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That's PLUD.ai slash Daily Beast and use code Beast for 10% off. Hi, I'm Molly Jungfast and welcome to the Daily Beast, the new abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at the Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer.
Our world has been turned up to down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.
Say we have an excellent show. Ryan Bussey, a former firearms executive, will join us to talk about his new book, Gunfight, My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America. And tell us how the NRA gave MAGA the blueprint for radicalizing the Reich. Then we'll talk to HuffPost senior justice reporter Ryan J.
Riley, on what's going on with the January 6 editionist and their jail time. But first, we have former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid and author of Kill Switch, the rise of the modern Senate, Adam Juntalsam. Welcome back to the new abnormal Adam. Thanks Molly.
It's good to be back. You're a frequent flyer here and it's funny because it's like, I feel like you're a little bit of a congressional soothsayer. Yes, that was my title actually. That's right.
That's right. I mean, it's a lot of the stuff you've been talking about all year is sort of looks like we're at a kind of do or die moment when it comes to the filibuster. And is that gratifying? What's gratifying is how much progress has been made on the issue over the course of the year.
And I sort of always feel two ways about it. I mean, on the one hand, it's obviously very, very frustrating that we are this close and we have very small number of senators holding us back. But I do take some comfort in stepping back and looking at the big picture because filibuster reformers and issues that people have been working on for basically 200 years. I mean, Henry Clay tried to get rid of it in 1841.
He's engaged in a debate with John Calhoun. The fact that there are somewhere around 48 Democratic senators who are ready to do this is pretty significant. And that is progress. That's how things happen.
It is do or die. We've only got short amount of time to try to get the other two senators to come around. But it's quite possible. What the fuck is wrong with Kirsten cinema?
It's a really good question because nothing she's doing really makes much sense. I mean, there's new polls out showing that her numbers are just absolutely abysmal. I'm shocked. She's begging for a primary challenge.
You've got organizations. Ruben Diago, if you're listening. Yeah, I mean, you've got like, you know, primary cinema pack. There are people who are doing this.
It's only 2021. And she's not up at 2024. But already you have people ready to primary her and looking like she would be extraordinarily vulnerable. I mean, I don't think I've seen numbers like this for an incumbent senator.
I don't think even Joel Lieberman who drove from her. That's crazy. That's bad. It's a sounding.
And so I think the only way it makes sense is if she's sort of preparing to maybe switch parties or go, I don't think she can switch to the geo-teachers. I don't think Republicans want anything to do with her. No, I think the fact of the matter is she'd never win a Republican primary. She'd get crushed because with her voting records, she voted to impeach Trump.
I mean, you can't win a Republican primary with a Republican. So it's quite hard to figure what she's doing. I don't think that there's a grandmaster strategy. I think even if she were to become an independent, that's a very career choice to make stick and make work.
Especially when at the end of the day, you're still just a one-term senator. You're not a well-known person like John McCain or Joel Lieberman, right? He's the party's presidential nominee in 2000. So I think it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Hopefully she realizes that all she needs to do is just back Biden's agenda. Nobody's asking her to support Medicare for all. It's like, do what Markely is doing. Be a strong advocate for the president's agenda.
That's the road to success. And I think there's still time for her to come to that realization. It's amazing. But she's in Europe now.
She also, I mean, she went to Boston. She ran the marathon. I mean, some of us have jobs. Right?
Right. I mean, that's what's astounding about this. This is not her pissing off the left. This is her just absolutely failing to do politics 101.
Her constituents say they can't reach her. There's another story out saying all of her allies, people who supported her in her election, haven't spoken to her in a year. And here she is popping up in Europe doing fundraising. It's just this is not good politics, not just from a lefty perspective.
This is just like basic politics 101 stuff that she is just completely failing at. It's from an idiot perspective. But I just want to circle back to this for a second, because you know a lot about what happens in the Senate and what's legal and what's not legal. How is she allowed to fundraise in Europe?
Aren't you only allowed to take money from Americans? Yeah, you can fundraise in Europe from Americans who are living overseas. But how many people is that? Not that many.
But it's like, it's something the presidential candidates do because you can make sort of one stop and pick up a lot of cash in a quick stop. Because if you've got all the Americans who are living in London to come to a fundraiser, you can scoop up. It's worth an hour or two of your time if you're already traveling. It's more unusual for a senator to go over.
And I think it kind of sounds like it's more of an excuse for a quick trip than it is like an urgently needed thing that she needs or that the DSC needs. Right. And I mean, obviously, like, why does she care about raising money when she's so underwater and she's not up for reelection for another four years? Like that's two weekends ago, she said she was going back to Arizona for a medical appointment.
And then it turned out that there was actually a quote unquote retreat, which your listeners should read as a fundraiser with high dollar donors in Arizona. I think there's a lot of medical care in Washington, DC, she put a pattern medical appointment here. But the retreat was the real reason she went back. So I think, in this case, the fundraising in Europe, maybe she would argue she's sort of helping the DSC raise a little bit of money, but probably Europe.
So she did. Yeah, I mean, just madness. So I mean, there's a lot of Dems and Decorae coverage, a lot. It sounds to me like it's more like Dems legislating.
But I'm curious to know what do you think is disarray and what do you think is legislating? Yeah, I don't see this as disarray right now. I mean, look, the legislative process is always long. It's always ugly.
I mean, you know, in 2009, when Democrats are trying to pass the Affordable Care Act, you know, we were in a similar state of disarray, it hadn't passed by now. It didn't pass until the following January. So this is all part of the process. I mean, I think it's one of those things where, you know, where we end up will determine how we look back and see this period.
If ultimately, you know, Democrats pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a reasonably robust, build back better reconciliation bill in the neighborhood of two trillion dollars, and that gets done by the end of the year, I think people will look back and say, yeah, this was a rough period, but you know, it's the sausage making and it's necessary. And ultimately, it serves a productive purpose. If however, things go off the rails and, you know, only one of those two things pass or neither of them passes, then this will have been a bad period. And I think Dems will be in disarray.
But if these things pass, you know, you're going to have signing ceremonies at the White House, you're going to have press conferences with all Democrats together. And I think this will be a look back as people barely remember this period. And it will all have been worth it. It is a profound thing that you have things that have already passed that people don't think Democrats gave them.
And I would like to talk about that for a minute, because the polling on the child tax credit is like, people think Republicans did it, they don't know who did it, they don't know where it comes from, they're not even sure they want it. I mean, that seems like a failure of messaging at the highest level. Yeah, that's that is true. I mean, look, there's a reason people sort of made fun of Trump for putting his name on the checks in 2020.
But you know, there's a reason you do that. And I thought that was actually pretty smart because you want to take credit. And that's it's political. I mean, we're doing this because it's good for families.
And it helps people stay out of poverty and it helps families who are struggling. But politically, there's nothing wrong with taking credit because it is something you did. And in this case, it is something that Democrats only did because no Republican supported these bills. So it's perfectly reasonable to brand it and to take credit.
So I think it is a little bit unsettling that the polls show. So few people understand this is something Democrats did for them. You know, the question is, what will they think on election day 2022? We had this wonderful senator on who I love.
But he said, you know, if we do good stuff, the American people will give us credit for it. And clearly, that's not true. I think that's that might be a little bit optimistic. Yeah.
Look, there's a lot to be said for, you know, I think the range is more like somewhere between, you know, you'll get a little bit of a political payoff versus you won't have a lot of political cost. And I actually think there's a lot to that. You know, if the stuff that Democrats pass is very popular, maybe people will reward them for it at the ballot box. But also, as long as it's not terribly unpopular, it's not going to cost them at the ballot box.
So the ACA is a good example. By the time it passed in 2010, it was really unpopular. And it probably cost Democrats a good number of seats in the 2022 and 2010 midterm. So, you know, they can't take it away.
Yeah, exactly. Right. Now it's so popular. There's a lot to be said for do know, hard, you know, as long as the child tax credit is so people like or don't mind, it's unpopular.
Like that's kind of a win. But I don't understand how giving people money is not popular. I mean, I don't understand, like it's $300 a kid. If you're giving them money, you're taking children out of poverty and they're like, I don't know if I want that.
It's a lot. But I mean, they literally, I mean, there is, they should people should spend, and I think we'll probably spend millions and millions of dollars on advertising to try to make people understand this is something that Democrats did for them between now and two. It's so hard to break through. You know, people spend a few seconds a day at most pay attention politics.
But I think there will be a really robust attempt to brand this as things that Democrats delivered before the 2022 elections roll around. And I think the effect will be somewhere between, you know, not costing Democrats a lot and then hopefully maybe having a little bit of payoff. So, Adam, I've seen this tweet about the new updated version of your book and talk about white supremacists forged the filibuster. That quote, particularly shocking, can you explain it?
I think what's important to know about the filibuster is that its origins are deeply rooted in efforts to maintain white supremacy. And there's a lot of debate among historians over exactly when the filibuster started, who was responsible for first filibuster. You know, part of the reason there's ambiguity there is that it wasn't called filibuster wasn't in the Constitution. They didn't have a name for it.
And so there were lots of sort of versions of obstruction that were happening in the early years of Congress that people sort of retroactively go back and try to say, well, was this the first filibuster or was this the first filibuster? Because nobody who was doing it at the time called it a filibuster because that name didn't exist until September, the 1850s and 1860s. My take on it as I lay out in the book is that, you know, of all of the people who sort of dabbled in obstruction, John C. Calhoun is the one who most clearly established what we today would identify as the modern filibuster.
And this is about linking not just the practice of obstruction, but also sort of principled and rhetorical justification for what you're doing. And he is the one who sort of connected these two threads in terms of lofty defenses of minority rights, vastly overstated from what the framers intended, combined with the tactic of standing on the floor, working with allies to and Calhoun, you know, of course, was the leading advocate of white supremacy in the Senate at his time. This is a guy who even by the standards of the time was it was a particularly noxious resist. Well, I know because my husband lived in Calhoun in college and has made it and is obsessed with, you know, how he there should be no dorms named after.
Yeah, I mean, look, nobody was covering themselves in glory in the 40s and on the issues of race, but he was bad even by the standards of time. So that's that's why I say what I say about white supremacy. Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense. And again, it's a way to stop progress, which is why Republicans love it so much.
That's right. Right, because I think like fundamentally Republicans don't like to legislate anyway. Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, Calhoun was the origins, you know, in the middle of the 19th century.
And then under the Jim Crow era, after reconstruction before the civil rights movement, you know, the tide of white supremacy was even more explicit because, you know, the filibuster was everyone's in a while, it would come into play on bills unrelated to civil rights. But in all of those cases, whatever the issue was, was resolved and the bills had gone to pass. The only bills that were stopped in their tracks that were never passed because they were forced because they're defeated by the civil rights bills. And that was the case for about 100 years.
And, you know, the folks who were doing this were explicit about their intention to maintain white speech, Richard Russell of Georgia, who was the leading practitioner of the filibuster during this period, testified at a rules committee here in 1949 that the main reason he wanted to preserve the filibuster was to block the vote. So the really, this was a time when people were very comfortable talking about their desire to maintain white supremacy on the Senate. And so, you know, the tide got even more explicit as time. How disappointed are you in the Senate parliamentarian?
Well, I think I'm not that disappointed because I sort of knew this was, this was why I thought it was going to happen. I'm sort of, in some ways more disappointed in Democrats for not dissipating it. I mean, people often say, well, would Harry Reid have done differently on this or that? And one thing that I do suspect he might have done differently was perhaps place the parliamentarian earlier in the year.
Like after January 5th, when it was clear that Democrats had won Georgia and were going to have a 50-50 majority, it might have been a good move to make sure that you had somebody in that position be more favorable to your outcome. So, well, you know, Mitch McConnell would have, she'd be 100%. And I think it's one of those things where you take a hit at the time because the sort of beltway press would say, oh, you're, you know, you're replacing this person, you know, because you want to get more favorable rulings, he's like, well, that's right. And you take a hit for like 12 hours or something, but then, and nobody really notices those stories anyway.
But then, you know, for the rest of the time you're in power, you have the possibility of getting your stuff now. So that is, I think, a missed opportunity there. And I do think there's Elizabeth McConaughey's the current parliamentarian is relatively conservative on a lot of these issues. And I think we're going to get a lot of favorable rulings out of Yeah, I mean, and meanwhile, the other guy the Republicans had was for Arctic drilling and reconciliation.
But, Kase de Ross, yes, it's all in the eye of the beholder. We just need to know when I is more favorable. That's right. Thank you so much for joining us, Adam.
This was great. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Hey, folks, in case you didn't know every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Insight, the Daily Beast membership program.
This week, we'll talk to two Democratic candidates for Congress. We're taking on some of GOP's worst congressmen and trying to win back those districts for the Dems to hear this along with all of our past bonus episodes and gain access to all the Daily Beast's fearless journalism and to newevnormal. That's newevnormal. The Daily Beast dot com Ryan Bussey is the author of gunfight, my battle against the industry that radicalized America.
Welcome to the new abnormal Ryan. Thank you so much for having me, Molly John Fassen, Jesse, great to be here. So you have a book that is like very much of our alley, and I want to talk to you first about how did you get into firearms? Yeah, so I think I'm a good part of my book is explaining that to folks who don't quite understand what the near religious devotion to firearms are by so many people.
And, well, it's everywhere now, right? But fly over country especially. And the way I got into it was I grew up on a real ranch and I joke that I was born with a shotgun and one hand and rifle in the other. That's a bit of hyperbole, but it's probably not far from the truth.
And a lot of the best parts of my youth were spent hunting with my dad or shooting with my brother or, you know, they were centered around firearms and guns became to us, this sort of thing that represented the best parts of your life or what you wanted things to be or what you hoped things would be. And so after I graduated from college, I thought, why not get into something that I really love? And so it was kind of a dream for me really. It was like, is that a dog in the background?
You must you are now centered on this podcast. You must explain to us what kind of dog I'm sorry, but I've got her dogs and I've got wire hair, a German wire hair and a Britney spaniel, both of which see a deer out the window and they're very distressed by it. Excellent. All right, so continue.
So yeah, so I got into the industry. Like a kid who wanted to play baseball, it was almost like I made the major leagues. And so it was a dream job for me, but early on the industry, you know, in my time in the industry, which I got in 1995, it was still infused with this sort of responsibility and decency, much like our politics was in the way back years of the 1990s, right? There were just norms and lines you didn't cross and the firearms industry was certainly like that.
There were norms and lines that were not crossed. And sort of the through line of the book is that the NRA and the firearms industry developed this modern radicalization that we see in our politics. It just, you know, I lived through a time that preceded what we have now in Trumpism by about 10 years because Wayne Lockyer and the NRA essentially turned the firearms industry into radicalized politics. So you talk about some of the techniques they used to do that and how they paralleled what was going on in recent years.
Yeah. So the parallels are just frightening. You know, there are all the things that you see in Trumpism were first developed by the firearms industry. And first and first and first and first and first and when I think is this embrace of conspiracy theory.
And I think that the NRA sort of stumbled on it, right? During the Obama years, there were ads and speeches and everything where NRA would say things like, President Obama is going to rewrite the Constitution. And I think they said it kind of looking around the room and then people cheered and they're kind of like, holy shit, they believe this. Okay, let's keep going.
How about President Obama is going to outlaw hunting ammunition and they cheered. And then President Obama is going to disavow your right to own any sort of firearm and they cheered, you know, and they just, and then they wrapped a flag around it and then they put a bible in its hand and people just kept cheering. And I think they were like, oh, holy shit, we were just sort of making this up on the fly. But people believe it.
QAnon really, I think has its roots in winglock years in our ace beaches of 15 or 18 years ago. The other one is this sort of casual embrace or use of racism. And it's very much like the Trump voters who will claim, well, we're not racist. And I think in their heart, they're correct, but they're okay with using racism or they're okay with forgiving racism to drive hate and fear.
I detail many examples of that in the book. And then the last one I think that's extremely important and pertinent is that the NRA developed this police state totalitarian 100% with this or against this culture that is now employed by the NRA and by right wing Republican politics. Nobody is 99% right there either 0% or 100%. And that's the NRA really started and perfected that.
You can never be pro gun enough. So if you say, well, I just want to consider more background checks, you're out, you're done, you're not sufficiently loyal. So those are all things that were developed by the NRA and really handed off to the Republicans and the Trump administration. So one of the things I think you talk about well in the book is like outsiders, I come from a family of anti gun activists.
You often wonder is a cognitive dissonance to not say the pro-efforation and ease of access to firearms versus just general greed. Can you talk about what your experience with the industry was of seeing how people are with it? I think there is fourth cognitive dissonance. I think there, this is not an anti gun book per say, it is an anti gun radicalization book.
And I think that the NRA wants to lean on the sort of respectable decent parts of gun ownership as a way to provide social cover for the parts that aren't very defendable. Once you overlay greed and quarterly capitalism with this sort of embrace of we will do anything to win the next election or make the next sale, then you you can venture self that you're under attack from Jesse's family, right? Then you can convince yourself of anything. We're now the Americans standing up against the big bad socialists trying to take our lifestyle away.
The truth is everything in this democracy is freedom balanced with responsibility. And firearms in this country can exist just fine if there is responsibility balanced with the freedom. But right now, I think that there's frankly, there are a bunch of people who believe that freedom should run a monk or there should be no responsibility. And if you haven't figured out, that ain't working very well.
It's interesting that we do think we find ourselves in a situation where the gun lobby is you can't negotiate with them at all. There is no negotiation, right? Just like there is no negotiation with Trump is or with Mitch McConnell, or that's why these gun politics that I lived 15 years ago as they were developed, like they are our politics now. Mitch McConnell is not his strategy is no, that's the strategy.
And that's the same thing with the NRA, even when they know that it's morally reprehensible and societally reprehensible to do what they're doing, it's all for the short term. They'll do anything to win the next election literally anything they'll sacrifice anything, apparently now, even our democracy. Because if you didn't notice the people in January 6, they had a couple of different kinds of flags. They had MAGA and US flags and Trump flags.
And then the other type of flag they had were AR15 flags. They weren't the barbecue girls, they weren't their favorite cars, they weren't their favorite sports stars, they were AR15s. That is the whole gun thing is literally at the center of the political radicalization that we see today. You seem to point to Columbine as like an inflection point where things could have changed.
Yeah. Well, I think right then, they were higher up in the marketing behind the marketing of the NRA that realized, wait a second, this is bad. But it can be used to gin up fear because the worse the event, the more nationalized the event is, the more horrific the event is, the more there could be political activity which we could use to scare the hell out of people. So instead of just working to do the right thing, which I mean, at that point, the only thing that need to be done was to close the gun show loophole, which is a minor policy thing.
But instead of doing that, the NRA ratcheted up the fear machine and basically told everybody, no, we're not just talking about that. They're trying to remove all American gun ownership, right? And once they realized that that sort of horror and fear could be used to drive the next election or make the next gun sale, we were eventually we're going to be on the path to where we are today. Yeah, that makes sense.
Sandy Hook was another sort of inflection point like that. I saw in Sandy Hook so much, like the industry really wrestled in the NRA, you know, a week later, LaPierre came out and waved his belly finger around and said, we need basically more more armed people in schools. Right. And I'm like, what the fuck man?
I think a lot of people work in the industry with that way too, but eventually, you know, they jumped on board. Do you think that there's any I mean, if you can't get reform or some kind of control over guns after killing all of these kindergartners? I mean, do you think there's any hope? And especially because I mean, the NRA right now is pretending to be bankrupt.
Yeah, they're pretending well, they aren't morally bankrupt. But I mean, what's happening right now is they are sort of trying to shop this idea that they're bankrupt, right? So I think the NRA and gun politics are very much like Trump is Trump didn't win the election. But again, if we haven't noticed, he's still ruling the Republican right and the NRA is still doing that in gun politics.
It's as if they set this little campfire by which everybody thought they could stay warm and then they woke up and like, holy shit, it's dry and the winds blowing like the place is on fire. And even if the NRA is weakened in its current state, the fire that it let across the country is not weakened or cooling off in any way, I do think that there's hope because there are so many gun owners and I think it will it isn't incumbent on reasonable gun owners to stand up and say, we're not down with this shit. Like responsible gun ownership? Yes, hunting?
Yes. My rights to own a gun? Yes. This sort of irresponsible ship where guns are at the center of sacrifice and democracy, are we done even care about little kids being shot?
No, we're not down with that. So I believe that there is hope because there are tens of millions of gun owners who just aren't down with this shit. And when they stand up and take the mic back from the loudest people in the room, unfortunately, those are the people that have control of the politics on the gun side and the Republican party now, it doesn't take all of them. I mean, it just takes two or three or five or 10% across the country to make a huge difference in our politics.
And I think we're near a point where the NRA and the right have jumped the shark on that on this because you can't watch people marching with the Capitol with the R15 flags and attack Capitol police officers and not know something is very fucked up. Right. I agreed. So but one thing with the weakening of the NRA, when NRA TV came out, I was like, Oh God, we're now having a new echelon of hell and that echelon of hell did disappear.
You talk a lot about that in this book. Can you tell us what you saw there with the NRA TV in like Parkland? Yeah. So I really believe that the NRA by that time, an Ackerman McQueen who was advertising agency behind the NRA, they figured out that, okay, we have these national tragedies that happen once every year, 18 months, six months, two days, whatever it is, and they have driven sales and politics.
We use those to gin up and not fear. We have black president, we use that to gin up fear. But now in Parkland, we have our preferred candidate who's not going to take anybody's guns and these Parkland kids, we basically demonize them enough. So what do we do?
Oh, let's start NRA TV. Tell everybody to if they're out of people to hate black presidents, legislators, whoever that is, let's tell them to hate their neighbor. And that famous Dana Lausch, you know, cleanse, this is the truth bullshit. That was essentially, I thought that the hate your neighbor had because we had run out of people just efficiently hate, right?
So to gin up the next election, we had to say hate your neighbor, even better if it's a gay kid or a black girl or like even better, right? Thankfully, that fell a little flat. But you know, Trump had, you know, society handed him one more card, which was COVID and then the George Floyd murder. And when that conflagration hit our country, gun sales fucking exploded.
When I started in the industry, not all that long ago, you know, guns sales were in the three to four million units per year, the year in and around COVID and George Floyd, Black Lives Matter rallies, there were 23 million guns sold. Oh my God. And so if you think that turmoil hatred, fear doesn't drive guns sales, just think about the worst time in your life in American society and then overlay gun sales with it. It's a dead nut smash.
Why so when did you decide to leave the business? And what was the moment? I wrestle with that a lot in the book. I think sort of the defining last straw for me was Inauguration Day 2017 that happened to correspond with Shacho, which is the large industry trade show, one of the largest trade shows in the world.
It was in Las Vegas that year. And inauguration day to day the Trump gave his American carnage speech was on that last day of that trade show. And the industry trade group, the NSF, essentially stopped the trade show, they didn't stop it, but they pumped the audio for the inauguration into the entire Las Vegas Convention Center so that everybody could stop and praise the Trump. And I watched what was usually a frenetically paced trade show environment come to a stop as if it was like a Catholic mass.
And I'm like, holy shit, what have we done? And it took me a bit longer to get out because I continue to try to fight back and I still thought I could have influence. And I was losing a battle. I think that's the moment I decided I got to get out of here.
So what do you think people can do to try to weaken the NRA and the messaging that guns should just be every single place and crossfires just going to be part of our lives? Yeah, I think the first thing we need to do is frankly what you guys have been doing on this podcast for a long time, which is basically called bullshit to bullshit. You don't just let pass right? It's not your best interest to let your family member just spew out some sort conspiracy theory of Thanksgiving dinner because you don't want to say anything bad at Uncle Jim bullshit.
That is leading us into a very bad place. I think too, that gun policy advocates, like Jesse's family, they need to understand that there are good people who value guns in a good and healthy and safe way. And we need to empower them, not even as and try to understand a little bit more, but I think that good people are going to stand up and I'm very hopeful about that. Well, it seems like the people who need to be advocating for gun control and are people in the Republican Party who have guns.
Right. Do you really think that we're going to have a victor or ban sort of a country where just a few roving lunatics have the gun rights and you're going to have a mean, these people, the type of Carlson's other world need to wake the fuck up. There is not going to be any there's not going to be any constitution or any amendment much less the second amendment if these people get their way. I mean, it is so funny that, you know, he did a whole week of victor or ban is great in Hungary.
And then, you know, he didn't realize that you can't get a gun there or you have to get a fax. All the things that Tucker Carlson holds so dear are actually things he can't happen. Well, I think you were pulling back the veil on what the right really wants. We want this proto.
We don't but they're obviously advocating for this sort of proto fascist world where they pick a few of their shock troops as Stephen and said, you know, those are the people who get the guns. Everybody else doesn't. So I mean, if you want to have, I mean, actually being responsibly pro gun at this point is being responsibly pro American and pro constitution because that's the way our rights are going to exist. The same a free speech.
You really think you're going to have free speech if these people get their way. They don't want free speech. They don't want you to have this podcast. I do think we're at this dire sort of existential crisis in the country where these are the real questions we're going to ask ourselves.
Yeah, no, I mean, I also think we're going to need good guys on the right. I mean, that's what it sounds like. What you're saying is that we need good guys on the right and I don't know exactly how we will that into existence. Yeah, I think and Sarah, my wife who was in the book is very, you know, very fond of saying Ryan, you're going to have to kick down the store.
Like it can't be people. I don't mean to be a short of Jordan against Jesse, but Jesse's not going to be able to kick down the door right. Somebody has to kick it down from the inside. Thank you, Ryan.
Thanks so much for having me guys. Love you show. Thank you. Ryan J.
Riley is the senior justice reporter at Huffington Post. Welcome to the new abnormal Ryan. Thanks so much for having me. You have been just really brilliant about reporting on the only people who have gotten punished for the capital insurrection, the foot soldiers.
And I think you've done a meticulous job and I'm curious to know how you got started doing this. Yeah, you know, I mean, as soon as January 6 happened, it was pretty clear that this was going to take over my beat. And initially, you know, I was kind of not too happy about that, but I think ultimately it ended up being just a really fascinating investigation because this is the largest probe in FBI history. It just has so many different layers and so many different approaches and just a lot of really sort of unexplored areas of the law.
And I mean, every day, there's a new charge, there's a new guilty plea, there's a new court hearing, there's just development after development after development. And it takes, you know, a lot of journalism effort and the efforts of other journalists as well to sort of get a handle on this and really give Americans a sense of what's happening in this investigation. And you know, I still don't think that most people recognize just the sheer magnitude of this investigation. We're talking about over nearly 650 people charged at this point, but in reality, based on the work of online sluze, that's only about one fourth of the total universe of potential defendants, because there were about 2000 people who actually entered the Capitol.
And then you put on top of that another around 500 people who assaulted police outside the Capitol, engaged in some other sort of criminal activity that would be charged with outside of the Capitol. So there really is just this massive caseload that is coming down. It's already sort of overwhelming the system. I think it's really important to pay attention to what's happening there.
And you know, as sort of justice, this is a sense for what happened on January 6th. I think it's really exciting the way that you've been. And I think a lot of people have been a little more open to Internet sluze. Have, did you have qualms about that?
I did. I mean, initially, I think that the story that initially always comes to mind is the Boston Marathon bombing and sort of some of the bad sluze thing work that was done there. Well, I'm just going into that a little more, with a little more detail for people who don't totally know the story. Yeah.
So I mean, initially, everyone was trying to identify the two individuals who obviously were involved in the Boston Marathon bombing. And there was just a massive amount of people who were focused on a couple of different suspects. And that went in a bunch of different bad directions. And people were misidentified and thought to people who they weren't.
In the Capitol case, it's actually at this stage, it's a little bit of the reverse where there's more of like a core group of people who have done this for months and know that no things really well know the Capitol building really well, know the suspects really well, who are now seeking to identify an even larger group of defendants. And because they've done this for so long, even when I'm dealing with people who I don't actually know their real identity, I do know their track record. And I know that they have a provable track record, this person with X-screen name, I know where they're from, I know I think about them, but I know that they've given me good information in the past and open source information in the past. And that's the thing about these sort of investigations, is you can check the work, you can look at what they found online and just basically compare and contrast that.
And so it's something where you are able to vet this information. At this stage in the investigation, it doesn't make a ton of sense for me to identify a bunch of people who haven't been arrested yet because that's only going to step on an FBI probe. And also, there's more than a thousand, that's what you're saying. Yeah, I think, well, clearly, I mean, if they don't clear a thousand, something went seriously wrong because there's just so many people who the FBI has all the information they need to charge them, it's just a matter of when that will actually come about.
Yeah, so I mean, like, I think that now at this stage, it's more just sort of waiting for that sort of pipeline to open up a little bit because there's just basically things are being sort of jammed up right now in the system because the system can't really handle this capacity. So I know it's frustrating to some of the solutions that the FBI has been at least trying behind the scenes to give them encouragement that their work matters and show them the impact that it's having when charges ultimately come out. It's so, I mean, it is right. People are very pissed off that things are taking so long and I don't think they realize that the wheels of justice are not the same as there's protocol for this stuff.
Totally. And I think not only is there protocol, but just even organizing the logistics of an arrest is a tremendous lift, right? Because a lot of these FBI field offices are often centered in cities and major metropolitan areas, places where there's a significant population. A lot of the suspects live in pretty remote areas of the country and that makes these organizing some of these arrests all the more difficult because there has to be local authorities involved.
They have to bring an FBI team from elsewhere to execute an arrest. So there just really is a tremendous amount of logistical work that's happening behind the scenes that can often be frustrating. But it is, you know, it's just bizarre because I'm monitoring a number of these social media accounts of people who will eventually be arrested and they just don't see it coming. Like they're just sort of going about their normal day.
The case that really comes in mind is Logan Barnhart who was identified dragging a Metropolitan Police Officer down the stairs of the Capitol. This is a guy who was a bodybuilder and had this pretty significant online presence and was pretty covered up when he actually took part in that attack. But at one point when he was at the actual Trump rally by the White House, didn't have his sunglasses on. And all it took was a camera briefly moving by him for them to get that perfect image of him and then find all those images through facial recognition of him on the cover of romance novels and him and bodybuilding magazines.
Yeah, so like, and but he didn't see that coming in all and he just sort of kept, kept posting. He didn't have anything. He had one post I think that like commentary like people don't know what really happened at the Capitol sort of referencing him, him being there. But, but then he also had all of his items of clothing that he worked at the Capitol where all all those components were in his other his other Instagram post.
So he had that evidence just sort of sitting out there online thinking that he was never going to be caught. And you know, will be hold sleuths or working on this behind the scenes. It's so I find this totally fascinating. Some of the pieces I've read that you've written and the reporting that you've done, these people some of these people are like Trump told me to do this.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the people were saying that they were invited to to the Capitol by the president. That's been a major line of defense. And I think that especially you've seen defense prosecutors make that pretty clear and say, Hey, like, you know, this is the president's fault. Ultimately, why are we going after the pawns?
I mean, you know, if you look at a lot of the defense attorneys, it's not perhaps not surprising. Right. Even where you know, DC defense attorneys sort of fall into a certain political category. But it is sort of interesting to have how those consequences have been dispensed, because of course, like the people most morally responsible really for what happened at the Capitol are the ones who are facing the least, you know, actual real world legal consequences for it.
And these people who just sort of, you know, we're following a leader to a certain extent are the ones who are really having their lives torn apart. And the collateral consequences, I think, are not something to, you know, to downplay. People have varying feelings about some of the sentences that have been handed down. But you know, overall, I think the consequences publicly of having your name associated with this for the rest of your life are going to be somewhat significant.
But if you I just want to dig down on this for one second, because it's just curious to me, if these people are being judged, you know, if there are some sentences that really do sort of hit at this idea that it really wasn't their fault that they were taking direction from, you know, they were doing what they were told, how is it possible that then there isn't a larger criminal probe against the people who were telling them to what to do? Like, I mean, if you had a drug dealer who went to jail and said, well, I'm dealing drugs for this guy, you would then go to the guy who you were doing. Do you know what I mean? Like, just talk me through why this doesn't like trickle up.
Yeah. I mean, the first amendment concerns, I think, are the major hurdle there. The only way that someone could be really charged is if they were involved in specific planning for violence beforehand. And there's just not a ton of least public evidence about that at the moment.
That might be something that we see come out more. But in reality, you look at Trump's speech and he was, he made a comment in there about, you know, peacefully, peacefully, right, like that would gut any case against him, even if he did it in sort of a sarcastic tone, because of the, you know, the first amendment implications there, right? Like, you should be able to organize a rally or a march to the Capitol. You should be able to say people should be socially march to the Capitol.
That's right. You know, that's so people were acting upon. It's kind of what makes the conspiracy theories about a stolen election so potentially, you know, I mean, obviously, what we saw ultimately, they had consequences, right? Like, because if you actually believe that the election was stolen, logically, this isn't that unexpected of an outcome.
If you actually believe that there is this massive criminal conspiracy to steal America from under your feet, it would make sense that you would do something about that. And you didn't just go down there and hold up a little sign because you thought this was 1776 2.0, you might actually do something about that. So, I think that's just what made this so volatile and such a dangerous mix. And it's sort of, you know, the ultimate question that I think might be answered by the January 6 committee is what more evidence did the FBI miss or what warning signs did the FBI miss in the lead up to January 6.
So talk to me about, and it's a really good question, talk to me about the very important people, the VIPs of the insurrection. The VIPs of the insurrection. Who, like the people who actually were in the, the VIP list that was recently released and it had Bannon's daughter and it had. Yeah, you had a lot of really important, important figures in that.
I think that in order to connect that the criminal activity is going to be still a little bit of a heavier lift. Right. You might have some people who recognize the potential for violence and it would certainly be interesting to see what some of those communications were on the morning of, I think, realize that all of these people who showed up to this rally were, you know, dressed in military gear and sort of ready and willing to fight. There are a number of figures, I think, including, you know, Melissa Carone, obviously, who became sort of infamous and was parodied on Saturday Night Live, who it's just sort of bizarre that someone, that little credibility would have been put forward by the screw by supposed not all that surprising.
Ultimately, when you realize that the content that they were actually putting forward and the reliability of all of the information they were putting forward, it's not surprising. I suppose that they would put someone who was so clearly unreliable in such an important position. But you also look at people like, you know, state Senator Doug Mastriano from Pennsylvania who was on that list. And he actually, I mean, in another scenario, I was not, yeah, and he was with him.
So he's been. And again, and again, yeah, I saw him in the Senate report. That's right. Yeah.
And he also, like, he powed around with a bunch of these people who were, you know, domestic terrorists, right? He, the one guy who was arrested actually the day of the hearing over the summer where the four police officers testified, there's this guy who had been around for months and was going to a Rudy Giuliani rally that Doug Mastriano was using as a fundraiser and, you know, posed with photos for him. And this is a guy who was clad in military gear, had a bullhorn, was saying steal their guns about police officers, charge the police line, try to rip away the fence, pepper spray them, and then bragged about how he naced the cops right back on video afterwards. And this will end like in the months afterwards, while he's on the FBI, one of us is going to Doug Mastriano events.
And Doug Mastriano himself was on the legally on the, on the US Capitol property during the insurrection. And in any other scenario where police weren't overwhelmed or where it wasn't such a lift for prosecutors to be able to bring thousands and thousands and thousands of cases home could have been subject to arrest for that easily. He was past the barricades. He's, you know, unlawfully in an area he wasn't supposed to be.
He won't be charged for it because prosecutors really have the wherewithal or the ability to charge, you know, 9,000 people who are illegally on the grounds of the Capitol. But he was breaking the wall that day. And it's just, it's so incredible that, you know, there haven't been any consequences for someone, for someone like him really legally who brought all of these people to the Capitol and people who committed crimes that day. Yeah, it's great.
Talk to me about Ali Alexander. Yeah, I think that Ali is really going to be one of those tougher cases and raises a lot of first amendment issues. And what's interesting about a lot of these cases is that in the recent legal maneuvers around, say, you know, a charge of sort of riling up, right, riding up a mob to commit violence, a lot of the test cases that have tried their actually against flat out white supremacist who were basically, we're inciting a riot. And a lot of the recent legal maneuvering has been about white supremacists.
And now because of, I think, some of those cases in, in the federal appeals court, that's actually offering somewhat of a protection to a lot of these defendants who, you know, there might be an arguable case that they were somehow, you know, inciting and, you know, including Trump himself, if you were to try to make that incitement charge against him, that's sort of the legal framework that you're running into. And the Justice Department has had some issues. And some of those legal findings have been, you know, overturned, bringing sort of an incitement charge against individuals who weren't directly involved in criminal activity personally, even if they inspired it in some way. So yeah, and the legislative history of that also is really fascinating.
So there's just a ton of fascinating and really, you know, intellectually intriguing components to this investigation overall. Yeah, it's fascinating. And you don't think that those congressmen who were, who spoke at the rally like Mo Brooks and Paul Gossar, America's least favorite dentist, you don't think those guys will sort of get in trouble? I would be shocked if they were because I think that they just run headfirst into those first amendment concerns.
And you know, unless there was an explicit, very, very explicit arguments that go down their smash those windows, break into that and that building and, you know, drag lawmakers out by their necks, I don't think you're going to see the Justice Department go down that way. Because they frankly, it probably wouldn't work out well for them. In the end, they probably lose those cases ultimately. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
This was great. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it. What's crazier than QAnon?
We're outlandish than Pizzagate and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz. The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from the Daily Beast tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes and straight up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday, hosts Swinsuba Sang and Will Summer checking in on the movement of the radical right.
Head to thedillybeast.com slash podcast for your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. So Ryan, who is your fat guy today? So I'm so happy to stand in here for Jesse today.
My fuck that guy is one bony-fingered guy who used to run around the NRA convention with very expensive tailored suits. And he struck me as sort of a worn out junior high school principal. But again, with much nicer suits and sort of a stretch skin sort of face that you might get by sitting on a yacht too much. Or maybe he got that by being in front of the cameras after Sandy Hook and all these sorts of tragedies where he said things like the only thing that will stop this is more people with guns in our schools.
So as you might guess, my fuck that guy is one Wayne Lopier. How I feel so, so honored to say Wayne, fuck you. It is a very good choice, I think, and extremely non-controversial. My fuck that guy is a multi-shirt wearing subpoena ignoring television producing autocrat by the name of Steve Bannon.
Congress is trying to figure out whether they're going to have to lock him up. He's trying to claim executive privilege, even though he hasn't been working in the executive branch in more than a thousand days. And for that, and Jesse, don't have to be what I have. I mean, he also did recently say that he has 20,000 shock troops to start the coup next to government, which is really lovely.
So really, we have to remember, he is the guy who is the top of the human centipede of feeding all the shit to people about that we need to have a coup in America to install the right as an authoritarian state. Also, he doesn't take showers. No, don't take showers. No, don't take showers.
All right, I think you're on to something. Now, the three-shirt method, this would make sense like the first shirt is absorption, second shirt is suppression of smell, third shirt is just in case. I think you figured it out. All right, I'm not.
Yeah, I mean, it's not reported elsewhere. I'm not participating in this, but I do think he gets a hardy thought that guy, Steve Bannon. On that note, we'll wrap this episode with a new abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science.
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