The Broken Men

Stewart Rhodes gets 18 years - now let’s see justice for the plotters of the Insurrection

As you know, I feel it is critical we take a moment to acknowledge the wins.

Oath Keepers’ leader Stewart Rhodes received an 18-year sentence for his role in the plot to try to keep Trump in power.

It’s been more than a decade since any American received a sentence for seditious conspiracy

“What we absolutely cannot have is a group of citizens who – because they did not like the outcome of an election, who did not believe the law was followed as it should be – foment revolution,” said Judge Amit Mehta, as he handed down the sentence.

“Once again, we see another horrible, sad, broken man, filled with conspiracies, gaslighting, and lies - this one an opportunist - whose life has been ruined and ruined the lives of others. Those who would make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. And now, Rhodes will pay for the atrocities he has committed,” said OSINT investigator Josh Fidel, aka my podcast partner HiFi. “When will the people who feed heads full of those absurdities and pointed people at the Capitol on January 6 be held to account?“

By people, I would name Donald Trump, who led the violent Insurrection, and his allies in the White House in the days that preceded the violence who plotted the attempted coup. And those very same people who schemed and deployed the conspiracies that brought people in the thousands to the Capitol, many with a violent intent, many chanting to hang the vice president.

Yesterday, Capital police officer Harry Dunn thanked my other podcast partner Jim Stewartson for his kind words about his service on that day. Dunn, ever since he helped save our Republic, has been the target of online hate terrorists. It’s been relentless. If you listened to him during the January 6 hearings, you will recall his painful words. Here is what I wrote about that day:

The last to speak was Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer, who asked for a moment of silence to pay respect to Brian Sicknick, an officer killed by the mob. 

After telling the crowd he voted for Biden, he described a woman in a pink MAGA shirt, who “yelled, ‘You hear that guys? This n***er voted for Joe Biden.’ Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming, ‘Boo, fucking n***er.’ No one had ever, ever called me a n***er while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer.”

He described the “words as weapons.”

That Dunn endures ongoing online abuse is un-American, and should never be accepted as just the way things are. I demand decency, and that will only happen when those inflaming the ugly are held to account.

Stewart Rhodes’ stiff sentence is important.

Judge Mehta determined Rhodes posed an “ongoing threat and peril to our democracy” and said that “we all now hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. Will we have another January 6 again?”

There is little doubt we are seeing the chaos and destabilization events that would lead to the next attempt. I see the rhetoric around the GOP election as causing chaos and destabilization.

Mehta called “seditious conspiracy… among the most serious crimes an American can commit.” He said: “It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country.”

Last week, Mehta called Rhodes’ actions “domestic terrorism.”

As we know from our ‘Speakeasy’ with Jason Van Tatenhove, who wrote the book ‘Perils of Extremism’ about his time as a propagandist for the Oath Keepers, men who gravitate toward these movements are often trying to fix something broken inside. They are prey for the traitors who are plotting and scheming ways to destroy America from the inside.

As Van Tatenhove wrote:

“I had underestimated Stewart’s reach and influence. He had helped bring our country to the point of violent insurrection and an attempted violent coup… Stewart had always sprinkled the coming civil war into the messaging, but I had always made the mistake of dismissing such rhetoric.

“That was a mistake I will no longer make. Now is the time for those of us who do not want to see the futures of our children and grandchildren become dystopian to take real action. Things have gone too far.”

This sentence is real action.

But I will not rest until I see action taken against those who instigated the plot that led to the violence. These very same men are suing my colleagues to try to silence truth. As Benjamin Franklin wrote:

“Whoever would overthrow liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

I only know this because I live in a community that cherishes such notions, so much so, that you find these words painted on utility boxes. I live in a neighborhood that has the first amendment painted on the side of an entire building. I live in a blue state. We cherish our freedoms, but we also try to prevent our freedoms from being weaponized against us.

Rhodes son said that if the coup had succeeded, his father would be answering to disgraced retired general Mike Flynn and mercenary Erik Prince, who was just indicted in Austria for arming a Libyan warlord.

Now that many high-level violent, broken men, who worked under the plotters and schemers of the January 6 Insurrection have now been deemed domestic terrorists and are facing severe consequences for their seditious conspiracy, it is only right the American people demand those who set these plots in motion also face severe consequences.

It would be un-American to do otherwise.

They represent a clear and present danger to not only the US but to the global democratic world order.

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