Ryan Reilly: The Sleuths Who Helped Nab Jan 6 Rioters

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I am Charlie Sykes. The world is burning. The house is burning. Jim Jordan still is short of enough votes.

To become the speaker of the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is in the Middle East, and that ghastly war is getting even more Gastly. We’re gonna talk about a lot of things, but we have a very special guest today. Ryan Riley, who is justice reporter at NBC News, and author of the brand new book came out just yesterday. Sedition Hunters, how January sixth broke the justice system?

First of all, good morning. Congratulations, Ryan.

Thanks so much.

So what’s more amazing to you? The fact that Jim Jordan apparently is gonna become the latest GOP speaker candidate to crash and burn with the fact that Jim Jordan is actually plausibly, could have become speaker of the House of Representatives. I’m asking this in the context of January six. What is more amazing to you? The fact that the house GOP is in complete chaos or that they actually for a few minutes thought about making Jim Jordan speaker of the house.

You know, Jim Jordan comes up a lot in in the course of January six, of course, is pretty integral to this whole deal. But the case that really jumps out at me is this one, individual where he’s, standing at a stop the steel rally in Pennsylvania, sort of giving a speech. I think he has a Bulwark in hand. And then directly behind him is a guy who, was arrested for and trying to storm the US capital in full military gear, shouting, take their guns, take their guns, other members of the mob as the mob was fighting with police on the west front of the Capitol, and then pepper sprayed officers. And, you know, he was also hanging out with Doug Mosriano, who was the, you know, GOP gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania.

There are more than half a dozen photos of them together at different events. And It really is one of these things where how closely tied, you see these connections between people who storm the capital and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives these days. It really is astonishing.

It is astonishing. And, you know, there’s there’s so much about this, and then you’re reporting that is just extraordinary. But what you just described, the the attempt to normalize what happened, the revisionist history, the fact that people like Jim Jordan, he was not the only Republican that voted against certifying the electoral votes, but Jim Jordan played a special role in this. I mean, he was more than just your your average run of the mill coat conspirator. I mean, he was out there, you know, obviously colluding with the Trump White House you know, appearing at these stop the steel rallies, but we get so numb to all of this.

The scene you just described. Here’s a man who came within a few votes of being could the house represent it is. And he’s appearing on stage with a violent insurrectionist and that’s kind of a new normal for at least for Republican politics.

What’s happened with January six and the aftermath of January six is is really just astonishing where like, one point that I constantly come back to that just fundamentally grinds against what’s supposed to be a conservative idea of the idea that, you know, government is bloated, government ineffective. That was at least, you know, my extended family, you know, a lot of core members, of my family is that’s, you know, belief that they’ve had for a long time. Why they’re conservatives because they think, you know, that government isn’t as effective as the private sector as we sort of saw with these sluice afterwards, but a this idea, they suggested that the FBI was somehow behind this just really assigns this degree of competency to bureaucracy, which just doesn’t make a lot of sense to Right? Like, it doesn’t fundamentally compute that they think that government is bloated and government’s awful, but at the same time, they’re just these mastermind and super geniuses who are able to pull off the perfect crime and manipulate all these people and put people in different spots and and leave no traces or any evidence. And It’s just not what the facts are when you end up looking at all of these thousands of pages of documents and just see, wow, this bureaucracy really was weighing the FBI down both in the aftermath and afterwards.

If you go deep down these rabbit holes of these conspiracy theories, and, of course, you have all of, you know, these dark forces the deep state that are able to manipulate these things, you know, play five dimensional chess. But, of course, you know, stop with the logic and the linear thinking here. Now this is one of the moments to remind ourselves that people’s minds don’t necessarily work in always an orderly way you and I were were chatting right before we started this, and I was, you know, describing a college student that I think did not know what NATO was, and you told a a story about one of the better educated insurrection of rioters on on January six. Can you just tell me that story again?

Yeah. So, you know, a lot of writers mistakenly thought that they were storming the White House and said that as much as they were storming, the US capital. And, you know, you sort of expect that of the guy, you know, this one QAnon believer from, you know, Iowa or Ohio who was, you know, basically really into this idea, didn’t really know what he was doing, just following all queue drops online. It’s really interesting to me when you have people who are an expert in one field and actually know that field really well, but then have this really abundance of confidence that they really had not really earned in other areas of life. So for example, one of the individuals who stormed the capital and said that they were very embarrassed about this is actually you know, someone who graduated for medical school and expert in his field who then thought he was storming the White House when he was storming the US Capitol, got the complete branch of government raw.

I wasn’t great at science, right, when I was in high school. That was not my forte. And it’s just as amazing to me when you have this situation where people really just have this overconfidence their knowledge of something when they have none. And they’re just believing a lot of stuff because they read something really quick on Facebook without, you know, looking very deeply into it or without learning the backstory for how this process actually works.

But it is amazing. We do live in

this age where

all people need is one source one piece of data or information that confirms their priors or gets them upset about something that they want to get upset about and they’re gonna go with it. To this moment, I cannot tell you. I’m sure you get even more than I do. You know, the the number of of emails, or social media posts that say, Well, Charlie, when are you gonna talk about Ray Eps? Ray Eps was behind to the entire insurrection.

Now you and I know that that’s been completely debunked, but we live in an age where everything was on the internet is on your permanent record, but it just never goes away. So any conspiracy theory that that allows you to think about an event differently no matter how much evidence there is, no matter how many thousands of pages there are, no matter how much videotape that we saw, people are gonna believe what they wanna believe.

Yeah. You know, I have I’ve talked with my wife who’s, you know, a therapist about some of this. And

That’s convenient in the house.

Yeah. It’s very much very helpful in getting, through this book. But this idea that people don’t feel any sort of shame or embarrassment is quite something to me because a lot of these, for example, with that example of Ray AppS, they’re, you know, that has been thoroughly debunked. It’s it’s just garbage. Right?

Like, it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t compute, but it’s something that people will to the core of their bones defend and the people who are saying this in the first that, you know, this was all a set up that this person was encouraging, etcetera. We’ll never take the l. So to speak, we’ll never admit, oh, yeah, that was dumb. That was wrong.

I was incorrect on this. And that was really what you would have to do if that person has been charged. Because just, like, take a step back for a second. Rayups has now been charged. Now what people were saying is, oh, the charges weren’t strong enough, and they just pivoted and said, wow.

They really gave him a good deal. Even though he hasn’t been sentenced yet, we don’t know what sort of sentence he’s gonna get. And even though, really, comparatively to what other people did, he really is kind of getting singled out frankly. There are thousands of people who are on the grounds of the Capitol that day who are not going to ever be charged because mostly the FBI is focused on people who either went inside or attacked officers or destroyed property. Rayups didn’t do any of those things.

He briefly

He’s also not working for the FBI. I mean, this is number nine. I feel guilty even, like, you know, giving a little bit of oxygen to this, but he was not do we know, by the way, Why did they fixate on this guy?

He was just sort of camera ready. Right? The big thing was that the night before on January fifth, he was talking about needing to go, you know, into the capital. That was the main thing. Right?

So he was talking about, you know, I’m not gonna say this. You know, I shouldn’t say this. We need to even go into the capital. But, you know, there are lots of people talking about storming the capital, and just because he was caught on video saying it before this idea that There’s this FBI set up. It just really even if you were to think that the FBI was that diabolical, let’s set that aside.

They’re just not that competent. They could not pull that off. Right? The FBI could never do this. They’re not that technologically skilled.

They’re not that good at covering their tracks. There’s this image of the Hollywood FBI that I think is just really fundamentally out of sync with the reality of the FBI. And it just doesn’t make a lot of sense at its core if you have an individual who Let’s just say Ray AppS, oh, he was working for the government. Imagine how how you would feel what he’s gonna do time in prison just to maintain that cover. This fundamentally doesn’t make sense.

He wouldn’t have been charged if he was actually working for the government. They can’t do that. So that fully breaks the the entire argument, but people can’t accept that and have to say, oh, you know, I think they’re smartest person in the room, and I see what’s really going on here. And the FBI is just, you know, covering their tracks by charging them. It fundamentally doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Okay. So let’s go to the other end of the spectrum. We were talking about the guy who has the medical degree who didn’t know whether the capital was not, the White House. There are people who didn’t know what exactly was going on. So I’m talking about members of of Congress, including Kevin McCarthy, who denounced Donald Trump’s role.

I mean, clearly, he was there. He was on the phone with him. And yet, like so many other Republicans, they’ve gone along with the various attempts to whitewash it, Kevin McCarthy giving this unedited tape to Tucker Carlson. By the way, did he ever give that to any other news outlets? I mean, it was such an extraordinary thing to give it to one outlet with the clear intent of currying favor with him, but also of of aiding and abetting in the attempt to completely whitewash what, in fact, he had experienced So what is the psychology of people who were fearing for their lives on January six who saw you know, inexperienced that attack, and then have decided I’m gonna do everything I can to convince people that it was just a walk in the park.

Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s a really politically inconvenient fact. So I think there is this need to sort of pivot. Right? You know, what about ism?

What about the, you know, what about Bulwark Lives Matter protests and what about this and what about that? You see very frequently, why aren’t they, you know, going as aggressively after them? And, you know, frankly, part of this is that, individuals storm the capital just left a lot of slow ball sort of hanging over the plate for the FBI here. It’s not really that complicated for to ideally a lot of these folks who are openly bragging about their exploits online and filming their crimes, when you compare that to, you know, say an antifa, Bulwark clock measure where people are covering their faces and it’s tough to figure out who’s doing what, owning the lids with sort of the mantra on January six by not wearing a face mask and lo and behold, that makes it a lot easier. To identify you.

That’s so convenient.

It’s yeah. There’s a mask mandate in place. If ever you had an excuse to, cover your face while committing a crime, you had it, but, you know, that’s not, why where things went. You mentioned the tapes. They had been making that process open actually to go into eventually, but they sort of opened it up to a lot of more right wing sort of bloggers initially, some people were running some sub stacks and people were basically trying to undermine this entire idea of January six and paint this of January six as a setup, and they eventually opened that up more widely.

But I still have, you know, it’s probably over a month old now. A request out because I was trying to get footage of something that happened that evening when an officer who actually later died by suicide was struck in the face with a pole. The slues have really been working on trying to identify who that individual was, but there’s not as much footage at night. And, you know, obviously, it’s at night. So it’s a lot tougher to see things.

But I’d requested all these videos, and, you know, that’s something that has been on pause. And I haven’t been able to get those videos, I think, basically, because of the chaos in in the house, but you know, meanwhile, they’re still putting out videos or at least where in recent weeks to some guy who runs a blog who’s trying to figure out who the person who set up the gallows off of the Capitol grounds was as though that’s sort of gonna undermine this entire thing. They actually it’s just it’s so ridiculous, but They have video of him walking generally in the direction north. And from that, they surmise that, oh, that’s where the FBI Washington field office and they’re coming from there. And it’s just and you do, like, basic common sense and logic doesn’t seem to break through here in terms of, okay, so you’re saying person was under FBI Control, and their grand crime was to set up a photo op that actually, you know, it’s a really despicable thing to do, but I actually think setting up a gallows could be as long as it’s off the grounds of the capital and it’s on accessible land actually probably in the realm of protected free speech.

Right? That’s not something that I can see a an enumerated criminal statute, that you could actually be able to charge someone. For. But they think that’s gonna break this wide open that that that one guy was the one who set this all off instead of just sort of following the obvious logic that a lot of people who thought that the country was being stolen from under them, were really mad and got really revved up on January six and that the mob mentality took over for a lot of the people who you know, the Proud would refer to as, quote, unquote, normies.

Your book is really interesting because you you mentioned things about the FBI and the casting some data on the competence of the FBI. This is a really important part of the story because what you write about is the online sleuths who helped catch the January sixth rioters. And the title of your book, and when I first got it in the mail, I was really struck by it. I kind of did a little take here. Sedition Hunters, how January six broke the justice system.

Okay. So let’s talk about that title. Because a lot of people are gonna go, well, hold up, but the justice system is working now. We are having, you know, one after another have been arrested, but they have been convicted. You have a lot of people who’ve gone to jail.

The justice system seems to actually be Bulwark. So that’s not what you meant though. How did January six break the justice system? Let’s start there.

Yeah. You know, I think that there are a lot of wins. Right? And I wouldn’t take that away from them, especially the seditious conspiracy cases. These are major victories, I think, for the justice system, you know, you have the longest sentence, for example, twenty two years.

It was handed out to a member of the Proud Boys, the oathkeeper’s case, you know, very significant and prison sentences there. But frankly, it’s just the capacity of the justice system. There are gonna be people frankly who are gonna walk away from this who have committed violent crimes on January six who are never going to be charged. Whether or not they’re identified is a different story. But we’re already at the halfway mark of this investigation because the statute of limitations is five years.

And, you know, the total spectrum of people who could be charged in connection with a capital attack, and that means they either entered the building or assaulted law enforcement officers or committed some sort of property damage outside. Inside just that limited realm, which is sort of where the FBI has drawn the boundaries, that is upwards of three thousand. And today, we have only one thousand one hundred. Actually, only, that’s a lot of people, but one thousand one hundred people who have been been charged. And there are just hundreds of cases.

In fact, more than a thousand cases that are identified right now that you could walk in and write up an affidavit, get somebody tomorrow. Most of those are identified are people who are identified directly by the slews and sent into the FBI. So there are just all of these cases sitting out there, and the speed of these cases has really slowed down. And there are just people who are not going to ever, ever be charged in who could be charged. And I think that that’s really it’s it’s sort of the capacity for this.

And it, you know, that also sort of reflects how the system was broken before January six because the fact that January six happened sort of shows how the intelligence community or the and the intelligence part of this justice system was broken because you just had these bureaucratic hurdles that were in the way of them actually preventing January six from taking place.

That’s what’s really, really valuable about your book that, my takeaway was that if it had been just left up to the justice system, to the FBI, to the intelligence services, we wouldn’t have really broken this case. Would we? I mean, you tell the story that all of this footage from the cell phones on Twitter along with the police officer Body Kims, surveillance cameras from the attack. Enterize this online group of self appointed tactives who set out to find the identities of all of the rioters. And as you write in this book, this internet neighborhood watch, became an invaluable resource to the FBI.

I mean, this was I won’t say it’s the first one, but it was certainly the most dramatic crowd sourced investigation. This whole thing would not have played out that way if you hadn’t had people sitting in their basement like you and I right now on their computers doing the work that the professionals either didn’t know how to do or or just didn’t have the resources to do. So tell me a little bit about this this this online neighborhood watch that broke so many of these cases.

You know, it’s funny. Well, you know, with the with the basement idea, it’s one of the reasons I think a lot of the slues were really sort of, eager to talk to me part of it to just sort of dispel this idea that, you know, there’s sort of these losers in their mom’s basement. Right? Like, I think, like, a lot of these people, I I talked about one of them one of these guys really successful guy voted for Trump twice. Right?

And it plays a critical role in this online community. And the technological skills that people develop are really valuable. And a lot of these people have really, you know, rewarding family lives, rewarding careers, but have gotten really into this in a, in a really really good at this. I mean, it is, like, it is fascinating. Those things can keep you sort of going.

So who are they? Give me a profile. I mean, how many people we talking about and who are they? They’re not the five hundred pound guy sitting in his mom’s basement. Okay.

I get that.

That’s right.

Obviously, we’re very, very skilled.

Yeah. And

we’re able to do a lot of things that are pretty amazing.

So very early on, there are actually certain people from overseas who are really good at open source intelligence that were, involved in sort of documenting a lot of this. And But there’s a ton of people, basically, who it’s a really diverse group, frankly. So I’ll start with, like, one woman who, you know, just considered herself just so, you know, a mom, that was her sort of full time job. She’s from Pennsylvania. She lives near Hershey, and she just sort of got a message early on from Accedition Hunter’s group And she sort of just went to town on Facebook trying to identify this guy who’s actually found inside, the US Senate on January sixth.

And this one wasn’t the biggest mystery in the world because he was wearing actually the sweatshirt that belonged to his children’s school, and it was a pretty small school. So she went backwards, worked backwards off of that, went to the Facebook page for the school and basically just started looking at anyone who had ever liked or commented on any post from the school. Eventually found somebody. It was under the name of Zieker Bosell. Just clicked on that, and it was just like a snowman, but then it was a profile photo, but went even deeper on it.

That ended up figuring out that it was the individual called, Brent Posel the fourth. It was actually, of course, the son of Brent Posel, the third and sort of, you know, inherited a lot of this conservative movement back for the past more than century. So that was, you know, an individual who was identified smashing in a window there. When they first made entry to the capital. So it’s been really fascinating to see how this has all come together.

But then, you know, there are also people who just really use their technological skills on the other end. There’s one, you know, dad, who, you know, from the south works for a major company, pretty successful. And he really just sort of has been really about archiving as much of this footage as you possibly can. It just really gets into this. So, you know, dinner conversations with his wife now are talking about all of these different events on around January six.

And, you know, obviously, life sometimes sort of gets in the way so he’ll be able to do more of this on some days than others. Sometimes he’s busy with work, sometimes he’s busy with with family, but he’s really been archiving as much of this as he can. And in one instance, found himself going down the Rabbit hole, identifying someone who assaulted an officer that day and using facial recognition software ended up generating a lot of leads to pornographic websites. And before he knew it, he was looking through a lot of gay porn to find ultimately a man who assaulted officers. And, they just then sent that into the FBI, and he’ll probably be hearing about that potentially, you know, next year or whatever the FBI gets around finally, bringing that case home.

But it really just, you know, brought it beyond any reasonable doubt and with, you know, able to match up some of these things that you knew about that individual with things that you could find out about them online. You know, freckles play a big role here, tattoos. All sorts of things that can be that little confirming piece of information. Often, it’s just who people were with. If you find one person, you know, there’s no guarantee even with a facial recognition match perhaps that this is that person.

So how do you get that confirming factor? If they were with someone and you see them together at the Capitol on one day and then separately, Outside of that together at another point, you’re good to go. Right? Because that’s double confirmation. If you have two people who look similar and you find them in separate environments, then you’ve identified

And these are all amateur sleuths. I mean, what I thought was interesting is that as you’re right, they use their own vetting process before they turn things over to the FBI. You interviewed one individual. You’re right. They wanna make sure that they’re dotting all the i’s, crossing all the t’s to make sure that they are correct identifications.

So, I mean, these people develop their own protocols for how to go on. Because, obviously, you know, you don’t wanna go into the FBI with something half baked. Something you don’t actually understand. So is there a network were they working together? Were they screen sharing?

Was this group thing? How does it actually work?

Yeah. A lot of it takes place in group chats. And I think, frankly, that’s one of their sort of secret weapons just that they can use some of these collaborative tools that are really available to everyone, whereas that’s a little more complicated for the FBI where you’re talking about all these field offices where email is the primary source of communication between these different field offices. Whereas, you know, they’re just in these group chats chatting, and they can organize them by hashtag, and they can organize them by various subjects. So, you know, everyone gets sort of a nickname or a hashtag and everything that’s found about them is dumped into one of these chats.

It keeps it well organized. Okay. Now this report’s been sent in. We’re good to go there. They all sort of collaborate really well together.

But, you know, they really are batting a thousand here. And I think it’s that peer review process that really helps out because you can sort of challenge the evidence that other people discover, make sure that’s true and sort of really thoroughly vetted question it sort of like an editing process almost within this loop, that community. And because there’s so much sort of trust built up there, it becomes this really valuable tool. Whereas, you know, the FBI, frankly, they rated someone who wasn’t the right person they were looking for. There was a woman who was rated in at Alaska who had her door knocked down because they thought that she was involved in stealing Pelosi’s laptop And after that happened, and this news story sort of blew up because the FBI raided, the wrong woman who did not enter the capital, the slews ended up working on the woman that FBII was actually looking for here and identified her, lickety split within thirty minutes.

And now, actually, she’s being sentenced this afternoon. Her nickname was airhead, lady, along with her son, and they were in in Pelosi’s office and aided, with the theft of Pelosi’s laptop.

How’d she get the name airhead lady?

That’s a good nickname, and she earned it because she actually it’s not just sort of a a joke, although that’s the underlying part of it. But you see these photos of the individuals on the floor of the house lawmakers who put these emergency hoods over there had these clear emergency hoods, sort of an airbag. Right? So they stole those, and actually walked out of the Capitol with those on their head, these emergency.

Brilliant.

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s how they, got the nickname.

Hey, folks. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks. You are not the crazy ones.

So why not head over to the Bulwark dot com and take a look around. Every day, we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a bulwark plus membership free for the next thirty days to claim this offer go to the bulwark dot com slash Charlie Sykes. That’s the bulwark dot com forward slash Charlie Sykes gonna get through this together. I promise.

He’s going back to this diverse group of you know, anonymous Americans, you know, been working to do all this. You know, the the range of skill sets that you you described. So, you know, in case you think that you’re twenty something year old daughter is wasting their time on dating apps. In fact, one of these twenty something year olds entrapped in insurrectionist on a dating app There’s the mom who uses you described as her Facebook stalking skills in pursuit of justice. So we might think that, you know, people are wasting their time on all of this, but they become these valuable, valuable tools here.

So let’s just talk about January sixth in the way it’s understood because, you know, there are now millions of Americans that think that it’s overblown They believe either the revisionist history, or they’ve just decided it was just another protest. You explained The January sixth was a pivot point for American democracy, but it was also a pivot point for this is what she wrote. It was also a pivot point for the FBI and law enforcement, which were caught flat footed despite all the warning signs flashing online ahead of the capital attack and who would have left playing catch up with open source researchers moving at internet speed. This is another one of the astonishing aspects of January six. How could they have been caught so flat footed?

I mean, this is one of those moments where we have an assumption of our ability to anticipate and monitor something major. This was a huge intelligence failure. Yeah. You’ve looked at this. What happened?

What broke down. Will we just never set up to do something like that? Did we never anticipate that something like this would happen? Was it a policy failure, a structure failure, a failure of of individuals? What’s your read?

I think sort of all of the above There’s one example that the open this is just a sort of bureaucratic thing that’s sort of a a head smacker. There was this contract that was set to expire, involving data this tool that the FBI had been using for years to sort of alert them of really bad rhetoric, what was bubbling online. It’s actually a tool that a lot of newsrooms, use as well to sort of alert them of what’s getting a lot of traction. You know, it is built a lot off of Twitter, but it uses some other websites as well. That contract a year before January sixth.

So, you know, I think December of twenty nineteen comes up for renewal, you know, they open it up this process. They data miner gets underbid by another company called Zero Fox. So when does that contract expire? New Year’s Eve. Of twenty twenty.

Just as when the clock hit midnight, and then we got into twenty twenty one, they no longer had access to that tool, and all of the other FBI sort of components that were built off of that underlying structure of dataminor went offline like a put. So you see these emergent email circulating because this was sort of something that they got blindsided by. The new company did not set them up with logins and did not sort of have a layover, essentially, to make sure this transition was smooth. And, you know, the best that they could really hope for, even though they started paying for this tool on January first was they were told, you know, we’ll we’ll definitely get them before inauguration, you know, hopefully you can get them on the sixth, be for, you know, you guys. But, you know, just look at that.

Right? You’re talking about the last two weeks of December of twenty twenty, you know, which is a time where there’s a lot of other events going on. We sort of overlook it now, but there is this massive data breach, one of the biggest data breaches in American history. There’s also a bomb that went off in Nashville that didn’t kill anyone, but that was something that the FBI surged a lot of resources to. Everyone went in That was just at the end of the hell of the year.

And frankly, you know, government, etcetera, you know, this would apply to journalists as well. Nobody’s really firing on all cylinders right, during those final weeks of December. It sort of phoned it in time.

In retrospect, I think that’s true. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, just a vacation. Yeah. It was a part of this.

Well, you also, you know, talk about the technological capabilities of of the FBI, you know, after September eleventh when, you know, the FBI realized that, they’re technology was outdated. That it was the high-tech equivalent of the stone age. I think that’s your description. In two thousand twelve, the FBI deploys this new computer system, but you’re right that Well, nearly every field office in the country was involved in the January sixth investigation, the FBI was drowning. And the Bureau was also impacted by the sizable percentage of agents sympathetic to the rioters.

Okay. So I’m we’re talking about now post. So they’re drowning in data. But how significant was that a problem? That in law enforcement, there were sympathizers for what happened on January sixth.

Which is really disturbing going forward too.

It is. And I think there are degrees of this. Right? There are FBI agents who aren’t just, like, you know, necessarily gung ho Trump guys, but who also don’t think that these cases should be a priority just because, you know, they’re not used to working, same, estimators. That’s not typically something that the FBI does a lot of is work misdemeanor cases.

And there was that sort of belief about this within the Bureau that they’d much rather be Bulwark, what one, official called sexier cases. Right? Sort of whether that’s international terrorism or sort of these harder gang cases, A lot of this is because it’s sort of coming down from the sluice now, the FBI agents are really just sort of there to to check a box and to sort of vet that information. It’s not I set that aside in terms of the, the, seditious conspiracy cases. The FBI did a lot of really thorough work on those, but some of these sort of more run of the mill ones, they’re just sort of panned into them on the silver flatter.

And, you know, it’s not something that maybe, you know, gets your blood going. But there certainly is a lot of trump’s sympathy within the Bureau, and I think it’s tough to think about that in the current political environment because we’ve had, you know, I don’t know how long six, seven years now, eight years now of Donald Trump saying that the FBI is out to get him. It’s part of the deep state. But just fundamentally, if you look at, you know, the inputs to the FBI, it’s more conservative leaning. It’s a law enforcement organization.

You know, military veterans have priority there. You can enter the FBI a little bit later if you’re a military veteran than you otherwise could have. So when you’re talking about the inputs there, and you look at who, is within the FBI, it really is kind of more of a conservative, leaning organization. And I think that that’s that’s laid out. We’ve seen some of that bubble up into public where you now have these, quote, unquote, whistle blowers who have testified before the house about what they’re really sorry about the January six cases.

You know, written books and have podcasts that are centered upon them being, whistle blowers, quote unquote, about what was happening inside the FBI after January sixth.

So going ahead out of this has changed everything. You know, one of the sleuths told you that the FBI computer system is is fucking stupid. Others said they needed to make sure the reports they sent to the FBI did not surpass the FBI’s file size limit. So you’ve went up one of the great innovations from this open source intelligence from the sources, the FBI didn’t have to put all their faith in them. The Bureau could simply vet the information selves are verified through cell phones that the suspects were actually in the capital.

So by, you know, early this year, the FBI was deeply indebted to these slews. So going forward, is this gonna be a continuing relationship? Is this, like, a new era of monitoring law enforcement? Has these moms at their kitchen tables now have they changed the way the FBI is going to do its work?

I think hopefully will be the hope there because the FBI has to change how it’s doing its work just altogether, frankly. Right? This is not This is just really outdated. One of the things that I learned, that just sort of snapped me in the face, I graduated, you know, in o nine. Right?

So I I’ve been covering and I’ve covered DOJ and the FBI. Ever since. So, you know, fourteen years now. Right? And when I was first starting out and up until a few years ago, when I emailed the FBI, there was a it was typically the format was, you know, a name at I c dot f b I dot gov.

And I never really knew what that stood for. I guess I probably thought maybe like intelligence community, some other acronym along those lines. And working on this book, I came, to learn that it actually stood for internet cafe. Oh, no. And so, yeah, from the days of dial up in AOL because This was it was created at a time when you actually had to physically go to a separate room because their system wasn’t hooked up to just the internet in general.

So you had to go to this internet cafe within your FBI field office to check into your electronic mail, and it just It’s I think that that’s really sort of what we’re what we’re dealing with here. It’s just when you have these massive contracts and to fix these systems, it just really just becomes bogged down. In the bureaucracy, and they’re just not as nimble as a lot of these outside groups can be. The first amendment concerns are real here. And, you know, I I think that that’s gonna be sort of a challenge going forward because the FBI just can’t shouldn’t be collecting mass information on just protests.

Right? They shouldn’t be doing a lot of the stuff that outsiders can, but That’s really what’s broken. Some of these cases open for the slues is they just, you know, they do some sort of search and then, okay, every we’re gonna document everyone who is at this protest. And then if you see them at the capitol and then you see them at a protest in the state capital in in their home state, then you already know, you know, okay, okay, this person is from Michigan. Who else can I connect them to, and that becomes a really quick lead?

So a lot of this, you know, stuff is stuff that the FBI shouldn’t be keeping on their internal systems, but they could be looking out there on the world wide web. And the Boston Sarah Longwell bombing is one that really I think that could have been a lesson for the FBI because they were just flooded with all of this information. And ultimately, this is sort of a bad example of how this flu thing can go bad because you had people on Reddit who were falsely accusing innocent people of doing the wrong thing.

And that ultimately

is what spurred the FBI to put out photos of the actual suspect because they didn’t want innocent people getting in the line of fire, so to speak. And that was what spurred. And then because of it, they put out those photos out. They actually got a tip on family member. That’s what led to the identification.

But there could have been some lessons learned, and that was, you know, ten years ago now from that instance where they needed a better way of collecting all these digital materials, not just leaving them sitting, in an FBI inbox somewhere and, you know, some some servers somewhere actually make them more accessible, more readily accessible and searchable for the FBI because they really took the approach to this case. That was it was all about documents. And that’s the, you know, multi million dollar contract that they handed out was for this product that could really well organize PDFs. And that’s just not what January six was about. Give me the video.

That’s all the clues I want. Every video you could possibly see because that’s what really can break these cases open.

Okay. So this seems related to it. I’m I’m hesitant to take us into a deeper area here, but but help me out here, Ryan, because a lot of this is about the information age, the flood of information. You you, right? The internet was both to blame for January six and responsible for help solving.

It’s also just changed the way that we deal with information and with truth. And so I’m not asking for any reporting here or any decision. I think, millions of people this morning today. We’re watching what’s going on in the Middle East. We’re watching this horrific bombing of a hospital.

Palestinians are saying five hundred people were killed. They are blaming Israel. Israel is coming out with data and video saying no. It was Islamic jihad. We did not bomb this hospital.

But it’s one of those moments where the information is would be the facts have a hard time catching up with the spin I think a lot of the media went with the original claims from the Palestinians as this was an Israeli bombing. I guess cutting through all of it is How the fuck do we know who to believe anymore? How do we? Because and the stakes are so high because the whole world is on fire There’s going to be retaliation. People will die because of these narratives that are going to be spread about all of this.

The Israelis are trying to say And Joe Biden apparently believes them that this was not the Israelis’s, but how do you catch up when you have these vast resources and people who are committed to putting out disinformation, misinformation, ambiguous information. Do you know what I’m getting at? I mean, I I’m not asking for a definitive answer, but it but, I mean, this is this moment where We have lived through the annihilation of truth where you just don’t know who to believe for so long, and now we’re faced with life or death. Decisions on all of this. How do we know who to believe anymore?

Right? And is it gonna get worse?

It’s really tough. And frankly, I do think, you know, it it can get a lot worse from here because I think that’s it’s a unique scenario where you have different parties claiming different things. And, you know, whatever value you want to assign to sort of both sides, there, and you can sort of weigh them. I think, you know, obviously a lot of mistakes were made in the reporting yesterday. But I think that, you know, overall, if you’re just sort of, brought in now, the tools for creating disinformation are getting more complicated, especially with these sort of AI creations that could fool well well intentioned, reasonable people.

You know, not just sort of the most gullible people in

the world.

They can they can trick you. You I could be fooled by AI. Right? That other people need to be fooled by AI. This isn’t some, you know, crazy email that your uncle’s forwarding about what Hillary Clinton did.

Right? These are real looking things. They’re not on their face ridiculous. And I think that that’s sort of what is interesting with January six because there’s so many things that to me, and I think that you know, to a lot of of a lot of people who are just on their face ridiculous, like a lot of these claims and just logic doesn’t work here when you’re talking about a multi state criminal operation operated by dastardly Democrats to steal, you know, hundreds of thousands of votes across several states. It’s it’s too big of a conspiracy.

They can’t actually take place. They’re not that confident again. But, you know, it’s tougher when you’re talking about these sort of more complicated tools that really can trick people. And especially when you’re in an environment with X, for example, where people are incentivized

and

cause the payment structure, to actually fool people in people and promote misinformation because they actually get a paycheck showing up, the more views they get.

And you have this sort of universe skepticism now because there was maybe once a time where if I showed you a photograph or if I showed you the video of what actually happened, you’d go, okay, now I know what actually happened. People now and going forward, even when you show them the video proof. This happened. This person did this thing. They won’t necessarily believe it.

They’ll think that it’s fake. And it might be fake. And this is this is the problem that we faced them, and I’ll I’ll confess to you. This morning, as I was reading through trying to figure out what actually happened, I found myself, and I I I think probably the Israelis are telling the truth. But I also know that I want the Israelis to be telling the truth.

This is the problem, is that people now essentially decide who side are they on. And therefore, they want to believe them. Do I have the capacity to tell you right now? What actually happened? No.

But you can see that people are already sorting themselves out. Some of them based on the evidence, some of them based on what they want the evidence to be. And I just think this is a very dangerous. I mean, and we’ve lived through January sixth. And, you know, as I’m reading your book, I’m thinking, January was just a dry run for what’s gonna happen, especially with all of the things you describe.

You know, suddenly my silly education, my major, media studies, you know, one of those goofy liberal arts terms isn’t, so out the door anymore because I really do think that these critical media skills and critical thinking skills are so essential, to the reality where we are today because you have to be able to challenge your own biases to check with other people to really vet these sources and rely on reliable sources of information, you know, as much as you can sort of disparage, the media overall, at least when you have someone who’s grounded in reality, and there’s consequences for them just putting out putting out garbage. And that’s, you know, one of the things that is just so frustrating when you have people who don’t have that, you know, don’t have any repercussions for putting out information, don’t have any you know, blow back. And just like the core sense of also embarrassment when you put out a lot of this stuff, I would be I would be so embarrassed if I leaned It’s humiliating. Exactly. If I, like, I probably would, you know, crawl into a hole if I were saying, this guy’s responsible for January sixth, and he’s an FBI informant and then the FBI charged Right?

And then he was charged with the federal crime. Oh, how embarrassing? Gudding?devastating. But that’s not the situation we’re in. People can just very easily pivot and say, oh, no.

I was still right. And sort of try to save face. And, you know, the the toughest thing now is figuring out who actually believes the garbage and who is just saying the garbage because it’s politically it can’t.

And there’s not necessarily a red line between those two. I mean, the way the way people’s minds work, you know, I understand that people, you know, in in the age of what about is we’ll say, well, look, here’s this you know, you say we need to find sources that we trust. Well, here’s where the BBC or NBC or the Washington Post got the story wrong. The key, I think red line has to be when people get it wrong as inevitably they will because we are human beings, do they correct it? Do they say we were wrong?

We are sorry. Or do they double down on it? And I would think that that one one of the you know, life lessons would be that if somebody has lied to you and then when they’re caught lying, do not apologize, do not correct it, then you don’t regard them as a credible source ever again. Somebody tells you something that’s wrong, but then they come back to you later and say, okay. We didn’t have the complete story.

We were wrong. Then that person, obviously, or that entity that organization is concerned about credibility.

Yeah.

There are, as you point out, There are entities that frankly, clearly do not give a fuck whether or not they are putting out disinformation misinformation Because if it gets them the clicks, if it gets them the donations, if it gets them the attention, if it gives them the political edge they want, they’re gonna go with it. Those people are the ones who are toxic, but I don’t know how to solve this problem anytime soon. And my sense I mean, it was bad in twenty seventeen. It’s exponentially worse now. What’s it gonna be like in five years, Ryan, especially with AI?

And I think also just people getting with so much information. Right? You even talk to reasonably well informed people who are

Yeah.

Paying more attention to the news than your average American, and they’re what trial is this again? Which one is this with Trump? Like, you know, people get very easily lost. And sometimes you have to remind yourself and you’re like, wait, what happened in case, when’s this one happening? It’s a lot of information that you’re sort of getting you’re getting blasted with.

And it’s a lot for people to handle, and I think those, you know, those deep fakes are gonna be really troublesome. When they ultimately hit. And, you know, whenever I get frustrated, I guess, with any of my jobs that I’ve had, it’s something I think about now where it’s like, getting these stories through and how difficult it is, especially in some of cases where I identified someone before they are arrested by the FBI, the amount of internal vetting that that had to go through, gosh, to, like, get to publication, whether it be with a standard desk, or whether it be with legal and make sure every I is dotted and and and T is crossed in those cases, was just it was extraordinary, but it’s also It shows that, you know, there is responsibility. And, frankly, you know, we you see stuff with, like, the dominion settlement where that’s where this ultimately boils down too is is is money. And I think it’s only when people start seeing, you know, consequences to their bottom line that you’re really gonna, have some accountability there.

Exactly. That’s that’s not an effective way to to have a, sort of an information environment work because, you know, obviously, some entities are much bigger targets than others. When you have these established media companies that have a lot on the line, they really do work hard to They do. That that information internally. So, you know, I would say, you know, trusted sources while, obviously, the media doesn’t have a perfect track record.

Those are a lot better than the alternative of of just sort of misinformation and and internet garbage out there.

The book is sedition Hunters, how January six broke the justice system. It is a really an incredible read. It is very eye opening. It’s very entertaining. Ryan Riley is Justice reporter, NBC News, The book is out yesterday.

Ryan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Thanks so much for having me.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bullworth Podcast on Charlie Sykes, we will be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. The Secret Podcast produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.