Jan6: The American Gulag

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Mon May 15 23:53:23 PDT 2023


J6 Attorney Says Feds Using Military Counterterrorism Tactics Against Americans

https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-depth-j6-attorney-says-feds-using-military-counterterrorism-tactics-against-americans_5254967.html

IN-DEPTH: J6 Attorney Says Feds Using Military Counterterrorism
Tactics Against Americans
Attorney Carol Stewart is also a retired U.S. Army colonel who worked
in intelligence
Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in
Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
By Matt McGregor
May 10, 2023

An attorney has called on House Republicans to investigate and defund
the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) efforts to prosecute defendants
being treated as domestic terrorists for their presence at the Jan. 6,
2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol.

“This could go on for two or three more years unless House Speaker
Kevin McCarthy takes the floor and declares that the DOJ is abusing
legislation,” Carol Stewart, who represents several J6 defendants,
told The Epoch Times.

Stewart said McCarthy can make a resolution and start an investigation
into the abuse of U.S. criminal codes 1752, 231, and 1512, which
relate to restricted buildings or grounds; civil disorders; and
tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant, respectively. She
said these laws are being misinterpreted to frame American citizens
who protested at the Capitol building as culprits in a plot to
overthrow the 2020 election through a violent insurrection.

The problem, Stewart argues, is that the story the DOJ, the FBI, and
the mainstream media are telling “is a lie.”

One of her clients, 56-year-old Eric Christie, is charged with
violating statute 1752, a misdemeanor that criminalizes the act of
entering or remaining in “any restricted building or grounds without
lawful authority to do so.”

In addition, he’s alleged under subsection (b) of the law to have been
brandishing “a dangerous weapon or firearm” on restricted grounds.

On Christie’s tool belt was a hammer that Stewart said was never
removed, as it was part of a construction worker costume.

“He did not breach or push aside any barriers, assault police,
participate in any violence, witness violence, encourage violence,
enter the building, or do anything besides use protected First
Amendment speech in a peaceful manner in a location that he believed
was approved for speech,” Stewart wrote in her facts of the case.
Unaware of Restricted Area

Christie, an advocate for the Make America Great Again movement from
California, believed he could “lawfully go forward” into an area he
didn’t know was restricted, Stewart argued, because someone had
removed a barricade of bike racks without his knowledge.

Though he never entered the Capitol, Christie was arrested at his
apartment on Dec. 22, 2022—almost two years later—surrounded by a SWAT
team of 20 to 30 people in a histrionic show of force, Stewart said.

According to Stewart, there was no knock, and Christie was never told
he was under arrest, only that the officers wanted to search his
apartment. When he asked for a search warrant, officials had to
retrieve it, as they had not brought it with them.

His water and electricity had been turned off. A drone was sent into
his home and determined that he had guns with the intent to use them.

Having arrived at 9 a.m., it took the officers until 10:45 a.m. to get
the warrant. Instead of bringing it to him directly, they sent in a
robot, which took 30 to 40 minutes of everyone watching it make its
way downstairs.

The FBI had already rammed in the front door and broken the glass,
thrown in flash-bangs and tear gas, and brought in a crisis
negotiator, Stewart said, which led Christie to believe that they were
there to abduct or kill him.

“Other people I’ve interviewed have examined this situation and agreed
with Christie’s assessment,” Stewart said. “You don’t do all of that
unless you’re going in. It’s not done, because you’re inviting danger
if you do that.”

The fiasco was framed as a three-hour standoff, Stewart said.

“His delay in exiting his home had nothing to do with any falsely
claimed ‘barricade,'” Stewart wrote in the court report. “It was due
to shock, anxiety, the belief that the FBI wanted to murder him or
take him to Guantanamo as a terrorist, and the failure of the FBI to
have a search warrant on-site to present to him.”
Epoch Times Photo Supporters of President Donald Trump flock to the
National Mall by the hundreds of thousands for a rally in Washington
on Jan. 6, 2021. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Created Circumstances

At any point, however, the FBI could have gone to Christie’s attorney
and asked to have Christie self-surrender.

Instead, Stewart said, the FBI engaged in tactics designed to elicit a
reaction, not obtain facts.

A week before on Dec. 16, Christie had been pulled over by a state
highway patrolman.

“Understand the bizarre nature of this,” Stewart said. “The FBI has
the California Highway Patrol (CHP) pull him over just to create the
circumstances for a person with anxiety.”

In the time between Jan. 6 and his arrest at his apartment, every nook
and cranny of Christie’s life was investigated using avenues opened by
the Patriot Act, which would not only include a forensic investigation
into his online profile but also into his medical history, Stewart
said.

It’s the kind of information that can be weaponized in a psychological
operation, Stewart said.

Later, in court, Stewart said the FBI admitted to using the state law
enforcement pretextually.

Under California law, an officer has the right to ask someone to get
out of their car. However, with Christie, there was no traffic
violation. The officer yelled at Christie, telling him that if he
didn’t get out of the car, he would break his window.

In a panic, Christie fled, Stewart said, aware of what was happening
with other J6 defendants.

It was agreed that he wouldn’t be pursued, Stewart said, so he went
about his life until the day of his arrest.

The CHP alleged that the officer pulled Christie over because the
officer saw Christie rolling through a stop sign, which Stewart said
is not true.

“The dash cam footage shows that this is false,” Stewart said. “They
didn’t even have him in sight. They left out the threat to break his
window. They said he fled arrest. For what? The CHP filed a false
report and not once said they were operating in coordination with the
FBI. So, there’s some dirty dealing going on at that level between the
guys in that unit and the local FBI agents.”

Then there is the probability that the FBI had been entering
Christie’s condominium for several months, as there was a mock-up made
of his apartment, Stewart said.

“This is the kind of stuff they’re doing,” Stewart said. “I’ve worked
with special forces a lot. They don’t build mock-ups for a normal
arrest. For all the people we went and grabbed in Afghanistan, they
didn’t build mock-ups.”
‘I Know What a Setup Looks Like’

Stewart’s seen these strategies before during her time working in
counterterrorism and counterinsurgency while serving 25 years of
active duty with the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel.

Stewart’s counterterrorism work dates to 1993. She served as an
intelligence battalion commander in Bosnia from 1998 to 1999 and
continued to work in military intelligence in Kosovo from 2001 to 2002
and at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2002 to 2005.

Stewart spent six and a half years working as a senior intelligence
officer with the Department of Defense at CENTCOM with strategic
assessments related to terrorism, insurgency, and regional issues;
targeting; and special projects that included terrorism,
counterintelligence, and insider threats.

Considering her work in military intelligence, Stewart said the
tactical operations used on Christie and other J6 defendants are
strikingly familiar.

“This is how the military in Iraq organized for urban warfare to go in
and clear houses,” she said. “This isn’t much different. I know what a
setup looks like.”

Before the engagement even takes place, the FBI creates a “baseball
card” on the suspects, which is a dossier developed for targeting
terrorists.

“This is for kill or capture missions, so I want that to set in for a
minute,” Stewart said. “The whole concept of a baseball card for
overseas terrorism was based on creating a targeting package to go on
kill or capture missions. This has now been transported back into the
United States to go after American citizens.”
Epoch Times Photo Police fire rubber bullets at advancing protesters
as they retreat into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol
Police/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Parallel Construction

To put together this baseball card, agents use illegal surveillance
and search tactics called “parallel construction” that violate the
defendant’s constitutional rights.

According to a 2018 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), parallel
construction is when agents create different stories about how they
gathered information to hide their unconstitutional tactics.

Officials who wish to keep the investigation activity hidden from
courts and defendants “can simply go through the motions” of
rediscovering evidence in some other way, the report says.

This could include having local police pull over a suspect with the
intent of creating a conflict that leads to an arrest, then pretending
that this is where the case began.

“Due to parallel construction, defendants in criminal cases across the
country may be experiencing serious infringements of their rights
without their knowledge,” the HRW report said. “The United States
Constitution draws on lessons learned from the abuses of the British
colonial era in placing firm restrictions on how the government can
behave when it wants to prove someone has done something wrong.”

The FBI also uses Cellebrite, an Israeli intelligence company that
provides its software to law enforcement agencies and governments and
allows those entities to seize phone data and download all the
information.

“If you ever talked to somebody before they were arrested for being at
the Capitol, then your number is now in a database they’ve created
using the information on these phones,” Stewart said.
‘The DOJ Are Lying’

Overall, the FBI and DOJ are using any resources they can to carry out
political persecution rooted in a contrived narrative, Stewart said.

“There’s no record that the Secret Service or U.S. Capitol Police
restricted the grounds, even though the DOJ claims the entire 58.8
acres were restricted under section 1752 all day,” she said. “The DOJ
is lying and taking 1752 as a starting point to persecute.”

Another law the FBI and DOJ are abusing is section 231 of the criminal
code, Stewart said, which prohibits civil disorder that “may in any
way or degree obstruct, delay, or adversely affect commerce” or any
other “federally protected function.”

“There was no civil disorder that obstructed commerce or any federal
function,” she said. “They’re lying in the courts, and the courts are
now abusing it. If you want to declare a riot, pick out the people who
were violent and charge them. And let’s also investigate the Capitol
Police who provoked, who fired on people.”

Finally, there is section 1512, which was written to prosecute those
who engage in felony evidence tampering, such as the shredding of
documents. This is being applied to J6 defendants by alleging their
actions delayed the joint session of Congress’ counting of the
electoral votes.

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
upheld the DOJ’s use of the 1512 statute against the Jan. 6 defendants
in a divided ruling, according to a previous Epoch Times report.

Both Judge Florence Pan, appointed by President Joe Biden, and Judge
Justin R. Walker, appointed by former President Donald Trump, voted to
reverse U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols’ 2022 ruling that dismissed
obstruction charges against three J6 defendants, stating that the law
applies to any official proceeding, which includes “all acts that
obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding or attempt to
do so.”

Judge Gregory Katsas, appointed by Trump, dissented, stating that the
use of the evidence-tampering statute to prosecute J6 defendants will
“supercharge a range of minor advocacy, lobbying, and protest offenses
into 20-year felonies.”

“Section 1512(c)(2) has been on the books for two decades and charged
in thousands of cases—yet until the prosecutions arising from the
January 6 riot, it was uniformly treated as an evidence-impairment
crime,” Katsas wrote. “This settled understanding is a ‘powerful
indication’ against the government’s novel position.”
‘Tyranny’ and ‘Evil’

For Stewart, the entire debacle is a scam propagated by the FBI and the DOJ.

“They’re sick,” Stewart said. “The DOJ needs to be cleaned out.”

House Republicans could not only make a resolution to end the abuse of
the laws, Stewart said, but also defund the effort to propagandize
those who attended the rally as terrorists.

“There is a fervor to attack these people, ruin their lives, and
bankrupt them,” Stewart said.

But it’s how the deep state operates, Stewart said, having seen it before.

“I’m seeing tyranny; I’m seeing evil,” Stewart said. “There’s a couple
of DOJ people who don’t fall into this category, but for the most
part, this is evil. These people have no conscience or soul.”

The Epoch Times contacted the FBI, the DOJ, and the CHP for comment.

Joseph M. Hanneman contributed to this report.


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