Since early in this week’s tragedy in Washington, D.C., the MAGA insurrections who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday seemed to fall into two categories.
First, the revolution tourists and rioters. Several already identified have lost their jobs and more likely will. Jenna Ryan, the Texas real estate broker who flew into Washington, D.C. with friends on a private jet was one of the more well-heeled of these; Elizabeth from Knoxville probably drove. The white-nationalist Proud Boys are the semi-pros, regulars at protests and MAGA rallies where they show up to bluster about civil war and pick fights with counter-protesters.
The second category are the zip-tie guys. These insurrectionists came in military-style tactical gear on Wednesday, with helmets and military vests ready to do … what exactly? Video captures a small “team” in tactical gear and backpacks climbing into the Capitol through a broken-out window.
Dan Kois described some of them for Slate:
Call the zip ties by their correct name: The guys were carrying flex cuffs, the plastic double restraints often used by police in mass arrest situations. They walked through the Senate chamber with a sense of purpose. They were not dressed in silly costumes but kitted out in full paramilitary regalia: helmets, armor, camo, holsters with sidearms. At least one had a semi-automatic rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails. At least one, unlike nearly every other right-wing rioter photographed that day, wore a mask that obscured his face.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, began collecting crowd-sourced still images and video clips to try and identify them. Friday night, Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker published a profile of retired Air Force retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr. (in the helmet, above) after confirming Scott-Railton’s findings.
Brock’s pattern of radicalization by now sounds familiar:
Two family members and a longtime friend said that Brock’s political views had grown increasingly radical in recent years. Bill Leake, who flew with Brock in the Air Force for a decade, said that he had distanced himself from Brock. “I don’t contact him anymore ’cause he’s gotten extreme,” Leake told me. In recent years, Brock had become an increasingly committed supporter of Donald Trump, frequently wearing a Make America Great Again hat. In the days leading up to the siege of the Capitol, Brock had posted to social media about his plans to travel to Washington, D.C., to participate in Trump’s “Save America” rally. Brock’s family members said that he called himself a patriot, and that his expressions of that identity had become increasingly strident. One recalled “weird rage talk, basically, saying he’s willing to get in trouble to defend what he thinks is right, which is Trump being the President, I guess.” Both family members said that Brock had made racist remarks in their presence and that they believed white-supremacist views may have contributed to his motivations.
In an interview, Brock confirmed that he was the man in the photos and videos. He denied that he held racist views and echoed Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, saying that he derived his understanding of the matter principally from social media. He told me that he had gone to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate peacefully. “The President asked for his supporters to be there to attend, and I felt like it was important, because of how much I love this country, to actually be there,” he said. Brock added that he did not identify as part of any organized group and claimed that, despite the scenes of destruction that day, he had seen no violence. When he arrived at the Capitol, he said, he assumed he was welcome to enter the building.
Considering “Operation Occupy the Capitol,” let that last line sink in.
Brock said he wore the paramilitary gear to defend himself from attacks by “B.L.M. and Antifa.” He claimed to have found the zip-tie handcuffs on the floor and wishes now he had not picked them up.
As of this morning, less is known about #ZipTieGuy or his plans. After multiple crowd-sourcing sleuths identified him late Friday as Eric Munchel from Nashville, Tenn, Scott-Railton confirmed it. A live stream from the Grand Hyatt hotel lobby helped ID Munchel, now maskless but wearing much of the same gear.
After Munchel affirms, “You guys are obviously patriots,” and his female companion checks to be sure the videographer is not an Antifa infiltrator, he spills his guts.
“I am very worried about our country and where it’s going politically, religiously, and just morally … as we are as humans, to our heart to strangers,” he said after just attempting the overthrow of the government. “If we were on different sides of the fence, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We would just be yelling at each other, spitting in each other’s face.”
Perhaps neither he nor Brock has not seen the 40 min. video of the violent assault that ends with the shooting of a female protester. She tried to climb into the Speaker’s Lobby through busted-out glass after an angry mob tried breaking down the door.
Now Scott-Railton is working to ID Male #3 from the Senate chamber.
Rioter Josiah Colt of Boise, Idaho was last photographed hanging from the balcony of the Senate Chamber. In an interview with Newsweek, Colt “begged for forgiveness, saying he got caught up in the moment.'” He had previously posted an Instagram video in which he called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “that bitch” and “a traitor.”
More and more of these insurrectionists will be receiving visits from the F.B.I. The agency will want to know much more about the planning and intent of these people before deciding on what charges to file.
In theory (if I have this right), under Department of Defense guidelines, Brock, 53, could be recalled to service and then court martialed.
UPDATE: Guy stealing the Speaker’s lecturn: Busted.