By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
A FORMER January 6th prisoner has called for judges and prosecutors involved in the US J6 convictions to be impeached and prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.
John Strand, a Los Angeles artist and film and documentary maker, was among the 1600 J6 prisoners recently pardoned by President Trump. Strand says every one of those “cases” was reviewed by the new administration and almost all were found to be tainted by egregious violations of due process.
The stories now emerging paint a picture of an organised campaign of criminal judicial abuse to vilify and destroy some of Trump’s most active political supporters.
But the media, that played a crucial part in this campaign by repeatedly airing the most violent minutes of the event and labeling it a “an attempt by a violent mob to overthrow the US government”, is maintaining its efforts to vilify those involved.
National Public Radio (NPR) for instance, reported on 11 J6 prisoners among those pardoned with serious criminal records. These 11 were among “dozens of defendants with prior convictions or pending charges for crimes including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking.”
One might be tempted to ask how and why people with such serious criminal records ended up in a political protest infiltrated by provocateurs. Were they perhaps paid or coerced to be there?
Strand was in Washington DC on January 6th with Dr Simone Gould of LA, who was booked to speak on a platform with Congressmen. He would record her speech and act as security. They were among the hundreds of thousands of people at the massive prayer rally and protest called by Trump after he and numerous other election observers suspected a giant vote rigging operation.
Strand and Gould were standing on the Capitol steps trying to find the platform where she was to speak, but were suddenly set upon by police and caught up in the chaotic scene as rubber bullets were fired and flash bangs set off.
A short time time later the Capitol building doors were opened from the inside and people began to stream inside as police looked on. Dr Gould and Strang were among the hundreds who simply walked inside, peacefully.
But a small violent group had only moments before smashed ground-floor windows. Others fought with seriously outnumbered Capitol Police on a number of fronts as the crowd surged into the Capitol grounds and then the building.
The January 6th investigation committee video focused on the clashes between police and the small group of militants infiltrated by at least 40 FBI “informants” – as later admitted by the Department of Justice but who told fact-checkers that none of them were “directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts.” Oh we’re sure that would be the case, wink, wink, nod, nod.
“There were absolutely agents provocateurs,” Strand told online presenter Shannon Joy. “For example there’s a case where a federal prosecutor acknowledged that term in a court document – up to 40 agent provocateurs in the crowd – that was an admission from Garland and Greaves’ DOJ.”
The FBI field office at DC during January 6th was also overseen by one Steven M. D’Antuono, who some months before being transferred to DC was the field officer in charge of a scandalous entrapment event, the false flag kidnapping plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
Twelve days after J6, on Martin Luther King Day, Strand received the shock of his life when an FBI SWAT team assaulted his home, smashing in his front door and pinning him on the floor with laser gun sights focused on his chest.
“I could literally smell the body odour of the agents because of the adrenalin pumping as if they were expecting violent drug lords to fire back at them and kill them. This is in downtown Beverley Hills on a Monday morning.
“I’m sitting there on a conference call, working … it was insane and honestly very traumatic, very damaging those weaponized FBI raids. They have caused death from miscarriages and much other trauma to many, many other people.”
He was then “disappeared” four four days without being informed as to what was happening. He was denied legal aid or contact with anyone. He didn’t know where he was. Dr Gould hired a private investigator who eventually located him and forced the issue with authorities to get him bonded out.
“It’s obscene, totally illegitimate. This is what happens in banana republics,” he said. “They didn’t say anything except stand over here. I was treated like a rabid animal. I was told nothing. It’s terrifying and then after I got out I realised they’re charging me as part of some domestic terrorism group.”
Strand later rejected a plea deal offered to him by prosecutors. He, like many other Jsixers, was threatened with being charged with a 20-year felony involving obstruction of justice, and tampering with a witness or informant. The “golden handshake” was to simply to enter a guilty plea to lesser charges.
The law the Jsixers were threatened with was drawn up during the George W. Bush presidency in the wake of the Enron scandal, and designed specifically for bad corporate actors . Bush, when the law was passed, specified that it must never be used against political protesters, but that is exactly what US Attorney General Merrick Garland used it for.
Strand was sentenced to 32 months in prison for being present at the J6, held for a year in Florida Federal Prison then had his charges dismissed on appeal to the US Supreme Court.
He said the prosecutors lied during his trial, altered and cherry-picked evidence. Jason Manning the prosecutor in Strand’s trial, who recently blabbered to MSNBC about his “proud record”, presented a photo of a hand being raised in the J6 crowd and said it was Strand’s and it proved he was “a violent aggressor”.
“My hands were in black gloves the entire day. It was obviously not my hand. The jury was unbelievably biased. They could have just said ‘he was in that mob, throw him in prison, yes please’,” said Strand.
He described the next four years as “hell on earth for J6 protesters”. In his case he was set up, framed, assaulted, attacked, defamed, charged, put through a meat grinder and convicted. “Many people would have protested their innocence and had a trial, with a mix of jurors, but in so many ways their Constitutional right obliterated.”
Strand and several other organisations are seeking justice for the J6 judicial abuses. “We advocate strongly that every angle of what happened on J6 must be investigated,” he said.
“It’s crucial that we not let this go. There needs to be restorative justice to the victims and the damage to our Constitution. It’s not sustainable if we don’t have a reckoning to correct this.”
A ground-level video of the event can be viewed on Rumble at https://rumble.com/vi0ye9-righting-history-the-journalistic-battle-of-january-6th.html. Early parts of the video show Ashli Babbit, the woman shot dead on the day in the Capitol Building.
The start of the push against the barrier to the Capitol grounds also clearly reveals the actions of a provocateur in a light blue denim jacket and red MAGA hat (3min 43 mark) and his handler Ray Epps, the tall man in the military camoflague fatigues.
Several other people dressed in all black suddenly initiate a push against a barrier manned by about five Capitol police who put up a fight but are hopelessly outnumbered and forced to retreat as other people simply walk around them.
There is clearly a mixture of anger and elation in the surging crowd – anger over the widely perceived election cheating and elation that so many people have attended the rally and are making their voices heard in a march to the Capitol.
The objective of the protest is to make Vice President Mike Pence aware that they don’t want the election certified and the disputed electoral college votes sent back to the states for review. Some constitutional advice is that this is possible although it is controversial. Pence had no intention of doing it.
More than seven minutes into the advance on the Capitol grounds, most people are simply milling around. There is no violence, just shouting, flag and banner waving. But the militant few keep shouting “go, go, go” while thousands of other protesters quite calmly follow on behind.
At the 8min31 mark the person making the video comments: “Hey, you know what, they’ve had this set up for this. They did. There’s no way they did this. They set this up for us.” The following footage shows the beginning of the provocation as police, still outnumbered but in riot gear, face up with the worst of the protesters.
One, who is red-circled in the video, came well prepared with a quality video camera and wearing a protective full face mask sealed against tear gas. One of the front-liners pushes a cop and a brief melee ensues.
By 1.25pm the large crowd, mostly peaceful, is still milling around the front of the Capitol. And then suddenly flash bang grenades and tear gas are thrown into the crowd, hitting one man not far from the camera man. His trousers catch fire.
The crowd however is still largely peaceful although some are protesting loudly about the incident. A man named Kevin Greeson is seen being carried and apparently suffers a heart attack and dies despite desperate CPR attempts by a woman. Capitol police ignore pleas for help. The man is carried away on a makeshift stretcher but the mace and tear gas attacks continue. The large crowd remains stationary.
Rubber bullets are fired into the crowd and one man appears with a bloody hole in his cheek. As he retreats and people urge him to get treatment, massive spray of mace is shot over the crowd. Capitol cops, despite their low numbers, appear to be acting quite provocatively.
One of the documentary makers with a microphone is coughing from the tear gas and telling someone else that he identified Antifa people amidst the action. Some among the crowd chant USA! USA! A man attempting to climb a staircase up to the Capitol is pushed and falls several metres. He is stretchered away with police help but later dies.
“We’re going inside,” says someone. By this time the crowd is still largely peaceful and gathered on the front steps of the Capitol. More temporary barriers are breached and more protesters surge onwards. And then a small group appears and start smashing windows. Other protesters attempt to stop them, shouting “Occupy but not destroy. Do not break anything.”
In another clip seen by Cairns News, one of those attempting to stop a window smasher is head-butted and punched by the well-built vandal and forced to retreat. Concurrently the police open the main Capital doors and people stream in.
Capital police suddenly change tactics from aggression to conciliation, offering to talk with protesters if they sit down quietly. The famous horned “wild man” Jacob Chansley shouts out “we have the right to peacefully assemble”. There are repeated calls to stop violence but a hardcore group seem intent to stir it up.
Chansley is later escorted around the building but further confrontation ensues as protestors attempt to smash through glass doors and gain entry to the Speaker’s office. A police pistol appears from around a corner and Ashli Babbit is fatally shot in the head.
Chansley is portrayed in media as the “wild man of the insurrection” but the fact that he is escorted around the building, even praying at times, is totally ignored by media. They also lie, accusing demonstrators of killing a policeman with a fire extinguisher. The policeman had a heart attack.
But this is also the entrapment operation. All people entering the building are caught on cameras and matched with geofencing data from their mobile phones. The crowd was quite cleverly played and then demonized as a violent mob by media and both Democrat and Republican politicians.
