Q and the Capitol Building Riot

how that is connected heavily to Q and On. Now. Many people seem to think that because Trump is no longer the US president, Q and on is over. Unfortunately, that is very much not the case. There are hundreds of thousands of Q followers still hanging on, and believe it or not, some of them still think Q so called plan is being followed to the t. Will be showing you that just because you're not seeing it everywhere

now doesn't mean Q and On has gone away. Before we go into all of that, though, let me explain what we'll be doing in this series. So in the first series, we clearly laid out who we think is behind the Q and On hoax, and why we went over, how the account changed hands, how media misinformation started blaming the wrong people, and why hundreds of thousands felt for

the madness of Q and On. If you haven't heard it yet, I strongly advise you to go back to episode one of series one, otherwise a lot of this will make no sense to you. The end of series one of Q Clearance came around the same time as the end of Q and On as we know it, at least the end of que drops. See Q hasn't posted a single que drop since before the US election. The followers have been somewhat set adrift by this. Some have realized their error in believing in such an outlandish

conspiracy theory, whilst others have dog in deeper. Will be covering all of that later on in this series, so to be clear, In this series will be documenting the evolution of Q and On without its leader. Will also cast a light on the deeper parts of the conspiracy that you won't see discussed in the news segments. Since the see of Maga hats kicked in windows at the Capitol Building, twenty four hour news channels have decided to take proper notice of Q and On. Predictably, most of

their reporting is surface level and often over dramatic. At Q Clearance, we're digging in deeper. For four years, we have witnessed the pro Trump crowd fought with the police. This is the west front of the capital and you see the smoke is building and you see the flash there. Sometimes the flash bang is used by law enforcement to try to disperse the crowd. It's obviously one of the

tactics in their tool belt. Um and and it seems we saw the FBI swat team come in earlier, no question that they The storming of the Capitol Building is what really catapulted Q and On into the public eye. Before that, Q and On was an oddity, laughed at by most who had heard about it. Now it's becoming a serious talking point for every US politico from here to d C. Some people are calling Q and On a terrorist organization, whilst others have started trying to distance

themselves from this beast that they obviously nurtured. One side blames the other as usual. It's all a mess. But what actually happened at the Capitol Building in January? To discuss the situation in a way that's hopefully less dramatic than the online discourse that surrounding all of this has been. I spoke to journalist Matthew Goat. Goat runs the podcast Angry Planet and has been doing work on Q and

on from the very beginning. Let's just just do a beat by beat for January six here, just so we kind of know, have the facts straight in front of us. Um. So, on January six, Congress bought the House and the Senate convene at a joint session presided over by the Vice President, and it's to certify the election results. Basically, to count the electoral votes and officially say, all right, Joe Biden wins,

he will be the next president. This is part of like a very you know, an adyne normal process of American politics. Right. Um, the lead up to this day, Trump is indicating both on Twitter and in speeches, et cetera, that Pence could quote do something about this, that he could stop the certification, you know, because he's making this bold claim that the election was stolen from him and that the election is fraudulent, right, or at least kind

of hinting around that. No here, that many Q and on's were convinced at the time that Mike Pence was their savior. They thought he might be one of Qu's right hand men and that he'd storm this stage as it were, and announced that Trump was about to take over. Of course, Q and On's linked Trump's tweets about Pence to cues previous hints that Pence was on their side to make things even more polarizing. There was also a contingent of Q and On's, many of them who thought

the opposite of Pence. Many believed he was a traitor either way. On the day in question, he played a sign if a can roll in the Q and on mythos Um. Also in the lead up to the day, he announces that he will be holding a stop the Steel rally on the day that they are certifying the election. So in January six, then that morning, and then kind of throughout the afternoon, Trump supporters gather on the Ellipses, which is a large park north of Washington, north of

the Washington Monument and south of Lafayette Square. UM. So at noon Trump speaks. I think you know, at this point we've all heard the speech. We all know what he said. It was played repeatedly on cable news broadcasts and as part of his second impeachment trial. So he's still speaking when at twelve thirty the crowd begins to gather outside of the Capitol building itself. UM. And at one pm people start to push through the first barricade that was around the Capitol. UM. At one one oh five,

inside the Capitol, they begin certifying the votes. UM. At one tin Trump ends his speech and he else his supporters that we are going to the capital and that he will you know, we're going to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and that he will be there with them. Um.

He was not physically anyway. Then about one thirty, Trump supporters start marching down Pennsylvania Avenue and they make it to the steps, and a lot of the most striking footage that that we saw on social media comes from this moment, like from one thirty to two, where the crowds are gathered out outside and they're starting to fight with police officers and they're crawling all over everything. Um.

And then at about two fifteen they get in. And then five minutes later when Congress adjourns, and they start moving to safe locations either within the building or without if they can get outside of it, and then you know, we again we get to start to see what happens while these people are in the Capital Um. There's a lot of selfie taking. Uh, there's a lot of petty vandalism.

There's reports that excrement was smeared on the walls. Um. And you know there's there's the Q and On Sharman, who we will talk about here in a moment um. You know, in the ratunda in the chambers, looking looking very regal and important. If you saw any of the coverage of the Capitol Building riot, you will have seen the guy at gold just mentioned the Q and On Shaman.

We'll be talking about him more later in the series, but just in case you've been living under a rock or something, the Q and On Shaman is a man called Jake Angelie. Angelie was a hardcore Q and On believer who turned up to the Capitol Building shirtless, with his face painted and wearing a fur hat with antlers attached to it. You could not make this up. He was a well known face amongst the Q and On protests for years, and was of course present when the

Capitol Building was stormed on January nine. He was a rested on federal charges of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on capital grounds. He's since renounced his q and On allegiance and Donald Trump. It's believed he has also had a history of mental illness.

As the Capital Building was stormed, many of the protesters were posting their crimes to social media, showing off and often cheering Q and On mantras as they did it. And these people are all posting to social media. Um, they they're they're also going into congressional offices. They are looking for people. Mostly they find equipment. Some of them steal equipment, some of them steal Nancy Pelosi's mail and her laptop. Things get trashed, and that's generally what happens.

So what does this have to do with you and On? I think is like the big question, right because I think in the aftermath of all of this happening, a lot of the blame for this event was put on Q and on so YouTube and Facebook had already banned Q and On from its platforms for whatever you know

that means. Uh. Late on January eighth, Twitter comes two days after what will the storming of the capital, Twitter bands active q and on accounts and deactivates around seventy thousand accounts it says are connected to q and on. This includes former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Ron Watkins, who I'm sure listeners will be very familiar with by

this point. If that name means nothing to you, I again strongly advise you go back to series one to find out how it was uncovered that him and his dad were very likely behind the q and on hoax. UM. So, partly because of this and partly because of increased scrutiny overall, and a perception the platforms like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter silence and conservative voices, um, what I would call the q and on community begins to kind of migrate

to Telegram. We've got a whole episode coming up about how qun on flooded their way onto Telegram, the messaging app when its proponents were banned from social media. But just so you know for context, the ideas behind q and on have only become even more outrageous and unbelievable now that its main source of discussion is on Telegram. These groups aren't small either. When I'm following has well over one hundred thousand members and is constantly being updated.

So why is Q Why do people think you and on is to blame for this? Right? Right? I think that's that's like a big question, like why is that part of the narrative here? Um and I would say that is because we don't have good numbers on how many people were actually there. We may never know like what the total number is, but we can look at people that have been charged um SO. As of this recording, federal authorities have charged more than three people in connection

to the rights. The list is growing every day, and the charges range from conspiracy to petty vandalism. It's really all over the map with what these people are getting charged with. Um SO. News outlets like USA Today, Insider, and NPR have searchable databases of who the people are that are getting charged um things that have been written about them in their local newspapers, what their social media

activity was like. So there were people at the riot who were Q and On believers, Alright, how many of them believed quote unquote in Q and on or we're big Q people. I don't think that's super noable, but I do have some data points from like the indictments and what we know about some of these people, and I just kind of want to run through just three real quick. UM. So there's Harry P. Muntzer, who's fifty two. He's charged with disorderly conduct and breaking and entering UM.

He ran an appliant store in the Midwest. The local newspaper would report on him. It would run photos of a of an appliant the appliance store. It was decorated in murals talking about Q, talking about how people are sheeple um, and that this was an awakened store and that he was fighting against a deep state cabal. Um. You know, this is on the wall of his of his Midwest appliance store, just in in the middle of just you know, on a normal street. There's Dominic Madden,

forty three. He's got a real long list of charges, including including disorderly conduct and breaking and entering UM. He was seen on January six wearing a blue Q hoodie. There's a married couple, Jason and Christine Girding, also charged with disorderly conduct. They took a photo together in the rotunda of after they'd broken in UM. A loving like the kind of thing that you would see, like a normal couple take in front of a beautiful bridge or landscape.

UM and Jason's profile photo on Facebook before the rest is emblazoned with the Q. UM. There's others. There's others, people in the three hundred people long list, right, But it's not as if I mean you you know this and the listeners know this. It's not as if there's a centralized location where Q is being planned and people

are being organized. This is a self starting belief system and cult these So it's it's to say that Q and on caused this, I think is a simplification of a much broader phenomenon about what's going on that also involves President Trump, that just involves the way the internet works, in the way conservative politics have gone in America more

broadly in the last ten or twenty years. I think as well, though, some something that a lot of people look to when saying, oh, the Q cause this is because the Q and On's before this, Actually this happened before the riot happened. The Q and On's on telegram was saying, right January sick, there's going to be something big. Trump is going to come back. He's gonna he really won the election, he's going to arrest ever, you know, another one of these failed predictions that they always have.

And then when nothing happened, they kind of made something happen and said, see, we told you something big was going to happen. And it's like, no, that that's not the same. That's like saying, oh, my car is going to get stolen on Monday, and then when no one steals that, you steal your own car and trash it and then say, see I told you, Like, no, it doesn't work like that. That's not prediction, that is you causing it. That's a self fulfilling prophecy. Right. I think

that did have a lot to do with it as well. No, I think you are exactly right, um, and like part of and this is especially what what you're talking about is especially important when we talk about what has happened

after to the Q and On movement. They say that January six is going to be this day the you know, the big Q we will call it a Q influencers, the big people in the Q and On community right are saying that January six is going to be the stay, It's going to be the day that the election is certified. Like and as you said, they manifested this. They made something, They made something happen. So there we have it. The Capital Building riot or insurrection or whatever you want to

call it didn't necessarily happen only because of Q and On. However, I think it's fair to say that it likely wouldn't have been carried out in the way that it was if Q and On didn't exist. Q whipped his supporters up into a wild frenzy for four years, promising political violence, secret plans, and the destruction of the Democrats. When that didn't happen, many many Q and On supporters sort of tried to light the spark that Q couldn't, because of course Q was full of ship from start to finish.

This isn't over, though, the threat of potential violence from Q and On adherence got so extreme that on page one of a New York Police Department Intelligence Bureau mailer on extremist imagery, they put the Q and On symbol at the top. This mailer was obtained by journalist Jason Wilson.

On it, the police wrote the following, Q and On is a broad conspiracy movement with anti Semitic underpinnings that falsely alleges, based on purportedly classified intelligence, that an elite cabal of pedophiles led by Democrats is plotting to harm children and undermine President Trump. Several adherents to the movement have been responsible for acts of violence and criminality. The possible danger here is that Q and on is very much still alive. It's just more underground than it ever was.

Stay tuned to Q Clearance while we bring all of this into the light. Q Clearance is brought to you by I Heart Radio and cou Data Media. I'm Jake Hanrahan. You can find me online at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h a N A h a N. This episode was produced by myself, with fact checking and additional research by Sarah Hightower. The music is by Sam Black and the sound was mixed by Thomas Griffin. That splicing Block Burton Burton and Burton person unperson