Americans believe their country is different from the oppressive nations famous for jailing their political dissidents, like Russia and its treatment of Alexei Navalny. Staying in this dreamworld is becoming increasingly more difficult because of the extraordinary way the Biden Administration, including its spy agencies, is targeting conservative journalists.
Blaze News investigative journalist Steve Baker was taken into federal custody Friday and charged with four non-violent misdemeanors related to his coverage of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
- 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) – Knowingly Entering or Remaining in any Restricted Building or Grounds
Without Lawful Authority, - 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(2) -Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds,
- 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(D)-Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building;,
- 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G) -Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building.
There is nothing normal about this. Jailing journalists because of their reporting isn’t supposed to happen in America, and yet here we are. https://t.co/vPTTQiFksK
— Mary Rooke (@MaryRooke_) March 1, 2024
Jan. 6 is a highly contentious issue made even more so by the reality that most of the “facts” surrounding the day are still locked away from the American public, with thousands of hours of footage still needing to be released. What little Americans know about the infamous riot was used in highly politicized hearings put on by Democrats and so-called Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to make the participants look like blood-thirsty ghouls hunting down members of Congress.
Before the release of some of the Capitol closed-circuit TV video from Jan. 6, footage captured by independent journalists, like Baker present on the day of the riot, was the closest thing Americans had to an honest understanding of the events responsible for arrests and charges levied against American citizens. (ROOKE: Democrats Are Already Cooking Up New Election Law Shenanigans For 2024)
Baker finds himself among these unlucky people targeted by the federal government because he’s “been poking them in the eye for three years,” one of his lawyers, William Shipley, reportedly told him.
I must turn myself in to the @FBI at 7 am, and then the FBI (or US Marshalls?) will transport me to the Dallas courthouse, where I can meet my attorney at 9:30 am.
I’m then scheduled for a 10 am hearing before the magistrate.⬇️— Steve Baker – TPC (@TPC4USA) February 28, 2024
Baker’s Jan. 6 reporting seemingly uncovered possible perjury by U.S. Capitol Police assigned to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s protective detail. In an Oct. 2023 report for Blaze News, Baker claims that a Capitol Police officer appeared to have given “false testimony about his whereabouts during a key encounter with members of the Oath Keepers.”
During the trial that eventually found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and member Kelly Meggs guilty of seditious conspiracy, U.S. Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus testified that he saw four members of the Oath Keepers, including Rhodes and Meggs, in an “antagonistic conversation” with USCP Officer Harry Dunn near the Speaker’s Lobby. (ROOKE: So-Called Republicans Are Helping Biden Gaslight Americans)
Baker claims that his analysis of available CCTV footage shows there is no way Lazarus saw the four Oath Keepers engaging with Dunn near the mini rotunda.
ITV News had journalists in the Capitol who captured Agent Lazarus emerging in the small rotunda at 2:58, but it was Journalist @TPC4USA Steve Baker who found footage that showed Lazarus was in the tunnels, not here, minutes earlier. Yet Baker is being charged for being in the… pic.twitter.com/GCGRlwJoeH
— 🇺🇸 (@FreeStateWill) February 26, 2024
“Three Blaze Media employees, including [Steve Baker], and a House Oversight Committee staffer recently examined the U.S. Capitol CCTV video, which appears to prove conclusively that Special Agent Lazarus was not in that part of the Capitol Building at the time he claimed but in fact in the lower tunnels that lead to the Senate office buildings, escorting senators away from the Capitol,” Baker reported. (ROOKE: Biden’s Border Crisis Exposed America’s Dirty Foreign Agent Secret)
“By analyzing the footage from multiple CCTV cameras and comparing the timelines associated with Officer Dunn’s actual interaction on camera with the Oath Keepers, it is clear that Lazarus did not arrive at the bottom of the staircase until three and a half minutes after the last of the Oath Keepers had left the area and were exiting the Capitol Building,” he said.
The biggest difference between journalist Luke Mogelson’s entry into the Senate Wing and journalist Steve Baker’s (@TPC4USA) entry into the Senate Wing, is that Baker used the door and Mogelson used a Window. But the government is charging Baker, not Mogelson. pic.twitter.com/RrISf30Jqv
— 🇺🇸 (@FreeStateWill) February 28, 2024
Baker also claimed Dunn and Lazarus gave “conflicting accounts” of the alleged incident with the Oath Keepers. “Lazarus claimed he saw Dunn involved in a conflict with the Oath Keepers as Lazarus came up the stairs. Dunn claims the opposite: that he saw Lazarus involved in a conflict as Dunn came up the stairs,” he reported. (ROOKE: One Huge Issue You Thought Was Over Is About To Rock A Republican Primary)
He also inferred that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation “crafted a version of events to present to the jury that does not seem to have taken place– a version of events that does not seem possible” and promised to continue “investigating … in the days and weeks to come.”
My first thought was to deny the FBI this very moment.
But the more we thought about it, the more this only brought home the fact that the Biden DOJ is going after a journalist who has exposed corruption inside the U.S. Capitol Police.
Game on boys.
— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) March 1, 2024
Most Americans aren’t aware of what transpired on Jan. 6 outside of the prevailing narrative mainstream media and the federal government has pushed. It’s a chilling reality that independent journalists who don’t subscribe to left-wing ideas aren’t allowed to ask serious questions about possible malfeasance from the federal government.
The payment for that is hand-cuffs and humiliation.