Michigan radio journalist Bobby Powell poured his heart into finding and telling the truth about suspicious actors at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Sadly, his heart gave out before he could finish his work.

Bobby suffered nine heart attacks after Jan. 6. It would not be hyperbole to suggest that Jan. 6 killed Bobby Powell. He predicted it would. He was 61.

‘I refuse to let the history I recorded on January 6th slide down the rabbit hole.’

It was that ninth heart attack that took his life at about 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 4, just weeks after he wrote me an email titled, “Final Thoughts.” We never got the chance to do the interview I requested after reading his final note.

“Well, I’m just about down to my last breath, and I refuse to let the history I recorded on January 6th slide down the rabbit hole,” Powell wrote on Aug. 11. “They’ve tried to bribe me, kill me, and maybe even had a hand in inducing a few of those heart attacks I’ve had.”

Since Bobby died destitute, his son Adam asked the Jan. 6 community to help pay for funeral expenses. In just two days, Adam’s crowdfunding campaign raised $23,000.

Bobby Powell was the cover story of a 2022 issue of Insight by The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times

Bobby was passionate and outspoken about what he witnessed on the east patio of the Capitol on Jan. 6. His frustration grew when it seemed almost no one wanted to hear about the two suspicious actors he captured on video.

He could be gruff. In one of my stories, I called him “grizzled.” I think he wore that like a badge of honor. He spent more than $20,000 and sacrificed his health trying to get the word out about these provocateurs.

Bobby Powell tells his Jan. 6 tale to Joseph Hanneman in “The Real Story of Jan. 6 Part II: The Long Road Home.”

As soon as Bobby began seeking media coverage for his Jan. 6 work, he was demonetized on social media, where he published a blog called “The Truth Is Viral.” That drop in income forced him to sell his Michigan home and live in an RV in Florida.

He said a prominent Michigan Republican Party official offered him $200,000 to go away. When Bobby refused, he was threatened that if he didn't put a lid on his Jan. 6 fedsurrection talk, he could be killed. For this reason, he moved around a lot from campground to campground in Florida, always looking over his shoulder.

I hope the many politicians and media figures who rebuffed, scorned, or ignored him since Jan. 6 are now inspired to take a look at the evidence he left behind. The silence from them, the FBI, and the Justice Department speaks loudly — even more so now that Bobby's voice has been stilled.

‘I swore that I would tell the truth to my last breath, no matter what the cost.’

Maybe the new Jan. 6 Select Subcommittee chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) will investigate the men Bobby suspected were fed provocateurs.

In the Aug. 11 email, Bobby's last message to me was a warning.

“You’re a good man, Joe. You’ve been there for me when many others didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing and speak truth to power,” Bobby wrote. “Unfortunately, I cannot say that about many other ‘MAGA Influencers,’ politicians, or so-called ‘journalists.’”

During my first interview with him in 2022, Bobby shed tears. This tough Marine Corps veteran broke down over the phone — simply because I said that I believed him. His story rang true because it is true. He was beyond relieved to have a new ally. I wrote about his efforts many times over the next three years.

January 6 was supposed to be Bobby's last assignment before he retired after more than three decades in radio journalism. He hosted his own podcast, “The Truth Is Viral,” and was host of “Your Defending Fathers” on WCHY-FM 97.7 in Cheboygan, Michigan.

Little did he know as he filmed the crowd around the famous Columbus Doors at the U.S. Capitol the gravity of what he was witnessing. He emailed me in 2022:

Two men I recorded attacking the building in separate incidents, smashing a window and pushing people inside the East Entrance doors, have not been arrested, nor are they on the list of suspects being sought by the FBI.

That remains the case today. Neither bad actor — dressed suspiciously like plainclothes federal agents — has been publicly identified, arrested, or prosecuted.

It was not for lack of trying on his part. In January 2021, Bobby contacted the FBI and its Joint Terrorism Task Force. He offered a copy of the 29 minutes of high-definition video he shot on Jan. 6. They never called back.

Bobby was filming the crowds on the east patio of the Capitol at about 2:15 p.m. on Jan. 6 when Hunter Allen Ehmke jumped on a window sill and began smashing the glass. Ehmke was later arrested, convicted, and ordered to serve four months in jail.

‘Be careful who you trust, Joe. Wolves in sheep’s clothing are all around us.’

When Bobby spun around with his camera, he caught the man as he pulled out a large section of the tempered glass and dropped it on the ground.

Bobby Powell shows me his Jan. 6 footage in his RV near Tampa in November 2022. Paulio Shakespeare/The Epoch Times

Minutes later, when Bobby was approaching the entrance to the giant Columbus Doors, another man dressed in tactical clothing placed a hand on his back and shoved him intothe foyer. That man was holding open one of the doors with a heavy wooden rod.

Bobby personally handed thumb drives with video of these incidents to prominent Republicans in Congress and scores of media celebrities and influencers. Only a few gave his story the attention it deserved — if any attention at all.

Trying to engage with the self-appointed “Sedition Hunters” in late 2002, Bobby asked them why his two feds were not on the Sedition Hunters’ website. Bobby made up hashtags for the two provocateurs: #CapitolGlassMan and #CapitolDoorman.

Sedition Hunters eventually put up a page with photos of the GlassMan. They even claimed to know his name, but no one was ever arrested.

Joseph M. Hanneman

Missing CCTV video

One of the topics we were going to discuss in our final interview was a gap in the Capitol Police CCTV security video from inside the Columbus Doors.

The missing footage should have shown #CapitolDoorman holding the huge ornate doors open with a wooden pole and pushing protesters inside the Capitol. This footage was somehow missing from the video from Camera 7029 published online by the Republican House Subcommittee on Oversight.

This was a great find by the intrepid Marine. The gap in video has not yet been solved. That is a project I will take on in Bobby’s memory.

During his final two years, Bobby got bowled over by two hurricanes. Before one of them, he emailed me that his RV was hunkered down in an alley between two brick buildings in the Tampa area. Hurricane Debby flooded his RV in August 2024. After that storm, Bobby and a neighbor used his boat to rescue a 90-year-old man and his caregiver from the floodwaters.

Peter Ticktin, an attorney for President Donald J. Trump, was one of the few officials who accepted a thumb drive with Bobby Powell’s Jan. 6 video evidence. Photo courtesy of Bobby Powell.

“On the bright side, I have a roof over my head, air-conditioning, internet, and I’m not dead yet,” he wrote me in an Oct. 2 email. “Compared to others, I have a lot to be thankful for.”

Bobby's heart was badly scarred and less able to pump effectively every day. He knew his time was growing short.

Not much heart muscle

“My cardiologist said my heart is about 30% muscle and 70% scar tissue that doesn’t beat at all,” he wrote in late 2024. “I asked why I was out of breath all of the time, and she told me, ‘Because every step you take is like carrying a 250-pound man on your back. Your heart has to pump twice as hard whenever you do anything.’”

Even with that challenge, Bobby was determined to forge ahead with his work. He attended the Capitol premiere of my documentary “The Real Story of Jan. 6 Part II: The Long Road Home.” He recorded a testimonial for our producers after the screening.

Bobby testified in several Jan. 6 trials in Washington. He was kept out of others by DOJ prosecutors who didn't want federal juries to see his fedsurrection footage. The court cases gave him an outlet to keep sharing his story. It also took a heavier toll on his health.

“My cardiologist tells me that every day I wake up is a gift from God,” he wrote on Aug. 11, 2025. “I’m still limited in my abilities, but I think I can handle a call-in show I’m planning; until I can’t.”

In December 2022, he wrote me from his hospital bed after Jan. 6 heart attack No. 4.

“This is number four since J6, five total in the last three years,” he said. “And it’s the last one I will survive.”

Bobby said both atria of his heart were badly damaged by the attack. He had to wear a defibrillator jacket until a permanent defibrillator could be implanted.

Bobby Powell was all thumbs-up from his hospital bed in December 2022. Photo courtesy of Bobby Powell.

After we filmed a documentary interview in his RV near Terra Ceia, Fla., in November 2022, we talked about his Christian faith. I gave him a blessed challenge coin designed by my friend Father Richard Heilman. The coin had been touched to a relic of the True Cross of Christ, which makes it a third-class relic.

One side of the coin has the image of St. Michael the Archangel with the Latin phrase Defende Nos in Proelio (Defend Us in Battle). The other side has a likeness of St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus, with the Latin phrase Sancte Joseph Castissimi • Terror Daemonum, noting Joseph's warrior title as the Terror of Demons.

I gave this blessed coin to Bobby Powell in November 2022. He said he would keep it on him at all times. Joseph M. Hanneman/Blaze News.

Bobby understood as well as anyone that we are engaged in spiritual warfare. As St. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:

Put you on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.

Bobby said he tried to live his life every day for Christ. In his final email to me, he wrote of regret for not teaching his daughter more about Jesus.

“I could never speak to her about Christ’s love for us,” he wrote. “She’d just look at me with her big, beautiful eyes and say, ‘Oh Daddy, you know I don’t believe in that.’"

“I thought I would have plenty of time to teach her about Christ, but she died at just 24 from an idiopathic heart attack.”

Bobby said his hurt and regret fueled a commitment that drove his Jan. 6 work.

“I lifted her ashes to the heavens and swore to Almighty God that I would never be afraid to tell the truth again for fear of being called a ‘conspiracy theorist’ or a ‘kook,’ even though all of my conspiracy theories turned out to be true," he wrote.

“I swore that I would tell the truth to my last breath, no matter what the cost.”

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