Transcripts For CSPAN2 After 20240703

The thing. Its good to be with you in this setting as opposed to the federal courthouse where we usually spend our days and weve a lot to cover about this really Remarkable Book that congratulations and glad its finally out. Just to start with a basic question, who who are the sedition hunters and why did you choose to write not just a story about them, as in might normally, but an entire book would tell me tell me about them. You know, its a really diverse group. Theyre really from across the country early on. I think there are a lot even people who are overseas who are sort of involved in this on the open source side and bringing some of their sort of skills and technology to that. But really, you know, the core group that it is now are spread out all across the country. And in fact, of our different political persuasions. And in fact, theres a key individual i write about in the book who voted for trump twice, which was sort of a surprise for a lot of the other sedition hunters, but really just saw what happened on january six, got really, you know, angry about the assault on democracy and sort of brought the skills that they had to the table to sort of help solve a lot of these crimes with a particular focus on the violent offenders. Well, tell me, when did you realize that this community of sleuths as you as you call them, this was going to be a significant. Part of this january six story that, you know, we all saw the attack on january six. I think you and i had the same reaction. This is a flash point in American History that deserves to be covered inside and out to understand what happened. The sleuths, though, are very discreet. Some subset of that story. And when did you realize they were going to matter so much . And when decide, you know. Right, really write this book. I think it built over a few months. But my first sort of entry into it actually involved a woman who was just sentenced this week, Rachel Powell. Shes a mother of eight, grandmother of six, whos in her forties. And she was wearing a pink hat and was known as bullhorn lady. And, you know, very early on in the first days after this, there were some irresponsible sort of social, social media speculation similar to sort of what we saw after the, you know, the Boston Marathon bombing, for example, where people were just throwing out these ideas. But very quickly, the community sort of coalesced around these rules is that we dont throw out names just willy nilly. We dont put them out there. If were not sure about them. We send things into the fbi. So that sort of all came about. But the way this really started out with Rachel Powell was that i sort of had made an offhand twitter joke as i am, i as i am sometimes i want to do and mentioned that, you know, because she was leading around this group of rioters saying, hey, we should probably coordinate together to take the building over a bullhorn. She sort of had a tone that reminded me of sort of someone leading, you know, a tour or perhaps a, you know, a chaperoning an eighth grade tour of the capitol and like sort of a little bit flustered, a little bit of that tone that i sort of knew as a parent, where youre kind of like, all right, at the end room, hey, guys, you know, and i just sort of thought it was funny. So i said, you know, 20 bucks says this ends in both criminal charges and a pta resignation. So i just homeschool her as a little bit off. But ultimately, thats what i got a tip that really brought me into this community because i got a tip from this mysterious account saying, hey, weve identified her. You know, were trying to figure out what to do. But the frustration there was is that there is all this energy of the Community Focused on this and getting that message out that this person has been identified, but not necessarily setting off any sort of doxing or setting off any sort of, you know, something that could mess up this investigation cause she was still out there. Right. So ultimately running faro beat me to that story, but i sort of, you know, sucked it up and said, ill get the next one and then ended up working on the Danny Rodriguez story and identifying the individual who drove a stun gun into officer mike finance, an act which was really the first major story that i that i wrote was based on this. And i want to get into that one more later. But i am curious, sort of, you know, the sedition hunters, as you describe them, the sleuths have become sort of this adjunct essentially of the fbi and the book, i think, details in a really remarkable way, the sort of modern history of the fbi and a lot of their their failings in this arena and dealing with modern technology. And so the sleuths kind of seem to have arisen as a consequence of that of the fbis, you know, cumbersome, cumbersome bureaucracy of it. And so so how did you tell me about this . The community, how it came together . Are these people that work in concert or are there multiple groups . Are they split . Do they all get along . Do they know who each other are . Do you know who they are . I know who some of them are. Some of them i only really know by their handlers and their, you know, their history. Whats whats nice about this is both the fbi. Whats nice about this for both the fbi and for me is that i can check this, right . I can check the work. I can look at what they did, work this backwards, find the connections and make sure that these are accurate because they just, you know, can send you everything where they show up. Heres where we made this connection. Theres someone being sentenced this week. It named air horn or airhead lady with her with her son, who is known as air head boy because they had worn these emergency escape hoods as they left the capitol building. And that was a case where the fbi actually raided the wrong home. They went to a home in alaska, knocked down this womans door, put them in handcuffs, put her and her husband in handcuffs, and started questioning them about where Nancy Pelosis laptop was. And thats because they thought that this woman was a woman who entered into speaker pelosis office and was involved in stealing that laptop, ultimately helping get it into the backpack of another individual. And they got some a human, actually, who apparently knew this woman, the wrongly accused woman. Who was i should say, at the capitol, but didnt go inside that we know of. She was just on the grounds of the capitol with her husband, who said that . Oh, yeah, thats her. Right. So they got a human to say who knew her. And thats sort of one of those instances of, you know, the the human eye isnt isnt the greatest and human witnesses arent necessarily the best. Because if you look very closely, theres just a lot of differences between those two women. They had a, you know, an ear lobe attach for example, is one of the differences. And the husband actually remarked at one point, you know, that my wife is much more attractive than this. This woman would never be caught dead wearing that outfit, correct . Exactly. Yeah. So thats a, you know, thats where sort of a lot of this the skills that they brought to the table have really come to bear. And that was one of the things like one of the sleuths remarked to me that they think that that work with some of the most important they did because, you know, it cleared or at least helped get attention off of a woman who is wrongly accused and had her home raided by the fbi because they didnt check their facts and they didnt really go through all of the open source ways they could do this or do even a facial check. Really, they could have just compared photos like dont use your eyes, computers are better at this. Like run that through a match to make sure that those are the same person. Well, and that, you know, so much of this book is about the use of facial Recognition Technology and how any i mean, just the massive volume of Video Evidence of the january six attack. And that seems to be where the fbi just was completely, you know, in over its head was that they dont know how to handle cases that have their have an enormous load of Video Evidence. You think you wrote about how they were still getting evidence on flash drive. They couldnt hold large files and so the solution or not didnt have the same sort of constraints. And so so how did that i guess how did that work . How did the this was realized that they could be useful to the fbi have the fbi realize that this loose could be useful to them . And how does that relationship work to this day . I think one thing that i was guilty of and a lot of people are guilty of in the first days was overestimating the fbi capabilities. Right. Because it came in with this big, strong message. I remember one of the things we commented, we heard in one of these early press conferences was, you know, we do big, right . Weve done this before. We got this. But if you look at what they thought the scope of this was at the very beginning, they thought there were 800 people who were there like, you know, going to get arrested who were involved in this, maybe 800 entered. Thats what they were sort of looking at the max and now today we have 1100 and thats only a third of the people who could be arrested. There are more than 3000 people who could theoretically be charged based on the way that prosecutors have laid this out, which means they either entered the building or committed some sort of violence or destruction outside of the building. Thats sort of where the parameters have landed at the moment. Were never going to get to that because right now, even when you had that massive influx of resources in that first year when most of these arrests really took place, you know, year two in year three, you know, were probably about the same as year one. Thats, you know, not where were going to end up in the end of this. The pace just isnt going to keep up. So now its more about what cases are going to be priority wise. And it really is, frankly, you know, the slews who are putting pressure on the fbi being like, hey, we sent this in two years ago. Whats going on with this one . Theres a funeral home coowner in long island who they just really were sort of publicly ragging the fbi about saying thats the guy with the wasp spray, right . Correct. Yeah. And thats and i got to tell you, that was one of the ones early on that i was like, oh, now this persons going to be arrested, too. Like, this is 2000, you know, 21. And i was just like, now this is going to be too obvious. Ill focus on another one and then flash forward, you know, two and a half years later. And finally hes charged. But they were, you know, sending out tweets saying, you know, you need a you need a google address, you know, a map to his house, because theres just no doubt he was with his son. I mean, there are so much confirming information there. Well, you write about this a lot in the book. You mentioned people who have not yet been arrested. And so obviously you dont identify them by name, but you point out, you know, things that are on video that youve seen on their own eyes, people committing violence, people committing all sorts of the worst sort of crimes that you think the bureau and the Justice Department are prioritizing. People know who they are. They basically have verifiable, confirmable evidence, but they havent been arrested to this day. Even years after thats been surfaced. So, i mean, talk about talk about that a little bit that this was frustrated. Do they get do they feel like the fbi is hearing them and values them as a resource . I definitely think a lot of the soldiers know how valuable they are to the fbi, but they are just really frustrated by the bureaucracy. Right. And theres been a lot of turnover in the two and a half, more than two and a half years since this investigation even started. But, you know, in the early days, they were really sort of sending things into this black hole, into sending it into the national tip line. And then who knows where that goes or who knows who reviews it, if its ever come back to you. Because there are many cases where the sleuths later on would follow up and say, okay, you know, weve put together a case against someone. Heres all the evidence. And then instead of basing it off of how the clues it them, the fbi just went back into their database and found someone who knew that person who like, you know, on january seventh or eighth was like, hey, heres this persons info. And, you know, basically the case basically off of that. But i think they know how much theyre appreciated. But theres definitely a growing sense of frustration with some of these cases not being brought information, especially when you see all of these conspiracy theories blow up around individuals because, you know, weve seen some really sort of absurd out there conspiracy theories who, oh, this person was the one really controlling this or that. Were all going to blow this up. If if we just identify this person. Right. You know, and a lot of those people have been id theres one guy who broke a window, was pulled away by another rioter. And like there are millions of people who have seen videos. And this has promoted really big on the right wing that this guy was obviously a fed or obviously antifa like just 100 stated as fact. Oh, and obvious that hes working for the feds. We call him. No idea who the guy actually is. You know, this is a guy who i wrote down the book who i went to his Facebook Page still up there the other day. Its like maga 100 all the way. He was arrested for threatening a democratic politician before all of this blew up, pleaded guilty in that case afterwards, and still hasnt been arrested yet by the fbi and thats one of the sort of cases that is really frustrating because you see all this misinformation and if theres an end, youre sort of waiting on in action. But meanwhile, is this misinformation, this disinfo is heavily ingrained and people who will never see that correction two years down the road, right . No, actually, that guy was an anti as it turned out, just another trump supporter. He thought the election was stolen. Well, that thats a fairly common theme. And some of these people are arrested after, like you said, those theories have been built up. You know, you talk a little bit about how this was viewed as particularly valuable when they can knock down Bad Information almost as much as when they can provide good information to help id people. There are some cases you mentioned in one, one very prominent one in which the sleuths have actually found information about crimes that were committed by particular rioters after theyd already been charged or even convicted or pleaded guilty to lesser charges. One of the ones that comes to mind, is that real . A member of the proud boys who was charged with seditious conspiracy, which is one of the bravest crimes charged. But talk about this episode emerged in trials. I wonder if you could talk about that and how the sleuths played a role. Yeah, and this is one of those ones. That is. Yeah, it was a for the defense attorney. Essentially what happened was there were going into a long weekend and they were directly examined zachary real on the bench and they didnt want a situation where zachary real was going to be questioned by prosecutors on crossexamination just before the weekend and then have that sitting in jurors heads for a long weekend that wasnt going to be beneficial. They one of the last thing that jurors heard to be a very sympathetic sort of portrayal of real talking about his background and the things that he would talk about on direct examination from his own attorney. And because of that decision to sort of spread things out and really just, you know, kill a day, essentially the slews got to work. And over a long weekend were able to surface images there. So it was actually a real with a can of pepper spray spraying officers and that was something that emerged from another from another case public video that was that was put out because it was released in connection with another another case. And they were able to spot that well. And its so amazing because one of the sub themes of the proud boys trial, again, probably the most serious trial of all january six riot based trials, was that, well, they did theres no evidence they committed any violence or limited evidence that there was any physical violence committed by any of the these men on trial. And it just took it took them a weekend when they realized they had that one last opportunity to to completely undercut that entire narrative and catch what i would my view look like. Zach, really unaware on the stand that they would even surface this evidence and they leaned in hard. He leaned in very hard to. I did not assault anyone and just, you know, there you go. And it really is just astonishing that, you know, for that was the one of the most Serious Investigation of this entire matter. And that was something that the fbi managed to miss. And i think its just because theyre not good at organizing this video behind the scenes. Well, in a lot of your book and one of the things that surprised me about it in in a good way, i mean, i would expect to read a lot about this. Lewis that i did. But theres also sort of a modern history of the fbi in there and some of the reasons why they werent necessarily equipped to do this huge post january six investigation and you know, something you pointed out was, again, the the ideological history of the fbi. But also there reluctance and hesitation about things like domestic terrorism talk about how that factors in here and how that led to sort of the rise of the sleuth, i guess. Yeah, i think theres this really theres this thing within the fbi where theyre very eager to say that two things are equal. And in reality, if you look at who is killing individuals in acts of Political Violence, its almost entirely on the right. That is where we see deadly Political Violence coming from. As i say, specifically deadly. Right, because, yes, antifas committed a bunch of assaults. Youre also not really that well organized, but its just a different beast. If you want to look at the body count, thats where you need to really have your focus on is the right. And i mean, that makes sense. Theyre just ideological differences between the left and the right. Even during the heyday of really efforts from terrorism, from the left in the 1970s, when you saw bombs happening even at the u. S. Capitol, there was really an effort not to kill anyone. And a lot of those things, they effectively those bombs really were effectively press releases, exploding press releases as as one author described them. That would happen on a constant basis, but they really were not about killing people. And i think that thats really just where we see this difference today. You know, you have one side that is very into guns and weaponry and very into 1776. And, you know, where on the other side you sort of have more of a pungent nazi sort of scenario. And its not really more about that deadly Political Violence. While they are certainly deadly individual deadly acts, the body count is just much higher on the right. And i think thats one of the things within the fbi that theyre really struggling with, because, you know, that gets really complicated because you dont have and when youre talking about international terrorism, a contingency of, you know, hard, you know, of islamic extremist within the within the house. Right. Who are going to say, you know, oh, like support all of these that youre going to aggressively against islamic extremists. But as soon as you step on something on the other side, you know, all of a sudden youre getting called to the carpet and called in for a hearing. If, if anything sort of goes out of whack. And it is just a really difficult situation. And because, you know, obviously trump is driving a lot of this Political Violence. We saw that time and time again where trumps rhetoric really did amp people up and was and, you know, and we saw that with the bombs that were mailed to by caesar sayoc. You know that, right . A strip club bouncer who was mailing off bombs to all of trumps enemies. So you see these events. But they cant really talk honestly about this. And it just sort of, you know, before january six, it seemed sort of obvious that if you convince a bunch of people that the election was stolen and say this is the last moment to save their country, some of them are going to do some pretty stupid things. And, you know, you get at some of the i mean, the fbi itself as a as an organization was sort of, you know, politically sympathetic to the right historically. And so, you know, its in some ways, its almost almost comical that theyre now portrayed as sort of being these sort of ultra ultra lefties who wanted to subvert, you know, prevent, you know, trump, trump or in a wrongful way prevent trump from from winning reelection or hurt his his his chances. But then, you know, you talk about the bureau. As you know, there just general discomfort going after domestic terrorists because of the americans are entitled to constitutional protections that International Terrorists dont have. Right. So i guess how how does that you know, how did this lose help get around some of that internal that bureaucratic problem that they face where they act . There actually are legitimate constitutional issues when you are targeting americans, you know, over a very politically sensitive crimes. Yeah. And a lot of the rhetoric that is sort of commonly used even is somewhat violent in a lot of scenarios, you know, targeting and all sorts of words that are used to, you know, fight like hell, for example, really is this thats protected speech, right . Because that doesnt necessarily mean a physical, violent fight. Youre not saying attack. You know, theres just a lot of language that we use in politics that really is in this sort of inbetween area and the fbi is just overwhelmed with the volume ahead of january six. You know, the day before january six, they had, i think, you know, 10,000 tips come in, 5000 of which had to do with political speech. And that amount was like triple of what they normally had gotten, say, a couple of years earlier on an average day. So just really an overwhelming amount of information. But the way they approached that was by talking about, you know, sort of lone wolves and individual circumstances. So if someone said something really awful and violent, they would look at that individual specifically and maybe they would go talk to that person and rule out that person as a as a specific threat. And thats really the way that theyre thinking of this as sort of a lone wolf scenario, not realizing the power of the mob and the power of organizing a mob on a specific date, on a specific time, with a specific purpose, and how that would sort of bring this whole coalition together, because, you know, the fbi had done this sort of red cell activity just before the election, about a week before the election, where they sort of speculated on what the scenarios could be if the election had been disputed. And just imagine trying to have that conversation within the fbi. Right. Your boss is really donald trump. Ultimately, you are part of the executive branch and you cant really speak honestly about the obvious consequences of this. You know, a couple weeks earlier, hes saying stand back and stand by to the proud boys. Are you going to write a memo that says what the president is doing as a danger to National Security . You know, get ready to get called in the congress for that one. Right. Like, if you write about january six being this looming threat and the president s organizing this and really pushing this and really motivating a lot of people to violence, thats just really going to i mean, thats going to backfire on you very quickly. So you have to talk about this all speculatively and with the sort of both sides is and that doesnt exist just like the one moment that really crystallized it for me is last year, the january Six Committee was questioning this top fbi intelligence official with the Washington Field office and saying, you know, theyre talking about, jane, about the december 19th tweet from trump will be wild. That obviously inspired a lot of this really got people moving. And you know, she conceded that yeah as it got closer to january six, we saw a lot more heated rhetoric. And then she and there was a pause and then she added on both sides and like, lets just lets just be frank about this. There was not militant joe biden supporters who were plotting to storm the us capitol to overturn an election won by their preferred candidate. That just doesnt make a lot of sense at all. But theres this very instinctual thing, you know, almost like they feel compulsively obligated to be like, oh, yeah, on both sides. Were looking at this and its just not the reality. But its this really strange situation that were in. Is there any evidence that youve seen that the fbi has adapted, learned change at all throughout the course of this investigation, either through their experience, the flu and seeing how they operate successfully in this in part in this arena or just in general as an institution based on some of those blind spots that you identified, i think we saw in the Washington Field office specifically, we saw a lot of new leadership come in within that first year after january six. We also saw a new intelligence official in a higher capacity, sort of one of the only positions, i think within the country that they elevated. Its sort of, you know, in the weeds within the fbi, what they elevated someone to a different position. They created a different position essentially to worry about intelligence, specifically focused on the washington region. So i think obviously realizing that they were sort of caught flat footed here and that they needed to make sure that they had a better awareness of what was happening and i think the disconnect between whats happening within the fbi and whats happening online is just huge. But it really does get complicated and dicey when youre talking about what is protected free speech. You know, no ones if someone is even just a supporter of of isis, for example, you cant even retweet something that you could actually charge them with Material Support for, for, say, retweeting something on their behalf. Theyre just more protections and theyre as theyre, you know, should be for protected speech. But its just a lot easier to pursue these cases and have a reason to investigate someone who might be supportive of a group like isis than it is, you know, for supporting your local militia or something along those lines, which depending on your state, you might have some Legal Protection there. If youre forming a militia, though, i want to ask you about the app and whatever youre able to say about it, but you know, this list, as you referred to it several times in the book, rely on and app where they basically have assembled their own database of evidence against people who are in the riot. They i dont if its open source or theyre just gathering accumulating as much as they can and use that to help track different people in the threat you know that were there on january sixth and find some of the evidence there ultimately turning over what is the app, how does it work . Have you seen it . Yeah, theres theres a few different tools that the that theyve used to sort of access a lot of these more open source information, you know, i think theres a few main ones that they that they really focus on who built who built this sort of primary app they use. Sure. Theres an individual referred to as alex, who is one of the people really who was was that was pushing this. And, you know, i think a lot of them have just really brought a really unique skill set and can really it allows them essentially to access information that is already publicly Available Online very quickly. So you have a lot of these backups of all the videos. So any you posted anything from january 6th, they probably already got it in their database. And thats just all backed up on public websites that you can access and go into these things. So its just a way of, i think, surfacing the material that is within those public websites or quickly going to a video where at this moment thats sort of what the theyve been able to bring to the table with some of these tools that they develop in the background. Alex was a trump supporter, right . And if i remember from the book and as you pointed out, some of these are not ideological. You cant typecast these people as theyre all. Theyre just you know, people in their in their moms basement who are antitrump, very successful people. Like thats like rich family lives. Like very successful people who are involved in this. And, you know, there is someone who cracked who is involved very deeply in this, i think, sort of in a in a heated exchange. At one point, you know, someone sort of, you know, saying, like, you know what, losers these people were . And theyre like, i make more money than you and i work in cancer research. Like, right. Like, its just it is this very i think theres this again, its sort of this hollywood image of what you would think of the fbi versus the hollywood image versus the reality of the fbi compared with this sort of outdated, i think, idea of of of, you know, nerds or like this idea or of people who know how to use the internet. Thats a really marketable skill in this day and age that actually can you a lot of money. And i think thats one of the problems that the fbi is facing, in addition to the fact that you cannot smoke pot when youre a member of the fbi. Right. Right. You know, theres just a lot of these limitations that are really setting them back because youre going to have to take a big pay cut if you want to join the fbi. If youre a really technologically skilled person and, you know, are you going to stay in for all those 20 years when, you know, okay, sure. You get that. You know, youre youre going to be paid a portion of your salary for the rest of your life and then you can get another job. And then that becomes a thing thats sort of the typical thing with the fbi. You stay in for 20 years and then you get that pension and then you get another job on the side. But in the tech world, that doesnt necessarily make the most sense because, you know, your most marketable skills are probably today, right . Thats youve got to get in these companies early. You know, the fbi doesnt have stock options, right. Handing out to folks it doesnt have really cool campuses that people want to go to. In fact, you know, you might be sent anywhere in the country that, you know, it doesnt its the fbi. I think its facing a lot of hiring challenges. I just even think, you know, just with my family or with anyone else is if you could if you were to sign up for a job that said, hey, they could send us anywhere, just imagine how your spouse would react to that. And and also the salaries not that great, right . They could just be like, were going to maybe if you live somewhere we dont want to live, you know, not in the place we prefer to be sort of anywhere. And, you know, its its a tougher, i think, road for them to recruit, especially on the tech side. Of course. And then well and so just returning to the app, it organizes this video in a way that that i think i mean i mean, is it really just a clearinghouse or can they actually use it to comb through and identify people who, you know, maybe the fbi. The fbi has some evidence on them, but they can find them in other locations, other spots at the capitol and use that to sort of supplement the evidence. The fbi may or may not already have. I think its mostly like everything that it pulls from is public. So its just more like pulling from what is Available Online. But i think you can see it sort of in some of the sentencing memos and whatnot where theyre like, you know, at this moment, on this moment, blah, blah, blah. And so when i read a lot of those affidavit, its im like, i can sort of see the hand. Theyre sort of moving behind this, even if theyre not directly cited because the, you know, the government isnt finding random videos on the internet in a specific time. Right. You know, without that and its interesting if sometimes theyre very explicit about acknowledging we we have we have a confidential human source who happen who isnt connected to anyone in this case, but theyre just open source researchers and theyll cite them explicitly in the in the government filings. And other times theyre more opaque about it. And kind of say, you know, that they use euphemism is about where they got the information from is is there consistency . Do you have a sense of why they do it a certain way sometimes and not at others . I think it just varies on the field office. Thats the handling these and i think there have been instances where they probably, you know, showed a little bit more than i think the this sleuths would want necessarily. Right. Where its just sort of obvious on on the face of it, you know, there have definitely been screw ups on the fbi side that sort of showed probably more, i think, than this loser necessarily comfortable with. But, you know, obviously, there are some of these individuals who have especially signed up or, you know, are on the tab. But theres a lot of the world is just a lot larger than that. And what i sort of mentioned in here is that there is one person sort of at the center of this who i met with very early on in the process and mentioned in the book sort of that is really playing a central role here in sort of organizing and getting this information to the fbi and is willing to testify should it come to that point, because thats really what youre sort of putting on the line there. But in reality, like, unless theres not really much reason for logic, theres not a lot of reasons for someone to have to actually testify. Hasnt happened yet, right . It hasnt happened yet. And it wouldnt be of that much value. Right, because its the video about the videos. The video. Yeah. And its not like they cant, you know, like the way you can authentication is a big thing for these criminal cases and you can, you know, do that in a lot of different ways, whether it shows the same scene, whether its back dated a lot of this information you can just that basically on the face of it so really you know i think the only reason that you would see sort of this pursued was because, you know, a defense lawyer sort of had an ax to grind rather than it really actually has to undermine the case because its just publicly Available Evidence that anyone. Journalist the fbi can vet on their own and independently confirm. You mentioned that at one point, i think early in the book that the fbi was pretty aware of your your own communications with the sleuths were, i guess, maybe worried that, you know, if if they were to simultaneously feeding the bureau and feeding you that it could somehow influence some of the case. The ongoing cases, did you find that that was made it harder for you to to then you know, talk to some of these people that were they they were less willing to be forthcoming with you because of their own relationships with the fbi somewhat. But theres also that tension between them and the fbi, right . They arent completely on the same page and theyre really frustrated by a lot of this. And, you know, theres a mention and alex mentions at one point that were all going to be really when we learn what was going on here because theres just a lot of things that that dont make sense behind the scenes and dont seem to really add up for why there are these these delays. And i think there are just a new a number of different factors for why these cases havent been brought forward. But its its definitely really frustrating because, you know, were getting to a point where there are going to be people who when january six, 2026 comes around and the statute limitations expires are going to, you know, get away with it. Right. And i think that thats especially for the violent ones. Thats something that this law is really want to prevent, because i think the way that they think about this is that youre going to have millions of people who believe a crazy Conspiracy Theory about the 2020 election, who believe that the election was stolen, and no amount of reason or logic is ever going to break through with them. So the only thing that you can really do is make sure that those people who believe that Conspiracy Theory are not going to take action on it and make sure that they know that if they do take action on it, there are going to be consequences for that. And i think that thats what this is a really concentrated on. And think of themselves as a wall as we go into 2024, when were going to have most likely the de facto republican candidate, donald trump, saying again that the election was stolen. And, you know, probably saying that he is, no matter what happens, probably saying that he wanted 24. How does someone become a sleuth and how do these communities sort of form a sense that these people that, again, are theyre different groups that are different. They all get along. Do they trust each other . How do they how do they become trust worthy . They dont they know each others identities. Whats your sense of that world . They do. I mean, so theres one of my favorite moments was two individuals talking to one another who thought they knew each other well. And mike knew big things about their identities. And one said, you know, that they would be becoming a parent soon. And one of the clues ended up sending this individual tips on breastfeeding only to learn that they were talking to the dad. So you know, and now, you know, were at the point now where they exchange christmas, right . So there are people who have, you know, each other by their identities. But a lot of this has just been on screen names and track records and, you know, i dont think there have been a ton of new people who have joined since that first year. Its been that core group who really people are we talking about here and your in your estimation . Its hard to say because there are Different Number of groups. You know, dozens is probably in the in the right in the right frame. But there are different groups and also there are Different Levels of dedication and activity. And some of the groups have shifted. You know, they had they did were in these little groupings. Some theres some overlap between those groups. And a lot of this is happening in sort of the you know, the apps that people use to communicate is sort of similar to slack, right . That they just sort of have these these group chats where they can all communicate, all sort of commiserate. And i think that thats an that they have over the fbi as well, because you just think of the fbi sort of doing all of this via email to like a field office and then waiting the timeliness of of active group is really essential. And ive seen that even in our in our own work as well. There are a ton of story ideas that ive had only from like active actively communicating in a Group Setting with a bunch of different people and sort of throwing out something and like this is, you know, and then that sparks an idea and you really just cant replicate that within the fbi. They have individual chats, but also everything is documented forever and turns up in discovery. And then you cant even sort of have these sort of water cooler moments and to a certain extent, because all of thats going to be turned over to the defense. So you cant like theres a moment where they talk about an affair or Something Like that, but at the same same probably, probably, yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, theyre just sort of joking around popcorn emoji, you know, they say, oh, i got the popcorn or Something Like that. And all that is turned over in discovery. Well, i thought that was a very interesting point to link system is there. Right there. There are their internal fbi messaging system and everything they say theyre discoverable to the defense for the most part. And its all in the in the a few years back when theyre like an fbi employee was talking to the person like two fbi employees were talking they later married. But theyre sort of just discussing politics one on one in general and all that turned up. And then it became this huge thing made its way into an ig report and like, you know, you just it just is this environment where you cant talk freely, really, and you have to be so careful because its not because theres already so people who believe that the fbi is is really biased. But, you know, chris wray is really emphasized not only, you know, the making sure that were not use were not politically biased, but also making sure it doesnt appear as though were publicly biased, which just makes it impossible. Have just open sort of conversations that you would have or other in other settings. You know, you talked, you mentioned early on that, you know, we mentioned a few times actually the this sort of feeling certain responsibilities about not just doxing people not trying to upset the fbis cases and trying while helping them and being frustrated with them, not doing anything that could jeopardize a case. And i think in the book and you mentioned this earlier in our conversation, the the Boston Marathon bombing was an example where there was some footage that came out and people analyze it and analyze it very incorrectly and it created a crisis at the time, or at least a short the short lived crisis till they found the actual bomber. How did that episode shape what happened here . And then there was an interesting connection between that episode and january six, a curious day for your take on that . Yeah, that was one of those moments where it was just like chefs guess right, chef. It was perfect because i was trying to figure out a way to connect the Boston Marathon bombing and how disastrously things went there with january six itself. And then, lo and behold, it turns out that someone who was at the press conference who was like or rather a boston k9 officer, i was in the background of a press conference and he was caught on camera. Right. And that that image of him, pretty clean face shot showed up online. And when they sort of went to do these searches of the individuals at the capitol, they figured out who this was. He was a guy whos now been charged with attacking a Police Officer at the capitol, inside the capitol, with a chair. And its just sort of really everything together, a good way to link this up. But yeah, i think that like the Boston Marathon bombing really could have been a moment the fbi pivoted. I was watching a documentary that came out, i think earlier this year about the Boston Marathon bombing. And that was something, you know, i know that was something that the fbi learned about first via tweet, right. Like that was someone saw this come in and then thats what sort of set everything off in the the fbi is a response often got everything into gear but they really struggled with the amount of incoming evidence and videos that they were receiving. And they sort of put one of those things up and said, hey, everyone, send us everything you got here right . But then because that was sort of into a closed system and then only the fbi had that. You had these people who were trying to figure this out online, wrongly accused some people and then ultimately thats what sparked the fbi choosing to put out photos of the actual suspects, sort of basically to get the attention off of innocent people who were wrongly accused by, you know, people online. And and thats what ultimately they got a tip from a Family Member on phone. And thats what caused the arrest. But i think that you know, there wasnt the fbi does not have the capacity that they need just to organize that kind of a video behind the scenes. And, you know, i think that what they really need is basically similar to what you have on your your phone. Right. Thats think a good way to describe this is, you know, if you go if you have a photo and you go into your Iphone Icloud library and you swipe up on a photo youre going to see, hey, is this that person . And then it links it to every other person and all those videos are interconnected and like kind of simple technology. Millions of people have that in their pocket right now. But its not something that the fbi has the internal capacity or at least their tool that they do have those lines is not you know, its not a degree. But you point out, too, that the was sort of they were aware of that episode, at least some of the ones you talked to and viewed it. They knew that if they got it wrong or if they had any similar blowups with their own systems, that the fbi might write them off or might not take them seriously and sort of took it upon themselves to be thorough and accurate in a way that is, i mean, i think is borne out because the fbi still leans on them very heavily. But so how aware were they that if they there was a chance they could go very wrong and that they could damage the entire process . Yeah, i think early on, like Jon Scott Railton was one individual who really was involved in these early days and sort of, you know, setting the standard, laying out the rules and saying we do not name people publicly online, lets use these hashtags, lets do this all behind the scenes. And we did. There was over a course of probably a few months while theres still a lot of activity of this, it happens on twitter, or at least there was until more recent changes to twitter turning into x, organizing this sort of out in the public. But now you know a lot of that did for go sort of behind the scenes where youre in these these groups that are you know even though you might not know everyone thats in them or at least not publicly available to everyone in the world that these are you can have internal conversations and hey, what do you think of this . It really is sort of a peer review almost for a lot of these for a lot of these sleuths, because they can challenge their, you know, preconceived biases or challenge their if theres any, you know, errors or jumps that they made along the way that you cant really get to. And just sort of vetting it, in fact, checking it and a lot of the Little Details like, you know, ears, obviously, like i sort of mentioned freckles, tattoos, all these things are really things that really bring these over the line in addition to finding people, if theyre together, then thats something that really checks out because, you know, while one facial rec check might, you know, bring up someone whos not really there, although even then, if you can find them in d. C. , youre pretty solid or you find evidence that they were in any way in, you know, right where they were january six or january 5th or january 7th. Were coming to their venue. Whats another way of going down that line . But if you find two people together and they both have a facial rec check and then you find them in that environment on january six, and then you find them in another environment completely outside of that context, youre good to go, right, because youre not going to have two people identical who are in both environments together that is that person. So its just about sort of accumulating multiple data points seconds earlier, increase your confidence about, you know, identifying someone who might be blurry in one shot, but then or they wear a mask in one shot, but then they removed it in the next one. Exactly. With their head lady. It was actually her rings whose you know, she you know, the facial rec check was great. They went down that and they found the that was another case also where there were two together. It was her sons and then they found a bunch of images of her son when he was like a teenager. And then facial rec said that that was the same person, blah, blah, blah, go down that line. But then also just the rings that she wore like when shes reaching for the cord on pelosis laptop, you can see the rings on her finger and then you find a facebook photo of her se wearing those same rings on those same fingers. And i think it is a pinky ring or something along those lines that sort of stood out. You mentioned you mentioned airhead lady. You mentioned the hashtags and a couple other examples. Talk to me about the importance of those monikers that this list used to identify some people that maybe they were identified by their real name, maybe they havent. But why did they use those and how are they important . This is another case where i think where the fbi is aversion to controversy is really setting them back because there are still people being added to the fbi, capitol violence web and even someone like me who is deep in the weeds on this and covering this. People like us who are following this very regularly, how often do you go to the capitol . Violence, right. Right. Right. And like, they just dont pop. You cant write a story. No News Organization can write a story about number 536 added to the fbi list. If you have is this photo and you cant like say this is what this person did or the nicknames is where that comes in here with bank robbers. The fbi is comfortable doing this all the time. Theyll give somebody a nickname, even if it mocks them. Whatever, something is memorable. And because they give them a nickname, you know what that does . That result in a lot of News Coverage and no one News Coverage does gets people identified and pretty easy process here, but they havent done that in any of the january six cases. And i think its entirely just because of politics. If you gave these people nicknames, it would blow up, right . You could just gently mock them in some way and that would all of a sudden, pop, we that with the woman pink beret beret where that was something where it was only because it was sort of funny that the fbi tweeted a photo of a woman in a pink beret that that went viral. And because that went viral, somebody was standing inside of a joann fabric, standing in line with their buddy. And their buddy turns their grabs their phone and says, hey, check this out. And hes like, oh, my gosh, thats my exgirlfriend. Right . Thats what you need. Something that pops and is interesting and really gets in peoples social media feeds and thats not something thats happening really with just these sort of, you know, clean cut standard number 537 has been added to the fbi list. When you dont even know that person. Right. Youre not youre not going to hashtag 537, but you will have hashtag pippi, long scarf, hashtag ball, bald eagle with with a fun one or the sweet swedish scarf is one that comes up often. Yeah. Do you have a favorite nickname . Its tough to say. I do think bald eagle, even though it doesnt work well as a hashtag, because a lot of people are just bald eagle for actual photos of bald eagle. Its funny because he the funny part is, is this guy in this American Flag suit who is wearing the entire time, almost the entire time on january six to the rally, etc. And like while they were attacking cops, a bald eagle face mask or just full on full head mask . Yeah. And then at one point during the really when hes in there like that, he sort of think its funny and then hes like really in there during the fight. But at one point, you know, he, he takes it off and it turns out hes also bald. So it worked on two levels. I thought that was kind of a funny one, although its not the greatest hashtag in the world. But yeah, theyre, i mean, theyre definitely comedy is a big part of this and thats something that i kind of, you know, a lot of these these these clues are are have become friends and have have these sort of really fun relationships and have a lot of laughs off of it. Its a really, you know, awful day, but its just also there is a lot of it thats just so absurd and ridiculous that you cant help but laugh at some of it when you have people who are invading the us capitol who think theyre invading the white house and openly saying on camera here and touching the way its just inherently funny that wasnt right. Doug jensen well, i think you you wrote about in the book, you were there other examples of, you know, you know, writers who maybe got a lot of News Coverage, maybe we know he was part of the mob that chased Eugene Goodman up the stairs very memorable imagery. Were there were there specific cases that you chose to focus on and how did you choose which cases focus on . Of the 8000 plus that have been brought in the book . Yeah, you know, i mean, i think some of it just depended upon what was available and what were the most interesting stories. And, you know, the one i think of with that which ended up in a in a podcast that was really well done, i think was called will be wild was Danny Rodriguez the the you know, taser as he was first nicknamed, the guy who drove the stun gun in who we identified about a month before he was arrested. And he just because of the way that case played out and because there was a challenge about the miranda warning that he got and whether he was properly advised about his rights. We ended up with this video audio transcript just of him spilling his guts to the fbi and it was just fascinating. And the same thing with jensen. Right, that also came out through the court process. When you just have these Raw Materials that really give you an insight into what these people were thinking was i thought, a good way to sort of tell the story and something that you know, necessary. It wasnt necessarily something that a lot of people did a deep dive on. You know, jensen, for example, no ones reading that transcript, but i thought it was really enlightening just to hear about his his life story and how he got to this point. And really, you raises a lot of of core questions about when were in this environment where so many people believe these sort of crazy conspiracy theories, you know, whos ultimately responsible for the inevitable consequences of people believing that, you know, the election was stolen or that you know, because it just it just really does seem like one of those things that youre like. Of course, this was going to happen if people believed that just, you know, like, what else do you think theyre going to do . Do you think theyre just going to go down there and hold up a little picket sign and say, oh, gosh. And then when the election when america is ruined in their mind and, you know, they say, i got shot, oh, well, get them next time. And then, you know, do you think the next election is going to be rigged . Just you cant have a system like that where theres no trust at all in any institutions or in in just basic common sense or basic reality. And you you talk about reading some of those Court Filings, some of the transcripts that come out when you put this book. And i mean, i combed through the index to see sort of 100 pages and yeah, mean tons of it is based on your own in your own interviews your own source work over the years and your own history covering the Justice Department. A lot of it is piecing together Court Filings. The Court Transcripts from trials. We talk about the process of writing this book. How how challenging was that and how many, many Court Filings do you have to go through to piece it together . Is a lot. Yeah, i think that like the story is really just sort of sprinkled in a lot of different ways. And one of the, you know, the great things i think that the january Six Committee did, however you feel about their final report and what they decided to do in terms of basically, i think in the written report and in their public hearings, giving the fbi a pretty big pass. I think what they what was nice that they did is that they they gave all the Raw Materials over. So you can sort of read all these materials and form your own conclusions. And also, you know, i read through thousands of pages of of fbi for years that havent gotten a lot of a lot of eyeballs on the necessarily but were dumped online some for is from from doj as well and yeah i think like compiling that story and getting people to understand it more broadly how this came about, it was important i think that that it ended up the the lead up to january six ended up being, i think, more of the book than i originally had had thought. And i think thats because, you know, i thought this was such an important story and one that i think is still getting overlooked, because right now youre not having serious discussions within about what needs to change at the fbi how they could be doing better. Theres sure theres a Inspector General re investigation thats been ongoing and you know maybe well get before the three year mark but it also could be complicated by the fact that it involves Jeffrey Clarke, the former doj official who is very much at the center of a lot of this and, you know, is obviously charged in georgia and is essential to the case being brought by jack smith against donald trump. I believe that youll correct me on this is one of the coconspirators, one of the unnamed, unnamed coconspirators has acknowledged himself that he is one of the very cleared legal. So i think thats one of the things that could complicate this, because but thats you know, i think that this really does need some heat from members of congress. There was a report from the Senate Homeland Security Committee earlier this year that sort of looked at some of this. But the fbi is not prepared to face the threats that it needs to in the 21st century and is not technologically where it needs to be. It has enormous challenges on the personnel level as a normal, enormous challenges on the tech level. And thats what thats the reality that were in, like the internet is the most important thing. Right . Open source is a technology and tracing a lot of that is is the most important thing and you know as good as you can be a dna test, you know there werent running any dna tests on, you know. Oh, right, right. It was all open source video like videos where they need to be at. And thats just not the way theyre thinking of this. One of the tools that they created that really was disparaged by both every every party by ive heard it disparaged by defense attorneys, disparaged by will say members of law enforcement. And, you know, just everyone across the board was focused on, written words and focused on pdfs and sorting through that information. Thats just not what the reality is. They need really good video processing capability is just not what they going to do in that vino. One of the things you wrote about in the book to a degree was the unpreparedness that not just technologically, but there was this massive cleanup done at the capitol that removed extreme out of physical evidence because people were just sort of, what do we do next in congress . Want to come back in . They wanted to remove the evidence of the attack right away, clean up, get the building looking like the capitol again. And that led to evidence that probably crucial evidence being moved or removed that may never be recoverable or certainly wasnt. What what did you make of that . And like what what why why did you mention that in the book . I just thought it was like its one of the i completely get the instinct to just clean this up. Right. But like, that was a massive crime scene. And when you have literally the next morning, like the scaffolding company out there, like looking at the damage and then people going around with, you know, blowers, you know, like dusting all the evidence away and stirring up, all of the sort of pepper spray that had settled down. It just was that should have been much better documented and analyzed. And one the case that this came on or its come up in multiple cases, but one of them was someone threw some sort of a grenade or something into the tunnel. It was some sort of explosive device into the tunnel. And the they didnt have anything to analyze on what it was because they didnt pick up all of those pieces of materials. You would never had a situation like this. I think it was mostly because congress was like, lets clean this up. I think thats who was directing it. Fbi was, you know, not not in full control of the scene at that point, even though they probably should have been more. And there was this to like, you know, we need to get democracy back on track here. But it really did. You know, a lot of this evidence was just lost where you had people throwing things in the trashcan and cleaning up as quickly as possible that what could have been invaluable evidence. And one of the defendants was a swedish was the nickname, i think it wasnt that one of the pieces of evidence that either either was removed or it was discovered later somewhere and a trash bin somewhere. Right. Its like that. That scarf is one of only 700 in the world or something. And, and yeah. And that was actually sergeant connell, was he. He sent me some of the photos he took after the capitol attack, including, you know, the damage that was done to his hands. But he was just and he was that was the moment when he was looking for a rose and boylans id and actually found it on the ground had been, you know, sort of lost there. And thats how they actually figured out this is who and rosanne boylan, who sadly died on january six, was. But that was one of photos they snapped. And, you know, theres a bunch of weapons there, too. Right. And, you know, thats really important when youre talking about especially deadlier, dangerous weapon enhancements when it comes to that point, those evidence and what that material actually was is really essential. And thats not something you can necessarily always determine from a video you mentioned, sergeant cornell, youve talked about officer fanone, the mpd. You talked youve clearly talked to that. Youve talked to them over the years. You talk to them for this book. What they are they they know this. Lewis are they bystanders . What do they think of the of this lewis role in helping solve the crimes that were committed against them . I think in public, you know, acknowledge that hes talked to this. Lewis yeah, i think, yeah, theres some relationships here which which you know, cornell is going into all of his videos and that happened that day and, you know, really sort because he did have a body camera was the big thing with so hes really like everywhere on january six hes in so many of these fights and was assaulted so many times and he has to piece it together because the Capitol Police didnt have body cameras with with fanone. Its sort of easier. Heres my entire experience right front to back recorded. Sure, you can get other pieces of evidence from elsewhere and you know, that sort of thing. But you know, when you have someone assaulting you to your face, hes thats going to be documented right there. Face is going to be captured or a piece of their clothing is going to be captured or something about them will captured and documented. Whereas, you know. Canellos has to piece all of us together and i dont think there i dont think ill speak more broadly, not just him but i think that there is some are some frustrations about the support that theyve gotten you know, from necessarily following up with victim impact or things like, you know, theres been situations before where hes had to or you know, specifically has had to ask for, you know, to make a comment at this at this sentencing or Something Like hell youll get blindsided and ill send a tweet and then hell be like, oh, this guys get he assault, right . He was involved in this assault, you know, but they didnt know that that sentencing was happening and that sort of thing. So i mean, to really complicated sort of bureaucratic nightmare to handle all these things, i dont envy anyone whos charged with organizing this inside a really sort of antiquated system. But i mean, it just its pretty clear to me that things there needs to be a shakeup. Well, maybe this is the answer to the question. We are running out of time. But i wanted to ask you, what surprised you the most in . The course of researching this book and putting this book together . Like what did you learn that i didnt expect you . Or what was your number one takeaway . I guess after this whole massive project, one thing that really clicked for me that i dont think i really registered was how trumps efforts to sort of use the Justice Department to overturn the election really just so fundamentally overlapped with the lead up to january six. I dont know if i just sort of missed that, but, you know, these this showdown that we had in the white house where Jeffrey Clarke was supposed to be installed as attorney general or was saying he was going to take this job there, was this huge face down with all these Justice Department officials that happened on sunday night and on january third, and actually what had happened just before that was that there was an important Conference Call talking about january six. It was, i think, 1 p. M. On sunday afternoon right before the acting attorney general of the United States and the acting Deputy Attorney general of the United States got on that call they talked about how Jeffrey Clarke had just told them that he was going to take the job and that was it. Right. That he thought he was going to the acting attorney general. The United States thought he was going to be fired via tweet. The acting Deputy Attorney general of the United States went into his office, started taking things off of the wall, boxing them up, getting ready, because that was it. They thought that they were at the end of the line. So you might say that theyre a little bit distracted in the lead up to january six, especially when they just lost this critical tool that the fbi just lost, this critical tool that was monitoring all of this. Theres just a lot of chaos. And i think that that chaos had distracted, had to distract from what was happening on january six. Because just imagine, its been a late night at the white house in something that would have been something for the history books like that would have that was effectively the saturday night massacre, the same sort of deal that was like the autocracy on the line. And then, oh, what you roll into, you know, next morning, monday with, you know, in 48 hours late, like within 48 hours, theres going to be a massive attack on the capitol. Its just theres no one who could handle that sort of sort of pressure and just dealing with the bureaucracy. Youre getting hit from all sides with that. And i think that that was something that i really didnt necessarily click for me until i was sort of deep into the book is just how that really was such a distraction in these critical moments up to january six. Well, unfortunately, we have to leave it there. But a remarkable achievements, addition hunters how january six broke the justice system. Incredible book honored to read it and join you today. So thanks for thanks for doing it. Yeah, thanks for having me. It is a great and and ill see you in the courtroom soon