(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Florida, Trench Coat Man, '1776 Returns,' and the January 6th Plot [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-24 Florida has another tourist attraction claim - the most January 6th participants arrested and most coup plotters! The January 6th committee’s final report contains a treasure trove of details on how Trump and company tried to overthrow the U.S. government and erase the results of the 2020 presidential election. You have likely heard much of that sordid story if you have followed the hearings and media coverage of said hearings. But if you wade through enough of the thousands of pages of testimony transcripts, you will also find a few anecdotes that you haven’t heard before, and they just might shock the sh!t out of you. I’ve had some time lately to read through the report and some testimony transcripts. One thing I learned that I haven’t seen widely reported is that Florida not only has more residents charged with January 6th crimes than any other state, but more coup plotters live there than any state. It’s not just Trump — Mike Flynn, Patrick Byrne, Roger Stone, Enrique Tarrio, the national leader of the Proud Boys, Erika Flores, the cryptocurrency promoter who reportedly slipped Tarrio the “1776 Returns” Capitol attack blueprint [which I didn’t hear much about before these hearings], key Oath Keepers and other militia types, all live there. It’s no wonder or coincidence that Brazil’s far right leader Bolsonaro settled there. I haven’t even mentioned that DeSantis is leading the state. Florida is pretty much a right-wing wacko paradise, even more so than Texas. In reading through much of the committee testimony transcripts, Byrne’s rambling performance stood out more than most. Of all the January 6th coup plotters who complied with subpoenas, he was most open and answered questions in detail, probably too much detail. While Stone, Flynn and others took the Fifth [Giuliani answered some questions when he wasn’t claiming attorney-client privilege, mostly claiming he didn’t remember details unless it was about that so-called Antifa guy, John Sullivan], Byrne spent almost nine hours talking in great detail about what happened in the days leading to January 6. He didn’t take the Fifth once. Byrne rambled on about subjects the committee didn’t want to hear, such as how the VA medical system was supposedly hacked by Iran. But when he talked what happened in the days right before January 6th, it was fairly revealing. During one meeting at the Trump Hotel on January 5, he said that he, Sidney Powell, and others met with some Republican Congress members, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, to discuss plans for the following day. Retired Army Col. Philip Waldron, who focused on psychological operations during his military career, was among the speakers there claiming election fraud. Waldron had worked with Flynn on secretive projects during the Afghan and Iraq wars and had spoken with Republican Pennsylvania state senators in November 2020 about how vote totals could supposedly be hacked and changed, routed through servers in China and other countries. Like the others in Trump’s orbit, Waldron had no proof of fraud. The Congress members in that meeting were “noncommittal with us,” Byrne said. “It was them questioning these people until they ran out of questions and objections.” At one point, they discussed a plan to “raise these objections, and ultimately, if it worked, that Pence would say, ‘This …. needs another week of study,’ and set it up for the legislatures to go and then make whatever decision that they wanted to make.” Another anecdote was wild, like something out of an Oliver Stone film. At one point on January 5, Byrne said he was approached by a bald man wearing a trench coat who knocked on his hotel room door. Byrne said there were others with him, and he didn’t let them inside but spoke in the hallway. The intruder said he was with a militia, possibly in Michigan, and told him that Byrne was “the only man outside our militia that we listen to.” Trench Coat Man said that 10,000 people “with long guns” were “coming to town” the following day and “taking the city,” Byrne stated. “We’re just waiting for your word.” Here is Byrne’s testimony on that: A …. He came to my hotel room and said, we want you to know you're the only man outside our militia that we listen to. And we are coming to town. We are coming to town tomorrow. We are taking the city with -- we got 10,000 long guns coming into town. And we're just waiting for your word. And bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And I said -- everyone stepped outside in the hall. And we were saying, I know Benson Holly told me all this. As you could imagine, it was kind of -- I think it was one of two conversations I was somewhat flabbergasted by. And I said, you are telling me if I give an order, you guys will follow it no matter what? They said, where are your men? I said here is my order I want you to take back. Under no — I said, I think it was a little rude --I said the order to take back is I think you're out of your minds. Under no circumstances -- and I regret that I said I think you're out of your minds -- but I said under no circumstances is there to be any weapon, any weapon brought into D.C. If there's one weapon, I'll be so disappointed. And absolutely, under no -- if there's any instruction that people will listen to, not only listen to me, but if they have one instruction is no violence, no weapons, whatsoever. And then I went and I immediately got on and wrote the Jerry Garcia story, and tweeted that out a couple times. And I was going to tell the Moldova story the next morning, but the whole schedule for January 6th got completely disrupted……. Q So we're going to talk a little about the 6th. And just before we break, though, I want to follow up a little bit on this interaction you had at Trump Tower. Did the person identify himself? A No. Q Did he tell you -- what made you think he was from a militia? A He said. Q Did he identify the organization? A He didn't -- if he did, I don't remember. Q Do you remember what words he used other than the fact that there were 10,000 long guns? Did he specify that I'm a militia member or something? A He said that I'm with the militia. I'm in the militia. I think he named Michigan. I don't know if there's one. Q Did you ask him who he was. Mr. Byrne. No. He was kind of an odd-looking character. Out of place in the Trump Tower. Cadaverous face. Bald, cadaverous fellow. Very, I would say, serious-looking, sober with a trench coat. And I didn't let him into the room. I stepped out and was down the hall. And he -- and he told me this. I took him to mean that they were kind of, come take Washington, D.C. I took him to -- that's what I understood him to mean. And I was imagining something like, are you familiar with what in Beirut, Hezbollah did back in, like, the May 8th Movement, or whatever it was called. Hezbollah walked into the town, the Beirut, with, like, 20,000 people one day armed. And they just took the city for a few days just to show that they were so overwhelming. That's what I thought the guy was saying. I had some image that he thought they were going to have people with machine guns on every corner. And I said, you're out of your mind. Absolutely not. Blah, blah, blah. Q Did you report this to anyone in real time? You said the Feds know about this, but did you -- in the minutes or hours after the guy left, did you report this conversation to anybody? A It's really hard for me to talk about my relationship with the government, even understanding -- my understanding is they knew. My understanding is that they knew. Mr. Driscoll We'll probably leave this for after lunch. Mr. Byrne My understanding is they knew, but they had a very close eye, and they knew everything. I was given to understand that they knew everything that was going on with me. In a later followup, Byrne added this: Q Did you -- other than the -- before January 5th when the guy from Michigan came to your hotel room and told you that he had 10,000 long guns stashed in D.C. and was awaiting an order from you as to what to do, did you have any sense that there was going to be violence at the Capitol on January 6th? A Not really. And he didn't tell me he had 10,000 long guns. He told me he had 10,000 people coming with long guns. Q Okay. Well -- A Just to be a stickler. Q Sure. A Which is equally scary. And like I said, I thought that we -- I thought he was talking about a Beirut-like scene where every street corner was going to be occupied by somebody.….. Yeah. I'm sorry. So what was your question again? I'm sorry. Q Did you expect there would be violence on January 6th? A No, I did not up until then. I really expected -- I was so pleased with how people behaved in the two rallies I had seen…... Q Then let's go to that January 5th meeting with the militia guy who had told you about the 100,000 individuals with long guns. A Uh-huh. Q I think you said he didn't identify himself to you, right? You didn't know who he was? A No, I didn't know. Q And I think you might've also said that you didn't ask him who he was? A I don't remember that specifically in the conversation. Like, once he had explained what his mission there was, I wasn't going to ask him a bunch of questions. I mean, I was going to let him talk and hear him out. Q I guess that's my next question. Why wouldn't you ask him who he was, if there's an individual telling you he's got 100,000 people at your disposal? A Not 100,000, 10,000. Q 10,000, correct. A I didn't want to get close enough to know his name. It was an odd anecdote to say the least. Remember, Byrne was testifying to a Congress committee in which he knew that lying was a crime. So he had to believe this happened. He’s an odd character, but even odd characters can tell the truth at times. In the Oath Keepers trial, they established that the militia kept rifles and other weapons in hotel rooms that some stood ready to bring down to the Capitol if they got that order. Anyways, I haven’t seen this Trench Coat Man anecdote mentioned anywhere except a few tweets, and it wasn’t covered in any detail. The tweets didn’t say he was wearing a trench coat, which is a pretty good way to identify him since not many men wear those these days [though I guess trench coats are making a return in some places]. It seems like something that should have been checked out before, a militia guy telling this Trump adviser at Trump Hotel on Jan. 5 that there were 10,000 people with rifles and other long guns coming to attack D.C. on January 6. I wrote about this and other related topics in a longer story here. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/24/2154723/-Florida-Trench-Coat-Man-1776-Returns-and-the-January-6th-Plot Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/