Two Capitol insurgents made previous headlines at climate, BLM events

January 18, 2021 Tatiana Prophet

Jake Angeli, shamanic practitioner, leads the crowd in a yell before the march in solidarity with climate activism groups across the country to the Arizona State Capitol Building Friday, September 20, 2019.

Nicole Neri/The (Arizona Republic)

By Tatiana Prophet
Editor-in-Chief
TWO OF THE MOST VISIBLE antagonists at the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol melee had previously made headlines — literally — for their over-the-top performances in protests of a much different kind.

Jake Angeli was wearing his same “shaman” outfit at a Phoenix climate protest in September 2019. While he was pictured carrying a sign “Q Sent Me” on Jan. 6, at the Maricopa County Courthouse he carried a sign stating “The poles are shifting! The ice caps are melting! This is Ragnarok! It’s time to wake up!” Ragnarok is the final battle of Norse mythology. The photo was published in the Arizona Republic in an article that described the crowd as “in the hundreds.”

But it seems that by February 2020, Angeli’s views had shifted toward supporting Donald Trump — or at least picking up the cause of the Q movement, according to an article in USA Today in which they cited the Arizona Republic (under common ownership with USA Today, by Gannett), as the source. And a reporter for the Republic tweeted after Jan. 6 events that Angeli was most definitely a Trump supporter.

Either way, Angeli has been a local fixture for at least a year and a half in the Phoenix area, and on a cold, windy day in January, he showed up shirtless with a megaphone and strutted into the House chamber as if he owned the place, seemingly oblivious to the police who were already there pleading with intruders to leave the “sacredest place.”

ANALYSIS: This publication, and this article, makes no claim to know the backgrounds of all of the people who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday. Obviously many Trump supporters made a very poor choice that day, one that could have proved much deadlier than it did. We are simply providing information that, for one reason or another, seems hard to find. Videos of the breach do appear to show instigators with training, and some were even reported in the media as being off-duty law enforcement — which is very hard to believe given the incendiary nature of the breach. There is visual indication that some protesters in different parts of the crowd simply thought the protest was continuing inside — as they went in to take selfies with the police and the statues. We need transparent and fearless investigation of this complex event. But that is not what we’re getting. Instead we’re getting rumors immediately labeled as false and the usual obfuscation and sawdust from the FBI.

Factual information about the activities of both men has come out since the Jan. 6 Capitol debacle; but you’d almost never know it. On Jan. 7, USA Today did a fact check of social media users’ claims that the protest was staged by members of Antifa groups.

It went like this:

“Amid the upset and confusion, conservative social media users are falsely identifying one trespasser as a liberal actor. “AZ BLM rally in June, DC Capital in January,” Cari Kelemen tweeted on Jan. 6 alongside two photos of a shirtless man wearing face paint and horns. Twitter flagged Kelemen’s post as “Manipulated media” and directed users to information that the claims that suggest the man is associated with antifa, rather than far-right movements are false. Kelemen continued to share tweets, claiming the man was a paid actor and the Capitol Building breach was staged. Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is an unofficial movement of left-leaning political actors with no unified leadership. The movement has a long history of opposing neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. and Europe. In recent months, President Donald Trump and his followers have widely blamed antifa for violence at anti-racism protests.

USA Today Jan. 7 "fact check"

AS MOST PEOPLE have now heard, John Earle Sullivan was arrested (and released on bail) for his role in the Capitol protest.

A worldclass speed skater and former Olympic hopeful, Sullivan had relocated to Sandy, Utah, for his Olympic pursuits. But he grew up in Northern Virginia. His previous brush with fame occurred July 10, 2020, when he was arrested after a protest in downtown Provo, Utah. He was nabbed after allegedly goading on counter protesters opposing a march for law enforcement. His group Insurgence USA was listed as a co-sponsor of the counter-protest, along with the Salt Lake Antifascist Coalition.

One of the counter protesters encouraged by Sullivan actually shot at a motorist on his way to Home Depot. Sullivan and his brothers were all speed skaters and came from a military family, his brother James has publicly stated since the Capitol riot.

Sullivan’s most recent stunt was the videos he made at the Capitol protest while accompanying documentary filmmaker Jade Sacker. The two were interviewed by Anderson Cooper to tell their account of the riot. While he billed himself as a concerned citizen and observer, his own videos show him goading people to set fire to the Capitol. He was also present at the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, which he filmed.

After the death of George Floyd, by his own account, Sullivan began to organize protests. He founded a group called Insurgence USA, which co-sponsored a counter-protest to a law enforcement support protest on June 29, 2020.

He has at least two channels on YouTube and he was even featured in an Uber commercial in 2016.

Further reading:
Salt Lake Tribune:
BLM leader said she never saw Sullivan until the June 2020 protest when someone got shot