Staff Reports
The Capitol Riots on January 6, 2021 have been a source of contention and confusion for many Americans. With Speaker Kevin McCarthy granting Tucker Carlson access to the 14,000 hours of surveillance footage, the public is eager to learn what the videos will reveal. In the meantime, newly released bodycam footage has provided a glimpse into the events of that day.
Why hasn't the government informed the public that undercover MPD officers were chanting "our house!" and repeatedly urging protestors to advance up the northwest steps of the Capitol on January 6?
Officer 2 said someone would get shot and went up right behind Ashli Babbitt. pic.twitter.com/93xkSOSLDC
— 🇺🇸 (@FreeStateWill) February 18, 2023
Obtained through the court trial of Jan. 6 defendant William Pope from Topeka, Kansas, the recording displays uniformed officers conversing about identifying “non-uniform” agents. Furthermore, it captures a man following Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was fatally shot by Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd, and forecasting that “someone will get shot.” MPD bicycle officers also halted four plainclothes men who were armed but turned out to be law enforcement agents.
Joseph M. Hanneman of the Epoch Times reported and verified the authenticity of the videos. They were then shared on Twitter by William Pope, who goes by the handle @FreeStateWill. In Pope’s motion, he described how three MPD officers in plainclothes approached the northwest corner of the Capitol grounds at around 1:40 p.m. on January 6th. Officer 1, who filmed the event, joined in with the crowd and chanted, “Drain the swamp!” After a group of men ran past the officers toward the Capitol, Officer 2 — who was wearing a Trump beanie — commented, “Those guys are getting shot.” Officer 1 then joined in with the crowd chanting, “Whose house? Our house!” and climbed over a barricade with help from a nearby man. He then urged protesters to go toward the Capitol Building.
Officer Terry Thorne of the MPD was captured on bodycam video encouraging protesters to march towards the Capitol from Trump’s speech at 12:30 p.m. He urged them to continue the march down Constitution Avenue. In a separate video, uniformed police officers were seen providing instructions on how to identify non-uniformed police officers who were involved in the Capitol riots. Undercover officers disclosed their identification and confirmed that they were armed in another clip.
Officer Lawrence Lazewski’s bodycam footage captured him and another MPD officer discussing their belief that the police had been deliberately set up on January 6th. They expressed their opinion that they had no chance of winning and had been intentionally set up to fail.
Earlier, Pope had reported on Ray Epps and highlighted the fact that despite several protest participants being charged for pushing a Trump 2020 sign into the police, Epps has not faced any charges yet. This is despite evidence showing that Epps was trying to instigate an insurrection the night before January 6th, resulting in chants that he was a “Fed.” In a Substack post, Stephen Horn argues that this reporting, along with the case of Virginia man Fi Duong, who met with an undercover Metropolitan Police employee on the morning of January 6th, provides additional proof of the presence of agent provocateurs involved in the Capitol riots.
The federal government’s case against Enrique Tarrio and four other defendants partially relies on a document called “1776 Returns.” This document allegedly outlines the Proud Boys’ plan to travel to the Capitol on January 6th with the explicit goal of overturning the election. The document was discovered in the possession of Tarrio’s girlfriend and appears to have originated from the intelligence community. It was sent to Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio at the government’s request shortly before January 6th, possibly to frame or implicate him in a government-sponsored scheme to storm buildings near the Capitol. The document has links to Samuel Armes, a cryptocurrency trader in Florida with significant ties to the U.S.
The preceding article is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Trending Politics
