714: What REALLY Happened Inside the Capitol Building? - Adam Johnson's Firsthand Account of the J-6 Protest

Brian Nichols  0:00  
From protester to insurrectionist. Yeah, we're gonna talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, hey there, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host joining you live from our B and C Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana folks, the recession is right around the corner. If you are not revamping your sales strategies, well guess what? You're gonna be in the dust because your competitors are if you want to make sure you're not being left behind. Email me, Brian at Brian Nichols. consulting.com. All right, we're gonna go way back to home way back. I don't know if it's really way back way back to the J six protests, which when they started out, they were quite literally protests. And as the day transpired, the protests started to turn in the framing of the media towards insurrectionists and storming the Capitol. And it was the worst thing we've seen since 911. I don't know I've seen a lot of the pictures from behind the scenes and specifically one picture in mind, which is, you know, one guy walking out with a lectern, big smile on his face. And you know, what, I don't know, was it really a quote unquote, insurrection? Well, how about that we're gonna go ahead and have that individual on the show today. Adam Johnson is joining us, Adam, welcome to The Brian Nichols Show.

Adam Johnson  1:28  
Hey, thanks for having me on.

Brian Nichols  1:29  
Absolutely. Adam. Thanks for joining us. And I obviously tease things a little bit here. You're pretty well known in terms of Alicia your picture is, and that is you are there at the J six protest. And you are walking out the Capitol with the the speaker's podium and you had that big smile and the wave to the camera. That's, I think, where a lot of people know you but there's a lot more to you than the picture. That was a snapshot from J six. So before we go ahead and put the cart before the horse here, I want you to do us a favor, introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and how did you end up at the Capitol Building on J six?

Adam Johnson  2:01  
Well, hey, thanks, everyone, for giving me a chance to just speak and listen, and you may be here just a different side of the story. My name is Adam Johnson. I've also known as the lecturing guy, your podium guy was via Getty, for a little bit. There was a whole thing going on on Twitter, hilarious look into it. But I'm, I'm a stay at home dad, I've got five sons, my wife's a physician, went to college, it turned out to be too much to raise kids and also finish. So we took a break from that. And just been doing that for a while. Startup carpentry business, you know, built furniture for people. I do that for a hobby now. And I'm just not not actually too much. I do jujitsu. I'm kind of, you know, just the normal regular guy. I decided to show up to a protest and I first protests in January 6.

Brian Nichols  2:45  
So talk to us about that protest. Right? Because I think there's kind of two different schools of thought here. One is the the J six protest slash insurrection that was, you know, a stain on our democracy. Whereas then the other side, there's, you know, this was just a protest where some stuff happened. And it wasn't necessarily, you know, a storming of the Capitol more so a lot in of the Capitol and a lot of confusion that followed thereafter. So there's a lot of, you know, whether it's misconceptions or misinformation, if you want to use that word lightly about what actually happened there on J 602. As a favor just kind of articulate in your personal experience. What was that day like, from your lens?

Adam Johnson  3:29  
Well, for my lens, some it's, I showed up to a protest, I showed up to a Trump rally first and foremost, and we were there to listen, you know, kind of to Trump's last hurrah. We had some questions about what happened during the election, we had some definite concerns about some of the powers and some of the abuses of power that happened during COVID. And we also had questions about the people that were coming back in charge, you know, call them to Deep State call them the unit party, that we knew that we're going to propagate or so we we look at that, and we say we need to show them protests because we're finally getting to a place in our country where maybe the average citizen that is middle of the road libertarian is finally being addressed and finally being acknowledged. So we show up to the protest, I listen to Trump's rally speech. And, you know, I hear Giuliani and everyone else talking and at the end of the day says, we're going to march down to the Capitol, and we're going to let our voices be heard. We're going to be marching peacefully, but we're going we're gonna protest. So I decided that's where the protest is going. I will walk with the crowd down to the Capitol. So we took a nice leisurely walk down to the Capitol. And by time we got there, it was already I mean, I used the word under siege, because there were people that were, you know, fighting with cops and cops were fighting with people, but the majority of what were that was going on was outside. There was a group of people that were I antagonizing on both sides. There was a point I think I saw a video. I think it was two weeks ago where a flashbang was accident. We fired by a cop into the crowd. And he didn't know how to use his his weapon apparently. And I was actually there when the flashbang went off. And it was we were a tear gas, we were amazed and most of us were just saying, the things that we were there to protest a very peaceful Sibley organized. We are here to say we don't like what's happening. This is not right. At some point, whether the cops started pushing or the people started pushing, I couldn't tell you was about 20 yards back watching the whole thing unfold. When that very small group of people that decided to turn things violent turn things violent, I left that group because that's not what a protest is. And that's not what the majority of people were doing there that day. That is not what we were there to do. It's not what they were there to support or say. So there was a handful of us that walked away from that kind of let that work out on its own. And we just were kind of walking around. And then about 10 minutes later, we recognize that people are just walking through open doors, the doors have been opened. We don't know how they're open, but they're opened, and people started filtering inside. And the people that were inside were a completely different temperament that people who are outside, right, everyone inside was completely peaceful. They weren't breaking things. They weren't burning things to the ground. You know, they were chanting, you know, USA and stopped the steel, all these things. But that is a protest. That is what a protest consists of. And it was a completely different temperament. And I guess what I'm what confuses me what everything is the way they treated the people who were inside protesting peacefully, compared to the way that maybe the people that were protesting during the Kavanaugh trials were treated with fines and slaps on the wrist. And then we saw I mean, how many capitals now have been, you know, quote, unquote, stormed and how many instructions have we seen in the past couple of weeks. We have Florida Mike, my state Florida Capitol was just stormed by a bunch of people. I'm interested to see how DeSantis handles that. And we see this happen over and over again on the other side of the party, but it's capital D difference. If you know you're on the right side of the party. And it's definitely a two tier justice system. We we've seen people go to prison, I went to prison for a nonviolent misdemeanor. And it's trespassing for 75 days, they sent me to a federal prison. I've been on probation for almost two and a half years now where I can't leave the Middle District of Florida. Unless I get permission to travel. I was fined over $5,000 for walking around didn't destroy anything. The whole lectern thing, I didn't leave with it. There were narratives running for four, they're still running now people still think I left the building with a piece of furniture. The furniture was sitting in the wide open. Underneath the staircase, I moved it 20 yards for a photo, gave a short speech and left it in the middle of the room. And what's crazy is when the government called my attorneys two days later, they were asking where the lectern was, as you still have it, but they had just rolled it out for Nancy Pelosi to give a speech that day. So whether it's just complete, just they're not communicating with each other ignorance or they're just trying to get me to, you know, entrap me and something else I couldn't tell you. But the amount of people that propagated that story saying, you know, this man's a thief, this man stole it, they did everything they could to ruin our lives. And while there are retractions now, two years later, they say carry and not stole, there are millions upon millions of people who believe a story that they put out there, that is not true. And they had to have known by Friday, it was untrue.

Brian Nichols  8:42  
Once they see it, they can't unsee it. And that's the entire point of trying to promote whether it's false narratives misinformation, at the behest of in this case, the corporate media is the one of the main purveyors of this false narrative. And you mentioned something earlier there. You were going through what you experienced that really just I think it hits home to a lot of folks was was this you know, ignorance, or was this actual malevolent intent it your intention to go after individuals like you at them? And I think after especially the past three years, where we've all lived through this COVID insanity? A lot of the I guess the lipstick on the pig of well, maybe it's just, you know, it's good intention people who just they they're doing the wrong thing unintentionally while trying to do a good outcome. I don't think that's the case in a lot of these situations is a matter of fact, I think, to the opposite people in positions of government, whether it's Andrew Cuomo in New York State, knowingly putting COVID patients into nursing homes with the highest risk individuals, despite having Trump sending up that big cruise ship to New York City to take on a bunch of patients. He said, No, I'm not going to give Trump that political win. We're going to put these people in the nursing homes and what happens you see New York start to just lose seniors in the 1000s 10s of 1000s because of his policy directly as a result of him trying to do something too slight the other side. So I'd say that because when you look at that, what aren't they willing to do? Right? If there you have you have Andrew Cuomo up there who's only known for you know what, grabbing Fannie's and killing grannies. Now you got you, Adam, who you're being targeted, because let's be honest here, the main reason that you were targeted was because you had the biggest smile waving and you just kind of represented the the I don't know that the jubilance and kind of like the Spirit, if you will, that represented this. Yeah, we're done with this notion of what the government has been presenting as a quote, unquote, narrative. And you know, we're going to take our country back, now you weren't doing anything violently. And I think that speaks to the approach that they took to go after you, they needed to create a narrative to destroy, not just the perception of you being the happy guy carrying the podium, but to destroy what you represented. And I think that speaks to where we are right now as a country is that you really have two sides who are trying to wield this power. And I guess that goes to my question, what do you think's going to be the outcome here, right, because you saw what they did to you. And I would love to dig into more of what they specifically did to you. But where do you think this is headed for political discourse moving forward?

Adam Johnson  11:18  
I think what we're gonna see is, well, we've seen the evacuation of states of blue states, red states and red meat to, by the way, in Philadelphia to Indiana back in 2022. So I I'm right there with that, that happened to everybody, I think you made it out, we're gonna, we're gonna see states become more red, like deeper red and deeper blue. And what we're, it's I'm, I don't want to say I'm excited about the outcome, but it's definitely going to accelerate things. It's going to allow states to vote in things that maybe just deep blue people want and deep red people want. And it's going to run a social experiments, and then we're going to see outcomes. And I don't, I don't want to see people suffer. I don't want to see people live through this recession that is obviously coming. But I think it's necessary, I think that people will have to continue to suffer, they will have to continue to deal with the consequences of their own making their own decision making. So if you asked me where we're going to go with this discourse, I think that we're going to continue to separate and isolate and build our personal vacuums in our own spheres where we hear only we want to hear, because we we don't have anything in common with each other anymore. And it's not that we don't have anything in common, it's that the things that we do have in common aren't enough to bring us back together.

Brian Nichols  12:34  
Right. Talk to us about your personal experiences in terms of the outcome of your being involved at J six, because you mentioned 75 days in jail, you're on probation, but like, what was the case against you? How did they build that case? And what was your experience working with the federal government?

Adam Johnson  12:54  
Well, I mean, it's it was hard to deny it was me. I'm in there, I'm smiling. I'm posting pictures, you know. And at the beginning of it, I thought, Well, look, worst case scenario, if they get me for trespassing, it's a slap on the wrist, I can't come back, you know, maybe a fine. And for me, I was willing to make that sacrifice to have my voice be heard. Because maybe someone sees a group of us saying, we are done. We're not going to stand by and allow the government to continue in its corruption. send our kids to die in war, steal our money. Like maybe that gives people courage and I'm willing to make that sacrifice. So when they initially picked me up, the charges were violent entry, which got dropped because there's a you can see the video right now Google, it'd be walking through open doors. It was a felony theft for moving furniture, 20 yards. They said I converted the use of the lectrons property to my own. And then the last charge and was a felony because they said the lecture was over $1,000 I'm a carpenter. I built one just to see how much it cost. I built it for like 230 bucks. But you know, government overspending, you know, it's

Brian Nichols  13:57  
like, for the FDA, and it's like, why can't we have government run health care, and then it shows the FDA was spending like $37,000, for chairs with cupholders. And that speaks to the exact problem. You spot you. You're mentioning there. Sorry. Rand Paul. Rand Paul spending reports. That's

Adam Johnson  14:12  
right, favorite. Yeah. absolute favorite. And then the last charge was entering and remaining in a restricted building, which is a misdemeanor, and it's glorified. Trespassing is what it's called. If you're in some way, you're not supposed to be, you know, you can get trespassed from the place. And typically, it's not supposed to be something you send people to prison for, especially in my case, because it is it is the first time I've done this. I am a I am a model citizen. I have five children. My wife's a physician, we we don't we're not a part of any, you know, groups that are about hates or anything. I'm not a part of proud boys, not a part of anything. I when they sat down and interviewed me for 14 hours across two interviews. They took my cell phone they took my life apart, and there was nothing to see because I don't do any You think I'm a normal person, I'm a normal person who just is living in this country and recognizing the signs and saying, We have to stop this now. And maybe we should have been talking up 30 years ago, maybe we should have been more involved in the schools, more involved in local politics. But the I, I gotta make this point, what I think we're seeing is the conservative the right the Republican Party is slowly becoming a Libertarian Party. They're collecting the new generation of people, the Gen Xers we're, we're not the old Republican Party. We're not pro war. We are, we are pro freedom. And we are smaller governments. And what the left used to be classic liberalism was, we are now encapsulating. And it's it's just so interesting to see the left, sit here and say, we need to, you know, defend the non NATO country and send F sixteens. And tanks. It's ridiculous. I feel like I'm living in a twilight zone,

Brian Nichols  15:54  
you owe 100%. I hear you there. And I must say, it is refreshing to see the GOP starting to echo back a lot of the libertarian small l libertarian sentiments that we in the greater liberty movement have been expressing and echoing you please bring this messaging into your platforms, because it is going to help you win, especially when we're going after the honor of voters, because a lot of the younger voters, like you mentioned, they're not on board with spending 100 plus billion dollars with a bee to Ukraine, our 51st state which is 10s of 1000s of miles away. It just doesn't make sense. Right? And I guess I wanted to kind of rewind a little bit to you personally, because I think you're representative of a lot of where your average GOP here or liberty movement person is, you're a good person who does good things. And you just you were targeted by your government. And I guess, where were you before? You know, the J six protests? Let's let you go back 10 years, what was your political kind of compass pointing towards then? And how did that impact you after J six to where you are today?

Adam Johnson  16:53  
I was registered Independent since I was 18. I have never voted in an election because I just, I don't have I've never had faith in them. You know, or at least I thought, I'm not going to spend my time voting for people who don't really have my interests in mind. And I think we can look at the majority of politicians that live in Connecticut, obviously vote for you know, Paul, but, you know, there's a lot of people that I just I have no business getting out and voting for someone who I know was just establishment. So I was more focused on what's my inner circle, you know, my family, things like that. I couldn't be bothered with it. 16 came around, and I saw it was Trump Hillary, and couldn't get me to vote. And I said, Well, I don't want to vote a murderer. And I also don't want to vote a, you know, reality TV star. And so I just kind of sat back and watch what happens. And then I watched the machine, just grind this man. For four years, I saw all of Hollywood, I saw musicians, sports stars, you could not get away from the constant attacks on Trump. And I said to myself, maybe just maybe this is an indicator that we finally have someone who is not part of the machine. And we can talk about his hiring choices, we can talk about the way he played within the system and all of that that's definitely a long conversation. But at the end of it, what the majority of Americans wanted, what we truly, truly wanted was more money in our pocket books. We wanted job opportunities, we wanted the ability to buy homes, we wanted the ability to say, we don't want to be in war anymore. We want to get out of our foreign conflicts. And we don't want to send our kids to die for things that we have no business being in. Yep. Awesome. For me, that was it was I think it was around 2017 I started listening to podcasts and getting, you know, more informed. And 2020 I voted for the guy. And then we watched we actually had an election watch night at my house. And I think it was around two o'clock. They're like, Hey, I think we're gonna stop counting votes. And I was like, oh, that's that's weird. Is this normal? Is this? Is this something we do?

Brian Nichols  18:59  
Know, the answer is no. We don't do that here. And Adam, you know, we are getting hard pressed for time here on the actual show. Now folks, remember we talked about this couple of weeks ago, we are changing things up here at the show. We're gonna be doing some more deep dive questions more into Adams personal backstory, but also, I have some fun questions like, will he be supporting Donald Trump or his current Governor Ron DeSantis in 2024? If you want to hear the answer to that question, got to make sure you're a supporter of our Patreon audience insider Don I nine a month or you can become a superfan at five bucks a month as well. And you get more of the content here and these episodes that I know you guys love and crave. But before we go there, we're going to wrap things up here on the main show with our final thoughts, Adam, I'll kick things off if you're cool that and that is specifically this is you know, this is why we are doing what we're doing here at the network and that is focusing and you actually hinted at it and made me smile, local politics, educating your children building a culture a community, not just of people who share Are your principles, your values, your morals, but also the idea of just good people bringing out the good and people. And that's why we have a good people network over on Facebook, where we're bringing folks in to promote and network with other people who are doing good things. But also I want your good solutions that you're bringing to the table to be shared with the world. So if you're on board with the ideas of being a good person and trying to help build up that Network and Sharing positive outcomes that are impacting both your your community locally, but also your family and your circle of influence. Well, I'd love to hear about it. Join us over on Facebook and our good people network link in the show notes. Adam, what do you have for us?

Adam Johnson  20:37  
As far as what oh, sorry,

Brian Nichols  20:38  
your final thoughts, your final thoughts?

Adam Johnson  20:40  
Final thoughts? Yeah. My final thoughts is don't give up. Don't abandon your convictions. You know, they tried to bury me, they tried to ruin our lives. And I am here speaking because if I, if I fold, I feel like other people will. So it's going to take people that are willing to sacrifice, take a stand and speak. So don't stop speaking. Bring it into your work. Tell your kids to bring it into your schools and around the dinner table. Don't let your kids not know what's going on. Tell them what is truth.

Brian Nichols  21:10  
Amen. Adam, where can folks go ahead and follow you if they want to learn more, and I continue the conversation off air.

Adam Johnson  21:16  
I'm on Twitter at lectern leader. I am the lecturing guy on Twitter, most of my social networking is through there. So if you want to communicate with me, I try to comment back to everyone who comments and I will respond to you at some point. So come give a follow. It's a lot of satire and a lot of fun.

Brian Nichols  21:30  
Awesome links will be in the show notes, folks. And again, we are going to be continuing the conversation with Adam in our Patreon behind the scenes conversation. So if you want to hear part two of this conversation, we'll make sure you head over there $1.99 A month or five bucks a month for audience insider, or superfan. Otherwise, go ahead and follow me on Twitter at B Nichols Liberty also on Facebook at V. Nichols liberty and if you're joining us on sovereign wealth Hello, you're getting a sovereign exclusive. Behind the Scenes actually, you're getting a sneak peek because the episode hasn't even aired yet. So there you go. That's what you get for joining us on sovereign but also we are on YouTube rumble and an odyssey as well. Regardless of where you join us all I ask hit that subscribe button and little notification bell so you know it's a single time we go live but with that being said, I will see you guys over on our Patreon but that being said, Brian co signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Adam Johnson. We'll see you later. Thanks for listening to The Brian Nichols Show.

Adam Johnson  22:20  
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