Episode 2: Stop The Steal

rebellion against an illegitimate government. He's in his mid thirties, and his crisp white shirt and edgy haircut announced him as an influencer. As he looks out over the chaos, he revels in what his influence has unleashed. This is we, the people of the growing frustrating tunes of the government, and what's happening now is exactly what I've warned about. That's not quite true. He hasn't been warning about this day.

He's been planning for it, organizing for it, inciting thousands upon thousands of people with the lie that the election was fraudulent. I've said that we need to make fair elections in transparent county so that the people do not feel like the last resort is public demonstrations like this. As he addresses the camera, the scene behind him is escalating. Rioters are pouring into the US Capital. We are marching through. Members of Congress are scrambling for safety. Where are you going?

White nationalists Q and on cultists and card carrying militia members are roaming the hallways. They're hunting elected officials. What they're doing a darts trying to find her later in the day. Rioters will even smear their feces on the walls. I want to say something I don't do avow this. I do not denounce this. This is completely peaceful, looks like so far. And there are a couple of agitators that I obviously donates for. The influencer on the rooftop.

This is the culmination of a life's work. He's the wily right wing provocateur you've never heard of. But you can't understand the Capital insurrection without understanding his story. I was a person who came up with the January sixth idea. All of this begins with a lie. And that slim, smartly dressed guy on the rooftop his name is Ali Alexander and he's the man behind the lie. From the teams at Cool Zone Media. I heart radio and novel.

This is the Assault on America Episode two, Stop the Steel. Okay, straight off the bat. The Capitol riot involved tens of thousands of Trump supporters, including more than eight hundred who entered the capital itself. It was promoted by the President of the United States. One the presidential election was rigged, illegal votes, and then I've taken this White House. We're going to fight like hell. I'll tell you right now, who, in turn, was amplified by a vast media network online

and on TV. Voter fraud people voting to quite seven million votes deleted, so much evidence right in front of people's eyes. So can we really single out one far right influencer as the chief architect of the riot? Oh? No, I think that's fair. That is very fair. That's Luke O'Brien. He's an investigative journalist who covers political extremism. I'm an investigative reporter and I have been tracking a network of bad actors on the political right for the last five years.

In case you're wondering, it's not the easiest beat to cover. I think it began with my very first story. I started getting defamed and harassed and threatened, and it's been that way for uff a decade now. Every story you're right usually results in some sort of blowback. Blowback is Luke's jovial way of describing having his personal details leaked online to thousands of far right accounts, or being deemed a picture of a handgun with the caption your time

is come. I've covered a lot of the same communities and can confirm that death threats are sort of de rigor. The harassment increases exponentially if you do this work and happen to not be a white dude. So anyway, Luke was digging into these kinds of networks when he first

came across our man on the rooftop, Ali Alexander. I've noticed him online and then in I noticed him in person because I attended a rally in front of the White House that had been organized by several of Alexander's collaborators. It's called the Rally for Peace, I believe. And it was funny because before the rally kicked off, you had some very angry, very militant Trump supporters who were not speaking in peaceful terms. There was one guy who was

talking about putting George Soros in a gas chamber. There was an ultranationalist skinhead group that was doing security, and Ali Alexander got up on stage and spoke as well. There he is in the flesh all uh, you know, turned out in his slick suit on a hunt day, his hair kind of brushed back in an interesting hairstyle, and clearly trying to make a go of it as an influencer. Until this point, Ali Alexander has been more of a behind the scenes guy, the type of person

the press might refer to as a political operator. But in two thousands seventeen he starts moving into the spotlight, appearing on stage next to heavyweight right wing influencers, the type of social media stars who wield great power on the right. So you had in mid seen all the elements of this anti democratic network that Ali Alexander was a central note of coming together in front of the

White House. Now Alexander isn't the biggest name to speak on the stage that day, not by a long shot, but he has something that the others don't, one thing that distinguishes Ali Alexander from some of the other bat actors on the political rights. Some of these influencers online, is that he actually does have some real political operative experience, going back many years, organizing experience, working on campaigns, setting

up websites, running social media for various Republican candidates. So prior to Trump running for president, Ali Alexander is moving around in actually, frankly, some fairly high level Republican circles. Yeah, there's much more to Alie Alexander than your typical maga Yahoo mashing the retweet button after every presidential admission. So where does a guy like Alexander spring from and how did he end up on that rooftop overlooking chaos on

January six? Arguably more responsible for the violence than any single person except the President himself. Very early as a child, I saw it power. I saw it power and influence. That's Alie Alexander speaking in two thousand nineteen. I guess it's no surprise he ended up in politics. Alexander was born in Texas in the mid nineteen eighties. He was raised by his mom after his dad walked out when he was two years old. The way Alexander describes it,

he was hooked on politics from the start. I grew up phone banking for judges, you know, I built websites for politicians when I was in high school. It was only natural I was going to be a congressman or I was going to be a U. S Senator. And that with the plan. Trouble with the law and a nasty mug shot killed the dream of high office, and by two thousand seven, Alexander finds himself unemployed, a college dropout with convictions for property theft and debit card abuse.

But happily for Alexander, it turns out that none of that matters because Ali has a superpower. Those websites he built in high school for Republican politicians, those were just the start. Young Ali is way ahead of the curve on all things digital. He's living online before the phrase even exists. He creates a Twitter account so early that he secures a prized three letter handled at Ali, and luckily for Alexander, the Republican Party knows talent when they

say it. They set him to work on the newly emerging digital arena of politics. Ali will later describe himself as a pioneer in the field, and he's probably right. Seven there's about twenty us that we're building websites during email marketing social media, creating UH profiles and interface with that. I mean, now there's like four thousand of us. By two thirteen, he's organizing his own after party at SPAK,

the biggest Republican event of the year. In this video, he's standing next to Ted Cruz, the newly elected U. S. Senator from Texas. Let me tell you, the men and women in this room, you represent power and you represent the money. Alexander called the party blog bash to celebrate the digital warriors like him fighting their campaigns online. Clearly Cruise understands their value. You scare one, you scare the

hell out of Washington. Well that's prophetic. Roll on to twenty teen, and Alexander has worked on a slew of Republican campaigns as a digital director. But along the way he seems to have burned a few bridges in his native Texas. So he resurfaces in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's here that he meets a local writer and publisher called Lamar White Jr. I kind of like a mosquito in here. It's Louisiana. Lamar covers politics and state government in Baton Rouge.

So when a guy like Ali arrives in town. Lamar's radar pings, he seeks out Ali for a drink. I met him at a bar. It was just this normal bar in Baton Rouge, and he was with his boyfriend, so it was a very like, sort of relaxed, you know, casual getting to know you type of thing. And he was nothing like the Ali Alexander that emerged in the Stop to Steal campaign. At this stage, Alexander is just another political operative trying to build a network in a

new town. He certainly comes across as a political consultant. There is a personality type, you know, someone who has probably two or three cell phones and his multiple things going on at once. And the candidate that he worked for in Louisiana, by the way, was not someone that you would define as a right wing ideologue in any respect. In fact, the candidate he worked for, I would say twenty years ago, would have been a Democrat. But Alie

Alexander's a political survivor. When the winds change in ten and Donald Trump takes control of the Republican Party, Alexander changes his tune in an instant, becoming a true believer in the Maga cause. Basically, overnight. And that's not the only evidence of a healthy dose of a moral flexibility on Alie's part. I mean, the guy doesn't become the chief architect of an attempted coup just because he's a

Trump convert who knows how to tweet. Alie. Alexander has another string to his bow, a willingness to get dirty. Here's Luke O'Brien again. He started doing some work for this very strange looking group called the Black Conservatives Fund. And this is essentially it's a political activism type group that receives dark money. Dark money the scourge of US politics. This is untraceable cash pumped into the system, usually by

mega donors with somewhat questionable intentions. You can pretty much rest assured that it's not on the up and up. Not on the up and up is certainly one way to describe Alexander's new venture in Louisiana. Alee Alexander is working for this group and they are targeting Democratic candidates in different elections around the country, and they're promoting far right or hard right Republican candidates. And the irony here is, you know, Alee Alexander's a mixed race man. His mother

is black. His father, he claims from the United Arab Emirates originally, And you know, he was working with another black woman on this Black and Service Fund, and a lot of things they were doing, we're actually disenfranchising black voters. Here's a typical example. He targeted an incumbent senator, Democratic Senator in Louisiana, Mary Landrew. She was up for re election. The Black Conservatives Fund begins infiltrating one of Mary Landrew's

campaign events and recording them. This one was hosted by Landrew's chief of staff's dad. He happened to be the mayor of a small town in Louisiana called Apaloosis, and he made a joke about voting twice. You know, someone asked him, what if, what if we've already sent in a mail and vote. He said, oh, we'll show up the polls anyway and vote again. So the room burst out laughing. It was very clearly kind of a campaign trail type joke. If you early voted, go vote again tomorrow.

It's a joke. You here in politics all the time. Next thing you know, this is being turned into an attack ad and numerous press releases put out by the Black Conservatives Fund targeting mary Landrew, saying that the father of her chief of staff or her campaign manager was urging voter fraud to take place. He was recommending that all these black voters, and these are predominantly black voters

that we're talking about here, vote twice. Here's the introduction to the ad put out by Ali Alexander and the Black Conservatives Fund. What you're about to hear is shocking, even for the sad swamp of Democrat politics here in Louisiana. The man talking is Louisiana State Senator Albert Guillory. His mournful tone is kind of like a teacher who isn't angry, just disappointed. The Black Conservatives Fund obtained footage at a private gathering of the Democrat faithful where the mayor of

Apulusus suggests that people vote twice. Why urge people to commit voter fraud? With this ad? Ali Alexander is learning his craft, hinting to Republicans that if the election doesn't go your way, it must have been stolen. When you allege the voter fraud is happening in the South and the Democrats are the ones doing it, well, what you're saying is that black people are cheating when they're voting somehow, because the Democratic Party in Southern states is heavily heavily black.

And while Alexander is riling up Louisiana Republicans with false claims of black voter fraud, he's simultaneously targeting black Democrat voters with disinformation designed to stop them from turning out to vote. Here's a deceptively edited robo call he put out reworking an interview with Mary Landrew to make it sound like she didn't vote for Barack o'ball in the twenty twelve election Louisiana. Here is an important last minute

election update US Senator Mary Landrew with US here. I voted for the Affordable care I did not vote for Obama. Did you hear that mary Landrew talking to a white host different than she talks to black voters. I did not vote for obam What happened next is that the Republican Party of Louisiana amplifies this propaganda and puts out statements of its own. And the goal, of course, is to spread some disinformation and try to take out a

Democratic senator. And so Ali Alexander played an instrumental role in making that happen, and mary Landrew ended up losing her election. Lamar White Jr. A veteran of covering Louisiana politics, also thinks that Alexander had a critical role in handing mary Landrew's Senate seat to her Republican rival Bill Cassidy. Yes, I do, I absolutely do. The Black Conservatives Fund made a couple of pretty big splashes, I would say. And you can see a photograph of Ali and Bill Cassidy

standing together on election night celebrating his win. So Alie Alexander maybe swings a senatorial race in Louisiana. Okay, impressive, but kind of small fry. This series is about a full blown insurrection in Washington, d C. After all. But don't worry. He's about to hit the big time. The thing is he needs a little help with the transition. At some point in the Trump years, Ali falls in with a man who's done it all before. A master of the political dark arts the Loki of us politics.

I have no title, I have no line responsibilities, but I have access to all the right people. When Roger Stone starts collaborating with Alie Alexander, it's like a master meeting a talented apprentice. Stone was working with Trump at the time as a kind of fixer, or, as Stone would rather put it, I'm just an fot friend of Trumble. It's hard to say exactly what Stone was doing for Trump, but we can take a guess from his background. Roger

Stone goes way back in US politics. I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their presidents or crook. Well, I'm not a crook. He was pulling fast tricks in the Nixon years. They called it rat fucking back then. The term refers to all of the underhanded, immoral, or straight up illegal ways you can screw over your opponent in politics. The Watergate break in is a classic example, and by the way, Stone had a role in that as a junior Nixon staffer,

but he was never charged. Roger Stone was forged as a political operator in those dubious years. He even has a tattoo of Nixon's on his back. But Stone's real contribution to this story comes in three simple words, stop the steel. Roger Stone coined that phrase, stopped the steal in, and that was during the Republican primary with US tonight businessman Donald Trump, of New York. Trump was a long shot candidate. It was a very crowded field Jeb Bush

and Florida. Trump was kind of the non politician who was making a lot of noise property from then let me talk quiet at the time when he first cleared his candidacy and nobody gave him a chance, and then he started picking off the candidates one by one. So I think you're on the wrong side of this. If you're still arguing for a single player. I'm not. I'm not. I don't think you've heard me. You're having a hard

time tonight. But it still looked like he might not get the nomination, and so Roger Stone coined this phrase stop the Steel to basically under in confidence in the political process. In the Republican primary, there is insurmountable, compelling, overcoming evidence of fraud, and the idea was, well, if Trump loses, then clearly this has been stolen, right because the people want Trump. Accordingly, the chair announces that Donald Day Trump has been selected as the Republican Party nominee

for President of the United States. The people, as we know, did want Trump, and he secured the Republican nomination for president. So in Roger Stone Stopped the Steel campaign was never rolled out. But after the primary comes the general, and once again the numbers aren't looking good for Trump. Clinton head by nine siy, Clinton eleven points and leading Trump by twelve point. Once again, it looks like it's an uphill fight. So Donald Trump is again challenging the legitimacy

of the election. Trump and Stone dust off their trustee slogan stop the Steel. It became far more toxic this phrase, and far more dangerous at that time, because then it was about demonizing Hillary Clinton and demonizing liberals, and liberals are trying to steal this election from Donald Trump, the Democratic machine, the deep state, all these things started circulating in the conversation. You could see what they were trying to do. Back in they were trying to say that

if Trump didn't win, somehow the election was rigged. Trump himself was using that kind of language in the lead up to the election because he wasn't sure he was gonna win. Roger Stone stopped the Steel efforts are more than simple rhetoric. I think it's essentials. He starts working with groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. These are the kind of brutish, armed thugs. We'll hear

more about later in this series. For now, all you need to know is that they are not professional poll watchers. Roger Stone was using Stop the Steel to promote sending pole watchers, as he called it, to go and just,

you know, make sure the election wasn't being stolen. Let's just send an army of really angry, delusional, probably very large white men to go and stand outside, you know, the polls in neighborhoods where a lot of minorities vote, you know, and make sure they're not stealing the vote. Pull watchers in Lee County. Tomorrow, the uful watchers are going to be at polling locations across New Mexico. While

poll watching is legal, intimidating voters is not. Roger Stone's key discovery is that baseless conspiracy theories about election integrity are a huge hit with Trump space. As Trump heads for the general election, there's more and more rhetoric from the Trump camp about greaked elections, cheating Democrats, and widespread voting fraud. But once again, the full stop the Steel campaign isn't needed. Trump surprises everyone, including himself, by taking

the White House. Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated, business, complicate. Stop the steel is put on ice. You don't shout about election fraud when you win. But it turns out that stop the steel is too powerful a weapon to lay dormant for long. This came back in. It came back, not as how Ali Alexander got involved. Was stopped the steel breaking news in Florida. The counting is over in the eighteen midterm elections. There's an extremely close race in Florida.

Republican Rhonda Santis is still ahead of Democrat Andrew Gillam by only four tenths of a percent. It's so close, in fact, that a recount is required by law. The situation became kind of a microcosm foreshadowing of what would happen in the presidential election. The voting on election day favors the Republican candidate ron De Santis, but the mail in ballots counted later than the election day ballots cast in person favored the Democrat Andrew Gillim. This phenomenon is

known as the blue shift. It's called that because the result of the election starts red Republican and gradually moves to blue Democrat. There are many reasons why Democrats are more likely to vote by mail than Republicans, but the discrepancy creates just enough ambiguity for agitators like Alexander to get to work. Ali Alexander decided, Okay, let's deploy the stop the Steel campaign again the phrase, but also he

had the social media presence. This is important because Roger Stone, for all of his wiles and experience, never understood social media. Like Ali Alexander. It's a generational thing. Stone has some reach, but even his rat fucking days never prepared him for the cesspools of social media. Alexander, on the other hand, came of age politically on Twitter. In his hands, stop the Steel is a far more powerful weapon than it ever was for Stone. He started tweeting out a stop

the Steel hashtag. He had his network who were boosting this stop the Steel campaign that Alexander had launched in They all jumped in. President Trump just tweeted an unsubstantiated accusation trying to steal too big elections in Florida. We are watching closely, he writes. Alexander studied organizing an actual protest outside the election center down in Florida where where the recount was happening, and guests who showed up a lot of the same type of people who showed up

on January six. These people are extremists and they're kind of passing in normal society, and they all showed up in to stop the steel down in Florida, and it worked, by the way, it worked. About fifteen minutes ago, I spoke with Andrew Gillham and he very graciously conceded the election. When the votes are recounted, the Republican Ron De Santis is declared the winner. He was a very formidable opponent and I wish him well in his future endeavors. Maybe

the recount would have always favored to Santis. But if you're counting votes with an angry right wing mob waiting just outside the front door, well who knows what might happen. And the crazy thing is for Alexander, the result itself isn't even the main rise. What was successful about it for them was that Ali Alexander and his group were able to almost immediately get a pretty significant turnout on

the ground from what they were doing online. So they had figured out how to weaponize social media use it to organize an actual protest and get people to show up with signs angry people who just believed that the Democrats were stealing the election because they've seen it on Twitter and they've seen enough people tweeting about it. That was a very successful field test for what he would end up doing in What does he end up doing? In by Alexander has completed the move from back room

operator to social media influencer. He grows his following on Twitter and Instagram by posting increasingly incendiary content. He posts the kind of attacks even Trump didn't go near. Kamala Harris doesn't count as black because she's only half Jamaican. Joe Biden secretly has Parkinson's disease, and of course he lays the groundwork for the Stop the Steel campaign, raising funds,

organizing logistics, readying his network of followers. Lamar White Jr. The investigative reporter from Louisiana, checked in with his one time acquaintance to try and figure out what was going on. I had contact with him right after the election. I noticed that there was a Stop the Steel protest that was planned for Baton Rouge, which I've frankly found a little silly considering that Donald Trump won Louisiana by like

nineteen points. He told me when we spoke that he was planning these events in all fifty states, that that was next on his agenda, that he was not going to relent, And he made it seem as if what he was doing was perfectly reasonable and that the only thing he really cared about was ensuring election integrity, and

he had these legitimate questions about election integrity. I mean, this is frankly, this is b s. Soon after election, Trump's own Homeland Security officials declare it the most secure election in US history. At least eighty six lawsuits are brought by the Trump campaign and their allies, claiming instances of election fraud. One after the other. They're swatted down in courts around the country, many thrown out by Trump

appointed judges. Ali Alexander is unfhased. He had been planning to do this for months before, so regardless of what the outcome was if Trump lost, no matter what combination of states came together to give him that loss, Ali was going to do this anyway. Ali spends November and December organizing protests all over the Wes. He speaks at many of them. His rhetoric ratcheting up as he spreads

more and more lies. They say there's a cue going on, and there is Trump got I believe eighty million votes. After organizing NonStop rallies throughout the winter, Alexander decides on a final push, one last effort to overturn the national election. The date he lands on January six. January six, Alexander leverages all his connections, all his experience as an organizer.

His skill is a propagandist. He liaises with Trump campaigners, with grassroots organizers, with far right extremists, and with alt right influencers. Piece by piece, he pulls together the mother of all maga rallies. At twelve pm on January six, Donald Trump addresses a shivering crowd outside the White House. Alie Alexander sits in the front row. We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede. Where there's that in my head? At least,

he smiles when he hears this line. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steel. Alexander has pulled some political tricks before now, but this is the biggest of them all. He's rolling out a stop the Steel campaign that has been prepared for every previous election in Donald Trump's political career. Only now is it needed. And Alie Alexander is the man at the helm. He's the guy. He's the guy who who drove this car to stop

the steel car. That is what led to January six more than anything else, that mass disinformation campaign that he was driving. And it's replicated on the other side. This is we the people, the growing frustrations of the governments. Alie Alexander's live stream on the rooftop overlooking the Capital riot is the zenith of his career. Most of the rioters have probably never heard of him, but they've heard

of Stopped the Steel. It's why they were here. But within days of the riot, something strange happens to Alexander for the first time in his adult life. He stops posting. The political operator with multiple phones, running dozens of accounts, bombarding millions of Americans with distortions, half truths and lies is d platformed by almost every social media site on the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. One by one, Allie Alexander's

accounts are suspended. Even parlor beloved by the Right for its lack of content moderation, and is knocked offline by its hosting partner Amazon. The only platform that will still take him is a streaming site mainly used by gamers. Judging from Ali's new content, he doesn't take his d platform ing well. My entire life is over. They have ruined my earthly life. They have totally ruined it. Five people died at the Capitol riot that Alexander worked so

hard to incite. Yet he's full of pity for himself and anger at the social media bosses who took away his toys. And he's filming these these videos, these live streams in the backseat of a car, kind of you know, rumbling through the dark to some undisclosed location like he's you know, he's on the lamb. I have lost my cash app, I have lost my PayPal, I've lost my Venmo.

Please send money. I'm thinking that he's still on the grift, you know, the grift is baked into his soul at this point, right because I've seen him do this before, where he talking about I need money, I need it right away to pay for my security team. My life is in danger, and there's never really been any evidence of that. He's never produced any evidence to back up anything he's saying. My first concern is making sure that I have full time security with me. That means into

every bathroom that I go to. From now until the rest of my life, I'll probably never get to hang out with my dog again. Besides the self pity, Alexander craves revenge. I will unleash a legion of angels to bring hell to our enemies. I pray that I am the tool to stab these mother fucker's. You might be tempted to look at somebody like Alexander and dismiss him as a weird sight show a grifter into charlatan, but

that would be a huge mistake. I hate to say it, but when Ali Alexander threatens revenge, we need to take him seriously, especially given the militant nature of his fan base. That you had a vast network of extremists, many of them anti democratic activists who are actually trying to destroy democracy in America because they know that democracy in a multiracial country like this is a losing proposition for them. And Ali Alexander was one of the main people behind that.

He was one of the ringleaders. Unless we do something about it. Now, it's going to come back, and it's going to be uglier. I know that. I do think he'll be back. I really do. The case of Ali Alexander represents both a problem and an imbalance in our justice system. As of the writing of this episode, Ali has not been charged with any crime for deliberately inciting a riot that led to several deaths, and indeed, he's back on his game, broadcasting on an encrypted app used

by many on the right. Now. One might argue if he were to be charged that it would set a dangerous precedent, It might make organizing unsafe for a variety of people across the political spectrum, but that's already the case. Left wing activists are regularly charged with felonies for organizing

protests where no one dies. In September six, socialist organizers were slammed with a bevy of charges and in some cases, threatened with up to forty eight years in prison for organizing protests in Aurora, Colorado, where no one was killed or seriously injured. They were charged with kidnapping because the protests surrounded a police station and thus imprisoned officers. These charges were dropped months later, but the case is ongoing.

In July, a test organizer in San Louis Obispo, California, was charged with five crimes, including felony riot, for leading protesters to briefly block a highway. And on January one, the FBI arrested and charged a leftist activist who had fought against ISIS in Syria and who tried to organize an armed left wing counter rally to defend against a far right attack he believed was coming. After January six,

he was sentenced to three and a half years. That last one may seem like it crosses a line for you, but in August one, failed comedian Jason left Cowitz stood up at an anti mask rally in Santa Monica and held up a list of the names and addresses of every Los Angeles City Council member. He screamed, you want to feel intimidated, We're coming to your homes. Were coming to you now. He later added, quote civil war, Civil war is coming. Get your guns. Left Cowitz, like Alley Alexander,

has not been charged with any crime. The FBI has not shown up at his door to confiscate his weapons, and they never will coming up. An episode three, a radical far right militia group is spurred on by Alley Alexander's lies and takes drastic action. They've gotten the gallows set upside the Capitol building. It's trying to start fucking using them. They're throwing your nets, they're freaking shooting people

are payballs, but we're in here. Everything we fucking trained for fucking gets some In the next episode of The Assault on America, we're in the fucking capital