Episode 7: The Lost Cause

have formed a battle lie. Their wooden shields are painted with pro Trump and quan On slogans. I'm here to her a far right rally. The Facebook event declared it the mother of all Back the Blue rallies. Portland has been ground zero for far right street violence over the last few months. I'm filming on my phone wearing a vest and a helmet labeled PRESS, but I know that won't be enough to protect me. Some anti fascist demonstrators in Black Lives Matter T shirts start a counter chant

with drums. They're outnumbered, but they square off with their opponents. I'm right in the thick of it. I to eye with a bearded proud boy named Alan Swinney who threatens to maze me. He's kind of a local celebrity in Portland fascist circles. Later today he'll pull a gun on a BLM activist. Someone throws a jug of orange juice into the crowd and things escalate a back the blue supporter hurls smoke bombs and improvised flash bangs into the crowd.

Four right wingers start beating an unarmed man with baseball bats. A line of proud boys charges at the anti fascist protesters. People are knocked to the ground, and oath keepers pile in, kicking and spraying mace. Out of nowhere, a proud boy with a blue shield and blasted with God Bless America runs right at me. He smashes the phone out of my hands with a police baton. I double over. My hand is broken into places. I confront my attacker, holding

up my bloody hand. He attempts and fails to knock me back with his shield. It's a thousand persons street fight ten feet in front of Portland police headquarters, but no arrests are made. In fact, law enforcement never moved in on the crowd. The closest they get to riot control is an officer parked outside in nearby Starbucks. He tells the protesters to play an ice from inside his car.

Just over four months later, on January six, many of the far right activists who honed their tactics on the streets of Portland while police look the other way, will make their way to the capital. Last episode, we heard the stories of officers who fought tooth and nail against the rioters. This time we meet the cops on the opposite side of the battle lines. At least twenty current or former members of law enforcement have been charged with

crimes related to the January six insurrection. Even more have been suspended, dismissed, or are currently under investigation by their local department. Even the Capitol Police themselves, the officers charged with defending the building, have placed over thirty five officers under investigation and suspended at least six. The vast majority officers, like Harry Dunn and Sergeant Gonell fought heroically, but a small number put their arms around rioters and posed for selfies.

Patriots are taking selfeast together with Capitol police inside the Capitol or they beckoned the invaders into the Capitol building. Urging them on, and the so called patriots loved it. Police are doing nothing. They're not even trying to stop. At this point, I've seen for myself the way police handle far right groups like the Proud Boys and local militias is decidedly hands off. The question is why, Because

there's no doubt about it. This permissiveness of right wing violence, which stretches back decades, was a key ingredient in the toxic stew that led to January six. So it's time to address one of the scariest questions about the riot. How comes so many cops were part of the mob.

From the team's at Cool Zone Media, I Heart Radio and novel This is the Assault on America Episode seven, The Lost Cause m the first Black Lives rally in Rocky Mount I was very impressed with the number of people that came out that day, children, older people, young black people, young white people, older black people, older white people. Penny Edwards Blue grew up in Franklin County in the

foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. She moved back after a career in tech and is now the only black member of the local school board. She's describing a rally that took place in June in Rocky mount a rural town in Franklin of about five thousand people. It was Rocky Mounts first ever b l M turnout and it was a good one. The sun was shining. People out with signs. Everyone was very nice to each other. When

cars passed by and they saw the signs. Most people hank and the sheriff spoke and he also had a black deputy speak. There was a sense of determination but also elation. There was dancing. Do you remember that rash of videos in early twenty of cops dancing at b l M rally's everybody, Well, it happened here too. As they moved on to the next part of the march, they did dis dancing. Police officers and protesters did the electric slide sidestepping in Unison, next to the Farmer's Market.

The police department handed out water bottles, and as the afternoon wore on, an officer brought the protesters McDonald's Happy Meals and pizza. One of the dancing protesters was a young hairdresser named Bridget Craighead. Bridget founded the local Black Lives Matter chapter and asked Penny him mentor her. After the protest, Bridget was brimming with optimism about the reception they'd had from the cops. She thought she had made

a breakthrough because these cops were dancing with her. What do you have to understand about history is they did that during slavery. The master's children played with the slave children. Yet when they grew up, they treated them as slaves and treated them harshly. Just because someone is dancing with you and smiling with you and have on a conversation with you does not mean they have your best interest at heart. In a photo from the rally, Bridget stands

side by side with two police officers. Sergeant Thomas T. J. Robertson has a wide, clean shaven face. Officer Jacob Fracker has dark sunglasses and a goatee. They all hold signs painted with slogans just us isn't justice and silence equals violence? Police and the People United. Everyone is smiling. Seven months later, on January six, a very different image finds its way onto the Internet. It's another selfie featuring officers Fracker and Robertson,

but this time they're not smiling. This time, the two cops are glaring down at the camera, they look angry and hyped up. Fracker is flipping his middle finger. Behind them looms a white marble statue of the revolutionary general John Stark. There's only one place they could be, the Statuary Hall in the heart of the US Capital. They've traveled there from Virginia to join the riot. The picture shoots around Rocky Mount, lighting up phones and computer screens

all around town. Within a week of the riot, it all hell breaks loose tonight Tonight to Rocky Mount police officers are on administrative leave and are being investigated by federal authorities. Protesters going head to head outside the Rocky Mount Town Council meeting Monday night on January Frecker and Robertson are arrested on federal charges after a public outcry. They lose their jobs at Rocky Mount's tiny police department,

and at the time of recording there awaiting trial. But the story doesn't end there because the case of officers Frecker and Robertson has split their community right down the middle. There are those in Rocky Mount who are a gas that two of their officers invaded the US capital, and there are many others who think that the Justice Department is being over zealous and prosecuting two cops with previously spotless records. So who are these police officers who dance

with BLM one day and attack democracy the next? What do they have to say for themselves? It's very rare if you're a journalist to have a police officer readily answer your questions. This is Mike Allen, a journalist who lives near Rocky Mount. He works for The Roanoke Times, where he covers politics in Franklin County. Franklin County has a kind of colorful reputation. Its nickname is the Moonshine

Capital of the World. Mike loves the history of Franklin County so much that he has quite literally bought the T shirt. I'm not wearing it right now though. When it came out the two Rocky Mount police officers had invaded the capital, Mike was quick to get in touch. To his surprise, Sergeant Robertson and Officer Fracker were willing to speak. T J. Robertson was very eager to expound

on his side of the story. Jacob was it first a bit more cautious, but later he also communicated with me and My impression, for what it is worth, is that both of these fellows were absolutely convinced that they had done nothing wrong. How could two police officers charged with upholding the law failed to understand that storming the seat of American democracy is a no no legally speaking? The answer, as is so often the case, lies in

the trail of their social media communications. In November, following the presidential election and the rollout of Ali Alexander's Stopped the Steel campaign, which we covered an episode two, t J. Robertson became increasingly outspoken on Facebook. His words here, as laid out in his FBI indictments, are spoken by an actor being disenfranchised by fraud is my hardline. I sent most of my adult life fighting encountering sir agency. I'm about to become part of one, and a very effective one.

Like his colleague, Officer Fracker, Sergeant T J. Robertson is a military veteran who has done tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robertson talks about insurgencies, he's not getting around. Civility has left me. I'm tired of always taken the high road and being beat by those who cheat, lie, and steal the win and then allow their media to paint me as the bad guy. I won't be disenfranchised.

I'll follow the path our founders gave us. Redressed grievances, already done civil disobedience here now, and then open armed rebellion. I spent the last ten years fighting an insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm prepared to start one here and know a bunch of like minded and rained individuals. On Monday January four, two days before the riot, he writes, I'll be in d C Wednesday to peacefully protest. The day after we shall see. So how did the peaceful

protests turn out? Jacob Fracker and T. J. Robertson went into the capital in about the middle of the time of greatest turmoil, though they both told me in interviews that they didn't see any violence happening around them. As they went in. Fracker would message a friend that he

was the eighth person inside the capitol. If this is true, it would be pretty astounding if he saw no violence against police on his way in, But Francker and Robertson have always maintained that they weren't involved in any violence. They simply walked in and walked out. They really really took pains to convey to me as they saw it, all they had done was take part in a peaceful protest.

Anybody who's familiar with the case who hears me say that, is immediately going to think about some of the things that both of these men posted on social media that actually sound very militant and like they are advocating for violence. But they swore that they had done nothing wrong, that they were just participating in a protest. On January eight, Robertson took to Facebook to celebrate his participation in the peaceful protest from two days before the next revolution started

in d C. One six one. The only voice these people will now listen to is violence, So respectfully, buckle armor or just stay at home. The word violence in that post, by the way, is it all caps? And there's more. The picture of senators cowering on the floor with genuine fear on their faces is the most American thing I've seen in my life. Wants for real, you people actually realize who you work for. For his part, Officer Fracker shared a video with friends on Facebook saying

that he hadn't been that hyped up since Afghanistan. For good measure, he added ship was wild l O l I Piston, Nancy ps toilet. T J. Robertson told me that those statements were essentially meant to be editorial statements or hyperbole or you know, sort of cheering for the team, that they weren't supposed to be taken literally. People obviously have their own opinions about that, and you'll probably have

your own opinion about this too. The most recent development, which is kind of mind boggling, is that T. J. Robertson, after he was released on bond under conditions that he not possess any guns, proceeded to buy more than thirty guns online and have them shipped to a gun dealer essentially in Romano, as well as receipts for thirty four guns. The police found a partially constructed pipe bomb in Robertson's home.

He claims he owned it for police training purposes. Whatever the case, his bail has been revoked and he is awaiting trial from prison. The Rocky Mount Police force is small, about twenty officers strong, and the fact that two of them have allegedly been planning an insurgency online and I'm asking weapons while out on bail. It's scary stuff. And the unavoidable truth is that it's scarier for Black Americans

than it is for white Americans. Of coy Sarbotica and eariler this year, and I put cameras around my house. Penny Blue, who was at Rocky Mounts first BLM event, sees the Capital riot as a racist event, a largely white crowd protesting election results from largely black areas, egged on, as she sees it, by an overtly racist president. She recognizes the dynamics clearly enough from her own childhood growing

up in the sixties in Franklin County. Back then, she and a couple of other kids were the first black students in the newly integrated schools. Certain elements of the local community were less than welcoming. The KKK burnt across in another family's yard that had sent their children to

the white school system. So my dad went to visit them and talked to him, and then he came back and went to the Union Hall store where the guys sit around and talk and share news, and he basically said he heard it was a cross burning and these people's yards last night he said, I just want everybody to know if it's some white sheets in my yard that's not on Helen's line, they will be full of bullet holes. Today, Penny still feels under threat in her

own community. Remember the BLM rally from earlier. While Penny Blue and Rocky Mount residents were peacefully demonstrating, the local militia had just out of you, armed and watching. We have pictures of the militia that was right down the streets. So we had children and grandparents out there that day and they had the militia with guns across the street. If the militia had been visible at my rally, that

would have concerned me very much. Militia groups like these often claim that they're turning up to keep everyone safe and make sure things stay calm, because what's more calming than a troop of anonymous white gunman shadowing a BLM protest. And the way Penny sees it, these militia groups are driven by the same forces that took officers for Racker and Robertson to the capital on January six. And I'm not talking about online radicalization or the ratcheting power of

social media, which pushes people towards evermore extreme beliefs. I'm talking about something much deeper. Most people need to understand their history a little better. If you understood your history a little better, then you would understand a lot more of what's going on today. A lot of people talk about the Confederate flag and it being in the capital and that being such a big deal. We're living in Franklin County. We see the Confederate flag all the time.

Penny volunteers at the book Or T. Washington National Monument in Franklin County. It's the estate and a farmhouse where Booker T. Washington, the educator and author, was born into slavery. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Penny spends her free time dressed up

as Washington's mother, giving history lessons to visitors. For her, the Capital riot is just the latest iteration of an ancient battle that's always been part of the story of America. Those who backed the January sixth rioters say the storming of the Capitol had nothing to do with racism. Penny argues that a casual glance back at the history books

reveals some striking parallels. It amazed me the number of people that tried to tell me that the Civil War was not about slavery, and when you have the conversation, oh, it was about states rights. Yes, states rights to own slaves. The idea that the Civil War wasn't actually about slavery is known as the Lost Cause narrative. It paints the Confederate States as heroic and erases the horrors of the slave trade. According to Lost Cause mythology, enslaved people were

happy and even grateful to their Antebellum masters. It's basically lying about history. I had that to the insurrection because they show it on TV in the news almost on a daily basis. Yet Congress, people who one day or fraid for their lives now are saying it was just people that were visiting the capital on January six. I never felt threatened. I didn't. Watching the TV footage of those who entered the capital and walked through Statuary Hall,

I knew those are people that love this country. If you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit. Even though we can see it with our own eyes. It's trying to rewrite history. It wasn't. It wasn't an armed invasion by a brigade of dangerous white supremacists. Those are wise. So this is why Penny was unsurprised to learn that two local cops would be joining the far right throng at the insurrection. To her, it's just the

natural evolution of the deeply rooted beliefs. A lot of people in her community hold Trump did not have to radicalize anyone. They learned this from birth. All he did was take advantage of what was there. And I don't want to speak anything into existence, but just to say, I am not surprised that Donald Trump was elected. I am not surprised about the insurrection, and I don't know what the next things will be. The events in Franklin

County are a microcosm of modern America. Cops going bad, society at each other's throats, and right at the heart of it all too competing narratives, not just about the election, but about America's history and this kid glove treatment of the far right. It doesn't just happen in small town p d s or during BLM. Proud boy clashes in major cities. It also happens at a policy level, right at the very top. Someone who has seen this firsthand

is a security expert named Darryl Johnson. Like Penny Blue, Arroll wasn't remotely surprised by the events of January six. He comes from a conservative Mormon family in Utah and on paper, has a background that wouldn't have sounded out of place at the Capitol on January six. But Darrell has dedicated his career to confronting right wing domestic extremism. He's a former analyst at the Department for Homeland Security.

Today he runs a consulting firm called dt Analytics, and the reason he no longer works for the DHS is quite a story. When I sat down with Darryll, he told me that groups like the Franklin County Militia follow the pattern he's seen playing out nationally with other far right militias like the Oathkeepers. These people are recruited with specialized skill sets that they've learned in the military and

police forces. They have access to investigative information as well as, you know, maybe classified information, so it poses a unique threat, an insider threat or counterintelligence threat. Just to be clear, there's been no implication that Jacob Fracker and t. J. Robertson were members of the Oath Keepers, but their rhetoric on social media bears a lot of similarities to the idea that the militiamen subscribed to. Plus, you know, Robertson bought thirty four guns while out on bail and banned

from owning a firearm. I think a lot of militia guys would approve These anti government militia groups are getting more agitated and more active and been arming themselves for the past couple of decades, and they are definitely the most capable of conducting a mass act of violence just with the sheer amount of weaponry that they hoard an ammunition that they've stockpiled. This is a threat as old

as America itself. Darryl has seen the far right recruiting people with military and law enforcement experience many times across his career. Darryl knows as well as anyone what can

happen when trained soldiers become extremists. Chaos in downtown Oklahoma City after what police believed to be a twelve hundred pound car bomb ripped through the nine story Federal Building in Timothy McVeigh, a decorated U. S. Army teran, murdered one hundred and sixty eight people when he detonated a homemade fertilizer bomb at the Alfred Piemura Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and in its shadow the exhausted, who for a day and a half now have sifted through its

debris and counted it's dead and seen up close why they call it terror. Darrell witnessed the aftermath of that terror firsthand when he visited the wreckage soon after. The makeshift memorial will still up with the various notes and flowers and teddy bears tied to the fencing. The candlelight vigils were still laying on the sidewalks, and I made a commitment to myself that I would do anything I could to try to prevent the next terrorist attack, either

against the military overseas or here at home. McVeigh was a veteran and an anti government white supremacist. The bombing triggered a major crackdown on right wing extremists by federal authorities. The Department of Justice, the FBI, a t F and others disrupted many plots, rounded up key leaders on conspiracy and other charges and disrupted these groups and movements, and

it worked. According to data from bipartisan think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in nine there were forty three major right wing terrorist attacks and plots in the USA, around eight of all terrorist incidents. By two thousand two, that felt a fifteen with only four right wing plots or attacks, And as the right wing terror threat declined, eleven came along. Suddenly the state security apparatus was throwing everyone at combating Islamic extremism, everyone apart from

one guy. When I arrived at Homeland Security, I was actually the only person at the Office of Intelligence Analysis monitoring this threat that's right in the middle ots. The Department of Homeland Security had just person analyzing far right threats. And you know, the crazy thing is the Oklahoma City bombing hadn't really been all that long ago. But in

two thousand eight, two things happened that changed everything. Barack Obama, forty seven years old, will become the President elect of the United States, but now tumbled more than five hundred points. After two pillars of the Street tumbled over the weekend. Lehman Brothers a one hundred and fifty eight year old firm filed for bankruptcy. Barack Obama becomes the first black president of the United States, and the financial crash plunges

the world into an economic crisis. Membership of white supremacists and other far right groups begins to surge. I remember reading literature by white supremacists years ago talking about when the black occupies the white houses be the lowest point in America, and here that realization came true. Add the financial crash to Obama's presidency and you have the perfect storm for far right recruitment. The economic downturn creates fear.

People want to blame or scapegoat their economic problems. You know, jobs going overseas, immigrants coming in taking American jobs. So those two main things created this fertile ground for recruitment and radicalization among white supremacists and militia groups and sovereign citizens. And some of these groups make a point of recruiting directly from the police. I called out the linkage between returning military veterans and these extremist groups targeting them for

recruitment to boost their violent capabilities. Based on Darryl sounding the alarm, the Department of Homeland Security begins to scale up his department. By two thousand nine, his one man band has grown to a team of eight, and we actually had plans of hiring more people because there was so much work to do. In April two tho nine, Daryl and his team put everything they've learned into a port It's a guide to help law enforcement around the

country deal with new threats. There are a lot of documents like this released every year, and most of the time they only reach a niche audience. But this time was different. A new report by the Department of Homeland Security creating quite a stir. It's entitled quote right Wing Extremism, current economic and political climate fueling resurgence and radicalization and recruitment. Here it is. The right wing media machine painted the

report as a partisan attack on the political right. Speak out, get shut down. Even just the words right wing extremism got denounced as a political tool that was being used to demonize ordinary conservatives and good old fashioned patriots. Their definition of a right wing extremists sounds awfully close to somebody who might simply just disagree with the Obama administration.

Darryll's analysis of how the fire right targets former soldiers because of their military experience, was framed as an attack on veterans right wing right wing extremist Act. For example, they would define it as people that maybe think we're not controlling our borders, people that are pro life pumper stickers concerned. This is nothing more than concerned Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, and the left and the ovamb

administration is clearly trying to take it away. Extremist for saying in God we trust. Daryl watched the backlash play out on his TV. Really, it was actually kind of shocking and surreal to sit there and see people spinning it politically. We have a Department of Homeland Security equating you know, our domestic terrorism with you know, the vets coming home from Iraq, taking things out of context and

just outright making up lies about it. It seems like they're more concerned with the threat here at home than they are the threat abroad. I was conservative Mormon, third generation Republican when I wrote that report, and they were trying to say it was some sort of of a political insider on the left that was somehow trying to demonize the far right and the conservative movement. Despite the

media fallout, Daryl trusted his bosses to back him. My leadership at DHS, they knew the type of analysts I was. They knew that I did good work. But days later, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano made a public apology to veterans for the report, and behind the scenes things changed drastically.

What happened with this political firestorm is they immediately shut down all the valuable work that we were doing, training that we were giving, all of the intelligence reporting, finished intelligence that we were working on came to a stop. Darrel was told that it's just a temporary measure until the controversy dies down, but that was just a cover to reorganize, to dismantle the team, reassigned us to do

other work. By two thousand and ten, there was nobody at the Office of tell his Analysis doing this type of work on the level that we were doing earlier. Not long after Daryll quit and found a job in the private sector, he felt unmoored politically and personally. You know, that really caused me to do a lot of self reflection. So today I'm a different person than I was, you know,

ten eleven twelve years ago. Because of that experience, a lot more moderate, tolerant, and more independent than I ever been. Darryl sounded the alarm for what we saw on January six, twelve years early, but he was shouted down. Today, the number of right wing plots and attacks have surpassed the peak they reached in the mid nineteen nineties. Right Wing terrorism accounted for over of all terrorist plots and attacks in the United States between January and May, according to

the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Darrell believes that to truly break the side ale of far right radicalization in the United States, something significant needs to change. Conservative voices need to get on board. If I can call out this threat being a conservative, Mormon Republican, why can't

my fellow Republicans and Congress do the same. And I still challenge them to this day to do the right thing and to call out this threat and to condemn it, because failing to do that has allowed these groups to proliferate, and it actually emboldens these people. For Penny seeing the violence of the far right play out on the ground, and Daryl trying to stop far right attacks as a senior member of Law Enforcement in Washington, the Capital Riot

did not come out of the blue. For Penny, the riot and it's subsequent retelling is an eerie echo of the Lost Cause narrative that the Civil War was about states rights, not upholding slavery. In both cases, violence has whitewashed his noble patriot is m For Darryl, the conservative backlash, which hampered efforts to tackle right wing domestic terrorism and painted his vital report as a left wing attack, laid the groundwork for a far right surge on January six.

In both cases, the truth about oppressive, racist, or otherwise radical right forces is obscured by a story that makes any attempt to call them out and attack an ordinary, well meaning conservatives. In my home of Portland, Oregon, I've seen the effects of this first hand. Violent rallies like the one we heard at the start of this episode where my hand was broken by a proud boy, are

now a regular occurrence. If you've only caught occasional hazy stories from our city on the news, you've likely missed a key part of the story, which is that time and again Portland police have sat by and allowed proud boys to drive through town beating unarmed protesters and shooting

pedestrians with paintball guns. This permissive attitude made Portland a safe place for these groups to get experience and test tactics before rioting in places like Washington, d C. On December twenty one, armed far right protesters breached the windows of the Oregon state capital Salem, roughly an hour from Portland, in what would prove an eerie prelude to January six. They assaulted journalists, broke windows, and maced police officers and

their attempt to assault elected leaders. What happened in d C on January six was not a surprise to anyone who paid attention to the far right in Oregon. These people have made their plans and goals clear for quite some time. The bravery of individual capital police officers does not change the fact that none of this would be happening without the acquiescence and active support of law enforcement

officers around the country. In the next and final episode, we meet the army of digital sluits who have risen up to identify rioters. This is one of the leaders. This is a person who has come here with all of this information, who has a plan. In this final installment, we go inside the digital dragnet m HM