Original Article By BeckerNews.com:
Undercover police officers acting as agent provocateurs incited protesters to riot on January 6. The stunning development was uncovered during J6 defendant William Pope’s trial.
As reported by the Epoch Times’ Joseph Hanneman, a federal prosecutor “admitted in court papers that three D.C. Metropolitan Police Department undercover officers acted as provocateurs at the northwest steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
The report cites an admission in a March 24 filing before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras that sought to keep video footage shot by the officers under court seal. (The document now appears to have been removed.)
As noted by the report, “prosecutors accused the case defendant—William Pope of Topeka, Kansas—of an ‘illegitimate’ attempt to unmask the video as part of his alleged strategy to try the case in the news media. Pope filed a motion to remove the court seal on Feb. 21.”
“The defendant is not entitled to ‘undesignate’ these videos to share them with unlimited third parties,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Moran. “His desire to try his case in the media rather than in a court of law is illegitimate, and the government has met its burden to show the necessity of the protective order.”
“The officer clearly incited that area, and we still don’t have video from all other undercover MPD,” Pope told The Epoch Times. “And as the numerous informants in the Proud Boys trial demonstrates, we are only just beginning to scratch the surface on FBI involvement.”
The undercover video—a portion of which posted on Rumble on March 24—shows three members of the MPD’s Electronic Surveillance Unit approach the Capitol’s northwest steps. The video footage has been reviewed and is consistent with the Epoch Times report.
“This video clearly evidences undercover law enforcement officers urging the crowds to advance up the stairs and scaffolding towards the Capitol on January 6,” Pope wrote in an earlier case filing. “The government may claim that incidents like this did not happen, but the facts show they did.”
Prosecutor Moran acknowledges the thrust of Pope’s statement in a motion filed on March 24.
“The specific footage, GoPro video recorded by an MPD police officer who was stationed at the Capitol in an evidence-gathering capacity, captures the officer shouting words to the effect of, “Go! Go! Go!” Moran said.
“At other times in these videos, the officer and the two other plainclothes officers with him appear to join the crowd around them in various chants, including “drain the swamp,” “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”, and “Whose house? Our house!”
Moran argued against releasing surveillance footage, even if it contained exculpatory evidence, by claiming that it put officers at risk.
“There are very specific and highly worrisome risks associated with the specific videos the defendant seeks to share en masse,” she wrote.
“Given the highly volatile nature of the discourse surrounding these cases, releasing the identities of the officers depicted in these videos—officers the defendant now claims to have instigated the entire attack on the U.S. Capitol—would surely put the lives of those officers at risk,” the lawyer argued.
According to Pope’s motion, three undercover MPD officers approached the northwest corner of the Capitol grounds at about 1:40 p.m. on Jan. 6. Officer 1, who filmed the event, joined in with the crowd and chanted, “Drain the swamp!”
The motion can be read here:
As the motion adds, Officer 1 pushed protesters in front of him to advance on the Capitol, shouting, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, let’s go!”
Video from the bodycam of MPD officer Terry Thorne shows him urging protesters to go down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol from Trump’s speech at 12:30 p.m. He says to “keep the march going.”
“Let’s keep it going,” Thorne says. “Let’s keep the march going. Let’s keep it going. Guys, let’s keep the march going.”
After a group of men ran past the officers toward the Capitol, Officer 2 — one wearing a Trump beanie — commented, “Those guys are getting shot,” according to the motion.
Then Officer 1 joined in with the crowd chanting, “Whose house? Our house!”
Pope also describes how Officer 1 climbed over a barricade: “Officer 1 began yelling at people in front of him to ‘Go, go, go!’ As they climbed bicycle racks, Officer 1 yelled for the crowd to ‘help him up, help him up!’ followed by ‘push him up, push him up!’”
“Needing help to get up, Officer 1 asked a nearby man to give him a boost,” the motion continues. “The man gives Officer 1 a lift up, and Officer 1 says ‘Thanks, bro.’”
Officer 2 replied, “They’re not going to shoot anybody.”
Along the edge of the Capitol property, Officer 2 encouraged one protester to go up to the building. “Go join ‘em then,” he said. The man replied, “No, I’ve got my bike to guard.”
The men continued to discuss the protest as they crossed the west Capitol lawn.
“This is amazing,” Officer 2 said. Officer 1, who was shooting the GoPro video, remarked, “Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
As noted by the Epoch Times report, “nearly 30 members of the Electronic Surveillance Unit were assigned to duty on Jan. 6, some of whom were gathering evidence on crowd activity. Members wore special bands on their left wrists to identify themselves as part of the Electronic Surveillance Unit, according to the MPD’s 96-page Jan. 6 action plan.”
One video showed uniformed police explaining how to spot non-uniform police who were working the Capitol Riots.
“Dark hair, black vest, thin blue line, thing on, dark hair,” the officer said. “And he’s got like, it looked like a little 27 or something on his hip. No police identification on him at all.”
“They will have a wristband,” he added. “Their guns will have a candy stripe on the barrel. Okay. I don’t know the wristband color, but they’ll have a wristband somewhere.”
In another clip, plain clothes officers reveal their identification and confirm that they are all “armed.”
The bodycam of MPD officer Lawrence Lazewski shows him and another MPD officer expressing the belief police had been “set up” on January 6.
After nearly 90 minutes on the police line on the west front of the Capitol, Lazewski retreated to the Upper West Terrace at 2:33 p.m. He approached a group of other officers, one of whom was engaged in an animated discussion.
“They set us the [expletive] up,” the officer said. “That’s what they did. They set us up.”
“They set up [Unit] 64, absolutely, and then they ask you all to come two hours later. They set us up.”
Lazewski said, “They needed everybody right away,” to which the other officer replied, “Nah, right away, they set us the [expletive] up. We ain’t got [expletive].”
“I didn’t realize how bad … they set us up to fail,” Lazewski commented at one point.
“They did,” the other officer replied.
“There was no way we were winning that,” Lazewski said. “Now you’ve got at least four platoons that are just gassed out.”
Officer 1 also repeatedly joined in chants of “Drain the swamp!” and “Our house! Our house! Our house!” He also joined in with a “USA!” chant.
Officer 1 shouted to a protester leaving his bike at a bike rack, “C’mon, man, let’s go! Leave that sh*t.” He then got help from a protester climbing onto the steps. He continued to encourage the crowd to go towards the capitol, “C’mon, go, go, go!”
He whipped up the crowd to go forward up the stairs by repeatedly shouting, “Keep going! Keep going!” and “Keep going, keep going, come on!”
Officer 1 then apparently passed someone he knew, a man in a blue sweatshirt wearing a dark cap, protective goggles, and some type of Halloween mask.
“Tim!” the officer shouted out.
The unidentified man replied, “What’s going on, bro?”
Walking on a sidewalk next to the Capitol, Officer 1 hears a protester say, “Now they’re letting everybody in, there ain’t nowhere to go.”
Officer 1 replied, “I think it’s gonna… they’re going to trap everyone in.”
Pope also made a remarkable discovery in his video research. He spotted Ashli Babbitt being followed by Officer 2 and Officer 3 before she was killed by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd.
Her killing was captured on video by known Antifa supporter John Earl Sullivan. Sullivan, a self-style ‘revolutionary,’ positioned himself perfectly to capture the shooting on video. He also had worn a Trump hat and had shouted incendiary slogans during the riot such as, “we gotta burn this.”
The J6 trial developments follow upon explosive footage aired by Tucker Carlson, such as a video showing the “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley being led through the capitol by Capitol Police officers.
