Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDRLST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today on this special edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour is Tim Hale. Tim is an Army Reserve
veteran who spent nearly three years incarcerated for nonviolent offenses
related to the January sixth, two thousand and two only
one riots at the Capitol. Let's put this where it stands.
Tim was a political prisoner in one of the darkest
chapters of government abuse in this republic's history. Four years later,
the nation has yet to reckon with the damage done
to the people falsely labeled as insurrectionist and to the
idea of blind justice free of political interference. Tim, thank
you so much for joining us today on the Federalist
Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, sir, thank you so much for having me back on.
I can't wait to talk.
Speaker 1: You've been well. We were talking before we began recording.
I asked you about your holidays, and you said, boring
the way you would like them to be. You spent
some holidays behind bars, and it's in isolation. At one point,
give us a sense of how others who have been
swept up into these political prosecutions, how they, unfortunately spent
the holidays.
Speaker 3: Yes, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of my fellow defendants, A lot
of my fellow defendants had to spend their holidays, of
course in solitary confinement, of course, separated from their loved ones.
And you know, for the past few years, holidays aren't
exactly even if you were granted bail.
Speaker 3: Which not everyone was, but for those that were.
Speaker 2: Even then you had the dark cloud hanging over your
head of whether or not you were going to prison,
whether or not you would be convicted, or just whether
or not you would even be alive. And that's the
unfortunate reality. So for many families, they didn't have happy holidays.
They had really just a reminder of how their lives
had been torn apart and their families.
Speaker 1: And families had to of course deal with those as
you mentioned, law, those who were so under the foot
of the politically weaponized justice system that they could take
no more. There are people who took their own lives
because of what has happened in the last four years.
Speaker 2: Of course, yes, unfortunately there are at least five that
I know of. Five defendants have taken their lives. Matthew
Pernah is the most prominent example. I've gotten to know
his family, especially Jerry Perna. President Trump has brought her
on stage with him. President Trump actually has repeatedly told
her that he would give him a posthumous pardon, which
is a good thing, but unfortunately it's just not going
to bring back Matthew. And so, you know, the level
of destruction that these prosecutors and the dj have wrought
is really despicable, especially or someone like Matthew when they
intentionally threatened to give him more time after he agreed
to take a plea deal. They tortured these people.
Speaker 1: No doubt there's good news on this front, and perhaps
there's much better news coming in the new year. But
I wanted to start with your personal case my understanding.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as it should,
your conviction was vacated on the grounds of what the
Supreme Court dealt with in terms of the Sarbanes Oxley Act,
which we all know now was used inappropriately unconstitutionally in
trying cases like yours. There are a lot of political
prisoners facing the same situation. Can you walk us through
that where things stand? Because I think the last time
I talked to you, you were waiting for this particular moment.
Speaker 2: And waiting and waiting and waiting. As you know that
charge eighteen Usc. Fifteen twelve, that substatute that they applied
to us, that was ruled on by the Supreme Court
back in June June of twenty twenty four. And so
the reason I was waiting was because I had an
appeal in an appeal of my conviction and the government
was trying to make backroom deals with me where they
would drop my conviction. They would drop my conviction for
the fifteen twelve if I agreed to drop my appeal.
Speaker 3: You might think, well, okay, fair enough, but no.
Speaker 2: In fact, they said that they were going to prosecute
me for fifteen twelve, again just under a different trial theory.
Speaker 3: So I told them to kick rocks.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, yeah, So but fortunately after President Trump was reelected,
they basically lost their fire or yeah, they lost their
will to fight.
Speaker 3: And they're like, all right, mine, and.
Speaker 2: So they agreed to vacate the fifteen twelve without reprosecuting.
Speaker 3: And fortunately it.
Speaker 2: Only took a few weeks before the appellate court vacated
the conviction.
Speaker 3: So that's good news for me.
Speaker 2: I wish I didn't have to serve my entire sentence
for the fake felony, but that's a win, is a win.
And now I have to be re sentenced on the
misdemeanors for whatever reason in March, but I'm hoping that's
not going to be a necessity by that point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Indeed, just just amazing, just how willful, stubbornly willful this
prosecution has been in the Biden instration, the Department of Justice.
I know we've talked before about what you went through
in terms of, you know, the system of justice, so
to speak, the two tiered system of justice that we
have seen in America. You lived it. Take us back
through your experiences from that day January sixth, twenty twenty one,
when this whole thing began as a demonstration at the
Capitol there's no doubt that it turned riotous, But just
like you, there were hundreds and hundreds of others swept
up into a political prosecution following that day. But take
us back to what happened on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Oh, certainly, And it's worth noting that just recently the
Congress on their house page on the Rumble, has just
begun dumping more CCTV video.
Speaker 3: So we're four years into this and all the video and.
Speaker 2: The truth about what actually happened that day is still
being held back. So one of the first things I
did when I got out of prison was release my
personal cell phone video from that day, and it showed
that we were at the Ellipse listening to President Trump speak.
Everything was fine. It was like a you know, it
was like a concert, and.
Speaker 3: So people gradually.
Speaker 2: Made their way down to the Capitol to peacefully and
patriotically protest. As President Trump said, President Trump never directed
us to attack the capital, to fight police or to
break any laws. But about a half hour before people
like myself showed up at the Capitol, the perimeters, these
piecemeal perimeters that were set up around the Capitol grounds,
which we're seeing being assembled. Now actually this year, you know,
very recently, you can see they actually are putting real
signs up with the actual statutes, giving people proper notice.
Speaker 3: How about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So but before I and others showed up,
these barriers, these bike raps x and some makeshift fencing
were torn down by a group of people. People probably
know the name Ray EPs by now. He was one
of these individuals in this room. But there were approximately
i'd say five five capitol police protecting the perimeter of
the Capitol grounds, which you might think that's really not
a lot, and that's that's true. So these barriers get
knocked down, the police retreated and they assembled you could say,
a piecemeal perimeter around the west terrace of the Capitol,
very much farther in. But this didn't change the fact
that people had torn down fencing and gotten rid of
the signs. So thousands of people like myself had poured
into the area not knowing it was restricted grounds. Long
and short of it is there were certain provocateurs planted
in the crowds to incite a riot with the police.
The police instead of targeting specific provocateurs, actually, I'm sorry
to say, incompetent many of them attacked random members of
the crowd and incited the crowd even further and so
throwing flash bang grenades into the middle of the crowd bodies,
slamming old women with riot shields. This exacerbated the situation,
and eventually there were so many people they made their
way into the capitol. There are interesting individuals who were
involved in the initial breach of the Capitol building itself,
but for the most part, people like myself walked through
open doors. And there is testimony I have from other
defendants that I was incarcerated with who said that indeed
the police were opening doors for people. The police were
directing people for somewhere to go. I have video that
shows certain protests are saying, oh, it's quote, it's that way.
That's why we're not allowed down that way, which means
that we can be in most of the capitol hallways,
just not where the police cordon opt over here. It's
very complicated, it's very confusing, and I can even concede
that the police might have unknowingly given the impression to
protesters that they were allowed to be certain places they
were not.
Speaker 1: Well. It was very very chaotic, tim I mean, you
see the videos you lived it. It was very chaotic.
There were people rushing into that capital, not because they
were insurrectionist or because they wanted to do damage, but
they were fleeing from, you know, all kinds of pandemonium,
and they felt like they were going to be trampled
underfoot or maybe assaulted in the rush, assaulted by law enforcement.
It was an extremely chaotic time that is well known.
Speaker 2: Absolutely Matthew Perna who I just mentioned, he was pushed
into the capitol. He was almost crushed to death. And
people like myself, as I said, I walked, I walked
through an open door, a door that the CCTV shows
was kicked open, but I had no knowledge of. And
so this is an important thing for people to understand.
And here's a logical test. If January sixth was an
armed insurrection, wouldn't it have gotten more violent once the
capitol was infiltrated rather than less. The truth is that
most of the violence happened on the outside of the capitol,
on the capitol grounds, in very specific areas where people
had contact with police because of provocateurs or because people
were reacting or were incited. But when we got inside
the capitol, there was virtually no violence inside the Capitol
building itself, and this is reflective of the actual intent
of the people there. And so when you watch the
CCTV or any of our personal video, you see people
just chanting stop the steal, or you see people fist
bumping cops when they come across them, or you see
people walking through velvet ropes like it's a museum tour.
And so for the vast majority of people there, this
was just a protest. This was never an insurrection. This
was not a rebellion. And most people, even most people,
though there was a riot that developed, most people probably
didn't even know about the riot.
Speaker 3: And so it's important to understand.
Speaker 2: But from that point on, when the cops had told
people to leave and you know, ejected us. In my experience,
I was arrested very early on. I was arrested about
a week later. I was the union representative for naval
weapon contractors for Naval Weapon Station Earl, a Navy base
here in New Jersey. I had a poor relationship with
management because as the union rep I was constantly holding
them to task or taking them to task for labor violations.
It's a whole other topic. Everyone had known I had
gone to Washington, DC. Nobody knew that I was a
quote unquote insurrectionist, but my management had tipped off NCIS.
NCIS had come to my house looking for me, and
instead they found my roommate, and then they strapped my
roommate with a wire to try to incriminate me. And
the next day after that, I was in a county
jail after getting raided by.
Speaker 3: Dozens of FBI and NCIS agents.
Speaker 2: And not sure where you'd like me to go from there,
but I can definitely address the civil liberties that were
deprived of January sixth defendants for quite a time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, as you've described it, you go from
chaos to incrimination and then you know, you have basically
this storm of law enforcement officials on you. They're infiltrating
people in your life to try to get you to,
you know, to say some some incriminating things. Let's talk
a little bit about that, because you know, there are
so many different abuses here, but it can be argued
your particular civil liberties were very much abused in this.
Uh you know, these recordings in these sorts of things
where let's let's be honest. You know, you said some
unfortunate things, not in the context of course, that it
has been drawn into in terms of the testimony in
your trial. Sure, you know, my roommate was a BLM guy.
He was left of center, which I never had an
issue with. You know, he was a Jamaican American. You know,
we'd lived together for about three years.
Speaker 2: He was in the Navy and I was a naval contractor,
and we had worked together as for in, you know,
creating satire for by some time. He was my tech guy,
and I had recordings from videos where he was basically
advocating sectarian conflict, civil war, basically typical BLM burn it
all down stuff, and I never took it at face value.
And so the night he records me, I had been
drinking and so instead of playing the straight man, I
did a reverse UNO card, so to speak, and I
was the one who was joking about civil war.
Speaker 3: Now this is out of context, and.
Speaker 2: The recording makes it clear, very clear that at the
end of it I actually said, by the way, I
don't actually want civil war. But the damage was done
when I had been in front of a magistrate judge
and then at later a district judge for bail when
I was going for bonds. The government was issuing transcripts
that were chopped off, so it didn't have the entirety
of these conversations. And so the government had done everything
it could to try to portray me as the next
Timothy McVeigh. They had tried to portray me as a
white supremacist or a Nazi. They had taken satire from
years before January sixth to do that, and they had
manipulated evidence and withheld exculpatory evidence in order to deny
me bail and keep me as well. Eventually, in Washington,
d c. And where I was kept in solitary confinement
for approximately a year, I was denied a fair and
speedy trial. And everyone knows the Constitution says that you
have the right to a speedy trial. But it's important
to understand constitutional law has to be constitutional rights have
to be fleshed out with statutory law. Right. So in
DC you have the Speedy Trial Act, and the Speedy
Trial Act said you have the right to a trial
if you invoke it within seventy days. Well, I waited
sixteen months. It took me a year and a half
to vote a trial. I was denied my evidence. I
was denied access to my attorney. I couldn't even see
my attorney during the week of my trial. I was
denied access to religious services. You weren't allowed to take communion.
I was denied visitation from family, denied basic medical care,
and as I said, captain solitary, pretty cruel and unusual.
But more than anything, they tried to hold us hostage
because of COVID nineteen. DC was worse than any deep
blue state, and so they were able to get away
with depriving us of our rights under the basis of
protecting us from COVID. And of course, the jail promised
us that if we got the COVID nineteen shot, if
we got the vaccine, then we would be allowed to
see our families, see our lawyers, receive communion. And that
was a lie, and several people, unfortunately fell for it.
But that's what life was like in d C. It
was essentially a re education camp. I say that the
DC jail, or the DC goulag as it's called, is
a cross between an FBI field office and an insane asylum.
They courted us off, They segregated us from in the
entire jail. They segregated us into a special wing, basically
a nuthouse, where they kept us in solitary and they
also housed us with informants who would try to sabotage
our cases. If we still thought so, every every right,
every privilege of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and
I would also say the fourteenth Amendment equal protection. We
were treated very differently from other DC inmates. We were
also treated very differently from other rioters, and so everything
you'd hold sacred as an American was basically stripped from us.
Speaker 1: That is horrifying on so many levels, just absolutely horrifying.
And again I can't help but think about you mentioned
the BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the rioters
in the violent protesters in that movement. One might even say,
because of the burning of down of government buildings and structures,
that they were indeed insurrectionist, and yet I don't remember
them being treated the same way. You talk about disparate justice.
This whole experience was one long case study of justice.
And you mentioned COVID, But how on earth were they
able to get away with this kind of treatment of
people alleged to have committed crimes but not convicted of
committing crimes.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that is the it's the million dollar question.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, I believe COVID was used as a trojan
horse to justify pretty much anything. Keep in mind, I
was in the dcjail for approximately two years. I left
about November in twenty twenty two, and people were still
forced to wear COVID masks inside anywhere they went inside
the DC jail. COVID was a catch all boogeyman, and
it justified doing anything.
Speaker 3: And keep in mind, Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Had stopped with their COVID lockdowns and restrictions long before
the DC jail had. There was a ruling actually by
my judge Trevor McFadden, where he ruled that Mayor Bowser
couldn't couldn't lock down churches in DC because it was
a violation of the Bill of Rights. And so it
was curious though, because if they couldn't do that to
DC as a whole, why could they do that to
inmates in the DC jail and deprive them of all
their other civil rights? And so unfortunately, this is what
is what I always call the pendulum swing. The pendulum
can always swing back in the other direction. And because
we have a common law system. Bad precedents can last
for generations. I mean, you know recently the Dobbs decision
overruled Roe v.
Speaker 3: Wade. How many decades did that take? Or you look
at Plessy v.
Speaker 2: Ferguson and how long it took until Brown versus the
Board of Education. The common law system is a beautiful thing,
but it's very delicate, and bad precedents like this, if
they're allowed to stand, they'll ripple through history. And you
know what happened after January sixth, and also with COVID.
It needs to be nipped in the butt and this
can never be allowed to happen again.
Speaker 1: Well, that brings us to a very important point as
we look ahead now and turn the calendar, turn the
page into a new administration.
Speaker 4: Skyrocketing energy prices have caused people to do what the
watched Out on Wall Street Podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day,
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it affects your While thirty four percent of
people have cut back or stip spending on necessary expenses
to pay their electric bill, this government involvement and increased
regulation continues to drive their prices even higher. Whether it's
happening in DC or down on Wall Street. It's affecting
you financially.
Speaker 3: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Our guest today on the special edition of The Federalist
Radio Hour is Tim Hale. Tim is an Army Reserve
veteran who spent nearly three years incarcerated for nonviolent offenses
related to the January sixth, twenty twenty one riots at
the Capitol. Indeed, he was a political prisoner, like hundreds
more because of politics. Let's call it what it is.
So now you have experienced what you have, so many
have experienced, you know, being hounded, being arrested, being convicted,
being tossed in behind bars, so many, like you said,
rodding away without the benefit of a speedy trial, all
of the things that we just addressed. Will there be
any accountability for these abuses? And let me ask you
this through the prism of what my colleague at the
Federalist is reporting today as we speak, that Liz Cheney,
who was the co chair of the infamous J six
Congressional Committee, the House Committee, is receiving the highest citizen
honor in the land from President Joe Biden, basically a
last shot at those that his Justice Department swept into
this massive political prosecution. Liz Cheney is receiving the Presidential
Citizens Medal. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2: I think she belongs in prison, and I'd like to
see her go there when my friends are let out.
You know this, look, I'm I have always considered myself
more of an independent person, not a Republican partisan. She
is a Rhino and she work with the Democrats, and
that's whatever. But from my perspective, that committee didn't just
lie about January sixth, and they didn't just destroy evidence
from January sixth. They deprived people, good people that I
was incarcerated with, with the ability to have a fair trial. Now,
keep in mind, from my perspective, DC's extremely biased. They
were trying to have they were trying during my vois
deer hearings, during jury selection, they were trying to put
they were trying to put staffers from Chuck Schumer's office
on my jury. You know how, Yeah, you should read
the transcripts. It's actually insane. Every almost everybody that ends
up on these biased leftist juries they hate Trump, of course,
but they also work for the government. There's a there's
a massive, uh, there's a huge conflict of interest. But
that's that goes without saying. Actually, when they were having
those hearings, those committee hearings, they had plastered this video
all throughout Washington, d C. They put up big screens
and they were saying the names of Ryan Nichols, Jessica Watkins,
the Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers. They were prejudicing any possibility
and already prejudiced jury. It was they they deprived people
of any ability to defend themselves, and they had convicted
them in the court of public opinion before they'd even
set foot in a courtroom.
Speaker 1: But Tim, that is astounding to me because you know,
we also think about the concept of a fair and
unbiased jury. Well, you know, that's a delusion we saw,
of course in twenty twenty four when you had you know,
the Republican nominee for president in a kangaroo court in
manhatt Hat and convicted of crimes and of course trumped
up crimes, no pun intended. But you know, we really
the system of justice has really taken a beating. It
has been battered over the last four years in this country,
it's how do you ever get that back? But I
think about how could you ever expect a fair trial
or your co defendants, your fellow defendants, how could you
ever expect a fair trial in Washington, d C? Of
all places? And the question is, ultimately why were these
trials not removed from Washington, d C? On the basis
that you could not get a fair trial there?
Speaker 2: Well, and that's and that's exactly it. You know, the
issue of change of venue should the changes of venue
should absolutely be available to defendants in extremely controversial cases.
And yet, and yet in the belly of the beast,
keep in mind, in many of the government's arguments, basically
Washington d C was the victim. So if Washington DC
was the victim, how could d C and its residents
be the ones to try the case or to judge
the case? And of course the reason that changes the
venue weren't allowed, of course, obviously because they would have
a fair shot in any other district, even more, even
what we would typically consider liberal states or blue states
or regular district outside of d C. Yeah, that we
would have had a far greater shot at being judged
fairly by our peers. But you know again, I think
that this, and you alluded to the kangaroo court, this
is reflective of the Frank. I think this is reflective
of the change from a republic to an absolute despotism.
When I look at history and I think of how
Rome changed, it wasn't just the Roman Civil War that
caused the change from the republic to the empire.
Speaker 3: It was the fact that.
Speaker 2: The Caesars were replacing the power of the Senate, and
going forward to every new administration would be justified by
who assassinated who. And what I see now in America
is we're going to this place where each administration is
encouraged to prosecute or hunt down the last, or to
unse eat power. And that's not how a republic should function.
They talk about the peaceful transfer of democracy, and yet
they spend years hunting down their political opponents. It might
be more, it might not have as much bloodshed as Rome,
but I still think the principle stands, either we stop
this or we're not going to have the United States
as we know it.
Speaker 1: I agree, a quarter of a millennium into this great experience,
in this exceptional country, this representative democracy, you know, we
do have those Fall of Rome style concerns going on,
and that's why, in many ways a lot of people
in this country saw November as an existential election. But
I'm curious you noted it. You know, while you have
a Department of Justice clearly politically weaponized in this case
in so many over the last four years. Now on
New Year's early New Year's morning in New Orleans, we
have an attack on a celebrating crowd in the French
Quarter what appears to be a clear case of terrorism,
and there has been a lot of, I think understandably,
a lot of commentary questions about how this could happen,
How could this possibly happen? And when you look at
all of the resources, the time, the energy, and the
focus that has been placed on non violent offenders at
the capital four years ago, it is a matter of
misplaced priorities. How do you feel about all of that
given what we have experienced in this country over the
last four years.
Speaker 2: Well, it's absolutely right that their priorities are misplaced. I mean,
they we know that they've deliberately stopped, deliberately stopped targeting
child predators so that they could hunt down January sixth,
defendants with all the resources they have. I mean, but
keep in mind also this is the same old movie.
Oh he was on our radar. This that the other thing.
I mean, I never trust anything that comes out of
the government when it comes to these types of attacks.
I actually recent recently got a call from a defendant
I was incarcerated with, and he pointed out that this
suspect he actually worked for a company called Deloitte, and
Deloitte was the contractor that the prosecutors were using to
handle January sixth evidence. I don't trust anything that comes
out about this, this story in particular, But you can't
trust anything now. And this is unfortunate because I remember
a time people did trust law enforce They respected the
authority of those in uniform and those who were entrusted
to protect over to protect us. And yet I'm sure,
I don't know if you saw last night, Suddenly the
FBI is interested in get in finding the pipe bomber
from January sixth, and it's a little curious why they
would wait until right before the next January six and
inauguration to suddenly start asking for tips about the pipe bomber.
I don't trust anything that comes out about this. Their
priorities are absolutely completely wrong, and I think that this
is all performative. At the end of the day, I
think they're just trying to drive a point home to
the country.
Speaker 3: Don't you ever question us?
Speaker 1: And that is the sad and let's face it, dangerous
impact of what we've experienced in this country over the
last four years, as it relates to the j six
political prisoners, as it relates to so many different things
with the Department of Justice, we have understandably lost faith
in our institutions because those institutions have performed and acted
so badly. So as we turn the page on a
new administration, the forty fifth president becomes the forty seventh president,
a huge defeat for those who want to not only
see Donald Trump in prison, but want to continue these
kinds of abuses of government. Are you a lot more
confident these days that you know your fellow defendants will
see justice and that there will be ultimately accountability. I
have hope that President Trump will keep his word. I
look forward to the prison, you know, the prison doors
opening up. I look for over to my friends getting
to see the sun again. And I don't know if
restitution or by what means he's going to make people
whole to account for the injustices they've faced. But I
have faith that President Trump will take care of those
who've been abused.
Speaker 3: You know, the concerns I have are not.
Speaker 2: Whether or not this new administration will do right by
January sixth defendants. My main concern, I actually think is
stopping them from ever doing this again. I don't foresee
President Trump allowing such a thing, but I do know
that there are those who really want to stonewall his
administration like they did the last time. And so I'm
hoping that with the people he's getting into this new administration,
they'll be able to weed out the fifth columnists who
would absolutely love to undermine him with you know, another
syop or a false flag, a color revolution, what have you.
That's my biggest fear. My biggest fear isn't that we're
going we're not going.
Speaker 3: To get justice.
Speaker 2: I'm confident we will, as you know, you know, with
Patriot Freedom Project. President Trump has stood by January sixth defendants.
He's met with the children of these defendants, and he's
given there, he's given his word, and you know, I'm
I'm I'm hopeful for the future. I can't see the future,
but knowing the kind of man President Trump is, I
think that I think things are going to be okay.
Speaker 3: It can't get here soon enough.
Speaker 2: But you know a lot of us have waited quite
a while, and you know, waiting a couple more weeks
isn't going to be the end of the world. I
just hope that the country stands with President Trump because
they're going to come at him harder than they ever
have before.
Speaker 1: Can only imagine given what he has experienced, what we
all have experienced over the past eight plus years in
this country. Let's talk about the Patriot Freedom Project. I
had the great honor to talk to your aunt, Cynthia Hughes.
You know, this is a woman who is committed to justice,
justice for the political prisoners like her nephew, you know,
just swept up into these political prosecutions. What has the
the project been able to accomplish and where does it
go from here?
Speaker 2: Well, fortunately, thanks to the generosity of a lot of
very caring Americans, you know, PfP was able to help
a lot of j six families with Christmas, with Thanksgiving.
I'm hoping and I'm confident this will be the last
holiday season where it's going to be a question whether
or not defendants or with their kids, or whether or
not they can you know, put food on the table
going forward. You know, it's hard to say exactly what
the future holds. You know, there are questions about you know, lawsuits.
Should it be class actions, should it be individual how
what exactly is the timeframe for pardons going to be
Nobody knows it quite knows for sure.
Speaker 3: But I do foresee that there are still.
Speaker 2: Going to be people who need help from from PfP
going forward. A lot of people have still just had
their lives torn apart. Finding work is going to be
a problem, and so it's really hard to downplay just
how much these people's lives have been destroyed.
Speaker 3: You know, when just speaking on my own behalf.
Speaker 2: The first thing you google or the first thing you
find when you google our names is terror, risk, racist,
you know, what have you.
Speaker 3: People? People?
Speaker 2: You know, here's the thing, you know, a pardon or
even just an end to the prosecutions, it's not going
to change what people have endured. Uh, it's not going
to get people's reputations back. It's not going to undo
the damage. It's going to put you know it's going
to put us off to any further, uh, any further travesties.
Speaker 3: But you know, I'm hopeful that I'm.
Speaker 2: Hopeful that pardons will come fairly quickly. I know President
Trump said that they're going to look at things on
an individual basis. I think that's appropriate. I personally don't think,
you know, federal informants should get pardoned or ANTIFA members.
Speaker 1: That's just me.
Speaker 2: But I think that people will be let out, they'll
be able to start resuming normal American lives. I think
the process cutions will come to an end, the Feds
will stop kicking indoors and rating raiding the homes of
old ladies, and I think that we're going to have
a return to normalcy.
Speaker 3: But PfP, here's the thing. I think that.
Speaker 2: Patriar Freedom Project is probably going to be needed in
the future, even once the dust settles, because as we've
seen with like this Daniel Penny thing, as we've seen
with President Trump, even with how he's been targeted, I
think that weaponized justice might be the norm now. And
it's it's it's you know, as we just discussed with Rome,
it's not it's not a comfortable thing to confess to yourself.
But you know, I think that going forward, there are
going to be a lot of people when you look
at like, for instance, the Michigan kidnapping plot, with the
you know, the Whitmer case, where those gentlemen were set up,
I fear that our law enforcement, intelligence agencies all of that.
I'm concerns earned that even going forward, Americans are going
to be targeted and trapped, set up and falsely imprisoned.
And I think that, you know, when we know that
groups like the ACLU aren't going to do their job,
I think that we might need alternatives that will.
Speaker 1: Well, no doubt about it, four years of an administration
is not merely enough for the kind of necessary reforms
needed in our federal system of justice, that's for sure.
And so you know, you have an opportunity here, but
it's a very slim window for Congress to act. Congress
hopefully the members of Congress fully understand the abuses that
have occurred in the taxpayer name over the last four years,
in particular in this country, but it's going to take
some time. Certainly. I hope Americans are committed to the
work that it's that it's going to require to make
some real changes, and you touched upon it. The final
question for you is where where do you go to
get your reputation back? I mean, as as you noted,
you've been labeled a terrorist, insurrectionist, a Nazi sympathizer. How
do you get your reputation back? And for so many
people caught up in the same kind of narrative as
they go to find work after their long prison sentences,
do where do they go to get their their good
names back?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I I've been saying the wheels of justice turned slow,
but the wheels of oppression always come to a halt.
This is going to be unfortunately, it's just going to
be a long process, and you know, some of us
are going to have a harder time than others. You know,
when it comes to the reputation thing was I was
called a Nazi. But another man I was incarcerated with
Julian Cater, he was accused of murdering Officer Brian sick Nick.
That's a man that's going to be slandered as a
cop killer for some time. So one thing that and
I had you know, we had just addressed earlier that
my conviction was vacated when my felony was vacated. That
also meant that I was no longer on supervised release,
and so now I can freely communicate with those that
I was incarcerated with. And so a lot of the
men that I was locked up with have decided that
we're going to collectively write a book, a multi volume
history series about our time, about our time in the
DC Gulag, and so we're going to chronicle all the abuses,
similar maybe to Gulag Archipelago. But you know, I'm hopeful
that we're going to be the ones who correct the
We're going to be the ones the defendants, will be
the ones who will be the authoritative sources on the
history of January sixth, not the prosecutors and not the press.
So I think that's one way speaking out, getting more
involved and setting the record straight. I think that's going
to play a big part in the future, and I
actually think it's going to be necessary because, similar to
bad legal precedent, lies and disinformation will also ripple through history,
and it's up to those of us who live through
this to set the record straight. And I look forward
to doing that with a lot of the good men
that I.
Speaker 1: Was locked up with well, good for you and God
bless you for taking that on. I think that is
absolutely critical for the record. The people who experienced these
injustices need to have their say, and that is ultimately
hopeful that that will indeed come to pass. Thank you
so much for your time today, Tim, and we appreciate
your perspective on this anniversary of a very dark day
that led to a very very dark time in American history.
And I wish you godspeed and good luck moving forward.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Thank you for having me back
on It was great and God bless America.
Speaker 1: Our guest today on the special edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour, Tim Hale. Tim is an Army Reserve veteran
who spent nearly three years incarcerated for nonviolent offenses related
to the January sixth, twenty twenty one riots at the Capitol.
As we said, his felony offense has recently been vacated
because of a Supreme Court ruling that said the government
went way too far. I think as we move forward,
we're going to continue to see more and more evidence
to show that the government went way, way too far.
You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray