Ep 240 | Should Pardon ALL Jan. 6 Defendants?! | John Strand | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Glenn Beck Program – Ep 240 | Should Pardon ALL Jan. 6 Defendants?! | John Strand

Introduction

In Episode 240 of The Glenn Beck Program, hosted by Glenn Beck of the Blaze Podcast Network, John Strand shares his harrowing experience surrounding the events of January 6, 2021. Strand, who authored the book Patriot Plea, discusses whether all January 6th defendants deserve pardons, presenting his case as a victim of what he perceives as political injustice.

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John Strand’s Journey to January 6th

John Strand begins by recounting his background as an artist, actor, and model in Los Angeles. The COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 marked a turning point, prompting him to become politically active. He organized the Beverly Hills Freedom Rally, which garnered significant attention when President Trump retweeted it, drawing tens of thousands in support of the freedom and liberty movement. Through this involvement, Strand met Dr. Simone Gold of America's Frontline Doctors, leading to his role as communications director and security guard during their speaking tour.

Notable Quote:

• "The truth is never simple, but the truth is important." [00:04]

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The Events of January 6th

Strand details his presence at the Capitol on January 6th, explaining that they were scheduled to speak alongside various Congress members and national figures. Upon arriving, he found the venue disorganized, with no stage or crowd control measures in place, likening the situation to a Super Bowl being canceled last minute with thousands of fans left bewildered.

Notable Quote:

• "It was as if you had purchased tickets planned for a year in advance with travel and arrangements to go to the Super Bowl. And then you pile into the stadium and literally at game time, an announcement says, so sorry, folks, the team didn't make the plane, so they're not here to play the game." [05:09]

As the day progressed, the atmosphere shifted dramatically when a boom resembling a bomb caused panic within the tightly packed crowd. Strand describes the chaos that ensued, including the sudden opening of the Capitol's heavy Columbus doors, which allowed the surge of people into the building.

Notable Quote:

• "The boom sounded like a bomb went off and the crowd panicked... and I couldn’t see it. Too many people pressed around me." [09:43]

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Arrest and Imprisonment

Following the events, Strand was swiftly charged with four nonviolent misdemeanors. He criticizes the handling of his arrest, highlighting the lack of communication and prolonged solitary confinement, which he deems as "cruel and unusual punishment." Strand expresses frustration over being placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list and the subsequent abuse he endured, including being denied phone calls and subjected to isolation.

Notable Quotes:

• "I never forget my first time being on an FBI Most Wanted list." [21:38]
• "It was so tyrannical, it was so totalitarian that I didn't really expect justice or reasonability at all." [31:41]

Strand recounts the brutal conditions of solitary confinement, describing it as suffocating and despair-inducing, akin to being trapped in a submarine lost at sea.

Notable Quote:

• "Imagine you were on a submarine... stuck in this concrete closet in the bottom of the ocean." [50:00]

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Trial and Conviction

Strand was charged under Title 18, U.S. Code § 1512, which pertains to tampering with a witness, evidence, or informant. He argues that this charge was misapplied, emphasizing that the law was not intended for political protesters, as confirmed by former President George Bush. Despite his assertions of innocence and lack of criminal intent, Strand was convicted and sentenced to 32 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

Notable Quotes:

• "When the legislature passed 1512 into law... they closed that loophole and said, if you delegate your tampering of a witness... the third party can be liable." [34:18]
• "Prison is a sledgehammer." [35:57]

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Views on the Justice System and Call for Pardons

Strand vehemently criticizes the January 6th prosecutions as politically motivated and an abuse of prosecutorial power. He advocates for pardoning all defendants involved, arguing that the entire process is flawed and tainted by corruption. Strand emphasizes the erosion of the "innocent until proven guilty" principle and calls for a systemic overhaul to restore integrity and justice.

Notable Quotes:

• "We have to reclaim the essence of innocent until proven guilty." [37:58]
• "Every single person should be released. Because you can't go back and say, well, this guy was wrong... So how do we do anything other than say, everybody out, everybody's out." [59:20]

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Conclusion: The Patriot Plea

In his concluding remarks, Strand underscores the necessity of individual courage and collective action to combat governmental corruption. He draws parallels to the American Revolution, advocating for a "remnant" of patriots dedicated to upholding constitutional principles. Strand's message is a call to action for Americans to reclaim their constitutional republic by overcoming the "spirit of evil" and centralized power.

Notable Quotes:

• "We just have to exercise it." [76:24]
• "The patriot plea, right? That's my call, is that we need to raise up a remnant." [78:01]

Strand encourages listeners to engage actively in preserving America's foundational values, emphasizing that even a small, dedicated group can effect meaningful change.

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Final Thoughts

John Strand's testimony on The Glenn Beck Program offers a poignant and controversial perspective on the January 6th events and their aftermath. By sharing his personal ordeal and advocating for widespread pardons, Strand invites listeners to reconsider the complexities surrounding the Capitol breach and the subsequent legal actions taken against its participants.

For more insights, listeners are encouraged to explore John Strand's book, Patriot Plea, available at johnstrand.com.

Transcript

[Glenn Beck]

And now a Blaze Media podcast.

[John Strand]

Are the January 6th defendants heroes or villains? Did they all storm the Capitol with the intent to dismantle democracy? Or were there patriots that were there, these patriots that were caught in a trap laid by their own government? Or is it a little of both? I'm not sure. The truth is never simple, but the truth is important. Today I have a man with me who spent a year in prison, four months in solitary confinement. That is the definition of cruel unusual punishment. Now he spent all that time in prison. The Supreme Court is the one that released him for what came down to four nonviolent misdemeanors. Sound fair? I think he's clearly a victim of injustice. But does that make him a patriot? Should we take his plans to restore justice for the January 6th defendants seriously? Should President Trump. You will decide in the end. Welcome the author of the new book Patriot plea, January 6th defendant John Strand. Before we get to John, let me tell you about Burna. I'm a gun owner. I'm a second amendment advocate. I've, I've got plenty of guns. Unfortunately I lost em in a boating accident. But anyway, one of the things I do have that I didn't lose in the boat boating accident is something that is 100% legal to carry in every state. You don't need, you don't need a background check, you don't need a license. You just have to be 18 years or older. According to law enforcement statistics, 99% of all situations where force may be required does not require lethal force. So you don't want to pull a gun at a knife fight, but you also don't want to have a knife at a gunfight. You have the best of both worlds, I think, especially if you're in places like California or New York or where you just can't carry guns. You can carry this. It looks like a gun. It looks like a scary gun, actually. And it shoots rounds out that are less lethal. They'll shoot out tear gas or connective little projectiles that hurt. The tear gas or the pepper spray, whichever, could go 60ft and it will incapacitate somebody at 60ft for about 40 minutes. Legal in all 50 states. No background checks. All you have to do is go to Burna.com Burna B Y R N A dot com make sure you go there now. Burna.com Glenn and save John. I want to take you through your story and try to do it almost chronologically, at least for a while. So where were you January 6th and why were you in Washington? What were you doing?

[Glenn Beck]

Great question. Thank you so much for having me on, Glenn, and allowing me to share this story. It's the story of my life in America, but I've been working my career as an artist in Los Angeles, as an actor and a model for a long time. And then 2020 COVID lockdowns. I could tell the world was changing dramatically. And I, for the first time, became sort of politically active at that point in my life. Not because I was looking to get into politics, I just wanted to push back against lockdowns. But that ended up becoming synonymous with the ongoing presidential campaign of President Trump. So I was leading a freedom rally in Los Angeles called the Beverly Hills Freedom Rally. President Trump actually retweeted that became really well known. We had tens of thousands of people coming into Beverly Hills to support the Freedom and liberty movement as I saw it. And that's how I got to meet Dr. Simone Gold, who founded America's Frontline Doctors, which rocketed to the stage during the COVID chaos. And that's why I was in Washington, D.C. i actually would have been leading my own rally in LA to support the Stop the Steal effort, asking for an audit, a forensic audit of the election. But because of Frontline Doctors, we were scheduled to be on the east coast for a whole two week speaking tour. January 5th and 6th were two dates on that tour. And Dr. Gold had been invited to participate in a rally with a government approved permit alongside of a number of Congress people and other national figures. And I was her communications director and security guard at that time. So I was there.

[John Strand]

So when you were there, you obviously attended the rally. Stop the Steel Rally. When you went into the Capitol, did you go in with the intent of stopping the certification of the votes, or what was your intent when you went in?

[Glenn Beck]

I didn't intend to go in. So once I was in there, my intention was simply to figure out how.

[John Strand]

You got in, then how did you get. How did you get in there first, then?

[Glenn Beck]

So there was some confusion during the course of the day. This is one of the aspects of January 6th that people often gloss over or have not had a truthful accounting of. It was a very long day. There were over a million people in the city. There were a variety of activities scheduled in advance. There were, I think, over a dozen different permits that had already been secured for various free speech activities that day. Ours was just one of many. So we had attended the morning event at the Ellipse where President Trump spoke famously, and then it had been expected in advance that there would be a march, a protest march, as is very common along Constitution Avenue from the Ellipse to the Capitol for afternoon events that would have incorporate speeches and so forth. We traveled that distance and arrived at the Capitol building to find, to our confusion, that there wasn't a stage where you would assume there would be a well set up environment to have Congress people and other national figures delivering speeches. But the audience was there. So the way I describe this, this is truly, I think, the best way to understand the reality and the context of what happened on January 6, particularly in the afternoon as we approach the Capitol building. It would be as if you had purchased tickets planned for a year in advance with travel and arrangements to go to the Super Bowl. And then you pile into the stadium and literally at game time, an announcement says, so sorry, folks, the team didn't make the plane, so they're not here to play the game. So we'll just have to schedule it for next year. But you have 100,000 people in a stadium that have planned all year to watch the Super Bowl. What do you expect to happen in that environment?

[John Strand]

Okay, so I didn't even know this part of the. So there was a planned speech with congressmen coming out and officials coming out and talking to this crowd?

[Glenn Beck]

Yep. This is all well documented. There was no surprise here. Planned weeks in advance.

[John Strand]

Organized by whom?

[Glenn Beck]

This particular rally. Oh, gosh, the permit poll for hours might have been for. I can't remember if it was some Health and Freedom conference or if it was the. I don't think it was the Stop the Steal rally group.

[John Strand]

Okay.

[Glenn Beck]

They had, I think, a different permit, but there were multiple groups with multiple permits. I just know that we were part of a group expected to speak alongside of Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lance Gooden, Paul Gosar. Wow. And the list goes on.

[John Strand]

Okay, so then you're standing there. There is no event. What goes through your head and how do you end up inside?

[Glenn Beck]

What went through my head was, this does not make any sense. And I'm not gonna just say, oh, well, I guess we'll come back next year. I wanted to give it a few more minutes to determine where are all these people that were committed to coming and doing this event and what is it exactly that happened? So I didn't see a stage, but I did see a whole bunch of people. And I didn't see anything else concerning. I didn't see violence. I didn't see anything along those lines, But I just saw kind of a lack of organization. And I was specifically looking for law enforcement and crowd control measures. And I saw almost nothing. I think five or six police officers standing up at the top of the steps in front of the columbus doors, and that was it. So we stood there in the plaza for a few minutes, Trying to determine what was happening. It's well reported now that cell phone communication Was almost entirely not functional that day for hours and hours. And certainly at that moment, we could not get messages in and out or very infrequently. So that was making confusion, increasing the confusion. So the crowd, though, because regardless of cell phones or anything else, they're all just moving from the ellipse to this plaza by the tens and hundreds of thousands. So the crowd was filling up, and they moved their way into the plaza and on the stairs. Dr. Gold looked at me at one point and said, I don't know exactly what's happening, and before I just go home and give up, I want to at least try to address the people that are here. I have an important message, and whoever will listen to me, I will shout and just try to be heard, because that was her obligation, her mission. She was dedicated to it. Especially at that time, the urgency of the COVID lies Were really pressing on her mind.

[John Strand]

Right.

[Glenn Beck]

So I had this internal calculation. In the book patriot plea, I tell this story and I explain. I have security guard instincts and experience that told me we should have a recalibration and sort of check what happened and why. But Dr. Gold said, Look, I just got to go to the crowd because they're here, they're forming, and something needs to happen. And I thought, well, if she starts calmly addressing them, that at least gives a focal point for what should happen. That could be a good thing, potentially. There was nothing else really to do other than just leave. But she didn't leave, and I had to make sure that she was safe. So I stayed with her. She just walked up the steps. Lots of people milling around. We tried to get a balcony position over to one side where maybe she could have a vantage point where people could hear her. But the crowd was so thick up there that we couldn't quite get into that spot. And we kind of got funneled into between the balcony and the east columbus door. So we were on the right side of the doors, but not too far from them. And over the course of another 10 minutes, again, the crowd is still building and filling as people walk over. And we got pressed towards the top of the steps, Kind of squashed, like in a mosh pit at a concert. It was kind of exciting. But also sort of weird, like what are we doing here? But I continued to monitor the energy around me, the activity, and I did not see anything, still anything at this point, violent, criminal or even really angry. I mean, certainly there were people generally upset about the election issue, but the tenor of the crowd, the tone of things was still very First Amendment America First. We're here to be who we are, express our opinions and potentially listen to some important people speak about it. And that all changed, Glenn, in a singular moment. I remember it seared into my memory when just a boom sounded like a bomb went off and the crowd panicked. Now the crowd was already packedly tight, tightly packed, but that flashbang which sounded like a grenade and then several ensued and then smoke filled the air, turned the tenor instantly and there was panic, there were shouts and screams. I understood we were under assault generally, just instinctively, but I couldn't actually see it. Too many people pressed around me. And then I basically just tried to keep Dr. Gold from getting stampeded or crushed in that moment until maybe five, eight minutes later the doors in front of us opened from the inside. And we standing there, which by the.

[John Strand]

Way, I don't want to go just brush past that. The Columbus doors are metal, big heavy metal doors that don't open.

[Glenn Beck]

£10,000 of bronze.

[John Strand]

Yeah, right. They don't open up without somebody opening them from the other side. And it's electronically open at this point, you know, it's, it's held together. You're not storming those gates. Those gates should have never been opened. We still don't have an answer, as I understand it, on who did open those gates. But someone with authority did open those gates. And you say that was part of this turning point?

[Glenn Beck]

Well, it was a turning point. I will be accurate with you about the specifics as I understand them though. It's actually a non government citizen who was prosecuted by the Biden doj, I believe his name is George Tenney, who opened the doors from the inside by using the emergency release mechanism. Because there are two sets of doors. The 10,000 pound bronze outer doors called the Columbus doors are supposed to be locked with a padlock, but they were unlocked and swung open. I don't have a good answer as to why that happened. And that's no small detail because those outer doors being swung open visually give an obvious invitation to enter the doors. That's a ceremonial entrance. You don't swing them open unless there's a reason. And in that protest moment, many people and myself included thought perhaps they're allowing people to come up to the doors or even walk through the Capitol, Particularly when there were so many people. Not a stage, no other crowd control measures. Where are these people supposed to go? What are they supposed to do? So over the course of time, it seemed that, okay, either they're gonna have more police come and say, please leave and go this way, or they'll open the doors and have people walk through, which is what ended up happening. Now, they're saying that they didn't allow that and all the other things they're saying, but of course, you know, that's not the honest reality of the situation. But in the moment, that turning point, I'm crushed up against the doors, the crowd around me. I'm simply trying to keep Dr. Gold upright and safe. And praying, literally praying and hoping, okay, cops are gonna come and disseminate the crowd in an appropriate manner. And instead, they attacked the crowd, whipped them into a frenzy, and then allowed the doors to become open. Inside, the crowd flushed through, and I was pushed inside. I mean, I could not have just stayed there. There was a avalanche of people behind me pouring in those doors. Dr. Gould actually stumbled over the threshold. There's video showing that I keep her from actually being trampled. Pick her up, move her straight forward away from that melee. And then what happened next? I mean, you see two uniformed officers go right past us. They could have said, hey, go this way or that way. They went right past us to other people. We just proceeded calmly straight ahead. Found ourselves in the rotunda with red velvet ropes, and then we stayed within the red velvet ropes, essentially, for the rest of the time we were in the building, just wondering, how do we appropriately get out of here?

[John Strand]

So when you. When you talked afterwards, Rolling Stone said you sent a private text message after January 6th that said, we stormed the Capitol. It was insane. Do you mean by that?

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, they love that text message. That was at trial. Thanks to Rolling Stone for crowning me Magazoolander. That was the best marketing campaign I ever could have asked for.

[John Strand]

I love it.

[Glenn Beck]

So consider them friends. But, yeah, I mean, that was just naturally what was in my mind. But I'll explain why I said the words. First of all, the analogy about the super bowl is the exact same idea here. So I always ask people when you get excited that your high school or college football team wasn't. They're an underdog, and somehow they had an unbelievable fourth quarter comeback in the last 10 seconds. They score the last touchdown, and they win the game that they never should have won. What happens? You storm the Field. Is storming a violent act? Of course not that kind of storming. Obviously we didn't mean we stormed the Capitol like our troops stormed Normandy. They had guns and they intended to kill people with them. That's a violent storming. When you storm the field in excitement, it's not violence, it's exuberance and it's a celebration. So the storming term really was more appropriate in that sense of things. No one had guns, no one was intending to assault anyone or certainly overtake the building or the government, cuz that's just ridiculous. But to say you stormed in all at once in a crowd moment of excitement is what ended up happening. And I was insane, right?

[John Strand]

Hang on just a second because I'm trying to put these two storylines together before you write this. You are in the Capitol. You just told me you were kind of pushed in, you were just trying to get out. And it sounded like an insane situation. Totally. You're also, by explaining storming, you're also saying you were excited and it was a victory. So what was the victory? What was the excitement that you were feeling?

[Glenn Beck]

The excitement and the victory was really what I understood before I even got there. When Dr. Gold was first booked to be a speaker at this event and she said, should I do it? And we knew that there would be a large crowd assembling. Cuz her mission wasn't political, actually was nonpartisan, advocating for medical freedom and not wanting to get into the politics. But because of censorship, we had to go where people collected in person to hear otherwise. We were silenced. So we said absolutely, we're gonna go. But I knew in the back of my mind that this was a historic moment forming. I had no idea what was actually gonna happen with January 6th as we now see it. Of course I couldn't have known that. But instinctively I knew it was historic. And of course I was proven right even beyond my wildest imaginations as all of this insanity was happening. Confusion, weirdness, walking through the rotunda and all of that history and just you're in awe of the 250 Year Experiment of America and realizing because again, the context here is the illicit election that is no small detail and a really serious part of this story and of our history. We were aware of that. And the million people that showed up that day, whether they made it inside the building or not, they had to take time and expense of their own when it was really unpopular to do so, to push back because no one wanted to. You want. You were considered an idiot and a radical and a Lunatic. If you challenged the election, now we can see that's actually what happened. But it wasn't popular or credible, so to speak, to do that at the time. And I understood the history of the moment in the sense of a million people showing up, being brave enough to do that. And that's what I thought was the victory, that they stood firm in their convictions and they exercised their First Amendment.

[John Strand]

So at what point did you feel like, this could be trouble, I could be in trouble here, that I could face prosecution? Did that happen at all on January 6th when you were in the Capitol? Do you have any feeling that this could become a problem?

[Glenn Beck]

No, not in the sense of I personally being Prosecuted. Not on January 6th. Maybe the next day. But even the next day, my. Basically my instinct or my frame of reference is the fake. We call them fake news for a reason. Right? They're constantly distorting and lambasting and hyperbolizing and just. It's insane. So the next day, I'm thinking, okay, they're trying to make this sound like a terrorism event or whatever. They're calling it insurrection. What does that even mean? But it just didn't sound credible. Cause I was there, Glenn. I was in the crowd.

[John Strand]

I saw intelligence.

[Glenn Beck]

It didn't make sense, me.

[John Strand]

But because you were on the other side of the Capitol with the Columbus doors, you also wouldn't have seen the people that were breaking the windows and. And fighting on the stairs. So you had a different vantage point. When did you realize that stuff was happening?

[Glenn Beck]

I started to see those vignettes the next day. And probably by January 8th. Yeah, probably by. Because the first day sales were still down, it was hard to get much content. I was just sort of debriefing with my immediate team that was around me. But the next two days, then you started to get a sense that, wow, okay, There were some more violent moments that happened that I was unaware of. Of course, now I understand how those actually occurred, and I. And I firmly believe the evidence clearly shows.

[John Strand]

Hang on, hang on just a second. I want to come back to that. I want to get to that. Okay. I just want to take it first chronologically, and then we're going to take it apart and what we've learned since. So when did they come to arrest you? How did that happen? When did you know? Okay, this is something that involves me now. I could go to jail.

[Glenn Beck]

So I didn't have any sense of it. The day of. Like I said, the next couple of days, we realized this was being portrayed at least as much more I had people. Actually, the next day they sent me an FBI Most Wanted list poster and I was in the top row. Glenn.

[John Strand]

Wow.

[Glenn Beck]

You never forget your first time being on an FBI Most Wanted list.

[John Strand]

I bet you don't. I hope not to find myself there. But I bet you don't. Do you have it framed?

[Glenn Beck]

I hope as well. Hope as well. It's still framed at the top of the FBI's Twitter profile. Glenn.

[John Strand]

Oh my God.

[Glenn Beck]

I'm not. Four years later, my mugshot is a cell phone camera of me and my trademark maverick aviators and black leather gloves. You standing by Dr. Gold as she's trying to preach the message of truth and medical freedom to the world that will listen in the rotunda. But that picture is still pinned to the top of the FBI Washington Field Office X profile. It's insane. So a couple days I got that picture and I got the sense that, okay, they're clearly working this up into something much, much bigger. But again, because I was there, I saw what I saw, and because I know who I am and what I did and what I didn't do, I know I didn't do anything unlawful. I know I had no criminal intent. I know I was scheduled and invited to be present and I was doing my job in my official capacity. And that's the only thing I did. I had a rock solid alibi, regardless of what anyone else may have intended to do or otherwise. I knew I was completely innocent. So I had no intention of saying or proceeding otherwise. But we did have advice like, you should probably get out of D.C. we just stuck to our travel schedule. We were there another couple days and then back to Florida for other speaking events and then back to Los Angeles. So 12 days later, January 18th, the irony is not lost that it was Martin Luther King Day. And on a Monday morning on MLK Day, in a quiet two bedroom apartment in Beverly Hills where we had a headquarters for the organization, at that time, we were on a conference call with several colleagues and our lives were forever shattered by blood curdling screaming yells so loud that my head literally vibrated, as did the walls. We could barely register the shock and wonder. Are we under attack by criminals? When our door was pulverized by a battering ram, literally, and flooded into our apartment. 20 armed officers in black tactical gear and machine guns and red laser science sights bobbing on your chest like a Jason Bourne action movie. It was terrorizing. It was abhorrent. Now that I think about it, even in the moment shortly after the shock wears off, I realized this is The US Government assaulting peaceful citizens in a major city in the US as if we were terrorists. This is backwards. This is so wrong. And, you know, I've only since then been able to contemplate and really measure the impact of that trauma, not just on myself, but hundreds and hundreds of J6Americans have had this assault.

[John Strand]

Did they call you at all and say, hey, you could come in for an interview? Hey, here's this wanted poster. We know where you are. You know where we are. Can we just talk? There was no communication. And did you think about reaching out and saying, hey, I'm on your wanted FBI most wanted poster? I mean, should I come in?

[Glenn Beck]

I mean, Dr. Gold actually had the Washington Post reach out a few days before our arrest and say, would you do an interview? And she wanted to be forthcoming about what happened. So she said, well, sure, why not? And, yeah, I was there. I was invited to be there. I gave my speech. That's what happened. I did nothing wrong. So I don't really have anything else to say about that. And that was days before. But, no, the FBI, the US Government did not advise us or request a meeting or say, come turn yourselves in or anything. They just broke our door down on a Monday morning and clearly intended to terrorize us, demoralize us, silence us, and really send a chilling message throughout the community and throughout the country that the US Government is in charge?

[John Strand]

Yeah, I. And we'll get into this later. I think they were trying to send the message that it's not necessarily even the outcome, it's the whole process that we'll put you through that should scare you and everybody else. So what was the process like? They pick you up, they take you to jail, you get an attorney. What are you charged with? What do they say, Man?

[Glenn Beck]

So your point is exactly right, Glenn. The process is the punishment, and they plan to punish you. I mean, at every juncture, at every possible nook and cranny of the bureaucratic machinery, they will weaponize it. And I mean, that goes down to the last detail. Like, for example, first of all, I explained the raid and the assault, which was just egregious. People can die from those missions. Misused tools of violence. And I was disappeared for four days without a phone call. I mean, that's so outrageous. Dr. Gold had to hire a private investigator to find out what had happened to me and to force the government to allow the bond process to happen, to bail me out of jail. They should have bailed me out within hours, obviously, but they chose not to. For whatever Excuses they love to pull. Cause they can do whatever they want. The government. I vanished. No family member, no lawyer, no. No one knew where I was for four days until we pressed the issue there. Then when I get out, then I'm given a public defender and arraigned and explained. This is what we're charging you with. And it was. I could hardly understand what they were even saying. Obstruction.

[John Strand]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. When you got in there, you know you have a right to a phone call. Did they deny you your right to a phone call?

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, the first. So they dragged me into a jail, processed me, threw me in a concrete cell, ignored me until the next day, didn't answer a single question or give me a chance to talk about anything. Dragged me into a car, drove me across town to another jail, then processed me in this little, like two foot by two foot room with a screen. Covid rules, so that I could see the magistrate, who then said whatever he said. I was so disoriented I could hardly understand. He said, I'm not letting you bail out. Then I got dragged away into an isolation unit in the MDC. That's the FBI's federal facility in Los Angeles. Banging on the door, can I have a phone call? Banging on the door, can I have a phone call? For three straight days, no help, no response, no phone call, no nothing. Four days later, Strand, pack up your crap, get out on, you know, get out of here. And they dumped me on the street. And then, thank God, I found where the public defender's office was, walked there and said, could you please help me? I have nothing to my name. And then someone found me and picked me up off the street four days later.

[John Strand]

Wow. Okay, So I wouldn't want a public defender with all of this going on. You have a public defender? What? When? How long did it take it from this point to the trial? And did you have a sense, like, you know, Alfred Hitchcock is one of my favorite movie makers filmmakers, because it's always the innocent guy who's like, wait, I can't believe this is happening. You know, what you just described happened in north by Northwest, his movie. And. And you have to believe, as his characters always do, okay, this is just a mistake. This is gonna work itself out. Justice is. I'm gonna get to somebody reasonable. Did you have that feeling? And did it ever go away or when did it go away?

[Glenn Beck]

I mean, in this opening week or so after the January 6 event and the arrest, it was so. I really don't think there's a better word to describe it, it was fascism. Weaponized government pointed at a citizen for a politicized purpose. And after the first few days of the shock of January 6th wore off, in terms of the narrative that they're selling about it, it was obvious to me, of course this is political. Of course this has to do with Trump and the election and the uniparty attack on American populist resistance. That's what this came down to. So I've understood that ever since then. In those opening couple of weeks, it was so tyrannical, it was so totalitarian that I didn't really expect justice or reasonability at all, because I couldn't even get anyone to answer my basic question about how can I have a phone call to reach my mom or my attorney. And after a few days of that being completely ignored, you start to lose hope that reason has any part of this equation. Once I got bailed out and took maybe a few weeks or so to get rid of the public defender and find an appropriate attorney, convene with my co defendant now, who's my colleague, Dr. Gold, and the whole organization, the nonprofit we work for in our team, and then absorb what was actually going on. Then you realize, okay, this is a whole new ballgame in America. We are squared up against the entire might of the federal government, currently weaponized and controlled by the Biden administration generally. And your question became a recurring theme. Will we ever find reasonability? Will we ever find the rule of law still functioning? And at every turn. Turn, Glenn, at every turn, we found it completely hijacked, completely inverted and utilized in a two tiered system where they continue to mouth the message of rule of law. Nobody is above the law, they say, perched prominently above you as they swing down a sledgehammer.

[John Strand]

Right. As a. I mean, I'm not a journalist, but I mean, I work with journalists. And as we were trying to find out what was happening, we couldn't find out anything. I mean, I called congressmen, I called senators. Where are these people being held? How can we talk to their attorneys? As members of the press, we couldn't break this wall of silence. As members of Congress and the Senate, they couldn't break the wall of silence. At the beginning, this was what you did. You were just almost in a China like way, disappeared.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, our families and our attorneys couldn't break the wall of silence. If your direct attorney cannot reach his client, what country are we in?

[John Strand]

Correct. Correct. Okay, so let's go to the trial. Now they're charging you with obstruction of or jury tampering. Or obstruction of justice. Was it both of those?

[Glenn Beck]

Well, so everyone calls it obstruction of justice colloquially, and they use that term obstruction of justice to basically say you're obstructing what duly should happen and blocking the government from performing its duty. So in that general sense, it sounds like, well, that's not good. We shouldn't allow citizens to do that. But correct the exact title of the parent statute. Obstruction of an official proceeding. Right is what they say. But I was charged specifically with Title 18, U.S. code 1512 and 1512. The title of that statute is tampering with a witness, evidence or informant. Witness, evidence or informant. Okay, now that sounds like a trial. Also, if you go back to where the law came from, and this matters because in our system, legislative intent actually matters. It's not acceptable to just take English and Scrabble it into a weapon to your fashion and your liking. What the legislators intended matters. When the legislature passed 1512 into law. And you know this because the president at the time, George Bush, said this when he signed it, he said, this should never be mistakenly used against political protesters. He actually said that. It's on record.

[John Strand]

Wow. Wow.

[Glenn Beck]

And the purpose of the law clearly was to close a accounting loophole that ensued from the Enron Energy Corporation scandal. And they basically said, oh, it was our attorneys that shredded documents that tampered with witness or evidence, so you can't prosecute us for it. So they closed that loophole and said, if you delegate your tampering of a witness, evidence or informant to a third party, the third party can be liable. What does that have to do with protesters that are complaining about illicit election and gathering their house of government to redress, you know, ask for redress of grievances per the First Amendment. What does that have to. Obviously has nothing to do with it, which.

[John Strand]

Which is how the Supreme Court ruled, which, you know, got you out of prison after only a year in prison. Let me, yeah, let me go. Let me go now to. They charged you, they convicted you. What. What is it like standing as a. An innocent man and even, even at your worst, if you would say, okay, well, I was in the Capitol and I can, you know, this parading thing, I can understand how you give me a ticket, maybe, Maybe, okay, you give me a ticket for something or I get a slap on the wrist. When they came at you and said guilty and the, the judge said prison, what was that like?

[Glenn Beck]

I mean, it was serious, Glenn. I'm not going to say otherwise. That is a sledgehammer. Prison is a sledgehammer. I Describe it in my book as watching a freight train in reverse, like in slow motion that's coming at you. Because I knew this was coming before it happened, but I'm kind of slowly moving ahead towards it. From the arrest to the trial was over a year and a half. It's a long time. A lot of stuff happened during that period of time. Terrible stuff. Civil rights abuses, persecution, exhaustion, defamation, constant assault from the media, betrayal from friends and my family. I was digitally assassinated for my entire career that I had really spent my life and put my life, or I'd taken a lot of risk in my life to do what I've done, putting myself out there to be an actor and a model and these things that are very difficult to try to achieve. And I had all of that was I was digitally assassinated in a heartbeat on January 7th. None of that existed anymore. And then suddenly I was propped up by Rolling Stone and everyone else as this target. Come and destroy this guy. And they spent a year and a half destroying me before I even got to court.

[John Strand]

It's pretty amazing. And, of course, I've lived some of that. It's remarkable.

[Glenn Beck]

Remarkable. It really is. And so there's more to that story, details in the book that people really should dig into and that we should really talk about in our country as far as being honest with ourselves, what is happening, what we've allowed to happen, and how we get guardrails back on, because the guardrails have become swords in the hands of an enemy that is stabbing them.

[John Strand]

So before we get to those solutions, let's pause here for a second. And before we get to what they did to you in prison, talk about anything that you feel needs to be addressed here on that.

[Glenn Beck]

So we have to reclaim the essence of innocent until proven guilty, right? We just had Daniel Penny sacrificed on the altar of DEI and BLM garbage, insanity. And it's going to take a lot of reverse engineering to sort of give him a reasonable life back. I don't think people like that.

[John Strand]

I don't think you ever do. People don't understand. And this is a baby comparison to you. But, you know, for 10 years, the media and powerful people came after me with all their guns ablaze and did everything they could to destroy me and paint me. And I will never get that opportunity with maybe 40% of the country to ever be anything other than that. And that's a big deal. You know, when you know, you don't. You don't. You don't notice when you have that. Everybody has that, you know, the opportunity to just be somebody and have people address you and take you for who you are. As long as you are displaying that you don't understand what it's like to walk in where lies have been spread about you and you have 40% of the room who will hate you forever no matter what you say.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah.

[John Strand]

And it's a new era.

[Glenn Beck]

You cannot unring that bell. Absolutely, Glenn. That is true. Of course, I can tell that you understand this. You empathize because you've experienced it yourself. So anyone that does personally experience it, it will be a lot more real. But this new era with technology and the speed of lies and just the incendiary nature that they just catch on fire and burn your life to the ground in an instant, and you can never have that life back. It is a huge thing. So the loss.

[John Strand]

You know what it is? The loss of honest people and honest questioning. You know, I've always believed in the system of justice we have here because I've always believed that an innocent person could be caught up in something, but there would always be someone in the system that would go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You gotta give them the chance to be heard. And we don't just, we don't have kangaroo courts. This was a kangaroo court. And when you lose the ability as a society to find honest people who may disagree with you, but go. Wait a minute, hang on just a second. I disagree with him, but he has this right. We have to do it the right way. When you lose that, you have nothing left.

[Glenn Beck]

That's right. Yeah. Disagreement does not mean. Yeah, dishonesty. Right.

[John Strand]

So disagreement doesn't mean. Doesn't mean because we disagree, it doesn't mean you lose your rights. You're still a human being as valuable as I am. You know what I mean?

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah.

[John Strand]

Okay, so you're. You're convicted, you're sent sentenced to prison. What. What is the sentence you're given?

[Glenn Beck]

32 months. So almost three years of my life in a prison facility, along with three years of supervised release and continued government abuse after that. So another six years of my life on the hook to be annihilated beyond the two plus years at that point that had already been chewed up in the government blunder.

[John Strand]

And what we failed to talk about was you get this sentence because they try to make a deal with you and say, look, we can make all of this go away. That's right. You know, we'll stop destroying your life if you just admit. I mean, this is very 1984, just 2 plus 2 equals 4. And you wouldn't admit. When you're standing there and you realize, I've had three years in prison. Did you ever have a second where you went, oh, my gosh, what have I done? I should have taken the deal.

[Glenn Beck]

Not one second. It was so. Glenn, at the very.

[John Strand]

You realize how odd that is, right?

[Glenn Beck]

I do. And that was somewhat the point. That was kind of the point. I mean, fundamentally, Glenn, the real point, like I said, is that we have to have clarity on what right and wrong is. We have to have. It is our duty, and it is. It is essential in order to preserve our future and preserve the integrity of our system, which without integrity, it will devolve and destruct, like you mentioned. So to preserve that integrity, we have to have total clarity on what is good and evil and what is right and wrong. So some things are not moral, some decisions. There's not an obvious right answer, but sometimes there are. And when there's an obvious right and wrong answer, and particularly when it's really uncomfortable to make the right choice, that's when it's so important to do so.

[John Strand]

Yeah. So when you get to prison, you know, you think of prison as a couple of things in America. You think, okay, you might have got shafted by the system originally, but the prison system is a completely different system. And now it's got its own problems. You know, you've got the violence in prison, you've got all of that, but you don't expect the. You wouldn't expect the same kind of punishment for the same reasons to be happening in prison. Do you know what I mean?

[Glenn Beck]

I do.

[John Strand]

Unless it's a fascistic country, you don't expect the prison to take out political vengeance on you. But that's not what you found, is it?

[Glenn Beck]

No, I found precisely the opposite. I found that the prison system has been hijacked like every other part of our government, and all these institutions have been bent and fashioned into weapons to serve the violent will of those in power who demand that they keep it. So, I mean, man, the trial, like you said, so many lies, so many in your face distortions and manipulations, and just violations of their ethical and legal duty. For one thing, it was very clear that the jury was gonna convict me because they're from D.C. they're Washington, D.C. residents. 95% voted with full open hatred against President Trump. Obviously, they're going to not just convict me. They were looking to crucify me. And it was, you know, and it was enjoyable for them. So the prosecutor didn't have to openly lie about evidence. He could have just said he was there, and he's one of them and, you know, take it from here. But no, they spend all this energy lying, manipulating evidence. My website and book shows all of this in great detail. It's shocking, actually, and it's something we really need to dig into. It didn't just happen to me, and it's part of that kangaroo court. When we say kangaroo court, Glenn, we're not exaggerating. It is fully, truly that.

[John Strand]

And then in prison, especially in Washington.

[Glenn Beck]

D.C. yeah, especially in D.C. in prison. And I was not in a D.C. prison. I was in a federal facility starting in Florida. But I have paperwork from the BOP that acknowledges that the reason that some of their rules were rearranged in order to clearly torture me psychologically and in horrendous physical conditions and in super isolation, meaning totally cut off from all contact with my family and attorneys for an extended period of time. That was happening because of the fascist fingers of the Department of justice, specifically the FBI and the AUSA Assistant U.S. attorneys Office, which I believe traces back to Mr. Jason Manning, the actual federal prosecutor who prosecuted me at trial and put me into that prison in the first place.

[John Strand]

So what rules did they rearrange for you? What happened to you in prison?

[Glenn Beck]

I was pulled aside in this office with no one in it, with a gentleman who worked for the security division of the prison who basically said, do you know who I am? Because I know who you are, and I'm watching you. I said, I don't know who you are. I'm not surprised that you know who I am, because that's become pretty well known at this point. And he said, well, let me. Let me break this down for you. You know, I know you are all big on constitutional rights and talking a big First Amendment game and this and that, but this is. This is my kingdom, and I rule here. So you better get that straight real fast and clear intimidation. But I wasn't.

[John Strand]

But the Constitution applies to prisoners as well, sir. But. Go ahead.

[Glenn Beck]

Oh, it's supposed to. But, you know, our founding fathers called the Constitution a parchment barrier, and there's a reason they use that terminology. It's only gonna hold so far as the men holding that parchment have the integrity to understand what it means and how it's supposed. Supposed to be applied.

[John Strand]

Yeah. So he threatens you, basically. He threatens you?

[Glenn Beck]

Oh, absolutely. Well, I told him. I said, sir, I am not looking to cause trouble. I know you're in charge here, and I want to abide by whatever your Rules are. Please just explain them to me. But I do have a First Amendment, and I plan to continue exercising it. I don't have a bone to pick at this point with the prison. I wasn't there to complain about prison. I was there to there to continue highlighting the fraud of January 6th, the corruption of the DC court system, and the fact that I'm innocent and so are many other J6ers who I need to continue to advocate for, and I'll do that from prison. It doesn't matter. I'm here to do a job. So I explained to him that me being in prison, from my point of view, was deployment in service of my country as a political prisoner. And he was maybe agnostic on that, but basically said, I'm in charge. But he seemed to indicate like, okay, we can manage that. But he wasn't honest with me. And I was basically entrapped into supposedly breaking their rules about some technicality about the phone system, even though they broke their own rules by failing to give me the written rule book that explains all of these details. And then later said, well, you broke this rule from page such and such in the rule book. And I said, what rulebook? They said, didn't we give you that on day one because the policy stipulates we must do that? Nope. No rule book. I had no idea about this rule. The rule you told me was you have to submit the people you want to talk to on the prison communication systems, controlled and monitored. Of course, I understood that. Submit those people, and if we approve it, then you can talk to them. Well, I did that. I talked to them, and then they said, you broke the rules. You're going in the hole. And then, long story short, they disappeared me for four straight months of horrific isolation, abuse. I barely explained.

[John Strand]

I heard about you at this point. I mean, what you were going through. I heard that you were in solitary for four months. And again, we tried to get senators and congressmen to give us any details what's happening. And they were blocked at every. Every corner as well. What is solitary confinement like?

[Glenn Beck]

I mean, it's terrible, physically speaking. It's very. It's very suffocating. It's just very harsh and it's very desolate. So I think maybe that's a good word to describe that. In addition to being very uncomfortable and very intimidating, there is this element of total despair that creeps in very quickly but continues to gradually build. And you realize you're being strangulated by this sense of despair that you can't quite see. Or identify. But there's no remedy for it. You have nowhere to turn. You have no one to talk to. You have no honesty or logic or rationality in an explanation of anything. Most of the people there ignore you or are rude to you. So it's like being in a. I describe it as. Imagine you were on a submarine, Glenn. So, you know, like I said, I'm on deployment. So this is a military mission. I'm trying to take it seriously, but I know I'm in a war and there's people that are against me or whatever. I'm on a submarine, and suddenly someone trips me and I fall into this closet. The door swings behind me. I jump up, but the door's already locked. I'm banging on the door, and then I suddenly hear this sound as the submarine, I could tell, is dropping to the bottom of the ocean. And then it hits the bottom. No one is coming. You keep banging on the door. No one is answering. And then after a few minutes, you realize I am stuck in this concrete closet in the bottom of the ocean. And I don't know if anyone knows or cares that I'm here and if they'll ever come and get me. And then another day goes by, and then another day goes by. And physically, you are miserable. And that pain is compounding with every day. So it's. Everything is compounding by the hour, by the day, by the week. You're supposed to have a phone call.

[John Strand]

You have a window. Can you see time pass?

[Glenn Beck]

One sliver of a window. So, yeah, I could see daylight in the day. Well, at least in one solitary unit and another solitary unit. It was so dark and the window was so slim that actually I couldn't see day. So different solitary units have different conditions. The one I was in that I spent the most amount of time in was a concrete square hut with various isolation units. I couldn't see these people, but the inmates were savage, like animals. Screaming, yelling constantly. Almost never stopped throughout the course of the day. At night, they would be exhausted and fall asleep. But during the day, it picked up again. I hyperventilated at one point because I just couldn't get away from this cacophony that sounded like the dark corners of hell. I mean, it was hellish in that sense, very literally.

[John Strand]

Did you get to go outside at all? Did you? Because I've. No, actually have to. You have to have an hour or something outside, Right?

[Glenn Beck]

So the policy says you must have an hour of recreation per day. And when people hear recreation, they think you get to stand Outside, you get to dig your toes in the grass. You are human on a planet. No, no. First of all, they ignore that rule half the time. So I was in a concrete shoebox for about 164 hours a week. But for the two or three hours that I might actually get the wreck time, they just dragged me to a different part of that concrete building where they had taken the ceiling off with a cage above it so you could see the sky through the cage. You're in a dog cage inside of a concrete building where you can see a piece of the sky. That was their recreation.

[John Strand]

Four months. Four months. Four months like that.

[Glenn Beck]

And they're supposed to give you. They're supposed to give you a phone call, Glenn. Even in isolation, the rules stipulate a phone call at a minimum every seven days. And when you are in those isolation conditions, that phone call is the difference between life or death. You will scratch their eyes out to get that phone call. I was ready to scratch my own eyes out just to hear the voice of my mom or my girlfriend or my attorney or someone tell me, we're still here and we're going to get you out of this hell.

[John Strand]

They violated that. You didn't get it every week?

[Glenn Beck]

Nope. It took almost three months before a lawyer got through a call, and it took four months before I was finally taken out of solitary. And that was only because of Congressman Matt Gaetz springing the fire in Congress and bringing the weight down on the BOP to realize they better start changing some things. So they whisked me out of the middle of the night to spite him because he was gonna come and visit on site middle of the night, whisked me away before he could get there to take me to a different facility. And I was finally taken out of solitary.

[John Strand]

You were put in general pop in a different prison?

[Glenn Beck]

Yes, I was finally put in general population in Oakdale in Louisiana.

[John Strand]

And that's where I wrote that A. Was that a Martha Stewart kind of prison?

[Glenn Beck]

No, no, definitely not a Martha Stewart prison. Slightly less terrible than Miami. Still a terrible place. I detail that in the book as well, because I had six months there to kind of learn how, quote, unquote, normal prison works. And I had at least the opportunity to have a shower every day. I had the opportunity to kind of structure some of my own time, to process what I had just gone through the previous six months and to wrestle with a lot of questions with God and with myself and with what I believed my country to be before this happened. And so I wrestled through those Questions? I read some books and then I wrote my own book while I was there in General population.

[John Strand]

But you're in solitary. Could you read books? Did you have access or is it just you and your thoughts?

[Glenn Beck]

There's a lot of you in your thoughts. But I did get some books. Again, the rules stipulate they're supposed to provide books to you. They did at times. They don't always follow those rules either. But I did get some books, and I had a few guards that were nicer than others. So I had a few guards that tried to make sure I had a book and a Bible. They blocked my US Mail. Wildly illegal. It's just not acceptable in this country. There's no law that allows that to happen. That is against the law to block U.S. mail from a U.S. citizen. But they blocked most of my mail for most of those entire four months. But I did have a couple guards that would sneak some letters into me.

[John Strand]

Okay, so let's talk here about. I mean, there's so much more, but you can get it in your book. But you're fascinating to talk to. Let me start with where I am and tell me where we differ.

[Glenn Beck]

Okay.

[John Strand]

I. I have a problem with people who were violent, and that is the police and people who were in the masks breaking windows and, you know, fighting. But it's hard to tell who was a good guy defending themselves and a bad guy, you know, wishing intent on the cops. And I think at this point, everybody would have spent their time in prison if this was a normal case. Everybody would have already served enough time. And I don't think it's fair to, you know, Donald Trump says, we have to take it case by case. And I understand that thinking. But when you know that something has been wrong with a prosecutor, you don't just let the one guy that you know for sure has been wrongly prosecuted. If that pattern appears in other cases, you gotta let everybody go. Because Fruit of the Poison. Yes. You know, something's wrong. So just based on that concept and that law, every single person should be released. Because you can't go back and say, well, this guy, you know, this guy wasn't as bad. Cause you don't know it was the same people involved that did you. And we know that was wrong. So how do we do anything other than say, everybody out, everybody's out.

[Glenn Beck]

100%.

[John Strand]

Time served, 100% right.

[Glenn Beck]

You are correct, Glenn. You are absolutely right. And I don't think there's a credible argument against what you said. It is absolutely fundamentally clear that this process was totally corrupted. It was irredeemably tainted.

[John Strand]

But legally speaking, correct. And people I guess, would argue and say, well, but the violin, but that's not the way it works. We have this. We have this for a reason. I'm not making up something new. I'm not asking for something that hasn't been done before. This is our rule of law, is it not?

[Glenn Beck]

Exactly. That's the term I wanted to say. When we say the rule of law, what does it mean? It means there is a pre established rule by which we comport our behavior, by which we comport our review and investigation, by which we comport our administration of justice. And that rule says, that rule says that if the government is shown to be nefarious or corrupt or even just derelict, you must throw it out. And it's very simple why. Glenn, it's very simple why the founders told us, I believe George Washington, when the people fear the government, there's tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. And George Washington also said government is not eloquence, it is force. It's a fire that will burn things to the ground if you don't keep the guardrails. So Thomas Jefferson said, we must speak no more about the good intentions of man, but we must bind them down by the chains of the constitution.

[John Strand]

Correct? Now here's the thing on this is, when this rule has ever been enacted before, you don't get mad at the person, the judge or whomever that says, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. All of this has to be thrown out. You're supposed to get mad at the prosecutors. You're supposed to say, you morons have done this in a legal way. You've let bad guys go and you've persecuted good guys. Now it's not the judge or in this case, not trump that is making this judgment. This is the way it's supposed to be. Because you screwed up. And without that slap on the face, not on the wrist, but on the face of the prosecution, you'll never change anything.

[Glenn Beck]

Hundred percent agree with you. And I wouldn't call them morons. I would call them knaves and scoundrels because they weren't stupid. They knew what they were doing. This was political, of course, and ultimately was evil. It was highly unethical, it was wrong. It was a egregious abuse of their prosecutorial power and of their government issued positions of authority. It was immoral, it was wrong and it was gravely evil and has caused an incredible amount of destruction and even Death. So that's not an exaggeration at all.

[John Strand]

But Glenn, go ahead.

[Glenn Beck]

Don't forget the. Before we get to the prosecutors, the first step was not the prosecutors, but elements of the government that facilitated and instigated this. There's a lot of evidence of pre planning. For example, the FBI operation, the Whitmer fednapping hoax. Well documented. No really argument against this. The FBI field director, Steve Dantuono of the Whitman Detroit field office oversaw that operation and then was reassigned to D.C. right before January 6th.

[John Strand]

Yes.

[Glenn Beck]

So a lot of interesting credible evidence, but we'll put that aside. We'll say for the sake of argument, without assigning negative intent or criminal intent to the government. We can see with our own eyes clearly what they physically did. That was egregious violation of their duty and their protocols. So that created the conditions and accelerated. When you said you are upset about violence committed by people in black gear breaking windows, so am I. But those people aren't in jail, correct? I am not aware. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of the military style tactical units all dressed in black, which of course you can't identify them. Who were the insurgents that first broke the windows to gain the initial access to the building that then allowed people to blunder in and then open the doors for me and I stumbled in so.

[John Strand]

Well, I just. I just know that I've never seen conservatives dress like that before. I've seen antifa dressed like that, I've seen the government dress like that. But I don't generally see conservatives dress like that or act that way. But that doesn't mean they couldn't have been. But we don't know who they were because it doesn't seem to be any effort to get those guys. My view on this whole thing is, you know, we find out that there's 26 informants, FBI informants that are there, and those aren't necessarily good guys, you know what I mean? They're informants, you know, but at the very least that would lead one to unto the understanding, not to believe, to the understanding of the truth. The FBI had 26 informants that were there on the ground. That means. Yeah, at least. That means at least 26 FBI agents knew what was coming. If it was planned, okay, if it was planned by these, you know, this grassroots, you know, vigilante group, that means 26 FBI agents knew that was coming. So then explain to me how the National Guard wasn't there. Explain to me how the police weren't alerted. If you had the FBI knowing this is, this is the most innocuous charge I could possibly bring on the FBI is, okay, so you weren't involved, but you knew it was coming and you did nothing. That's the best scenario. What do you think happened?

[Glenn Beck]

I think we know for certain that Nancy Pelosi and Muriel Bowser are officially entrusted with the responsibility to protect that building. They openly denied the 10,000 National Guard troops that President Trump had duly authorized and done his part to make it possible.

[John Strand]

Right.

[Glenn Beck]

There's a handoff.

[John Strand]

What right? What do you attribute that to just incompetence, hating of Trump? What?

[Glenn Beck]

No, I attribute it. I mean, it's just not reasonable to think that these people are that dumb. It's just they didn't get to the positions of power that they are by being dumb. They're not dumb, they're smart. They're just very, very unethical and immoral. And I think evil is really the accurate term. So clearly, clearly Pelosi and many other people benefited by creating the conditions for a violent event of conflict which they could then misrepresent and distort and exploit in a myriad of ways. This isn't a grand conspiracy theory. Like they had the map of the whole thing from the beginning necessarily. Right. But they've game planned and war gamed these things, as we've noted, and they very clearly denied 10,000 troops that obviously should have been there. Remember, my first thought when I walked up the building was, I don't see the stage and why aren't there cops or crowd control here? Cuz there's a million people coming to see a speech. It's just objectively insane. So, you know, the optics that they complained about were really the optics of making them look completely derelict as government officials. But because they have the bully pulpit, the microphone and all the government weapons pointed at us, they can just shout their story. They can parade the January 6th unselect committee show trial, literally a show trial for a year and a half on primetime television, gaslighting us all to death. So that's how they get away with it. But if you're calm and reasonable and objective and you go through the evidence and you're not taking Nancy Pelosi's side or President Trump's side or anyone else, just what actually happened here. It's not that hard to figure out what happened, and it's not that hard to, you could say speculate, but we could speculate that Pelosi and company clearly had motives and they had an objective. They had an agenda to advance and they had an opportunity to exploit by facilitating the conditions for an event of violence to occur that never should have happened. And without the government's involvement, it would not have happened like that.

[John Strand]

Right. So even with you, you are saying they allowed the conditions, they maybe even encourage the conditions a little bit.

[Glenn Beck]

But we have cops on video taking fence down.

[John Strand]

Yeah, right, yeah. That doesn't explain like the pipe bomb or anything like that, which clearly that. That was. That was. What was that? I mean, that just seems planted by people who did have a master plan. They may not have said, oh, this is the way it's going to happen at the Capitol, but they wanted to make sure that something happened. And those pipe bombs were put in with somebody with an agenda. The Vice President was moved to where one of those pipe bombs was for a reason. And it seems to me they just didn't need that reason anymore. And so just brush it aside.

[Glenn Beck]

Right.

[John Strand]

Does that seem reasonable to you?

[Glenn Beck]

Absolutely. Contingencies, Right. Again, these people aren't stupid. And also, as we mentioned, there isn't one single quarterback of everything. I mean, I don't think generally that you can say the grand conspiracy ends up with this person calling all the shots. It doesn't quite work like that. So there's overlap and there's disarray to things. But yeah, there was. There's just a lot of evidence and all aspects of it should be investigated honestly and completely by the incoming administration. We have to have answers to this.

[John Strand]

I had a meeting. I didn't have a meeting, but one of my, one of my guys who was working for me at the time, he was kind of a right hand guy. He had a meeting that was asked for by the Soros organization. And so my right hand man met with the right hand man of Soros. And we interpreted as clearly as a threat because it started with, your boss is going to stop saying these things about my boss. And it only went downhill from there. And I talked to somebody right after who knew George Soros, who had worked with George Soros. And I said, what do you make of this? And he said, that was clearly a threat. He said, now, Glenn, here's what you have to understand. George Soros is not going to give the order to go kill you or disrupt your life. He said he doesn't need to. There are enough people that want his attention, want to be in his circle that will take it on their own and they would be willing to do something and then let it be known in that inner circle that, you know I was the guy who took care of that problem for you.

[Glenn Beck]

There are so many.

[John Strand]

There are so many interests that you don't have to have a central committee planning. This stuff can happen organically, on its own. If, like you say, you allow the conditions to be right for it. So we don't need to have a Star Chamber planning all of this.

[Glenn Beck]

Right. And it's because of the reality of human nature. Right. I always tell people that the genius of the founding fathers was to recognize one singular concept with total clarity, and that is the fundamental, inescapable, unchanging reality of human nature. It devolves towards evil, and it collects power in one place in a totality, totalitarian manner. Power always collects in one place, and people always seek it. So that's why I keep saying guardrails. That constitution is guardrails. To channel human nature in a productive direction and counterbalance it against itself.

[John Strand]

Yes. All right, let me. Let me ask you a couple final questions here. If you could go back and speak to yourself on January 5, 2021, what would you say to yourself?

[Glenn Beck]

Man, it's an interesting question framed that way. I can't imagine on January 5th that I would tell myself, go to the capitol grounds on January 6th. That would be. Yeah. I mean, God never calls us to do something painful on purpose for the sake of being painful. That would be sadism and foolishness. So God calls us to be wise. I believe firmly and honestly, I can tell you this from my heart, that I was as prepared and wise in the moment as I was able to be at that time. So I'm proud of what I did and how I did it, and I conducted myself honorably. I will answer to God for that, and I'm satisfied there. But if you had told me on January 5th, and I knew ahead of time, I would have adjusted based on that information.

[John Strand]

Of course, the last question, you know, I. I know many of the players that are going to go into power here soon. I. I know Cash Patel very well, and I have a lot of respect for Cash, and Cash and I have had conversations on air long before he thought he was going to be in charge about things like the Epstein, you know, listen, the Diddy problem, this particular problem. And we are looking at. And people don't really understand this, and I think you do. We talked about Hitchcock. People don't understand movies are not totally made up. They do reflect real life. And I've had times, and I know you have had times where you're like, I'm in a movie. It's weird. I can't believe I'm in a Jason Bourne movie all of a sudden, right? Those, those movies would tell us when you have this much power, this much money, this many famous people with so much at stake, these things are never really fixed. They're never. They never. The Epstein list will not be released. The P. Diddy, he might go to prison, but what about all the people that were there? Will we ever know them? Do you. Are you optimistic over the next four years that this next administration with Donald Trump is serious enough, knows what they're facing and brave enough to do this and to take this all on and expose it?

[Glenn Beck]

So I love that question because it brings me right back to the book that I wrote while I was in prison. I'm in prison going through all of this insanity and abuse and even despair. And I realized this comes down to me in this moment and what I choose to do at the moment. This comes down to the choices I make on how to respond to suffering and pain. And I believe that our country is amazing because it calls us to remember the sacred, the sacred truth of the human spirit and individual sovereignty. America is all about you and me as individuals. So I am optimistic because it isn't just about President Trump and his administration. Now, I love President Trump. I'm very proud of him. And a valiant supporter will continue to be. But President Trump, by and large, also understands the reality that this is about you, the American. And so if we remember that, if we reclaim that, and that's why I love to talk about a red pill revolution. Revolution is the overthrow of an existing system. Now, we don't want to overthrow our constitutional system. We want to reclaim and revive it. But we do have to overthrow the spirit of evil, the spirit of corruption, the spirit of selfish deception, self seeking, centralized power, and the lies that they use as weapons. We have to overthrow that system so that we can reclaim the American constitutional republic for ourselves as American citizens. And if each one of us commits to doing that, there is no weapon formed against us that will stand.

[John Strand]

I will tell you that that is exactly the answer I have come to. I just wrote predictions on, you know, 2025, and I talked about Epstein and this kind of case and said, I don't think it will happen this year, but it doesn't mean that it won't happen. But the only thing standing in the way of its happening is apathy. If we realize how much power we actually have and we stand up and say no, our children are being raped. Our children, they are bringing children in for pleasure. This system is corrupt. I want to know who is part of that corruption. I want this judge, the prosecutors, the FBI, the doj. I want all of it. And I want the bad guys in a fair trial. I want the bad guys to go to jail. I want this to be clean. And if we all stand up, it's the only thing that will, because nobody is. You know, Donald Trump has already risked his life. How many people are really, truly willing to risk their life to expose this stuff? Not as many as you would hope. I mean, look at the number of FBI agents that stay quiet even though they know what's happening is wrong. We have to be the ones that demand it. That has been great.

[Glenn Beck]

That is my.

[John Strand]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Glenn Beck]

That is my patriot plea, man. The patriot plea, right? That's my call, is that we need to raise up a remnant. It won't ever be everyone but the American Revolution. This country, the United States of America, formed in 1776 with 3% of the colonists participating in that effort. 3% was the remnant. And I tell a story in the book about Gideon, a Jew that God found in a winepress and said, you, mighty man, are going to save the nation of Israel from the hordes of Midianite marauders. And he's like me, Like, I don't have anything going on here. God said, it's not about you. It's about me and your obedience to the call. Raise up those who are willing to exercise uncomfortable courage. And it was. He had 32,000 Israelites that initially answered. And God said, that's too many. I want the remnant. I want those who are really willing to stay strong when the going gets tough. Who. When the government says, I'll give you a golden parachute plea deal. And you know that plea deal is a lie that's being used to crucify thousands of your American citizens and to propel totalitarian government forward. And you say, no, God wants that remnant, but it's 3% or whatever percent it is. It's a minority, but it's the tireless minority that Sam Adams spoke, lighting fire, brush fires in the minds of men with truth and the opportunity of courage. We just have to exercise it.

[John Strand]

John Strand. The name of the book is Patriot Plea. You can find it by going to johnstrand.com johnstrand.com John, as always, thank you. God bless you.

[Glenn Beck]

No, thank you, Glenn. Honor is mine, and God bless you and our great country.

[John Strand]

Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.