“The Real Story of January 6,” a documentary by The Epoch Times, reveals the truth that has been hidden from the American people. While a narrative has been set that what took place that day was an insurrection, key events and witnesses have been ignored until now. The documentary takes an unvarnished look at police use of force and the deaths that resulted in some measure from it. The film asks tough questions about who was responsible for the chaos that day. With compelling interviews and exclusive video footage, the documentary tells the real story of January 6. The film is narrated by Joshua Philipp, host of “Crossroads” on EpochTV and a senior investigative reporter at The Epoch Times.
Jasper Fakkert, editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, said: “There has been a narrative perpetuated about January 6 that omits many of the facts about what happened that day.
“With in-depth interviews and exclusive video footage, we take an objective look at the issues, the people, and the impacts of the events.”
The film takes a close look at the shooting of 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt and the deaths of three other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. It analyzes the police response to the massive crowds and use of force around the U.S. Capitol.
It examines the human impacts of Jan. 6, including the suicide of one defendant and the long pretrial imprisonment of dozens of others. It also investigates claims that some attacks on the Capitol and police were carried out by unindicted suspicious actors.
This film takes audiences on a cinematic journey around the world, from the depths of the Amazon rainforests to the Taiwanese Mountains, the Mongolian desert, the US Dust Bowl, the Norwegian Fjords and the Scottish coastlines, telling the story of our planet through shocking testimonials, poignant accounts from indigenous people most affected by our ever-changing planet, globally renowned figures and leading scientists. This powerful documentary sends a simple but impactful message by uncovering hard truths and addressing, on the big screen, the most pressing issue of our generation – ecological collapse.
Confronting and entertaining, this documentary allows audiences to question their everyday choices, industry leaders and governments. Featuring a wealth of world-renowned contributors, including Sir Richard Branson and Tony Robbins, it has a message of hope that will empower audiences.
So much basic scientific data and so many best practices and ethical standards in public health were abandoned during the Covid pandemic, it would be difficult to list them all.
Nevertheless, we must remember just how much reality has been warped since March 2020 and try to understand how that warping occurred. Maybe if we understand what happened, we can prevent it from happening again. Maybe we can unwarp the narrative enough so that more people can see clearly what went wrong.
For my own sanity, I need to understand what happened, so I can come to terms with why people behaved the way they did, and why so many of my own assumptions were shattered during the pandemic.
I want to know why real science got thrown out as misinformation, propaganda turned into absolute truth, the free press morphed into a government mouthpiece, and supposedly liberal and scientific institutions abandoned ethical standards and critical thought to impose zero-evidence, zero-Covid authoritarian lockdowns and mandates.
How did my family, friends and neighbors – who I thought shared my liberal, humanist values – turn into a group-thinking, bullying herd? What forces were exerted to erase scientific and intellectual integrity from the minds of literally millions of doctors, scientists, economists, journalists, educators and other normally curious and compassionate people worldwide?
To answer these questions, I am less interested in an exact timeline than in a story that makes sense of seemingly senseless behaviors. I am also less interested in the culpability of specific individuals than in an examination of the factors – psychological, social, historical, political – that drove those behaviors.
Overall, I believe four extremely powerful forces converged catastrophically to initiate, and then perpetuate, the snowball that became the avalanche of Covid insanity. And by insanity, I mean the imposition of unprecedented, untested and predictably unsuccessful – not to mention horrifically damaging – pandemic containment measures.
Those four forces were: panic, politics, propaganda, and profits.
Panic
I believe pandemic panic was driven from above – from the highest echelons of the most powerful governments – and below – within populations primed for disaster and perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Panic from above: it had to be a lab leak
The stratospheric level of panic unleashed over a virus of relatively low lethality (estimated overall infection fatality rate <0.2%) has always seemed wildly disproportionate to me. When previous, muchmore lethal viruses were discovered in various populations, nothing near the level of Covid hysteria happened.
I therefore surmise that, at the onset of the Covid pandemic, there was a spark of panic from a very powerful place that ignited the fear already smoldering in the population.
Much has been written about the lab leak hypothesis in terms of detailed timelines and specific people involved. To me, the most compelling argument in its favor is psychological: Without the lab leak there would be insufficient momentum to fuel such a juggernaut of global panic, causing scientists and public health experts to abandon everything they knew about respiratory viruses, and leading democratic governments to adopt Chinese-inspired authoritarian policies.
Specifically, the Wuhan lab leak makes sense as the source of initial panic because the research conducted there is highly sensitive and controversial. It involves EPPPs – enhanced pandemic potential pathogens – viruses engineered to be very contagious so their spread can be studied in animal models. Interest in this type of research comes not just from the virology and epidemiology fields, but also from national security and intelligence agencies focused on bioterrorism.
If both public health and intelligence officials knew, or suspected, that a virus had leaked from a lab studying EPPPs, there would be huge levels of apprehension, not to say hysteria, in that group, even if initial data showed, as it did, that the virus was not very dangerous to most people and affected mostly those over 65 with multiple underlying conditions.
If the virus was intentionally engineered for its pandemic-causing potential, it could be way more dangerous than just any old pathogen jumping from animals to humans. Who knew how an engineered virus would evolve? How much more virulent could it become? Intelligence and national security officials, in particular, might push for a maximal response without reference to standard epidemiologic or public health protocols.
In fact, it is almost impossible to explain the drastic abandoning of everything scientists and public health practitioners knew and believed about flu-like pandemics, without adding to the equation the terrifying unknown of what an engineered pathogen might do.
And to top off the panic palooza, if and when the truth of the virus’s origins came out, those involved with the EPPP research, already riddled with safety concerns, would be blamed. Major international and diplomatic crises could ensue.
Further strengthening this hypothesis is the fact that the countries with the strictest and most prolonged lockdowns, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, were all members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, along with the US and UK. It makes sense that precisely those countries sharing the earliest and most detailed intelligence about the lab leak felt not only justified, but compelled, to carry out the strictest lockdowns.
All of this leads me to conclude that a small group of top intelligence and public health officials, fearing a catastrophically deadly engineered virus had been released (regardless of its observed effects in the real world), convinced themselves, their governments, and in turn their populations (without publicly revealing the virus’ origin) that the strictest containment measures were needed or else millions would die.
Panic, then, became not just a reaction to the virus but, in the minds of those instigators, a necessary state in which to hold the population in order to elicit maximum compliance with containment measures. As inertia set in following the big initial push, panic and compliance became not just means for supposedly ending the pandemic but goals in and of themselves.
Scientists and media enlisted in panic campaign
All major media outlets, including the billionaire owners of the largest social media platforms, were likely asked by panicked government officials for their help in supporting draconian virus-suppressing measures. It seems likely, based on the strict adherence to the panic narrative, that guidelines were disseminated as to how the pandemic should be discussed, warning that any deviation therefrom would lead to countless unnecessary deaths. The threat of the virus could not be overstated. Questioning anti-virus measures was taboo.
Although prominent epidemiologists and public health experts outside the inner circle tried to publicize alternative, more realistic scenarios, based on data already gathered about the virus’s actual fatality rates, I believe the government’s allies in academia – some perhaps apprised of the EPPP situation, some politically motivated and/or petrified by the propaganda (as discussed below) – brutally silenced any discussion or debate.
Panic from below: the madness of crowds
The US population was primed to react strongly when massive panic from above was unleashed upon it. Covid fears had already been building since early 2020, with the proliferation of terrifying videos and reports of people falling dead in China’s streets from a hitherto unknown virus. We now know these videos were most likely fake and related to the Chinese propaganda campaign discussed later in this article. But at the time, they went viral, fomenting fear of the new virus.
Even before that, in the years leading up to the pandemic, especially in liberal coastal cities, a culture of hyper safety and risk aversion had taken hold. It was a perfect setup – in addition to the strong political forces acting on the very same populations (as described below) – for pandemic hysteria to proliferate even more virulently than the pathogen that prompted it.
Once large socioeconomically and politically homogeneous groups embraced the panic, as Gigi Foster, Paul Frijters and Michael Baker so cogently explain, herd mentality, or the madness of crowds, took over. To this day, the crowd madness continues to block any critical analysis or questioning of Covid policies in these groups.
Politics
If the pandemic had not happened during the Trump presidency, the panic from above and below might not have garnered enough scientific and media buy-in to turn the entire Democratic Party, as well as other self-regarding liberal governments around the world, into mirror images of totalitarian authorities they so often decried.
Trump was considered by the politically left-leaning coastal elites in the US (myself included!), and their allies around the world, to be a menace the likes of which had never been elected before, and a clear and present danger to the very foundations of democracy. For over three years, these groups, largely controlling the mainstream marketplace of ideas, spent much of their time ridiculing, lambasting and whipping up fear of Trump’s incompetence and nefarious intentions.
Like many others on all sides of the political spectrum, I believe criticism of Trump was largely justified. However, for many Democrats, Trump hatred went beyond rational debate and came to dominate not just the discourse but the very identity of the party, fostering a self-righteous superiority complex displayed through ritualistic virtue signaling, and engendering the apt label “Trump derangement syndrome.” The derangement part was the turning of anti-Trumpism into a self-identifying obsession and singular standard of virtue, to the exclusion of any objective examination of Trump’s words or deeds.
Anything Trump said, the anti-Trump camp felt it their civic and moral duty not just to proclaim, but to deeply believe, the opposite.
When it came to the pandemic, this meant that:
If Trump warned that prolonged lockdowns would wreck the economy, left-leaning economists derided anyone who, as they myopically contended, put economic concerns over human life.
If Trump claimed children were immune to the virus, every Democrat was convinced it would kill their own children and everyone else’s, and that schools should be closed indefinitely.
If Trump said masks don’t work, doctors who for years had known masks to be useless at blocking transmission of flu-like viruses, now believed masks should be mandated everywhere forever.
If Trump suggested that the virus came from a lab in China, editorial boards at major newspapers believed this must be a racist smear which should never ever be entertained, let alone investigated.
And, in my personal life, if I tried to share data showing Covid was not very lethal or that mask mandates did not work, instead of discussing the merits of the data, my friends (who knew very well my ultra-leftie politics and socialist worldview) would turn to me in horror and ask: “Are you a Trumpist?”
Thus was Trump derangement syndrome seamlessly transmuted into Covid derangement syndrome. All the rage directed at Trump was redirected toward anyone who, like Trump, dared to doubt its deadliness or question the authoritarian measures used to fight it.
To top it all off, the pandemic happened during an election year. So Trump hatred and pandemic hysteria were effectively bundled together to get Trump voted out and Biden, a Democrat more aligned with the public health establishment, in. Subsequently, anyone elected on a pro-lockdown, zero-Covid agenda was incentivized to continue advocating for the strictest measures for as long as possible.
Although they knew from the experience of past epidemics, and from basic epidemiologic science, that it is not possible to stop the spread of a flu-like virus once it has seeded itself throughout a global population, I think public health and national security officials – especially those in the lab leak group, as described above – desperately wanted to believe that the Chinese measures were working. After all, nothing like that had ever been tried before. If China said it was working for them, maybe it would work everywhere else. It had to work. Otherwise, they feared, millions of people would die and they would be blamed.
Even as months and years passed, and the virus continued to infect every population in every other country, the world continued to believe China’s zero Covid reports. In fact, the scientifically and medically nonsensical “zero-Covid” goal became the mantra for the authorities imposing Chinese-style virus containment measures everywhere else.
Scientists and media successfully propagandized
One very influential part of the effort to freak the world out about Covid was the early modeling provided by the Imperial College of London in early 2020. Not coincidentally, as proudly declared on its own website, Imperial College is one of China’s top academic and research partners in England.
A scientific and journalistic consensus quickly coalesced around these models and the necessity for the zero-Covid measures they supposedly proved. As mentioned above, dissenting views were silenced, but they were also a small minority. The toxic confluence of panic, politics and propaganda worked like an anti-truth potion to preclude even the possibility that someone would think, let alone publicize, anything suggesting it wasn’t as bad as everyone – the Chinese, the US government, the leading newspapers and scientific journals – said it was.
Profits
President Biden took office just as Covid vaccines became available. This was supposed to be the beginning of the end of lockdowns and a return to normal.
Alas, at this point so many profit-driven interests had piled onto the zero-Covid train, that it continued to hurtle forth at unstoppable speeds.
The nonsensical, non-scientific zero-Covid measures that had begun from a place of mortal panic, spread through political polarization, and amplified by Chinese propaganda, now generated unprecedented profits for anyone who made anything related to the pandemic.
As far as these money interests are concerned, the pandemic might as well go on forever.
In assessing the potential influence of profits on the indefinite continuation of the state of Covid emergency, the numbers speak for themselves. Here are just a few of the jaw-dropping reports on the beneficiaries from never-ending Covid:
Big Tech
In October 2021 the New York Times reported: “In the last year, the five tech superpowers — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook — had combined revenue of more than $1.2 trillion. … some of the companies are growing faster and are more profitable than they have been in years.”
Test Makers and Sellers
In January 2022 CBS reported “Windfall profits for test makers,” including Abbott Laboratories ($1.9 billion in third-quarter sales related to COVID-19 testing, up 48% compared to the year-ago period). Other beneficiaries with skyrocketing profits were labs that process PCR tests and drugstore chains like CVS and Walgreens.
Vaccines
In February 2022 The Guardian reported that Pfizer made nearly $37 billion in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine in 2021 – making it one of the most lucrative products in history. Pfizer’s overall revenues in 2021 doubled to $81.3 billion, and it expects to make record revenues of $98 – $102 billion this year.
Billionaires
In January 2022 OxFam reported: “The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty.”
“If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet. They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.”
Conclusion
An engineered pandemic potential pathogen leaked from a high-security US-funded lab in Wuhan long before it was acknowledged by China. By the time it became known, it was too late to contain.
Having outlined the cataclysmic convergence of forces I believe came together to create the Covid catastrophe, I now have a Covid story that makes sense to me:
When they found out, top US intelligence and public health officials affiliated with the Wuhan research panicked, fearing millions of deaths, international mayhem and personal culpability. This caused them to disregard real-world data about the virus and to abandon basic epidemiological principles and best practices in public health.
The Chinese authorities adopted scientifically nonsensical zero-Covid policies not because they thought they would work but to deflect attention from China’s role in the viral leak and coverup. In a brilliant propaganda coup, they turned the pandemic into a celebration of their authoritarian measures, convincing the world to follow their example.
All Democrats in the US and their allies elsewhere reflexively and uncritically favored all the policies that President Trump – viewed as their mortal enemy – opposed. These were the very same scientifically bogus policies that the panicked officials and Chinese propagandists were pushing.
Many who controlled the narrative in media, academia, public health and medicine were particularly susceptible to panic, politicization of the pandemic, and Chinese propaganda, which all came together to induce widespread groupthink and herd behavior. As cogently explained inThe Great Covid Panic, such behavior is detached from logical reasoning and the ability to objectively evaluate reality.
Major industries and individuals with enormous wealth and influence saw huge gains from the pandemic. It was, and still is, in their best interests to push for more testing, more treating, more vaccinating, more remote work and learning, more online shopping, and more of everything else pandemic-related.
Although terrifying and depressing to the extreme, this story helps me understand how so many people’s views of data, science, truth, ethics and compassion became so warped. I hope the telling will at least help a little with the unwarping.
new scientific study entitled “Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA vaccination in randomized trials” provides the best evidence yet concerning the safety of the mRNA Covid vaccines. For most vaccines in common use, benefits far outweigh risks, but that may not be the case for the mRNA covid vaccines, according to this study by Joseph Fraiman and his colleagues. It depends on your age and medical history.
The randomized controlled clinical trial is the gold standard of scientific evidence. When regulators approved the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines for emergency use in December 2020, tworandomized trials showed that the vaccines reduced symptomatic covid infection by over 90% during the first few months after the second dose.
Pfizer and Moderna did not design the trials to evaluate long-term efficacy or the more important outcomes of preventing hospitalization, death, or transmission.
The randomized trials did collect adverse event data, including the presence of mild symptoms (such as fever) and more serious events requiring hospitalization or leading to death. Most vaccines generate some mild adverse reactions in some people, and there were considerably more adverse such reactions after the mRNA vaccines compared to the placebo.
That is annoying but not a major issue. We care about severe health outcomes. The key question is whether the vaccine’s efficacy outweighs the risks of severe adverse reactions.
The Fraiman study uses data from the same Pfizer and Moderna-sponsored randomized trials presented to the FDA for vaccine approval, but with two innovations that provide additional information.
First, the study pools data from both mRNA vaccines to increase the sample size, which decreases the confidence intervals’ size and the uncertainty about the estimated harms.
Second, the study focuses only on the severe adverse events plausibly due to the vaccines. Serious adverse events such as gunshot wounds, suicide, animal bites, foot fractures, and back injury are unlikely to be due to a vaccine, and cancer is unlikely to be due to a vaccine within a few months after vaccination. By removing such random noise, the ability (statistical power) to detect genuine problems increases. If there is no excess risk, shorter confidence intervals bolster confidence in the safety of the vaccines.
Classifying adverse events into the two groups is not a trivial task, but Fraiman et al. do an excellent job to avoid bias. They rely on the pre-defined Brighton Collaboration definitions of adverse events of special interest (AESI). Founded in 2000, the Brighton Collaboration has two decades of experience using rigorous science to define clinical outcomes for vaccine safety studies.
Moreover, Fraiman and colleagues blinded the process where they classified the clinical events as AESIs. Adjudicators did not know whether the individual had received the vaccine or the placebo. Hence, any criticism of so-called p-hacking is unwarranted.
So, what are the results? There were 139 AESIs among the 33,986 people vaccinated, one for every 244 people. That may sound bad, but those numbers mean nothing without comparison against a control group. There were 97 AESIs among the 33,951 people who received a placebo. Combining these numbers implies 12.5 vaccine-induced AESIs for every 10,000 people vaccinated, with a 95% confidence interval of 2.1 to 22.9 per 10,000 people. To phrase it differently, there is one additional AESI for every 800 people vaccinated (95% CI: 437-4762).
That is very high for a vaccine. No other vaccine on the market comes close.
The numbers for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 10 and 15 additional events per 10,000 people, respectively, so both vaccines contributed to the finding. The numbers are similar enough that we cannot confidently say that one is safer than the other. Most excess AESIs were coagulation disorders. For the Pfizer vaccine, there was also an excess of cardiovascular AESIs.
While these safety results are concerning, we must not forget the other side of the equation. Unfortunately, the study does not calculate composite estimates that also included the reduction in serious covid infections, but we have such estimates for mortality.
Dr. Christine Benn and her colleagues calculated a combined estimate of the effect of vaccination on all-cause mortality using the same randomized trial data as Fraiman et al. They did not find a mortality reduction for the mRNA vaccines (relative risk 1.03, 95% CI: 0.63-1.71).
One important limitation of both Fraiman’s and Benn’s studies is that they do not distinguish the adverse reactions by age, comorbidities, or medical history. That is not their fault. Pfizer and Moderna have not released that information, so outside researchers do not have access.
We know that the vaccine benefits are not equally distributed among people since covid mortality is more than a thousand times higher among the old. Thus, risk-benefit calculations must be done separately for different groups: with and without prior covid infection, by age, and for the first two doses versus boosters.
Covid-recovered people have natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. So, the benefit of vaccination is – at best – minimal. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as in the randomized trials, there is a negative risk-benefit difference. Why are we mandating people in this group to be vaccinated? It is both unethical and damaging to public health.
While everyone can get infected, children have a minuscule risk of covid mortality. There is very limited safety data from the trials on children. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as for adults, the harms outweigh the risks. Children should not receive these vaccines.
Older people above 70 have a much higher risk of covid mortality than the population in the Fraiman study. If their risk of adverse reaction is the same, then the benefits outweigh the harms. Hence, older people who have never had covid and are not yet vaccinated may benefit from these vaccines. However, we do not know if they are better than the Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca vaccines.
It is unclear from the clinical trial data whether the benefits outweigh the risks for working-age adults who have not been vaccinated and who have not already had covid. This is true both historically, for the original covid variants, and currently for the newer ones.
The Fraiman study analyzes data after the first and second doses. Both risks and benefits may differ for booster shots, but no randomized trial has properly evaluated the trade-off.
These results concern only the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Fraiman et al. did not analyze data on the adenovirus-vector vaccines marketed by Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca. Benn et al. found that they reduced all-cause mortality (RR=0.37, 95% CI:0.19-0.70), but nobody has used trial data to analyze AESIs for these vaccines.
Critically, the Fraiman and Benn studies had a follow-up of only a few months after the second dose because Pfizer and Moderna, unfortunately, terminated their randomized trials a few months after receiving emergency use authorization. Of course, a longer-term benefit can provide a basis to tolerate negative or neutral short-term risk-benefit differences. However, that is unlikely since we know from observationalstudies that mRNA vaccine efficacy deteriorates a few months after the second dose.
There may also be long-term adverse reactions to the vaccine regarding which we do not yet know. Since the randomized trials ended early, we must look at observational data to answer that question. The publicly available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is of low quality, with both under- and over-reporting. The best observational data is from CDCs Vaccine Safety Datalink(VSD) and FDA’s Biologics and Effectiveness Safety System (BEST), but there have only been limited reports from these systems.
Fraiman and colleagues have produced the best evidence yet regarding the overall safety of the mRNA vaccines. The results are concerning. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and FDA to ensure that benefits outweigh harms. They have failed to do so.
A German journalist living in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region has been criminally charged by the German government for interviewing Ukrainian citizens and reporting her findings.
Independent reporter, 28-year-old Alina Lipp, moved to the Donbas area six months ago, where she transmits first-hand information to her audience in German, Russian, and English from her telegram channel.
Lipp claims she is only doing what any journalist would do — interviewing citizens and documenting what is happening around her.
The journalist explained she is “doing interviews with people in Donetsk and merely translating them into German.”
“I am simply filming everything I see around,” Lipp added.
She inquired rhetorically “what is it that’s illegal in that, or dangerous?”
The controversy around Lipp began in March when one of her videos explaining the history and the context of the war went viral.
In Lipp’s viral video, she said, “you need to understand that Russia has been asking for eight years that the Minsk agreement be upheld. Ukraine did not adhere to it, nor did they approach the Donbas region in an attempt to come to agreement.”
“Instead, they have been bombing the outskirts of the Donbas region for eight years. They are shooting at civilians, who now also have to live in completely shot-up houses. Very many people have died here,” Lipp continued.
In the video, Lipp alleged that the Donbas citizens who overwhelmingly voted to secede from Ukraine in 2014 had been, “thankful that Russia finally did something”.
Lip added, “Finally, the people here have been liberated from the terror that they’ve been experiencing for the last eight years,” under continuous shelling by the Ukrainian military.
Soon after the video went viral, Lipp’s YouTube channel was closed, her PayPal account was blocked, and the Ukrainian government labeled her a “terrorist”.
Uninformed Consent is an in depth look into the Covid 19 narrative, who’s controlling it and how it’s being used to inject an untested, new technology, into almost every person on the planet. This film explores our recent loss of human rights while weaving in the devastating impact of mandates and the deeply powerful story of one man’s loss. Hear the truth from doctors and scientists unafraid to stand up against Big Pharma and the Elite Class who profit from these mandates.
What were the results of the experimentation and practice of social engineering and mind-control during the Cold War? When Project Paperclip was ushered into the United States, coinciding with the inception of the CIA and the National Security Act, Nazi research and trauma based mind-control experiments were brought to the US, initiating Project MK ULTRA. These secret projects were funded through arms deals, drug operations, human trafficking and human slavery.
The ultimate goal behind this hidden agenda was to implement mind-control deeply within our government, education, healthcare and media to create compliance in the new world regime. TRANCE weaves Cathy O’Brien’s experience as one of the last surviving victims of MK Ultra and Project Monarch, into the macrocosm of past world events, and the agenda currently unfolding. An eye opening view of our world today and how we got here.
When asked if a United States CBDC would be used to control how, when and where the population spends their money, a senior vice president for the St. Louis Fed’s Research Division responded, “in life, one can’t give absolute assurance of anything…The best we can hope for, is for Congress to respond to the electorate’s concerns about privacy.” However, signals by the Biden regime and the Federal Reserve indicate they intend to move forward on a CBDC, regardless of any approval from Congress, industry leaders or the public. In fact, there are a growing number of research and pilot programs in various phases of development in America and around the world, despite public concerns of an impending digital currency enslavement system tied to a digital ID and social credit system.
The Biden Regime Presses Forward
On March 9, 2022, the Biden regime issued an Executive Order on ‘Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets,’ which placed “the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.” The EO commanded Attorney General Garland, Treasury Secretary Yellen, and Federal Reserve Chair Powell to determine if a legal path to bypass Congress is possible, stating, “within 180 days of the date of this order [by September 5, 2022], provide the President…an assessment of whether legislative changes would be necessary to issue a United States CBDC, should it be deemed appropriate and in the national interest.” The EO further directed them to provide the President with a legislative proposal within 210 days, by October 5, 2022.
A former Fed vice chair, Randal Quarles, remarked that any bill in Congress authorizing a CBDC would be unlikely to pass, noting a lack of support from the public. In July of 2021, lawmakers introduced legislation that has yet to pass, known as the ‘Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act,‘ which appears to authorize the Fed to issue digital versions of Federal Reserve notes and to use distributed ledger technology for the “creation, distribution and recordation of all transactions involving digital Federal reserve notes.” On the other hand, legislation was introduced in January of 2022 to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC directly to individuals. In March of 2022, legislatures proposed an alternative to CBDC in a bill known as the ‘ECASH Act‘, which proposes to develop an electronic version of the US dollar issued by the US Treasury instead of the Federal Reserve, and purports to imitate the privacy and anonymity features of cash. While there is no current federal statute mandating businesses to accept cash, lawmakers introduced the ‘Payment Choice Act of 2021‘, designed to require retail businesses to accept cash as a form of payment. In all, Congress has introduced 50 bills on digital assets, blockchain, and CBDCs.
During a May 26, 2022, House Committee hearing, some lawmakers took issue with the Biden regime’s Executive Order and the ambiguity of the Federal Reserve’s comment in their January 2022 discussion paper, which states, “The Federal Reserve does not intend to proceed with issuance of a CBDC without clear support from the executive branch and from Congress, ideally in the form of a specific authorizing law.” Representative Andy Barr commented, “This to me suggests that the administration is not yet convinced that Congress has a role here.” Lawmakers were unable to seek clarity from the vice chair of the Federal Reserve during the hearing on whether the Fed would in fact proceed with the issuance of a CBDC without official Congressional authorization.
Other issues raised in the House Committee hearing on CBDCs included risks to the public of mass surveillance and targeting of citizens who are critical of the regime. Representative Warren Davidson remarked to the Fed vice chair, “The concern is the surveillance state… If you turn the Central Bank Digital Currency into this creepy surveillance tool…it literally is what China is developing and we shouldn’t imitate them. We should protect America’s way of life.” The threat of adopting China’s model for surveillance and control has become even more apparent in recent days, as China thwarted attempts by protesters to access their frozen funds by turning their QR codes red. Representative John Rose addressed his concerns to the vice chair, adding, “We saw how dangerous it can be when the government weaponizes the financial system for political purposes under the Obama Administration’s Operation Choke Point. More recently, the Canadian government instructed banks to freeze accounts linked to the trucker protests over vaccine mandates…Without appropriate safeguards, would a CBDC make it easier for the federal government to block individuals it disagrees with from accessing the financial system?” Vice Chair Brainard did not deny that CBDCs could be used to block access of individuals, stating that the use of CBDCs would essentially be no different from the current banking systems, from which accounts of political dissidents have been frozen.
Legislatures aren’t the only ones concerned about the rise of the CBDC surveillance system. Both the public and shareholders were invited to submit comments on the Federal Reserve’s plans to issue a CBDC, many of whom were resolutely opposed to the idea. One citizen wrote, “You don’t want privacy. You want to control every aspect of our lives.” Another individual replied, “I do not want government in charge of access to the kill switch to my account/money if I do not ‘tow the line.'” Yet another responded, “Stop playing games with our lives. And ignore Klaus Schwab. I fear the system completely breaking down if CBDC is enacted. Because Americans want privacy, freedom, and their work rewarded with sound money.”
In response to the Fed paper on CBDCs, the American Bankers Association warned how the disbursement of a CBDC would devastate local banks, stating, “The issuance of a CBDC would fundamentally rewire our banking and financial system by changing the relationship between citizens and the Federal Reserve,” adding, “The risks associated with issuing a CBDC are often downplayed but are real and likely to undermine any possible benefit that a CBDC would have. Most importantly, every construction of CBDC requires moving funds from banks to the Federal Reserve.” The ABA concluded, “As we have evaluated the likely impacts of issuing a CBDC it has become clear that the purported benefits of a CBDC are uncertain and unlikely to be realized, while the costs are real and acute. Based on this analysis, we do not see a compelling case for a CBDC in the United States today.”
Despite numerous dissenting voices among Congress, industry leaders and the public, the Biden regime and the Federal Reserve are pressing forward with plans to develop a United States CBDC. The Fed released yet another paper on the issuance of a retail CBDC in April of 2022. On June 17,2022, Fed Chair Powell lamented the decline of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency (driven by reckless federal spending and intentional mismanagement) and looked to a United States CBDC as a solution to the problems they’ve created, stating, “Looking forward, rapid changes are taking place in the global monetary system that may affect the international role of the dollar in the future. Most major economies already have or are in the process of developing instant, 24/7 payments. Our own FedNow Service will be coming online in 2023. And in light of the tremendous growth in crypto-assets and stablecoins, we are examining whether a US central bank digital currency would improve upon what is an already safe and efficient domestic payments system. As our white paper on this topic notes, a U.S. CBDC could also potentially help maintain the dollar’s international standing.”
There are a multitude of research and development programs for CBDCs underway. Currently, 105 countries, which represent more than 95% of the global GDP, are in various phases of CBDC exploration. Approximately 50 countries are in the advanced phases of research and development, while 28 retail CBDC pilots and 3 live retail CBDCs have been implemented. A study of 81 central banks determined that 90% are currently researching CBDCs, and over half are in the developmental or experimental phases. Several key areas of CBDC exploration are highlighted below.
China’s CBDC pilot program continues to expand since the announcement of its launch in 2020, gaining 261 million digital wallets opened in 2021. The Chinese government has extended the program to include more regions and applications. As China’s CBDC pilot program expands, so do their surveillance capabilities of Chinese citizens, multinational corporations, and other consumers around the world. On May 25, 2022, Senators introduced a bill known as the ‘Defending Americans from Authoritarian Digital Currencies Act,’ to prohibit app platforms, such as Apple and Google, from hosting apps that accept China’s digital currency. Senator Tom Cotton commented that the digital currency will provide the Chinese government with “real-time visibility into all transactions on the network, posing privacy and security concerns for American persons who join this network,” adding, “The Chinese Communist Party will use its digital currency to control and spy on anyone who uses it. We can’t give China that chance.” On June 7, 2022, lawmakers introduced a bill in the Senate known as the ‘Responsible Financial Innovation Act,’ to regulate crypto and to direct several agencies including: CISA, ODNI, and the DoD to investigate the national security implications of the use of China’s CBDC.
United States & Project Hamilton
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and MIT Digital Currency Initiative are collaborating on a CBDC exploratory project known as ‘Project Hamilton.’ The first phase of the operation was completed, demonstrating the feasibility of a CBDC payment system similar to the scale of the US economy and the US dollar’s utilization globally. Phase 2 of the project will focus on security, programmability, “how to balance privacy with compliance,” and safeguards against cyber-attacks. Critics argue that a United States CBDC does not address the issues of cybersecurity, government abuse, privacy, and centralized control. Congressman Tom Emmer commented, “Not only would this CBDC model centralize Americans’ financial information, leaving it vulnerable to attack, but it could also be used as a surveillance tool that Americans should never tolerate from their own government,” adding that, “Requiring users to open up an account at the Fed to access a US CBDC would put the Fed on an insidious path akin to China’s digital authoritarianism.” Laying the foundation for their CBDC program, the Fed has developed “a new instant payment infrastructure” known as FedNow. The new digital interbank instant payment system is expected to launch in 2023.
The investigation phase of the Digital Euro Project began in October of 2021 and will be completed by October of 2023. As part of the investigation phase, the European Central Bank has solicited public feedback. The ECB received 8,200 public responses, a record number of participants in the survey that ended in January of 2021. The feedback from this consultation provided a clear mandate, with the majority of respondents confirming that the public wants “payments to remain a private matter.” The ECB again solicited public feedback in a survey that ended in June of 2022, which received well more than double the number of responses as the previous survey. Once again, the public survey determined an overwhelming rejection of “digital slavery,” from a CBDC “slavecoin.” One respondent wrote, “No to the digital Euro! Living in the EU is becoming a nightmare, with forced vaccinations on the horizon, and now a digital Euro. It is clear that you want to have a population with no rights and no privacy – as wanted by your overlords of the WEF.” Despite the crushing negative public responsesto a CBDC over privacy concerns, the European Central Bank is moving forward with their plans. European Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni remarked to the press that, “A completely anonymous digital euro is not desirable.” A digital euro prototype is expected to launch in late 2023.
International CBDC Projects
While central banks are exploring and developing their own CBDCs, there are a number of collaborative projects to coordinate the exchange of CBDCs globally. Between 2017 and 2019, the Bank of Canada completed a four-phased program known as Project Jasper, in coordination with the Bank of England and Monetary Authority of Singapore. The project marked, “the first time in the world that a central bank participated in a distributed ledger technology experiment in partnership with the private sector.” The Saudi Central Bank and Central Bank of the UAE announced their joint initiative known as Project Aber in January of 2019, which included the involvement of commercial banks and businesses, and aimed to develop a CBDC that could be used between commercial banks across borders.
In December of 2020, the first phase of Project Helvetia, a partnership between the Bank for International Settlements, the Swiss National Bank, and a financial infrastructure company known as SIX, was completed. Phase 2 of the project, which was completed in January of 2022, focused on integrating commercial banks and CBDCs.
In December of 2021, the Bank for International Settlements announced the conclusion of Project Jura, an experiment in transferring CBDCs between French and Swiss commercial banks on a shared third-party platform. The joint operation, designed to continue the experimentation done under Project Helvetia, included the Bank for International Settlements, the Bank of France and the Swiss National Bank.
In September of 2021, China, Thailand, Hong Kong, the UAE and the Bank for International Settlements released a report on the second phase of their mBridge Project, which included the participation of 22 private sector participants. The project aims to develop a platform for international trade using CBDCs. Also in September of 2021, the Bank for International Settlements announced Project Dunbar, in collaboration with Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Africa. A report released in March of 2022 outlined how the project has developed two prototypes that enable CBDCs issued by multiple banks to use a shared platform.
On June 16, 2022, the Bank for International Settlements announced a partnership on Project Sela, including the Bank of Israel and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The joint project, which kicks off in the third quarter of 2022, aims to test the feasibility of a retail CBDC.
In September of 2020, Mastercard announced the launch of their CBDCs testing platform for central banks to simulate the “issuance, distribution and exchange of CBDCs between banks, financial service providers and consumers.” In January of 2022, Visa joined Mastercard in offering central banks a platform to test CBDCs and Visa products. More projects to develop CBDCs can be found on the BIS Innovation Hub.
In summary, the broad range of CBDC research and development projects across the globe is immense. Joint operations across borders are paving the way for international exchange of CBDCs, and ultimately a single global digital currency as promoted by the World Economic Forum.
The development and implementation of CBDCs in America and around the world is moving forward, with a multitude of projects underway and many of those projects coming to fruition within months. Central banks and global powers seem undeterred by objections from their citizens or the indecisiveness of Congress. Though there are numerous models for implementing CBDCs, they all share the same risks to our freedom. Lack of anonymity, programmability, tracking, and centralized control are the key features of CBDCs, which will enable subjugation of the masses in the most extreme ways imaginable.
The enormity of this all-encompassing initiative to implement CBDCs around the world is daunting. It seems inevitable that this end-game system of global totalitarianism will become a reality. However, we must be encouraged that the people are becoming aware of the true agenda behind this financial takeover. Their digital control system depends on our submission, and we each have the choice to not comply. By removing ourselves from the system and using cash instead of their digital wallets and debit cards, we can starve this rising beast of data and banking fees. Only together, in mass noncompliance, will their plans for digital enslavement become unrealized.
While there is growing speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 protests and recording responses for the purposes of entrapment, evidence now proves that “plainclothes” members of a special Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) were embedded among the protesters for the purposes of conducting video surveillance. Evidence also points to a day of security deficiencies and police provocation for the purpose of entrapment.
According to a report—First Amendment Demonstrations, issued Jan. 3, 2021, by Chief of Police Robert Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—the MPD began to activate Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) platoons on Jan. 4, 2021. Full activation of 28 platoons was scheduled to occur on the following two days.
According to the Department of Justice website, “A CDU is composed of law enforcement officers who are trained to respond to protests, demonstrations, and civil disturbances for the purpose of preventing violence, destruction of property, and unlawful interference with persons exercising their rights under law.”
The objective of MPD was “to assist with the safe execution of any First Amendment demonstration and ensure the safety of the participants, public, and the officers.” CDU personnel and Special Operations Division (SOD) members were to “monitor for any demonstration and/or violent activity and respond accordingly,” according to the report.
There has been speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the protests for the purposes of entrapment. As Red State reported in October 2021, “multiple surveillance videos show masked men opening up the doors to the U.S. Capitol Building to allow protesters to enter. In fact, one video shows them entering while Capitol Police officers simply stand around. Yet, we have no idea who those men are.”
The ‘Covert Cadre’ of ‘Provocateurs’
On a Dec. 7, 2021, episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the attorney for several Jan. 6 prisoners, Joseph McBride, identified a man tagged on the internet by so-called “Sedition Hunters” as “Red-Faced 45.” The man, dressed in red from head to toe—with even his face painted red—appears in a video engaging in continuous dialogue with uniformed personnel and others whom McBride insists are agents embedded in the crowd. McBride said the man is “clearly a law enforcement officer.”
“He passes out weapons, sledgehammers, poles, mace. Some of those things come in contact with some of the other protesters who have subsequently been charged with possessing dangerous weapons and are using dangerous weapons at the Capitol. That is clearly entrapment.
That is clearly the government creating conditions of dangerousness and entrapping members of the crowd to possess weapons and possibly use them for reasons that we cannot comprehend.”
On Jan. 13, 2021, J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy, published a first-hand account of his observations. Waller is also President of Georgetown Research, a political risk and private intelligence company in Washington, D.C.; and was founding editorial board member of NATO’s peer-reviewed Defence Strategic Communicationsjournal (2015–2018), and a senior analyst with Wikistrat. He is convinced people were embedded in the crowd to execute “an organized operation planned well in advance of the January 6 joint session of Congress.”
The Epoch Times reported on Jan. 1 that senior federal law enforcement officials refused to answer questions about an Arizona man named Ray Epps, captured on video the day before the rally wearing a Trump hat repeatedly encouraging protesters to “go into the Capitol” the next day. Many were suspicious of him. Chants of “fed, fed, fed” drown him out. On Jan. 6, he is seen telling the crowd “we are going to the Capitol, where all of our problems are.”
Bobby Powell host of “The Truth is Viral” podcast, has several videos exposing two men, clad all in black, whom he believes are FBI informants. They are seen breaking windows, attacking the Capitol building, and even pushing people inside.
McBride finds it strange that these “provocateurs,” as he calls them, have yet to be charged, despite their having a much more active role in the Capitol incident than some who were charged, including some individuals who never even set foot on Capitol grounds.
The Proof
Unknown to the public until now, the First Amendment Demonstrations report also reveals that an undisclosed number of “plainclothes” MPD ESU “members” were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”
It is unclear who the MPD ESU “members” were. However, they are never referred to as “officers” or “police.” Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the MPD, an ESU is not among them. In order for other security personnel to recognize embedded ESU members among the protesters, they wore a specific “bracelet on their left wrist identifying them as MPD personnel,” the report stated.
“While it is admittedly an important type of unit to have in the nation’s capital, electronic surveillance requires warrants,” Waller told The Epoch Times. “The word surveillance itself implies intrusive rather than passive monitoring of people, in which case it would be required for the police to get warrants to conduct electronic surveillance on people. What kind of warrants were asked for and under which jurisdiction? Were they issued? If not, why? Are such warrants necessary for the type of surveillance this unit was doing and how does it work? This raises a huge amount of questions about an entirely new kind of surveillance unit by the police chief of the nation’s capital.”
Waller also said the reference to “members” of the unit, as opposed to “officers” or “agents,” is also very disturbing. While he said “the rest of the memorandum sounds very disciplined in it’s language and specific,” that it doesn’t identify “officers” as members of the Electronic Surveillance Unit “is very troubling.”
“Are they using private contractors? Are they using political volunteers?” Waller posed. “Are using paid agents of different types? We don’t know. This is something the public has a right to know and we need to get to the bottom of it. If the D.C Police is running electronic surveillance on American citizens without warrants, this could be a very serious breach of our civil liberties.”
An Oct. 29, 2021 report by Politico exposed that a 17-page strategy report called “The Civil Disturbance Unit Operational Plan,” showed that police made plans for plainclothes “officers” to monitor protesters and carry out five objectives:
To provide an environment in which lawful First Amendment activity can be safely demonstrated.
To prevent any adverse impact to the legislative process associated with unlawful demonstration activity.
To effectively mitigate actions associated with civil disorder; safely respond to crimes of violence and destruction/defacing of property.
To safeguard and prevent any property damage directed at the US Capitol, West Front Inaugural Platform, and all Congressional buildings.
Establish and maintain a fixed march route while excluding access to counter-protestors to minimize potential for violent interactions.”
However, because the CDU was understaffed and unprepared, it failed in all its objectives.
According to a 140-page report issued by then-Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton—”Review of the Events Surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Takeover of the U.S. Capitol”—Capitol Police’s CDU was ordered by supervisors not to use the department’s most powerful tools, like stun guns. Bolton’s report, which has not yet been widely released to the public, also contends “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including stun grenades, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership.”
The CDU was given riot shields, many locked in a bus some distance away, that “shattered upon impact.” They had expired weapons that didn’t work and inadequate training.
Bolton’s report also noted that officials were warned in an intelligence assessment three days before the protest that “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike” and that “Congress itself is the target.”
However, reports surfaced that then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett sent a memo to lawmakers informing them that security officials found that “there does not exist a known, credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex that warrants the temporary security fencing.”
Some Capitol Police officers were reportedly told to go home amid staffing shortages, reported Business Insider.
According to the “UNITED STATES CAPITOL POLICE TIMELINE OF EVENTS FOR JANUARY 6, 2021 ATTACK,” also obtained by The Epoch Times, “USCP Deputy Chief Gallagher replies” to the Department of Defense (DOD) “via text” on Jan. 3, 2021, “that a request for National Guard support is not forthcoming at this time after consultation” with Chief of Police (COP) Steven Sund.
On Jan. 4, 2021, “COP Sund asked Senate Sergeant at Arms (SSAA) Michael Stenger and House Sergeant at Arms (HSAA) Paul Irving for authority to have National Guard to assist with security for the January 6, 2021 event based on briefings with law enforcement partners and revised intelligence assessment.”
• COP Sund’s request is denied. SSAA and HSAA tells COP Sund to contact General Walker at DC National Guard to discuss the guard’s ability to support a request if needed. • COP Sund notifies General Walker of DC National Guard, indicating that the USCP may need DC National Guard support for Jan. 6, 2021, but does not have the authority to request at this time. • General Walker advises COP Sund that in the event of an authorized request, DC National Guard could quickly repurpose 125 troops helping to provide DC with COVID-related assistance. Troops would need to be sworn in as USCP.
However, the timeline shows it took over three hours and five frantic requests before the National Guard was deployed.
During his opening remarks before two Senate committees on March 3, 2021, Walker told members of Congress he received a “frantic call” from Sund in the early afternoon advising that the security perimeter of the Capitol was being breached. However, military leaders informed him that deploying troops would not be “good optics.”
During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Piatt and Flynn denied making such comments.
At the hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene informed the committee three people were involved in turning down repeated requests for the deployment of the National Guard: “Chuck Schumer in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi in the House, and Mayor Muriel Bowser. Also involved, are the SSAA Stenger, who answers directly to Schumer, and HSAA Irving, who answers directly to Pelosi.”
In stark contradiction to then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett’s assessment that no “credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex” existed to warrant “temporary security fencing,” there are multiple admonishments in the First Amendment Demonstrations report of the importance “for the members to monitor the fence line” and orders that “all members” were to “monitor 16th Street and the surrounding area for any potential issues or demonstrations.”
“Members assigned to the bicycle rack” were ordered to “restrict pedestrian and vehicle movement upon making the closure of the police lines.”
“The bicycle rack, in conjunction with police cars and blocking vehicles will create a barrier in which no person or vehicle will be allowed to pass,” the report said.
However, video evidence shows police waving protesters past bike racks and even removing them to open a path into the restricted areas to encourage people to move toward the Capitol Building.
A March 2, 2021, USCP Report of Investigation regarding the incident, also obtained by The Epoch Times, confirms that on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, “an Unknown Officer violated USCP Directive 2053.013, Rules of Conduct, when they allegedly waived unauthorized persons into a restricted area secured by bike racks toward the US Capitol during an insurrection.” Evidence in the case included the “video posted to twitter, dated 01/06/21 ” and “CCTV of the East Front of the US Capitol, dated 01/06/21.”
On Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, then Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) Commander of the United States Capitol Police, Inspector Michael Shaffer, sent an email with the Twitter video of the unidentified officer (UO) to Inspectors Amy Hyman (Senate Division), Thomas Loyd (Capitol Division), Kimberley Bolinger (House Division) and Acting Inspector Jessica Baboulis (Library Division) requesting assistance in identifying the UO. All parties responded to Shaffer that they were unable to identify the UO.
The recommendation was that the report “be APPROVED and the case CLOSED.”
On Feb. 4, 2021, this case was put on hold pending a review by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Public Corruption. No further information is available.
Provocation and Entrapment
In a June 10 interview with EpochTV’s “Facts Matter,” Julie Kelly—a political consultant in Illinois and senior contributor for American Greatness—described Jan. 6, 2021, as “an inside job” and “something Democrats and some Republicans and federal agencies put together to entice” and “entrap” people who went to hear President Donald Trump’s speech. She noted that the FBI used agents to try to infiltrate the so-called militia groups.
Jeremy Brown exposed a video of FBI Terrorist Task Force agents attempting to recruit him to spy on fellow Oath Keepers.
The Department of Justice still won’t answer questions about Ray Epps, an Arizona resident captured on video encouraging protesters to breach the Capitol Building.
Video footage found at Gateway Pundit shows flash grenades being launched by Capitol Police into a group of protesters, consisting of women, children, and elderly people, who were standing peacefully behind barriers. According to American Greatness, Capitol Police were also firing on the crowd with rubber bullets. The approximate time of the confrontation was around 1:36 p.m. However, the USCP Timeline does not mention the deployment of these flash grenades.
Another video, which still exists on TeaParty.org, was filmed by Kash Kelly from ground level where the flash grenades went off. Kelly, who is now himself in prison regarding pretrial release violations regarding a previous charge and the subsequent charges related to his presence in Washington, is shown ensuring the evacuation of women in the area where the flash grenades exploded.
“The police started shooting at people,” Kelly says. “There were kids in the crowd.”
More extensive video footage, analyzed by Ray Dietrich of Red Voice Media, shows “the beginning of violence on January 6.”
An unidentified USCP officer is seen repeatedly yelling down to the crowd, assembled peacefully below his position, advising that if they “want to get a good picture” they should “go up into the bleachers.”
“The video shows the moment either stun grenades or tear gas canisters were deployed into the crowd of protestors,” Dietrich says as the video plays out. “The question I have, after a 20-year career in law enforcement, is why were these munitions deployed? I have picked this video apart and many more, and cannot see why the USCP used this force against the crowd. There is no fighting and no violence, so why did they target these people with less-lethal weapons?”
“What happened next?” Dietrich asks rhetorically. “Chaos. Violence. The crowd fought back. The Capitol was breached.”
As the stunned crowd scurries in the attack, police can be seen spraying people in the face with pepper spray. In another segment, three police officers are beating a protester who is being held on the ground. In a measure that further escalates the tension, police begin deploying tear gas into the already frantic crowd. In a course of 20 minutes, a once peaceful scene descends into total chaos.
In June 2021, reports surfaced that the Justice Department had begun to release its own video footage, including footage from body-worn cameras that allegedly show assaults against police officers defending the U.S. Capitol.
A summary of findings shows that:
Evidence shows that until the deployment of munitions, the crowds were peaceful.
MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) members were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”
Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the Metropolitan Police Department, an ESU is not among them.
Liberty International News 