Open.Ink Continues to Receive Credible Tips from Gallows Video: Questions Remain

The gallows video released on Bannon’s War Room on Friday the 13^th by Gregg Phillips with Open.Ink has prompted an exciting, massive response from viewers, many of whom have responded with photos and other tips that may help identify the individuals in the video. According to Phillips, there have been a “couple dozen credible tips, which is a lot for one story.” Open.Ink is actively working to obtain more raw footage and photos concerning J6 in hopes of better understanding what happened before, during and after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol protest. 

Ed Martin with the Pro America Report correctly states in the gallows video that “there are many unanswered questions about what really happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6^th, 2021.”  Martin obtained the raw footage from the U.S. Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight and believes Americans should be entrusted with access to all the video because it will help get to the bottom of the unanswered questions. 

The Gallows Is Built Early Morning Jan. 6

Five individuals, three of whom arrive in a white van and two others who appear to arrive by taxi, emerge to assemble the gallows around 6:30 a.m. Three of them take out “wooden pieces [on wheels no less] of what would later be assembled into the gallows.” The gallows do not appear to be an afterthought but, rather, a well-thought-out prop. After all, it is later strategically placed, perfectly framed by the Capitol in the background. Dutch journalist Michael Persson, who picked it up, giving it to the FBI after protesters departed, said, “The gallows was too small and weak to be used. It was erected as a symbol.”

One of the involved individuals is referred to in the video as “Mr. Coffee” because of his multiple trips to get coffee as the gallows are being built. 

Many questions remain: What are the identities of Mr. Coffee and the other four individuals? Why did they construct the “gallows” on Jan. 6? Were they lone actors or did someone instruct them to build it? If so, who and why would they do it? Who benefits from placing the gallows in front of the Capitol on Jan. 6? Why would the media repeatedly insist it was Trump supporters who constructed it? The NY Times stated in its gallows story that it was erected “so the traitors know the stakes” and was a “motif [that] has become a favorite among right-wing extremists and white supremacists.” What is the factual basis for that assertion? Could there be another group who would benefit from erecting the gallows?

The gallows event is one of many odd occurrences associated with Jan. 6 Others include doors magically opening on the East side of the Capitol, Capitol police happily allowing Trump supporters to enter, many of whom fist bumped with protesters as they entered the Capitol, and the pipe bomber who has never been identified. It is also odd that Jan. 6 was never designated as a National Special Security Event (NSSE), when everyone in D.C. knew both Trump and Pence would be in D.C. in the company of thousands if not millions of protesters. 

The Transition Integrity Project (TIP)

With regard to the gallows, one must ask whether it was merely a scheme cooked up by a small group of individuals or was it a scheme whose timeline began well in advance of J6 to “prevent a disrupted Presidential election and transition.” No one really knows. However, oddly enough, the above statement is taken directly from a June 2020 report from the Transition Integrity Project (TIP). 

The TIP, according to official documentation, “convened a bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts in a series of 2020 election crisis scenario planning exercises.” Launched in late 2019, the very purpose of TIP was to explore scenarios addressing the “likelihood” that “the Trump Administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process,” as explicitly stated in the document itself.  

The group states it was preoccupied with the “the extreme lengths to which President Trump may be willing to go to stay in office.” This group was propped up to “mitigate” the risk that Trump might succeed. 

Moreover, on page 22 of the document, one of the “preliminary recommendations based on the input from participants in the scenario planning” states (emphasis added by Open.Ink):

“More broadly, there needs to be a robust, intentional, and specific strategy to challenge the white supremacist and extremist networks that enabled Trump’s rise to power and were in turn enabled by Trump’s administration. This base will not automatically demobilize if and when Trump leaves office, and it is inimical to the kind of pluralist democracy the founders intended.”

While the connections with what played out is yet unknown, the contents of the TIP document show there was considerable time and energy spent by a well-connected group of people who were “planning for a contested election” and the potential scenarios associated with their anticipated outcomes. Moreover, the report leaves little room for speculation about the group’s perspective on Trump and his supporters. 

They name Trump as “the elephant in the room” going as far as to say he is a “norm-disregarding incumbent” who may “[attempt] to stay in power through any means possible.” They also spend considerable time fleshing out tactics that “trusted leaders and the media” must use to “publicly challenge President Trump’s claims of fraud…” 

Those tactics include the use of agent provocateurs “to deal quickly with violent elements.” They focus on the potential implementation strategies to “[work] with media, organizers and campaigns to develop strategies to both promote accurate reporting with trusted leaders and to interrupt and limit disinformation campaigns.” They suggest working with social media platforms to “also elevate trustworthy officials and accurate information, remove lies and disinformation, and refuse to give voice to those provoking or organizing violent action.” 

Whether purposely planned or not, the erection of the gallows on Jan. 6 furthers a narrative that is thoroughly and repeatedly hashed out by the TIP group: Trump and his followers might turn “aggressive and coordinated” going as far as to suggest the lynching of former V.P. Pence should he not “cooperate” with the plan to properly count the electoral votes.  If not literally built to lynch Pence, whoever erected or orchestrated the gallows, the prop was almost certainly built to evoke an atmosphere of intimidation and violence. 

It is also interesting to note that the House Select Committee opened on June 16 with video of the gallows to illustrate the lengths to which the Trump insurrectionists would allegedly go to fulfill their task and purpose on Jan. 6. Or at least that is what Rep. Cheney (R-WY) and others on the Committee wanted Americans to believe. 

When examining high level initiatives like the TIP, it is important to look at the players involved. Co-founder Rosa Brooks is a professor at Georgetown Law Center and a former Obama administration Pentagon official. According to Influence Watch, she “serves on the advisory board of George Soros Open Society Foundations and was previously special counsel to the president at the Open Society Institute in New York.” Brooks also wrote a column on the “ways to get rid of President Trump before 2020.” 

In addition, Brooks wrote an OpEd for the Washington Post on 

Sept. 3, 2020 that predicted “the election will likely spark violence and a constitutional crisis.” She audaciously predicts Trump will “invoke the Insurrection Act” in response to “pro-Biden protests” and will send the military in to “teach these anti-American terrorists a lesson.” In this column Brooks makes the case for the existence of TIP, “war-gaming [called the Matrix game] seeks to forecast all the things that could go wrong—precisely to prevent them from happening in real life.”

In an August 5, 2020 interview with WBUR, Brooks made public some of the other members of TIP. They include the Michael Steele, the former Chair of the RNC, John Podesta, former Governor Jennifer Granholm from Michigan, Democratic operative Donna Brazile, Bill Kristol, a known never-Trumper, high level people associated with social media companies, Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, and British writer for the Financial Times, Ed Luce who wrote a column entitled, “How America Could Fail the Democracy Test.” He has written countless hit pieces on Trump, including having interviewed Hillary Clinton several times about her take on Trump. 

Notably, Wilkerson also served on the National Task Force on Election Crises, whose group began to meet in February, 2019. Wendi Strauch Mahoney reported for UncoverDC that the Task Force was “a high-level government sponsored entity” whose roster of members include

“David Becker with CEIR, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and CTCL's Tiana Epps-Johnson at its helm. Eventually, the task force would have at its disposal the full force and power of the DOJ and the FBI to "deter, detect and protect against threats of violence against election officials." A June 25, 2021 memo from Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco telegraphs the formation of a related DOJ task force comprised of members from the Criminal Division, the Civil Rights Division, the National Security Division, and the FBI to protect "against threats against election workers."

TIP and the National Task Force on Election Crises are not alone in their pursuit of the “preservation of democracy.” Since the 2020 election there have been numerous initiatives, discussions, roundtables involving high ranking Congressional members to address misinformation and disinformation to debunk Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.” 

Asking Questions and Formulating Hypotheses

Wendi Strauch Mahoney spoke with Ed Martin about his work to obtain raw footage of Jan. 6. for Open.Ink and the American public. Martin represents several J6 defendants and says the release of all footage from Jan. 6 is critical to their cases as well as the understanding of what happened that day. Martin rightly questions why there is so much reluctance in D.C. to investigate what seem to be the more selective aspects of Jan. 6, including the gallows incident:

“When they had 19 million plus dollars, the Select Committee didn't get to the bottom of it. The FBI had three years and we still know nothing about the pipe bomber. People not getting to the bottom of something—this says to me there's something there. That’s why we put the video on Open.Ink. Since we put our video out on Friday, we have had hundreds and hundreds of tips.” 

“As a result of posting our video, we received more video over the weekend. We got video and photos from people who were there. One of the people went to Open.Ink and asked if I had seen the white van. So, now I've now created a little video where you can see the van that they get out of.”

“People with more high-powered stuff than I have, meaning the FBI, they could figure out who those men were! I mean they could look at the license plate and run it down. And one of the guys in the Gallows gang was on his phone. One of them purchased coffee at that coffee shop, with a credit card. I have to assume there's a million ways they could get to these folks. So, we'll see if they do. Mr. Coffee changed his coat and hat. He’s got a power tool. Look at his shoes. Someone has to know who did this, who these people are.

“And again”, continued Martin, “The Transition Integrity Project, they refer to agents provocateurs. They referred to creating things. And my point is that's a group with a Georgetown University law, professor. It is a 501C3.”

It is indeed ridiculous to think that the DOJ and FBI have nothing on the gallows incident but have geolocation data from every single J6 defendant; data that includes dossiers with all of their text messages, social media interactions, histories, and movements after Jan. 6. Our government wants us to believe they have nothing on the Ray Epps or the pipe bomber.  And yet, the DOJ has an entire site dedicated to Capitol Breach defendants, with no parallel page that would document the attendees of the 2016 Inauguration protests,  Lafayette Park or the Portland riots. 

Most Americans understand J6 was a polarizing event because of its nexus with the much-litigated 2020 election and former President Donald J. Trump. The hypotheses surrounding why J6 devolved into something more than simple peaceful protests in some instances are many. And, while it is tempting to fall into the trap of reductionist thinking, — that it was all planned by one side or another,— the facts are that no one really knows. In fact, as raw footage and information are collected by Congress, Open.Ink, citizens, and journalists, it becomes increasingly obvious that J6 and the forces surrounding it make it an extremely complex event that warrants dispassionate scrutiny and robust testing of multiple hypotheses. 

Open.Ink Wants You To Participate

Open.Ink’s mission is to preserve in perpetuity footage, photos, and information from important events like Jan. 6 both for historical purposes and to enlist Americans to investigate the data on their own. 

Open.Ink seeks to provide a landing place for data that will provoke curiosity and the testing of any and all hypotheses. 

Open.Ink has the capacity to post and preserve all information associated with J6, including the thousands of hours of yet-to-be-released footage. The goal will be to continue to engage all Americans to pursue the truth wherever it may lead with regard to J6 and other topics of historical import. The feedback from Ed Martin’s gallows video has been spectacular and continues to bear fruit. 

If you know, or if you have any relevant information to share, please call 314-256-1776 or email at us at [email protected].

For those wishing to support the J6 Patriots and their loved ones, visit patriotfreedomproject.com.

Journalists and media professionals, your inquiries are important to us. We believe every side of this story deserves to be told. Please direct your questions to [email protected].