‘It Was a Fatal Right-Wing Terrorist Incident’: AI Chatbot Giants Claim Charlie Kirk’s Killer Was Right-Wing but Say Left-Wing Violence Is ‘Exceptionally Rare’

The major AI platforms—which have emerged as significant American news sources—describe Charlie Kirk’s assassination as motivated by "right-wing ideology" and downplay left-wing violence as "exceptionally rare," according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

The post ‘It Was a Fatal Right-Wing Terrorist Incident’: AI Chatbot Giants Claim Charlie Kirk’s Killer Was Right-Wing but Say Left-Wing Violence Is ‘Exceptionally Rare’ appeared first on .

YouTube Throws In Towel, Agrees To Fork Over Millions To Trump After Suspending Account

YouTube agrees to pay Trump $24.5 million

FBI Jan. 6 report sets off a firestorm: Why did it take 56 months to disclose 274 agents at Capitol?



The disclosure of 274 FBI special agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 has set off a firestorm of controversy, with FBI Director Kash Patel insisting that the agents only did “crowd control” and President Donald J. Trump saying he wants to identify all of the agents, who he said were “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists.”

After 56 months of not disclosing the scope of the FBI’s presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Sept. 25 leaked report from the House Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding January 6 has turned into an online free-for-all — trying to assign blame and determine what the disclosure really means.

‘This was a mass entrapment scheme that was run and operated by the government.’

“It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed, against all Rules, Regulations, Protocols, and Standards, 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social. “... I want to know who each and every one of these so-called ‘Agents’ are, and what they were up to on that now ‘Historic’ Day.”

More than 360 FBI special agents and other staff from the Washington Field Office responded to the rapidly developing events at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, including 274 special agents and 89 intelligence analysts and support staff, the leaked report says. The professional staff did not deploy to the Capitol. A report issued in December 2024 reported 26 FBI informants at the Capitol on Jan. 6, including four who went into the building.

After that news garnered millions of views on social media, Patel went to Fox News to “clarify” that the 274 agents were only there for “crowd control.”

Crowd control?

“Agents were sent into a crowd-control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police – something that goes against FBI standards,” Patel told Fox News. “This was the failure of a corrupt leadership that lied to Congress and to the American people about what really happened.”

Metropolitan Police broadcast declaration of a riot over police radio at 2:22 p.m.

Patel’s attempt to tamp down the online furor from former Jan. 6 defendants who tried to get this information in their criminal cases didn’t work, with many saying they don’t believe Patel’s explanation.

“Where is the film of one agent doing crowd control? Where is one affidavit in court?” asked former Jan. 6 defendant Larry Brock Jr. “This story doesn’t fly. You definitely need a better PR team. There are cameras everywhere in D.C. Show us the videos of the Hoover building emptying.”

While there is ample video evidence of SWAT teams from the FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals, Park Police, and other agencies sweeping the Capitol after 3 p.m. and escorting lawmakers to the subways, that is not the case with plainclothes FBI personnel. Their presence was most noticeable after 6 p.m., when no protesters were left in the Capitol Building.

The Department of Justice Office of Inspector General said there were no FBI undercover agents in the crowds on Jan. 6. That category is distinct from agents who are described as plainclothes. In the field, plainclothes agents would normally wear their badges on a lanyard or their belts. Some wear blue FBI windbreaker jackets with “FBI” stamped in yellow on the back. Agents who patrolled hallways of the Capitol office buildings before Congress reconvened late on Jan. 6 wore body armor with FBI patches.

Patel’s answer seemed a far cry from the expectations he set up in a May 18 interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News.

RELATED: Judge allows Jan. 6 lawsuit alleging excessive force in DC jail to proceed

FBI Director Kash Patel promised a “trove of information” about Jan. 6 on May 18, but no report has been forthcoming since.Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

“We’ve got answers coming. We just found a trove of information, and it’s on its way to Capitol Hill right now,” Patel said. “And they’ve asked, and they’re getting them, and you’re getting answers on January 6.

“You’re getting answers on what sourcing was utilized, what money was utilized, how many assets were utilized, who made those decisions — you’re getting it,” he said. “We can only control the FBI. But you’re getting it from the FBI.”

When Bartiromo asked, “Were there FBI agents under cover egging people on?” Patel replied, “Like I said, that answer is coming, and it’s on its way to Congress.”

Assistant FBI Director Dan Bongino cautioned that people should make the distinction between FBI agents and “assets.”

“I just hope when people put that information out there, they make the distinction,” Bongino said. “Not that it’s better or worse, but there’s a distinction there.”

No “trove of information” has been released since Patel's interview May 18.

‘FBI provocateurs in the crowd. Peaceful Americans framed. Lives destroyed.’

FBI tactical teams flowed into the Capitol through the Hall of Columns south entrance after the 2:44 p.m. shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

Security video shows FBI SWAT medics entered the Capitol at 2:49 p.m., turned right, and met a Capitol Police SWAT team that was carrying the mortally wounded Babbitt. The FBI medics set Babbitt on the floor and began lifesaving aid at 2:50 p.m. Babbitt was declared dead at a hospital at 3:15 p.m.

According to Capitol Police CCTV video, an armored vehicle of ATF agents arrived through the Capitol’s south barricade at 2:46 p.m. That ATF tactical team entered the Capitol through the South Doors at 2:48 p.m.

FBI medics, SWAT

An FBI tactical team rolled into the House Plaza parking lot at 2:32 p.m. Off-duty FBI Special Agent Baker Doughty appeared to be waiting for the armored vehicle, as he approached and talked with tactical team agents for about five minutes, according to a court filing by former Jan. 6 defendant William Pope.

Doughty was with two other off-duty agents and former FBI Agent John Guandolo watching the protests from a crowd seated and standing on the House Egg. One of the active-duty FBI agents is seen on video clapping and cheering, “This is huge,” as protesters swarmed up the east steps to the Columbus Doors just after 2 p.m.

Guandolo, former FBI liaison to U.S. Capitol Police, said Doughty and the other FBI agents introduced him to several other off-duty FBI agents at the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to an affidavit Guandolo provided in a 2023 Oath Keepers case in Alaska.

Former Jan. 6 defendant William Pope disclosed the presence of several off-duty FBI agents with former FBI agent John Guandolo. They are shown here at 2:57 p.m.U.S. Capitol Police, U.S. District Court/Graphic by Blaze News

Pope said the FBI must have considered Doughty to be on duty that day, since he, Guandolo, and other other agents entered the government-defined “restricted zone.” Doing so off duty would have precluded him from participating in the FBI raid of the home of former Jan. 6 defendant Fi Duong and any other Jan. 6 cases, Pope contends.

The FBI SWAT team left the armored vehicle and headed for the South Doors at 2:53 p.m. That team, led by a plainclothes FBI agent wearing a blue FBI windbreaker, entered the Hall of Columns at 2:53 p.m.

The official U.S. Capitol Police Jan. 6 timeline makes no reference to FBI agents being requested or deployed to the Capitol.

In contrast, then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund asked for backup from then-Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee at 12:58 p.m. A large group of MPD officers rushed onto the West Plaza at 1:12 p.m., began hosing the crowd with pepper spray, and set up new police lines.

Chief Sund asked for help from the U.S. Secret Service at 1:01 p.m., the timeline said. At 1:40 p.m., Sund asked for and received confirmation of help from ATF.

While the presence of non-uniformed FBI agents is scarce on security video, large numbers of plainclothes agents wearing body armor are seen on video securing hallways and buildings in preparation for the return of a joint session of Congress after 8 p.m. This happened only after the Capitol had been cleared of protesters.

RELATED: Bobby Powell gave his last breath working to expose Jan. 6 corruption

An FBI SWAT agent patrols the Longworth House Office Building on Jan. 6, 2021.Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

Former Jan. 6 defendants and attorneys found the 274-agent disclosure especially troubling because the DOJ and FBI refused to provide that information as part of case discovery in the nearly 1,600 criminal cases brought by the DOJ.

“I personally made over a dozen requests ... for this stuff,” defense attorney Bradford Geyer, who represented Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson at his September 2022 trial, told Blaze News. “Many times, many times.”

Geyer said the failure of the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice to disclose this information during hundreds of cases taints the entire massive prosecution effort. It is more evidence that many or most cases should have been dismissed for withheld exculpatory evidence, he said.

“I’ve always thought that these cases should have just been dismissed en masse because of government conduct and Brady failures,” Geyer said, referring to the duty of prosecutors to produce exculpatory evidence as dictated in the landmark 1963 Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland.

“This was a mass entrapment scheme that was run and operated by the government,” Geyer said. “We know that that’s what happened, but we’re not quite there yet. If we established that that happened, I bet most people would agree that all cases should be dismissed.

“You could dismiss it on this failure,” Geyer said. “I asked for drone footage; I asked for logs from the U.S. Capitol Police control room; I asked for the video of people going and entering the control room. I asked for all the stuff about the [Columbus] Doors, about the electronic signaling systems to the doors. I never got any of that stuff.”

RELATED: Restoration of military honors for Ashli Babbitt strikes back against a tide of Jan. 6 lies

An armored ATF tactical vehicle arrives through the U.S. Capitol south barricade at 2:46 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Capitol Police CCTV

After Blaze News disclosed the number of special agents at the Capitol in an article late Sept. 25, battles erupted on social media on the significance of the information.

Some viewed the disclosure as validation of long-held suspicions that Jan. 6 was a “fedsurrection,” while others dismissed the report as nothing more than a standard response to violence and rioting at the Capitol.

“Christopher Wray concealed this from us for four years,” U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), wrote on X. “This is a big deal.”

“J6ers need some reparations,” wrote the Hodgetwins comedians, responding to a Blaze News post on X Thursday night

“If the FBI were smart, they would start selectively releasing some documents to reveal the other agencies that were involved in January 6,” said Pope, who exposed the presence of several off-duty FBI agents at the Capitol Jan. 6. “Why take all the heat yourself?”

John Strand, who went to prison on Jan. 6 charges after his trial in Washington, D.C., said the disclosures need to spark action.

“Today’s revelations prove it: Jan 6 wasn’t justice, it was entrapment,” Strand said on the “The Benny Show.” “FBI provocateurs in the crowd. Peaceful Americans framed. Lives destroyed. The real criminals are those who weaponized our government. They must be investigated, prosecuted, and held accountable.”

No national security event

Former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin told Blaze News he was allowed to take leave on Jan. 6, since the events at the Ellipse and Capitol that day were not designated a National Security Special Event by the Department of Homeland Security. Otherwise, he said, he would likely have been doing countersurveillance at the U.S. Capitol. Instead, he was doing training with Maryland State Police that day.

Seraphin said a report on total federal law enforcement assets at the Capitol Jan. 6 is needed to better understand the full Jan. 6 picture. Federal agencies use a system called the Android Team Awareness Kit to track personnel and give real-time data on movements of agents and other employees.

Seraphin recalled an instance in summer 2020 when his team was ordered to the White House.

“Everybody showed up wearing overt body-armor markings and belts showing a badge. That’s how you show up,” Seraphin said. “You show up as a team, and then you get sent somewhere by some sort of central command unit. ... You don't just show up randomly and then flash a badge and join a skirmish line.”

Pope disclosed in his criminal case that nearly 50 agents from the FBI and various agencies attached to it were working on Jan. 6 and later wrote affidavits of probable cause to support arrest warrants in Jan. 6 cases.

Pope developed a spreadsheet of FBI special agents and other officers from the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, including a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent from Colorado; an NCIS special agent; FBI special agents from New York, Nashville, Memphis, Newark, Philadelphia, and Albany, New York; and an agent from the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service, Pope’s motion stated.

‘The real criminals are those who weaponized our government.’

“There is now ample evidence that the FBI had a heavy presence at the Capitol on January 6, which is even more alarming considering the fact that we now know they had intelligence that was not shared with other agencies,” Pope wrote in a 2024 court filing. “This constitutes outrageous government conduct.”

RELATED: The New York Times rewrites history while Jan. 6 families pay the price

Two undercover Metropolitan Police Department officers watch the crowds on the west side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.William Pope via U.S. District Court

Pope also disclosed the presence and activities of undercover Metropolitan Police Department officers, some of whom are on camera inciting protesters and helping them climb over barricades to get to the Capitol. There were dozens of MPD officers on Capitol grounds as part of the Electronic Surveillance Unit. Only a small percentage of the video they shot Jan. 6 has been made public.

Geyer said even if FBI agents did nothing nefarious on Jan. 6, their presence gave protesters a false sense of security.

“If you take the FBI agents and the Homeland Security agents — and there was a DEA agent who was badged that Will Pope found walking down Pennsylvania Avenue — and all the federal employees in plain clothes and looked very respectable, that had a psychological effect and influenced the crowd,” Geyer said.

“It gave people a false sense of assurance that the areas that they were in, it was okay to be there because intermixing with the crowd were these very respectable-looking people. So even if none of them got out of hand and they were there for good-faith reasons, it still influenced the crowd.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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Judge allows Jan. 6 lawsuit alleging excessive force in DC jail to proceed



An excessive-force lawsuit by a pardoned former Jan. 6 defendant who was allegedly twice blasted in the face with pepper spray by a guard in the District of Columbia jail will proceed toward trial, a federal district court judge ruled on Sept. 19.

Judge Jia M. Cobb rejected a motion from lawyers for Crystal Lancaster to dismiss the excessive-force lawsuit brought against her and the District of Columbia by Ronald Colton McAbee of Unionville, Tenn.

The judge dismissed the District of Columbia as a defendant, saying McAbee’s claims of municipal liability in the case “are too conclusory for the court to allow those claims to go forward.”

‘I pray that the truth will prevail.’

Citing several U.S. Court of Appeals precedents, Judge Cobb said, “No officer confronting a person who was 1) subdued by officers, (2) had his hands behind his back, (3) was compliant, and (4) was not engaged in any threatening or assaultive conduct could possibly think it would be reasonable to spray that person in his face with a chemical agent.”

“Accordingly, McAbee’s excessive force claims can proceed against Lancaster,” she wrote in a 19-page memorandum opinion and order.

The pepper-spray incident occurred at about 9:45 a.m. on Sept. 5, 2022. McAbee left his cell in the C2B pod at the D.C. Central Treatment Facility to walk to a nearby medical cart to obtain his prescription medications. Witnesses said then-Lt. Lancaster shouted at McAbee to put on a COVID-19 mask.

After McAbee took his medication, the lawsuit alleges Lancaster sprayed him with oleoresin capsicum — a harsh chemical irritant sometimes referred to as pepper spray or pepper gel. After McAbee’s hands were cuffed behind his back, Lancaster allegedly fired another blast of OC spray in his face.

RELATED: Jan. 6 defendant Colt McAbee on presidential pardon: 'Best day of my life other than my wedding'

Ronald Colton McAbee is struck in the head by a riot stick wielded by a Metropolitan Police officer at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Metropolitan Police Department bodycam/Sarah McAbee

Sarah McAbee said her husband suffered painful aftereffects over the next several days. Even after he was allowed a brief shower, the residue on McAbee’s skin reactivated, causing a painful burning sensation. He was put into a shower with warm water, which she said was like jumping into a hot tub after a third-degree sunburn.

Sarah McAbee told Blaze News that after the spray incident, her husband was put into solitary confinement and not given access to clean clothes or a thorough decontamination for three days.

Judge Cobb allowed the lawsuit to proceed on the two counts of alleged excessive force, saying the second instance of pepper spray to McAbee’s face is a stronger candidate as a violation of constitutional rights.

“It is clear, however, that the Due Process Clause protects a pretrial detainee from the use of excessive force that amounts to punishment,” the judge wrote.

Judge Cobb deferred ruling on which clause — the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment or the Fourth Amendment — applies to each of McAbee’s allegations. She asked both sides to prepare briefs on the issue.

The litmus tests for excessive force are “substantially similar” under both the Fourth Amendment and the 14th Amendment, Judge Cobb wrote.

“Both tests focus on objective reasonableness and direct lower courts to consider factors in assessing reasonableness, including ‘the relationship between the need for the use of force and the amount of force used, the extent of the plaintiff’s injury; any effort made by the officer to temper or to limit the amount of force, the severity of the security problem at issue; the threat reasonably perceived by the officer and whether the plaintiff was actively resisting,” Cobb wrote.

Judge Cobb said she will “allow McAbee’s claims that Lancaster used unconstitutionally excessive force against him.” McAbee “has pled a plausible excessive force claim against Lancaster.”

Judge Cobb rejected Lancaster’s claim of qualified immunity, saying the affirmative defense that shields officers from liability applies only if the conduct in question “does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional law.”

McAbee told Blaze News he was encouraged by the judge’s ruling.

“I think it’s very exciting and telling that maybe we can go through with this case in D.C., where there is a bias against people like me,” he said.

“In reality this is about right vs. wrong. Going forward will bring justice and closure,” McAbee said. “I pray that the truth will prevail and the people that orchestrated this years-long delay and attack on me are put to justice, whatever that may look like.”

The District of Columbia Department of Corrections defied demands from U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) that security camera footage and Lancaster’s bodycam footage be released to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. Eventually Nehls was allowed to watch the video at the DOC offices but did not receive a copy.

Now McAbee will have opportunities to obtain the video as the case proceeds to the discovery phase.

RELATED: Tennessee sheriff's deputy became a January 6 trophy in a lie-filled 'manifest injustice'

Colt McAbee on his way home after a pardon from President Trump. Photo courtesy of Sarah McAbee

McAbee was prosecuted by the Biden Department of Justice for alleged actions on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol. Despite bodycam and other video showing he never assaulted Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wayte, a jury found him guilty of that count and six other criminal charges.

The case was marred by lies, manipulated evidence, and a possibly tainted jury to such a degree that defense attorney and former veteran DOJ prosecutor William Shipley called the result a “manifest injustice.”

McAbee was sentenced in late February 2024 to 70 months in prison. He was serving that sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn., when President Donald J. Trump signed a pardon declaration that set him free after 1,252 days in government custody.

He walked out of FMC Rochester into minus-18-degree weather and into the arms of his wife, Sarah. “Best day of my life other than my wedding,” he told Blaze News at the time.

McAbee appealed his conviction in March 2024. On March 17, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated his criminal conviction and remanded the case to the district court, which dismissed it as moot.

Blaze News reached out to the District of Columbia Office of Attorney General for comment on Judge Cobb’s opinion.

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"Lectern Guy" from January 6th SPEAKS OUT on His Full Experience
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"Lectern Guy" from January 6th SPEAKS OUT on His Full Experience

Peter Navarro’s book is a warning: If they can jail me, they can jail you



Blaze News readers know the script: agencies weaponized, media complicit, ordinary people crushed in the gears. “I Went to Prison So You Won’t Have To” follows that script with raw detail and a court docket.

Peter Navarro, once a senior economic adviser to President Trump, begins his account with a boarding-gate arrest worthy of a thriller: five armed agents, leg irons, and a cell once used for John Hinckley. He ends with a defiant claim — that a man can emerge unbroken after 120 days in what he calls a “lawfare gulag.”

The new gulag is not only a place. It is a habit. Navarro’s account shows how to break it.

Navarro doesn’t argue that America has become the USSR. His point is sharper: Bureaucratic impunity and political prosecutions can turn any free nation into a maze of petty tyrannies.

Kafka behind razor wire

The book’s middle chapters read like Kafka with a side of commissary ramen. Navarro describes a prison “camp” wrapped in razor wire, a dentist prescribing sunscreen the commissary didn’t sell, and commissary prices triple those at Target. He recounts a sudden Special Investigative Services raid that smashed showers, flooded the dorm, and locked inmates down. A First Step Act loophole denied him time credits because his sentence included no supervised release.

Absurdities pile up, but the lesson is deadly serious. Systems that multiply rules and shrug at conflicts breed injustice.

Executive privilege on trial

Navarro anchors his refusal to testify in claims of executive privilege and Department of Justice-recognized testimonial immunity for senior presidential advisers. He dismisses the Jan. 6 committee as a political theater project designed to “expose for exposure’s sake.” A White House letter, he says, purported to waive a predecessor’s privilege — something he insists an incumbent president should not have the power to do.

Skeptics may doubt Navarro’s reading. But the incentive structure he highlights cannot be ignored. If an incumbent president can extinguish a former president’s privilege at will, and if Congress can punish disputes it should legislate, then the machinery exists to criminalize losing an election.

That is not a conspiracy theory — it is a theory of incentives. And it is what Navarro says happened to him after the Biden administration took power.

Survival notes

Blaze News readers will recognize the moral of Navarro’s ordeal. He refused to plead the Fifth — not because it wouldn’t have helped, but because, as he writes, he would not validate a process he viewed as punitive. He catalogs the system’s manipulations: “Potemkin” cleanups before the media arrived, choreographed delays that wiped out visiting hours, petty flexes of power designed to make people small.

RELATED: The ‘normie conquest’: Millions just joined the right overnight

Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

Americans long believed political imprisonment couldn’t happen here. Navarro insists it already has.

Why the book matters

Why should “I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To” sit on every Blaze News reader’s shelf? Because it doubles as a manual. It maps how citizens can be dragged through the gears: investigations framed as oversight but prosecuted like warfare, constitutional disputes treated as crimes, prison terms leveraged as warnings to Trump and the MAGA movement.

The book’s title is both a promise and a dare. Learn the tactics. Resist them peacefully, locally, lawfully. Read it. Argue with it. Mark the pages that disturb you. And above all — stay awake.

The new gulag is not only a place. It is a habit. Navarro’s account shows how to break it.

Hakeem Jeffries Somehow Finds A Way To Make Charlotte Stabbing About January 6

'It is outrageous'

Elizabeth Warren Can’t Help Herself, Invokes January 6th In Aftermath Of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

'He is the leader of an insurrection'

Bobby Powell gave his last breath working to expose Jan. 6 corruption



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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The New York Times rewrites history while Jan. 6 families pay the price



The New York Times recently published an article attempting to recast the events of Jan. 6, 2021, through the lens of prosecutors who lost their jobs following President Donald Trump's return to the Oval Office. The piece depicts these lawyers as martyrs in a political purge, forced to leave behind diplomas and personal items as though they were casualties of injustice.

Yet this framing fundamentally ignores the real devastation that flowed from the government's handling of January 6: families destroyed, children traumatized, and ordinary Americans subjected to years of aggressive and politicized prosecution.

Prosecutors were not martyrs. They were the instruments of a system that made martyrs out of ordinary citizens.

Those of us who have worked directly with these families have seen firsthand the long-term impact of the Department of Justice's unprecedented approach. History cannot be rewritten to cast prosecutors as victims while erasing the lives they targeted from public memory.

The forgotten victims

The most overlooked victims of January 6 have been the children of defendants. These young people endured traumatic government raids that remain etched into their memories. Many remember predawn operations when flash-bang devices exploded inside their homes.

They recall doors being battered down, glass shattering, and heavily armed agents entering their bedrooms. They watched their mothers cry, attempting to hold families together as fathers were taken away in handcuffs. In certain cases, both parents were removed, leaving children to wonder if they would ever see their families whole again.

This was not a foreign dictatorship. It happened in the United States. These tactics, carried out against families who posed no threat, inflicted deep and lasting harm on innocent children. Yet the prosecutors who initiated these cases are now presented as political casualties.

That is an inversion of reality. They were not martyrs. They were the instruments of a system that made martyrs out of ordinary citizens.

The tragedy of Matthew Perna

The case of Matthew Perna illustrates the human toll of this prosecutorial overreach. Perna entered the Capitol, recorded video, and left without committing violence or destruction. Nevertheless, prosecutors pursued severe charges against him, including the application of a "terrorism enhancement" that would have drastically increased his sentence. Media outlets amplified the narrative, branding him as a threat to the nation.

The weight of this combined persecution proved too much for Perna. Before sentencing, he took his own life. His story exposes both the cruelty of the government’s approach and the complicity of media institutions that reinforced it. Today, prosecutors involved in such cases seek sympathy for their professional losses, while families like Matthew's continue to grieve irreparable personal losses.

An egregious double standard

The broader context highlights a political double standard. Democrats describe January 6 as one of the darkest days in American history. Yet the riots of 2020 — federal courthouses attacked, businesses destroyed, police assaulted, communities set ablaze — are routinely called “mostly peaceful.”

The murder of retired police captain David Dorn, killed on livestream while defending his community, generated little lasting outrage. Entire cities endured months of chaos, but few faced consequences comparable to the sweeping prosecutions unleashed against January 6 participants. Where were the terrorism enhancements then? Where were the years-long investigations, the solitary confinement, the relentless media coverage?

The truth is straightforward: Unrest associated with the political left is minimized or excused. Protests involving Trump supporters are magnified into terrorism. This inconsistency erodes public trust in equal justice under the law.

A critical course correction

Against this backdrop, the decisions by Attorney General Pam Bondi and special prosecutor Ed Martin should be recognized for what they are: efforts to restore fairness to a corrupt system. Bondi took decisive action to remove prosecutors who had shown an inability to separate justice from politics.

Martin, who himself witnessed the events of January 6, understood that Americans cannot be criminalized simply for supporting a particular political movement. His leadership in ending the ongoing persecution of defendants brought accountability to those who had turned prosecutions into a political weapon.

The New York Times calls this a "purge." A more accurate description is a course correction — an attempt to re-establish integrity in the Department of Justice and reaffirm that justice must not serve partisan ends.

The true victims of January 6 were not federal prosecutors. They were the more than 1,500 Americans caught in the dragnet of politicized charges. They were the families left bankrupt and broken. They were the children who still wake with nightmares of flash-bangs and broken doors. They were people like Matthew Perna, who lost hope under the crushing weight of unjust treatment.

They were also President Trump, the first lady, their son Barron, and allies who endured years of politicized investigations, predawn raids, tanks in neighborhoods, and heavily armed SWAT teams at their doors. These were the consequences of a government determined to use its vast powers not against criminals, but against political opponents.

Setting history straight

We must ensure that these truths are not forgotten. We cannot allow prosecutors to rewrite history by presenting themselves as martyrs. We cannot permit the suffering of families, the cries of children separated from their parents, or the suicide of Matthew Perna to be erased from public consciousness.

RELATED: Exclusive: Justice for victim’s severe injuries is elusive after he was shot point-blank by police on Jan. 6

Photo by Suspended Image via Getty Images

Justice in America must return to its foundational principle: fairness for all citizens, regardless of political affiliation. Until that principle is restored, we must continue to speak out and to stand with those whose lives were devastated by the misuse of government power.

This is not about revenge. It is about truth. It is not about politics. It is about families. And it is not about power. It is about ensuring that no American child ever again experiences the terror of waking to flash-bangs, shattered doors, and the loss of their parents over politics.