Ray Epps Does Jay Six (Updated)

Oct 03, 2024

This Bailey podcast episode originally was released January 22nd, 2024, and it’s where I talked to a Trump supporter about the Deep State, Ray Epps, and the broader January 6th narrative. I extremely proud of this episode, and the topic remains red hot relevant as it perfectly illustrates some of the epistemological chasms within the MAGA movement I’ve already written extensively about.

The AI-generated transcript I originally included with this episode was very rough and inaccurate. I’ve since shelled out money to get a better one done which I went through line-by-line. I finally included timestamps below so that everyone can skip through comfortably because this is a really long episode, clocking in at 3 hours long.

Shakesneer and I spend almost an hour at the beginning just trying to define the Deep State, and I emphatically never even considered cutting that segment out because it was foundational to my overall argument. The fundamental tension with a concept as nebulous as the Deep State from the MAGA perspective is that it must be simultaneously vast but also uniquely malicious.

David Pakman

and Vivek Ramaswamy had a very similar exchange almost a year ago when they discussed who runs the “Managerial Leviathan Machine”. David had to heroically wring out specifics from Vivek, who was desperately coating himself with castor oil to slip out of any grip.

So you’ll notice lots of equivocating between the Deep State being all non-appointed federal employees, but somehow that disparate group of millions is also disciplined and organized enough to orchestrate nefarious conspiracies without getting caught. Those two things can’t both be true, and it was necessary to nail down specifics as early as possible to avoid tripping into the brambles later.

It would be my dream job to have these kinds of conversations all the time! The problem is that very very few people are willing to subject themselves to such intense scrutiny over their beliefs. Forget the time spent researching the actual topics, the biggest time sinks by far are the quarries of wasted hours burnt up behind the scenes just navigating logistics.

For example, most of you are very familiar with my dead horse 2020 stolen election hobby horse, which is the topic that has inspired most of my haters. I’ve begged and pleaded with many stolen election believers (Shakesneer included) to have a real-time conversation about it (with the standard conditions I always have), to give them an opportunity to humiliate me and show the world how wrong I was, but no one has ever taken the ~~bait~~ opportunity. Entreaties have been meet with refusal, silence, or eventual ghosting. I understand that it can be anxiety-inducing to be shown that you are wrong (or worse, delusional), but I find it very odd that those bros who have refused to debate me are so self-aware of their own deficiencies.

Which is why I want to give a special commendation to my conversation partner here. You might not be able to tell from the audio, but Shakesneer is a good friend of mine, someone who I genuinely appreciate as a person. I never withhold the fact that I think he believes in some kooky shit, but he deserves the most credit for willingly enduring his bout on the hot seat. I can’t say that about many people, which is just one way he has earned and deserves my respect.

The Bailey Podcast

E035: Ray Epps Does Jay Six

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a year ago · Yassine Meskhout

Timestamps

00:00 Outlining J6 factors we disagree on
00:13 Who is the Deep State?
00:49 Why infiltrate J6?
01:09 Pipe bombs tangent
01:22 How do the feds whip up a mob?
01:41 Finally talking about Ray Epps
02:15 Comparing Ray Epps to other J6ers
02:28 Taking Ray Epps off the list
02:45 Ray Epps's defamation suit

Transcript

Yassine Meskhout: So welcome to The Bailey. This is the podcast that did everything right. I'm your host, Yassine Meskhout, and today's topic is going to be Ray Epps and how he fits in to the broader January 6th story. With me today is Shakesneer. Welcome back.

Shakesneer: Hey, how are you doing today?

Yassine Meskhout: Great. I'm excited to talk about this. How are you doing?

Shakesneer: I'm doing great. It's a cold day here, but otherwise everything's quite warm.

Yassine Meskhout: Awesome. So how about you tell us who is Ray Epps and why is he important?

Shakesneer: Sure. This whole conversation is starting from a discussion we had on The Motte talking about Ray Epps. Ray Epps is a figure who has become the subject of a lot of debate with regards to January 6th, the protest or the insurrection, however you prefer. And thus the whole sort of Donald Trump, January 6th, politics, election, federal government, ideas, conspiracies and debates. And the specific impetus for our discussion was the announcement the other day that Ray Epps, who was present at January 6th and has been the subject of much debate and conspiracy, will only be sentenced to a year's probation after being convicted of a misdemeanor.

Yassine Meskhout: Right. And you said that he was sentenced or at least treated by the justice system unusually leniently, right?

Shakesneer: Yes. That's my contention and so—

Yassine Meskhout: But whether or not he's treated leniently doesn't matter as much. It's more about the implication of what that means. Is that fair?

Shakesneer: Something like that, yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So you can add to that if you wanted. I was going to ask, how does him being treated leniently, how does that fit in into the broader narrative from right-wing media figures, or I guess the official story, whatever angle you want to describe?

Shakesneer: Here's why it matters, and here's the outline of the case. There's a lot of debate about what happened on January 6th and whether that was sort of, let's call it the organic fault of conservative movements, conservative leaders, people who were there at the protest, or to what extent that it was manufactured or manipulated by agents within the federal government. Now—

Yassine Meskhout: So when you say debate, who is having these debates?

Shakesneer: So there are a couple of conservative outlets and media figures advancing theories about specific pieces of evidence that allege that specific parts or some, or all of January 6th was guided or manipulated by federal agents. And then there are more official sources coming from places like the January 6th committee where they have some subset of the evidence that they are using to allege that January 6th was an insurrection and a revolution against the government.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So when you say manufactured or manipulated, can you be more specific about what that means?

Shakesneer: So I am trying to be broad here because me sitting here at home, I don't have access to the actual documents of who the FBI might be employing at any time. Who did what? I don't have the base truth. I'm just looking at this from the point of view of an amateur historian. And so I am not going to say that January 6th was obviously caused by the federal government. January 6th was obviously caused by conservative leaders. January 6th was obviously—

Yassine Meskhout: Right, right. But I'm not asking you to make, I guess, an absolute statement. It's more about describing what's going on. So if you say January 6th was caused by the federal government, I'm not saying you believe that, but if you say that, I don't know what that means. What do you mean by caused? What do you mean by the federal government? Can you just give more specifics? So without even endorsing the statement, I'm just looking for, I guess a description that is specific enough to give people an adequate understanding.

Shakesneer: Sure. So I am trying to leave a little ambiguity here, but I would say that the claim is that there are elements of January 6th that were either planned by agents within the federal government or manipulated by agents in the federal government, specifically referring to the way that some protesters were led into the Capitol building, the way that some protesters were talking or talked about and incited, and the way that certain pieces of footage or evidence have been given new meaning after the event itself. Does that make sense?

Yassine Meskhout: I think so. Maybe one way we can zoom out, and I guess I'll give my view, which mostly aligns with what would be considered the official narrative about what happened on January 6th. And then we can figure out if there is, I guess, the points of disagreement. Does that sound good?

Shakesneer: Sure. That's fine.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So I guess part of the official narrative would be one of the first factors is that the 2020 election was not stolen, and Biden is the legitimate president. Is that fair and as a factor within the official narrative?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. And the second one would be Trump and his supporters were, I guess, rationally angry because they believed that the election was stolen or that they believe otherwise. There's some debate with the official story about whether or not Trump is genuine or if he's just faking the idea that he believes the election was stolen to whip up his base. But is that an accurate, I guess, representation within the official narrative?

Shakesneer: I think a lot of people believe that. I think the official narrative might say that Trump and his supporters are irrational, that they have no basis whatsoever for what they're doing. And I think there's an idea floating around that it's—

Yassine Meskhout: Well, sorry, there will be two components. One is whether or not they believe the election was stolen reasonably or on a rational basis. And then two, assuming that they believed that the election was stolen, their subsequent behavior would be, I guess, understandable or reasonable. So that would be the idea. There's two different components here, and I was only talking about the latter. We're not going to get into the 2020 election stuff, even though I would love to. Right, Shakes? We've been talking about this for a while.

Shakesneer: We could have a separate discussion about that sometime.

Yassine Meskhout: Right. In the future. But for now, I'm just talking about I guess their motivation and their response given what they believe. I'm not getting into whether or not what they believed was correct or not.

Shakesneer: I think that what you are describing is a reasonable position that it sounds like you have, and a lot of people have. I think the official narrative, if you look to say the January 6th select committee that had figures like say, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on it. And I think if you look at the story believed in by a lot of people within the federal government, if you look at the statements of say, Merrick Garland or Joe Biden, I think they don't believe that A justifies B. I think that they don't think that believing the election was stolen means that January 6th was rational. I think they don't want to connect those two ideas, and so January 6th is irrational.

Yassine Meskhout: So at least in terms of my position, I think it's not rational to believe that the election was stolen, or I don't think it's... Let me rephrase that. I don't believe it's reasonable to believe that the election was stolen, given the evidence, and we can have this discussion another time. But if you do believe it, I think being angry or feeling like you're out of options, I think that's a reasonable reaction given that first assumption.

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Makes sense?

Shakesneer: Yeah, and I want to agree with that because I think your position is a mainstream position, maybe not the official position, but I think that's fair.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Now my own opinion is... Well, the facts are there are about 10,000 protesters on the Capitol grounds, about 2000 made it inside the Capitol. My own opinion is the day was chaotic, but I would say most of the protesters were not violent. I don't think that... Well, there would be, I guess some debatable disagreement between the mainstream position. And then I guess the last component is the reason they were there is my opinion is that it was ultimately in this kind of ineffectual bid to delay or hinder the certification of the electoral college because of their prior beliefs. Does that make sense so far?

Shakesneer: Yeah. I would just elaborate. I think that there was this idea that Mike Pence could deny certification of the electoral college, in which case, according to the Constitution, and this is all untested and never been tried before, but in theory, that would cause the vote to go back to the different state legislatures. And I think—

Yassine Meskhout: Sure. I would love to discuss that again, I guess on the 2020 election, that topic, I think it's a completely baseless legal theory, but would it be fair to describe that they were there at least to show that they cared about this issue, that they wanted, quote unquote, "Mike Pence to do the right thing". Whatever needed to happen to rectify the wrong of the stolen election? Is that a fair description?

Shakesneer: Yes. I can't read anybody's minds, but from what we have seen, to me, it sounds really plausible to say that a lot of these protesters were hoping that if they showed up in protested, that Mike Pence or other legislatures would, as you say, do the right thing.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Now, when we contrast it against the, I guess we can call it the alternative narrative. There's broad agreement with the factors that I outlined, right? There's going to be some quibbles, but mostly agreed?

Shakesneer: So I would say within the conservative worldview, there are two views on January 6th. One is rather similar to the view you've been describing, which is January 6th is this chaotic event, maybe rooted in some sympathetic ideas, but that definitely led to chaos. And the other narrative, which has been gradually emerging over time, is this idea that some or all of January 6th was manipulated by agents in the federal government.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So when I look at the factors I outlined, the ones that would be different would be, I guess the first one was the election was indeed stolen. That would be a difference, right?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But I guess it's kind of irrelevant whether or not that's true for our purposes, because the main difference is going to be... I guess you would agree that some protesters used violence, not all of them, and it was in a way to make their presence shown. But then I guess you would add an addendum and say, but they were also entrapped into engaging with this violence?

Shakesneer: Yeah. So if we grant that most of the protesters were nonviolent, but some of them were violent, it becomes a question of why were they violent? And there's a lot of evidence floating to me. Some of it's more convincing than others, but there's a lot of it floating around that suggests that the violence was either instigated by the federal government or actually perpetrated by elements from the federal government.

Yassine Meskhout: So I think that's going to be the main crux of our disagreement. And I want to get into some questions. First, do you find anything, I guess, implausible on its face about the official narrative?

Shakesneer: The part of the official narrative that alleges that January 6th was an insurrection trying to overthrow the government, I find that implausible. The position that you've described, I find to be much more palatable and much more sensible.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. And what I said was it was an ineffectual bid to delay or hinder the certification that electoral college. Besides that, do you have any disagreements or do you find any part of what I outlined, I guess, implausible on its face?

Shakesneer: I think what you've described is a reasonable opinion, and within the limited evidence we have, I think that's one valid interpretation. However, as we get into talking about Ray Epps and some of these other things, I will elaborate why I think a different interpretation is plausible.

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And I'm excited to get into that. I just wanted to set the stage and see... So that we don't get lost. Figure out where we do agree and where our disagreement is going to be.

Shakesneer: Perfect.

Yassine Meskhout: So if there was... I don't want to use... By the way, just like a note, if I start using loaded language, please call me out on that. I don't want to say like, "Oh, this conspiracy theory or this scheme or whatever." I want to use neutral language. So if you notice otherwise, just let me know. Okay?

Shakesneer: Okay.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So the first question is, whoever organized this entrapment scheme, whatever part of the agency, who would do that?

Shakesneer: So there are a couple specific agencies that have agents that infiltrate extremist groups. The foremost among them would be the FBI.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Yeah, we agree.

Shakesneer: And so I don't have any records. I mean, when it comes to these things, the ATF will infiltrate certain groups for the purpose of apprehending drug traffickers. And I don't have the records. I can't read the federal government, so I can't prove that it's one agency over another. But the most plausible interpretation is that it would be people from the FBI or maybe from the parent Department of Justice.

Yassine Meskhout: So maybe some lay informants, some FBI agents, some undercover government agent. Their goal was to encourage protesters on January 6th to commit acts of violence?

Shakesneer: That's one theory. Yes.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Why?

Shakesneer: So the idea is that there is power in categorizing parts of the political right as domestic extremists, so that the political right can be defeated in other political arenas. If conservatives are just normal political voters, then they're just one faction and we have to defeat them at the ballot box. But if conservatives are domestic terrorists or if there are a lot of domestic terrorists within conservatism, then there's all of this justification for using other state powers against conservatives.

Yassine Meskhout: So I noticed that there's a few underlying assumptions buttressing all of this. So the first one is that these government agents... Can I use deep state? I don't want to use it if that's pejorative.

Shakesneer: Deep state is fine.

Yassine Meskhout: So we will just refer to these government agents as a deep state. The idea is that the deep state is inherently against conservatives.

Shakesneer: Mm-hmm.

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: I think that over time, Washington DC has developed a political culture that is at a distance from the rest of the country as a whole. And I think today, conservatism is more at odds with and more of a threat to the political culture of DC than other political movements.

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: I think that Washington DC has become this sort of epicenter of government that represents a specific vision of the government being big, of the government being powerful, of the government having all sorts of increasing powers. You look at the trend through the Bush and Obama years, the increasing powers the federal government has to police terrorism and extremism, the increasing budget of the federal government. And conservatism, especially as it's practiced in more rural parts of the country, is really hostile to that vision and to the culture of Washington DC.

Yassine Meskhout: So the deep state is hostile to... I guess the deep state feels threatened by any political movement that advocates for, let's say, budget cuts or staffing reductions, right?

Shakesneer: That's part of it. Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: What's the other part?

Shakesneer: I just think that there's a lot of personal antipathy.

Yassine Meskhout: For whom?

Shakesneer: I think that as the country is becoming more polarized, as you're seeing more division between the left and the right, there is more hostility, more personal animus, and I think whether true or not—

Yassine Meskhout: Against who?

Shakesneer: Between left-wingers and right-wingers, between those city folk or those bigoted idiots out in the country, between those educated snobs. You turn on MSNBC or CNN or any news network, and there's a lot of contempt, and it's not a one-way street. I think people increasingly feel more contempt for the other side of the political aisle. And it seems that—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but I guess I'm asking about the motivations. We're talking about the deep state. We're not necessarily talking about all liberals and all conservatives, right?

Shakesneer: I think people within the deep state have a lot of those same—

Yassine Meskhout: Antagonism or what?

Shakesneer: Antagonism. Sure, there's an impossible number of things we could talk about. But look, for example, at say Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. And I am not going to allege that Lisa Page and Peter Strzok did anything in particular, but their text messages came out. So these were the two FBI agents who were texting each other. They were having an affair during the Trump presidency, and they were talking about how they wanted to take Trump down and they were going to do whatever it took. And I think that's emblematic of a common attitude among the kinds of people in the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Yassine Meskhout: But why do they have this hate? Where does it come from?

Shakesneer: I mean, I think it comes from polarization. I think it comes from the fact that Washington DC has a specific political culture. You have to advance up the political pyramid. You have to progress in a career, and I think that lends itself to a certain kind of person—

Yassine Meskhout: Right but I guess how...because when you first started describing it, I described it as the deep state feeling threatened by any political movement that threatens its existence, which means threatens its budgeting, threatens its staffing. And then you added an antipathy component, right?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: So where does this antipathy come from?

Shakesneer: I can't describe necessarily why people always feel the things they feel. I just think there is a lot of antipathy. I see it when I look at the kinds of people who make up government agencies, and I see it in reverse in the way people talk about the federal government. And I'm only trying to come up with an explanation for what I already see around me, which is that a lot of people in the federal government are hostile to conservatives, and I think that goes vice versa.

Yassine Meskhout: When did this start?

Shakesneer: We could go back a long time, but I think if you look... And I don't have this data in front of me. I think if you look at data in terms of the tendency of certain professions to lean Democrat versus Republican, there's probably an inflection point around the '80s or '90s.

Yassine Meskhout: I don't know the specifics, but I can stipulate that a significant majority of government workers lean democratic. But you're describing more than just government employees tend to be democratic. You're describing a deep state that feels threatened by political movements, and I'm trying to figure out where this enmity comes from and what motivates it. You gave me some ideas by saying it feels threatened by staff and budget reductions, and then you also added this unknown antagonism. So what am I missing?

Shakesneer: There are a lot of incidents over a long period of time that I would have to dig down and find. For me, this antagonism between people within the federal government and more conservative political movements is just something I see all the time. To me, it's just background noise. It's just the conclusion of hundreds of specific examples. And so if you want—

Yassine Meskhout: But if you're describing some sort of coordinated attempt to entrap members of a political movement in order to discredit the broader political movement, I think you need more than just, "I heard someone say something mean about conservatives."

Shakesneer: Let me tease at that word coordinated attempt for a moment, right, because—

Yassine Meskhout: I can use the different terminology. I don't want to get hung up on the vocabulary.

Shakesneer: It's not about the terminology. It's this idea of what coordination entails. There's a question of if we suppose that there is FBI involvement in some of these January 6th movements, there's a question of what does that mean? What does that look like? What were they trying to do? And for me, I don't believe in and don't find necessarily to believe in there being say, some secret meeting where a couple powerful people get together and say, "This is our plan. This is what we're going to do. We're going to entrap January 6th." I find it plausible to believe that there were already FBI agents embedded within different conservative movements, and that either they incited or exaggerated tendencies, violent tendencies within conservative movements, or they exaggerated tendencies for their political advantage. Does that make sense?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. We can get into the specifics. I don't need to use the word coordinated if you object to it. I'm just really trying to understand the basics. We were talking about the deep state having enmity against this political movement, but why conservatives? When did it start? Does it apply to all conservatives? Does it apply to all politicians that threaten budget and staffing cuts? I am trying to understand some contours here.

Shakesneer: I think that there is a contempt for, let's call it, broadly conservatism within a large part of the culture of Washington DC.

Yassine Meskhout: When did it start?

Shakesneer: It's a complex process, but I would say the modern movements we're talking about, you probably date them to the '90s. We could date them to say the Oklahoma City shooting and the Ruby Ridge case. And I am too young to quite remember Ruby Ridge the way a lot of people do. But my impression is that a lot of people's ideas about what the federal government represents were fundamentally changed by Ruby Ridge, changed by this idea that government agents will come and label you a cult and threaten you with the violence of the state.

Yassine Meskhout: But I'm still just trying to understand the motivation. So if I told you, for example, the DEA goes after drug dealers, and you ask me why, and I say, "Well, it's in their congressional mission. It's in their charter. This is what they're trained to do. They're evaluated by how well they enforce the law." I can give you specifics of why does the DEA go after drug dealers. So I'm asking a broader question, and I understand there's going to be some ambiguity, but when I'm asking why is the deep state going after the conservative movement. Mostly what I've heard is they have contempt, they hate. But why? Do you have any theories?

Shakesneer: I think I see a little bit better now. I would say that conservatism is broadly opposed to the existence of the political class of Washington. And I would say that the political projects of the people in Washington DC in running the country are broadly opposed to the conservative movement—

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: So it's not just budget cuts, although—

Yassine Meskhout: Why are they opposed?

Shakesneer: If conservatism got its way, a lot of these people would not have jobs. That's part of it. If conservatism got its way, a lot of these people would not be afforded the nice privileges of being somebody in Washington DC with power and shaping parts of the world—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so I can understand that. That's a coherent explanation. I understand that. That's what I said earlier. The deep state feels threatened by anything that challenges its existence or its scope or its breadth, right? Is that fair?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So I guess we can go by presidents. Out of the conservative presidents recently, who counts as the biggest threat to the deep state?

Shakesneer: I mean, I think most people would say Donald Trump. That's what I would say—

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: Donald Trump, for all of his chaos, and whether or not he delivers, he represents a couple key planks that threaten specific policy goals of the political establishment. He is in favor of tariffs, immigration, foreign policy. Those were the three core planks of Trump's original platform that propelled him in 2016.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, we'll just do this in order. So how do tariffs threaten the deep state?

Shakesneer: Well, so tariffs, but also arguments about stuff like NAFTA, the TPP. So there's a lot of money and power in organizing, industry organizing who trades, organizing trade deals between countries. There's a vision within Washington specifically of free trade that has led to a loss of economic industry within certain parts of—

Yassine Meskhout: How does that affect the deep state? Why would they care?

Shakesneer: They want free trade.

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: We could sit here and debate why. You look at Hillary Clinton. And she and Barack Obama, they wanted TPP. They wanted the TPP trade—

Yassine Meskhout: That doesn't answer the question. We're not talking about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We're talking about the deep state. I mean, if you want to establish that they're representatives of the deep states, you're welcome to do that. But I'm really just asking very, very basic questions about motivations. You can test me on this. Ask me any organization, any government, any agency, any department, and I can reasonably give you some motivations. So I'm just really trying to understand... We didn't get into the details about who is the deep state, but I want to know why they do what they do.

Shakesneer: I mean, there's a lot of debate about this. There's some people who say that these people are being bribed by lobbyists and trade agencies. There's some people who say that these people just have misguided economic ideas. All I'm describing is that there are consistent policies advocated by the federal government that lead—

Yassine Meskhout: Shakes, that's not the same thing. So the first question was, who represents the biggest threat to the deep state? You immediately said Trump. Cool. Why is he a threat? And you listed several factors: tariffs, immigration, foreign policy, NATO, TPP, fine. Why is that a threat to the deep state? I think that's a fair question.

Shakesneer: They don't want things. They want other things.

Yassine Meskhout: Why not?

Shakesneer: I can't read their minds. I'm just listing the differences between the two factions.

Yassine Meskhout: What's your evidence that they don't want these things?

Shakesneer: They oppose them. Donald Trump was the—

Yassine Meskhout: Who's they?

Shakesneer: Everybody in politics. Donald Trump was the only candidate running on several of these issues. Everybody opposed him for it when he got elected and tried to get deals through Congress, there was opposition. So let's look at NATO. Let's look at—

Yassine Meskhout: No, no, hold... I'm sorry, Shakes. I'm just so confused. You keep changing labels. You would say the deep state, and then you switch and say the political establishment, and then you switch and say Hillary and Barack Obama. I don't think conflating all that is reasonable. So it would be helpful if we had precise language about what we're talking about. I'm willing to grant some ambiguity and some fuzziness about the deep state. That's fine. But you can't keep switching names and say the deep state, therefore, the political establishment.

Shakesneer: Let's call the political establishment the people who broadly make decisions about how the country is run.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So Democrats and Republicans.

Shakesneer: Not just Democrats and Republicans, but people in non-elected positions who exercise control over the federal government, for example—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, Democrats and Republicans, with a majority of Democrats, yes.

Shakesneer: Fine.

Yassine Meskhout: You can challenge that.

Shakesneer: I mean, part of the issue is that a lot of Republican voters don't feel represented by those Republicans. The word Republican is kind of loaded because it implies that there's this sort of cross party consensus. And if you don't agree with that, you might not be a Republican or a Democrat. But there's actually a lot of Republicans within the party who don't agree with what the leadership in Washington ends up committing to. And so I don't disagree when you say Republicans and Democrats, but I think that that obscures one of the important differences.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: So let's call the political establishment broadly, the class of people that makes decisions about how the country is run, and let's call the deep state the part of the political establishment that has power regardless of who is elected. Does that make sense?

[00:31:04]

Yassine Meskhout: So who is that?

Shakesneer: So there's lots of career bureaucrats and officials in a couple key important departments who run things on a day-to-day basis. So if you look at say the Department of State, you elect a president, the president appoints a Secretary of State, right? The Secretary of State's a political appointee, and there's some under secretaries of state or some assistant secretaries of state, right? And underneath those political appointees is a whole class of people who are not elected. They've been—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So those are the members of the deep state?

Shakesneer: I wouldn't say that everybody who's a career bureaucrat is a member of the deep state, but I would say that there are some departments where there are unelected officials with a lot of power and that because they all live in DC they all are part of the same political culture and they all interface with each other. They've come to form a sort of class and that's what we might call the deep state. Does that make sense?

Yassine Meskhout: Getting there. What's their, I guess what brings them together, do they have a joint motivation or interests?

Shakesneer: I mean in the sense that any class has an interest, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So what interest do I have?

Shakesneer: I think they have an interest in the prestige of their own offices. So there's a famous incentive where every year government budgets go up. Government departments are always expanding their own budgets. They're always finding ways to spend money, even if they have nothing to spend the money on, but that increases their prestige. That's in their own self-interest, right? That's almost rational.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So let's go back to the original question. Now that we've sort of identified who the deep state is. Why do they feel threatened by Trump? You said tariffs, immigrations, foreign policy. Do you want to change any of those answers?

Shakesneer: I think those were the three pillars of his campaign. And I think that—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. How do tariffs jeopardize or threaten the career bureaucrats? Wouldn't that give them more power? If you have tariffs, then you have more regulatory power because you need an agency that collects the tariffs, that gets money from the tariffs. So wouldn't that be supported by the deep state?

Shakesneer: More than tariffs, the way Trump wants to renegotiate trade deals would lead to a change in balance where things are manufactured in this country, the policy—

Yassine Meskhout: Why would the deep state care about that? Why would career bureaucrats care about that?

Shakesneer: The United States gets a lot of power and global prestige from securing the supply chains, from patrolling the ocean, from leading military alliances all over the world. If the United States becomes self-sufficient in manufacturing its own goods, there's no real reason for the United States to pay all of these military costs that keep a lot of the rest of the world safe. And that leads to a loss of prestige for all of the departments that are lined up around US foreign policy the way it exists.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So I guess the idea would be, let me see if I understand it, the idea is that the deep state, AKA career bureaucrats feel threatened by any candidate or political movement that advocates for a higher economic self sufficiency, because if that happened, then there would be a significantly lower need to rely on the formidable US military apparatus. Is that fair?

Shakesneer: Yeah, I think that's part of it. Does that make sense?

Yassine Meskhout: I can understand it, but then doesn't that... I mean, there's different ways to cut back on the power of the state. I mean, Reagan fired a whole agency of employees. Was he considered an enemy of the deep state?

Shakesneer: I think that the deep state that we're talking about now, so again, I would think of the deep state as a class with a class consciousness and the '80s, 40 years ago I would think that the kinds of people making up that class had a different consciousness, different problems, and maybe wasn't as well considered as it is today.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But you're still describing them with a relatively intense hatred for political movement. I personally would assume that if there is an intense hatred for a movement, there would be some reason, some articulable reasons for that. So I'm trying to figure out where that comes from. We spent a lot of time on this topic, but I'm genuinely trying to understand it better because first you said they hate Donald Trump obviously, and it's because of tariffs. And I asked why and you said, "Well, it's not really tariffs. It's about all these trade agreements that could potentially allow the United States to be completely self-sufficient, and then if they're self-sufficient, they would rely less on the military and the Navy to patrol the oceans."

I can follow that, but I mean how long does this take, how credible is this risk, how long would it even take to manifest? Because I can't imagine the United States ever becoming economically self-sufficient, nor can I imagine it wanting to. I don't know any country that thrives or has gotten rich by just closing off its trade deals with the world. And even if that did happen, I guess eventually the United States military would be lower, but this sounds like a 50 or 60 year plan. So I'm trying to understand why would career bureaucrats care?

Shakesneer: Nobody's talking about making the US... It's not about making the US entirely self-sufficient in all ways, in all forms, right, but there are lot—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I can walk that back. I don't want to get stuck on straw man. I'm not saying you were straw manning it, but I don't want get stuck on extremes. So significantly lower or significantly higher, self-reliance, whatever you want to use.

Shakesneer: Sure. Right. So I don't know, we could talk about a million issues here, but I'm thinking for example of something like oil. There's a big divide between political factions about whether the United States should become self-sufficient in oil. Right, "drill, baby drill. Let's drill as much oil as we can," or whether we should be incentivizing the production of less oil as we move to greener energy sources to help mitigate climate change.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I'm trying to loop that back to why does the deep state care. For all of these things you bring up, I just ask why do the career bureaucrats care one way or the other?

Shakesneer: I think that there—

Yassine Meskhout: Is my question unfair?

Shakesneer: I don't think your question's unfair. I'm just trying to... I keep wanting to telescope out and then having the telescope back in without, I'm trying to figure out how to concisely put the pieces together without telescoping out and in.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I'm trying to understand a simple component. I don't think I would encounter this challenge if I was describing any other department, industry group, nonprofit. There's a corporation, I would be able to tell you what their motivations are. I don't know, the oil lobby, the oil industry group wants more drilling because it helps their members. That's pretty easy. That's a concise way of describing what their motivations are. I'm trying to understand why the deep state cares about any of these issues. And as soon as I ask for more details, you keep shifting. You're shifting the topic. I asked about tariffs and you said, "Well, it's not really tariffs, it's about these trade deals."

So I'm trying to nail something down. We can switch to immigration or foreign policy, whatever you pick. I just want to know one motivation for the deep state.

Shakesneer: Let's switch to immigration or foreign policy. Foreign policy I think it would be simplest for both of us.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Okay. So what about Donald Trump's foreign policy threatens the deep state, AKA career bureaucrats?

Shakesneer: So one example is Trump's desire to renegotiate NATO or pull out of NATO, right? There are a lot of prestige positions. There's a lot of preeminence the United States has for its position in NATO. There's a lot of bureaucrats who get a lot of value out of our relationship with—

Yassine Meskhout: How many? Like just roughly speaking, how many bureaucrats are attached to the NATO relationship?

Shakesneer: Everybody in the Department of State who interfaces with a NATO country or has to manage diplomacy along NATO issues has to deal with however many thousands of people are working for some of the departments involved, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So I can understand that the specific employees that are attached to a NATO function would have a personal interest in making sure that NATO stays relevant and stays active and well funded. I understand that. I concede that, but that's much, much smaller than the deep state, a class of career bureaucrats.

Shakesneer: Can I use a specific example here? Can I introduce—

Yassine Meskhout: Yes.

Shakesneer: Okay. So look at somebody like Victoria Nuland. Victoria Nuland is now one of the deputy secretaries of state. She has been described as being more or less responsible for the United States' policy in Ukraine right, going back 10 years to before—

Yassine Meskhout: What policy is she responsible for?

Shakesneer: She is responsible for the United States supporting the Maidan Revolution and supporting the new government that came into Ukraine in 2014 after that revolution. There's actually an infamous phone call where she was coordinating with one of the members of the new government on which officials would be appointed within the Ukrainian government as the post revolution government was being consolidated.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: And so here's an example of a person who has advanced a specific foreign policy with the United States relative to Ukraine. And we have an investment in Ukraine and we have an investment with NATO's relationship with Russia because the United States is in NATO and is the backbone of NATO. And because of our investment in NATO, we have to assume certain positions within Europe for which there are a lot of career bureaucrats implementing policy, right. Negotiating with countries over purchasing weapons for NATO—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. This is something I already conceded. I already concede that whatever specific employees are specifically attached to a NATO function would have a vested personal interest in maintaining the NATO relationship. I understand that. I concede that. I'm trying to figure out the deep state and what they want rather than just saying, "This employee wants to keep this particular job."

Shakesneer: Well, the deep state is in the terms that I'm using I would call it a class. And so Victoria Nuland is one member of that class who's a career bureaucrat who's been influencing the policy of the Department of State for many decades.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I'm trying to link it from "career bureaucrat has a vested interest in a specific policy and has been influential within their department" to "they hate conservatives so much that they're willing to entrap them in order to discredit the political movement". I'm trying to link that together.

Shakesneer: I don't know of anything Victoria Nuland specifically did about conservatives. I'm trying to answer your questions as they're coming up.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So the deep state is a class of career bureaucrats. They hate conservatives. I personally don't really understand why, but whatever. And they feel especially threatened by Trump because he represents the biggest threat. So I guess you would say their focus has sharpened against Trump instead of just the conservatives in general. Is it fair to say that it sharpened against Trump?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. What would you describe as the... When Trump was president for four years, what did he do to specifically threaten the deep state? Tell me the biggest thing that he did, the biggest policy that he did that seriously threatened the deep state because federal funding went up. I don't think federal employment changed at all. So I'm trying to understand.

Shakesneer: In my personal opinion, Trump didn't do very much that really threatened them.

Yassine Meskhout: So why is he seen as a threat?

Shakesneer: For irrational reasons. And so I think if he had—

Yassine Meskhout: Shakes, dude, come on. What?

Shakesneer: People are irrational. I think—

Yassine Meskhout: You're telling me the deep state hates conservatives. "Why?" "I don't know." And then they hate Donald Trump even though he didn't threaten them. "Why?" "Well, they're irrational." So you're just telling me that they have hate and are acting irrationally.

Shakesneer: Two opposite sides in a political dispute. One side wants X, Y, and Z, the other side wants anti X, Y, and Z. And so the fact is that Donald Trump wasn't able to really reign in the federal government or change most of its policies in a long term sustainable way. That doesn't mean that he wasn't trying to. People tried to stop him from doing many of the things he wanted to do because of this political conflict.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but they didn't do that against Bush?

Shakesneer: I think that a lot of Bush's policies were not all that, what's the word, unpalatable to career bureaucrats. In many ways, Bush—

Yassine Meskhout: But you just said that Trump didn't do very much to threaten career bureaucrats. So why the change?

Shakesneer: Bush expanded the powers of the federal government.

Yassine Meskhout: Ok, did Trump restrict them?

Shakesneer: I think Trump tried to, in several instances.

Yassine Meskhout: How? What's an example?

Shakesneer: Give me a second to think of a good one.

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, you're describing him as almost like an existential threat to the deep state. And I'm just asking why, why is he seen that way? You can't think of one example?

Shakesneer: My honest opinion is I think there's a certain amount of irrationality in this. I think Trump, if he had been elected and allowed to cut deals, I think he would've been quite happy doing whatever and cutting deals and having a nice infrastructure bill. I think that irrespective—

Yassine Meskhout: How does the infrastructure bill threaten the deep state?

Shakesneer: I don't think it would have, I just think that they... Here's what I'm saying. I think that if the deep state, if the political establishment, if the people and the Democratic party or whoever, I think if they had cut deals with Donald Trump, Trump would've said, "Great," and he would've made deals that would've been amenable to everybody. I think that instead of that happening, there was an antipathy that already existed between all the different parties.

Yassine Meskhout: But you just said the antipathy wasn't always there. It depends, I guess it shifts presumably in response to conservatives I guess it goes up. And earlier when I asked you who's the biggest threat to the deep state, you said Trump without hesitation. But then when I asked you what did he do to threaten the deep state, you said not much. So I'm confused.

Shakesneer: I think that Trump represents the spearhead of the opposition to the deep state. I also—

Yassine Meskhout: How? How?

Shakesneer: He advances specific interests that go against the deep state's interests.

Yassine Meskhout: Like what?

Shakesneer: Restricting the powers of the federal government.

Yassine Meskhout: What's one example of him trying to restrict the powers of the federal government?

Shakesneer: Cutting on reg-... What do you want me to say?

Yassine Meskhout: Just give me an example because you're describing him as this object of ire for the deep state, and I'm trying to figure out why. Why do they hate him so much? Why is he such a threat? I just want one example to understand that.

Shakesneer: Look, Donald Trump wanted to change the political orthodoxies of Washington, D.C. A lot of—

Yassine Meskhout: How? What did he want to change?

Shakesneer: Immigration, NATO.

Yassine Meskhout: How does that threaten the deep state? Wouldn't that increase the power of the deep state, because then you would need a much bigger border patrol apparatus? You would need Coast Guard patrols. You would need the border patrol. You need more employees at the Department of Homeland Security.

Shakesneer: A lot of the people who are doing the work for the Border Patrol for ICE, they're not in Washington D.C. They're not part of the class that I'm attempting to describe.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. You would still need more bureaucrats. Some of them are going to end up in D.C. to manage and run these departments that I just spoke of, right?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So I'm trying to understand where is the threat to the deep state?

Shakesneer: They don't want those things. What do you want me to say?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: Trump was specifically elected to—

Yassine Meskhout: So the deep state hates conservatives and hates Trump especially even though he's not a threat to the deep state, or he is, they think he is because they're irrational, but he didn't really actually do anything that would jeopardize it. But he also represents the spearhead for things that might jeopardize it. Is anything I said inaccurate or misrepresenting your position?

Shakesneer: I think he represents the spearhead of opposition to Washington bureaucrats, yeah. I don't think actually in office he did all that much to try to reign them in. But I think that if anybody was, he is the guy most likely viewed as a threat by all involved.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but you haven't given me a reason why except that they're sometimes irrational and they hate conservatives.

Shakesneer: They want different policies.

Yassine Meskhout: All right, so they want different policies and they focused on January 6th as a way to discredit the conservative movement, right?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Why would they try to jeopardize Biden's recertification?

Shakesneer: I don't think that's right. I don't think that's what they tried to do. I think that—

Yassine Meskhout: I guess why would they put it at risk? Why would they try to disrupt it?

Shakesneer: No, it would be the opposite. It would be that they perceive conservatives trying to disrupt Biden's inauguration, and so they infiltrate the conservative movement to try to make sure that doesn't happen.

Yassine Meskhout: Wait, what? I'm sorry. They knew that the conservatives were going to disrupt Biden's certification and so they infiltrated the groups to make sure it doesn't happen. Is that what you said or did I mishear you?

Shakesneer: No, what I'm saying is that since they perceive conservatives to be a political risk, not just a political risk, but like a domestic threat, a terrorist threat. And this is the language used by—

Yassine Meskhout: Is it they perceive them to be a domestic threat for the same reasons that we just spent the last hour talking about, right?

Shakesneer: Yeah. They perceive conservatives to be a domestic threat or certain factions within conservatism to pose a terror threat, right? And so they have agents infiltrating certain movements within conservatism. I really don't think that that's a controversial idea because we know cases where they have—

Yassine Meskhout: Sure, sure. I understand that infiltration happens and then what? What's the end goal here? What's the plan?

Shakesneer: I don't think that there's a cabal where they sit around and say—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, it doesn't have to be a cabal. What is the point of each infiltration?

Shakesneer: What's the point of infiltrating any movement, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Well, I can explain that to you and hopefully this can provide a template of an answer. But if I'm the FBI, and I'm doing some counter terrorism unit and my focus is going to be on Muslim terrorism, my plan is to infiltrate these groups to see who has at least some proclivity or some leaning towards committing acts of terrorism to stop it before it gets anywhere close to fruition.

And the goal is to identify these individuals, and my criticism of the FBI is that the way this is typically handled is they'll find impressionable people that are easy to sway. Some of them have severe cognitive deficiencies, but they'll say, "Hey, don't you want to be important? Don't you want to be special? We can give you money if you just want to Allahu Akbar a building. Don't you hate America? Don't you want to have some money for your family? Don't you want to go to heaven?" And the goal is to prosecute terrorism and enforce anti-terrorism laws before it happens. So that would be the point of the infiltration. So when I'm asking you what is the point of the infiltration for a conservative group, what is the answer?

Shakesneer: Let me ask you a question here.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: Because I agree with what you said, and I want to do a map in here. What would be the motivation for an FBI agent to take somebody who's not a terrorist and incite them into an act of terrorism or some other crime that could be perceived as an act of terrorism? What's the motivation for that FBI agent?

Yassine Meskhout: Provided it's ambiguous enough in terms of the actions of the person that is being entrapped, they can pass it off as, "No, they were planning a terrorism act. They were dangerous. We got them before they became dangerous. Please give me a promotion." So it would be a way to advance, it tends to play well with the press and the public. Prosecutors and agents like to put all their accomplishments on their resume. Like, "Oh, I was part of 38 operations that successfully caught terrorists before they did anything." So that would be the motivation.

Shakesneer: Yeah, I agree with that entirely. And I think that a lot of those same motivations now are being turned away from Muslim and Islamic extremism or the perceptions of those threats to conservatives.

Yassine Meskhout: So with Muslim extremism, there were Muslim terrorists, right? Muslim terrorists exist in the world, right?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. And I don't know if you took a poll of all terrorists in the world from the last 20, 30 years, would it be fair to a significant portion of them would be Muslim?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. And 9/11 happened, that was a great deal. Is it fair to say that there was a reasonable amount of increase in attention for focusing on or for deterring terrorist acts—

Shakesneer: Yes.

Yassine Meskhout: After that? Okay. So there's some background of "this happened before, we don't want it to happen again." A significant amount of terrorists tend to be Muslim for cultural and religious reasons. And so our goal here is to prevent this from happening by targeting or paying attention to the threat of Islamic terrorist. Is that fair?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So how would you map that to the conservative movement? It doesn't have to be obviously the same scale as 9/11, but what exactly makes conservative seem threatening?

Shakesneer: I think a lot of people within the political left think conservatives are motivated by racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry that the left thinks maps quite well onto historic American ideas. And so when somebody like Donald Trump says, "Let's make America great again," the left looks at that and says, "Well, when was America great before? You're talking about periods that involved a great deal of bigotry and violence and discrimination." And so they—

Yassine Meskhout: Would you say that conservatives are dangerous? Or how are they dangerous?

Shakesneer: I don't think conservatives are dangerous in that way. I don't think conservatives are trying to bring back Jim Crow.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So the deep state's belief that conservatives are dangerous, that's an unfounded belief. Is that fair or you believe it's unfounded?

Shakesneer: Yeah, I think it's unfounded.

Yassine Meskhout: But they believe otherwise, right?

Shakesneer: Yeah. I think for a lot of people, of which the deep state would just be a subset, modern conservatism is trying to hark back to horrible issues within American history, and they look at conservatism—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but the point is the deep state found out, or they have this delusional or unfounded idea that conservatives are dangerous, and because of that belief, they are motivated to infiltrate these groups in order to stop them from committing bad acts, right?

Shakesneer: I think that with the election of Donald Trump, a lot of people became convinced that Republicans and the far right were a real threat that was eminently threatening the country to—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but is it fair to say that that's what motivates the infiltration?

Shakesneer: Something like, yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But ultimately the goal is to stop the conservatives from becoming dangerous. From kidnapping Governor Whitmer and shit like that, right?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But you're saying that what ends up happening, do they find people that are planning plots or do they spend a significant amount of time having to create it?

Shakesneer: I think that in a large amount of cases, they end up inventing cases, yeah. Look at the Governor Whitmer plot, right?

Yassine Meskhout: And what's their motivation for inventing these cases?

Shakesneer: The same things you were describing with regards to Muslim extremism, they get promotion—

Yassine Meskhout: And what I described, what I described as the motivating, I guess the made up plots in the Muslim extremism isn't that they want to stop actual violence, it's self-promotion, there's a self-interest. It's like this person doesn't seem to be actually dangerous, but I need this case because I need a promotion. So if you're applying that to the deep state infiltrating conservatives, the underlying assumption is that, yeah, they're not dangerous, but I need a promotion. Do you adopt that?

Shakesneer: I think people rationalize in lots of ways. I think if you looked at the FBI agents involved in the Whitmer case, some of them clearly were just acting for their own personal benefit, but then a lot of them would justify what the FBI did in that case. They would say that conservatives are extreme and they pose a danger to the country, and maybe we incited them a little bit, but they would've done it anyways, they were part of a dangerous extremist movement that we're helping to expose.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but they didn't expose it. I mean, the Governor Whitmer plot, most of the defendants got acquitted.

Shakesneer: Right.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So how does the deep state convince people to commit acts of violence?

Shakesneer: Which people, what are we talking about here?

Yassine Meskhout: Conservatives.

Shakesneer: Through entrapment. I mean, there are—

Yassine Meskhout: How?

Shakesneer: There's a lot of stupid people out there. And I don't think that it would be that difficult to get some conservatives to say stupid things that then lead them to being faced with charges and having to roll over. So look at something like The Proud Boys. In the conception of the Proud Boys originally was like Enrique Tarrio thought that he could get a bunch of young guys together to be proud about Western civilization and show up to protest at universities and protest against leftist protesters. And that maybe was a high flown idea, but it's no surprise to anybody that you get a bunch of young guys together all worked up about an issue and some of them say stupid things and some of them go a little off the deep end. And that comes to—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but it's not just saying things, it's also planning and doing things right? Okay. So how does the deep state convince people to do things? Because the typical, I guess, scenario for entrapment for Muslim extremists, or what I would argue is entrapment, it's not necessarily legally recognized, but it would be the informant or a government agent would be furnishing the guns or the bomb parts and doing a lot of the legwork and then giving a cell phone and say, "Hey, you just need to dial 555, and then the bomb will detonate, Allahu Akbar."

So in terms of how much they're doing and how much they're saying, it's much more lopsided. So I would tend to agree with you, and that's true with the Governor Whitmer's plot, there was a lot of bullshitting, a lot of talking, and not much doing. They did scout some locations, but they didn't really take, in my opinion, not significant steps towards that. So I agree with you, but if there's actual violence or actual behavior, how does the deep state convince people to do that?

Shakesneer: So I think this is where the comparison starts to fall off slightly, because with Muslim terrorism, we're talking about basically lone wolves, right? Guys who are basically manipulated on a chat room to some act that can be framed as terrorism, right? With these conservative political movements, we're already talking about political movements that involve groups of people where they might even organically be planning something, right? So irrespective of—

Yassine Meskhout: Wait, so they might already be planning plots, and then the government finds out about them?

Shakesneer: Not plots, just planning things like planning a protest. So irrespective of the fact that there are federal agents embedded within certain conservative movements, irrespective of whether that's true or not, irrespective of the motivations of conservatives within those movements, there were people planning to protest at January 6th, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: And that involves a significant amount of organization. You have to send out emails and mailing lists and try to commit people to showing up. You have to drive people, you have to get cars, you have to figure out where people are going to be staying, how they're going to get into town. All these sorts of things have to be organized, and that's true of any political protest, right?

Yassine Meskhout: So let's assume that there were no government infiltrators on January 6th. What would you estimate the level of violence to be at?

Shakesneer: What kind of violence are we talking about?

Yassine Meskhout: Pushing, breaking windows, pushing doors, destroying doors, fighting with cops. Anything that uses force or I guess significant physical force in order to push your way into the Capitol push your way into the chambers.

[01:02:04]

Shakesneer: So I think that question has a problem, which is that it presupposes... There's really two questions there concealed as one. There's a question of how much violence there would be without any federal informants involved. And then there's the supposition that without federal agents involved, they would've entered the Capitol anyways. Those are two different—

Yassine Meskhout: No, I didn't make that assumption. I asked you how much violence would you have seen.

Shakesneer: In your counterfactual with without federal agents, when you're discussing the questions of violence, we're presupposing that violence includes entering the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: No. I said, "Use the force to enter the Capitol." We can define violence however you want. I don't want to get stuck on that point. I'm just asking how much did the federal agents contribute to the level of violence, however you want to define, it by their presence?

Shakesneer: Start at a baseline here. Let's look to something like Antifa as a comparison.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: I think if there was no federal involvement in January 6th, the protest might have looked like Antifa protest. People walk around like a regular Antifa protest in a regular city. Not some of the more extreme ones that are the subject of a lot of conversation where, say—

Yassine Meskhout: Like Portland trying to burn a courthouse?

Shakesneer: Yeah. Let's not go that far. Let's just talk about, there's a lot of protests. You get a lot of people to show up. They're really angry. They're really passionate. Probably a lot of people are just there to show support for a cause. And then there's a bunch of hooligans running around. And some of those hooligans are going to get into trouble pushing cops, pressing their faces up against barricades, shouting, uncouth things.

Yassine Meskhout: So your opinion is that without the federal agents that infiltrated on January 6th, we would have a small portion engaging with cops but otherwise, it would've been peaceful?

Shakesneer: Well, even as it was on January 6th, most of the people there for protesting did not go to the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So let's narrow it down. How many people do you think would've made it inside the Capitol?

Shakesneer: I want to give you a specific guess, but I also want to hedge—

Yassine Meskhout: It can be a broad guess. I'm not trying to hold you to it. I know we're talking about hypotheticals. But I'm just trying to get a sense of the scale here.

Shakesneer: This goes back to what I said way at the beginning of this conversation about how I can't read anybody's mind. So for me, here's a couple—

Yassine Meskhout: I'm not claiming you are.

Shakesneer: Yeah. Here's a couple plausible scenarios. I don't want to commit myself to just one plausible scenario. But here's a couple.

Yassine Meskhout: I'll make sure none of this gets edited. Yes, you can add as many qualifiers as you want.

Shakesneer: Here's a couple plausible scenarios. One is that without any federal involvement whatsoever, people protest outside. Everybody goes home. Turns out that because of the evidence we have, they deliberately let protesters inside. They opened the doors. They had cameras set up, and they tried to frame everybody. And without federal involvement, none of that would've happened.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: Let's call that one scenario. And there's a whole set of arguments that could be used to justify why that is or isn't true. That's one plausible scenario. Here's another plausible scenario. Everybody was caught with their pants down. You have these conservative hooligans running around, and they managed to find an unlocked door that nobody secured properly or that just wasn't happened. And the FBI's caught with their pants down.

And then in all the investigations and recriminations afterwards, there's a natural incentive to cover up motivation. Nobody wants to get fired for leaving the door to the Capitol closed. And so it would've played out exactly the same way without federal involvement. But now, there's all this suspicion in the aftermath because of a rational desire to try to prevent accountability. Right?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So to go back to your first scenario, do you believe that the federal agents and informants, are they coordinating with each other? Are they saying, "Hey, let's make sure that we're in January 6th. I'll make sure that the barricades on the east are opened. You take care of the northwest." Is that how it's working out?

Shakesneer: Sure. Let's imagine that as the most extreme end of one theory, that there's some amount of coordination to try and get protesters into the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: And what's the goal? Are they saying, "Hey, we just need to make sure to get into Capitol, and then nature will take its course, will activate the violence gene?" What's the goal?

Shakesneer: The goal is that once they're in the Capitol, it becomes a pretext for suppressing these conservative groups because they—

Yassine Meskhout: Right. But I'm talking about, okay, you agree that some people at the Capitol that day engaged in violence.

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Would they have engaged in violence otherwise? Or what did the deep state do to make them engage in violence? or encourage them or prod them or instigate them, whatever term you want to use?

Shakesneer: My baseline here is already comparing it to an Antifa rally where there's just some amount of violence that's just part of the event. So I'm not suggesting that every single and with the word violence here, we can be really loose, every single act of pushing. I'm not suggesting that that was all masterminded. The question here is—

Yassine Meskhout: But how does someone prod someone to engage in violence?

Shakesneer: I think when you are talking about protests that some of that is already baked into the event. There's a lot of people coming for a lot of different reasons and motivations, a lot of—

Yassine Meskhout: But then, why do they need to be there? Why do they need to instigate it if it's already baked in?

Shakesneer: That's the other theory that I have way at the other end, that the Feds didn't do anything, but that this sort of violence is just inherent, and the Feds were too incompetent or stupid to prevent that. And now, all of this federal involvement is just trying to cover up the fact that they should have known better and they didn't. Does that make sense?

Yassine Meskhout: Yes. I think I can follow that.

Shakesneer: I'm trying to define here the end points for what the plausible explanations could be for federal involvement. At one end, the Feds, nobody would've entered the Capitol without federal involvement. And at the other end, it all would've happened the same without federal involvement. And the way the Feds were involved is just in trying to cover up their own incompetence in allowing it to happen. Does that make sense?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Sure. On that spectrum, where would you place yourself, roughly speaking?

Shakesneer: Within that spectrum, there's a lot of other possible outcomes where some quantity of what happened was federal involvement on top of the baseline that I would suggest is akin to an Antifa protest.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So where would you place yourself?

Shakesneer: I would try to put myself somewhere in the middle. From what I have seen, there is definitely evidence that there were federal agents who had infiltrated some of these groups. I cannot tell you in any way, shape or form how much that infiltration was determinative.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. You mentioned, I guess, one example, it's the pipe bomb example. Do you want to explain it?

Shakesneer: Yeah. So this is something that's been going around lately, just within the last couple of days. So it's all fairly new. And I'm sure if it bubbles up to a wider consciousness, there will be arguments and counterarguments that I can't be prepared to rebut yet.

But here's what I'm seeing. I think this was Jack Posobiec and one or two other guys on Twitter were combing through some of the new footage that has been released of January 6th. Because a lot of footage from lots of cameras and everything, and not everything was released right away.

And here's what they found with regards to the pipe bomb. Originally at January 6th, one of the claims made by federal agents was that they found a pipe bomb that somebody had brought in. A bomb robot had to be called in to dismantle this pipe bomb, and they were going to look very seriously to figure out who planted the pipe bomb with the implication that it was brought by one of the protesters.

Yassine Meskhout: Yes. So this refers to, it's a case that's still unsolved. They haven't caught anyone that's responsible for the pipe bombs.

Shakesneer: Yes. They haven't caught anybody. And to people of a more conspiratorial mindset, it seems as though stopped caring about it all together. Maybe that's not—

Yassine Meskhout: So what's the evidence for that?

Shakesneer: That nobody's heard anything about it in a while. It depends on how you want to interpret that.

Yassine Meskhout: So do you believe it's unusual for active investigations not to have constant updates?

Shakesneer: What has it been? Let's see. Almost what day is today? The 19th. So as of tomorrow—

Yassine Meskhout: Three years.

Shakesneer: Yeah. Tomorrow would've been three years. And I'm not saying I feel this way necessarily. I'm just trying to describe the position. A lot of people feel that it's suspicious that three years later, they can't seem to find any evidence of who planted the pipe bomb.

Yassine Meskhout: Right. But a lot of crimes go unsolved for a while. That by itself, is that evidence of a government fabrication?

Shakesneer: No. But I think that a lot of people—

Yassine Meskhout: So what is another factor?

Shakesneer: Look, I'm not saying I think it's suspicious. I'm saying—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I understand. I'm not going to hold you to believe that you believe it, but I'm trying to understand what the factors are because unsolved crime for three years, that doesn't tell me government fabrication.

Shakesneer: Sure. So here's the rest of the case.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: Pictures came out of what the pipe bomb that was found actually looked like. There's footage of the pipe bomb being discovered by agents of the Secret Service. I believe that it was Secret Service agents associated with Kamala Harris. They find this pipe bomb. They call on the bomb threat, and it gets dismantled. this footage has just recently come out, or it's just recently been looked at critically. And so here's a couple points that have been discussed in this footage. One is that the pipe bomb that was called in the pictures of it, it looks identical to pipe bombs from FBI training manual.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So let's focus on this point. So Jack Posobiec, the guy's a liar. He has a long history of lying.

Shakesneer: Yeah. Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. He was a Pizzagate believer. He went to Comet Pizza, filmed himself, and then later tried to say that he was just trying to debunk it. He also put out a hoax about saying that some pipe bombs were found at the Korean Memorial. None of that was true. He just made shit up about a pipe bomb being found somewhere. Do you have any disagreement about what I just said?

Shakesneer: I'm not familiar with any of those things, honestly. I'm willing to accept them.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I'll put links to it. His tweet about a pipe bomb being found at the Korean Memorial, I don't think has ever been deleted. This was back in June 2020.

Shakesneer: I'm willing to believe what you're saying. I'm also willing to hear counter evidence, but I'm not familiar with any of this. And it's not totally relevant to what I'm trying to say.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I'm saying I have no reason whatsoever to believe anything Jack Posobiec says at face value. If he has evidence, I am more than willing to consider it.

Shakesneer: There are pictures of the pipe bomb. There's footage. That's what's being described.

Yassine Meskhout: Yes. So the picture of the pipe bomb is legit, the one on the left, and I'll put this in the show notes. And then on the right, it's a picture of presumably pipe bombs. And then on the bottom is kitchen timers and it says, "FBI training materials." He says that he received this from a source. Maybe, that's true. Maybe, he's making shit up again. I don't know.

Shakesneer: To me, it sounds plausible, but you could come up with evidence that says, "Actually, this isn't part of an FBI training manual."

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But this goes to the second point. In my opinion. It doesn't matter if it's from a training manual or not, because the whole point of pipe bombs is that they're made from commonly available materials. So when you say this pipe bomb looks exactly like the one in the training materials, yeah, that's kind of the point, because you go to Home Depot, and you get some pipe fittings, and you put together a pipe bomb. So why would you expect them to look differently?

Shakesneer: The real picture that I'm looking at. There's not just one example pipe bomb. But there's seven or eight, and they all look identical to each other.

Yassine Meskhout: I don't agree that they look... Well. Okay. How about this? Just Google "malleable iron threaded pipe cap" and look for the images. And I'll just send you a link right here. We can go through this piece by piece. If we're looking at the FBI training material, you see 10 different pipe bombs, presumably pipe bombs. I actually don't know if they're functional in any way, but I see pipe fittings. You can get these at Home Depot. You can get these on Amazon. And they still have stickers like UPC stickers on them, which to me indicates that they were purchased from the store.

Shakesneer: I don't disagree with you. But I also think that if we're talking about UPC stickers, this is a point of evidence in favor of there would be a trail of evidence with this pipe bomb that they should be able to track down. And here we are three years later—

Yassine Meskhout: Wait, wait, wait. Why? What trail of evidence?

Shakesneer: You're saying that if this is not from an FBI... Let's suppose that it's not—

Yassine Meskhout: No, I'm saying it doesn't matter if it's from FBI. The whole point of pipe bombs is that you jury-rig them from commonly available materials. You can go to a junkyard. You can shoplift pipe caps from the 50 different Home Depots in your area, so that there's no paper trail. The whole point is that you find plumbing materials.

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: So I don't understand when you say they look exactly... And they don't actually look exactly the same at all, the ones in the FBI training material. They have an end cap, a pipe, and then a pipe fitting cap, and then another pipe, and then another end cap. The one in the photo looks to be just like a single segment, and the end caps look different. It looks thinner in the photo than it does on the training manual, the FBI's so-called training materials.

Shakesneer: To me, all those pipe bombs look fairly identical in the-.

Yassine Meskhout: Wait but, Okay, I'm just going to grant they look exactly the same. What does that mean?

Shakesneer: It implies that when the FBI has pipe bombs shown to agents for training, they have a supply that were all made at the same time in the same place. And going further, there would be some cache of pipe bombs lying around that the FBI has as examples for training purposes. That would be very easy for somebody to grab one, throw it somewhere, and then say, "Look, we found a pipe bomb. Look at what these domestic extremists did."

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Would you expect the pipe bomb to look different if it was genuine?

Shakesneer: That would be one indication.

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: Because if somebody actually just scavenged materials from a Home Depot or any store around, they're just scavenging random materials, the bomb might not so closely resemble the FBI training materials.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I sent you the link, the Google image search. When you just look for iron threaded pipe cap, does it look any different from what you've see in the so-called FBI training materials?

Shakesneer: This is just the cap. There's the whole pipe, and it could be any kind—

Yassine Meskhout: That's the point. They're standardized plumbing supplies.

Shakesneer: The length of the pipe, the color of the pipe, the combination.

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah. These don't look the same at all. I told you there's segments. There's different segments. The FBI training material one, it's segmented. It's two parts with a pipe fitting in the middle. The one that was dumped on the street looks like was single pipe section.

Shakesneer: It's actually partially obscured in the picture. So we're really just looking at the bottom half.

Yassine Meskhout: And that goes into the second photo. If you Google kitchen timer and look at the images.

Shakesneer: Well, yeah, it's obviously just a generic kitchen timer.

Yassine Meskhout: So that's what I'm failing to understand. How is this compelling evidence for anyone? If I was building a pipe bomb, and I'm not, for the record, FBI, just in case you're listening, I would find whatever's commonly available. If I need a mechanical timer, I'll grab whatever's there, the most common one, if I need pipe fittings, I'll go to Home Depot and grab whatever's there. And whatever I come up with is going to look very, very similar to the FBI training material. So how is this an indication of the government fabricating it?

Shakesneer: I don't know. To me, they look similar. I'm not an expert on this thing.

Yassine Meskhout: No, no. Okay. I'm saying even if they look exactly the same, how is that an indication? Because I just described if I was making a pipe bomb, which I'm not for the record, I would end up with exactly the same thing, or at least close enough to pass it off as very similar.

Shakesneer: Look, I'm not an expert in pipe bombs. I really don't know how they're made.

Yassine Meskhout: I don't expect you to. I'm just trying to understand why this is considered compelling.

Shakesneer: Because I don't know anything. Apparently.

Yassine Meskhout: I'm not trying to—

Shakesneer: No. I don't know how reasonable it is for other pipe bombs to look like given pipe bombs. I am just repeating the claim that the pipe bomb that was discovered looks very similar to FBI training material pipe bombs. But there's another half of this pipe bomb thing, which is that the picture of the pipe bomb only comes from a video of the agents standing around the pipe bomb. And I think the video shows that there were several claims in the written report about the pipe bomb that were not true.

I think specifically one thing that troubled people looking at this video was that here's all these FBI agents standing around a bomb. And then in the footage, there are children and kids walking in the street right near to where the FBI agents are, and nobody runs over and tells them, "Hey, you shouldn't come here. This is-"

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I haven't seen this video. I don't know what it is, but it's also shifting the reason. So Jack Posobiec posted an image of the pipe bomb and said, "Hey, this looks very similar to" what he claims is "FBI training materials". I don't know anything about this thing about FBI agents standing around it. That's a completely different claim.

Shakesneer: Related, because they both come from the same piece of footage.

Yassine Meskhout: I'm not saying they're not related. I'm not saying they don't come from the same footage. I'm saying it's a different claim, saying that this pipe bomb looks the same as the training material is a different argument from saying in the footage where the footage with FBI agents found the pipe bomb, they didn't seem very alarmed. That's all I'm saying. Does that make sense?

Shakesneer: Yeah. Sure. Those are two different claims that constitute a larger claim.

Yassine Meskhout: Yes. So the photo that Jack Posobiec posted is still hosted by the FBI. But curiously, he doesn't include the other photo. That's much clearer that I just sent it to you on the chat. You see the one on the right?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: So that's one segment of a pipe bomb, obviously. Right?

Shakesneer: Mm-hmm.

Yassine Meskhout: And would you agree that the caps look different?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So if Jack Posobiec posted that photo instead of the one that he chose, do you believe the argument would've been just as strong?

Shakesneer: It looks to me like the picture from the FBI training materials doesn't have timers hookup to them at all. So I guess I don't know what the FBI training material pipe bombs look like when fully assembled. And so it's hard to judge the claims.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I'll just put these in the show notes. People can judge for themselves.

Shakesneer: What's demonstrated is that there's no way to judge the claim.

Yassine Meskhout: I mean my argument is this is what you would end up with if you were building a pipe bomb. It's a pipe. It's a bomb made out of pipes. Pipes necessarily come in uniform standard sizes. That's what you would expect. They're not like artisanal products, hand manufactured and have unique blemishes and whatnot. They're standardized supplies. Anything?

Shakesneer: No.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. All right. So let's finally talk about Ray Epps. The claim, as I said earlier, Ray Epps is accused or suspected of being a federal informant. But whether his status as an informant is kind of secondary to the broader allegation of deep state FBI, whatever, infiltrating January 6th in order to instigate, encourage or orchestrate violence

Shakesneer: In a way, yes.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But let's investigate, I guess, the claims that Ray Epps is a federal informant or otherwise a government agent or something to that effect. So I agree with you. It's true. The FBI has a history of using federal informants before, and we already talked about the Whitmer kidnapping.

Now, the key defense in the Whitmer kidnapping was entrapment. The defense attorneys argued that this was just all talk. They weren't actually planning on anything. Also, there's a significant entrapment defense, which is a valid, legally recognized defense. And entrapment is generally very difficult to establish. But the significant number of the defendants in the Whitmer kidnapping plot did successfully deploy that. They were acquitted in front of a jury. So it's not always obvious what the jury found compelling, but seems reasonable to conclude that, yeah, this was a good argument. Is that any disagreement so far?

Shakesneer: No. Keep going.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So my question is, how come there's been about 1200 January 6th defendants? How come not a single one of them have ever argued entrapment?

Shakesneer: I think there's a couple of reasons. And I think it goes to a sort of deeper problem with the January 6th defense. There's been a lot of stigma around defending January 6th defendants—

Yassine Meskhout: What? Who?

Shakesneer: It's been hard for them to get legal defense that isn't really wrapped up in certain conservative movements.

Yassine Meskhout: Like what? Most of them had federal public defenders.

Shakesneer: Yeah. It's been hard for them to get anybody else.

Yassine Meskhout: Well, for the record, unlike the state counterparts, state and county counterparts, federal public defenders are top-notch at their game. You don't have to take my word for it, but that's the generally recognized reputation. So I'm trying to understand what's the evidence that they weren't properly represented?

Shakesneer: I think that for a lot of them, they either want to take a plea deal and bargain their way down or—

Yassine Meskhout: When you say them, are you talking about the defendants or the defense attorneys?

Shakesneer: The defendants with the defense attorneys.

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: Because I think a lot of them understand that the federal government is interested in prosecuting January 6th cases, and there's a sense that they should try to cooperate and get their sentences reduced because there's no denying that all of these people were—

Yassine Meskhout: But that same problem happened in the Governor Whitmer plot, right? The government was interested in prosecuting the Whitmer plot. They made a big deal about it when it was first released. That was, I think, in 2020. So why didn't that apply then?

Shakesneer: So I don't think it's quite a one-to-one example in that—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. That's fine. What's the distinction?

Shakesneer: There's a difference between a handful of agents influencing a handful of defendants in a tightly controlled monitored situation over a period of months. One long specific entrapment scheme versus a sort of vague amorphous protest. So even if we accept that there are federal agents at January 6th, who is it—

Yassine Meskhout: What's the comparison? Because the comparison isn't just like a vague amorphous protest. We're talking about individuals. So if you're a January 6th defendant that is accused of, I don't know, spraying hornets spray on a cop, and you want to say, "I was entrapped into it," what's stopping them from pursuing that argument if it's true?

Shakesneer: That's the distinction I'm making. If you are one of the Whitmer defenders, there's a very easy case to make that you are being entrapped because here, there are specific agents who have been talking to you over a period of time trying to get you in the specific behaviors. The January—

Yassine Meskhout: The defense attorneys have to investigate that. The Whitmer defense attorneys, they say, "Okay. What's the defense?" And the defendant says, "Well, I was entrapped. I didn't do anything. There was this guy that always wanted to talk about plots. Maybe, you should talk to him."

And then they investigate that. They ask the prosecutor, "Can you give us the name of any informants?" And then they have their own private investigators to find the names of people involved and look into their background to see if they're informants or not. And then in testimony, the FBI had to admit that, yes, we did use informants. Why did none of the January 6th defendants do that?

Shakesneer: But that's the distinction that I'm drawing here. There's a clear difference between that kind of entrapment versus what we're describing here with January 6th where there's this—

Yassine Meskhout: Ok go ahead.

Shakesneer: Let me give you two answers here, which are related but separate. One is that there's a clear difference between having a couple FBI agents specifically interacting with you over a period of time in chat rooms in specific plots trying to get you to commit a specific crime, versus what we're talking about here with January 6th is this idea that there were federal agents embedded in specific groups. And they might have manipulated the chaotic conditions of a protest to create an image of a terrorist threat,

Yassine Meskhout: To create an image of a terrorist arrest? or to encourage people to act in a violent way?

Shakesneer: You could suggest both of those. Right?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: Again, I have—

Yassine Meskhout: What exactly is the difference? Because if you look at the Proud Boys and minor correction, I think maybe there were informants in the Proud Boys case. But if you look at the Proud Boys case, they were planning their January 6th for several weeks leading up to it. So I'm trying to understand what the difference is.

Shakesneer: The Proud Boys involvement in January 6th is just one piece of January 6th. So I guess in my mind, part of the image, looking in the background here is this question of how did the protesters enter the capitol? There's a lot of conspiracizing. There's a lot of debate around why the doors were unlocked or how they were unlocked. Were they let in? Were they—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But you do recognize that... I apologize for interrupting you. There's this element of infantilizing the January 6th protesters where they see an open door and it's like a mama bird trying to feed its young. It's like, "Oh, I see a gawking beak at me. I need to feed it." I'm going to say they're not that retarded. They're not that simple-minded where they just see an open door and say, "I'm going to go in." So I just want to put that in there, and I would love to hear an explanation for whether you acknowledge that or reject that.

Shakesneer: What you're saying to me sort of dismisses the question.

Yassine Meskhout: Well, okay. How about this? Let's talk outside of politics. Can you think of any example where people are, I guess, that prone to suggestion to actually, not just talking, but doing something to that level? How do you suggest them to do it?

Shakesneer: I think that the madness of crowds is well documented, and individual people can be suggestible. But a group of people can be highly suggestible.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Okay. If I said that the 2020 BLM riots/protests, whatever you want to call them, if I said that they were the result of federal informants, federal infiltration, trying to instigate people to act in a violent way, and that's why they were violent, would you believe that, or would you reject that?

Shakesneer: I would be highly skeptical of that. I would be open—

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: Because it seems very plausible to me that you get a lot of left-wing radicals, and you turn them into a location, and they have tendencies that lead towards there being some subset of violence. However—

Yassine Meskhout: Why do you not find that plausible for right-wing crowds?

Shakesneer: Well, hang on because I'm not saying I find it implausible. I'm saying that my supposition would be on the face of it, that there would be some violence that's organically generated, which is what I said for the January 6th people. I said that if you had no federal involvement at all, it's plausible that it would be just as rancorous as Antifa. Now, if you had evidence—

Yassine Meskhout: But you placed yourself away from that position. You said you were somewhat in the middle.

Shakesneer: So I definitely think that there was federal involvement in January 6th, and I think that that might have exaggerated some of the tendencies of what—

Yassine Meskhout: Right. I understand that. And I'm trying to understand... The part that I don't understand is how does one get encouraged to commit violence if they don't... If they weren't going to do it, are they at a knife's edge and it's just kind of like a tightly wound crowd that can go off?

Shakesneer: Let's qualify here the phrase commit violence, because—

Yassine Meskhout: Whatever definition you want to use, I have no interest in fighting over definitions.

Shakesneer: I don't want to shift any goalposts here. One half of this is about people committing violence, like throwing up hands, tearing down fences, punching cops. The other half of committing violence is what we were just talking about this question of people coming into the Capitol building. Right?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I'm not considering people walking into the Capitol as violence. If that's the line you want to draw, fine.

Shakesneer: Well, but that is something that I think was highly influenced by federal agents.

Yassine Meskhout: Which part?

Shakesneer: Well, this gets back to the question of Ray Epps.

Yassine Meskhout: Wait, wait. Okay. You said there's fighting cops is one type of violence, and then the other type is just walking into the Capitol or getting into the capitol. Which one was influenced by federal agents?

Shakesneer: The latter, walking into the Capitol. And recognize here for a second that it's people who entered the Capitol who were being prosecuted the most heavily. So the question—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But let me make sure it's clear. So are you saying the federal informants or federal agents had minimal or no impact on the fisticuffs version of violence?

[01:33:04]

Shakesneer: I think that's plausible. I think it's plausible that without federal—

Yassine Meskhout: Is that your position?

Shakesneer: Yes. Without federal informants, you're still going to have a lot of rowdy people. Again—

Yassine Meskhout: Well, let me see if I understand it. So your theory is that, if there were federal agents and informants involved, which you think is plausible or potentially likely, the aspect of violence that they most likely contributed to was allowing people into the Capitol, and then the baseline fisticuffs violence was just going to play out its course once they were inside. Is that a fair description?

Shakesneer: Yeah, that's plausible to me. That's what I think.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So...I mean this is walking it back significantly. If they were just there to get people, so their whole goal was just to get people inside and let nature take its course, is that their primary motivation?

Shakesneer: What do you mean by let nature take its course?

Yassine Meskhout: Well, we know that there's going to be some violence in protests, we want to make sure that it does the most damage inside the Capitol, so we're going to throw down some barricades, we're going to open the doors, we're going to let people in. Then hopefully once they're inside the claustrophobia will magnify the level of baseline violence, or at least be more likely to prompt it. Is that a fair description?

Shakesneer: I don't think the FBI was trying to incite violence within the Capitol. I don't think that there are agents sitting around saying, "Let's get these hooligans into the Capitol Building so that they can go and smash a bunch of cops up or do worse." I think that it's plausible that they were trying to let people into the Capitol Building as a sort of... What's the word I'm looking for? There's a phrase here. False flag.

Yassine Meskhout: Well, it's not a false flag if they actually did go in.

Shakesneer: But the false flag is this idea of trying to overthrow the government.

Yassine Meskhout: No, no, no. The false flag... Maybe we're talking about different things, but false flag is conducting an attack while wearing the uniform or pretending to be another group.

Shakesneer: But it also has a sense of meaning something that... Maybe I'm thinking of... No, I'm not thinking of astroturf.

Yassine Meskhout: AstroTurf is similar to false flag where it's the opposite of grassroot, where you say—

Shakesneer: Actually, I kind of like the idea of astroturf. I kind of like the idea of imagining January 6th as agents within the federal government astroturfing a more serious incident than what really occurred.

Yassine Meskhout: But they wouldn't have been able to do that if the baseline violence proclivity wasn't already there, right?

Shakesneer: I'm not denying that in a crowd of tens of thousands of amped up people, there were some violent people. I'm not denying that. I've never denied that.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but what difference did the federal agents make? If someone was willing to... If there's elements of the protest that were willing to punch cops, why would a door, why would a barricade stop them?

Shakesneer: Why wasn't the door locked?

Yassine Meskhout: Which door are you talking about?

Shakesneer: The door by which some protestors entered the Capitol. Why wasn't that door locked? Why—

Yassine Meskhout: Generally when I walk around my neighborhood, if I see a door, I don't just walk in, or I don't test whether or not doors are locked unless I have a reason or an interest of being there. Which is why I believe that the January 6th protesters, the ones that surrounded the Capitol, they had a reason and desire to be inside the Capitol. There's a shit ton of footage and video evidence that shows they're willing to smash windows. They can steal a riot cops shield and use that to smash a window. They can smash through doors, they can push barricades. There's plenty of evidence of that, so I'm failing to understand the idea that they wouldn't have done it if federal agents didn't open doors. And even if you establish that, why are they fucking lemmings?

Shakesneer: That seems to me to be taking it the wrong way around, because why—

Yassine Meskhout: Please correct me. Please, I'm waiting.

Shakesneer: If they're willing to smash windows and doors, why didn't they have to smash doors to get in the building?

Yassine Meskhout: They did! How much footage would you find satisfactory of people smashing windows at the Capitol?

Shakesneer: Windows, but what about doors? The doors are being—

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah, I can show you doors being smashed. What is your expectation here?

Shakesneer: Who unlocked the doors? That's been a big point of controversy.

Yassine Meskhout: You don't need to... What? First of all, I've never heard of this unlock doors, but if you're smashing a door, you don't need to lock or unlock it. If you're smashing a window, you don't even have to bother with the door.

Shakesneer: You've never heard of this argument?

Yassine Meskhout: No, I have not. But are you saying that you're not aware of the videos of people smashing windows and smashing doors to get inside?

Shakesneer: No, I'm aware of the windows. I'm not denying that. I'm talking about the other side of it. I'm talking about why the doors were open. Yeah, this is a big part of the debate and the evidence. There's—

Yassine Meskhout: I don't know what evidence it's in, because... Here's my explanation. January 6th protesters were really angry about the election. Their purported leader, Trump, whipped them up into a frenzy because he's saying, "Fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. They cheated the election. We're going to go march to the Capitol." And then he said, "Of course, peacefully." People were reasonably angry given what I believe are delusional beliefs that they held. But once they were there, if they were willing to punch cops, a window is not going to be... They're not show up to a door and be like, "Oh guys, hey, it's locked. Let's just go back."

Shakesneer: Yeah, but the thing is that some of these doors weren't locked. This is—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, what does that mean?

Shakesneer: It means—

Yassine Meskhout: I don't see the significance of that either, because... Okay, it's not locked. What's the theory?

Shakesneer: You need to talk about the other side of the equation here. Imagine you're Capitol security, imagine you're Nancy Pelosi, imagine you're whoever is responsible for the security of the Capitol Building. You see these protesters coming, you know that there's an important vote going on in the halls of Congress. You see these protesters, they don't just march in like a hurricane and in five seconds they're in the building. There's a process where, again, as you say, as we agree, they have to tear down barricades, they have to push through one layer of defense and another layer of defense. So why is it that at this final level of defense, there are unlocked doors, and then they just sort of walk in? There's this now famous footage of some of these people walking in, and they sort of do actually stand around lemmings, and they're sort of gawping, and they're just walking in because they don't really know what they're doing.

Yassine Meskhout: I'm trying to understand, the theory is that part of the safety plan was, "Hey guys, make sure to lock the doors of the Capitol?"

Shakesneer: There's nobody defending these doors?

Yassine Meskhout: There's Capitol police outside the Capitol, yes?

Shakesneer: Yes.

Yassine Meskhout: And there's Capitol police inside the Capitol, yes?

Shakesneer: Yes.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So let's assume the doors are locked. As the police outside start retreating, they are going to get stuck on the door, and then they would try to open it, right? To go inside?

Shakesneer: What you're stipulating here now is that cops can't... Now what you're talking about is, either the cops have to unlock the door, and why didn't they lock the door once they're safely inside? Or, they're just walking inside. Then in that case, they really are bringing protesters in with them. Although in that theory—

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah, if they're retreating, I don't find anything implausible about a Capitol police officer retreating inside the building, and as he's getting in the protestors grabbed the doors. There's a shit ton of video of that happening as well too.

Shakesneer: Yeah, I don't disagree with that. But that's—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So how does that- what do you think I'm missing? Because I'm looking at this, and I don't see anything worth considering. Even if I assume that some doors were unlocked, I don't understand what the plan is. You had deep state agents infiltrate conservative groups, and the biggest step that they took was making sure that the doors were unlocked so that people can come in?

Shakesneer: No, the accusation is that they tried to exaggerate the severity of conservative groups by making it look as though they were committing greater crimes. Or rather that the protest represented a serious attempt to overthrow the government, part of which included actually entering the building of the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: Right, but they weren't pushed inside by the federal agents, right? They walked inside.

Shakesneer: So let's finally talk about Ray Epps here, because this is where Ray Epps becomes important—

Yassine Meskhout: Well, I want to go back to Ray Epps, but to go back to the reason why I don't believe defense attorneys out of the 1200 or so January 6th defendants didn't present evidence of entrapment or anything like that, the reason I believe that is because I don't think there was entrapment, at least not worth presenting in court, in contrast to the Whitmer kidnapping plot where there was a significant amount of entrapment. So if you think that's unreasonable, you can let me know. But, we can move on to Ray Epps.

Shakesneer: I don't know if I want to add anything to that prior discussion.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so what were you going to say?

Shakesneer: Let's start with the interpretation of events that you've been using up until now, and correct me if I say anything that sounds unfair. But what we have, according to the mainstream position, is a bunch of violent hooligans who enter the Capitol Building, they're led into the Capitol Building, and this becomes a serious security threat. There's no sort of malicious interference by any government agents. Everything conservatives did was in some sense organic, even if say the feds might've dropped the ball in some way. It's because it was all on conservative's own impetus that all these people entered the Capitol and tried to disrupt proceedings, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Yes.

Shakesneer: So here, within that, you have Ray Epps. So here's Ray Epps, he is specifically shouting at several points, both during the protest and the day before the protest, saying that he wants people to enter the Capitol. I think within that, he might've said nonviolently, but he was trying to get people into the Capitol. This was something that—

Yassine Meskhout: That is true, yes.

Ray Epps: Tomorrow we need to go into the Capitol, into the Capitol.
Crowd: What? No. No.
Ray Epps: Peacefully.
Crowd: Fed. Fed. Fed. Fed.
Ray Epps: Peacefully.
Crowd: Fed. Fed. Fed.

Shakesneer: This one specific guy was agitating for, saying we should do this, we should go into the Capitol, we should... And he was saying that—

Yassine Meskhout: But you recognize he's not the only one, right?

Shakesneer: Yeah. I recognize he's not the only one. However, he is sort of the poster boy. Well—

Yassine Meskhout: According to who?

Shakesneer: Yeah, that's why I stopped that sentence. He is a perfect example of the exact case that the federal government is trying to make.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay? Please elucidate the factors that you believe compose the perfect case.

Shakesneer: He's trying to incite people to go into the Capitol Building. He is saying, "This is what we should do. We need to take this protest inside and actually enter the Capitol," which wasn't something that people necessarily... Well, whatever.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so that's factor one. He's trying to get people inside the Capitol, yes?

Shakesneer: Right. He agitates for that. He shouts at people to do that. That is making the government's case. That is everything the government says, "These January 6th people, they tried to enter the Capitol. They tried to disrupt official proceedings." Ray Epps—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, you're making the jump. So no dispute whatsoever that he asked people, he suggested loudly and publicly, "We should go inside the Capitol." No dispute. But then you jumped to say, "disrupt proceedings." I didn't see anything of him saying we need to disrupt proceedings.

Shakesneer: Why would he be telling people then to go into the Capitol? Part of the argument—

Yassine Meskhout: There's been a lot of protests in state capitols across the country. They occupy the rotunda, they shout outside the halls, they bring posters. Sometimes they sneak into the chambers while they're voting or while there's other proceedings. That happens regularly, right? You do recognize that.

Shakesneer: Exactly. That happens regularly in all sorts of contexts.

Yassine Meskhout: If I said in any other context, let's say I'm at the Wisconsin State Capitol and they're about to vote on an abortion bill, and I said, "Hey, we need to go into the Capitol." Is that by its own threatening in any way?

Shakesneer: No.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So someone saying, "We need to go into the federal Capitol," do you believe that that's threatening in any way just on its own, outside of the context of the chaos that surround that day? Just that statement on its own.

Shakesneer: I don't believe that that's threatening, no.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, and I agree with you. So what would be the other factor that makes him stand out?

Shakesneer: The federal government is not treating this protest like other cases of protesters occupying rotundas and Capitol Buildings. They are prosecuting—

Yassine Meskhout: Could it be that it was a different kind of protest?

Shakesneer: What makes it a different kind of protest? What's—

Yassine Meskhout: The level of violence, the amount of people, their motivation was explicitly to hinder or delay the proceedings that were going on. The proceedings were especially critical, they involved the transfer of power. So any hindrance to that was, in terms of importance, that was at its apex. It's very different from a state legislature that wants to vote on an abortion bill. Let me say that again. It could be very different, so long as the further apart they are, the more different that they are. But as soon as the state Capitol example starts to meet more elements, than it would reach to the level of importance that January 6th did.

Shakesneer: I don't take it for granted that just because there are protesters inside the Capitol Building that constitutes a threat.

Yassine Meskhout: I agree with you, that's why I didn't mention that part. I said the difference was the intent of the protesters, and the importance of the proceeding that was taking place that day.

Shakesneer: I agree that it's a more important event than a lot of events that usually happen in state capitols, but I don't see that that constitutes proving that these protesters are a unique threat.

Yassine Meskhout: You're taking one component and saying that's not enough. I agree that's not enough. That's why I added the other component, which was the intent of the protesters, their intent, not all of them, but at least the significant portion of the ones that got violent, their intent was to delay and hinder the proceedings. I didn't say overthrow the government, I said delay or hinder the proceedings.

Shakesneer: There's nothing necessarily malicious about delaying proceedings. That is—

Yassine Meskhout: Well, okay, you're doing it again. You're taking one component of what I said and saying that's not enough. I didn't just say, "delay the proceeding." I said, "hinder." Let's just use obstruct, they were trying to obstruct the certification, maybe even stop it if they were successful enough.

Shakesneer: Let's take these two elements. They're trying to delay these proceedings, and also these proceedings are uniquely important, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Sure.

Shakesneer: Protesters in other cases of rotunda, Capitol, state building protests are also trying to delay and hinder results.

Yassine Meskhout: Sure.

Shakesneer: So the only element that makes what you're describing unique is the fact that this is so important.

Yassine Meskhout: That's part of it, but it also involves the transfer of power, which is a critical moment in democracy. So if there was a state governor that was about to be inaugurated, and there were protesters there to hinder or delay the vote, I would consider that at a similar level of seriousness.

Shakesneer: Let's grant that that's a counterfactual for which no exactly comparable behavior exists for us to judge.

Yassine Meskhout: Sure. That's always going to be a challenge, I acknowledge that.

Shakesneer: But, putting that aside—

Yassine Meskhout: We're talking about Ray Epps and why what he did was... Why you consider it to be the perfect case for prosecution.

Shakesneer: Because he was inciting people to do the very thing that the government is alleging was so serious. And—

Yassine Meskhout: Well, okay, that's not... Let's make sure that... I don't want to obfuscate. Hold on, Shakes. You said he's inciting people to do the thing that government said was so serious, but you're obfuscating. He suggested to people that we should go into the Capitol. The most serious thing was not going into the Capitol. The most serious thing was obstructing the proceedings, yes?

Shakesneer: And the government is alleging that people obstructed the proceedings by entering restricted areas.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but is it correct to say that most serious thing isn't just walking into the doors, it's entering the building with the intent of hindering the proceedings? Is that fair?

Shakesneer: The government is prosecuting everybody who entered the Capitol. So I don't—

Yassine Meskhout: That's not true. There's about 2000 people that entered the Capitol. That's not even the total amount of defendants have been charged. They're not prosecuting everyone.

Shakesneer: They're still working their way through the backlog of cases. They're still—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But that hasn't happened yet, so you can't make an affirmative statement about something that hasn't happened yet. You can say, "I predict that they will prosecute everyone," that's fine.

Shakesneer: Okay. I predict they're going to prosecute all the people who entered the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, cool. So when you say that Ray Epps did the most serious thing, he didn't tell anyone, "Hey, we need to stop the vote, or delay the vote, or obstruct the vote," did he?

Shakesneer: I need to look again and see, but the famous footage is of him telling people to enter the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: Yes, I agree with you, and I'll even put the audio so that listeners can hear it. He did tell people to go into the Capitol. Did you ever hear his explanation?

Shakesneer: Yeah, a long time ago. What specific part are you referencing?

Yassine Meskhout: He said that he thought the Capitol was open that day.

Shakesneer: That sounds like bullshit.

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: That sounds like cover his ass.

Yassine Meskhout: Why? Why is it implausible?

Shakesneer: Because that, to me, sounds like at odds from what I remember him saying at other occasions.

Yassine Meskhout: What do you remember him saying?

Shakesneer: I remember him saying something about how we need to get as many people into the Capitol as possible so that we can surround it. I remember him talking about trying to enter the Capitol even before January 6th, on January 5th.

Yassine Meskhout: He did talk about wanting to enter the Capitol on January 5th. I've never heard him say, "We need to get as many people in there to surround it." That's possible. But how does that refute or rebut the notion that he thought the Capitol was open that day? An example would be him... I don't expect this to actually have been caught, but him saying, "Hey guys, I know that the Capitol's going to be closed, but we need to force our way in there, and get in as many people." I agree that would be seriously incriminating, but I haven't heard him say that.

Shakesneer: Well, yeah. That's exactly it, right? He's offering an explanation post facto that says, "Oh, what I meant wasn't this incriminating thing, what I meant was this thing that proves that I'm innocent."

Yassine Meskhout: He's never entered the Capitol, right?

Shakesneer: I don't think his ex-post facto explanation of why what he did wasn't a crime is something really worth sharing seriously. He's not going to say after the day of—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, let's assume that Ray Epps is telling the truth when he said, "I thought the Capitol was open that day." What event, what evidence, what behavior, what anything is inconsistent with that explanation?

Shakesneer: I think the fact that he was trying to lead people into the building, but he never went into the building himself.

Yassine Meskhout: Right. Isn't that consistent with someone thinking that it was open and then saying, "Oh, shit. It's actually not open. I'm going to go home"?

Shakesneer: If he thought the Capitol was open, why didn't he go in himself in the first place?

Yassine Meskhout: I just asked you that question. Isn't that consistent with him believing the Capitol was open, and then as he got to the doors and saw the barricades, and the police, he's like, "Oh, shit. It's actually not open. I'm going to go home"?

Shakesneer: Is that what he did?

Yassine Meskhout: He never went inside. Is there anyone that indicated that he went inside?

Shakesneer: Yeah, he never went inside. But then why was he encouraging other people to go in?

Yassine Meskhout: Because he thought it was open. I'm asking you which part is inconsistent with his explanation.

Shakesneer: Let me pull up the Revolver story. Give me a second while I pull it up. Now that I've re-listened to those, I want to challenge a little more strongly something you asked.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: So you asked me if what's incongruent between Epps telling people to go to the Capitol and then saying later, "Oh, I thought it was open."

Yassine Meskhout: Yes.

Shakesneer: In the tapes of Epps specifically, at one point he says, "Oh, I shouldn't say this because I'll be arrested, but I'm going to say it anyways. We should go to the Capitol."

Ray Epps: Tomorrow. I don't even like to say it because I'll be arrested.
Baked Alaska: Well, let's not say it.
Ray Epps: We need to go... I'll say it.
Baked Alaska: All right.
Ray Epps: We need to go into the Capitol.
Baked Alaska: Based Fed posting. We need to go into the Capitol. I didn't see that coming.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, fair. He's admitting to some criminal element to his plan.

Shakesneer: Yes.

Yassine Meskhout: But that's still consistent with him believing that it's open, right? Because there's different ways of committing a crime when a Capitol is open. It could be you're trespassing, or you're not supposed to be there, or you've out stayed your welcome, or something to that effect.

Shakesneer: There's lots of ways of parsing ambiguous statements. But look, he says the day before, the day of the attack, "We're going to go to the Capitol. We should go to the Capitol. I shouldn't say this because I might be arrested, but I'm going to say this anyways, we should go to the Capitol." So he himself, in that wording—

Yassine Meskhout: So that would be one aspect that you believe is inconsistent.

Shakesneer: Now, if you want to say that his post facto rationalization accounts for that, I would ask you to provide the wording of his post factor rationalization. Because to me, what you have described him saying—

Yassine Meskhout: Wait, wait, what do you mean by post facto rationalization?

Shakesneer: Saying after the day that, "Oh, I thought the building was open, and what we did wasn't... I wasn't doing anything illegal."

Yassine Meskhout: Well, I don't think he's ever said that, "I wasn't doing anything illegal."

Shakesneer: Your summation of what his justification was.

Yassine Meskhout: Well, I want to avoid loaded language. You call it a post hoc rationalization, that is begging the question. I'm just going to say his explanation for why he told people to go into the Capitol. What he claims, and we don't have to take his word for it... I don't want to play this game of, "Oh, well, he denied it." What he claims is, he thought that the Capitol was open. That's why he was telling people to go inside. He did admit or acknowledge some element of criminality to that encouragement.

What I find congruent about his explanation is, yeah, he's seen on video telling people to go in, but he never went inside himself. I think the furthest he got was the barricades. I see him running forward and interacting with the police, but I don't see any evidence that he went inside. To me, that's consistent with him claiming that he thought that the Capitol was open. The other thing that's consistent is that he fully cooperated with the FBI. The FBI put him on the list saying, "seeking information." I believe the day of, January 6th, he was photograph number 16. On January 8th, he called the FBI and spoke to them. Then on March he sat down for an interview with his attorney present, spoke to the FBI for a couple hours, and admitted that he messed up, and then provided, again, that explanation that he thought it was open. So because of those reasons, I'm inclined to believe him. I also know that tourists don't really know anything about monuments. They can't tell monuments apart to begin with. Someone having the wrong idea about what is or isn't open seems perfectly plausible to me. I don't see anything unusual about that.

Shakesneer: That just seems way too generous to his own theory.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but you need to tell me why. I just outlined several factors for why I think it corroborates or is congruent to his explanation. You can challenge any of those factors, or you can highlight your own factor, which I already conceded. Him saying, "I'll probably go to jail for this," I concede that that's an incriminating statement to make, but I'm balancing it with all the other congruent acts. So tell me why your factor matters more, or why the factors that I mentioned don't matter as much.

Shakesneer: Yeah, I'm not aware of Ray Epps going to the FBI of his own accord and saying, "Oh yeah, that was me," and then they take him off the list. It took them some time to take him off the most wanted.

Yassine Meskhout: I can tell you the... Okay, so this information is provided by the FBI, and submitted into court by a government attorney, prosecutor, and also repeated by Epps' defense attorney. I guess you can say that they're all in on it and they're all lying, I would ask for evidence for that. But the timeline that I just described comes from court files.

Shakesneer: That would be the natural supposition, right? That would be the easiest way for them to—

Yassine Meskhout: Only if you already have accepted the premises that he's an informant. Then, yes, that would be the easiest supposition. But we're challenging that very premise. If you already accept that he's an informant, then any explanation is a post hoc rationalization. If you don't know, or if you at least start from a blank slate, then you need to look for evidence, or at least you need to be agnostic at first, and then find the evidence and figure out which way that sways you. So the other thing is, when he said, "Let's go into the Capitol," he said, "Peacefully." Do you play as much weight on him saying, "peacefully?"

Shakesneer: From the footage I see, I don't remember him saying peacefully at all. Especially when he saying that—

Yassine Meskhout: He did say it. He said this on January 5th. It was at night. I think it was in BLM Plaza. Baked Alaska, who's a live streamer, he was the one that started shouting, "Fed. Fed. Fed."

Shakesneer: Yeah. Okay, that sounds more plausible. He said, "peacefully" after people start shouting fed at him.

Yassine Meskhout: Yes. The fact that he said "peacefully," isn't that exculpatory?

Shakesneer: This goes back to your question about, what do we pre-judge it as? If you lead with the presumption... This is something I almost wanted to say at the beginning, but I forgot. I don't have access to all the information. I'm not sitting here trying to pronounce him guilty—

Yassine Meskhout: That's fine. Shakes, I'm not making any claims that you have access to all the information. If you have a theory or if you have an assertion, it's totally fine to say, "I don't know if I can prove this. I don't know how much I can believe it."

Shakesneer: The standard here is not, is he guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? We have—

Yassine Meskhout: We're not there, and I want to avoid... I feel like it's a waste of time to start addressing or rebutting these extreme positions that no one is taking. I'm not saying this is beyond a reasonable doubt. It's okay to have uncertainty. That's totally fine.

Shakesneer: All right then. So if you assume he's innocent to start with, then saying peacefully just shows that it's—

Yassine Meskhout: I'm not. I'm not assuming anything.

Shakesneer: Let me finish what I'm saying. If you take the counterfactual that he's a federal agent, then the order of events looks even more suspicious because first he says, "We need to go to the Capitol," and then when people accuse him of being a fed, IE of being insincere of trying to lead them into a trap, he says, "Oh no, no, peacefully. Peacefully." That to me looks like walking back because first he's trying to lead people into the Capitol, and when they identify that as a trap, he has to now walk back what he wants people to do in order to make it more plausible.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. But this is, I think, a perfect illustration of what I think the core issue is. I'm not walking into this assuming that Ray Epps is innocent. It seems like you are actually walking into this assuming that he's a Fed, and then working backwards to justify the conclusion, and I can explain why I'm saying this. Let's assume that he is innocent. I'm going to walk in and assume that he's innocent. Him saying, "We're going to walk into the Capitol," and then receiving the negative reaction that he did from the crowd, that you saw in the video. Then he realizes, "Oh, shit. Maybe they think that I'm agitating for violence. I need to correct that, so I'm going to say 'peacefully.'" Is there incongruent with that explanation?

Shakesneer: Yeah. The next day when he's still trying to get people to go to the Capitol and he says—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but just that part. Is there anything incongruent about that aspect?

Shakesneer: No, that's one possible explanation. I grant that, that is an explanation.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Then what were you saying, the next day?

Shakesneer: Yeah, when he says... Or, it might've been earlier in the same day. But the clip we've already discussed where he says, "I might be arrested for saying this, but I'm going to say it anyways." All I know, it was nighttime during the clip where he gets called a fed, and it's daytime when he says, "I might get arrested for saying this." But I think that was actually the day before, not the day of.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So Revolver News also put up videos of him, of how he acted when he was in front of the police. This is when there's a barricade, there's a lineup of Capitol police in riot gear, and he's walking along and he's telling people, "We've already made our point. We don't need to engage." I'm paraphrasing, and I'll post the audio.

Protestor: I would've came locked and loaded if I knew this was happening!
Ray Epps: Take a step back. Take a step back. We're holding ground. We're not trying to get people hurt. They don't want to get hurt. You don't want to get hurt. Back up.
[Inaudible]
Ray Epps: It doesn't matter, we made our point. You don't want to take away from what we did.

[02:04:04]

Yassine Meskhout: But he's trying to calm people down. But is that congruent with, I guess, my version of events?

Shakesneer: I think it's more congruent with my version of events because here—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, explain.

Shakesneer: He's been telling people to go into the Capitol. He's been trying to lead people into the Capitol. He never goes into the Capitol himself. He spends his time outside the Capitol making sure that the cops are okay, trying to talk down protesters as—

Yassine Meskhout: You do realize that this is way before anyone got close to the Capitol, like the actual building. You'll see him in front of a lineup of riot gear cops. You can see the Capitol in the background. They're not close to the building.

Shakesneer: Yeah, so the Revolver News article claims that this footage is from 3:15, after the Capitol was already breached.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I mean, it's possible that it's breached in one portion, but why would the cops be standing outside if there were protesters behind them?

Shakesneer: Let me just read what Revolver News writes in this clip, which is, "Here's a clip of Epps patrolling the very front lines of the Capitol's Western Plaza at approximately 3:15 PM, at the height of the day's mania, nearly two and a half hours after Epps and his, quote," scare quote, "'breach team' appeared to coordinate the toppling of the Capitol's west side police barricades. This was also nearly a full hour after the US Capitol building itself had already been breached."

Now, here's Revolver really editorializing, really putting the theory in. "With Epps's stated mission of breaching the Capitol accomplished, and hundreds of Trump supporters already inside, Epps's mission magically switched to calming the crowd down, assuring them, 'We already made our point,' and ensuring that no more of his apparently fellow officers got hurt that afternoon."

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I mean, this is just unfalsifiable, right? Because he's saying, "Oh, we need to be peaceful." Oh, that's just him covering it up because his mission has already been a success. But if he said, "Let's go into the Capitol," oh, that's him encouraging others as a federal agent or a federal informant to go into the Capitol. So no matter what happens, it's because he's a federal agent.

Shakesneer: Well, he does encourage people to go into the Capitol but—

Yassine Meskhout: You recognize it's unfalsifiable, right?

Shakesneer: Well, but we have—

Yassine Meskhout: Yes or no. Is it unfalsifiable?

Shakesneer: No, I don't think it is unfalsifiable when you take—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, what would you have expected him to say instead if he was not an informant?

Shakesneer: Well, he says after the fact—

Yassine Meskhout: What would you have expected him to say instead? Not what he says. How would you expect him to behave if he was not an informant?

Shakesneer: If he was a genuine believer and he's telling people to go into the Capitol, why didn't he go into the Capitol himself?

Yassine Meskhout: I just told you because he thought it was open, and then as he got closer and saw the violence, he said he changed his mind and turned around.

Shakesneer: Then why did he think that he would go to jail previously for saying... Did he think that violence was not going to happen, but he could go to jail for—

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah, there's different ways that you can enter a Capitol during a protest and still get in trouble even if the Capitol was nominally open. I'm just asking how would you expect him to behave if he was not an informant?

Shakesneer: I would expect him to have tried to go into the Capitol himself, like I said, like he said he wanted to do.

Yassine Meskhout: But, dude, this is insane. You're saying if he was actually innocent, he would've tried to go into the Capitol and because he didn't go into the Capitol, that means he's an informant. What?

Shakesneer: Well, he tried to get other people to go to the Capitol, but he never went—

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah, and then he changed his mind.

Shakesneer: That's what he claims after the fact.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I mean, you're not giving me a counterfactual. It's like no matter what he does, he's a fed.

Shakesneer: No, that's not what I said.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Sorry, that's a misleading paraphrase of what you said. But if he did go in, isn't that also an argument that he's a fed?

Shakesneer: Well, if he went in, he might've been charged like lots of the other protesters were charged—

Yassine Meskhout: That's not what I'm asking. If he went in, isn't that an argument that he's a fed?

Shakesneer: No.

Yassine Meskhout: Because he is inciting people to agitate, and so he's joining them with the so-called breach team that Revolver News says. He's joining them to make sure that everything goes according to plan because he's a fed. Isn't that an argument in favor of him being a fed? I'm offering a hypothetical and asking if it's incongruent with the theory that he's a fed.

Shakesneer: I think what you are suggesting is that—

Yassine Meskhout: I think it's a very simple question. Is it congruent with the theory that he's a fed had he gone inside?

Shakesneer: No.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so what is your argument? The federal informants don't go inside, they don't get involved too closely? What exactly is the argument here?

Shakesneer: He behaved differently from other protesters while inciting those protesters to do the very thing that was held up as the worst piece of evidence? The fact that—

Yassine Meskhout: But that's not how informants actually act, right? We know that from the Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot, the informants had to blend in. They had to assuage suspicion. They had to talk and instigate others, to encourage others to talk about plans. So where are you getting this idea that the informants have to act differently? And this is also unfalsifiable.

Shakesneer: I'm not saying they have to act differently. I'm saying he acted differently, it was the suspicious point in the first place. He didn't act—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, let me make sure I ask you again. Had Ray Epps gone inside the Capitol, would you agree that action would be congruent with him being a fed? I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm not saying that's the only evidence. I'm only asking, is it congruent with the theory? That's it.

Shakesneer: It could be.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So if he had gone in, it doesn't tell us whether he's a fed or not, and you already said that the fact that he stayed out is evidence that he's a fed, right?

Shakesneer: I mean, the key piece of evidence that he's a fed is that he's trying to get people into the building.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so do you apply that to other people? Does anyone that encourages others to go into the building, are they by definition or is that a strong indicator that they're a fed?

Shakesneer: Let me hint something else. So not only did he incite people to go into the building and try to get people into the building, but he was never charged with trying to—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, okay. But this is what I want to avoid. I want to evaluate each factor and analyze whether they're determinative. I don't want to keep switching between reasons. I don't want to hear saying, "Oh, he told people to go in, therefore he's a fed." Okay, does that apply to other people? It's like, "Well, no, it's also because he wasn't charged." Okay, but that's making a different argument. I don't want to play whack-a-mole with this. Imagine an actual criminal, someone that is not an informant that was there on January 6th. His intent is to delay the proceedings. So he tells other people, "We need to go into the Capitol to delay the proceedings." Is there anything incongruent with him being a genuine rioter?

Shakesneer: A genuine rioter in this hypothetical, trying to go into the Capitol and delay proceedings would not be deterred by seeing the doors are closed—

Yassine Meskhout: Shakes, I'm trying to limit the number of factors so that it doesn't get confusing as to what we're narrowing down. So I'm just asking if there was a—

Shakesneer: To me—

Yassine Meskhout: This is slippery tactics. I'm asking about specific factors, whether they're determinative, whether they help us predict. And look, we can step back away from January 6th and we can discuss anything, like who ate the cookies or something. It's like, "Okay, there's cookies and they disappeared." There's several hypotheses that this is congruent with. Maybe your kid stole the cookies. Maybe a dog came in and stole the cookies. Maybe a scientist created a shrink ray and shrunk the cookies to a microscopic level. There's all sorts of hypotheses. I'm only asking whether they're congruent with each other. So when I say an earnest January 6th rioter, who had every intent to riot, if they said, "Let's go into the Capitol," what is congruent with that scenario?

Shakesneer: If he actually goes into the Capitol, that would show that what he was—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but you're adding components. I'm only asking about if someone said, "Let's go into the Capitol," and they had a genuine intent to disrupt proceedings, what is incongruent about those two factors?

Shakesneer: Oh, I see what you're asking. Nothing's incongruent about those two being put together.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so this is what keeps happening. You say, "Well, the fact that he told other people to go into the Capitol is evidence that he's a fed." It's like it's also evidence that he thought it was open. It's consistent with him actually wanting to disrupt proceedings. There's all sorts of hypotheses that are congruent with that fact, right?

Shakesneer: I've said from the beginning that I am willing to believe in some degree of variance here. I just think the idea that he's the fed is the most plausible.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. And I'm asking you to, I guess, narrow it down, and I want to avoid having to jump from one reason and one piece of evidence to another. It's okay to, I guess, rule out possibilities based on the evidence. I think I'm transparent about what I'm relying on. I see this dude, he claims after the fact that he thought it was open. The one piece that I agree is not fully consistent with that claim is that he said, "I might go to prison for that." See, I'm willing to say, yes, that is not fully consistent with his claim. But at the same time, there's other factors that corroborate that. Do you see how I'm willing to say, yes, that is not fully consistent?

Shakesneer: Well, when you phrase it like that, you make it sound like I am intransigent, like I'm not open to reason, which maybe that would be the correct position for me.

Yassine Meskhout: Look, you're not boxing with an arm behind your back. You're a grown man, you can fucking take it. So you're more than welcome to push back on the premises, and also, if I'm using faulty logic. I'm not hamstringing you in any way. I'm trying to figure out which, I guess, scenario is most consistent with the facts.

Shakesneer: Look, I would say, first, the spirit of what you've just said, let me explain suspicious without being determinative, right? Epps calls for people to go into the Capitol, but doesn't go in himself, doesn't try to go in himself, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: So the things he's advocating for people to do are not the things he actually does himself. Now, you can say after the fact, he has this justification that he was unaware that the Capitol was closed, to which I would—

Yassine Meskhout: And he also said he didn't realize it was going to get that violent.

Shakesneer: Right, to which I would reply, why does he assume prior that it could be an arrestable offense to go to the Capitol? Why does he have that association in his mind when later he seems to not?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Okay, that's fair. When you say it's, I guess, incongruent or suspicious, do you apply that uniformly? Because there's other people that are comparable, that told people to go into the Capitol that didn't go in themselves and they were never charged. So we already mentioned Nick Fuentes, I'll put in the audio.

Nick Fuentes: Keep moving towards the Capitol. It appears we are taking the Capitol. Keep marching and don't relax. Never relax, break down the barriers and disregard the police! Leaders must live in fear of the American people, who they have betrayed over and over again.

Yassine Meskhout: Ali Alexander, where he posted a video on January 7th, saying, "I did call for people to enter the US Capitol." And later in the live stream, he said, "I started a riot for the sitting President of the United States." So neither of those two people have ever been charged with a crime, and they're comparable to Epps because they told people to go in, they didn't go in themselves. And Epps was treated harsher than those two people.

Shakesneer: Let's talk about Nick Fuentes, right? So first, there's a lot of theories already floating around Nick Fuentes, which—

Yassine Meskhout: Which theories?

Shakesneer: That he's a federal informant.

Yassine Meskhout: Who's making these theories?

Shakesneer: People online discussing Nick Fuentes.

Yassine Meskhout: What evidence are they using?

Shakesneer: One piece of evidence is the fact that he wasn't arrested over January 6th. I'm not trying to have—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, this is my point. Everything becomes evidence that he's a fed no matter how unfalsifiable he is. So he didn't get arrested, that means he's a fed. He did get arrested, he is a fed. I'm lost, what exactly helps us predict anything?

Shakesneer: He's this extremist, inciting people to radical points of view. So already he exists in a world where federal investigators, federal agents are going to be paying attention, right? That's the reason.

Yassine Meskhout: So you also acknowledge that there is a free speech right under the Constitution, and maybe it's not fully respected all the time, but it's respected somewhat by the judiciary, right?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so what is so implausible about the explanation that we're not going to prosecute people for just talk?

Shakesneer: I mean, they prosecuted Ricky Vaughn for—

Yassine Meskhout: Who's that?

Shakesneer: You're not familiar with Ricky Vaughn?

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, I don't know how his name is spelled.

Shakesneer: That's the guy who got arrested for memes that were like the text to vote Hillary memes.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I concede that I guess you would say it's an edge case because this is the guy that created false posters, imploring Hillary voters to vote by text. The intent is they would falsely believe that they're voting when they're actually not. And the purpose was to reduce the number of people that were voting for Hillary?

Shakesneer: No, he states, and this is what the people around him state, that they were memes. They were memes mocking the intelligence of Hillary voters because they were also associated with memes talking about how if Hillary Clinton wins, she'll draft our daughters to fight the war.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Is there a possibility that someone dumb enough fell for that poster and voted by text and didn't vote for Hillary Clinton?

Shakesneer: The journalists allege that that number was—

Yassine Meskhout: Is that possible?

Shakesneer: It's possible, what do you want me to say?

Yassine Meskhout: So I concede that that's an edge case in terms of free speech jurisprudence, but we're not talking about the norm. So if someone talks a lot of shit and they don't get prosecuted, I personally don't see anything incongruent about that because there is a robust tradition of protecting free speech, and that especially applies to Ali Alexander.

Shakesneer: It's relevant because when it comes to the way the federal government is treating conservative activists, the new right, a lot of these right-wing influencers, they are starting to create new standards. That's why Ricky Vaughn is—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I agree, Ricky Vaughn is an example. His conduct, it's such an unusual case because it implicates the voting rights of people, and interfering with that. I agree that that's an edge case, but it doesn't represent the norm.

Shakesneer: They invented a legal argument based on one of the civil rights acts from the 1860s, like 150 years old piece of legislation that has never been used to prosecute anybody.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So that's your counter evidence that free speech rights of conservatives is not protected or not respected?

Shakesneer: It's illustrative of that when they really want to prosecute somebody, they can invent a new theory.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so you agree that posting a fraudulent poster imploring people to vote by text, that's different from telling people to go into the Capitol. Do you agree that those are different?

Shakesneer: That's a pretext, right? They wanted to prosecute him, and so they invent—

Yassine Meskhout: I'm asking if you think those are the same or different.

Shakesneer: I'm saying that if they wanted to prosecute people trying to incite people going into the Capitol, they would invent a pretext.

Yassine Meskhout: That wasn't my question. I'm asking if you think they're the same or different. You can argue what they can do, I'm asking if they're comparable first.

Shakesneer: Comparable in which sense?

Yassine Meskhout: Telling people to go into the Capitol is one type of action, putting up a fraudulent note imploring people to vote by text is another action. Those are not directly comparable to each other.

Shakesneer: But I'm not comparing the actions. I'm comparing the way the federal government prosecuted them.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. How about this? Can you think of any example of someone prosecuted for just telling people to go into the Capitol?

Shakesneer: I mean, nobody else did the exact combination of things Ray Epps did. So no, I'm not familiar.

Yassine Meskhout: Ali Alexander did, Nick Fuentes did, but then you said people online suspect that he's a fed. Because what's unique about Ali Alexander is that not only was he not criminally charged with anything, he was sued by Capitol police, a federal civil lawsuit. And then a judge took him off the case because she said, "Well, everything he did was protected speech. Nothing that he did or said, rose to the level of inciting imminent, lawless action."

Shakesneer: Right. So that's different from Ray Epps.

Yassine Meskhout: How?

Shakesneer: I mean, didn't they actually find Ray Epps guilty of a misdemeanor?

Yassine Meskhout: I think it was disorderly conduct.

Shakesneer: Disorderly conduct, right? So you're saying that Alexander Ali did not engage in disorderly conduct, he just said—

Yassine Meskhout: Someone not being charged with a crime is not the same thing as them not doing it. And simultaneously, someone pleading to guilty to a crime is also not the same thing as them doing it. Although, usually it is.

Shakesneer: This is a long story, I'm trying to find what you are suggesting.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, how about this? Can you think of anyone that did the same thing or close enough same thing to Ray Epps that got a harsher sentence or treatment than Ray Epps?

Shakesneer: A lot of people who went into the Capitol building—

Yassine Meskhout: Like what? Like who?

Shakesneer: Like the guy who put his feet on Pelosi's desk.

Yassine Meskhout: Wait, wait. Hold on. So you're comparing Ray Epps, who didn't go into the Capitol, with someone that did go into the Capitol?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: How's that comparable?

Shakesneer: What crime did he commit?

Yassine Meskhout: How is that comparable though?

Shakesneer: How is it not comparable?

Yassine Meskhout: Because Ray Epps was not in the Capitol and the other person was in the Capitol. I mean, that's a difference, right? Do you agree that that's a difference?

Shakesneer: We were talking about the matter of free speech and the actual crimes being committed.

Yassine Meskhout: So, I don't know how you compare things, but if we were in a forest and you said, "Hey, this tree is unusually tall." I would say, "Oh, compared to what?" Because if it's like a foot tall, I'd be like, "I don't know, that's not unusually tall. That's a really short tree." But if you said, "No, no, no, I meant compared to my Lego trees that are only like three inches." I'm like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that's true. This one foot tree is indeed unusually tall compared to your Lego trees." But then if you talk about a redwood tree and you said, "Oh, this is unusually short." I would say, "Oh, that's weird. I don't think it's unusually short." You said, "Oh, well, I mean compared to a skyscraper." "Yes, that is unusually short."

So, usually you have some comparison, some idea in mind, this person was treated badly, this person was treated leniently. Where does this comparable third person fit among this metric? So, I'm asking who is someone that did whatever is close enough to what you think Ray Epps did that was treated harsher than Ray Epps?

Shakesneer: I don't think there were people who were trying to incite rioters to enter the Capitol who did not themselves try to go into the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so let's dissect what you just said. You're using the loaded language, but whatever. He tried to incite rioters to enter the Capitol and then also did not enter. So those are two different components. The fact that he told people to go into the Capitol, that's incriminating. You would agree with that, right, that's a bad thing to do?

Shakesneer: I need to see the context of like how did he tell people—

Yassine Meskhout: No, I'm trying to divorce it away from... Because that's the problem, it gets confusing when you keep adding a bunch of different factors. So him telling others to go into the Capitol, that is an incriminating act.

Shakesneer: What does that mean, he told people to go into the Capitol? He texted people to go into the Capitol?

Yassine Meskhout: What he yelled outside, "Hey, we need to go into the Capitol." That's an incriminating act, yes?

Shakesneer: Sure.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. The fact that he did not go into the Capitol, he didn't commit the crime of trespassing, he didn't assist anyone else in bringing down any of the barricades, either passively or just by his presence, the fact that he did not go into the Capitol, you would agree that's exculpatory, right?

Shakesneer: I mean, you're saying that he was telling people to go into the Capitol—

Yassine Meskhout: It's a very simple question, Shakes. I can divorce it further if you want. Let's say someone was charged with murder or attempted murder. He bought a gun, you would agree that is an incriminating step. Yes?

Shakesneer: It could be.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. And then afterwards he said, "No, I don't want to do this anymore." And he threw the gun away into the river. Would you agree that that's an exculpatory step?

Shakesneer: If you throw a gun into the river, you're trying to hide evidence.

Yassine Meskhout: Evidence of what? There's no crime at this point.

Shakesneer: Then why are you trying to throw it into the river?

Yassine Meskhout: I don't know, people throw guns away. They destroy guns all the time. He doesn't want the weapon around. I'm asking from the context of attempted murder, is throwing a gun away that you were planning to use for a murder, is that exculpatory? Pick any crime you want. Someone wants to rob a bank. They have a plan. They drive to the bank, they scope it out, and then they change their mind and leave. They haven't committed any crime whatsoever. The fact that they changed their mind, is that exculpatory?

Shakesneer: For that particular crime, yes.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So from the context of Ray Epps, if the crime is entering the capitol, the fact that he changed his mind and didn't go in, that's exculpatory. So when you combine it with him telling others to go into the Capitol, to me it's kind of a wash. I don't know what's worse, whether... I don't think they cancel each other out exactly, but I can't definitively say he did a net bad thing or a net good thing.

Shakesneer: Yeah, but the question to me isn't about whether what he did was net good or net not good. So if we take for granted that he's not a federal agent, let's take that for granted, right? Then the question becomes, if we look at this guy and we decide we got to evaluate and come to an opinion, then there's a question of was what he did net good or net bad? And so you say it's a wash, right? That applies to—

Yassine Meskhout: No, it's more... Okay, maybe there was a point of confusion. But what we were talking about is we're trying to figure out who else fits his actions, to compare against. So I think you said that he was treated unusually and leniently, right, by the criminal justice system?

Shakesneer: Yeah.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So when you make a claim like that, when you make an assertion like that, ideally you have on one side of Ray Epps, someone that was treated unusually harshly, right? Because how else can you say that Ray Epps was treated unusually leniently if you don't have a foil or a contrast to compare against?

Shakesneer: I mean, there's no quite apples to apples comparison. That's why I'm saying—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but you're the one making the assertion that he was treated unusually and leniently. So how are you making that assertion without a comparison?

Shakesneer: I'm looking at all of the other people prosecuted during January 6th.

Yassine Meskhout: Who? Name one.

Shakesneer: The thousands of people prosecuted that we are talking—

Yassine Meskhout: Name one.

Shakesneer: You want me to name—

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, give me one example of one guy that did almost the same thing as Ray Epps that was treated unusually harshly.

Shakesneer: I think there isn't anybody who did almost the same thing as Ray Epps. That's what I'm saying.

Yassine Meskhout: What is your basis for asserting that he was treated unusually leniently if you don't have a contrast?

Shakesneer: He was only ever reluctantly prosecuted. Look at all of the people who are on the FBI Most Wanted list, he was one of the people they wanted right away. What crimes did they charge him with? They must have wanted him right away for something because they have video evidence of him trying to incite people into the Capitol. They wanted him. Why did they want him? Because they think he didn't commit any crimes? Because—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so we tried to find comparisons. You said there isn't one that you can point to, and we talked about Nick Fuentes and Ali Alexander. Let's talk about, I guess, the component where you said the... So, he was put on an FBI seeking information list almost immediately. I think the same day that he was put on. What do you think that is evidence of?

Shakesneer: The FBI was trying to find him. They wanted him, and usually—

Yassine Meskhout: And what is that indicative of?

Shakesneer: They want to find somebody who they believe might've committed crimes.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. And then what? I'm trying to understand how that establishes that he was treated unusually leniently or that he was a fed. How does it support either premise?

Shakesneer: Because they're supposedly searching for him and trying to find one of the guys who has been inciting people to go into the Capitol, and he never gets charged with anything related to that. He only gets charged eventually with disorderly conduct and—

Yassine Meskhout: This is what I mean, you're working backwards. You're assuming that he needs to be or that he should have been charged, and the fact that he wasn't, what does that imply?

Shakesneer: So, why do you think it's plausible for him to end up on the most wanted list if he never really committed any crimes?

Yassine Meskhout: He was one of the most visible characters from that day. He showed up, he was easy to spot. He didn't try to hide his face or anything. I think there's an element of randomness. There was thousands and thousands of video footage that day, the FBI tried to find—

Shakesneer: Was Ali Alexander on the most wanted list?

Yassine Meskhout: I don't think he was, no.

Shakesneer: Okay. So none of those guys who you were comparing as akin to Ray Epps were on the most wanted list, but Ray Epps was on the most wanted list.

Yassine Meskhout: Also, hold on, he was put on the list that said Seeking Information. They didn't know his name. He just showed up as photograph 16. Ali Alexander is recognizable. Nick Fuentes is recognizable. Alex Jones is recognizable. He would never be on a seeking information list. FBI is not going to be like, "Hey, do you know this guy?" Everyone knows who those people are already.

Shakesneer: Okay, fine. So the FBI doesn't know who this guy is, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Correct.

Shakesneer: What especially does he did that made him interesting? Because apparently, he—

Yassine Meskhout: I don't know. I don't know. He ended up on the list, they wanted more information. He called them two days after, and then he did the interview in March.

Shakesneer: You don't know from the footage that we've already seen why they might've been looking for this guy?

Yassine Meskhout: I have no idea why they were looking for him. That wasn't like a charging decision list. It was just seeking information. "Help us identify these people." Maybe they wanted to talk to him because he talked to other people that they wanted information on. I have no idea why they wanted information on him. I also don't know what you think it's indicative of.

Shakesneer: Wouldn't it be indicative of the thing he did that was most characteristic, which again, was being on tape several times in several locations trying to incite people to go to the Capitol?

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah, that's possible. Yeah. An FBI agent generated a memo for why they didn't charge him. This was submitted in July of that year, 2021, the summary says- and this was in the sentencing memorandum from the federal prosecutors and the defense attorney. It said the, quote, "Investigation did not reveal sufficient evidence that Epps entered the US capitol on January 6th, engaged in acts of violence or committed any other criminal violation." And it said the United States Attorney Office declined prosecution in this case.

Shakesneer: And you see why that sounds suspicious to me, right?

Yassine Meskhout: No. Can you explain that?

Shakesneer: So the only things they have to comment about on Ray Epps are that he didn't go into the Capitol, like that's it?

Yassine Meskhout: No, did not go into the Capitol, did not engage in acts of violence or committed any other criminal violation.

Shakesneer: Then why were they looking for Ray Epps in the first place?

Yassine Meskhout: This is circular. You're saying he must have committed the crime because they're looking for him, and if they don't find the crime, then they must be covering for him because he must have committed a crime, because they were looking for him. I mean, this just goes round and round.

Shakesneer: I think your point of view is circular and too credulous because—

Yassine Meskhout: Which part?

Shakesneer: The reason Ray Epps would have been wanted in the first place is because he's a highly visible face saying, "Let's go into the Capitol." He was there. He was present.

Yassine Meskhout: What's your evidence that that's the reason why he would be wanted in the first place?

Shakesneer: Why else would he have been wanted? Can you proffer another reason?

Yassine Meskhout: Yes, he talked to a lot of people that day. They could have been wanting to talk to him to see if he had information on any other people that he interacted with.

Shakesneer: Why was he one of the first people the FBI wanted? Why not anybody else?

Yassine Meskhout: It's random? I don't know what that's indicative of. Because consider the flip side, that he's an informant. So why the fuck would the FBI put him on the list seeking information if he's already an informant?

Shakesneer: So that he doesn't appear to be suspicious when they decide not to prosecute him. No, that's perfectly reasonable.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So because they didn't want him to be suspicious, they put his face and broadcast it to the world and say, "We need information on this guy"?

Shakesneer: It's a cover story. Why wouldn't it be a cover story?

Yassine Meskhout: But did anything I say, is any of that... Does that make sense? What's the cover story here?

Shakesneer: So, if you're infiltrating a movement and everybody else is getting prosecuted and you're not getting prosecuted, the question is why.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, so I'm trying to understand this theory. So, you're saying that the FBI put him on a seeking information list because they knew that there was going to be a lot of attention placed on him. So, as a way to assuage that suspicion, they put him on this very, very visible list, broadcast his face to the public, and told the entire world, "We need more information on him." And the reason they did that is as a cover story to, I guess... I'm so confused, because here's my explanation. The FBI were dealing with thousands of individuals, a shit-ton of information, a lot of footage, a lot of photos. They put a list that says, "We need more information. Can you help us identify these people?" And then they work through the leads. They didn't really bother updating the list and taking people off until months later. If you look at the list now, it's still up. You'll see that several people have been taken off the list. To me, I can't draw any conclusions from that. Am I supposed to conclude that everyone that was on the list was a federal agent or is it only the people that were on the list and then taken off?

[02:35:04]

Shakesneer: The timing here is important because as I recall, they took him off the list after news organizations started to ask questions about him.

Yassine Meskhout: What is that indicative of?

Shakesneer: As soon as news organizations started asking questions about this guy, they suddenly take his name down, like the second he begins to get any publicity.

Yassine Meskhout: Why don't you tell me, articulate what exactly does that prove? Here, I'll try and you can tell me if I'm wrong. So the FBI put this guy on the list to make him not suspicious, and then the news organizations started asking about it and then the FBI said, "Oh, shit, the news is asking. Let's delete his name and photo from the list because they're onto us." Doesn't that make them more onto you? I don't understand the logic here.

Shakesneer: If this is a guy they were actually trying to investigate and suddenly reporters are investigating him, why wouldn't they either just keep his name on the most wanted list or they could easily put out some statement or charging document or anything? There's a million things they could have done.

Yassine Meskhout: They had already investigated him. They talked to him two days after January 6th, and then they sat down for an interview with his lawyer present in March, so they already investigated him. And by July, all they had was the memo saying, "Yeah, there's no reason to prosecute this guy." I'm trying to understand like what does it mean for him to have been on the list and then taken off? I don't understand what that's indicative of.

Shakesneer: The timing is suspicious.

Yassine Meskhout: Why? Explain it to me. Explain why the timing is suspicious.

Shakesneer: You don't think there's anything suspicious about the FBI removing his face as soon as people start asking questions about him?

Yassine Meskhout: That could have been a coincidence, maybe. I don't know. They've already investigated him and you can look through the list in archives and see how often people were taken off. If you look at it today, there's a lot of people taken off the list because it goes like photograph number one, photograph number three, photograph number 8, 10, 16. There's a lot of people that have been deleted because it was numbered sequentially, so someone being taken off the list is not suspicious to me.

Shakesneer: Yeah. I grant that people get taken off the list. I grant that. I don't see how that proves your point.

Yassine Meskhout: What do you think my point is?

Shakesneer: I don't see how the fact that he got taken off the list proves there's nothing suspicious about the timing of taking him off.

Yassine Meskhout: I said it could be a coincidence. I just don't know what it's supposed to indicate. I also don't understand the scheme. They put him on the list, as you said, explicitly to dissuade suspicion, but then took him off the list when the news organization found out? How does that make sense?

Shakesneer: He was a high priority for the FBI. He one of the people they most wanted to ask questions to—

Yassine Meskhout: I'm asking how does that make sense? How does it make sense to put him on a list to dissuade suspicion and then take him off once a news organization asks question? How does that make sense?

Shakesneer: Very visible evidence that, oh, look, we're looking into this guy. He's not one of us. He's somebody we're looking into. But then the second other news organizations actually start looking into him, then he gets taken away.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. This is unfalsifiable again. The fact that he's on the list is evidence that the FBI is pretending to take this case seriously, and then the fact that he's off the list is suspicious. So whether he's on or off the list, it's suspicious, right?

Shakesneer: They're two separate things. The first is that he was put on the list in the first place, which would normally imply this is someone the FBI is looking for, right?

Yassine Meskhout: Right. And they talk to him. So what does that imply?

Shakesneer: If they don't find anything to charge him on when he's one of the people they're most interested in talking to first.

Yassine Meskhout: No.

Shakesneer: They later charge him with a misdemeanor. They're able to charge him with something once there's political pressure.

Yassine Meskhout: Right.

Shakesneer: Once people are looking at him, they're able to charge him with something. They didn't charge him with that misdemeanor in the first place?

Yassine Meskhout: No. I mean, they didn't charge a lot of the people that did the same thing and I already gave you examples, Nick Fuentes, Ali Alexander. You called Nick Fuentes a fed. Okay, fine. You haven't provided any explanation for why Ali Alexander wasn't charged.

Shakesneer: I said that the fact that Nick Fuentes hasn't been charged has also been taken by suspicion.

Yassine Meskhout: Right, but I mean, we're back into unfalsifiable territory. No matter what, it's evidence that it's suspicious or he's a fed.

Shakesneer: Saying it's unfalsifiable is like asserting that there's some sort of default position that Ray Epps should be given some benefit of the doubt, some benefit of innocence.

Yassine Meskhout: No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Unfalsifiable just means that the evidence that you're citing doesn't tell us one way or the other. The fact that he's on a list is suspicious. The fact that he's taken off the list is suspicious. I don't understand. Why don't you describe like what would it look like if he was genuinely innocent, if he wasn't an informant? How would that play out in your head?

Shakesneer: It might play out like the way Enrique Tarrio was arrested. It might play out like—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, tell me more about Enrique Tarrio.

Shakesneer: He wasn't even physically at January 6. He wasn't there.

Yassine Meskhout: Why do you think he was convicted? If you were to describe what Enrique Tarrio was responsible for, what do you think it is? At least like what the government accused him of. What do you think that is?

Shakesneer: Didn't they sentence him to 22 years for—

Yassine Meskhout: I think he got at least 22 years. I thought it was 30, but he got a lot.

Shakesneer: Wasn't the argument that the organizing he did of Proud Boys in the run-up to January 6 indicative of a seditious plot to overthrow the government?

Yassine Meskhout: Yes.

Shakesneer: The thing about Enrique Tarrio is that he wasn't present at January 6th on the—

Yassine Meskhout: That's correct. He was not physically present at the Capitol. That is correct. But if you're charged as part of a conspiracy, you don't need to be physically present during the act itself.

Shakesneer: Right.

Yassine Meskhout: You can think of a bank heist that says, "Hey, guys, I'm bringing the gang together. You, you take care of the safe. You're the getaway driver and I'm just going to stay here the night of to make sure that you guys do this right." Even if you stay home, you're not anywhere near the bank. You can still be vicariously guilty for what your group did.

Shakesneer: Yes, I agree with that.

Yassine Meskhout: So what problem do you see with Enrique Tarrio's conviction?

Shakesneer: In order for the government to allege that the Proud Boys were part of a seditious plot to overthrow the government, there has to have been a seditious plot to overthrow the government.

Yassine Meskhout: There was.

Shakesneer: Such as?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So for the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio was the chairman of the National Proud Boys. I think like a week or a few days after Trump's rally was announced for January 6th, he formed what is called the Ministry Of Self-Defense. It was a department within the Proud Boys that was heavily vetted. It was invite-only. And the goal, this was exposed in the text messages that they send each other, like Biggs and Tarrio were talking to each other. Biggs said, "It's time to get radical, get some real men, recruit real men." He formulated guidance on what these people are supposed to wear. He wrote like a nine-page strategic plan to storm government buildings for purposes of getting the government to overturn the election results. He implemented multiple rules that were enforced by his deputies. The group would be exclusively made of hand-selected members, specifically chosen by the MOSD leadership. He said multiple times like if Biden steals this election, the Proud Boys will not go quietly. In multiple group chats, the people talked to each other and said, "Yeah, we're ready to kick the fucking ass when it came to kick ass." They were planning violence on January 6th, and that was done through this hand-picked group of men that their standards, their training, their guidance, their rules that they were supposed to follow, that was all promulgated by Tarrio.

Shakesneer: You just said violence, but nothing you said allege actual sedition. Were they actually planning on going guns in blazing, killing senators? Were they actually planning—

Yassine Meskhout: You're listening to yourself, right? Because you're explicitly presenting a straw man that I did not argue for. I didn't say anything about guns. I didn't say anything about killing senators. I said it was a seditious conspiracy because the goal was to hinder or overthrow the election results and they wanted to use violence, explicitly wanted to use violence to accomplish that.

Shakesneer: And you think there's nothing in that akin to the things we already discussed Ray Epps saying?

Yassine Meskhout: No.

Shakesneer: Why so?

Yassine Meskhout: Because Tarrio had a leadership position in a fairly prominent organization. Tarrio explicitly recruited people to join an internal group with the intent of committing violence. Tarrio promulgated rules that everyone was supposed to follow. He promulgated the security protocol. He explicitly looked for people that were willing to get physical and violent, while even though he was not at the scene at the Capitol, he was still communicating with his deputies that were at the scene and making sure it was coordinated throughout. There's other elements that we can go over in terms of how different it is. So number one, he was in a leadership position. Ray Epps was not. He was Oath Keepers chairman in 2011. I don't see how that's relevant. Number two, he had the intent to violently obstruct the certification proceeding. I see no evidence that Ray Epps had any intent to commit any violence or any obstruction that day. The third one, I guess you could say is encouraging others.

Shakesneer: You don't think it was violent when he was present at overturning one of the barricades?

Yassine Meskhout: No. I don't think that's enough to determine violence because I don't know if he was the one that pushed it. I don't know. I don't see any evidence that he was the one that instigated the overturning of the barricades. I saw the video where he like backs up once people started pushing on the barricades, so that's exculpatory to me.

Shakesneer: When the barricades are down, he keeps going forward. He follows it.

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah, he does. Yeah. I don't see that as indicative of violent intent.

Shakesneer: Conveniently, at every point in time, he steps just far back from actually doing something—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but this is like we're back at this unfalsifiable thing. If he's committing violence, then he's guilty of violence. If he's stepping back, then it's just a cover-up. Where does this go? There's other elements. Tarrio encouraged other people. He expressed no contrition. He had absolutely no cooperation with law enforcement. All of that is in stark contrast with the way Epps behaved. So I mean, if you want to say anything to that, I'm happy to, but we can move on to I guess the defamation.

Shakesneer: I don't even want to talk about the defamation step, but we can if you want to.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So one other aspect that you said counts as I guess, favorable treatment that Ray Epps received is that, I think you said something like his suit against Fox News. So Ray Epps is suing Fox News for defamation. How is that indicative of, I guess, favorable treatment?

Shakesneer: So I don't think that the suit is indicative that anybody is consciously allowing Epps to do anything, which seemed to be the way you were interpreting my text post. Those were the sorts of questions you asked.

Yassine Meskhout: No. That wasn't my interpretation. Frankly, I had no idea how to interpret your post. I didn't know what it meant.

Shakesneer: So Ray Epps is this guy who was at the protest. Regardless of what he's legally culpable for, here he is at January 6th, inciting people to go into the Capitol building, which is exactly the sorts of thing that people have been saying was wrong with January 6th.

Yassine Meskhout: Who has been saying that?

Shakesneer: Leftists, people in the media, Liberals, right? People who are scared about January 6th, people who—

Yassine Meskhout: But I mean, you should have been able to identify one person that did the same thing as Ray Epps did that got punished harsher, but you haven't been able to find someone. So for you to say this is the perfect example of what was wrong with January 6th, I don't see how that's accurate.

Shakesneer: But nobody else was like Ray Epps actually physically there with the mob by the doors saying, "Let's go into the building."

Yassine Meskhout: I gave you plenty of examples.

Shakesneer: The other people you're describing are people who were hanging around, but they weren't actually—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. They weren't actually what?

Shakesneer: I don't think Fuentes is apples to apples.

Yassine Meskhout: And for the record, I don't see any evidence that Ray Epps ever reached the doors. Maybe that happened. I don't see it, but go ahead. So how does his suit against Fox News play out?

Shakesneer: We were discussing it. He was right outside the Capitol.

Yassine Meskhout: You said the doors.

Shakesneer: Yeah, he was right by the stairs, by the doors. That was in one of the videos we were looking at.

Yassine Meskhout: All right. People can see that for themselves, how close he was to the doors. But you were saying the suit against Fox News. How is that relevant to how he's being treated?

Shakesneer: Now that Epps has become the subject of conspiracy theories, which is a word I'm comfortable using.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay.

Shakesneer: Now that he's become the subject of conspiracy theories, nobody is sitting around saying, "Gee, here's this guy who wanted to invade the Capitol and he could get money from Fox News. Isn't that terrible? Here's this January 6th guy and he might win some money. That's really bad." Instead, they're all saying, "Fox News is about to pay money for their conspiracy theories." Like—

Yassine Meskhout: I'm having trouble following this because is it not possible to say, yes, Ray Epps did a stupid thing, but he suffered too much?

Shakesneer: What do you mean he suffered too much? Like what's suffering?

Yassine Meskhout: What do you think he faced? Like it's true that he got a shit ton of attention, nationwide fixation on him. How do you think that changed his life?

Shakesneer: He alleges that he received threats. He alleges that he received a lot of negative attention, which is just the price of being a public figure these days.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. His wife found shell casings on her property. She collected it and submitted it as evidence. People would come up to Epps in person and tell him to sleep with one eye open. There were several trespassers on his property demanding answers about January 6th. He received multiple letters saying that there's a Mexican drug cartel assassin. They were about to kill him. A busload of people came by his property during a wedding ceremony to shout at Mr. Epps. All of this is from his sentencing memorandum submitted by his attorney, and he eventually sold the property that he lived in and his business and moved to another place. I think he moved to another state in a trailer off the grid because he wants to avoid all the attention. To me, assuming it's true, maybe you can say that it's all made up, that comes across as a plausible and expected reaction given the fixation that he was the subject of, and it doesn't sound fun at all. I don't want that to happen to me.

Shakesneer: No, it doesn't sound fun. I'm not saying I want this to happen. I'm not—

Yassine Meskhout: I guess, like in proportion to him saying, "We need to go into the Capitol" and then turning around. Whatever. I don't see what his actions did as that bad. He was an idiot for going to the Capitol in the first place, yes, but he turned around. I can give him credit for that.

Shakesneer: What do you mean he turned around?

Yassine Meskhout: He didn't go inside. He left.

Shakesneer: Oh, I thought you were saying something else.

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, he also acknowledged that he was an idiot and what he did was wrong, so I can give him points for that as well. I'm trying to understand, when you say that it's bad that he's pursuing a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, I mean the central component to that is did Fox News defame him? Did they actually cause him damage? That's like the pertinent question about defamation, but you're turning it about, well, the left thinks that he's a bad guy, but they're happy that he's suing Fox News? I'm having trouble following.

Shakesneer: No, because we're talking about how it's plausible to consider Ray Epps to have been a federal agent. Right? That's the whole point of contention here.

Yassine Meskhout: Sure. Well, I don't think that's plausible, but go ahead.

Shakesneer: If you say so.

Yassine Meskhout: Continue your point.

Shakesneer: I mean, you don't think it's shameless? You don't think that there's—

Yassine Meskhout: Which part is shameless? What is shameless about suing someone for defamation who has defamed you?

Shakesneer: How did they defame him?

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. That's an argument. I'm glad to hear it.

Shakesneer: What do you think is defamatory about covering the fact that he stood outside the building and told people to go inside and the day before, he told people to do inside, like what's defamatory about that?

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, if you call him like an agent provocateur, if you say that he orchestrated January 6th, if you say he's the prime suspect behind all this, I would say that's a false statement of fact. That's defamatory.

Shakesneer: Which part of that is false?

Yassine Meskhout: Everything that I just said.

Shakesneer: Let's drill down on something specific.

Yassine Meskhout: That he orchestrated January 6th.

Shakesneer: What's the Fox News wording? What did they actually say?

Yassine Meskhout: I don't know. I haven't looked at his lawsuit, so I don't know what specific statements that he's alleging. I mean, you already said that the suit is shameless, so presumably you already are familiar with what is shameless about the suit. You're familiar with the statements that he's challenging, so you tell me why you think the suit is shameless.

Shakesneer: It's shameless for him to have been at the Capitol and to have been involved and then turn around and say, "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean any of it. I didn't know it was going to go down. We didn't know it was violent." At the beginning, he was going to say something that he could be arrested for saying, and then suddenly he turned like, sorry, I don't know. Gee whiz. And now he's going to try to sue people for covering him as if he planned some aspect of it? Yeah, that's shameless. It's absolutely shameless.

Yassine Meskhout: Does it matter to you whether or not the statements were false or not? The statements that Fox News made about Epps, is that relevant?

Shakesneer: I mean, it depends on which statements we're talking about.

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, it's a defamation lawsuit. You can't have a defamation lawsuit without a false statement of fact.

Shakesneer: Right. Which false statement of fact?

Yassine Meskhout: I haven't looked at the lawsuit, but you already have a negative opinion of this lawsuit, so you can't claim to say "yes, I examined all the statements that Ray Epps is alleging to be defamatory. I've concluded that they're not defamatory." You can't even say that. You just have a preconceived opinion that this lawsuit is bullshit.

Shakesneer: Yeah, it's a priori bullshit for him—

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: ... to try to make money off of something that he is on—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay, but you're shifting things again. When you say a lawsuit is bullshit, generally it's about the merits. Like, yeah, he's claiming that Fox News defamed him, but actually what they said was true or what they said wasn't actually defamatory. That would be an example of like why the lawsuit is bullshit.

Shakesneer: They claim that the videos are selectively edited.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I don't understand where this is going. If his lawsuit doesn't have merit, it's going to lose, right?

Shakesneer: I don't actually take that for granted, to be honest.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Why?

Shakesneer: I don't know how much we really want to elaborate on this. I think there's been a pattern—

Yassine Meskhout: It's up to you. I can go on. I mean, Joe Rogan has three-hour podcasts all the time, so this is fine. I'm trying to understand. You have a strong opinion about the lawsuit that Epps filed against Fox News, but you can't even tell me what statements he's challenging. So to me, that's another form of confirmation bias.

Shakesneer: He's challenging I think Tucker Carlson did the reports that he is suing them for, and to me, it seems highly plausible based on the way Fox News settled some of their 2020 election lawsuits that they'll settle this one.

Yassine Meskhout: Why? Why won't they fight it if it's meritless?

Shakesneer: I think that there's a growing pattern of juries endorsing politically vindictive, punitive damages.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. What's an example?

Shakesneer: The Alex Jones cases.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Why was he punished?

Shakesneer: Part of it, I think, is that he just refused to comply with the judge during the—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So that's not an indication that the jury's vindictive, right? Because there's another factor, him disobeying discovery obligations. Correct?

Shakesneer: Yeah. But they—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So why do you think that's a good example to cite?

Shakesneer: The whole lawsuit is political. Right? The lawsuit wasn't just—

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, what does that mean? A lot of lawsuits are political. What does that mean?

Shakesneer: The intent of all the suing parties was to try to destroy Alex Jones.

Yassine Meskhout: What do you mean by all ensuing parties? Who are you talking about? The people that sued Alex Jones?

Shakesneer: The people that sued him and the judges at his trial.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I agree that the people that sued him were trying to destroy him. Yes. Why do you say that about the judge?

Shakesneer: You think the judge was not biased against him? You think the judge was not—

Yassine Meskhout: You're making a different claim now, you're walking it back. You're saying that the parties involved were trying to destroy Alex Jones. I'm asking you for the evidence for why you claimed that the judge was trying to destroy Alex Jones and now then you said, "Oh, you don't think that the judge was biased?" That's not the same thing.

Shakesneer: The judge was biased against Alex Jones from the start. There was no fair trial.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. So what evidence do you have that the judge was biased against Alex Jones before any proceeding started? Rather than as a result of his misconduct?

Shakesneer: You have to look at the actual trial, but—

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. I mean, you have an opinion about this, so why don't you tell me what basis this opinion is based on?

Shakesneer: This happened a long time ago. I'm just trying to bring up an example of—

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, the first example that you can think of I guess like a rigged system against conservatives is Alex Jones? The guy who is famously obfuscating his finances, refuses to disclose any discovery, refuses to follow court orders. That's your example that you want to herald?

Shakesneer: How much did they decide he was on the hook for? $8 billion? 10 billion?

Yassine Meskhout: Yeah, it was a shit ton because the instructions tell the jury, you are not just allowed to consider his obstinance. You are required to assume the worst because he refused to comply with obligations. That's what's called the discovery sanction. The same thing happened to Rudy Giuliani. He refused to comply with discovery, so the jury instructions said you are ordered, your instructions are to assume the worst because he would not comply. This is the sanction for not complying with discovery.

Shakesneer: And you don't see anything political about that at all?

Yassine Meskhout: That's not the claim. You said the parties were trying to destroy Alex Jones. Then you walked it back and said the judge was biased, and now you're walking it back further and saying, "Oh, you don't think that there's anything political about that?" Yes, there is something political about that.

Shakesneer: That is part of a pattern of defamation lawsuits being used as a political tool. That's why it's highly plausible.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. What does mean? What does it mean for a lawsuit to be used as a political tool? I don't understand what that means.

Shakesneer: You don't understand what that means?

Yassine Meskhout: No.

Shakesneer: I am saying that defamation lawsuits are being used not to extract damages on behalf of parties who feel they were defamed, but are being encouraged to target the people being accused of defamation and lie.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. You said that it's not being used to extract damages from people who are being defamed. So which part of that are you challenging? Are you saying that the people were not defamed or that they're not getting damages? I don't understand what's inconsistent with that.

Shakesneer: I'm saying that these cases are being used specifically to punish conservative activists.

Yassine Meskhout: And these conservative activists just happen to have defamed people?

Shakesneer: It's easy to conclude that they defame people when the system a priori is going to rule them guilty.

Yassine Meskhout: When did that happen?

Shakesneer: Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani.

Yassine Meskhout: Okay. Why didn't they fight their case? What's your evidence that they were ruled guilty a priori?

Shakesneer: They did fight their case. They were ruled guilty. It had nothing to do with what they said—

Yassine Meskhout: They didn't fight their case. They didn't comply with discovery orders. They didn't follow court orders, and they had a sanction. I don't understand what's confusing about that part.

Shakesneer: It's not confusing. It's part of an example, and it's why I suspect Ray Epps will get a payout.

Yassine Meskhout: Because Fox News will just refuse to fight their case? I don't understand the theory here.

Shakesneer: Fox News will roll over.

Yassine Meskhout: Why?

Shakesneer: Because they don't want the publicity of having to go through discovery and trial like they did with the 2020 election lawsuits.

Yassine Meskhout: Oh, is that because the text messages that were unearthed were embarrassing?

Shakesneer: I think they were embarrassing, but not actually defamatory.

Yassine Meskhout: If they had a case, why didn't they fight it? Why didn't they fight the Dominion lawsuit?

Shakesneer: I think Fox News rolled over.

Yassine Meskhout: Why? They were already embarrassed at that point. Right? Why couldn't they claim actually the Italian satellites thing was true or reasonably true or whatever?

Shakesneer: I think they didn't want to have to embarrass themselves more. I think they felt like it was easier. I don't know. Is there anything else?

Yassine Meskhout: So my theory is that Alex Jones lost his case because A, he defamed people. I mean, he kept calling Sandyhook people crisis actors. That's a false statement of fact, unless you want to argue that it's true and that is defamatory.

Shakesneer: He took that back and apologized for it.

Yassine Meskhout: I dont- Okay. That's not like a defense to defamation. The fact that he had so much coverage of this one topic over and over again, and he didn't walk it back until like years or months after the fact, so that's not a defense. So he did defame people. He was sued for it. In the process of being sued, he refused to comply with court orders, and then he's whining that he lost a shit ton of money or he got a monumentous verdict against him. Well, yeah. Okay. That's not an indication of the system against him. It's indication of, oh, he's a shitty defendant that doesn't comply with court orders. Anything else?

Shakesneer: Yeah, I have nothing else I want to say about this.

Yassine Meskhout: I want to genuinely thank you for being open to conversation. I wish this happened more. My intent is not to embarrass you. I want to really dissect these ideas and arguments carefully. This was intended to be a relatively narrow subject on something that you wrote about recently, and so you're familiar with and well versed. I had no intention of catching you or ambushing you off guard.

Shakesneer: No, no, no. I'm not saying you did that. I'm trying to reflect here. Right? Me personally, frankly, I'm just not a detail-oriented person. I'm just not. Right? And so I always feel slightly disadvantaged in these kinds of conversations because I'm much more interested in the big picture stuff and key ideas, which might be a way of saying I'm lazy. Right? Might be a way of saying—

Yassine Meskhout: I mean, look, I'm more than open to any criticism that you have, if my questions were unfair. I thought they were very reasonable. I asked very basic questions. Like who is the deep state? What is their motivation? Why are they doing this? I thought that's like easy. The uncharitable interpretation, when you say I'm a big picture guy, the uncharitable one is, "oh, I realize that I can't justify this, so I want to zoom out and escape or change the subject". It's always okay for me to say, "I don't know too much about this subject" or "my opinion on this is not super confident". To me, those are reasonable qualifiers. Anyone can use them.

I guess the one I take issue with is when someone makes an assertion or has a strong opinion, but they can't back it up.

Shakesneer: Yeah, that's fair.

Noah Haskell

Oct 3

I really appreciate the degree to which you are willing to dig into this stuff - J6, the deep state, the stolen election, etc. It feels like extremely useful, even necessary, work, and the idea of trying to do it myself seems absurd and overwhelming (even if I had the right temperament and skills, which I'm pretty sure I do not). So, thanks for sacrificing so much time and energy to this.

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Billy5959

Well this is remarkable. I am part-way through the transcript and I had to congratulate you on your gentle and devastating cross-examination of your friend as "expert witness" for the deep state theory. Much is being revealed about a particular mind-set that explains, to those of us in Europe who have always admired the USA, what has gone so wrong in your politics, with disastrous consequences for you and us. I read on......

Yassine Meskhout

Ray Epps Does Jay Six (Updated)

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