Meet Jacob Engels, the Stone associate NYT reports is in the crosshairs of Jan. 6 and Greenberg probes.
A trail of public clues has long-suggested links between the investigation of Joel Greenberg and the criminal network of Roger Stone. The two now converge on Stone's closest protege: Jacob Engels.
“Meet Jacob Engels, Roger Stone’s Mini-Me.” That was the headline of a Feb. 12, 2019 Daily Beast profile of Jacob Engels, at the time a Florida twenty-something who was building a reputation as a Sunshine State provocateur, learning the tricks of the trade directly from Donald Trump’s (maybe) closest and (definitely) craziest advisor, Roger Stone. Beast reporter Will Somer wrote that Engels had known Stone for 6 years and become something of an ardent defender of the embattled convicted felon. More than that, Engels was already building a reputation for employing Stone’s age-old tactics of intentionally ramping up the temperature in the electoral process by coordinating with the Proud Boys in fighting recounts across Florida and harassing a Democratic staffer until he got him fired from a campaign. Still, at the time—and now—little else is known about Stone’s young protégé.
But yesterday, Engels’s name was thrust back into the spotlight by the New York Times when reporters Mike Schmidt and Alan Feuer published an article reporting January 6 prosecutors from two separate teams are examining Engels’s involvement with (1) the Proud Boys currently charged with seditious conspiracy and (2) similar Stop the Steal election tactics in Florida from back in 2018. Tucked in the middle of the article is a vague reference to the unending investigation of Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector from central Florida and friend of Rep. Matt Gaetz and Stone, who has also pled guilty to sex trafficking, bribery, wire fraud, and a slew of other charges and has cooperated with authorities for over a year. NYT’s Schmidt and Feuer include a quote from Greenberg’s attorney: “A significant aspect of Mr. Greenberg’s cooperation has been his assistance in matters involving efforts to subvert the democratic process.” NYT does not provide any further information linking the Greenberg investigation to Engels.
None of this was news to me or the half dozen other Twitter sleuths who have kept tabs on Engels for over two years. Engels has been prolifically involved in viral right-wing provocation for the better part of five years now: publishing nude photos of an unconscious Democratic gubernatorial candidate; posing as a concerned parent to get LGBTQ+ books banned from schools; infiltrating campaign events to harass local Democratic candidates; and, of course, standing by Roger Stone’s side in Washington, D.C. on January 5th and 6th.
I also reported seventeen months ago in May 2021 two sources close to the Greenberg probe told me Florida prosecutors were asking whether Greenberg engaged in or facilitated any electoral misconduct in 2018. As I was told then, prosecutors had asked witnesses about Greenberg’s ties to county elections supervisors and the DeSantis election, as well as third party candidate schemes designed to siphon votes from Democratic or centrist Republican candidates. The latter of these topics has resulted in several prosecutions since I reported it two Mays ago. I also reported then that it would be natural for Florida prosecutors to turn to Engels, whose focus on pushing pro-MAGA candidates and smearing anyone who wasn’t part of the machine somehow always dovetailed perfectly with Greenberg’s schemes. While yesterday was likely the first time many NYT readers saw the name Jacob Engels, anyone who has been closely following the lawless political hellscape that has overwhelmed the State of Florida knows a federal investigation into Engels is long overdue.
As I noted in posts from last year (found here and here), a helpful way to understand Engels’s work is to understand his work with Joel Greenberg. Engels was deeply involved in both pushing content promoting Joel Greenberg the politician as well as advancing a criminal smear campaign against Greenberg’s Republican primary opponent, local schoolteacher Brian Beute. With that dynamic in mind, links between Greenberg’s financial crime spree and a woman with her own direct connections to Engels and Stone puts Engels squarely in the crosshairs of the financial aspect of the Greenberg investigation. It is these ties, and perhaps others, that prosecutors are surely scrutinizing if yesterday’s NYT report is true.
A quick refresher: Greenberg’s first criminal indictment came about five months before the 2020 election. In June 2020, federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Florida charged him with harassment and stalking for fabricating child sex assault allegations against his primary opponent, the schoolteacher Beute. They alleged Greenberg wrote fake letters to Beute’s employer pretending to be concerned students and teachers who worked with Beute—who taught music—and claiming that a male student had confided in them that Beute raped and assaulted him. Beute’s employer alerted him and informed him they did not believe the letters. Soon, law enforcement was involved.
It was clear the story was completely untrue, and federal investigators who were already probing whether Greenberg had committed crimes by misspending taxpayer money while in office turned their attention to the letter scheme. After they found Greenberg’s fingerprints on the letters and his IP address and email affiliated with social media accounts harassing Beute, prosecutors charged Greenberg and executed search warrants on Greenberg’s car and office. In the weeks that followed, Greenberg was indicted again and again on a slew of other charges, including sex trafficking a minor, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, and bribery, just to name a few. He eventually pled guilty to six charges, including all the charges just listed and one charge related to Beute.
In the proceedings between his indictment and guilty plea, it was revealed Greenberg had an unindicted co-conspirator involved in his criminal harassment of Beute. Subsequent reporting later revealed that before Greenberg was indicted, Jacob Engels had sent email requests to the school where Beute worked requesting his personnel file and any complaints made about Beute just weeks after Greenberg initially sent the fake letters. Months after sending that request, but still before the letters were public, Engels posted videos to Facebook alleging Beute was “tromboning” his students and demanding Beute sue him so that Engels could issue subpoenas for evidence to support his allegations (presumably to pry loose the fake letters Greenberg had sent to the school). After Engels posted the videos, they were promoted and shared by fake accounts later attributed to a network controlled by Roger Stone. A few days later, Greenberg was indicted, Facebook removed the bot network and took down the videos. Engels never spoke of Beute or Greenberg again.
This was odd, considering Engels’ pro-Greenberg stories began appearing on Engels’s ultra-right-wing “news” website, the Central Florida Post, almost immediately after Greenberg assumed office and continued until his indictment. “Tax Collector Allows Open Carry, Showcases Bold 2nd Amendment Stance,” read one headline by Engels from 2017. Another example: “Joel Greenberg Partnering With Local Dog Rescue This Saturday.” The accompanying story broke the critical information to readers that elected official Greenberg was “doing his part to help place some really cute doggies in their forever homes this weekend.”
When Greenberg began running for re-election—the same campaign during which he criminally fabricated allegations against Beute as Engels smeared the same man—Engels started to document Greenberg’s political moves with more frequency and praise. “With $240k in Bitcoin, Florida Tax Collector Files for 2020 Election,” splashed one headline in March 2020.
Engels covered perfunctory developments at the tax collector’s office with flair. His news stories look more like Greenberg campaign press releases. “Seminole County Tax Collector Requests Extensions for Registrations During Coronavirus Pandemic,” read one April 2020 story, which was really about Governor DeSantis extending a 30-day period on renewing driver licenses and had little to do with Greenberg. As Engels strained to provide Greenberg with positive press, the fawning got worse: “Seminole Tax Collector Offers Innovative Drive-Thru Services, Could Expand Hours.”
These were stories about ideas being tossed around a local tax collector office, while other stories on Engels’s news blog were about Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Congressional candidates. Greenberg’s minor policy initiatives—even hypothetical ones—were always covered by Engels extensively. Engels’s posts praised Greenberg’s personal politics, too. Early in Greenberg’s tenure, Engels began framing him as an anti-corruption crusader (a characterization objectively comical in light Greenberg’s wide-ranging guilty plea). One headline—“Greenberg Ends Crooked Profiteering in Seminole County Tax Office”—stands out as particularly off-the-mark.
As he pushed pro-Greenberg content, he also began attacking Greenberg’s primary opponent, Brian Beute. On June 15, 2020, Engels posted the first defamatory video about Beute to Facebook, calling him “Creepy Brian Beute” a dozen times and referred vaguely to an incident of Beute “tromboning” someone at the school where he worked. Greenberg’s letters with the fake allegations had been sent about eight months prior, but were not yet public, and neither Engels nor Greenberg knew prosecutors were investigating the letters.
On June 20, Engels posted another video smearing Beute: “I don’t want to report on all the women who Creepy Brian Beute has made feel uncomfortable,” Engels said. “Creepy Brian Beute was involved in some creepy tromboning incident at Trinity Prep as a teacher, tromboning—we don’t know what he was tromboning but we heard there was a tromboning incident.” Engels then instructed Beute to “sue him” and said that he wanted to use the lawsuit to obtain information about Beute.
This statement may be key to investigators if they were to charge Engels with respect to the crimes against Brian Beute. Had Beute sued Engels, then Engels could have used the discovery process to obtain evidence to support his defense, including asking Beute’s employer for any records related to Beute’s conduct—like the fake letters, which Engels should not have known existed at that point. If Greenberg tells prosecutors that Engels knew about his fabrication of the letters and was attempting to draw attention to them into the public sphere, then the video of Engels, in his own words, goading Beute into suing him so he could use discovery to pry loose the letters would be strong evidence that Greenberg’s version of events is correct.
What is more alarming is the fact that Engels appears to have mirrored these kinds of tactics with dozens of other Florida candidates. We do not have as much insight into Engels’s other schemes, mainly because Greenberg’s imprisonment and guilty plea has broken the logjam of information about how the smear campaign against Beute worked. But as a general matter, Engels’s approach is to praise largely unknown primary challengers, then post bizarre rants and smears accusing their opponents of anything from fraud to pedophilia and everything in between. While the contours of free speech in the United States are wide-ranging, Greenberg has already pled guilty to criminal harassment of Beute, so this kind of speech is not always unilaterally protected by the First Amendment. An even more pertinent question lingers for investigators: how Engels is compensated for this work? From my perspective, it is this question, and his ties to Greenberg, Stone, Proud Boys, and other political operators across Florida, that have landed him in the crosshairs of January 6 investigators.
A financial connection between Engels and Greenberg may run through three entities: the Seminole County Tax Collector’s office, an LLC called “MAGA Advisory,” and a non-profit corporation called the “Florida Strong Fund.” This writer previously reported that public records reveal Greenberg signed a contract on behalf of the tax collector office with MAGA Advisory LLC in early 2017, just after he assumed office. The contract directed $2,500 per month in taxpayer money to go to the company for vaguely described services. A source inside the office said this amount was later bumped up to $3,500. The Orlando Sentinel reported that MAGA Advisory was paid in total $29,000 over four years.
MAGA Advisory was run by Leslie Ann Key of Altamonte Springs, Florida, a small suburb near Orlando. Key goes by the nickname “L.A.” on social media. But two sources who have met Key described her as a woman in her sixties and deeply enmeshed in what they called “MAGA culture.” Reporter Zachary Petrizzo of Salon characterized her as a longtime confidante of Roger Stone.
“She was always at Mar-a-Lago or posting Facebook selfies with Roger Stone,” one source who has met Key twice told me last year. “It’s not clear she has any job. I’ve heard she’s been on disability for many years, but I don’t know if that is true.”
What is true, however, is that her name, L.A. Key, is scribbled on the top corner of a Seminole County Tax Collector’s office contract dated February 2017 and provided in response to a public records request filed by this writer last year.
The contract refers to Key as a “Consultant.” It gives the Tax Collector office “no right to control the manner, method or details of the work” to be performed by Key, and authorizes Key to perform work “not necessarily . . . located on any premises owned by the Tax Collector.” The contract allowed Key to hire her “own employees” if she deemed it necessary.
But employees for what? What services did the taxpayers of Seminole County need Key to perform offsite in exchange for their collected tax money? According to the contract, Key was to provide “corporate liaison services” including “special events planning, community outreach, and communications support.” It also directed Key, a 61-year-old woman with no public experience in media or advertising, to “negotiate and perform advertising/media acquisition as well as any peripheral representation as necessitated.” Key has declined to answer questions about her work with Greenberg.
The absence of any explanation for why Key founded MAGA Advisory LLC in January 2017, just one month before snagging the lucrative contract from Greenberg’s office, raises red flags about the nature of her work. MAGA Advisory has no website and was dissolved just three years after its inception in September 2020. According to WFTV, auditors ultimately found Greenberg paid more than $100,000.00 to L.A. Key, but could not explain what work product was provided in exchange for the payments. WFTV Reporter Karla Ray spoke briefly to Key’s husband, Robert Hoogland, about her work, but he declined to say anything other than that it was “political consulting” for Greenberg. Hoogland died suddenly last November.
Some other clues as to what Key might have been up to—and how it may have involved Jacob Engels—were discovered after additional sleuthing by this writer and others pursuing threads in the Greenberg case online.
First, this writer found what appears to be L.A. Key’s Venmo account. An account with her name and photo has only one transaction on its public record: $550 received from a Venmo account that belongs to Jacob Engels. Curiously, the transaction—which dates back to October 2017—does not appear on Engels’ Venmo account page. But the fact that Key was being paid by Engels in October 2017, the same time period where she and her LLC were being paid by Greenberg’s office, Greenberg was embezzling cryptocurrency and socializing with Gaetz and Stone, and Engels was posting positive content about Greenberg’s work, raises questions about the connections between Key and Engels.
After discovering the Venmo account, a Twitter account with the username @gal_suburban (whose work resembles the efforts of Homeland protagonist Carrie Mathison, but instead of focusing on protecting the country from terror attacks, she instead attempts to tie together threads of corruption across Florida) posted a corporate document that deepened the connection between Key and Engels: filing paperwork for a Florida non-profit corporation called “Florida Strong Fund.”
The articles of incorporation indicate that the non-profit was created ostensibly to help raise money for victims of Hurricane Irma. L.A. Key served on its Board and as its President. Jacob Engels was listed in the articles of incorporation as a Board member and as the company’s Vice-President and Secretary. Florida Strong Fund was created in September 2017, ten months after MAGA Advisory LLC was created; nine months after Greenberg starting paying Key $2,500 per month in taxpayer money; three months after Greenberg began embezzling money from the office; two months after he posted the photo of himself with Gaetz and Stone; and one month before the Venmo payment between Engels and Key. Like MAGA Advisory, there does not appear to be a website for Florida Strong Fund. There is no public footprint of any charitable services it performed related to Hurricane Irma.
More importantly, both MAGA Advisory and Florida Strong Fund were dissolved on the same day: September 25, 2020, about three months after Greenberg’s indictment. The dissolution of both companies at the exact same moment is not particularly noteworthy since, in Florida, the State Department goes through and dissolves companies on a particular date after receiving requests to do so over a series of months. It does not necessarily mean the companies were literally dissolved on the same day. Still, it does mean that the need for either company to exist ended shortly after Greenberg was indicted. The facts present a possible triangle between the Seminole County Tax Collector’s office, MAGA Advisory, and Florida Strong Fund—and thus Greenberg, L.A. Key, and Engels.
This becomes all the more notable in light of NYT’s reporting that January 6 prosecutors are interested in payments to Engels for his work in 2018, right in the period where MAGA Advisory was receiving money from Greenberg and when Engels and Key began operating Florida Strong Fund. Prosecutors may want to know whether the goal was to illegally compensate Engels for his work, or to move money to other operatives and schemes in Florida and elsewhere.
After a flurry of articles emerged last year regarding a sex trafficking investigation involving Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.), it seemed as if the Florida Congressman and his swamp buddies were on the verge of indictment for serious sex crimes involving minors. When those charges did not quickly materialize, the story kind of died: Gaetz remained in Congress, Greenberg remained in jail, the press moved on. But in moving on so quickly, the national press missed steady progress prosecutors have made in the Greenberg corruption probe—a pursuit of remarkable fraud, bribery, and election corruption schemes that now threatens to engulf a number of power brokers in the Florida GOP.
Since Greenberg’s guilty plea, his former associate Joe Ellicott pled guilty to being involved in facilitating fraud; his former associate Keith Ingersoll pled guilty to additional fraud involving Greenberg’s office; and Ben Paris, Republican Party Chairman for Seminole County, was convicted of making a criminal straw donation to a third party candidate based in part on information Greenberg provided. Additionally, Paris and other political operatives have been charged with felonies for the same third-party candidate scheme. Florida prosecutors have been busy, and now it seems the January 6 prosecutors have noticed.
The weight of the wide-ranging investigation in Florida was confirmed in September, when former heavyweight Florida Republican political consultant, Mike Shirley, was charged with four counts of wire fraud, honest services fraud, and bribery for schemes with Greenberg and others that prosecutors allege occurred between 2017-2019 (most of Greenberg’s tenure in office). Shirley managed campaigns for a number of local and federal races in Florida, including previously serving as Field Director for now-Senator Rick Scott. The charges against him represent a remarkable fall for a Florida political player, but more importantly spell serious trouble for a number of targets in the Greenberg investigation—including L.A. Key. That’s because the legal theory prosecutors are using to prosecute Shirley appears to be applicable to anyone who received “no-show” contracts from the Seminole County tax office during Greenberg’s tenure (which seems to be a lot of people).
Shirley’s indictment explains the scheme well. The way it worked is that Greenberg used his authority as tax collector to orchestrate and approve contracts to associates, similar to the one he approved for L.A. Key. According to a recent interview Greenberg gave to local prosecutors, these were contracts for which little or no work was ever done (more colloquially known amongst prosecutors, accountants, and others as “no-show” contracts). Greenberg authorized a contract treating an associate as a consultant or advisor to the office, and it was accompanied by a monthly rate or yearly salary that came with it.
The effort to steal taxpayer money and line the pockets of Republicans in Florida began almost immediately upon Greenberg assuming office—the first “no-show” contracts were issued January 2017, the same month Greenberg was sworn in. The brazenness of the fact Greenberg began committing federal felonies within weeks of assuming office raises an obvious question of whether Greenberg and others conspired before he took office to undertake the conduct charged. Prosecutors and auditors have alleged Greenberg ultimately siphoned millions in taxpayer money to associates in this way.
It is unclear whether the money was spent by its recipients on personal goods, further directed toward other criminal activity, or both. One avenue investigators may be pursuing is whether the money Greenberg sent to political allies was spent on other illegal political schemes, including criminal efforts to interfere in the electoral process, or, per yesterday’s NYT report, whether it was spent on Proud Boy activities via Jacob Engels, Roger Stone or other associates. One thing is certain: the election schemes Greenberg was privy to go beyond Proud Boy riots.
For example, Florida prosecutors recently obtained a misdemeanor conviction of Paris, the Seminole Republican Party Chair, for making illegal straw donations to a third party candidate whom Paris had solicited to run in a competitive State Senate race. The candidate never campaigned, but mailers were sent out promoting the candidate which ultimately helped siphon votes from the Democratic candidate, helping Republican State Senator Jason Brodeur, who won by 37 votes, win the race. Greenberg told authorities in a proffer interview that he had attended meetings where the candidacy was discussed, and that State Senator Brodeur and others knew about the third party candidate scheme. A second, more serious conspiracy trial against the former Chairman Paris, the third-party candidate, and another defendant is pending.
Another Republican has also been criminally prosecuted for the same kind of scheme. A Florida State Senator, Frank Artiles, allegedly paid a random citizen, Alex Rodriguez, who had a similar name as an incumbent Democratic State Senator running against Artiles, to run as a third party candidate and confuse voters in another district. It worked. The Republican candidate beat Jose Javier Rodriguez by 32 votes, while Alex Rodriguez (who never campaigned or spoke to the press) got 6,300 votes in an election he apparently had zero interest in winning. Greenberg told investigators that Brodeur would host gatherings that included Greenberg, Artiles, and Paris and the third-party candidate schemes were discussed amongst the men. Artiles is set to go on trial in November.
This pattern showed up in Greenberg’s own 2020 race, too: Daniel Lee Day ran as Dani Mora Day, the same year Greenberg’s Democratic opponent was Lynn Moira Dictor. Daniel Lee Day has since disappeared. No one knows anything about him and, as of last summer, he has not responded to inquiries from Florida election officials. He withdrew from the race the same day Greenberg did, just after the feds charged Greenberg with stalking and harassment of his primary opponent, Beute. No charges have been brought related to the candidacy of Daniel Lee Day.
Here is a list of other Florida misconduct that may be implicated by Greenberg:
Chris Dorworth, a powerful Florida lobbyist with close ties to Matt Gaetz whom Greenberg alleged helped orchestrate the third-party candidate scheme in Brodeur’s race;
Eric Foglesong, a political consultant who is being prosecuted locally in the same third-party candidate scheme that recently resulted in a conviction for Ben Paris, Seminole County GOP Chairman;
Matt Morgan, a local mayor who now serves as Commissioner in Seminole County, and who also worked with Mike Shirley;
Leslie Ann Key, the local woman who frequently attends MAGA events across Florida and has ties to Roger Stone and his associate Jacob Engels, who helped further Greenberg’s criminal smears of a primary opponent, Brian Beute;
Megan Zalonka, a woman working for a medical marijuana investor and GOP fundraiser now under scrutiny for a trip to the Bahamas with Rep. Gaetz;
Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, a far-right lawmaker who recently lost a primary for Florida’s Seventh Congressional district who was heavily promoted by Engels and also received money from the Seminole County Tax Collector office.
Implicit in the carrying on of all these schemes to steal taxpayer money and send it to Republicans across Florida is that Greenberg remain in power. If he lost to a Democrat (or even another Republican) the multi-million theft would be apparent to any successor almost immediately upon Greenberg’s departure from office. So, the whole scheme to steal money from taxpayers is intrinsically linked to schemes that involved others, like Engels, to hurt Greenberg’s opponents, or siphon votes from them, or bolster his own reputation, or challenge results of elections that have Republicans losing.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that Engels’s smear campaigns and fluff pieces—and the third party candidate schemes—have popped up in a number of elections across Florida. One has to wonder whether these tactics were employed because there were similar motives to cover up financial fraud taking place at other public offices, too. One tidbit I noticed when the federal charges were announced against Greenberg, Ingersoll, Ellicott, and Shirley is that all of the defendants charged federally in the Greenberg probe so far have been charged with crimes that also qualify as predicate acts under RICO, the famous (and rarely-used) mafia-prosecution statue. Given the incredibly wide range of criminal conduct Greenberg appears to have had a hand in, and the fact that Greenberg himself recently described his own organization as a “little mafia,” it is worth asking whether Florida federal prosecutors are looking at charging a criminal enterprise down in the Sunshine State under the RICO statute. The goal of such a hypothetical enterprise would be fairly simple to explain: participants commit fraud, then undertake criminal schemes to ensure they continue to win elections so the fraud can keep going and remain concealed.
Consistent with this theory, NYT’s report that January 6 prosecutors are examining Stone and Engels’s 2018 election conduct suggests they may be trying to build a pattern, a necessary requirement for RICO cases. If they can tie the same series of predicate acts—wire fraud, honest services fraud, bank fraud, obstruction, or other qualifying RICO crimes—as running through both the 2018 election conduct and the 2020 election conduct, it would go a long way to showing that Greenberg and others around him built a criminal enterprise to steal money from taxpayers and corruptly hang onto power in Florida and elsewhere across the country to protect their crime ring. RICO charges carry a maximum 20-year sentence.
I wrote these words 17 months ago: “There is a strong chance Engels’ connection to Roger Stone could put him on a collision course with federal investigators examining the January 6 insurrection and Stone’s finances. Stone was in Washington, D.C. the day of the Capitol riot, and while he insists he had no involvement in the storming of the United States Capitol, he was publicly seen with several individuals later indicted for breaching the Capitol—and, notably, charged with conspiracy (note: they have now been charged with seditious conspiracy). According to witnesses and photographs, Engels was also with Stone in Washington on January 5th and 6th. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones—with whom both Stone and Engels have done interviews—publicly stated in February 2021 that prosecutors are targeting him and Stone for their involvement in the insurrection. Jones recently stated he paid $500,000 to help shuttle people to what eventually became the riot, but the source of that funding also remains unclear. Stone and Jones allege the insurrection investigation is a ‘witch hunt.’”
While these things were clear early on in the January 6 probes, what has been less clear is the source of Proud Boy funding that has allowed them to buy tactical gear, travel, and spend their days provoking conflict. Yesterday’s NYT report indicates that prosecutors “want to know whether Mr. Engels received any payments or drew up any plans for the Florida demonstration, and whether he has ties to other people connected to the Proud Boys’ activities in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol.” It specifically mentions a cryptocurrency promoter, Eryka Gemma, who has ties to Mr. Tarrio.
It is not clear to me if Engels and Gemma know each other. But @gal_suburban pieced together some interesting threads on Gemma’s ties to Florida corruption players that are worth examining. For example, Greenberg briefly hired a man named Samuel Armes and gave him the title of Blockchain director for the Seminole County Tax Office. Armes quickly left the job but went on to form the Florida Blockchain Business Association—where Eryka Gemma served on the Board of Directors.
According to NYT, “a week before the building was stormed, the promoter, Eryka Gemma, gave Mr. Tarrio a document titled “1776 Returns,” according to several people familiar with the matter. The document laid out a detailed plan to surveil and storm government buildings around the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a pressure campaign to demand a new election.”
The indictment of Tarrio says that the person who provided him with “1776 Returns” told him, shortly after it was sent, “The revolution is more important than anything.” According to NYT, that person was Gemma, although Gemma was not the author of “1776 Returns,” which was written by others, first as a shared document on Google, the people said. It is unknown who originally authored the document.
Many of Greenberg’s criminal embezzlement schemes also involved cryptocurrency; in fact, many names in the laundry list of potentially criminal characters above have their own ties to strange tokens or coins or foreign cryptocurrency endeavors. I would not be surprised if there was an effort to launder some of the improperly siphoned money Greenberg stole and multiply it via crypto scams, or funnel it to Proud Boy actors via transactions in advance of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Only time will tell.
While Jacob Engels has spent the better part of a decade making himself look like Roger Stone-in-training, he mostly remained firmly stationed in the minor leagues of local Florida politics. By doing so, he has avoided the glare of the national media despite his extremely close connection to and work on behalf of one of the country’s most prolific political criminals. But he jumped his place in line in favor of landing in the crosshairs of two teams investigating January 6—placing Engels right in the eye of the storm.
Ingersoll story has had zero MSM coverage, because they’re 100% in the tank for Ron 2024 ….. instead Fox does Daylight Savings chyrons when not attacking DNC proxies