First, I cannot fully express my gratitude to the folks who came out to today’s rally, and to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who answered our prayers and delivered us safely home from the event.
Next, I want say “thank you” to St. Louis media who covered the event: KMOV, KMOX, Fox2Now, and KSDK were all there, polite, friendly, and unobtrusive. Maybe they’ll edit the hell out of the tape to make us look bad, but I’m humbled that they still cover our activities after six-year hiatus.
Insights
Numerous friends and fellow tea partiers asked me to cancel today’s rally at the FBI office in St. Louis. There reasons:
The FBI or outside organizations will sabotage the event, either by drawing us into a fight or by wearing our regalia and committing violence.
The FBI/DOJ will identify us, track us, and set us up in the future.
Before I forget, The Gateway Pundit has great coverage of the St. Louis FBI Rally and (surprise) the dozens of others held around the country. I won’t go into the event details here since Jim Hoft is the master of event reporting. Instead, this post focuses on what today’s event means, for we can take away several important insights.
Insight One: Trust in the FBI Is Dangerously Low
The people who contacted me to stop the rally are not paranoid or crazy. To the contrary, during the heyday of the tea party movement, they were often the level-headed advisors who talked me off the ledge. These are reasonable, highly intelligent people.
And their trust in the FBI is so low they expected the agency to round us up en masse like Jews in Nazi Germany.
The FBI has earned this extreme distrust through years of being extremely untrustworthy. (Sorry, FBI agents; your employer has destroyed your personal reputation.) Some examples:
Stolen Valor: The FBI claimed it stormed a synagogue in Texas, shot the hostage-taker, and freed the hostages. Video and witness (hostage) testimony proved the FBI were milling about smartly in the parking lot when the rabbi grabbed a chair, threw it at the gunman, and guided his congregation to safety.
Perjury: The FBI and DOJ conspired to lie to the FISA court on multiple occasions in order to wiretap the Trump campaign and White House. This was a finding of the FISA court itself, not a conspiracy theory dreamt up by paranoid bloggers.
Laptop Lies: 51 current and former FBI/CIA/DOJ senior leaders signed a letter they knew to be false claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was the product of Russian intelligence. In fact, the FBI has now admitted the laptop was Hunter Bidens, the contents published (so far) were legitimate, and the signatories on that letter knew, or reasonably should have known, that the contents of the letter were false.
Entrapment: A jury found that the FBI concocted a plan to kidnap the governor of Michigan, recruited people to carry out, provided money, planning, and encouragement to the recruits, then arrested them.
We don’t even have to get into Hillary Clinton deleting 30,000 emails after receiving a records-preservation order from the DOJ or the raid on Mar a Lago. The FBI in recent years has operated like the KGB, except with a pathological need for self-aggrandizement. Deep psychological issues.
So, my friends’ total distrust of the FBI is warranted, even if Jim Hoft and I chose to go ahead with the rally, anyway. What’s important about this insight is what it means for the country.
There are millions of Americans who believe the FBI is so corrupt and so power-hungry it would target, isolate, and destroy ordinary citizens who dare to question the agency’s honesty. These are people who have good jobs, pay their bills, raise their kids right, go to church, and float to the top of the jury pool.
They sit on grand juries and trial juries. And they believe, with good evidence, that everything the FBI says is a lie.
Do you think these people would convict or acquit a suspect based on FBI evidence and testimony?
Of course not. to about 74 million Americans, the FBI’s testimony is about as reliable as Amber Heard’s. They see the FBI and all of its employees as Stasi. FBI evidence presented to them in a trial would have the opposite of its intended effect. Here’s a demonstration.
Headlines recently announced that the FBI had determined Alec Baldwin “pulled the trigger,” killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. (See Zero Hedge for more.) That inspired this tweet:
Yes, it was tongue-in-cheek, but it is likely true. Baldwin might be indicted, but he won’t convicted on the FBI evidence. Someone on the jury will simply dismiss FBI evidence and demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt from a non-federal source.
So, what happens when terrorists (who are entering the country by the hundreds across the open southern boarder) are on trial and all the evidence against them comes from the FBI? They probably walk.
Sure, a dude from Afghanistan who flew to Venezuela, joined a migrant caravan, crossed the Rio Grande, met up with a dozen other Islamists, and tried to buy LAW rockets on the black market is probably a terrorist. But if the only evidence against him comes from the FBI, reasonable people would question whether some FBI field office manager needed a big win on his fitrep to make GS-15. That’s reasonable doubt, and it lets Abdul walk.
Conversely, supposed one of the millions of Americans who have zero trust in the FBI learns of a plot to blow up the Empire State Building. Would they contact the FBI? Probably not. For a couple of reasons: 1) the plot they’ve uncovered my very well be an FBI plot, and the FBI would come after anyone who caught wind of it, or 2) the FBI would ignore the information as it has in numerous other terrorist and mass-shooter cases. Why take the chance?
So the first insight is this: the FBI’s all-time low level of trustability puts every American in danger. And it’s the FBI’s fault, not the American public’s.
Insight Two: Things Aren’t as Bad as Feared
I wanted to hold today’s rally to see what would happen. I knew there was a chance all hell would break loose, or that FBI agents would take Jim and me into custody the minute we arrived and send us to DC Gitmo for torture, deprivation, and psychological warfare experiments.
That didn’t happen. There were two identifiable FBI undercover agents mixed in with the crowd, but they did nothing but talk and flex their biceps for passersby. (I kid you not.) A lot of St. Louis Police officers ringed the parimeter of the event. I counted six police SUVs, two foot patrol, and two or three bike patrol. That’s more police presence than the 2010 Tea Party on the Riverfront which drew 14,000 people. So, the police expected trouble.
But the event went off without incident. I saw a lot of great friends and patriots who were staple at our events from 2009 to 2016—some I had not seen since Eric Greitens’ inauguration or before.
The fact that there were no infiltrators, saboteurs, or provocateurs tells me things aren’t quite as bad as some of us feared. That should be good news to everyone. We might be able to win this thing without a war, praise Jesus.
Insight Three: We Can Still Draw a Crowd
On short notice and under tense conditions, we drew a few dozen people to an FBI office on a Sunday while the Cardinals were playing the Brewers in a critical division series. This comes after six years of no tea party activity. Plus, we did not market the event beyond The Gateway Pundit, Hennessy’s View, and my hit on Dr. Gina Primetime on Friday.
Had we fired up our full marketing suite, the crowd would have been about 300. (We have solid data on how to attract participants.) We didn’t shoot for large numbers because of the risks. Infiltrators, saboteurs, and provocateurs prefer large, diverse crowds—they stand out like sore thumbs in smaller, intimate gatherings, as demonstrated by the two FBI pretty boys who didn’t quite fit in. By keeping the crowd limited to people Jim and I know, we were better able to spot the phonies.
We heard a lot of feedback from participants that they could have brought more people if they’d known sooner. I appreciate their frustration, but a crowd of a thousand in an unknown situation would have been dangerous.
On the other hand, Jim and I are considering stepping up the activist activity until the reckoning. People seem eager to do something, and something needs to be done. We cannot function well without universal faith in the integrity and competence of federal law enforcement agencies. And it seems only ordinary Americans have the balls to point this out and demand justice.
If that be us, so be it. We’ve done it before.
Stay tuned
Tests Passed
Today’s event tested three things:
The level of distrust of the FBI and DOJ among 74 million Americans. Trust has never been lower.
The lengths to which the FBI and DOJ will go to preserve their power. We learned they won’t (yet) try to frame folks in St. Louis who hold a rally. That’s good news, but not super good news. Those agencies could go nuclear any moment.
Our ability to put boots on the street. This passed with flying colors. Many stayed away to see how Test 2 turned out, and I expect they’ll be willing to attend the next event, if there is one.
Most importantly, though, we learned that our voices still matter. And the old lion can still roar when it wants to.
Again, stay tuned.
Bill,
Thank you for your, Jim's and the attendees courage that day. I do believe there are far greater than 74 million Americans who distrust not only the FBI and DOJ, but all the "Intelligence" agencies. Closer to 100 million plus, which should match the correct number of voters for DJT in 2020. Now with the RAID, many more than 100 million, and growing by the day.
Looks like it was a successful event - congratulations