that I was hugely involved in. I'd become a lot more involved in them because of what was taking place in 2020, you know that I'd started to pay a lot more attention.
Speaker 1:I think everybody did at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pay a lot more attention, but I think everybody did at that point. Yeah, and and for me that's what it really goes back to is when the covid lockdown started. That's when my red flag meter, you know, kind of started pegging out and going through the roof. I was educated in middle school and through high school, you know I understood American history. Civics, you know, introductory to our constitution and what it says and what it does, which you know is way more than a lot of the kids today. They don't in public schools, they don't get educated at all about those things. I was, you know, maybe Gen X. You know I'm a Gen Xer. Maybe that may have been the last you know real, you know generation that that was, that were educated, you know, on a public level. As to the civics, you know, American history.
Speaker 2:You know those kinds of things. But when COVID happened and the lockdowns and the shutting down of private businesses, I knew that was a direct assault on my civil rights, on the people's civil rights. Our founding fathers would have never stood for the government to come in and tell us I can't operate my business. What are you talking about? That's my pursuit of happiness. You can't tell me I can't operate my business. Yeah, you know what are you talking about. You know that's my pursuit of happiness. You know I can't. You can't tell me I can't, can't do that. Well, you know. But there's this COVID. You know there's this virus. It's super deadly. Well, was it? You know?
Speaker 2:At the time that they started those lockdowns, they already had enough information, in my opinion, to know what it was, and they continued the farce. They continued to go down that route and for me, I think it was a lot to do with it. That was an election year, and so I think they used COVID to, at the very least, manipulate the elections of 2020. There was things that we weren't allowed to talk about on social media. I was banned by Facebook, mark Zuckerberg, I was kicked off of Facebook just for voicing my opinion, objecting to the COVID lockdowns.
Speaker 2:You know, just for voicing my opinion, objecting to the COVID lockdowns, objecting to, you know, the medical tyranny that came in. You know, being told what I can and can't take, you know, and put in my body to protect myself. You know I've been going to Africa for a bunch of years already and we regularly took ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, you know, to help protect us, you know, against different viruses and bugs over there. So when the government all of a sudden started saying that those things were unproven, you know, and trying to make it illegal for me to be able to use and to buy, that's when I knew that there was something else, you know, kind of at play and COVID was being used in a nefarious manner, at the least to try to alter the elections, in my opinion For sure.
Speaker 1:I feel that if anybody was even paying any remotely close attention to anything, that was the most blatant. All of this is happening right now, so fast. Everything's locked down, except for Gavin Newsom's wineries and bars, and you know that that, to me, was where I was like we're not, we're not playing this game. Yeah, as a family, I'm not playing this game, right? Yeah, I'm. I'm with you on that one and you know.
Speaker 2:So that led you know it was. For me it was easy to predict what would be the results of locking down. You know a whole society. You know in general I knew the outcome that you would have. You know I don't know the best way to you would have populations of people.
Speaker 2:You know for some people the lockdowns weren't such a big deal. They have the means to provide for themselves. You know they have a bank account, they had savings account. You know they could survive. You know without a steady income. You know they have a bank account, they had savings account. You know they could survive. You know, without a steady income, you know, for for a while, if they, if they needed be. But then you have these, these lower income populations, minority populations, that all of a sudden you tell them. You know nobody can go anywhere. You know, yeah, they gave some stimulus checks for. But that population of the united states, you know that part of culture. You know they feel very threatened. I think at that point they they start looking around and they understand I mean, I don't have anything, I have no way of providing for myself unless it's the government that's taking care of me, which is scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know so there was. You know problems that arose. You know crime, you know started going through the roof and that put these officers you know our police officers, law enforcement officers you know in direct contact, you know, with people on in a, in a heated environment. You know, and you know that led to. You know ended up leading to the, the, the riots and the protests that we saw happen. You know all of 2020 long. You know a part of the population, a minority population, felt like they were not as protected as another certain class of people, and they took to the streets. You know, to protest that and I'm all for people protesting. You know if they have a problem with our government or the way that they're being treated. That is what our first amendment directs us to do. You have the right to be able to protest your, your government, and you have the right to do that in a in a safe and secure manner. Now is what happened in 2020, you know we'll just call them the Black Lives Matter protests, because that's what was. You know the premises behind them, but those protests became very violent and this is going to play. I think for me, it played a big impact in what happened on January 6th because we saw these protests grow violent. And they grew violent not so much, in my opinion, from what the Black Lives Matter people were doing, but because these protests were hijacked by Antifa.
Speaker 2:Okay, and people in this country need to understand who Antifa is and what they're capable of. In this country need to understand who Antifa is and what they're capable of. These are not just some unorganized. You know that people want to say well, they're a bunch of blue hairs and green head living in their parents' basements that are just upset because they don't get their way. That might describe a few of them. But Antifa is a highly organized organization. They'll try to say they're not an organization that we don't have presidents, but it is an organized organization. It originates out of East Germany. Really, the Weinmehr Republic is originally where it started. The Windmere Republic is originally where it started. You know Antifa is supposed to be for anti-fascist, but their whole goal is to just destabilize any type of democracy political organization.
Speaker 2:Anarchy is all they want. They seized the opportunity, you know, under these Black Lives Matter, you know to come in and turn these mostly peaceful protests Well, they turned violent. When Antifa comes in, they're the ones that's their MO. They kick in the doors, they break the windows, they throw the firebombs and then they step back out of the way and they say, well, go ahead, go in there and loot the store. And that's you know who I hold responsible for the majority of the violence that happened in 2020. And then that played into January 6th and the fact of the matter that most of the people that showed up on January 6th were not showing up there to fight the government or attack the government. They were showing up with the ability to protect themselves. Okay, they expected there to be some counter protesters there. They expected there to be Antifa there.
Speaker 2:It was on everybody's mind that violence could have happened that day. There had been past protests Two weeks earlier. People were stabbed. Some Proud Boy members, I think, got stabbed by Antifa people. I had another political demonstration there in Washington DC.
Speaker 2:So people showed up at Washington DC excited to see other Americans who still loved and supported their country instead of the whole. We hate our country, defund the police, the whole woke agenda that everybody would be hearing. But they also came prepared to defend themselves or protect themselves in case violence occurred. I think we all know in today's day and age it shouldn't be this way, but anytime you go into a public gathering you are putting yourself at risk of something extremely violent happening, whether it be a bomb, a car driving through the crowd, a mass shooter sitting up on top of a building inside a hotel room.
Speaker 2:But the people showed up on January 6th with the ability to protect themselves. You know they were wearing protective personal. You know PPE gear, personal protection equipment. A lot of it matched that of what the law enforcement was wearing. And when these J6 cases made their way into the courts, you know the way that the judges and the juries, you know, basically, were instructed. You know they basically came to the conclusion that if you were wearing any type of personal protection equipment, you are guilty of the intent to overthrow the government instead of just the intent to protect yourself.
Speaker 1:So a lot of these men and women that were there came prepared for violence because they thought Antifa was going to be a big problem, but they ended up having that you, anything that they had on that was all used against them as they were prepared for the overthrow of the government.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you know and that's one point that I want to make clear, because that's one of the arguments that I always hear from people as well those guys showed up wearing bulletproof vests and helmets. You know, they were obviously there to attack the government. You can't say that they weren't there, patrick. To attack the government they came. Why would you wear a bulletproof vest? Well, okay, let's rewind it a little bit and let's put this question the other way. Had a bomb gone off, had there been a mass shooting, who are the people that would have survived that scenario? The people wearing the helmets, the people wearing the bulletproof vests? You know, had Antifa showed up, you know, and decided, you know, I think there was just so many people there that they, you know, knew better than to come up and try to start any, you know, fights or anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would have been a.
Speaker 2:that's a hell of a hornet's nest to kick Losing situation but had a bomb gone off and there were bombs that were found that day. Really, yeah, yeah, there was pipe bombs that were found, you know, stashed, you know, both in front of the, I think, the Republican National Center and they're in front of the Democratic National Committee or center. There was a few different pipe bombs. Well, had those bombs gone off, who would survive? Okay, the people with the PPE gear, the law enforcement, you know officers that were accusing the citizens of wearing that gear to attack them. Let me ask you this, and it's a fair question If you're a police officer, when you show up to work at an event like January 6th, what do you get to bring? You know, and we'll use, you know, Platoon 42, you know, for example, which is a civil disturbance unit within the Metropolitan Police Department that I later had a confrontation with.
Speaker 2:Well, those guys get to show up with they've got their hard gear on, oh for sure, you know. So they've got all their elbow pads, knee pads, shoulder pads. They've got a helmet. They've got a canister. Most of them have a pepper spray. They've got a body cam camera. They've got a body cam camera. They've got a baton. You know some of them, it's just a hard baton. The other ones are retractable, extendable, but they also, you know, have a firearm, you know, on their hip. When they get to show up to work one of the events, they get to bring all that gear with them. If you were to ask them, you know, hey, you know, would you ever work an event like this without?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Would you show up, you know? Same for the military guy. Would you go into a battle, you know? Would you show up on the battlefield without your helmet or your bulletproof vest? No, absolutely not. Those police officers will tell you no, there's no way in hell. I am showing up to an event without my personal protection equipment. Okay, well. So why is it so unreasonable that some of the protesters, you know, were dressed wearing the same gear?
Speaker 1:I get it, especially, you know, with what we saw happen, with pallets of rocks showing up and pallets of bricks just randomly appearing in these neighborhoods where Antifa is about to go through or Black Lives Matter was about to protest the day before. I mean it would have been the smartest thing to do. I feel like if I was at an event like that, 100 percent I'm going strapped Like, I'm not going to just walk around aimlessly, especially with tensions so high. I feel like in the country at that point we were, we were on the verge of just overflowing into something pretty bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what people have got to remember is you've got to put everything into the context. It's been four years since that day. A lot of people I don't forget all of 2020 long, but some people have kind of gotten removed. But it was a violent summer. Know, the summer of love.
Speaker 1:You know burnt down yeah, police stations burned down yeah. So 2020 was wild. Yeah, super wild, wild year to watch. I mean it was history, not good history, but I mean the, the, the shit that was going on. I mean we just sat back and just like what the fuck? I mean?
Speaker 2:I mean you're scratching your head at everything yeah, for me, I mean, the best way to describe it, you know, is I felt like I was living in an episode of the twilight zone where it just didn't make sense and you just couldn't. You know, reason didn't get you anywhere because nothing was reasonable.
Speaker 1:No, that's a huge thing and I've said it on this podcast probably every fucking, every fucking episode. Make it make sense. Yeah, and none of it made any sense. None of it. The defunding, the riots, covid shutting things down but lick churches were shut down, but a liquor store is allowed to stay open. You have politicians in their restaurants and stuff. We're open. I could walk in a restaurant, have to have a mask on, but the second I sit down I could take it off and now COVID mysteriously disappears. None of it. That's why I was like I'm not playing into this. This is just all politically driven. This is all an agenda to divide and conquer and to just bring as much turmoil into this country as possible as fast as we can, right before this election is happening, and try to blame it on whoever we can.
Speaker 2:That's how.
Speaker 1:I looked at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think you pretty much nailed it on the head.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, for the most part, you know. So, in making the decision to go to Washington DC, my original decision was no, I couldn't afford to go. My buddy called me back a couple days days later and said hey, man, I really want you to come with me. You know, um see some people that still love their country. You know I was pretty disappointed. You know I was sad, you know, at the state of our country. You know I was heartbroken. You know I love my country.
Speaker 2:Um, I didn't understand why people didn't, um, I didn't, uh understand the divide, uh, divide. I could see what was happening. It was government officials that were using the circumstances to divide the people. For me, it was maddening, because the citizens and the different citizens of this country was what make it so great, and it's the strength of the diversity of these citizens that when we stand together, we can accomplish anything that we want to accomplish. And it became very apparent that they were trying to keep us divided on purpose so that we couldn't accomplish what was best for the country and for the United States.
Speaker 1:That's what makes America so incredible is how many different beliefs and and ethnicities, and cultures and religions and everything that we have. That makes america america. And I feel the only way that the left party is able to ever get anything is by just creating chaos. And that way it's. It goes back to the oldest divide and conquer. Divide and conquer, race, race, race, police, military. Everything's bad and it's just it wears on you and to me.
Speaker 1:I'd see these people protesting and we were never the greatest country. It's like we might not be the greatest country we might be. I haven't visited them all, but I'll tell you that the countries that I have been to we are a lot fucking better off than they are. Yeah, and I have nothing to bitch about, right? You know the people that have something to bitch about that have never been anywhere. Those are the people that bitch. Go take your ass to downtown kabul and afghanistan, or go to tijuana, close enough, you can just cross the border in tijuana. Go walk around the streets for three days there and come back and tell me that this country is dog shit and we're horrible.
Speaker 1:Have we made mistakes in this country? Absolutely, who hasn't? But that's the problem is we. We dwell on so many things from the past in our in. We obviously need to learn history, and that was another big thing. That was that was that was the key tipping point for me. Where I was ready for anything was when we started erasing historical monuments, statues and tearing things down because of the history of these people. That's, that's the one thing that I was like, okay, this is where, if they want to bring some shit here like, I'm willing to stand up for that, because if you erase history, this is how you get in trouble. This is when you start forgetting what got us here the, the, the path that was led before. We weren't the. We went. We didn't make great decisions, but I mean, fuck you, look at slavery, man, nobody's proud of that. But also, our country went to war. Millions of people, hundreds of thousands of people, died to end it. To end it. And it's something that is like we're we're so focused on it now and it's such this driven force from the left and everything is race, race, race, and it's like, yes, we're, we're never going to get out of this.
Speaker 1:If we want to start pointing fingers and going down the history of race, we could break down all cultures. We could break down the irish for crying out loud in this country. Look what we did to the indian, the native americans in this country. Like we are not perfect and nobody claims to be, am I proud of all the horrible things that have happened past? Fuck, no, no, nobody is, you know, a true american is. But it's history and it happened. Cool, let's build off of it, let's move forward.
Speaker 1:But it's this divide. They have to constantly focus on the negative and it's like why aren't we focusing on the, the positives, and these new generations and these kids that are learning things and bringing up and developing new programs and technology and science and medicine? It's we're so advanced over everybody, but everybody just wants to find the one negative thing and just they stick to it. And I don't know why our, our culture has come to that and why we've been trained to dwell on so many things in the past. And it just blows my mind.
Speaker 1:That's every time I show the girls and people are protesting and screaming about dumb shit. I'm like you don't know why. That's a privileged motherfucker right there. That's a. That's the most they want. That is a privilege. If you're crying how shitty this country is, the fact that you're standing on a platform screaming how shitty the country shows you how great it is. Take, take your ass to Pakistan, as a woman, or in the Middle East, and go and try to protest and talk about how horrible everything is. Nobody's going to give a fuck. You'll get stoned and drugged through the streets. That's reality today.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, you know I?
Speaker 2:just the whole gays for Palestine argument is ridiculous, you know? I mean, if you put the gays in Palestine, they're all dead, Dead You're going to toss off of a rooftop. They don't have that freedom and liberty. Gays for Palestine.
Speaker 1:Not happening. Tell me that there is propaganda without telling me that you have propaganda problems in your country when you have people protesting gays for Palestine yeah, yeah, they don't understand world history.
Speaker 1:They don't understand anything. They just that's what they're fed and that's what they believe in because of these colleges and getting indoctrinated. And you have these leftist professors and that's all they're pushing on these kids and it's like what? What the fuck are you talking about? Like if you thought any of this through, that you're protesting to support people that would slit your throat and hang you from a bridge the first, second they have. But we're a horrible country. Go, please go there and do your live streaming and vlog how your trip goes to the Middle East. Protesting was with your gay flags, dressed up as a tranny walking through the streets.
Speaker 2:Let me know how far you get, well, and that's you know, some of that, you know, accumulated on January 6th, some of that same mentality in those beliefs. You know people, you know they ask me you. Well, at some point in time you had to realize you know that it was all a setup. You know that, you, why didn't you leave? Well, it was because at that point in time, we decided that this was a movement that was the American people were were standing up for. You know, it was the first time, you know, that the American citizens had come together to say, hey, listen, you know we're not doing this anymore. And that's where, you know, there's a. The lines get, you know, kind of confused. When it comes to January 6th, you know, the narrative is that the people went there to try to stop the certification of votes, to stop the transfer of power, to keep Donald Trump as president of the United States. And that's what mainstream media, the FBI, cia, everybody jumped on that narrative and has crammed it downify the election due to the allegations of fraud, due to allegations of unconstitutionally held elections in several states. The purpose was not to stop that certification from happening. The purpose was not to stop that certification from happening. The purpose was not to interfere in that certification process was for that process to play out and to have, you know, a Congress not certify the election based on. You know those allegations. You know of inconsistencies. You know within the. You know in different states For me, you know there's several different.
Speaker 2:You know people talk about. You know the election fraud through the machines. You know that numbers were changed and there's you know, the whole argument that ballots were added or brought in. To me it's this simple I don't know, and I guess we probably never will know, what the actual results were of that election because it was never studied and never broke down. Nobody ever really explained it to us. But for me, several states, because of COVID, they changed the protocols to how they hold their elections and it was done in an unconstitutional manner, and by that I mean they violated their own state's constitution.
Speaker 2:When you get down to the ballot boxes and the mail-in ballots, normally those have to be requested. There are several states, like Colorado, where we do everything through mail-in ballots and if that's the process and I don't necessarily agree with it, but if that's the way that that state has been doing their elections, then they can continue to allow to do that. But what happened in the 2020 election is several states. All of a sudden, they're doing mass mail-in ballots to everybody. Well, their legislation in their state you know Pennsylvania wasn't set up for that If you want a ballot, you have to request it and you can't just decide. Some secretaries of state can't go to a couple judges that they know are on their side and say hey, you know what we're just going to do mail-in ballots for everybody because of this COVID stuff. Have a judge, approve it and then you hold your elections.
Speaker 2:That's not the way it works and that's what I knew, for a fact had happened. There was five or six key swing states that went to a total mail-in ballot system, putting drop boxes out that were unmonitored. And again, we don't have to even go into whether or not there was enough fraud that was caused because of this to affect the election. That's what a lot of people will say. Well, yeah, but they investigated it and there wasn't enough fraud to prove that it would have changed the election. Ok, that's not the point. If there is any fraud, if the state 6th we were hoping that Congress would decide hey, these certain states didn't follow their own rules, let's send it back to those states, you know, for further evaluation before we certify this thing.
Speaker 1:So that was a big reason why you went. That's what you were standing up for. Were those swing states, that overnight ballots? They had hundreds of thousands of ballots that showed up out of nowhere. We see this huge spike in numbers in the middle of the night. So all of that, compounded on top of it, and that's kind of what led you to like, hey, I'm going to go and I'm going to voice my opinion or give my thoughts at this protest. Was that the big reason, what swayed you to go there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was. You know a lot of. It was exactly that I didn't know, and you know some people. Are you an election denier? I'm not an election denier because I don't know. The numbers say that Joe Biden had more votes.
Speaker 2:To me, that is undisputable. How they reach those numbers is where the question is, and the problem with at that point in time is, and what I wanted to see happen on a personal level is I just thought that there needed to be some transparent investigations. I think everybody did, and I thought it was wise for the country as a whole to take those allegations serious and to do some investigations just to prove that they were going to be taken seriously In the spirit of election integrity. In order for the people to have faith and to trust those elections, you have to prove to them that you're going to take those allegations seriously, and so that's what I was hoping for. I said listen, if you guys do this investigation, put a pause on it. Yep, it's not normal. Yep, there's going to be people that everybody wants to. We're a country If we want instant results. We want it right now, but especially in 2020, there was enough circumstances that it would warrant a little bit more investigation, from our point of view at least at least from the american point of view.
Speaker 1:I feel that I thought so yeah 100, you know, and then it's.
Speaker 2:What was happening is. That wasn't being, that wasn't happening, it just looked right over. Yeah, so this whole. You know there's half of america, let's just call it half. You know conservative america that that thinks that there should be some investigation, and you know the judges, the secretaries of the state, they just didn't want to touch it. You know it was that the scalding hot potato.
Speaker 2:And I understand they felt like if, especially given the political climate at the time, if one of these judges had stood up and said, hey, you know what I'm, I'm not. You know this is not right. You know we need to. They were afraid, I think, that they were going to cause a civil war. Damn near came to it anyways, and it damn near did come to it. But that's even more reason why you've got to take an extra careful, close look and prove to the people that, hey, we look In order to prevent a civil war. Hey, man, you know what we did. Look at it. We didn't just write you off, we didn't deny your.
Speaker 2:You know what was happening. People were filing, you know, lawsuits against the states in courts and the judges were not investigating in them and proving those allegations to be false. They were simply refusing to investigate which. Why that? Why, at that time, you know, and their reasoning at the time was well, there's not enough, we can't find enough evidence to support. Well, you can't find the evidence until you bring it into the courts and agree to look at the evidence. You know, it's a catch-22. In order to discover the fraud, you have to look at it.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are being paid off. I mean, obviously we see what Doge is discovering now and they haven't even scratched the surface of that. Yeah, imagine once they do the military? Well, the Marines just passed. The Marines were the only ones that passed that of all the branches for the audit.
Speaker 1:They signed up for it, basically, and I had a buddy of mine. I was like hilarious marines were the only ones to pass an audit. I'm like that's because that's all we do is dumb shit. We have, we have we do more accountability of of everything that I've ever dealt with in my life. So it makes sense that we know where all of our pieces of gear are. But yeah, you're like hey, do us, we got it yeah yeah, we've been waiting our whole entire since 70, 75 for this.
Speaker 2:Um, imagine when they do the bureau of prisons oh yeah but after what I saw just in my short time you know, being there there's I can't imagine the amount of waste and corruption well, I'm back to the military side of things.
Speaker 1:I saw the other day they there was this um, this guy holds up this bag of bolts or washers and he's like these are aircraft certified, whatever you know the I don't know the terms, like um, you know for aircraft that has that. It was like ninety thousand dollars for this little bag of washers. I remember ordering a sledgehammer when I was in the marine corps. We broke ours had to order it. It was hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I remember filling out the form for it all and it was just some shitty ass. Not even like an oak handle, like pine handled five pound sledgehammer.
Speaker 2:It's a hundred nineteen dollar sledgehammer home depot at hundreds of dollars value or whatever, yeah you know.
Speaker 1:so I'm, I'm all for it, everything that's happening right now, and we could get onto that afterward. But, um, yeah, I'm all I, I the corruption that's going on and in what it's led to, I mean it's, it's insane what our government's doing right now, and I'm surprised january 6th is was the first that it's come to, and who knows where it's going to come after what's coming out now. But I don't want to get sidetracked, so I'll get on my tangent about fucking government. But so you show up January 6th. You hear that Trump's going to be speaking giving a little rally, whatever. You hear that Trump's going to be speaking giving a little rally, whatever. You and your buddy, you guys, go marching two by two to this rally and you're headed down the streets. Walk me through the day of January 6th, when you showed up to the rally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, I guess, let's get into it, you know. So, basically, we showed up on the 5th, okay, and I say we, my buddy Brady, he was flying from Salt Lake, let's get into it, you know. So, basically, we showed up on the 5th, okay, and I say we, my buddy Brady, he was flying from Salt Lake, so he came through Denver, I hopped on a plane with him in Denver and then we ended up in Washington DC. He had a couple other buddies that he was meeting there. Guys, I didn't know, I didn't realize that we were meeting. I thought it was just me. You know, me and Brady were going to be going. And then I had another friend from Salt Lake. You know that I'd posted on Facebook, you know, let some people know that I was going and he had reached out to me and said that he was going to be there too, wanted to know what hotel we were staying at, yada, yada, yada. So we hooked up. So there was five of us that originally got together on the morning of the 6th.
Speaker 2:We didn't have any other plans other than to go down to basically where the Washington, you know, the National Monument is, the Ellipse, the White House, the National Mall. Close by there is the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, which was another reason why I chose. I finally decided to go. You know my buddy said, hey, you know what, I want you to come with me, I'll pay your way. That was kind of the deciding factor. I talked it over with my wife. Free trip to Washington DC. I'd never been there. A bunch of cool shit there that I want to see, arlington National Cemetery being probably the highlight for me in Washington DC. The monument to the Marine Corps, the statue of the men pushing up the flag at Iwo Jima those two are probably some of the highlights for me in Washington DC. So that's what I wanted to do Go hang out with some other American people. It'll be fun. Love our country. Check out Washington DC. It'll be fun. Love our country. Check out Washington DC. It's a free trip, sounds cool.
Speaker 2:When we got there on the 5th, being at the hotel, we started hearing you know, some other people talking about that had been there that day and had gone to some of the. There was other activities the previous day. Some of those people you know were telling us you know that's when we started hearing about well, after Trump gets done speaking, there's going to be a march. People are going to go from there down to the Capitol building and cheer on Congress and hope that they do the right thing is what we were wanting them to do, which was to not certify the election. So we decided, hey, the night before we talked, man, we got nothing else going on. You know, I wanted to see the Capitol building. That was part of the hit list of things that I wanted to see, so that's what we did.
Speaker 2:You know, we went to the Trump rally. A lot of people were talking and we walked around, you know, looked at some of the sites and then, you know, trump got up about. I think he started speaking, you know, maybe around 12 o'clock. You know we listened to him. You know talk for probably about an hour. It's kind of just, you know, the same stuff. You know he went over, you know, over a lot of the accusations of fraud. We'd all heard those. It wasn't something I didn't think anything was going to change necessarily, but we stayed there until he was almost done speaking and I think we probably left that area about 1 o'clock, started walking with the crowd. It was a joyous occasion. People were happy, in a good mood headed towards. You know the Capitol building. You know this was going to be probably around 1.30ish by the time we got to the Capitol building.
Speaker 2:Trump's rally, you know there had to be. You know you'll hear different numbers, but you know there's no way, at least in my opinion, that there was any less than 500,000 people. You know, probably. You know in between 500,000 to maybe a million people you know that were at Trump's rally, no kidding, you know minimum 500,000. The majority, or a lot of those people not all of them, but a lot of those people were now marching, you know, down to the Capitol. Once we arrived on the Capitol grounds, it was, I'm going to say, somewhere between, you know, 130 and 145.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's important to note at this point in time that we separate that there's kind of two different events that are really going on. On January 6th, okay, there was the event that we were coming from with Donald Trump down at the National Mall and the Ellipse, and then there was a protest or a set of protests that were already going on at the Capitol building and they had been going on at the Capitol building since around 10 am that morning. Now, originally, there was, I think, at least up to four different protests that were permitted, you know, authorized by the Capitol. You know police, muriel Bowser, permits, protest permits for, you know, different things, but all of them having to do with, kind, of the election that were to be held on Capitol grounds.
Speaker 2:Traditionally speaking, historically speaking, there's been unlimited amounts of protests that have occurred on the Capitol grounds. So people that showed up for those protests, particularly a lot of them, didn't even go to the Trump rally. You know they held permits that they believed allowed them to have protests on the Capitol grounds that morning, when they had showed up at, you know, say, 10 am to begin these protests. Apparently, the Capitolitol police, muriel bowser, whoever the powers may be, yolanda pitman um, they had decided to revoke those permits, those protest permits, morning of, maybe like 36 hours before so the day. So the majority of people have no idea these permits have been pulled Right. So all the permit holders, the protesters, they showed up on January 6th expecting to have access to the Capitol grounds to have their protest.
Speaker 2:Now, when they showed up, there had been, you know, these barriers that had been erected around the Capitol grounds, you know, basically lining the whole perimeter of the Capitol grounds. And we're talking barriers, I mean three foot high bicycle rack things that they had put up, and there had been some signage that had been put up telling people that it was a prohibited area, um, that they weren't supposed to come on there. So when those protesters showed up and faced these conditions, they were upset, they were concerned, they felt like they held permits in their hands that said that they could be there. Now they were being denied their right to protest. They were being denied access which they felt like, by the federal government to those Capitol grounds Rightfully so, government, yeah, to those capital grounds, rightfully so.
Speaker 2:Apparently, at around 12 pm, some of those barriers came down. You know there's, there's, there's videos that circulate around the police. You know, removing some of those barriers and allowing people to pass onto capital grounds. Some of them were most definitely pushed over. You know you can see footage of ray epps and you know some of the other protesters where they physically forced themselves, you know, past those barriers and onto, you know, capitol grounds. That happened at around 12 pm.
Speaker 2:So when we arrived at around 145, 130, whatever it was, none of those barriers were really in place. You know there were still signs. You know, all over Washington DC, but you couldn't determine that we were not supposed to be on Capitol grounds at that point in time. Yeah, you know there are signs that say you know, stay off the grass. You know, no accessing behind this fence, you know, is private property. You know, that kind of stuff you can see all over Washington DC. Long story short when we showed up at 1.30, we were able to walk directly onto Capitol grounds. I didn't have to climb over any barriers. There was nobody standing out there.
Speaker 1:So you got a wide open. So by the time you guys are showing up to the Capitol, the gates are open. Yeah, you guys, and you don't know any different, you're just, you're just strolling in and going to the crowd that you're already watching protests.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we're just. We walk across the street, we walk onto Capitol Grounds. You know, nothing seems amiss. You know there was a lot of people. It was rowdy, you know, but I've been to a bunch of heavy metal concerts and some rock concerts that are pretty rowdy and I wasn't really expecting anything less. You know, with a couple hundred thousand people, you know, that were marching down to this protest.
Speaker 2:As we approach the Capitol grounds, I can see what they call the West Plaza area I refer to it mostly as the West Stage area and this is the area where, you know, there had been a set of bleachers erected, there was a stage area, there had been a big sound tower, you know, that was kind of erected in the middle of it, that had, you know, speakers and lights and different stuff you know, set up for it. As I approached the capitol grounds, I looked up and I saw this stuff and this is where all the masses of people were already gathered. Nothing seemed weird to me or amiss, because that's what I was expecting. Yeah, I expected, if Trump's going to be there and all these people are going to be in this protest man, there might as well be a stage.
Speaker 2:There might as well be bleachers, you know big sounds. None of it seemed out of place for me, so at this point you have no red flags.
Speaker 2:Everything seems as you would expect. You know some explosions, and you know loud explosions, like fireworks, and, you know, start seeing smoke. At first, you know, again, I might have been a little naive in the situation. I'd never been to a protest. I thought this was all legit, we were where we were supposed to be, yeah. So when I heard those first explosions to me I took it as you, you know, like at a rock concert, you know, before somebody the next performer comes out on stage, you know there's pyrotechnics and explosion time, you know. So that's as I was approaching it. That's kind of what I took.
Speaker 2:It in my mind was oh well, man, they must, you know, be really going at it. You know, for this protest, you know announcing people, and but then, as we got closer, it became apparent, you know, that something was amiss. You know, for this protest, you know announcing people. But then, as we got closer, it became apparent, you know that something was amiss. You know, your eyes started burning, started seeing CS gas. You know seeing the gas, smelling the gas, and you know my first reaction I'm like man, what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 2:I can imagine, yeah, we just we walked onto the grounds, we were told we were supposed to be here to have a protest. Now we walk up and the first thing that happens is we're getting pepper sprayed and they're throwing concussion grenades into the crowd. Now, and you know, now there's flashbangs going off, and so we didn't go to the front area. You know, right to the front we kind of held up, we removed ourselves off to the side. It was apparent that something else bigger was going on and had been going on for a while, before we ever arrived so now it's starting to set in.
Speaker 1:This is, this is something that you're like? Okay, we need to to stand back and watch this unfold yeah, yeah, it became apparent.
Speaker 2:You know that. Yeah, there's a lot more going on here. We kind of walked into, you know, the hornet's nest had already been kicked, if you, if you will you know, probably a great way to put it.
Speaker 2:The hornets were getting angry. There was a loud buzz, you know, and they were being sprayed with, you know, pepper spray and flash bangs. We didn't know exactly what was going on, so we didn't just dive into the middle of things, we tried to remove ourselves. We were standing off to the left-hand side. I personally, when I was looking around, there was not any police. I didn't see any police officers near me or around me, and that became concerning, you know, when I started looking around at the size of the crowd and there is a lot of people here and there's not many police officers here, you know, to protect this building and better yet, you know, now, the few police officers that are here seem to be doing a very good job of inciting a riot.
Speaker 1:How so.
Speaker 2:Well they're. You know they're throwing pepper spray. You know flashbang grenades. I had learned enough after studying. You know the riots that had occurred. You know all 2020 long studying. You know the riots that had occurred. You know all 2020 long that. You know there were some rules of engagement. You know, especially concerning the use of chemical munitions, that a lot of the things that had happened in 2020, you know the riots had been sparked.
Speaker 2:Well, they had analyzed those, evaluated the police forces and the response and in many of these cities across the country you know my hometown, denver, is where I was living it had been decided that there was a riot that occurred in Denver. You know this was at the end of May, first part of June, you know, during the George Floyd, you know, protest and stuff that led to riots. Well, there was riots that occurred. Protesters got into it with police officers. Most of these cities New York, denver, you know looked at those and they decided that the police officers had violated the rights of the protesters to hold a First Amendment protected, you know, free speech event, which, where they can hold a protest. They have the right to hold a First Amendment protected, you know, free speech event which, where they can hold a protest. They have the right to do that. They have the right to be able to do that without being, you know, attacked by law enforcement.
Speaker 2:And many cities had decided that their police forces had violated the protesters' rights and they had awarded those protesters millions of dollars. I think in Denver they gave $18 million to Black Lives Matter protesters, the protesters' rights, and they had awarded those protesters millions of dollars. I think in Denver they gave $18 million to Black Lives Matter protesters whose claim was that they had been attacked by the police officers, unjustfully so, and had been hurt or damaged because of that. So, because of that, it had been determined and this happened in Washington DC in June, muriel Bowser Metropolitan Police they had decided that they are no longer going to use chemical munitions at any type of First Amendment protected event. They're not going to use tear gas and pepper balls. You know. They're not going to use, you know, non-lethal rounds because it could instigate the crowd.
Speaker 1:But here you are finding yourself right in the middle of it.
Speaker 2:Here, we walk up and that's all that's going on. Okay, you know. So another part of the rules of engagement, you know, for those type of riots or protests, if you will, is they've got to make an announcement, a dispersal announcement. They've got to make it loud enough that it is heard by everybody that this is no longer a protected protest. You know it has gone beyond that protected protests. You know it has gone beyond that and a dispersal announcement has to come and be made to tell the people that listen, you are not involved in illegal activity any longer. You need to leave, and then they have to be given the amount of time to respond to that order. Are you hearing any of this? None of this is happening. There was no dispersal announcement being made, but there's already being.
Speaker 2:You know chemical munitions, flashbang grenades, you know tear gas, that kind of stuff is being used. Initially, as we were there trying to figure out what was going on, um, I could look up on to what was the scaffolding you know. You can hear him talk about the scaffolding, the whole stage area which you know. Just for reference, that whole stage, the sound tower, the bleachers, it hadn't been set up for the protest, that had been set up for the inauguration, which wasn't still for another two weeks. This is what comes into question, where people start asking me well, didn't you realize at some point in time? You know that it was all a setup and it was a little bit later. You know that you started realizing that, okay, they knew that this big giant protest was coming.
Speaker 1:They had to have known protest was coming.
Speaker 2:They had to have known why would they have this whole setup. You know, once we got to the bleachers, you know there was equipment everywhere. There was pipes laying around. You know again, the whole pallets of bricks, you know. So that showed up at. You know, blm protest here. You showed up and you start looking around and there's pipes and there's two by fours and there's ropes and there's all this equipment that's just left around in the open for anybody to grab and to use.
Speaker 1:So I mean, you're protesting in a construction zone, yeah, With scaffolding, which people are obviously going to climb and use all this stuff, yeah. So what are you guys doing at this point, now that the pepper spray is going off? They're tear, gassing, flash, banging people. Where are you guys in this scenario, or the situation I should say, like how we're? What's going on?
Speaker 2:um, again, we're still trying to figure out what's going on. So we've removed ourself from the situation a little bit. We're standing on to the north northwest side, you know, of that west plaza stage area personally, and I'm hoping some police is going to show up. To be honest with you, things are getting rowdy, you know, starting to dissolve a little bit. Personally, I'm hoping that, you know, some police officers are going to be here to kind of keep things calmed down Soon.
Speaker 2:I could see up on the scaffolding. You know the scaffolding was kind of see-through a little bit but it was white. But I could see police officers climbing the stairs and they're all carrying guns, you know, looking like you know AR-15 type stuff Turned out later find out that those were pepper ball guns. I couldn't tell that People were starting to climb up on some of the walls, you know, and climb up on the scaffolding. You know things were starting to get a little, you know, wild. But I could look up and I could see all these officers, you know, coming with these guns. People were climbing on the walls.
Speaker 2:You know my buddy that was standing next to me. I said man, what are these people doing? These people are idiots. He said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, what are they trying to do? And he said, well, I think they're trying to get into the Capitol.
Speaker 2:And I said, well, why I hadn't made the connection that there was any reason to go into the Capitol. You know, that was not something that well. I think you know to protest. You know the election results and man, they're a bunch of idiots. They're about to get shot. You know that's. I saw a police officer that I assumed they were carrying guns. You know and this is probably not going to be a super popular opinion, you know, but from me, you know, with some other J-6ers and stuff like that but when it comes to the defense of the Capitol building, I expected the men and women that were put in charge of protecting that you know, that if it came down to it, would use lethal force. I expected that that would be something that they would do. Okay, if the building was being attacked, if it was literally being trying to be broken into, I believed it was within their realm to use lethal, lethal force to protect that building so at this point you're watching them climb things.
Speaker 1:Now they're working their way up the crowds, pushing toward the doors or up the stairs, and the whole entire time you're thinking like shit's about to go down so yeah now. Now it's starting to get serious for you, yeah, yeah now it's definitely.
Speaker 2:It's definitely gotten serious. And where I'm on the verge of yeah, no, it's starting to get serious for you, yeah, yeah, now it's definitely gotten serious. And to where I'm on the verge of yeah, no, it's getting close to where things could get lethal, yeah, and that's something that I didn't want anything to do with, and that's the argument that I was making to the people that were there in front of me that were trying to climb up on the scaffolding. Man, what are you guys doing? You guys are about to get shot.
Speaker 1:So you're right in the crowd. How far from the scaffolding were you? Because I remember these areas.
Speaker 2:Now, we're you know, we're you know, 15, 20 feet away from the scaffolding. We're at the front of the line. We're still. The majority of the crowd is farther off, to our right.
Speaker 2:You know, that's right in front of the stage. We couldn't even see the stage at this point anymore because we were so front, far forward on the left, um, on the north side of the stage. We couldn't actually see what was going on down that line because the scaffolding was now blocking us. But so, yeah, things are starting to dissolve. You know I'm having an argument. You know other people are yelling at the people. You know it's a back and forth. You know, hey, man, what are you guys doing? You're about to get shot.
Speaker 2:No, you know, some people felt like you know that was necessary to go into the capitol. Um, again, who those people were, I don't know. Yeah, you know antifa. People say, well, antifa wasn't there. Well, if you're looking for antifa to be showing up in an all black block uniform, that's not the way that they're going to roll into this scenario. You know, they know if they show up in black block, that they're going to just be annihilated right away. So what did they do they? They dress up. You know, like, the like the people that they're around. So, yep, people were saying, at this point in time, you need to go into the capital. There was people on megaphones. Again, who they were who they were working for. Whether those were some of the fbi informants, you don't really know.
Speaker 1:So you got people on megaphones at this point screaming we got to get into the Capitol.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:People, you know hey listen.
Speaker 2:You know, let's go to the Capitol. Other people are arguing, citizens are. You know that's not the way. That's not what we're about. That's not what we're here to do. You know, I'm secretly hoping that there are going to be some police officers that are going to help. You know, trying to keep this under control, um, but it was, yeah, out of control. Um, people, it was becoming out of control and it was at that point in time, you know, when, um supporting units were being called. You know riot squads were being called. You know they were calling for other police officers to show up at the Capitol building. Um, you know, you know that their assistance were needed. And that's when Platoon 42, a civil disturbance unit, cdu, within the Metropolitan Police Departments that's when they showed up. They were called on scene to respond to that West Plaza area, which is where those barriers were around the big sound tower where you see a majority of the violence taking place, at least early on in that day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's got to be so much going on at this point. Is it pure chaos, or is it still kind of a protest? I mean, how much time has elapsed?
Speaker 2:at this point. Well, not very long, I said we showed up there. Maybe let's just call it 1.45. When we walked onto Capitol grounds within five to ten minutes, we realized that there was FUBAR.
Speaker 2:So, quick, yeah, so quick. You know this is not good. A lot of people say you know, why didn't you leave? Why didn't you write then and there? Why didn't you leave? Well, you know, it's a good question, but, you know, I'm just not that type of person. I want to watch it.
Speaker 2:Today, you know, I wanted to know the truth about what was going on in my country. I wanted to know the truth about the elections, I wanted to know the truth about COVID, and I'd been denied the truth, you know, and I felt at that point that the only thing, the only way that I was going to know the truth about what happened that day, was to stay and witness it. Yeah, a hundred percent. You know, I knew that. I knew that whatever happened was going to be twisted and manipulated by the mainstream media to push an agenda that they wanted, you know, the American people to believe, and it was. But I know the only way to combat that was to also have some level-headed people observe, you know, and so that's where I went into kind of an observation mode. Okay, I've worked as a cameraman. I filmed a lot of TV shows, hunting shows, hunting shows, filmed TV shows for the Outdoor Channel. I know what it's like to record and to be a cameraman and I kind of slipped into that mode at that point in time that you know what. I'm just going to try to document everything as best I can Keep some civility if at all possible. You know, I didn't want to see police fighting with protesters. I didn't want to see protesters fighting with police, but you know so I didn't leave. I wanted to see how it was going to play out.
Speaker 2:Now, while we're standing there in the middle of this chaos, you know we hear some cheers and also some jeers. You know, coming from off to our left, when I turned to my left, I could see an approaching line of officers. They were all in their hard gear face masks, face shields, batons, you know, all strapped down. They're all carrying guns on their hips and they've gotten into a point where they're approaching the crowd and the crowd became so densely packed there was too many people that the officers couldn't get through anymore. Oh, okay, and this is where they made a mistake. At least I think they made a mistake, and most of the officers.
Speaker 2:Later on, when you listen to their body cam footage, they also admit that they made a mistake. And there's most of the officers. Later on, when you listen to their body cam footage and stuff, they also admit that they made a mistake, you know, and the mistake was instead of going around to support that skirmish line at the front of the stage, you know, to me it makes sense that you do that from the rear Always provide support from the rear. You're a military guy and maybe I'm wrong, but I mean, does it ever make sense? When you're a military guy, and maybe I'm wrong, but I mean, does it ever make sense when you're in the middle of a battle type scenario, you know, would you insert yourself into that scenario by cutting through the people that you think is the enemy? So, whoever their leadership was, put them in a bad position? You know to where this—.
Speaker 1:They were surrounded.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this crowd of officers basically tried to insert themselves into this scenario by forcing their way through the crowd, and in their own language, you know, when they described the scene later, you know they openly admit that. You know, the crowd became so densely packed that they were reduced to single file line, walking in stack formation to try to force their way through the crowd. So these guys showed up and they began forcing their way through the crowd.
Speaker 1:This became, you know, violent pretty quickly An already agitated crowd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, an already agitated crowd, you know, a crowd that these officers seems to believe is their enemy. You know, at this point in time, and these guys come into the crowd, their forward progress gets stopped to where they can't keep progressing. So they start to use their batons forcefully pushing back the crowd to create space for themselves, to enter themselves. You know into this scenario.
Speaker 2:Well, the crowd didn't particularly like that a whole lot. Don't blame them. You know they're already upset that they're being fired upon by police officers. You know some of them had already got shot by rubber bullets. You know some of them had had tear gas, you know explode in their face. Others had flash bangs. You know, blow up. You know, close to them At this point in time, we'd seen other two other gentlemen I believe there was actually four people that died on January 6th. All four of them were protesters, Two gentlemen and I'm sorry I can't remember their names because they deserve to be. You know their names remembered, but they had died as part of that crowd.
Speaker 2:You know the official results were. You know, complications due to pre-existing heart conditions. But when you start dropping flashbang grenades and concussion grenades in the middle of a crowd, you know, um, I guess those things can happen. So this crowd has been getting fired upon seeing some people carried out. Bodies of these other gentlemen you know were carried out of the crowd. They believe they're in the spot where the they're supposed to be. You know to have these protests and then the police officers showed up. You know to have these protests and then the police officers showed up, you know, trying to force their way physically, you know, into the middle of them.
Speaker 2:You know the argument could be made that at that point in time the police officers became the aggressors. I'm sure the officers will make the other argument. Well, no, the aggressors was the crowd. You know there's going to be, you know, different opinions. Aggressors was the crowd. There's going to be different opinions on that and they're probably both valid. That's the hard thing about this scenario is it's a complex issue. It was a shit show. Yeah, it was a shit show.
Speaker 2:When these officers showed up, started pushing the crowd, the crowd didn't like it. There became a standoff scenario where the people kind of circled around those officers. They were telling them things like hey, you know what? We're on your side, same team, back the blue. We love you guys. What are you guys doing? We're not here to fight with you. We don't want anything to do with fighting you guys. And there was other people there too that that you know instigators, if you will. You know they may have just been, you know hardcore. You know American patriots that were just mad and pissed off at their government, who didn't have any respect for the police officer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Those people exist. You know. Some of them, I'm absolutely convinced, were Antifa people that were simply there to instigate, you know, the crowd and try to pick fights with the police. To instigate you know the crowd and try to pick fights with the police. We now know at this point in time that there was, you know, fbi. You know people that the crowd was full of them. You know, and some of these people you know on their own body cams and footage it is showing them, encouraging the American people to move forward, you know, and to move up the steps.
Speaker 2:But in this scenario and that's all I can really talk about because that's what I was involved in the police showed up. We're being rough with the crowd. The crowd didn't like it. There was a standoff situation. My friend Brady, we weren't part of that original blockage of those officers, if you will, but their forward progress was stopped. They were surrounded by other people in the crowd. There was a lot of arguing going back and forth. My friend Brady felt like I guess that it was his, you know, he was in a position where he could kind of step to the front of the crowd and try to keep some peace. You know, try to talk to the officers and explain to them hey man, you guys need to chill out a little bit. You know you're not in the best, man, you guys need to chill out a little bit. You're not in the best position to be roughhousing 200,000 people or whatever the numbers were that were actually there, also trying to tell members of the crowd hey man, you guys calm down. These guys are not the issue. We're not here to yell and fight with the police. They've got a job to do. They're here to do it. Leave them alone, guys, we don't need to be assaulting. And that's where we were at. You know Now Officer Hodges, which is one of the officers that was there that day.
Speaker 2:He was at the front of that group. If you'd recognize the name, officer Hodges Daniel Hodges is his full name is because he was also one of the four officers that later ended up testifying to the House Select Committee. There was four officers out of all the officers that were there that day that testified to that House Select Committee and he was one of them. He mainly testified because two hours later in the day around 4.30, he became the officer that we all see in that West Tunnel scenario. He was the officer that got smashed between you know, at the doorway. He got pinned at the doorway between protesters and the police officers that were inside the tunnel. That was a separate situation. Two hours after, you know, I encountered it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But he was the officer that was there. He was at the front of the group. We were standing in front of him having a heated discussion back and forth. I mean it was loud. You know you had to be yelling back and forth at each other because of the environment. You know there was no way of hearing. You know what anybody was saying without yelling. We were telling the police officers. You know, hey, you guys got to calm down, relax a little bit.
Speaker 2:The officers weren't saying a whole lot of anything, you know. We were asking them know, where do you guys want to go? Where are you responding to? They weren't called to respond to that area. They weren't making any arrests in that area. So we were trying to what is your purpose of being here? And some of them said you know, we're not trying to be here, we're trying to get to there. Okay, well, that makes sense, but this isn't the way to go about it.
Speaker 2:Hodges was at the front of the group. If you look at the body cam footage from the people that were at the rear of the group and this is where, you know, the sergeants and some of the you know, higher ranking officers of the platoon were at the people at the back of the group were saying, hey, we need to retreat, we need to fall back. We made a mistake. You know we can't be forcing our way through the crowd. You know this is not good, you know it's instigating things For sure. So most of the command and the officers were saying we need to fall back.
Speaker 2:Hodges was at the front in his defense. I'm sure he couldn't hear what those other officers were saying, but he made the decision that they needed to move and make way. On his body cam footage I'm standing right in front of him. He gives me a direct order. He says move, make way. I've been around enough law enforcement. I've got enough law enforcement friends to understand that when they give you a direct order, at that point in time, yes, you have to obey that direct order. And so we did. He said move, make way. You can see me on video. Move out of the way. Put my hands to the side. I create a hole for this Officer, hodges, to leave, to continue going about his business and to do his duty when he leaves that group of officers. None of the other officers followed him.
Speaker 1:So now he's on his own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he left that group. Immediately upon leaving that group, there's a guy standing in front of him and Hodges uses his baton, you know, to push this guy out of the way. This is an elderly gentleman, you know, 65 years old. You can see him on the cam. Reach up and grab onto hodges baton, again in self-defense, you know, protecting himself. He wasn't attacking hodges, he was just trying to keep from being hit with the baton. This happened to be the second incident within about two minutes in which hodges baton had been grabbed. Earlier, again, he had pushed somebody from behind and that guy had also turned around and grabbed onto Hodges' baton. Two baton grabs within two minutes.
Speaker 2:Once Hodges realizes he's by himself, you know, I think a little bit of panic, you know, kind of sets in. You know I don't question his courage, you know that's not what I'm here to do, but if I was by myself in the in the middle of a hornet's nest, I would be afraid as well. Yeah, so I think he became afraid, um, rightfully probably so. At that point in time he made the decision to try to get back with his group of officers. Um, in doing that now, he was approaching the American citizens that were in that situation, which all had their backs turned to him at this point in time. In his own words this is not me making this up, but this is Hodges' words that you can see in his testimony that he gives to the House Select Committee. That testimony is on tape, it's on YouTube. It was broadcast to all the world to see, broadcast to all of Washington DC to see, long before my trial ever occurred.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know. So he got to tell his side of the story without facing any type of cross-examination. You know, no lawyers, you know, questioned his testimony, but we're getting a little bit too far ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're getting too far ahead of ourselves, you know, into the legality of the prosecutions. This is simply, you know, hodges trying to make his way back into the crowd On his body cam. He's got his baton in his left hand. You can see him reaching up and grabbing people by their collars, by the back of their shirts, by their backpacks, throwing them to the ground. You can see his baton in his left hand making contact with the back of people's heads, you know, with their backs of their necks, their shoulders. No, you can say that he wasn't sure. He can say that he wasn't actually hitting people. I don't know it's up for debate, but he's got his baton in his hand. He's grabbing people. Bodies are hitting the floor.
Speaker 2:As he's approaching me now, I'm stuck in the crowd. I look off to my left and I see Hodges coming back into the crowd. I'm trying to move. I can't retreat, I can't leave the area. I'm stuck between between a wall and another barrier. I try to back up to get out of his way as he's coming. I can't do it.
Speaker 2:Right before he gets to me, there's another gentleman that tries to put his hands on on Hodges. You know, just try to stop him if you will. He's attacking people and, on my opinion, from my viewpoint, from behind they're hitting the ground. Another guy puts his hands out try to stop Hodges. Hodges turns and with a double-handed baseball bat type swing swings and he hits this guy in the rib cage, hits him twice, wow wham in the ribs as he turns and he lifts his baton. You know we make eye contact. You know at that point in time, you know it was an instinctive reaction. You know he had the baton lifted. I assumed that the next thing it was going to be used for was to hit me or the people in my immediate vicinity. Without thinking about it, I didn't make a conscious decision. I wasn't mad at officer Hodges, had no ill feelings towards him, but without thinking, instinctually I reached out and I grabbed onto his baton.
Speaker 1:How'd that go over for you?
Speaker 2:It didn't end very well. It didn't end well at all. You know, immediately, when I realized, you know, like, end very well, it didn't end well at all. You know, immediately, when I realized you like said it was it was an instinctual reaction. I didn't want the baton. I wasn't trying to grab the baton, I wasn't trying to rip it away from him. Um, I was just simply trying to stop what was happening from happening. You know, I didn't think that it was going to be of anyone's benefit. You know, if people continue to get hurt, yeah, you know, in this situation I just reacted. I grabbed onto the baton immediately, I regretted it. What did he do? Well, as soon as I grabbed onto it, I didn't have a plan of what to do next. You know, it was literally a case of grabbing the tiger by the tail. So, as soon as I grabbed onto the baton, you know the kind of crowd kind of surged in my direction. Um, I, we both got ended up kind of getting pushed to the floor. You know, it was kind of like a big mosh pit at that point in time, if you ever. I mean, it was just your body surfing, body moving. We got pushed to the floor. I fell down down on my belly. I had one hand on the baton. Officer Hodges was on top of me trying to grab the baton out of my hand.
Speaker 2:At this point in time I started getting hit with other batons other officers that were there, oh really, yeah, they started doing the whole pummel me with batons routine and I was face down on the floor at this point in time. You know I've trained a little bit. You know done some Krav Maga. You know study and training. You know I have, I know how to defend myself somewhat. I realized that if I let go of that baton while I was face down on the floor with the officer sitting on top of my back yeah, there is a good chance that I may or may, you know, would have taken a severe beating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I made the decision at that point in time not to let go of the baton until I rolled over on my back where I could get my feet up into a defensive position where I could use my feet, you know, just like you would in a MMA match, you know, to keep people away from you. Once I got in a defensive position where I felt like I could better defend myself, I let go of that baton. I did use my foot, you know, to push Officer Hodges. You know they say that I kicked him in the chest. You know, if you read any of their terminology in their indictment, you know that I kicked Officer Hodges in the chest and that was me assaulting the police officer. Okay, and that's not what happened, at least my opinion.
Speaker 2:You know I let go of the baton. I used my foot to push off the shoulder, create some space, got whacked with a few batons. My buddy Brady, you know, grabbed me, pulled me up, you know, pulled me out of the situation and you know that was it. You know I think I stood up. I gave uh, you know, gave the officers the double-finger salute. At that point in time I wasn't real happy with them. I felt like we had jumped in to try to help them, not escalate the situation.
Speaker 1:We were trying to keep violence from occurring.
Speaker 2:It wasn't happening. It wasn't happening, you know. And at that point, you know that was pretty much over with that scenario, you know, my friend picked me up. The officers, you know, made their way and they finally made it back behind the barriers to where they were supposed to be, you know, and their day, you know, went on from there, my day, to be honest, with you, right there, I was ready to be done. Oh, I bet, you know I was in some pretty immense pain. You know they know where to hit with those batons. You know to cause pain. Where'd you get hit? You know they hit me right on the inside of the knee. You know on the ankle bone. You know on my forearm, on my elbow. You know I thought my arm was broken. You know I thought my knee and I mean it hurt. It was that type of pain, you know, like when you're Deep pain, like when you want to throw up, like you're about to hurl Absorbing pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, and that's where I was at. You know, after that situation.
Speaker 1:God bless.
Speaker 2:I stood up and there was still chaos going on around me, and but man, no, I was sick. You know, I wanted to throw up. I didn't understand what had just happened. You know, I I didn't. How in the world have we gotten to this point? You know where?
Speaker 2:I was grabbing onto a baton in the middle of, you know, can only be described as a riot. You know, at this point in time and I was done, I wanted nothing else to do with it um, unfortunately that was about the time. You know, when these guys get on the microphones, you know, I and I was done, I wanted nothing else to do with it. Unfortunately, that was about the time. You know, when these guys get on the microphones, you know, I mean get on the megaphones and they start making announcements that Mike Pence had certified the election. And this was a big turning point. This is what people need to understand about that day. People didn't go into the building trying to interfere the certification. At this point in time it was being announced that that certification was over, mike Pence had certified the election, that all hope was lost, that it was done and the process was over go home yeah, yeah, there's no more chance.
Speaker 2:You know, you, you guys that are hoping that the certification, you know, won't be certain, that the won't be certified, your hopes are done. It's over. Now I'm going to say that this was a lie. That certification process was not done at that point in time. It was still ongoing. I was naive at this point. I didn't know how long that process took. The crowd, I think, was probably just as naive as I was. And when these announcements started coming down the pipeline that Mike Pence had certified the election yeah, people became angry.
Speaker 1:Do you think that was a strategic play by the FBI that was in the crowd, or was that just ignorance?
Speaker 2:I think it was a strategic play by somebody you know. I don't have enough information to say that it was the FBI that you know. You know that planned this insurrection. I'm not going to be the guy that says that but I think it was allowed to happen. It could have been prevented. At this point in time I don't know, and I still don't know, who those people were, but it changed the crowd's mentality so you see a shift in this in the, in the rioters now, now, now it's a riot.
Speaker 1:You got cops that are full, full, hand-to-hand in a crowd. You just got your ass whooped by yeah, you got.
Speaker 2:Some people will say rightfully.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I felt like I was protecting, doing what I needed to protect myself I mean I'm I'd say, rightfully so if I grabbed a cop's baton and beat the fuck out of me, I'm like deserved you know I mean that's and that's where I was at that standpoint.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I was like hey, you know what you, you get close to cops with batons, you might get hit by one, yeah right. But at the same time too, you know, they didn't try to arrest me, they didn't put me in place because you think you're good at this point? If they felt like I had assaulted a police officer, they should have absolutely thrown me in handcuffs at that point. And for sure, for sure, and they didn't, so now all this goes down.
Speaker 1:Got beat up by cops. They're on the megaphone saying that pence signed off on it. So now the whole energy of the crowd. Is it turning more aggressive at this point, or is it? Hey, let's go inside. Or is that all all hand in hand?
Speaker 2:no, I mean, I think there was again different people had different agendas. You can't paint every all the events with a broad paintbrush that covers everybody.
Speaker 2:There were some people there that, no doubt about it, from the very beginning, their intent was to get into the building. Very small percentage of people, the majority of the crowd now. They believed that Congress had not upheld the Constitution in the fact that they had certified the election without investigating at least investigating those, those claims of fraud so it's a huge slap in the face, huge everybody that's I mean to america in general, but to everybody that's there.
Speaker 1:You all are like what the fuck yeah?
Speaker 2:and again to to prove my point even further, that we didn't show up with that mentality of interfering with the certification process is because, you know, people were hoping that Mike Pence was going to be their savior. So people didn't show up that day At least the majority of people didn't show up that day screaming and yelling. You know there was still hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, fuck Mike Pence. You know, fuck my pants. You know, hang my pants. That wasn't the the rhetoric that people showed up with. Everybody was happy. They were hoping that this was going to happen. And when it became apparent, or it was announced, that that wasn't going to happen and it couldn't happen anymore because that process was over. Now the same crowd you know who at this point in time now, they've been being assaulted or felt like they had been being assaulted by the police officer for over two hours now I mean you're in just a bowl of just yeah chaos, getting pepper sprayed, beat up shot with rubber bullets, all this other stuff, and I think that was the final point which is
Speaker 2:it's starting to boil over at this point, yeah, and I think that was the point where a lot of people just just decided you know what you're doing it, you're not gonna listen to the american people and our voice isn't going to be heard. Then, up the stairs, we must go, you know, into the capitol. You know people felt that that was a legitimate, um, you know reaction at that time. Yep, again, I wasn't one of those people. You know, I never felt like anything was going to be accomplished by me forcing my way into the capitol building. Yeah, but at that point in time, when the rest of the crowd you know they started going up the stairs, um, my friends that I was with, you know, we lost a couple already. There was five of us originally, with two had already disappeared. I don't know where they went.
Speaker 2:So now it was down to just me, my Facebook friend, gary and Brady, and we had a discussion as people were going up the stairs. You know what? What do we do? You know, should we go? Should we go up or should we not go up? For me, that was the. The major dilemma was because, up until that point in time, I felt I had been within my legal bounds, the Capitol grounds I felt were originally permitted for protest. That's what I came there to do. The police officers I felt like had inserted themselves into the crowd violently, making them the aggressors, forcing myself to defend myself in that scenario. But and this is where I thought, their barriers had been set up to keep the crowd back. Once I made the decision to go up the stairs with the rest of the people, I felt like that was opening myself up to, you know, misdemeanor trespassing charges. Opening myself up to, you know, misdemeanor trespassing charges.
Speaker 1:So you were aware you were. You were like okay, this, this is. This was one of our questions. At this point, you're starting to go inside. Has it? Have you processed it yet? Or has it started to feel that this is a setup? At this point? When did that register with you? Like? This is looking fishy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it hadn't the fact of it being a setup hadn't really started registering yet, but that for me, that's when things legally changed. You know, I felt like, okay, this is where I believe the barriers to be. I felt like, okay, this is where I believe the barriers to be. If I go past this point now, I think I probably can be held accountable for trespassing, which is a misdemeanor crime. Okay, you know and I guess I accepted that responsibility at that point in time that this was a movement that was happening. The American people, you know, wanted their voice to be heard. We decided to proceed farther, you know, up that stair, so that we could continue witnessing, you know, the events that were taking place, but also just to throw some, you know, show some solidarity, you know, with the rest of the American people. That felt like that's what we were deciding. If this is what's happening is happening, and okay, then I'm loyal American people. That felt like that's what we were deciding.
Speaker 2:If this is what's happening is happening and okay, then I'm loyal, you know, to a fault. You know, in a lot of ways, one of my major issues with all that happened 2020 long was this whole concept of this silent majority. Yeah, you know that's what we were told. You know, yeah, you guys have your fun in your protest and do all your defund. The police, you know protest and violence because wait until the silent majority shows up to vote. Well, whatever happened, the silent majority never really seemed to have showed up. You know, the silent majority stays silent and you know that's the way that you lose elections. So, at that point in time for me to witness American citizens that were willing to do something— You're all in Whether it was right or wrong, and people can still argue that At that moment in time, I made the decision that I was going to support other American citizens. Okay, so you made the decision to go in the Capitol. Hadn't made the decision to go into the Capitol, yet I'm going to go a little bit further.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to go a little bit further and keep seeing this out. But I knew it and I even told the guys that I was with man. I don't want to go. I just got my ass kicked, I'm done. No, we got to go. We got to be part of this movement. This is history. We got to be there. Someone's got to be able to tell the truth. We got to go. Yeah, all right, whatever I ride with the brand, that's what we're doing. I'll support you in that.
Speaker 2:So we went up to the, went up the stairs. As we were going up the stairs, you know, there was a little tunnel that kind of went out into some scaffolding there, the bleachers. Later we like I said all that bleacher, that whole setup was for the inauguration At that time. I still believe it was for the protest. So we didn't really think that we were that far out of bounds, you know, just by going up the steps. But once we got to the top of those stairs, there were people that were moving off towards some entrances. We made the decision at that point. You know that I didn't want to be around one of those entrances. You know, I didn't know. I imagine you know we'd heard people about wanting to break into the building. I didn't want to be around one of those entrances. I didn't know. I imagine we'd heard people about wanting to break into the building. I didn't want to break into the building, so we removed ourselves from that crowd. At that point we weren't at one of these doors where people were banging on the doors.
Speaker 2:We weren't in any scenario where any windows got broke. Things were becoming crazy. We basically called a timeout for ourselves, removed ourselves from the situation and we went up some short little stairs and again now, we made our way up into the top part of the bleachers and we literally just sat down and from this point we were looking over that whole West Plaza area, all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the you know, national Monument, and as far as you could see, in any direction, it was people, really, you know. So again, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people, but I think it's about a mile from the Capitol building to the Washington Monument. It's a wall, national Monument, and it's people all the way down the streets, you know, and and all the way down the thing. And that's when the enormity of the situation really set in, you know, and it was, it was shocking, it was awe-inspiring to see that many people standing up for their rights their country and their rights and their freedom.
Speaker 2:It was saddening there was a part of me that was very heartbroken that really we'd come to a point in this country where this is necessary or we even think this is remotely necessary that our politics, that our government, federal government, has gotten so out of control that we literally it's all it was is just american people had lost their trust in their government. You know, at that point in time, all americans, they didn't trust both sides, and that's where we had come to the point, where we didn't trust our government, that the people thought it was necessary to make their voices heard in such a dramatic passion. So we were literally just sitting there, hanging out, chilling out, trying to avoid the chaos, and it didn't work. No, it got worse. How did it get worse?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, in that moment we were sitting in the bleachers, having our little breather. Behind us, we were on what they call the Upper West Terrace. As we looked out behind us, we could see a row of police officers, a force of police officers, maybe 50 to 100 strong, lined up, and they were advancing, you know, on the crowd of protesters that had also made it up there, and they were advancing, you know, on the crowd of protesters that had also made it up there. There had been some protesters again I believe these people to be Antifa that had kind of made their way to the front of that crowd and it was again a standoff between protesters and police. You had some instigators out there that were taunting the police, you know, trying to get them to engage. And again we looked down at this situation and just made the decision that, hey, we needed to get down there, try to get between those police and the protesters and keep them separated. We didn't want any more violence to occur. So that's what we did we got up, we left the bleachers.
Speaker 2:As we came back down onto the West Terrace, some other protesters had gotten involved, had already talked to the police, had talked to, you know, the other protesters and said listen, this is not what we want. The police basically agreed that they're going to move back a little bit as long as the protesters don't advance towards them, you know, know, or threaten them, cause anything. It was a standoff. So that situation was negotiated and you know, just it's weird, crazy people say you know how did you end up in all these places that day? Very key points and again I have to revert to that. You know nothing. I don't believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. Okay, um, I feel like god specifically placed me in certain positions key positions, you know so that I could see and witness those for myself. Because what happened next again is to me it's only by the, the providence of god, you know.
Speaker 2:We're standing there nowhere near an entrance. This little side door pops open from the capitol building single door. There's a side entrance. It opens from inside. A protester walks out, ask the people standing there hey, you guys want. Hey, you guys want to come in. You guys want to come into the building? No, man, I don't. I'm good and that's what most of us said. That was right there. No, we don't want to go in the building. What are you guys doing in the building?
Speaker 1:No, I don't want to go in the building, so you're just standing there and the side door just pops open with a protester.
Speaker 2:What did the cops do anything? No, the cops are right there. They're standing 20 feet away. They didn't do anything, you know, but they had moved back and that was their point, so they didn't do anything. Protester asked if we want to come in. We're like no, man, I don't want to go in there. That's not a good idea at all. And they're like no, but the the cops are right here. They said we can come in and hold up a minute. What do you mean? The cops say we can come in, hold up a minute. What do you mean? The cops say we can come in? No, they're going to allow us to come in and have a protest as long as we remain peaceful. We agree not to break anything. They're going to allow us to come in and peacefully protest, man.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that. Me and my buddies, you know we're skeptical, you know. But at the same time too, and if they're letting people in the building, if that's really the case, you know, why would we not go in the building? I've never been in the Capitol building, you know. So there's a little bit of curiosity to it. There's also, you know the part, you know people. You know people say well, you knew better, you shouldn't have gone into. But yeah, probably, you know so.
Speaker 2:But if they're going to let me in the building and they're going to give me permission to do it, you know there's two factors. One I'm curious. I want to see what's going to happen. I'm trying to determine, you know, truth, you know and, and what's going to happen that day? Two, I'm well aware of the elements that are around me. There's some nasty, bad people there, whether they're Antifa, whether they're extreme right wingists, I don't care. There was some elements of society that were being very violent, being vulgar, antagonizing police. If we were going to allow them inside the building, then guess what? There's going to need to be some American patriots inside that building too.
Speaker 1:So how long did it take for you to make the decision? Once the protester opened the side door to the Capitol and said, hey, come on in cops, say we're cool, how long was your thought process before you were like all right, let's go?
Speaker 2:Man, it was probably 30 seconds. You know we didn't have a whole lot of time. You know the door was open, and here's why I say that I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. I wouldn't have either. I'm with you on this. Well, yeah, when they opened the door, he's telling us we can come in. We're saying no, we don't think so. Then we look inside, police officers standing inside the door, just like he says.
Speaker 2:You know now, granted, they weren't all the way right, they weren't two feet in front of the door, they were about 20 feet inside the door. There was another set of interior doors, double opening doors there, and we could look inside the building. There was two officers standing inside the building holding those doors open. There was protesters walking by, officers holding the door, opening them, asking them if they're carrying any weapons, asking them, you know, if they've got any, you know, weapons, stun guns, those kinds of things on them. And they no, no, no weapons. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:So we're watching all this and we make the decision. Well, man, I guess they are letting people in the building. They're holding the doors open. There's 10 police officers there. There's nobody stopping anybody from going in the building. So we went in the building, you know, and that's the way it was. You know, we walked up as the the two double doors that were inside. There was a gap in between the protesters that were coming, so those actually swung closed. And then, as we approached the door, the officers inside, again, they reached up and they pushed the doors open for him and held them open as we walked in, you know, past those officers it is doesn't seem shady at this point.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I'm, you know, definitely I'm a little bit hesitant.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, I know, going into the Capitol building, you know, I'm sure that you know that they didn't want us here originally, but there's nobody stopping us. Yeah, and in my defense and the other protests, I had any of those officers at that point in time if any one of them I said hey, what are you guys doing? You guys can't be coming in here. You know, this is illegal, it's trespassing. You can't come in here. I would have turned around, okay, man, I thought we could, you know, but they didn't make that, those type of statements.
Speaker 1:Instead they held the doors you guys walk right in and they walked right in super inviting there's no, they're not yelling at you to get out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah let's not be. They're not being you know people. They were afraid for their lives and that's what you know. When my trial came and we showed this footage, you know, to the judge, his explanation was it's only logical, and you guys should have known this, and it's only logical to assume that those police officers allowed you in the building because they were under duress, they were scared, they were doing it. They made a decision that they thought, you know, would help preserve, you know, their lives more and from being harmed, which is, it's a fair enough argument. I would agree that, you know, maybe those officers did make that decision because they were scared.
Speaker 2:Okay, now we get into my personal responsibility. I can only make the decisions based on what my state of mind is and my state of mind frame. So I believe if an officer is allowing me permission to do something that I would normally know is probably illegal, well, if the officer is standing there allowing me to do it, then I have to assume that he has given that permission. Yeah, the perfect scenario would be if you came up on an intersection. All the lights are flashing red, you know, the power went out.
Speaker 2:There's a policeman that's standing in the middle of the intersection. It's a red light, but he's telling you to come forward. He's waving you on. Hey, come on. Okay, I know it's a red light. I'm not supposed to go through a red light, but there's a police officer that's giving me permission to do it. So I have to assume that now it is a legal move for me to follow that police officer's direction. Same thing here, and this will go back to you know what some people, you know I, my belief was that these capitol police were hired and trained to defend the capital of the united states and the politicians inside it against anything, any threat of violence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I felt like they would use lethal force in order to do that. The fact that they weren't doing so and that we're standing by and they were holding doors open, you know just further my belief that they were indeed allowing it to do it. They weren't doing their job that they were trained to do. The judge's excuse was well, it's because they were afraid, so they allowed you guys to do that and you guys should have known that. And my question to the judge is hold on, wait a minute, just a second. So they were afraid, so they were able to not do their job. So is that the precedent we're going to set for police officers, and especially military, in the future? Because I can probably imagine a lot of military people in the middle of a battle or when they're told to defend this outpost or whatever, that become afraid and you're telling me that if they become afraid now, they can not do their slippery slope, and that was my mindset.
Speaker 2:If these officers are here to okay the fact that they're allowing people in the building and not doing anything about it, you know that that gives credibility to the fact that they were allowing people into the building, you know.
Speaker 1:So now you're in and you're getting the green light that you think from the officers or holding doors open for you guys. Just went for a stroll in the Capitol.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean from that entrance? Yeah, pretty much. I mean we went through the hallway and up a set of stairs and it wasn't— I mean I've never looked at a blueprint of the Capitol building. I had no idea where we were at, where we were going. I was along for the ride, following the other people in front of me. Again, it was an organized fashion. I remember we walked down a hall and then we walked through another big room and there was little ropes set up, you know, on the side Everybody stayed in the lines, you know, and did what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 1:So nobody's doing anything stupid in there. Nobody's doing anything stupid. Is it nice inside of there? Yeah, I mean, it's Were you pretty, were you like holy shit, we're in the Capitol, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's where the first thing we ended up in was inside the Rotunda. You walk into the Rotunda and you look at all that artwork and the historical paintings. I was in awe, I was flabbergasted, I was speechless. I'd be standing inside the US Capitol building the Rotunda, and there wasn't a bunch of crazy nonsense going on, at least not at first. I was probably one of the first people a couple hundred people anyway to enter the building, I would imagine. And also you got to remember that we entered through that door, an uncontested doorway. We didn't break in. We didn't see anything break in.
Speaker 2:At that point in time we still didn't know that the building had been broken into. We thought that the police officers had decided that you, you know this many people were going to allow them in. Um, inside the rotunda, everybody was behaving civilly. You know people were walking around. You know there was a lot of excitement. Everybody, you know, was in awe that they were in there. There was police officers that were walking around in there. They didn't seem very afraid, nothing said yeah, they were talking to people.
Speaker 2:Everybody was talking, and I heard officers talking to other people and again the cold question was man, are you guys really allowing us in here? And the exact quote that I can remember the best it was a big black officer and he said okay, listen up. To be fair, we didn't allow people to enter the building, but what we've decided at this point is that, because there are so many people here that we are going to allow you guys to remain inside the building as long as you remain peaceful. If you guys want to have your protests, we'll let you have your protests, but at the moment where it becomes too unruly, if you guys quit listening, there's any type of vandalism. If we make an announcement, or you we, you hear us.
Speaker 2:If you guys quit listening, if there's any type of vandalism, if we make an announcement, or you hear us saying that you guys got to go, you got to go To me. That was fair enough, you know. Fair enough. So we're in the rotunda, you know, checking things out, taking pictures of each other. You know, while I'm there, I hear somebody come walking in and he's making announcements burn it to the ground, burn.
Speaker 2:Walking in and he's making announcements burn it to the ground, burn the place, light it up, burn it to the ground. So I immediately turn and I recognize who it is at first. It's a guy by the name of John Sullivan. He does a lot of reporting Antitha. I call him an Antifa sympathizer. Oh okay, you know some people say he is Antifa. Either way, he's there. Anyway, he's there and he's making recommendations that people set it on fire and burn it to the ground. I turned, I said no, that's not what we're going to do, and I made a loud announcement inside the rotunda hey, listen, you know, if you guys are American patriots here, you cheat this place with respect. You know the same type of respect you would show your mom's house, and that led to chants. You know people started a chant of you know whose house, our house, whose house, our house. But again, it was american people there, excited, supporting their country. Not they're trying to kidnap senators or take anybody hostage or you know any of the nonsense that they've kind of led you to believe.
Speaker 1:How much time did you spend inside the Capitol?
Speaker 2:From the time we entered they say that we came, you know, on video. We entered at 336, which, for also for timeline reference, the certification proceedings were stopped at 218. When those certification processes were stopped, the senators, House of Representatives, they were moved from their chambers. So when we actually entered the building at 236, those proceedings, those official proceedings, had already been stopped for going on 20 minutes, 25 minutes.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:So they were already paused. At that point in time, we were still under the impression that that process had been finished. So we were in the rotunda, we'd been there maybe five minutes and a group of people were now starting to wander up the stairs. Um, you know, we had kind of free roam at this point in time, you know, there was no police officers telling us where we could and couldn't go. So, my friends, they started following some other people up a set of stairs.
Speaker 2:Um, I was distracted by taking videos and pictures of the building, so I actually got separated from them for a little while. They came back and got me and we started following the, the crowd up the stairs, you know, with no real intention, didn't know where we were going, just kind of a case of curiosity, killed the cat, you know, follow the leader, you know, type scenario. And, um, we followed that group of people until we eventually, you know, we ended up, uh, outside the Senate gallery. Really, yeah, how was that? Um, again, it was interesting. Um, didn't realize I didn't have a blueprint, I was just following along with some other people.
Speaker 2:Uh, we came into a hallway. There were some guys that were dressed in know business suits. It looked like you know, and I couldn't tell you know they didn't. They weren't wearing police uniforms. Later it was found to be out that they were in fact capitol police, but they looked more like you know law clerks or courtroom clerks, something like that. And as we turned and we're walking down this hall with a large group of people you know there's a couple of those guys were over. They were locking up some doors.
Speaker 2:Some of the other protesters got involved, um, but those officers you know there was some pushing, shoving, match. The officers finally left, you know, I think they just kind of gave up and they're like man, screw it. They left and then people opened those doors and people started going inside. Um, brady, brady and Gary were some of the first people that went inside. I wasn't with them at that moment, so I actually went up a little bit further down the hallway and then went in and looked through the doors and as soon as we came in through the doors it didn't register again with me exactly where we were at. You got to remember. All of this was kind of shock there was a lot going on.
Speaker 2:We stepped into what basically looked like a big, giant courtroom, you know if you will, and we're standing up in the gallery. You know the mezzanine section. You know if you will. I didn't know where we were at, so I asked somebody standing next to me hey, man, where are we at? You know, man, we're in the Senate. What do you mean? We're in the Senate. Yeah, we're in the Senate gallery. That's the floor of the Senate. Oh yeah, well, that's probably not a really good spot for us to be. Probably shouldn't be here. No, and I agree fully, it's a misdemeanor offense to enter into the Senate gallery. At that point in time, I became, you know, guilty of violating a misdemeanor offense. I didn't do it on purpose, yeah, you know it wasn't my intention, but there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2:I was definitely there. You're in it now. Yeah, I was definitely there and at first, again, there was nobody in the room. Um, it didn't surprise me. I wasn't expecting there. I wasn't expecting to walk in on the senate. How many? Okay, in full, full operation progress. You know, we thought that that process had been finished wait, so there's still people in the senate.
Speaker 2:No, there wasn't any, okay okay, because I thought and it didn't strike me as odd, because I thought there wasn't supposed to be anybody. They finished the, the proceeding. Okay, and everybody left we're standing there and I said I'm getting. This is when I first kind of start getting uneasy. Okay, you know realizing, okay, I'm looking around and there's papers, and then I start noticing that there's laptops still sitting on people's desks and yeah, I should not be here, yeah, and that's and then that's when I started making putting it all together Like, wait a minute, these people did not leave in an orderly fashion at the end of conducting business.
Speaker 2:This doesn't look good Inside that scenario. You know, there was a lot of other protests at the time. People were starting to making you know, comments about. You know, let's jump down, you know, onto the floor, onto the Senate, onto the senate floor. You know, let's, let's shit on their desks. You know there was other people there that were giving off that whole antifa vibe. Um, it became apparent to me very quickly that, all right, something's not right here. You know, that's kind of when I first had that real realization and, man, we may have messed up big time. Really.
Speaker 1:Now it's starting to sink in. You should not have gone in the cap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no that's when it sinks in and say wait a minute, this is not, you know, a protest. You know that they gave us permission to have anymore. This is breaking and entering. Yeah, no, and I became very aware of man, you know what. We messed up. I didn't break into the building, I had permission to enter the building. So I still felt like, you know, I was covered there. I knew I didn't have permission to enter the Senate gallery. It became apparent that, you know, okay, they were not done with conducting their business of the certification of votes and at that point I wanted out of there. You, you know, I went and I got my two buddies you know, brady and gary. I said, hey, listen, man, I'm not sure what's going on, but that's enough of this. And we've been in the building at this point in time for maybe you know, 15 minutes, you know we're in the building total for about 20 minutes, 25 minutes.
Speaker 2:We entered at 235 and we left at uh uh 257 so now you guys are working your way out of that, yeah so I decided I grabbed them.
Speaker 2:You know, I said whatever nonsense is going on, I'm not feeling good about it. You know, we made an agreement with those police officers that we would leave. You know, things became disorderly and disruptive and so that's what we need to go and we need to leave. Um, so we left the senate gallery again by our own accord, still hadn't run into any police officers, for the most matter, went downstairs. And this is where things become complicated, because as we came downstairs, we entered into another hallway, what they call the Ohio clockway or the Ohio room. Okay, well, when we walked up, we walked right into the smack dab into the scenario where you see Jacob Chansley talking with the police officers.
Speaker 1:See the one that was dressed up in the like the Buffalo hat and American flag and all that. Yeah, he was the.
Speaker 2:Buffalo shaman. You know the guy with the spear and the Mm. Hmm, you know. So, the Buffalo dude, the shaman dude. You know we, as we left the Senate gallery, we walked down and he's having a discussion, him and some other protesters. They've been having this discussion for some time. You know, before we got there, with other Capitol police officers. It's all on tape, it's all on video. Those police officers are agreeing with him and telling him. You know what. Those police officers are agreeing with him and telling him you know what? Okay, here's the rules. We will allow you guys to stay in the building, we will allow you to have your protest, but it must remain peaceful. You guys all agree. And Jacob is relaying this on his loudspeaker. You know megaphone. So as we walk up, he's saying hey, the police officers, they've decided to allow us to have our protest. It must remain peaceful, follow me. And those police officers move and Jacob starts walking and everybody's following him.
Speaker 2:And again, I'm still in the mode of man, I'm trying to find my way out of here, but also realizing, you know, at this point we're, we're behind, we're in the thick of it, we're behind enemy lines. You know, as we're walking down, I'm looking down each little hallway looking. I'm looking for escape routes out of here, and now every hallway is blocked by police and officers. You know there's a few select of us that are behind all these lines that are, you know, just told that we were allowed to have a protest, but I can feel the dragnet, you know, starting to kind of creep in. So, but jacob said that we could have a protest, so we're following him. He goes out the building, goes around the corner. As we come around the corner, there's a bunch of police officers standing there. They let Jacob and some other people walk by. Then there's another officer that's coming from upstairs, walks into this situation. Apparently he doesn't approve that the police officers that are there are just allowing us to walk by, and so he puts a stop to the whole scenario. Man, what is going on here? He's chastising the other officers. What are you guys doing? You can't just let these guys walk? No, well, what do you mean? We can't let them walk. They just told him that they could do it. And then the other officer that just told Jacob comes walking into the scene and says yeah, man, we were just talking to these guys, they just gave him permission. What are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do? What are we doing?
Speaker 2:There was a lot of disorganization and the officer, that higher-ranking officer, decides well, we can't just let them go everywhere, we can't just give these guys free reign. So lock it down. And that was his exact words Lock it down right here. Right here is drawing the line. Okay, so in that statement, there's a lot to be taken away from it, because he is admitting, at that point in time, that they've allowed the protesters to be in the building, that they've allowed them to be wandering about the building, but at this point is where they're going to draw the line.
Speaker 2:Well, we had just come around the corner and watched Jacob go by. Now these officers spring into action and, oh no, you guys can't go past this point. All right, here we go. What do you mean? We can't go past this point? Those guys just gave us permission to have a protest. They told us to follow him. You just let him go up the how come we're not allowed to go past the point. Well, because we've decided that this is where we're drawing the line. Okay, well, yeah, but all these other officers are telling us that we can have a protest. Now you're not going to. Let us have a protest.
Speaker 1:So there's this huge miscommunication with the cops and now with the protesters, so everything's just an absolute shit show. Of course.
Speaker 2:Nobody really knows what's going on. We can only go by off of what we're saying. We thought we were going to be allowed to have a protest. Now these officers are telling us no, we can't, um, and it became apparent. You know, we argued back and forth, you know, I think, my point, you know, there was a point there that the officer made, um, that I want to bring up, because he said you know, I said what are you guys doing? You know we're on your side. You know we're here on the side of american citizens. What are you guys doing? We're on your side, we're here on the side of American citizens. What are you guys doing? Man? We understand what you're saying, was the officer, but we're just doing our job, and for me that struck a point. We're just doing our job, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, your job is to uphold and protect the United States Constitution, above and beyond everything. First, you don't take an oath to protect the federal government. You don't take an oath to protect the politicians. You take an oath to protect the United States Constitution. And your excuse? Well, I'm just doing my job, okay? Well, you're going to have to make a choice as a law enforcement, and that choice is and a lot of people made that day. What side are you going to be on? If you have to choose between defending your government and its politicians over the Constitution and the citizens, what side are you going to be on?
Speaker 2:You know and it's not quite the same thing, but you know, there was lots of Jews that were exterminated and killed by Nazis and when those Nazi soldiers were asked what they were doing, how come they didn't stop in. Why didn't they do anything? They were just doing their jobs. You know same thing when you hear, you know accusations and I don't necessarily agree with it, but you got to remember one of the big flash points of that summer was the whole george floyd incident and you know people were accusing those officers of not protecting George Floyd. You know one officer you know he was particularly charged with, you know assaulting and causing his death. The other officers were charged and found guilty because their excuse of, well, we were just doing our job was not valid.
Speaker 2:At some point in time, when you're doing your job goes against your oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. What choice are you going to make? Yep, and it's a hard choice. But in that scenario, when the officer said, well, we're just doing our job, okay. Well, at some point in time you got to quit doing your job and be an American. You're going to have to make a decision and hopefully that point doesn't come but I imagine it probably will sometime in the future where military, police officers and all of the above are going to decide OK, are we going to be on the side of the people in the Constitution or are we going to be on the side of the federal government?
Speaker 1:That's a slippery slope and a whole other conversation. That's a great question because I feel most of them would probably side with the government because they're going to shut off everybody's paychecks and they'll still get paid and they can still support their families and they're going to stick it out because it's their job and they get a little bit of electricity or food or paycheck when all of us are shut down. That's how they keep them on their side. Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, and, like I said, it's a it's their decision, it's, yeah, it's a decision that we all have to make. You know. But what we're willing to do, you know what, what need do we bow? You know Exactly.
Speaker 1:Okay. So now that they've drawn a line, they've drawn this line for you guys. Okay, you can't move past here in the Capitol, they're just doing their job. Where are you now? You're like, okay, we got to get out of here, or what's your thought process going forward?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I immediately went back to. I mean for me, I was trying to progress past that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Be honestly, I didn't really care a whole lot about going to a protest anymore at this point, you know. But if there was a legit protest happening somewhere and we had permission to go to it and to participate in it, then I wanted to be part of that, legally, you know, happening protest, you know. I wanted to get to that point, to where.
Speaker 2:I could say, hey, you know what? They gave us permission to be here when, in Rome, At this point in time, you know, know, when they made it obvious that we weren't progressing past that point again, I went back to the motor. Okay, it's time to get out of here, you know, and I grabbed my guy listen, man, we just got to go, you know, at this point in time. But again at this point in time, we looked around and we were definitely behind enemy lines. I could look down one hallway and I could see protesters lying on the floor with you know, camo fatigue had to be National Guard, you know, guys or whatever at that point, coming in and holding people at gunpoint on the floor. Okay, I could tell that the like, I said, the opportunity to leave was shrinking. We were behind, you know, there was no way out, and that was, that was the dilemma that we're in now.
Speaker 2:Now, we were trying to find our way out, but we couldn't go anywhere because every hallway was now blocked by police and protesters. So we finally made it to a group of police officers you know, that were. We just explained our situation, saying hey, man, we just want to leave. You know well, where are you guys trying to get man? We're just want to leave. Well, where are you guys trying to get man? We're just trying to leave. We're trying to leave the building. They told us we could be here to have a protest. They told us to leave if it didn't look like that was happening. So that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2:And the officer said oh, you guys just want to leave. Yeah, we just want to leave. Oh, okay, cool, we'll come here. You know, and he basically kind of escorted us, you know, took our little group and walked us past. You know other lines of officers you know that were holding. You know he parted the way the Red Sea, if you will open the door, and said hey, man, listen, these guys are with us, they're good guys. They just want to leave. We're letting them out. You know gave us fist bumps, you know we, as we left, you know we thanked them for their service. You know, padded some of the other officers on their shoulder, you know, as we left the building and and we were done, you know we were out of the building at three o'clock.
Speaker 1:Then what? I mean, were you free at this point? Were you like, holy shit, what just happened? I mean, you still got to be pretty sore from getting beat up an hour prior. You just went through the whole entire Capitol, ended up in the Senate room. I mean, is it sunk in yet? What the hell just happened? No, it's sinking in.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, and it wasn't again. You got to remember this whole time upon entry into the Capitol building, we were being allowed, we thought, believed that we were being allowed to go in yeah yeah, we didn't realize that the building had been broken into, got it.
Speaker 2:It wasn't until I left the building at a different entrance or exit that we saw broken gap glass and saw that some of the front doors had been broken, and that's when I realized, okay, this is a totally different situation than what I thought it was Okay. So as soon as we left, there was three of us it was me and Brady and Gary that were still together. We had two of our other friends that we didn't know where they were at. We had brought some walkie-talkies, you know, just to try to stay communication. You know, same thing. I take walkie-talkies when I go skiing, you know, with people just to communicate in case you get separated.
Speaker 2:There were so many people that day that obviously the airwaves were all garbled and you couldn't really communicate with a walkie-talkie, but we were able to get out enough and we could hear our friends responding that we just told them you know, meet us on the northwest side of the building when they showed up again. Like I said, this was around maybe 315. It was apparent that that we'd got ourself into a situation where it wasn't what we had seemed and we just wanted we wanted to be done with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, we got together and said hey, what do you guys want to do? You know, man, there's no reason whatsoever for me to stick around here, you know, any longer. You know, I don't know exactly what's going on. It's not the way that we thought it was. You know, we just need to leave, and so we did. There was some other people that were leaving. There was reports.
Speaker 2:As we started walking back, some of the other people coming our way were saying hey, man, you guys need to be careful walking back to your hotels. There's a lot of, you know, shady groups of people, of individuals, you know, that are trying to start shit, you know, with trump supporters and trump people. Um, and it was true, you know, as we started walking back, you know there was a group of guys, you know, and there's, you know, a bunch of you know there's. It was like four or five guys. They're all hanging out.
Speaker 2:You know black guys, you know, and as I was walking by, with mostly white guys, you know, walking back to the hotel and on our way home, you know they're, they're, you know, talking smack to us. You know calling hey, man, what's up with you? Which one of you chump motherfuckers want to die and I didn't really understand what he was talking about. I said, well, I don't know you. Nah, you chump fuckers. Which one of you chump motherfuckers wants to die? And I looked and then I saw him lifting up. He pulled up his waistband and showed me a pistol, you know, tucked into his pants there. And you know I didn't have any pistol. Yeah, you know, and that was probably one of the worst feelings I ever had, you know, is being threatened, you can't even defend yourself, and then having to walk and not knowing, you know if the next few minutes I was going to feel, you know a hot bullet, you know, in my back and you know, and we kept our head down and we kept walking.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and so we just went. We went back to the hotel, you know, and as soon as we got back to the hotel, I mean I didn't turn on the news, I literally I went into, we sat, everyone kind of separated. I went back into my hotel room and man, I literally just laid down on the bed and I crashed out. I bet. Yeah, I mean I was just emotionally, mentally drained. I bet.
Speaker 2:That I crashed out for a couple hours. I think I woke up and it was already dark like 630 or 7. There was still stuff going on at the Capitol that day and a lot of the stuff that you see on TV, like that whole West Tunnel scene where Roseanne Boylan she was killed there. That didn't where Daniel Hodges later got pinned. That didn't even happen until like 4.30 or 5. Oh really, yeah, in the afternoon so we were already back at the hotel room oh, really yeah in the afternoon.
Speaker 1:So we were already back at the hotel room. You've already been in the capitol, did the tour left at your hotel before that woman was shot oh yeah, really well.
Speaker 2:Okay, maybe not before ashley was shot. That may have happened right. In fact, I know, looking at the time, I know that that did happen while we're right at the beginning, after we had just entered the building. Okay, so that occurred, I think, at around maybe 2 35. You didn't know that that did happen right at the beginning, after we had just entered the building, so that occurred, I think, at around maybe 2.35.
Speaker 1:And you didn't know that she had been killed.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, we didn't know that she'd been killed Even inside the building. I didn't know. I didn't know until maybe even the next day, really, that something had happened to Ashley, and so we didn't really realize at the moment. We were there, like realize at the moment, you know, we were there, like you said, we did the tour of the capitol, we left, you know, went back home and it wasn't really you know, that night, when everybody was talking about it, you know, it started to sink in a little bit more. But it wasn't really until the next day that the enormity of the situation okay you know really sinking in, yeah, oh shit right.
Speaker 2:This is way bigger than we thought yeah, you know, and for me, you know, the next day we had planned to all go home. You know we were all had different places. I came from denver, my buddy was in utah and another buddy in utah, a couple guys from texas, so you know we split up pretty early. The next day, you know, went to the airport. Um, it wasn't really until I went to the airport, it wasn't really until I was in the airport in Washington DC and I was watching, of course, everything in DC, the news stations, it's all CNN, msnbc, and I'm watching the screens and I'm looking at it and they're talking about insurrection and trying to overthrow the government and I was like oh man, no man, this is not good, not good at all.
Speaker 2:You know that's not what happened, in my opinion. You know the people showed up up, you know to go to a protest and you know, had their first amendment rights, you know, violated.
Speaker 2:And then you know there was there was violence that occurred at police officers that, according to what we had seen in all of 2020, you know, was, you know, illegal for the officers to act in certain ways and use chemical. You know, illegal for the officers to act in certain ways and use chemical. You know chemical munitions and tear gas and flash bangs and pepper spray and rubber bullets. And but I knew immediately at that point in time, the way it was being portrayed is like, oh man, they're just going to use this as an attack on Donald Trump and on attack of his people. And then the realization that, oh, this was allowed to happen on purpose.
Speaker 1:So that's hitting you in the airport the next day. So at this point, when you're seeing everything unfolding the next day, after you storm, storm the Capitol and everything's gone down, now you're processing it, is it starting to sink in that you might be absolutely screwed that they? Or are you like okay, I didn't get arrested, I'm good, I'm on my way home? Are you thinking that there's going to be repercussions for you at this point, or do you think you're just cool? You're, you're hey, I was in, got out, no harm, no, no, I don't think I'm cool at all yeah you, you know you're in trouble.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, when I'm watching this in the sitting and watching I know I'm in trouble, okay, um, because it's not you know what we had thought it was, in the way that they're portraying it to be, now, I still, I still, I knew I was in some trouble, okay, and I had, you know, in the moments of that day, you know I had accepted responsibility. You know that I was going to maybe could be in some trouble. You know misdemeanor crimes, you know, maybe you know for me I wasn't guilty of trespassing on Capitol grounds, but once I made the decision to go past where I thought the barriers were and go up into the building, at that point I felt like I was probably misdemeanor you know, guilty of misdemeanor trespassing. Okay, entering the building, I felt like I'd been given the okay and the permission to do that. So I don't feel like I unlawfully entered into the Capitol building.
Speaker 2:A misdemeanor charge that I was charged with was, you know, parading and demonstrating with inside the Capitol building. All right, I don't know that I really got to parade or demonstrate, but my intent was to have a protest and that was the reason for being in the building. So, okay, I'll sign off on that too. You know that's probably a misdemeanor. You know crime that I could say, admit that I was guilty to this whole. You know interfering with an official proceeding of Congress, you know I thought was absolute horseshit. You know that proceeding of Congress hadn't been stopped, you know, until I mean it was stopped at 218 or 216. I didn't even enter the building until 235. So how did me, entering the building, stop that proceeding from happening?
Speaker 2:And then there was the whole legality of that charge to begin with. You know it's called the 1512 charge, which is interfering with an official proceeding. That charge originated, you know, from the Envron scandal. You know, back in the day. You know Congress came up with this law to prohibit, you know, people that were involved in investigation or were going to trial from destroying evidence. You know from shredding documents, from destroying physical evidence or intimidating or tampering with witnesses. You know juries, you know that's what the law originated from. They decided that they were going to try to use it because it carries a potential of 20 years. You know that, no kidding, yeah, so interfering with an official proceeding is punishable by 20 years in prison.
Speaker 1:So how long were you home before you got contacted about January 6th and everything that went down?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was the. You know we all split ways and we're on our way home. It became obvious that we were probably in trouble. I knew for a fact that you know my cell phone had been inside the building. I understand geofences and perimeters and, very simply, they could round up anybody's cell phone that had been inside the building. I understand geofences and perimeters and, very simply, they were could round up anybody's cell phone that had been with inside as a certain perimeter once they established that.
Speaker 2:I hadn't been trying to hide anything. I'd been very vocal on on Facebook. You know, on my way out there, even during the day, you know, while I was there, I was posting live, you know, stuff from Facebook. I wasn't trying to hide it. I thought we had been given permission to be inside the building, um, so once it became apparent that they were going to try to spin this into being some sort of insurrection to try to overthrow the government, that debate came up, um, between me and my, my co-defendants. You know we weren't co-defendants at the time but you know I figured man, you know what. We've got to make a decision here. You know I don't think we're getting away with anything, not trying to get away with anything. I think we should make the decision that we need to go and, you know, contact a lawyer. We need to figure out the best way to handle this, whether we need to turn ourselves in. You know, what do we need to do to get on the right side of this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know there was different people involved. We had different opinions of the best way to handle it. Um, my friend, you know he ended up. You know his family is fairly well connected and they ended up. You know, I think it was his brother maybe that hired, you know some big hot shot federal attorney, you know, out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, you know, to give us advice. You know my friend Brady was dealing with him. The advice that we got coming back was that we just there's so many people involved, you know, maybe we just needed to just lay low, you know.
Speaker 2:See if it blows over, you know, blow over, um, I wasn't really on board, you know, with that, I just didn't think there was any way, um, but also I didn't have the attorney, the money to hire an attorney. You know my buddy was, you know, gracious enough to, you know, foot the bill, you know, for hiring this attorney. And if that's what the federal attorney said was that we need to lay low, then that's what we're going to do, um, for me, as soon as I got back home, you know, of course, I'd explain to my family, you know, my wife, daughter what had happened. And, um, luckily for me, the next day, literally, I got back on, like the 8th, I think, or the, or the 7th, and then the 8th, I had a bow hunting trip down to, down by Tucson, you know, go hunt over-the-counter, you know, archery deer down in Arizona. My buddy from Wyoming was coming down and so, yeah, he picked me up and we took off to the desert.
Speaker 2:You know, without knowing what, what else was going to happen, um, we decided to try to lay low. You know, talking with the federal attorney, you know he, his advice was that we needed to, you know, ditch our cell phones. You know, get new cell phones. Um, again, I was something that I was kind of adamant about, because to me, you know, the truth is hide Well, the truth will set you free, for sure, and I had documented every single thing of that day, you know, on my phone. I had the video, I had the conversations, you know. I was willing to sit down, you know, and smart choice, yeah, and cause if you start hiding things, you're trying to get rid of stuff.
Speaker 1:it just makes you look guilty.
Speaker 2:Well, you know that was my choice. You know that's what I thought we should do is go forward, but that wasn't. You know, the attorney said you know you guys need to ditch your phones Right now. You're not defendants. You know charges have not been filed against you, so they can't tell you. You know that you're destroying evidence. All you're doing is getting rid of, you know, bad memories. You know bad pictures, bad videos, and and I and I took a stand on that for a while, you know, for two or three days. Man, I'm not doing it. That does not sound smart to me. I want to hold on to my stuff.
Speaker 2:Um, I got pressured by other people that were in the group. Um, other people, you know the, the attorney, you know, was telling me listen, it's you don't understand the way it's going to work. You know your evidence is not going to be used to set you free. Your evidence is going to be used to convict you. You don't win against the federal government. There's no way They've got a 98% you know conviction rate for a reason. You cannot win. You don't need to give them any more evidence. Get rid of your stuff, and so I did. Oh, really, I ended up, um, and it's one of the things, you know, that I regret most to this day um, you know, is that I, that I didn't hold on to that and there there's enough. You know other evidence and other things, but to me I felt like you know, that I should have made a bigger stand yeah, you know there and stood up a little bit more were you on your deer hunt when they contacted you or how long after?
Speaker 2:yeah, so no, I wasn't on um on the deer hunt. I went down there with a buddy from wyoming. I don't think he really realized the full scenario of the situation, you know, until he picked me up. You know he picked me up on the like I said the 8th. You know he knew of January 6th, of course, but not so much my involvement in it, until we started driving down there and I'm telling him about it and I think it's sinking in with him too that he might be riding, you know, with public enemy number one really. You know down to, yeah, down to the close to the border of mexico and the way that that might appear. You know to some people and I think he probably told his girlfriend and his parents and you know I could tell he was getting worn out about it. You know on the phone calls he wasn't letting on to me about it but you could tell I'm yeah I'm sure he.
Speaker 2:You know people were not happy with him being with me. We were being down there. I couldn't really focus on hunting, you know, because I was worried about what was going to happen.
Speaker 2:We were supposed to be there for two weeks. I think we were there for about five or six days and then we decided to head back. I knew at that point in time I knew that I was going to have to talk to the FBI. You know, there's no way that you know the way that it was being portrayed. You know the amount of exposure that I'd already had on Facebook. You know and shared that I was going to be questioned.
Speaker 2:I still believed in truth and justice and I thought that if I just shared my, my truth, you know, and told my side of the story that you know that things would work the way that they were supposed to, um. But I was just, you know, totally naive about the whole thing. I had no idea. So you ended up reaching out Um, so I did not reach out Um. I got back home um. So I did not reach out um, I got back home, um. I came home on the 17th. The next day was the 18th, I believed. Somewhere right around there was a sunday and I just remember I was watching tv. You know, with my wife and my daughter we were watching a prison movie. I mean a prison show actually. I don't know if you never saw that show orange is the new book yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, with all the, you know so, the women in prison.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we were watching the women prisoners and I heard the knock, knock, knock on the front door. Um, and if you've ever had a cop or the fbi knock on your door, you know what everybody knows instantaneously that knock, um, I was expecting to have to talk to him. So they knocked on the door sunday afternoon I got up, you know, went to the front door, opened the door and you know there was four or five fbi agents and another dozen, you know, local police. My whole cul-de-sac was full, really have full of cars and patrol cars. And I look out and I'm looking around my cul-de-sac and I see my neighbors, you know, poking their heads out the doors and like man, well, they obviously didn't all just roll up here. You know, thanks for the call. You know, thanks, thanks for the heads up that they were staging a fbi raid in front yard.
Speaker 2:But I opened the door. The officer I don't remember his name, I'm sure it's in the paperwork, but you know he looked at me and said are you Mr Montgomery? Yeah, yes, sir, I'm Mr Montgomery. Well, you don't look very surprised to see us. I said, well, no, I'm not real surprised to see you. You know you don't get to walk around inside the capitol building without having to answer some questions about some repercussions yeah, without having some repercussions. So you know, and to be honest with you, my experience was a lot different than a lot of other people. A lot of people had their doors broken.
Speaker 2:You know, raids, raids in the middle of the night, you know, full-on SWAT tactical teams with red dots, you know, on their families and their kids, you know, as they're yanked out of their rooms. It wasn't that way for me, you know. So I will, you know, give the officers that handled that situation, you know I thought they did a good job. They basically told me hey, you know, at that point in time I was only indicted on five or four misdemeanor charges. I didn't have any felony charges. No felony at that time, no felony at that time. You know, they basically explained hey, you know, we've got to ask you some questions. You know we've got a warrant. You know we want two things we want your cell phone, we want your green coat. I'd been wearing a green puffy coat and I think they wanted that to be able to identify me for sure.
Speaker 2:There was another female agent there that was able to sit down and explain to my wife and my daughter kind of what was going on and at that point in time it was basically you know, they, they had a warrant, they had to arrest me, they had to go get me booked in and then I'd be, you know, basically explained to my wife that I would be released on my own recognizance. You know the the next day or as soon as the judge could see me. And yeah, that's what ended up happening. You know, I was arrested, they took me to jail. The next day actually was Martin Luther King's day, so there was no court hearing, so I spent one night, you know, in jail. Next day I went and saw the judge and you know he basically turned me loose on my own recognizance, you know on.
Speaker 1:You know, misdemeanor crimes is what I originally started with so the wife fbi is at your house, or local law enforcement, along with everybody else. They serve you a warrant, they arrest you. How'd that go over?
Speaker 2:Let's just say that she was not happy, she was not thrilled.
Speaker 1:Probably got a few of the. I told you so's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and we had talked about it before I went that there was talk and chatter online about being careful that there may be Antifa people there. My last words to my wife, you know, before I left, was you know, don't worry, we're good, I'm good, I'll make sure, you know, I'm not going to do anything stupid, I'm not going to be involved in anything that's going to put this. You know, any type of jeopardy, you know, especially after my past. You know I've had, you know, trouble with the law and I overcame that and I ought to redeem myself and, to you know, reestablish my reputation. So there was absolutely no way in hell that I was intentionally going to put that into jeopardy, but I did, and my wife was like man, I thought we talked about this before you went. You know, don't do anything stupid. And here you are, and now I've got the FBI in my living room. My daughter is here, you know, witnessing this. You know, thanks, bud. You know thanks for bringing this upon our family.
Speaker 1:That sucks, are you just like damn it at this point?
Speaker 2:well, you know, again it's I'm still probably naively unaware of how much trouble I'm in. You know, I was, um, you know, charged with some misdemeanors. I felt, you know what, you know there's a couple of those I can. I don't agree that I did them intentionally, but that doesn't intentionally. It's not always a requirement of the law. You know, you can still break the law unintentionally and be held accountable for it. Um, I felt, like the misdemeanor charges there was a couple of them there that I probably, you know, given the opportunity, I would probably plead guilty to them. You know, I'd say, hey, you know what, these things, I agree, probably things I did, but I wasn't, you know, at that time I wasn't accused of any felonies, so I thought I was good out on bond. So I thought I was good out on bond.
Speaker 2:The judge, originally, you know, when he set my bond, you know I wasn't supposed to, you know, participate in any, you know, protests. I wasn't supposed to go near any buildings. You know, not do drugs, not drink. But on my paperwork it didn't say anything about not being in possession of a firearms. You know that that box was not checked at the moment, Um, and so I just kind of, you know, at that point in time I was still under the impression that this could be solved. You know that I could be. I have a chance to talk to somebody and tell them my side of the story and, you know, pay the consequences for what it was that I actually did. And you know, call it a day and that all changed. It did all change. Yep things, um and I'm really good at this things when they start going bad, man, I keep piling it on there. It goes from bad to worse. You know pretty quick.
Speaker 2:And in this situation, what happened? You know I'm a hunter, I'm a houndsman, you know I run dogs. You know, in the wintertime I'm out there, you know, chasing cats with my dogs. I wasn't under any at the time, any regulations or stipulations that I could see that wouldn't allow me to keep doing that. I was not prohibited from possessing, you know, a firearm, and so I kept doing my thing, going about my business, and it was at the end of March. I ended up, you know, shooting a mountain lion. You know that I caught with my dogs. It's the only mountain lion that I've ever shot. But, um, I did. I ended up killing that mountain lion. You know, shot him with a pistol, reported that to the. You know colorado parks and wildlife, like you have to do, and you know that created a whole new, whole new set of problems for me, no doubt.
Speaker 1:So you kicked another hornet's nest with that yeah, well, basically.
Speaker 2:Well, basically is what happened is you know Colorado Parks and Wildlife? They under the direction of the FBI. You know? You got to remember. I was operating in Colorado for 20 years as a professional hunting guide. I was around guns all the time. I was checked with guns in my vehicle. I believe I was even checked with guns with hunting. I shot a couple of bobcats with firearms that I self-reported to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. It had never been an issue. Nothing new, nothing new. But after January 6th that all changed and there's only one explanation, and it's the FBI. Just on your ass.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They went directly to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife after finding out that I was a hunter and a hunting guide and began to question them, you know, and tell them hey, you know, mr Montgomery, you know he's been convicted of a felony, you know, before in the state of New Mexico. Why are you guys allowing him to operate and use firearms? Well, you know, at that point in time, under New Mexico law you've got to remember, I was also not considered a felon anymore. You know, in 2011,. By the operation of New Mexico law, my rights were fully restored. You know, that's what I believed at the time, but Colorado didn't see it that way. You know, they basically charged me with possession of a firearm by a felon in possession of a firearm. This was also while I was out on bond from January 6th. So if I was convicted in a court of law of another felony while out on bond with January 6th, it was not going to end.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you're done for a while. So long story short. And we could talk about wildlife laws and Colorado Parks and Wildlife That'd be a whole other you know podcast. But they came to the conclusion that I was a felon in possession of a firearm when I killed the mountain lion. You know, at that point in time I just had a public defender for an attorney in Washington DC and she did a good job of keeping me, you know, out of prison. You know the FBI was telling the judge, you know, that I was a felon. Colorado was saying that I was a felon in possession of a firearm. But you know, that was actually when I became, when I got put on home incarceration, and how long did you get for that.
Speaker 2:Oh man, they put it on me and they didn't take it off until a couple months ago. You know I basically I did four years under home incarceration. The first two years I was not allowed to leave my house at all. I couldn't go across the street, couldn't go too far into my backyard or off the back deck. You know, for two years I was what it sounds like, home incarcerated, so you were a prisoner in your own home for two years was what it sounds like home incarcerated.
Speaker 1:so you were a prisoner in your own home for two years and I know some people probably say that doesn't sound horrible, but what is that like?
Speaker 2:um, I guess it's all in perspective. In context, it's not horrible compared to sitting in in prison.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for absolutely I mean I would take it all day, but for someone like myself or like you or any other outdoorsman that might be listening to this, to this show. Yeah, that's everything that goes against everything that we're about. You know, my whole point in living my life is to live it as free as possible, and I live that according to the standards that God has set for me. You know, not according to what my government decides is free, but my rights, they come from God and my objective in this life is to live as free as possible. I don't want anybody to take care of me. I don't need anybody to take care of me. I don't need anything from my government other than the opportunity to be able to provide for myself. Government, um, other than the opportunity to be able to provide for myself and for somebody that enjoys the outdoors as much as we do, you know, tells you that you can't leave your house. I mean, it's almost worse.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think, in prison because at least in prison you've accepted. You're in prison but like at home and I'm not speaking for anybody because I've never had to do either one but I feel like that is the ultimate. Just torture Granted. You get to be home with your wife and kids, that's great, but God, two years, you can't even like leave your back porch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't even leave and I still got four hunting dogs. I still got four hound dogs that in my life they're used to going out three to four times a week. That in my life, you know, they're used to going out, you know, three to four times a week. I wasn't allowed to do that anymore. I couldn't even take them to the dog park, couldn't take them hiking, you know. So I had, you know, some resident, some kids that live in my residential area.
Speaker 2:You know that I was kind of apprenticing, you know showing, you know teaching them how to be houndsmen. And then some of my other houndsmen buddies, you know they would come and take my dogs for me, you know. But that's even worse, you know sitting at home and loading your dogs up into somebody else's dog box, you know to go run around on the mountain while you've got to, you know, just sit at home. So, like I said, with prison, at least you accept your fate, you know where you're at. But yeah, it was hard, you know, being restricted. It was probably even harder, I think, for my wife, because now all the financial responsibility, you know, came upon her. She was the only one that was allowed to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She was the one that was, you know, paying all the bills. We had a daughter that was graduating high school and was getting ready to go to college. You know that all became, you know, my wife's responsibility and the fact that you know she had to. You know I wasn't on vacation. It wasn't my choice not to be working or to be there, but there's got to be and she would never say this, but there's got to be some animosity. You know when she's got to get up at four o'clock in the morning to get dressed and go into the office and work, you know, for 10, 12 hours a day and she comes home and I'm in the same place as where I was on the couch, you know, or you know, or at my computer. You know I started doing a lot of writing. You know, writing a book on this whole experience and you'll have that out, hopefully within this first six months. But yeah, no, it was hard for my wife.
Speaker 1:I can only imagine. So four years, two years locked to house arrest. The second two you still had an ankle bracelet on, but you had some more freedoms.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So after a little while two years on home incarceration, you know, we put in a request to the judge say, hey, man, if this is going to keep going on and dragging on, and all we were doing is waiting for a trial. The reason why all these trials took so long is because there was just so much evidence, you know, compiled and it was in all these other databases, that in order to get all the evidence that pertain to your case, you had to wait. You know so. You know.
Speaker 1:So there's the, there's rights to speedy trials, and you know I thought it was just the government messing with everybody like this because the judges are all corrupt and they want to drag this on as much as it is in a roundabout way, you know, but the way that they sold it to us is yeah, you can have a speedy trial, which gives you six months.
Speaker 2:You know, if you want to have a trial and get to there, you've got six months. You know that they can take you. You know they need to get the evidence compiled and they said that they would do that for us. Sure, we can get you to trial. If you want to enact your right to speedy trial, we'll do it, but you guys aren't going to have any evidence, you know. So you can waive your right to speedy trial and if you waive that, then we'll have enough time for your defense lawyers to get all their. But who knows how long that's going to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it ended up being, you know, almost four years, three and a half four years, and so a lot of these guys you know that sat, you know, in prison and in county jails have been sitting there, you know, haven't gone to trial. You know they've been waiting and people say, well, what about their right to speedy trial? Well, they had to waive their right to speedy trial if they wanted to have the evidence to defend themselves. So that's been the whole catch 22 between all these people. They're like yeah know, you can enact, you can invoke your right to speedy trial anytime you want, but you're not going to have all the.
Speaker 1:you're screwed, you're not going to have all the evidence you need to defend yourself so once you went to court and started dealing with this stuff, obviously they pulled camera footage, body cam footage and everything Was. It is it almost scary to see how much information and everything that they gathered that day in in what they actually put on you once. Once everything was formed, Did you like take a step back and just think, like holy shit, they have everything and now you deleted all of your video. So you have no proof to show your side of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and that was the scary part of it. I went into this whole experience still believing and trusting in our judicial system and that the citizens have rights and that the judicial system is going to follow them and uphold them and protect them. And that's been the scariest thing of it all is that, through this, with the amount of evidence that they had, anything that was exculpatory or helped you defend your case was locked away and hidden in top secret files that you didn't have access to. Anything that maybe made your case look a little bit better. Like for me. You know that scenario where I grabbed onto the officer's baton.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of other officers there that had body cam footage. We finally got all that footage after like three years to where I was able to sit down and start reviewing it and you know it's all pretty hectic. You know happened very fast, but there's three, three police officers. You know all the officers there. Their body cam footage was about two and a half hours long and their time card just ran out. The event was longer, but that's what they could record for about two and a half hours, so that's how long their video was.
Speaker 2:When going through these officers' body cam footage, looking for better views that would show the incident that I was involved in. I came across three different officers, everyone else. There's 20 officers, let's say All of them. Their videos are two hours to two and a half hours long. I find three videos that are eight minutes, seven to eight minutes long, and you start looking at the footage and those videos. They all end at the exact same moment that you would be getting a good view of the incident that appeared with Daniel Hodges, where he's coming back into the crowd attacking people with his baton, throwing them on the ground.
Speaker 2:It's going to show from the only view. The only thing that was allowed in evidence in my trial was his body. Cam footage ended up being the only thing that you got to see, but you're not seeing him swinging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can't see all that in a wide-angle lens. It's really in that chaotic situation that it's hard to see. So the three officers that would have captured on their body cam the perfect footage of that incident to where we could all take a look at it and see exactly what happened. Their videos were only seven minutes long.
Speaker 1:Eight minutes long, mysteriously disappeared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why is that Interesting? Why is it? These other ones are all you tell me and the prosecution wouldn't have questioned about it. Well, you know, their body cam footage got ripped off, you know, or you know it got turned off All at the same time. Yeah, so all right, at the exact moments when you'd be able to see this event. And then here's the further. I started investigating the officers that. They told me that their body cam footage had been ripped off their chest. Well, they had videos entered for them in the, in the, the databases from later in the day.
Speaker 2:So clearly that so you, you can't. You're telling me that this video, this officer, only has eight minutes of footage because his body cam got ripped off. Well then, what of this other footage? Where does it come from? And when you question about it, you know the judge is just no you can't. Are you accusing the federal government of falsified documents and even the attorneys you know? You would ask me I don't know if we can get up there and say you know we can't really accuse. What do you mean? You can't? That's obviously what's happening here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they had you guys.
Speaker 2:Well, they had us and they manipulated footage and they held footage back and that's you know what eventually led to these pardons. You know, it's the Let me find the best way to explain this, at least for me, and I can't speak for everyone. I accept responsibility for my actions that day. I agree that there's some of that stuff that I could have been held legally accountable for some misdemeanor crimes, but what they ended up doing is they overcharged. You know I started off with five misdemeanor crimes. Well, once they found out you know that I was involved with Brady and Gary, they started. They come back with more and they added three felonies on top of that, one of them being this, you know, 1512 charge, which carries a potential 20 years. So now I've got 11, 12 charges stacked against you and you've got attorneys, you know, that are telling you that you can't win. You know a trial Because and here's the most basic element for these pardons and reasons why I agree with them I may be jumping ahead a little bit, but yeah, we were. You know, nobody that was there on January 6th was given their right to have a free and fair trial by a jury of their peers in an unbiased courtroom, with an unbiased judge and an unbiased jurors At the most basic level. To me, that is validation for why these presidential pardons, you know, are legit and acceptable. I'm not sitting here, you know.
Speaker 2:Some people say, well, they deserve to be punished, those people that broke the law. Okay, well, punish us for what it was that we actually did, you know, and for me I believe that was misdemeanor crimes. And the people say, well, those people shouldn't get pardons. That were involved in violent crimes. Well, but did they have the right to a fair trial and where they were able to defend themselves? I wasn't.
Speaker 2:On the most basic level for me, we put in what they call I don't, you know. On the most basic level for me, we put in you know what they call I don't know how familiar you are with change of venue. Motions happen within a community or there's an event that's so big within a community that it's going to be impossible for those jurors or that judge to remain unbiased, that you can put in for a change of venue where they move it from that court system to a district, you know, to a neighboring state, a neighboring court, to where it's not quite as charged, an environment you know, and let those trials occur there. Washington DC is a perfect example of where none of these trials should be held.
Speaker 2:In Washington DC One, it's impossible for the jurors to be unbiased. You know these are the residents, the citizens of Washington DC. Where this event took place Immediately, you know, the local news and the mainstream media took control of the situation, burned it into everyone's heads that this was an insurrection. People were there trying to overthrow the federal government For sure. So in Washington DC the jury pool is so biased, absolutely, that is impossible to get a fair trial there. Now you add in the fact that also, you know the January 6th defendants that are found guilty they pay into a reimbursement fund, you know, for the damages that they caused to the citizens of Washington DC. So now the jurors, the citizens of Washington DC, if they find you guilty, well, now they get a financial payout out of it. They get a reimbursement if they find you guilty.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And this is looking at some of the finer print of things. But also now you've got these federal judges that are also citizens of Washington DC who stand to gain, you know, from finding guilt. You know, if they find that the J-6ers guilty, those that go to bench trials. But also you know the federal judges just have so much power of what they allow to occur within their courtrooms which evidence is going to be allowed to be presented, which kind of experts you know you're going to allow to have testify. And it was all rigged, you know, against. You know the January 6th, you know defendants, they didn't have that opportunity. I didn't have that opportunity. I put in for a change of venue motion. Nothing, nothing. It was all denied. Damn, that's rough.
Speaker 2:Well, put it this way, you know here's just a good example for the people that might not understand that you know Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, blew up Oklahoma City a bomb. You know at their federal courtroom he doesn't go on trial in Oklahoma. You know they move his trial outside of the state because they know that he can't get a fair trial. It's the same thing that has to happen in these trials in DC. You have judges that are also not only citizens of Washington DC, but you also have some of these judges making statements in the courtroom, for instance with the attorneys.
Speaker 2:Everybody was battling a lot around this word insurrection. Nobody was charged with insurrection. Not a single J6er was charged with it. So when the judges and the prosecutors would use the term insurrection in the courtroom in front of a jury, you would have defense attorneys that would object and say hey, listen, object, my client's not charged with insurrection. You can't keep using that term to label him that in front of the jurors. You are leading the jurors to believe that this was an insurrection and the judge's response would be listen. My office building sits at such and such street and I could look outside my building. I watched the events unfold that day from my window of my office. I saw for myself. You can't tell me that that wasn't an insurrection, okay, well, now you're judged, now you're being a witness, so you can't have a judge that is both a witness and a judge and a judge. There's just witness and a judge and a judge. There's just too much conflict of interest going on. Just shows you how corrupt it is.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and that was up to these judges and they had that opportunity to recuse themselves from those cases. Those judges also had the decision it was all brought up that this 1512 charge was unjust, it was not to be used in this manner. You know they could not, you know, technically charge the J6ers with this crime because in order for there to be an official proceeding there's got to be a finding of guilt, there has to be a judge present and the certification, you know, was not those things and that's ultimately what the Supreme Court decided, you know later was that the 1512 charge you know had to be dismissed, and it was.
Speaker 2:You know. I ended up being convicted of two charges the 1512 charge and then the 111A charge, which is impeding, resisting, interfering or assaulting a police officer, for when I grabbed onto the baton, found guilty of those in the Supreme Court throughout the 1512 charge, and so I went to prison on the 111 charge for grabbing onto the baton.
Speaker 1:And then you ended up getting 36 months federal before you got, as you were getting pardoned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was originally sentenced. I went to trial March of 2024, was convicted, ended up doing a stipulated bench trial instead of taking my chances with the jury, the judge. Of course I knew he was still going to find me guilty, you know. But for the stipulated bench trials the prosecution agreed to drop like eight charges. You know, being convicted of two is being better than being convicted of 10 or 12 or whatever. So we did the stipulated trial, knowing good and well that the judge was still going to find us guilty.
Speaker 2:At my trial I was not allowed to make any self-defense arguments. I wasn't even allowed to argue that. I grabbed the baton in self-defense. That wasn't part of my understanding that I was going to be allowed to, of what I was allowed and not allowed to do at a stipulated trial. I thought that that I was going to be allowed to of what I was allowed and not allowed to do at a stipulated trial. I thought that I was still going to be allowed to make defensive arguments to that 111 charge. As soon as we were in at trial with the judge and my attorney began to make those type of arguments, the prosecutors prosecution shut us down. You know. They said your honor.
Speaker 2:You know, mr Montgomery has agreed to do a stipulated trial, meaning that he agrees to certain facts of that day. He agreed that he grabbed onto the police officer's baton. He agrees that his foot, you know touched that officer's you know shoulder. He agrees that he assaulted the police officer. And that was never part of my agreement. And that's what we said. No, I agree to those facts as them being factual. Yes, I did grab onto the baton. Yes, I did use my foot. But because I agree to those facts doesn't mean that I am agreeing that I assaulted the officer. I still have the right to explain that situation from a self-defense scenario, for sure.
Speaker 1:Nothing.
Speaker 2:You know. To add the context that you know, I was afraid for being hurt. I didn't approach that officer. That officer came into my space. He was the aggressor. I didn't get to make any of those arguments because the judge immediately agreed with the prosecution and said hey, you know what you agreed. You know they dropped these eight charges and now you're going to sit here and try to make arguments against these other two. If you continue down this line, mr Montgomery, I'm going to declare a mistrial. We'll start jury selection tomorrow, you know, and you'll do a full bench trial, jury trial.
Speaker 1:Are you flying to Washington for these?
Speaker 2:No, mostly a lot of. Well, the trials were in Washington, but most of the court stuff was just done. You know, it was still COVID at the time. So we got yeah, we got a lot of a lot of it done through Zoom. You know those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:What a nightmare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know those kind of things. What a nightmare, yeah. So at the end of the day, you know, I was convicted, uh, sentenced to 37 months. Um, I didn't know when I was gonna have to report yeah you know.
Speaker 2:So I didn't actually go to sentencing until um halloween of 2024, okay, um, the judge sentenced me to 37 months. At the beginning of december I got a call, like the first week in December, saying that I had to self-report, you know, go turn myself in to FCI Englewood which is there in Denver. And I had to turn myself in on December 23rd, which was two days, you know, before Christmas.
Speaker 1:Damn.
Speaker 2:Knowing good and well that Trump had won the 2024 election.
Speaker 1:So you're praying that he's going to swipe this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, obviously turning myself into prison was tough. My wife had to go and drop me off and you're prepared to do these 37 months?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the way that I had to go and drop me off. Yeah, um, you're, you're you're prepared for it to do three of these 37 months?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the way that I had to approach it, you know, and there was this talk of these, of these pardons. But from a mental standpoint, getting ready to do 37 months, I could not allow myself to give into that hope of you know, I'm going to get a pardon, I'm going to get a pardon. Um, I believed most people believe that some people were going to get pardons, but there was a line in the sand kind of being drawn around whether does everybody get a pardon? Is it going to be blanket pardons or is it just the non-violent ones, the ones that are accused and convicted of violent crimes? Do they get pardons or do they not get pardons? And it's all legit questions.
Speaker 2:And but I've been accused of a violent crime, you know, assaulting a police officer for grabbing onto the baton. I did not think that I was going to get a pardon. Um, I didn't necessarily agree with that because, based on the premise of, you know, everybody deserves a right to a free trial, I felt that was grounds enough that I didn't get a chance to defend myself. So, just because somebody's got a violent conviction on their record, you know, was that a legitimate you know charge to begin with? You know, did they get a fair trial? Yeah. Other people will argue well, some people pled guilty, you know, to those violent crimes. Do they get a pardon? Well, you know. If they pled guilty, people say, well, they admitted that that's what they did. Well, but they were charged with 12 different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had to take a plea deal yeah, and one of those charges you know, the 1512 charge was an illegal charge to be used against them, but it was used to manipulate them into taking a plea deal that were you know if you guys will plead guilty to this. You know this one violent charge of you know assaulting a police officer, we'll drop all your other charges. Some people felt like they had no other choice but to do that. Yeah, which, again that is insane.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask you a couple questions. Okay, damn it, fuck, can you text mom to run me up my phone please? I think I left it in the bathroom. Um, with the pardon, we got about 30 minutes left so we could blow through these. Okay, with the pardon, in getting pardon, a presidential pardon, did that pardon just that? This is one of the questions from one of our followers. Did you get a pardon like a Biden pardon, how he blanketed and covered his son, or is this just for that? You're clear, ready to rock and roll, move forward.
Speaker 2:For us, our pardons apply to events that happened on January 6th Got it. For us, our pardons apply to events that happened on January 6th Got it. So it doesn't clear me of my past. You know history. You know from 1995, you know in New Mexico it doesn't. You know, protect me from anything in the future. You know that happens If I go out there and get in trouble again. You know it's not going to. You know, protect me.
Speaker 2:Got it, I figured trouble again, you know it's not gonna, you know, protect me and and the pardon from my understanding of it is it doesn't even completely remove it from my record. It basically it restores all of my, my civil rights, you know. So my right to carry firearms, right to vote, hold public office, sit on a jury. You know those rights have been restored. So I'm restored to full citizenship. So I can also not be treated, you know, as a felon. So those type of you know, on a federal level and according to the january 6th stuff, yeah, I am free and clear, you know to possess firearms. To go back to my business of guiding and hunting and doing what I've been doing for the past 30 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you were in. I mean you were two months in, three months into your sentence, right? I mean you turned yourself in December and you just got pardoned, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I basically turned myself in on December 23rd, went to prison, when I first, you know, got to prison. Here's just a little interesting story for you. You know coming, you know, from veterans standpoint of view, the prison that I went to, they had a program that was specifically set up just for the vets, you know. So all veterans from military fields.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had their own unit. They've had special programs, you know, to help them deal with you know some of their stuff. And as soon as I got there, they put me in an area, in a pod, with a bunch of you know druggies. You know we call them deuce heads. You know, these guys are smoking this K2 stuff now and it turns them into complete idiots, complete zombies. But that's was the original cell that I was put into as a four man cell. You know, as soon as I rolled up I took one look around. I could tell that man, this is not what I want, where I want to be, you know these guys could work, could hardly speak.
Speaker 2:You know these guys could hardly speak. You know it was like being on fentanyl or something. It kind of looks like these guys are being zombies and I don't have any experience with K2 or Spice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a whole different world, these guys were out of it.
Speaker 2:I was literally there still unpacking my stuff when somebody from the veterans unit side of things came down, you know, grabbed me, told me to grab my shit. You know that I was to follow them and that I was going to go live with them and from day one I basically became adopted by the, by the veterans that were living in this program. Normally people don't live in their units if they're not a veteran. I'm not a veteran but they moved me down there and kind of adopted me and took care of me. You know, know, kind of.
Speaker 1:He's a patriot. Yeah, he stormed the Capitol. That earns a slot with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it earned a good standing within those guys and so they took me in, took care of me. Well, I was also fortunate enough to get involved in. They've got what they call a FIDOs program, okay, which is basically they bring in um shelter dogs, you know from kill shelters, they bring them into the prisons and they got a program where they pair those up with, um, yeah, with with some of the inmates, um, and so I got accepted into that fidos program and became a dog handler, where you know, I actually ended up having a dog with me while I was in prison, in my cell.
Speaker 1:Um, really yeah, so that was part of the. That's badass, okay, yeah, all right, dogs change everything well, it does, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's a great program you know for, because not only for the handlers that are handling them, you know, and taking care of them, but just it rubs off on everybody else in the prison, you know there's I don't care how mean and grumpy you are. You know this is a little puppy. Comes walking by you on the cell block or cuddles up to you while you're in the TV room. You know it's going to bring a bit of joy, you know, to your life.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, I mean just the camaraderie and the friendship of a dog.
Speaker 2:the companionship is huge you know, and to have that within a prison environment. Yeah, that was a big deal you know for me and glad I got to participate in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good man, I'm glad. Uh, I'm glad it all worked out, because what an absolute shit show. So one of the questions that we got asked was how much faith do you still have in our judicial system?
Speaker 2:Right now not a whole lot, just because I've experienced and I've seen it. And you know, unfortunately this is something that we've been hearing for a while. You know, from our, you know our minority populations. You know they've been saying that the justice system isn't fair, that they get treated unfairly. Being part of that system, I would have to agree. You know it's not set up.
Speaker 2:I don't think our judicial system is set up with the interest of holding people accountable for their actions, letting them, you know, accept the, the consequences, responsibility for those actions, so that they can pay their dues, you know, do their time, be rehabilitated, if you will, and then go on about their business. I think it's our judicial system is now more geared to once you're in the system, good luck getting out of it, because you're a number. You make them money, you bring them profits. All it comes down to money and that's what our system is geared, you know, towards. I think is seems to be, you know, keeping people within the system as long as possible so that they continue to, to make those dollars.
Speaker 1:So you get quotas, you know I mean you get your or not quotas. But budgets, yeah, off of numbers and if you have, if you have low numbers and people are actually making a full turnaround and you're not having the bodies cycle through your prison systems, you're not getting the budget or the allocated amounts of money I mean for these guys. And you know it's a game, it's a huge, it's sad.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, people are rotting away in these places that shouldn't be there. Yeah, it's a multi-million. Now, if you're in for some, oh, multi-billion dollar, industries are correctional you know, but I I feel, if it doesn't have to do with kids, women, super violent, if you're getting a fist fight in the streets, whatever, but you know and that cool, there you go, go away. But these guys that are popping on drugs in their car and they're not it and they're wasting years away and it's like that's my tax paying dollars in there.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what you know. That is what people need to look at it from that standpoint is that's your taxpayers dollars that are supporting all these, this prison system, and you know there's better ways of doing it nowadays.
Speaker 1:And putting them. I'd rather put our my money into programs helping these guys get clean, and I don't know we do. I don't know how we break it down and do a three strike thing. I don't know, but it's just it's. I think it's wild the the fact of how many guys are rotting away in cells that can turn their whole lives around giving their life to Christ. Haven't been in any incidences in decades in prison. It's like get the motherfucker out of here, yeah no, and that's the reform that needs to happen.
Speaker 2:When I look at it, technology has come a long ways. They were able to keep plenty good enough track of me with an ankle bracelet. Why are we not doing that? You know a lot of these drug offenders and all these people, you know. Let's give them a break. You know, put them instead of having taxpayers dollars spent to keep them locked up in prison where they're really not. You know, let's just face it. They're not being rehabilitated, nobody's, you know, getting all the special treatment and mental help that they need while they're in prison.
Speaker 1:It's making it worse. You're getting pulled into gangs, you're getting pulled into drugs, you're getting pulled into anything you have to do to survive. That's why I think, recently with this president of Guatemala, I believe it is or Venezuela, he said we could ship all of our on the american criminals down there. Like, yeah, top tier criminals, why? Why are they sitting here if this dude's willing to take them? They got that giant maximum, one of the largest prisons in the world down there yeah all of our rapist murderers gone and then our prisons should turn into to helping these guys get back on their feet.
Speaker 1:Hardcore drugs if you're a kingpin drug dealer, whatever cool. We have our certain prisons. That Then our prisons should turn into helping these guys get back on their feet. Hardcore drugs if you're a kingpin drug dealer, whatever cool. We have our certain prisons that are designated for those. But our normal prisons. We should not be throwing some 19-year-old kid into a prison system. They get popped for some weed or coke or whatever. I don't want nonviolent crimes. Now he's getting pulled into a gang. So here's this kid. It's his first time getting popped on something that's non-violent, related goes to in the jail or prison to get sucked right into the system. He's gone forever. There's you.
Speaker 2:Can't get him back yeah, now, once you enter that, that prison system whether it's the state prison system or the federal prison system all that's. You're just being educated to become a better criminal. You know, you're just learning better tactics, better ways, better ways of doing things. Again, you know we could save the taxpayers in this country a ton of money. You know. Put these guys, let them back out, put them on ankle monitors, you know. Let them pay for it. Yes, you know, we don't have to pay to incarcerate them.
Speaker 1:Let them pay for it.
Speaker 2:If they mess up, you know, if they get a dirty UA or whatever, okay, you put them back in the pokey, you know, for another 90 days or six months. Apparently they didn't learn their lesson very well. Nope, you know. And then you put them back out. As long as they're not a non-violent offender, they're not hurting people, I have no problem with it. You know, put them back out there If they mess up again, like you said, maybe come up with a three-strike system like hey, bud, you know, we've given you two different opportunities here to be out on your own and you're not doing it. You're not getting the points. So now you're going to have to spend the rest of your three years, you know, in prison at this point.
Speaker 1:But start with home, yeah, start there, work your way out, give them an opportunity. It's way cheaper to put an ankle bracelet on somebody than it is to feed them every day in prison, especially when they're paying for it.
Speaker 2:Let them go work, let them be productive. Let them pay restitution based off of a full salary that they're earning at their job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why not? Why not? They're still being able to contribute to society, but they got to pay for their problems and they're not taking my tax paying dollars and flushing them down the drain. Exactly, dude, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a been a good conversation, you know, and I could, unfortunately, you know we can go for another day on this. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we could go. I think we're pushing the four and a half hour mark or are we. No, jeremiah's is the longest so far, I think. So this is five, I believe.
Speaker 2:I don't want to set a new record. Yeah Right, I'll do that.
Speaker 1:No, but I mean this is stuff that people I mean I have so many questions that people ask, but they're answered. You know, people want to know if Trump, you know, was part of from his rally pushing you guys over and I mean it seems like everybody walked over. A couple of questions people had were if you saw busloads of like Antifa getting dropped off, which I think it was probably a little late by that point you were, you were there, but I'd say, for the most part, man, we, I feel like we got a pretty good insight of what happened. A lot of people want to know if you got let in and obviously we covered that. That's.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating to me, that some guy just opened the door and the cops were standing there. I mean, what a what a crazy experience to be able to live through. And now a part of history you can say you were, you were one of the ones that went in the Capitol, storm the Capitol. I mean you could. I mean, fuck bro, you're going to be telling your grandkids this one day Like you have no idea what your uncle or your grandpa has been through and done. I mean.
Speaker 2:You know, and I shake my head and I smile and maybe even smirk, because it's not. I don't find it funny. Oh God, by any means and please, I hope nobody takes it as that I'm making light of this situation. No God, no Part of it is. It's just so unbelievable. It's not something that was planned, it's not the type of trouble that I was looking to get into, by any means. And to find yourself in this situation, I mean not to make light of it.
Speaker 2:but not too many people can say that they've got a presidential pardon. You know, no, not too many people have that piece of paper.
Speaker 1:Last question.
Speaker 2:Knowing everything you know now, would you do it again? Oh man, that is probably the biggest and most important question for the effect that it had on my family and my wife. My initial reaction would be no, that my family didn't sign up for that, didn't sign up for me losing my job. I didn't take enough of that into account, maybe, when I made the decision to go to Washington DC. But from that standpoint, no, I wouldn't have done it again. I regret obviously the amount of trouble that it's got me in and you know I haven't been able to work the past four years, so the consequences of it were were very grave. Um, I accepted and acknowledged. You know responsibility for for some of that, but the punishment has gone above and beyond what is fair and acceptable. Sure, would I do it again? I don't think that I would have gone inside the building.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, I would have probably still gone. I probably have still. You know the incidents that happened with the officer probably still would have happened because we were outside the building and where we agreed you know where we thought we were supposed to be I wouldn't have gone into the building just because nothing good, you know, happened there. You know I was under a different understanding when I made that decision, so I can't take it back. I trusted God in making that decision when I made that decision. So I can't take it back. I trusted God in making that decision. But ultimately, you know, january 6th was a tragedy. Sometimes tragedies are allowed to happen in our lives. God allows things to happen because it's necessary to produce a reaction. So if January 6th was necessary to wake up the so-called silent majority, to get the attention of American citizens that may be a little bit more trusting or naive of the government, the federal government and what they're capable of doing, if January 6th was necessary to wake people up, then I would do it again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you, and.
Speaker 2:I would accept those consequences, even to the point and this is where the decision that I had to talk with my wife about is even if it meant knowing that I wasn't going to get a pardon. It's easy to say, yeah, I'd do it again if I know I'm going to get a pardon, but would I do it again knowing that I might have to spend three years in prison?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, I think so good for you, and Good for you for standing with that Because I think, at the point, what we see happening now, I think, is a direct result of the American citizen being awakened through the events of 2020. And to see you know, people no longer blindly trust the federal government, and they shouldn't. That wasn't the case in 2020.
Speaker 2:Way too many people were trusting. If the events of that day showed people that they can't just blindly trust everything the government and social media is teaching them, then it was worth it.
Speaker 1:Good for you. Any last, any saved rounds, anything you want to, oh man without opening a whole nother can of worms.
Speaker 2:Um, I think we pretty much, you know, covered it. You know my key points being. You know that you know we didn't go there with the intent to try to stop the certification process from happening. We wanted that to play out. We didn't go there with the intent to try to stop the certification process from happening. We wanted that to play out. We didn't show up armed to the teeth to fight with the federal government. Some people showed up wearing personal protection equipment to protect themselves and they have the right to do that.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:That doesn't. Because you're wearing a bulletproof vest does not mean that you are intent on storming the Capitol. The people that showed up at the Capitol that day believed that they were going to a legitimate, permitted protest on Capitol grounds. There was an okie-dokie that happened and then switched there to where the people didn't realize that they were trespassing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Everything unfolded.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then, at the end of the day, too, we always retain the right to protect ourselves, the right to self-defense. That doesn't come from the government. I don't need the government to define that for me. That is my right as a free individual. You know that my creator, who I refer to as God, has given me that right to protect myself.
Speaker 2:And people will say, well, you can't protect yourself from law enforcement officers, you have to obey them when they tell you what.
Speaker 2:Well, to a certain degree, you know I can protect myself and it may mean that I get in trouble for it, but I do have the right to preserve my life, especially if I think an officer is acting outside of the legal performance of his duties, which I thought those officers were. In that scenario, I have a right to defend myself At the end of the day, and this would be, you know, maybe, what all ended on. You know, yep, you can say right or wrong about you know the things that we did. You can say we made some bad choices. You can say I made some stupid mistakes and, yeah, probably all of that's true, but at the end of the day, that's true, but at the end of the day, I'm still here today. I wasn't seriously injured, nobody around me was seriously injured, so there, there's legitimacy to that saying you know it's better to be, you know better to be judged by 12 than carried by six, and you know that's the decision I guess that I made that day.
Speaker 1:Good for you, man. Thanks for being part of that. Yeah, it is Opened a lot of people's eyes. And then we got to watch the last four years of how everybody was treated and you know luckily, for I feel like the majority of everybody getting pardoned. I mean a long time coming, but it was a huge part of this country. It was history. I mean a long time coming, but it was a huge part of this country. It was history. I mean we told our kids about it Like this is. I know they don't understand now but that was a chunk of history that our capital got stormed and how the media spun it and the hell that they put everybody through for the last four years. And yeah, man, I mean it wasn't for you and the rest of the people trying to make a stance.
Speaker 1:That's what we need for you and the rest of the people trying to make a stance. That's what we need. That's what this country was founded and built off of.
Speaker 2:You know, in 50 years hopefully there is a 50 years from now, but you know people will look at that event that day and it will have significance as much as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the American, you know the first American Revolution. You know you've got to remember our founding fathers. You know the first american revolution. You know you got to remember our founding fathers. You know when they first, you know, started going to war against the british and fighting for our independence, they were all traitors. Had they been caught and a lot of them were, you know they're dead hung treason stand up for.
Speaker 2:Some people say the J6ers, you know, are treasonous. Well, what were they doing? They were standing up for their beliefs. And I think, 50 years from now, when we look at this event, I think the narrative is going to be quite different, you know, and I think it's going to be in support of American citizens who stood up, you know, and voiced their opinion against the federal government Yep.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks, man. I appreciate you sharing that story. I couldn't even imagine the hell you've been through the last four years and just dealing with our judicial system and how corrupt and broken and paid off everybody is in it, and that probably opened your eyes quite a bit and everybody else has been able to watch that and it's been wild. It's been absolutely wild. I'd say your life has definitely been wild, chaos for the last four years, yeah.
Speaker 1:And uh, but thank you, Thanks for giving me the opportunity to sit down and tell your story and we've had a. I mean, we answered pretty much everything through the episode but, yeah, a lot of people were curious about what the hell actually just went on that day.
Speaker 2:Good, you know, and I thank you for the opportunity to share my side of the story. You know, that's one thing that I haven't really been able to do this whole time for four years is, you know, give my side of things. Well, you're getting.
Speaker 1:we got it. Yeah, it's going live, so hopefully we do it right and people get to hear it and get to open some eyes up about it. Yeah, absolutely. Again. Thank you, dude. Appreciate it. I appreciate it too. Appreciate your time, man. That was awesome. That's a wrap, oh man.