Update 8-10-20

Disclaimer – An individual who shall remain unnamed is claiming this article is about some sort of plot against him.  He is not hinted at or inferred anywhere in this document. I do not use an alias for him. My story is my story.  Everything in this account can be backed up with paperwork and multiple corroborating witnesses most of whom are named.  There is no implied or hidden story. 

For the past three and half years I’ve secretly worked as a researcher of the far right.  The story I’m about to tell is bonkers.  It involves an aging hipster, a hate group, an ambush by the NY Daily News, a phone call to the FBI, a surprise visit by the NYPD anti-terrorist task force, a bomb threat, homemade raw cat food and burlesque performers.  

Before I get into it, I feel I need to introduce myself to any readers who might not already know me.  I’m a 47-year-old divorcee in Brooklyn who lives with three cats. I’ve worked as a face and body painter for the past 19 years.  I won’t waste too much time with my personal history except to say that up until 2013 I used to work as an emcee/producer in the burlesque scene in New York City.  You can probably still find photos of me online in various costumes screaming or singing at strangers. I only mention my past with burlesque because it directly lead me into becoming a researcher of a far right hate group.  

I’m not exactly sure when this whole endeavor started but sometime before the last presidential election in 2016 a few friends asked for a favor.  They were still actively working as burlesque/nightlife performers in various clubs in New York City.  They sometimes worked with a woman who was making them extremely uncomfortable.  For legal reasons I’m going to call this woman Portia.  She’s not the focus of this story but because she’s made several false accusations about me in the press and on social media I’m going to avoid using her legal or stage name.  This story is long and involved so I’m going to use a bit of a timeline throughout to help frame the events.  

Fall 2016

My friends sought my help because they knew I worked with video.  At this point Portia had made a few appearances on the The Gavin McInnes Show (TGMS).  TGMS was one of many shows on the subscription based streaming platform, Compound Media, founded by disgraced shock jock Anthony Cumia.  The burlesque performers wanted me to capture every time Portia appeared on TGMS and give them the footage.  One of them was already paying for a subscription but she had no experience working with video.  They wanted to show producers proof that Portia was espousing what they thought were anti-LGBTQ and racist views.  They didn’t feel safe performing with her.  They were also concerned that a fan of TGMS might show up and cause trouble for a number of LGBTQ performers who worked with them.   McInnes did not hide his contempt for trans women, even going so far as to call them “mentally ill gays” and even wrote an article claiming that transphobia was perfectly natural.

I’d never really captured video off of a computer screen before and I didn’t want to spend any money on expensive software.   I used my old camcorder and a laptop to capture episodes of TGMS featuring Portia.  I would just line up the camera and crop the screen as best as I could.  The trickiest part was keeping my cats from meowing too much or walking through the shot. This was more difficult than you can imagine some days.  

Almost immediately I switched my focus from Portia to McInnes.  Portia gave me exactly what my friends wanted.  She would insult them, trash the nightclub and burlesque scene while occasionally saying something embarrassing, hateful or racist.  The other performers were happy with what I was giving them but Portia didn’t really interest me.  I had stopped working in burlesque around 2013 and had no personal history with her.  

I admit I’d never heard of McInnes before I watched the first episode of his show on Compound Media.  McInnes was a founder of Vice Media who severed his ties with the company in 2008 due to creative differences.  His departure included a large multi-million dollar settlement.  His rhetoric was the same old tired aggrieved white male schtick mixed with racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and general bigotry.  McInnes wasn’t unique in his vitriol.  I could easily find a few dozen angry white men on various platforms spewing the same kind of hate.  What set McInnes apart were two things — a fraternal group of men he’d founded called The Proud Boys, and McInnes’s repeated statements glorifying and encouraging the use of violence for political means.  

The Proud Boys were supposed to be about celebrating masculinity and Western civilization.  Members could be any ethnicity or sexual orientation although most of them featured on TGMS were straight and white.  Proud Boys were initiated into the group via a mild hazing and prohibited from masturbating.  Soon after he founded the group, McInnes claimed to have at least 10,000 members with chapters worldwide.  His appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience helped promote the group. 

I contacted a local antifa group in New York City since they had already run a story about Portia along with other local far right figures.  I let them know what I was doing and asked if they wanted any specific footage.  They told me immediately they wanted whatever I could find of McInnes inciting violence.  I sent them my first clip, one of McInnes saying.

Episode 006 – McInnes – “Five men in this room have violated some stupid fucking law, and we can get thrown in jail tomorrow.  So instead of hiding and hoping we don’t get caught we have to go, these laws are insane, get a fucking gun.”

They thanked me but didn’t really do much with it.  I knew I could find more quotes so I kept hunting.  When I started this project McInnes had already made a couple hundred episodes and was making about four new episodes a week.  I realized I would never be able to catch up and capture/edit all of them.  I figured the best way to get what I needed was to create a spreadsheet and edit episodes with high profile guests such as Richard Spencer, David Duke and Milo Yiannopoulos.  I spent a day going through the entire catalog of existing episodes on the Compound site and wrote down as much as I could find.  Then I went to work.  I’d capture the episodes on my camera, then download and edit them on my desktop.  To speed things up a bit I would watch and edit most episodes at 125% speed.

Within a couple of months I’d completely given up on working with antifa.  We weren’t exactly a good fit.  They didn’t seem to know what to do with the footage I gave them and they sometimes completely blew off my emails.  I wasn’t about to sit through dozens of hours of toxic rants by McInnes for nothing. 

I decided to seek out a reporter who might be interested.  At this point I had about 10 minutes worth of clips of McInnes inciting violence.  I created a transcript so I could easily cut and past quotes to show reporters exactly what I had.  McInnes had mentioned a woman named Amanda Marcotte on multiple episodes.  He claimed he was suing her over an article she’d written about him on Salon.com.  I figured if anyone would want to see this footage it would be Marcotte.  I discovered we were already friends on Facebook as I had added her a couple years prior after sending her some fan mail over an article she’d written.  When Marcotte and I met she was floored by the sheer amount of clips I had gotten at that point.  I had folders for every topic: black, Latino, Asian, Women, Muslims, LGBTQ and of course violence.  Marcotte said she would talk to her editor and she what she could do.

McInnes has said repeatedly that the Proud Boys are not violent and did not promote white supremacy.  The amount of times McInnes used the n-word and other racial slurs was staggering.  He often went on long rants about how different ethnicities evolved over time.  Here are a few clips that indicate the true nature of McInnes’s beliefs. 

Episode 104 – McInnes “I think there’s uh something that a lot of people are too scared to bring up when you talk about Western culture is white culture. And I keep it cultural and I’ve got plenty of black friends and I’m not gonna, but when I think of other cultures and other races in America the ones that thrive are the ones that tend to go white . . . so I think the west is made up of white people and people who recognize that the white system seems to be a pretty good system.  It’s a very contentious subject but I think the sorta the sub-angle with this is that Western culture is on the demise and if we could unify it we might have a chance of it going like this (gestures down) to this (gestures up).  Because you know whatever replaces the West is going to be worse.

Episode 267 – McInnes – “God started the microchip 3.5 billion years ago and he just sort of rolled it and he said if you’re a Dodo bird and you’re delicious  you’re going to get eaten and you’re not going to last long.  The other guys who experience winter they’re going to become really tough they are going to become Vikings they are going to take over the world and they are going to be my best people, (laughs) they are the chosen ones.” 

Episode 145 – McInnes – “My favorite monkey has to be Barack Obama, he’s my favorite n*gger.”

Episode 059 – McInnes – “(Black people) They spent more times climbing trees or I don’t know what it is but genetically something is built up. (mimes climbing with his arms).”

Episode 230 – McInnes “If you’re with Leslie Jones and you see you’re guys the next day, and you’re like (said in Jamaican accent) why you going on with that big gorilla from SNL.”

After a month or so Marcotte let me know her editor didn’t want to go with the story for a number of different reasons but she referred me to other reporters who worked the same beat. 

March 2017

At the same time around March of 2017 I anonymously sent a flash drive of what I had with a one page document to the FBI headquarters in New York City.  From what I’ve read in the press the FBI was already investigating McInnes and the group at that point. 

The Fourth Degree

I’m not sure exactly when I stumbled on the fourth degree as I was jumping around the catalog of episodes.  On 11/28/16 Episode 253 McInnes announced a new level in the Proud Boys organization.  A Proud Boy named Shawn Fitchner was declared the first “fourth degree” Proud Boy after he’d gotten arrested and then briefly jailed over a fight.  The 1st, 2nd and 3rd degrees of Proud Boy membership were as follows:

1st degree – Stating the Proud Boys creed

2nd degree – Saying five breakfast cereals while being punched by other Proud Boys

3rd degree – Getting a tattoo of the words Proud Boys somewhere on their body.

4th degree – Get in a fight, get arrested for the cause (Exact wording changed over time) 

Episode 253 – McInnes – “It’s being physically assaulted for the cause.  Getting arrested, getting in a fight.  Now the fight has to be an organized fight, not just getting in a fight.  So it has to be some conflict that’s officiated.  Now if you get arrested for something, that’s been officiated by the police so that counts.  I’ll just make it two things, one an organized fight in a ring.  Boom fourth degree.  Two you got arrested for fucking around and it was Proud Boys related.  That’s fourth degree, one of those two things” 

As I progressed through the series I noticed McInnes ramping up his calls for violence.  I was collecting quotes from nearly every episode.  Then something happened that dramatically changed his tone.  

Unite the Right Rally  – The Death of Heather Heyer

On August 12th, 2017 in Charlottesville Virginia, James Alex Fields Jr. intentionally drove his car into a crowd of people injuring 28 and killing Heather Heyer.  Fields previous espoused white supremacist and Neo Nazi beliefs.  Although there is no evidence that Fields was connected in any way with the Proud Boys or their organization, a former Proud Boy,  Jason Kessler was one of the organizers of the event.  McInnes did not attend the event himself but some members of the Proud Boys did attend. 

To quote the Southern Poverty Law Center

Their disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions: rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Indeed, former Proud Boys member Jason Kesslerhelped to organize the event, which brought together Klansmen, antisemites, Southern racists, and militias. Kessler was only “expelled” from the group after the violence and near-universal condemnation of the Charlottesville rally-goers.

After Unite the Right McInnes immediately pulled back on most of his violent rhetoric and disavowed Jason Kessler claiming he was never a Proud Boy to begin with.  McInnes soon left Compound Media for a new job at CRTV, a network owned by Mark Levin a conservative lawyer, author and radio personality.  The move appeared to be an attempt to rebrand.  CRTV had more of a traditional conservative base including Christians who wouldn’t go for McInnes’s typical antics.  I watched a couple of episodes of his new show Get Off My Lawn on CRTV and immediately lost interest as I could tell McInnes was essentially muzzled.  I knew I wouldn’t get useful content so I didn’t bother capturing any of it.  

Quotes from the footage I’d captured from TGMS were making their way into various articles.  The real game changer came when Michael Edison Hayden, now of the Southern Poverty Law Center, introduced me to the satirists Vic Berger IV and Nathan Bernard.  

At the time Berger worked for a Super Deluxe, a division of Turner Broadcasting.  Berger was known for making trippy, surreal, satirical videos using found footage of various politicians and celebrities.  Berger had already targeted McInnes for ridicule before I contacted him.  His first short videos of McInnes made with my clips were meant to embarrass and mock McInnes more than anything else.  McInnes made this job somewhat easy as he tended to do incredibly outrageous things on camera such as: inserting a butt plug up his own anus, whipping his penis out and humping green screens with porn stars projected on them.  

May 2018

In May of 2018, after a couple of somewhat successful parody videos of McInnes, a member of the Proud Boys showed up at Vic Berger’s house as a means of intimidating him.  Berger chased the man down and filed a police report.  Berger’s response was to double down and make even more videos critical of McInnes using the footage I gave him. 

Around this same time my name appeared in an article on the now defunct blog/website of Milo Yiannopoulos.  In a long and rambling mess written by fellow Proud Boy, Pawl Bazile, I was accused of all sorts of nonsense regarding Portia.  The article used the plural pronoun “they” throughout so I wasn’t really sure what I was being accused of by Portia or Bazile.  The blog post didn’t show up in a news search for my name so I decided to ignore it completely.  I got exactly three hostile comments on my social media from it.  

About a week later I got a voicemail from a state trooper in Rhinebeck, NY telling me he was contacting me on behalf of Portia.  This was utterly bizarre as I had never even been in Rhienbeck, NY and had no idea why he was even contacting me.  I knew that Portia was from that area of NY state and a friend told me she thought Portia had a relative who was a retired state trooper.  After two and half months of phone tag, the officer did not have voicemail, the entire ordeal was resolved in a phone call.  The officer let me know the compliant was not a criminal matter.  The accusation against me was that I had given private information about Portia to a local antifa group.  The only information I’ve ever had regarding Portia was her media appearances on TGMS and elsewhere.  The local antifa based group had already published an article featuring Portia before I’d even contacted them.  Portia then went on various right wing media outlets where she made claims about suing me and having me arrested.  Although she never called me out by name, it was obvious to me who she was talking about.  I wasn’t following her at all at this point.  The other burlesque performers sent me links to everything. 

McInnes gets kicked off of Twitter

In August of 2018 about a week before the second Unite the Right rally in Washington DC, Twitter suspended the account of McInnes and all accounts associated with the Proud Boys.  I suspect part of the reason for his suspension might have been the incident involving a Proud Boy showing up at Berger’s home.  Twitter never gave an exact reason.

Things calmed down a bit until the night of October 12, 2018.  McInnes was invited to speak at the Metropolitan Republican Club in the posh Upper East Side neighborhood in Manhattan.  The club had been hit with vandalism and threats allegedly by antifa groups before the meeting.  That night several different groups showed up to protest the event which ended with McInnes brandishing a plastic sword before he entered a car and drove away.  Soon after a fight broke out and a group of protesters were beaten by members of the Proud Boys. 

As soon as news broke about the fight I was flooded with requests for my footage.  At this point I had currated and edited about an hour’s worth of clips about violence.  I created a file sharing account and then contacted journalists who I was already working with such as Andy Campbell, Michael Edison Hayden, Christopher Mathias, Jared Holt, Amanda Marcotte and a slew of other reporters. 

Within a couple of days Berger, using my clips, made a video that got roughly 2 million views on Twitter.  Berger’s video was devastating.  He captured what I had been seeing for years in a perfect 2 minute 20 second video.  The Proud Boys and Gavin were summarily kicked off of Facebook and Instagram soon after.  Within a week or so of the video dropping McInnes was fired from his show on the newly formed Blaze TV.  

That week I decided to call the FBI and tell them what I had.  Although I didn’t give the agent my name I did give her my phone number which would have lead them to me instantly.  She told me to go ahead and drop my letter and the flash drive off at the FBI office in New York City.  After working on cleaning up all of my files for hours I rushed to get to their headquarters where I was told that I couldn’t drop anything off in person.  Due to security reasons they would only accept my submission via the USPS.  I asked them what was the best way to hide my identity and the clerk told me to use their address as my return address. 

I went home and mailed the padded envelope the next day along with one for the State’s Attorney.  I included Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch as a potential contact if they needed any additional information.   I then made a list of everyone else I thought should see this footage.  I started with a brief list of government officials the Southern Poverty Law Center provided on their website.  The governor and mayor were both begging the public for information.  With the help of some of the burlesque performers I purchased flash drives in bulk from Amazon.  I made a six minute montage of the worst clips for government officials and filled larger drives with everything I had for media outlets.

Over the course of a few days I sent out about 20 padded envelopes all addressed as the FBI had instructed.  Each envelope was completely flat, weighed exactly 2 ounces and contained nothing but a flash drive and a piece of paper.  I decided to send the video this way since I ran into so many problems when I tried to contact people via email or a website form.  I was ignored by any number of reporters.  I figured if I just sent them the flash drive, they could watch it if they wanted, and if they weren’t interested they could throw it away.  I used the sender’s address as my return address.  I mailed about half of them from my local post office using my debit card, and the other half from the main post office across from Madison Square Garden.  I purposefully used a clerk instead of stamps or a self-service machine to avoid suspicion.  

On the morning of October 24, 2018 I got an email from Amanda Marcotte.  She knew I was sending things out to various officials and thought she spotted my envelope.  She attached an image.  My heart sank.  There it was – a photo of the envelope I’d sent to the governor on some type of scale in a mail room.  I had the unfortunate luck to send my packages out on the same day that a crazy Trump supporter sent out pipe bombs to various Democrat politicians and media outlets.  The fact that my envelope contained a small piece of metal and had no return address was enough for authorities to panic and flag it.  I immediately called the governor’s office.  As soon as I could get an operator I said the following, 

“I’m the person who sent that package that you think is a bomb.  It’s harmless.  Do you know that yet?”

The operator replied, “You need to speak with a police officer.  Can you hold please?”

About ten minutes later I spoke to a State Trooper in charge of the case.  At this point they’d opened the envelope and realized it was in fact harmless.  After speaking with the officer for at least 20-30 minutes I thought my ordeal was over.  Here’s what my package looked like.    

This is what the pipe bombs looked like. 

Notice the many differences.  Mine included a label from an actual clerk in a Brooklyn post office.  The information on the label would most likely trace back to my debit card if law enforcement really wanted to know where it came from.  The pipe bombs were sent from Florida.  I also hand wrote the address and my package was completely flat and weighed two ounces.  I even wrote “Proud Boys” with an asterisk on the bottom of the envelope in the hope that someone might figure out it was a crime tip.  I’m not sure why they thought anything that weighed only two ounces could be a bomb but apparently my innocent crime tip set off a reaction that lead to about 400 police officers storming the mail room and Manhattan offices of Governor Cuomo. 

Meanwhile on Twitter people had traced my package back to the post office from where I sent it.  My mind raced as I thought back to the ridiculous article on Milo’s website that had been published in May.  I’m sure the author, Pawl Bazile, knew where I lived.  They might actually figure out who sent the package.  I contacted the reporters who posted the image but they couldn’t care less that they had documented a crime tip as a potential bomb.   

That night it was time to make a fresh batch of cat food, an activity I do about once a month.  To make the cat food I have to move everything off my counter onto my table, which makes a huge mess.  I then have to take frozen chopped up chicken thighs, bones and all, and shove them through a grinder which makes a lot of noise and tends to splatter bone marrow in various directions.  The whole process is arduous and disgusting. 

At 9:00 PM that night after making the first batch of food I got a knock on my door.  Again my heart sank.  Maybe it was one of the Proud Boys who figured out that I was a source of information showing up to my home like they did to Vic Berger.  I said, 

“Could you idenitfy yourself please?”

“NYPD and State Police we just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Oh thank God it’s you.”  I said as I quickly peeked open the door. 

“I’ve got blood all over my hands.  I was making cat food.  Give me a second.”

I put the remaining frozen chicken back into the freezer, put my meat cleaver down, ripped off my gloves and let the cops in.  My apartment looked about as bad as it ever looks so I apologized for the mess.  I could also smell the distinctive stench of dead chicken throughout the entire place. 

The cops walked in, realized it was a studio apartment and settled in.  I was sitting while they stood.  It was two state troopers and two NYPD officers all in plain clothes while an unknown number of plain clothed officers also waited outside in the hallway. 

Then the questions started. 

• Have you dated any member of the Proud Boys? No
• Are you a member of antifa? No
• Why would you do this? Because I was seriously worried they were going to hurt someone.  
• What are you trying to get out of this? Nothing. I was just trying to help.
• Why would you send this on the same day as a pipe bomb?  Well if I had a crystal ball I would go back in time and send it on another day.

The state troopers were kind and openly made fun of Gavin.  The NYPD members acted like I was insane.  The main NYPD detective starred at various objects in my office area, an old mermaid parade costume of the statue of liberty with the words “RESIST” across the crown was of great interest.  

The female state trooper seemed genuinely interested in the raw diet I fed my cats.  My guess is she was there to keep me calm.  After about 30-40 minutes I gave the officers a list of everywhere I’d sent an envelope and proved to them that I had absolutely nothing to hide.  I got my first laugh line when I told them. 

“I’m not a radical.  I voted for Hillary Clinton.  Do you want to see one of my campaign t-shirts?”

I thought it would be obvious when they saw three cats running around and two giant overstuffed bookshelves what kind of person I was — a nerd. 

The next day – Thursday, October 25, 2018

I was coming home from a kid’s party I’d just worked for a regular client in the Upper West Side.  I had on a blue velvet jacket trimmed in metallic brocade and a felt top hat, along with my shopping trolly covered in kid friendly patches.  I saw an older white man in my lobby who was just sitting there with a notepad.  I assumed it was another cop.  I went to my mailbox got my mail and tried to avoid him. 

“Ms Jesk” he mispronounced my last name.  It’s a common mistake.  People assume the e is silent.  My last name is pronounced closer to Jes-key.  

When I turned I saw his press badge (NY Daily News) around his neck and then I really panicked.  Somehow having four cops in my apartment didn’t freak me out but being exposed as a source on this story sent me into an aboslute terror. 

“How do you know my name?  I sent you something anonymously.  I do not want to be named.  I don’t want to be the story.  Why would you do this to a source?  Please leave me alone.  Give me your phone I want to talk to your boss.”

The reporter seemed stunned and obliged.  I proceeded to chew out his boss.  I was then hit up with the same series of questions all of which I answered as I had in the past with the cops.  The one that really pissed me off was “Have you ever dated any of these men?”  I understand why that might seem like an obvious question but it annoyed me off that they would think a woman couldn’t do something like this without some type of revenge motive. 

Then he asked “Did you give this to the NY Post?”

I responded “No, why would I waste the postage on them?”

“Good.” 

The reporter’s boss told me that they received my information through a source at the NYPD.  My panic only got worse.  I found out weeks later that they most likely got my information through a police scanner.  They were making an educated guess based on the fact that both the NYPD anti-terrorism task force and state police showed up at my apartment the night before.  

After going back and forth with the reporter on the phone and the one in my lobby I had a complete breakdown.  I quoted to them from video I’d seen and captured the night before that Pawl Brazile had made on a Facebook Proud Boys group.  (The entire group was kicked off of Facebook only a few days after this incident)

“We will find whomever sent this fake bomb to the governor and hang them from the highest tree, metaphorically of course.”

With that quote and my complete emotional break down the reporter decided to back off.  I then said something to the effect of having Grandparents of German descent who couldn’t even speak of World War II without sobbing.  I had always asked myself what would I do if I saw the rise of something so horrible in my lifetime.  I was just trying to help.  I didn’t want publicity.  I didn’t make any money off of this entire ordeal, I’d spent money on it.  

I’m not even sure what I said as I was a complete and utter mess.  As I got off the phone I saw the reporter, a man probably in his late 50s.  He was also crying.  He said,

“I’m so sorry.  We didn’t know.  Thanks so much for trying to do the right thing.  We need more Americans like you.”

I wiped my tears and got into the elevator and called a family member who assured me they couldn’t run a story like that without my consent.  I guess I should have known something like this could have happened but I never would have thought in a million years that my tiny flash drive would get mistaken for a bomb or that a reporter would want to do a story about me.  I found out later that the NYPD had gone around to all of the locations I’d sent envelopes and picked them up.  The only two media companies who refused to give them up were the NY Daily News and Buzzfeed.    

Saturday, October 29th 2018

I woke up late having been drained by the week’s events.  I picked up my phone and continued to have another meltdown.  My phone filled up with updates about a mass shooting.  It was a synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Eleven people were dead simply for being Jewish.  The man was driven by deep hatred that had been stoked by others on the far right.  

I couldn’t move and could barely breathe.  Through studying McInnes I’d learned far more about any number of far right personalities and the toxic hate they promoted.  McInnes had made a number of problematic statements about Jewish people including terrible jokes about the holocaust.  McInnes tread a fine line he was usually not overtly anti-Semitic yet he’d had guests on his show like David Duke who had built a career on his hatred of Jews. Was this the start?  Would there be more shootings?  

November 21, 2018

McInnes posts a video on YouTube where he formally quits the Proud Boys.  He claimed he was quitting the group on the basis that it might help the men who were charged in the fight outside the Metropolitan Republican Club.  I wasn’t really sure how that would work as he’d have to go back in time and never form the group in the first place to really help these men.  It seemed more like McInnes was trying to save himself more than anything. 

August 1st, 2019

The trial for two of the men arrested and charged in the fight outside the Metropolitan Republican Club begins.  A couple of weeks earlier I contacted the Assistant District Attorney handling the case, Joshua Steinglass.  I was suprirsed that the operator gave me him directly and not a paralegal.  At first he also thought I was a random nutjob until I described exactly what I’d sent the states attorney.  For the next few weeks I agreed to capture and edit any comments McInnes or any of his guests made about the case and send them to Steinglass via his paralegal.  I would find myself coming home after long catering gigs or special events and then watching McInnes on his new network.  McInnes talked about the case constantly.  

I also discovered that some of the clips that I gave to the States Attorney were used as evidence in the case or at least submitted as evidence.  The quote about Gavin comparing Barack Obama to a monkey was quoted in The New York Times.  

October 22, 2019

About a year after the brawl outside the Metropolitian Republican Club two members of the Proud Boys were sentenced to four years in prison for the actions the night of the fight.  I found out via text by Jared Holt while in the middle of a catering gig.  I had mixed feelings.  I actually felt somewhat sorry for the two men.  One of them did kick another man in the head but I agreed with the judge on the case Mark Dwyer who said, 

“It’s a shame when some people jump up and down on a platform and their followers, their soldiers, get into trouble.”

McInnes was reckless in his promotion of violence.  He somehow thought using violence as a means of political change was something he came up with.  He didn’t bother to notice the overwhelming evidence that violence just begets more violence and that any group who tries to beat their opponents into submission is rarely viewed positively.  

November 19, 2019

A group calling themselves Latinos for Trump held a rally in support of the convicted Proud Boys outside of a Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan.  About two dozen Proud Boys supporters were met by approx. 300 counter protesters across the street.  The protest was rather tame as the NYPD made sure the two groups were nowhere near each other.  The night before I made a two-sided sign.  I rarely go to protests of any kind but I decided I should go to this one.  I put on my Vic Berger IV t-shirt and layered up as it was bitterly cold that day. 

The front of my sign said. 

This was meant as an inside joke for Vic Berger and the many reporters I’d worked with.  The flip side of my sign said. “Proud Boys Go Back to Your Mommies” the following image is from a story about the march in the NY Post.  

That’s yours truly on screen while McInnes discusses my sign. I nearly fell over when I realized they were referencing me. I realized at that moment why antifa protesters often cover their faces.

Soon after this I stopped watching or editing McInnes’s show. He spent most episodes complaining about his plight more than anything else. He once had a 50 minute segment called “The People in your Neighborhood” where he ranted about the various different types of people who accosted him in public. I’m sure his viewers could relate.

This whole experience changed me in ways I can’t begin to describe in words. In the days after the Pittsburgh shooting I decided I was going to change course completely and go back to school to pursue researching and writing about the far right full-time. McInnes was his own worst enemy. In his attempts to silence or intimidate his critics like Marcotte, he lead me directly to the best resource to expose him. I met other reporters this way. McInnes would insult them in a segment. I’d capture the footage and then send it to a reporter. It’s how I met Colin Moynihan of the NY Times.

I’m sure now I will be trolled for days or even longer. McInnes will call me a spinster with dried up ovaries who has become a colostomy bag for men’s cum. He will say I can’t write and that I’m a loser, even though as an entrepreneur technically the Proud Boys are supposed to celebrate me. I will take the hits as they come. The first amendment applies to everyone, including people McInnes doesn’t agree with. If he or anyone says anything into a camera they should expect someone who is critical of them is watching. Of course he or anyone can say whatever they want on any platform but those words do not come without consequence.

In the most surprising twist of this story I discovered that Alex Jones was kicked off of Facebook due to his association with McInnes. I sent an email to a number of the reporters I’ve worked with the subject title “We are the Masters of the Universe.” I was joking of course but I never would have imagined when I set off on this project that I would ever have any influence towards getting someone like Jones kicked off a platform like Facebook. I was just a nerdy crazy cat lady after all. I still make raw cat food, although now I have a much better meat grinder it doesn’t make nearly as big of a mess.

Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/JulietJeske

Add me on Facebook Juliet Jeske Facebook Fan Page