How the J6 witch hunt escalated Big Tech's control over speech

The federal digital crusade against anybody who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, launched a new era of intense weaponization of Big Tech that’s still accelerating.

While many Americans look at the modern-day U.K. and thank their lucky stars that free speech hasn’t plunged quite as low here as it has across the pond, the truth is that being hunted down, arrested, put in solitary confinement, or even killed for what you post or non-violent protest actions is very much a reality in Biden-Harris America. In fact, as this article will explain, even "doing journalism while not progressive” has become a crime in modern-day America.

The response to January 6 unleashed a tripartite nexus of freedom-destruction aimed at noncompliant citizens: massive federal budgets and access to top technology combined with enthusiastic private citizens and private companies willing to actively aid government efforts to maximally punish a group guilty, primarily, of wrongthink.

The latest excesses of digital nanny-state tyranny can be traced back to the fanatical federal response following January 6, which resulted in the biggest FBI operation in history and led to more than 1,200 arrests and 700 convictions. An estimated 3,000 individuals entered the Capitol, the majority without engaging in violent action. But the dragnet put in place thereafter was like nothing America has ever seen, pinpointing each step of the “insurrectionists” and destroying their lives and futures as much as humanly and extrajudicially possible.

The “laser-like” search for anyone who entered the Capitol was made with a variety of tools. These tools included tracking geolocational phone data, accessing private banking information, extensive combing of social media profiles, state-of-the-art facial recognition technology, and ample use of enthusiastic citizen informants. The liberal media lionized these sleuths as “sedition hunters.” They spent many days of unpaid labor tracking down those men and women who had entered the Capitol on January 6 and the small number of individuals who engaged in violent actions on that day. They even developed their own J6 tracking app. Over 200,000 tips came into the FBI in the first few days after the official investigation launched.

One of those whom the J6 witch hunt has snagged is Blaze News investigative reporter and correspondent Steve Baker. On January 6, Baker was working as a freelancer covering the protests and was one of over five dozen members of the media documenting the day’s events.

As Baker explains, “I didn’t submit my story to the right kind of publication, so I got arrested.”

Video footage shows Baker comporting himself calmly without violence or provocation and leaving when directed to by law enforcement. Later that evening, however, Baker called Nancy Pelosi a “bitch” on camera, which the authorities have used to retroactively impute his time inside the Capitol as participation in the actions of “the mob.” They have subsequently charged him with four misdemeanors.

“We can point to literally hundreds of protests and riotous events that did far more damage, with people killed, and the perpetrators have not been prosecuted, had their cases dropped, or were not charged to begin with,” Baker notes.

According to Baker, the difference is that the non-left has only had one big slip-up.

“The massive difference was that January 6 was our one event. They have racked up hundreds of them over decades. We finally did one and they lost their minds, and they activated the largest investigation — the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice — dragnet in the history of the country because our people screwed up one time.”

A digital war on dissent

Dragnet is far from an overstatement. Court filings prove Google responded to thousands of location requests by the government, essentially issuing a “mass warrant” against those in and around the Capitol on the argument that they may have been committing a crime or “witnessed” a crime and were thus not subject to privacy protections in their data and location. To cut a long story short, Stasi-like tactics and reasoning are very much par for the course among the upper echelons of the U.S. security establishment.

As Rachel Weiner and Drew Harwell note: “Since 2016, law enforcement has used geofence warrants to pull information from smartphone owners who use ‘Google location history,’ which regularly records a person’s location through a combination of cell tower, internet protocol, wireless, GPS, and Bluetooth data.”

The response to January 6 unleashed a tripartite nexus of freedom-destruction aimed at non-compliant citizens: massive federal budgets and access to top technology combined with enthusiastic private citizens and private companies willing to actively aid government efforts to maximally punish a group guilty, primarily, of wrongthink.

This multipronged witch hunt helped the government track down many of the “domestic terrorists,” as Biden referred to them, along with aid in boosting numerous false stories by the mainstream corporate media. This included breathless media platforming of serial perjurers such as Harry Dunn and David Lazarus, who told a version of events in line with the story of Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic establishment.

“We’ve actually seen in trial demonstrations the FBI bragging about their prowess of following somebody all the way from Texas, all the way through Arkansas, all the way to the Capitol,” Baker recounts.

“Spending the night in Virginia. Going over across the river the next day. You can see this is where they went literally inside the Capitol. Very precise, especially considering we couldn’t get cell phone signals that day.”

As for technology used on the ground, it’s clear that this was significant as well.

“We know there were — and this is typical of any crowd — it’s not related just to January 6. But the various federal agencies had gathered surveillance teams in the crowd, and they are using very specific technologies in that,” Baker explains.

“We have no doubt whatsoever that they were utilizing real-time facial recognition technology to identify threats. This is not a ‘bad’ thing or nefarious thing in and of itself. But we also know that they were tracking innocent people.”

When it comes to tech used in the crowd, investigations are also still under way.

“We also believe that there were assets in the crowd with jamming technology. There are portable units that are used by our special forces and IC that are very effective in jamming very large distances from either backpack-sized or smaller.”

Baker points to “the highest-profile trials and some of the unknown and really tragic, sad cases,” adding that “these people are being lied about, they’re having their lives destroyed, and this does not happen to the other side. It never does. It just doesn’t.”

While Kathy Griffin was holding up a bloodied mannequin of Donald Trump’s head in a widely shared post with zero legal consequences and violent rioters spurred by a false narrative were burning down cities during the Summer of Love, conservatives were facing an entirely different reality. Leftist celebrities and anti-Trump activists routinely issue death threats with little fanfare and few consequences (not to mention street-level violence), but when conservatives go off the reservation, they tend to get jailed or killed very quickly. Just ask Craig Robertson.

Journalists in the crosshairs

Blaze News investigative journalist Steve Baker in cuffs

Baker highlights the horrific abuse of justice against journalist J.D. Rivera of Florida.

“He behaved himself 100% professionally. He did not chant, he did not join in any of the singing. He wasn’t wearing political paraphernalia. He had all the professional photographic and video gear. … He was SWATTED by over 20 agents. What’s crazy is that the warrant was only for the four basic misdemeanors, and they SWATTED him. They put the red lights on his wife, his children, him, at 6:30 in the morning.”

Refusing to lie and accept a plea offer admitting guilt, Rivera went to trial, got convicted on all four counts, and was sentenced to eight months in prison with his first 60 days in solitary confinement.

“It turns out J.D.’s crime was not what he did that day. It was the fact that he was an activist for the Latinos for Trump movement.”

In Baker’s instance of facing potential jail time for not being a leftist and covering January 6, a plea deal is still possible, but he wants to know why other journalists are exempt from scrutiny, if so.

“This process is very disruptive to me in my life and my job. If I were to get a plea offer, obviously we would negotiate. I would negotiate it to the point that I didn’t have to tell a lie. If I were to be offered a plea deal that said I trespassed and entered a restricted space, OK. I did do that.

"But so did 60 other journalists as well. So this is selective prosecution. So I can say ‘yes I am guilty of entering a restricted space.’ But I also have to ask why aren’t all 60 journalists — the guy from the New Yorker, the guy from the New York Times, the guy from BuzzFeed … right down the line? Why aren’t they being charged? French television, British television. They’re not being charged. It is selective prosecution.”

Baker’s case is currently in a holding pattern, but he’s not giving up, nor is he giving in to fear. His lawyer will also file a selective prosecution motion in the next several months.

As for his journalistic work, despite warnings from individuals in the special forces community and intelligence community, Baker is moving ahead with an investigation of classified technology potentially used on January 6, which he has been urged not to continue digging into. But Baker isn’t stopping.

“I have multiple dead-man switches set up in the event of anything happening to me,” Baker emphasizes.

“I’ve been very public about that.”