XPost: dc.politics, sac.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: drooler@gmail.com   
      
   Joseph Bolanos was a pillar of his community. President of his Upper West   
   Side block association for the past 23 years, he looked out for his   
   neighbors during the pandemic. He dropped off masks and kept extra heaters   
   in his rent-controlled apartment for seniors. He raised morale with a   
   weekly street dance to show his support for essential workers.   
      
   A Red Cross volunteer after the 9/11 attacks, the 69-year-old security   
   consultant once received a police commendation for heroism after saving a   
   woman from being mugged.   
      
   Unmarried, and caring for his 94-year-old mother, he was a well-loved   
   character in the quiet residential area.   
      
   But now his neighbors think he is a domestic terrorist.   
      
   Yes, he attended then-President Donald Trump’s rally in Washington, DC, on   
   Jan. 6, but he never entered the Capitol. He was in a friend’s room at the   
   JW Marriott a 30-minute walk away when the Capitol breach occurred.   
      
   Nonetheless, he was raided in February by the FBI anti-terrorism task   
   force, handcuffed, paraded and detained for three hours while his   
   apartment was ransacked and all his devices confiscated. Four months   
   later, he hasn’t been charged and doesn’t have his devices back, but his   
   neighbors are shunning him, and he’s had two strokes from the stress.   
      
   “It’s destroyed my reputation,” he says. “I’m not a violent invader … I do   
   not condone the criminality and violence on [Jan. 6] whatsoever.”   
      
   The FBI told Bolanos he was raided because of a tip to the Jan. 6 hotline   
   from a neighbor who said he had overheard him “boasting” about being at   
   the Capitol.   
      
   An FBI agent phoned Bolanos the Sunday after the riot and left a message.   
   He returned the call the next day, but never heard back.   
      
   At the time he was staying at his mother’s apartment in Washington Heights   
   because she had been moved to rehab and he was facing the difficult   
   decision of whether she should move into permanent care.   
      
   On Feb. 4, four FBI agents arrived unannounced and interviewed him for 25   
   minutes. They asked if he was a member of BLM, Antifa or the Proud Boys.   
   He said no.   
      
   He told them he caught a train to Washington on Jan. 6 and arrived at the   
   Ellipse to meet a friend who had flown from California with a girlfriend   
   to watch Trump’s speech. He filmed the crowd, which he described as   
   “friendly, like a political Woodstock.”   
      
   Bolanos is a registered Democrat, but calls himself “an independent at   
   heart.” He liked Trump’s policies, but was never a Trump fanatic.   
      
   He strived to keep politics out of his leadership role, knowing his   
   neighbors were a mixture of ultra-progressives and closet conservatives.   
      
   Trump’s speech was boring, and the day was cold and blustery, said   
   Bolanos, so at about 12:40 p.m., he and his friends left early and made   
   the eight-minute trek back to the Marriott.   
      
   That’s where they were when the Capitol barricades were breached at 12:57   
   p.m. Bolanos has time stamps on photographs he took in the hotel to prove   
   it. One inside the room was taken at 1:41 p.m. Another out the window of   
   the street below was taken at 1:45 p.m. Another photo was taken at 2:04   
   p.m. inside a hotel elevator. He says that is when they decided to head   
   back to the Capitol to see what had happened with the Electoral College   
   count.   
      
   Bolanos videotaped the scene as they walked slowly down Pennsylvania   
   Avenue. They were still about a mile away at 2:12 p.m., when invaders   
   smashed windows and stormed the Capitol.   
      
   They arrived at the rear of the Capitol at about 2:45 p.m. Unbeknownst to   
   Bolanos, inside the building, Ashli Babbitt has just been shot. He and his   
   friends stood on a patch of muddy lawn about 400 feet from the wall of the   
   Capitol taking photos. The riot was all over.   
      
   “There was no hint of violence … If you were shooting a movie at that   
   location, you would never know anything had happened.”   
      
   No police were there. The only disorder he remembers seeing was a pile of   
   overturned bike racks.   
      
   In the distance he could see people climbing a wall of the Capitol. “But I   
   couldn’t process it. I thought why they are climbing it.”   
      
   He told the FBI agents all of this. He gave them a video compilation of   
   peaceful crowds and told them he could provide more videos from a camera   
   in his apartment. They said they would call Monday, but never did.   
      
   The next Thursday at 6 a.m., he was awakened in his mother’s apartment by   
   loud banging. “I opened the door and there’s about 10 tactical police   
   soldiers and one is pointing a rifle at my head. [They had] a battering   
   ram and a crowbar.”   
      
   They also had a search warrant, issued by District Judge Gabriel   
   Gorenstein, which named Bolanos as the “target subject.” The front door of   
   his empty apartment was being broken down in a simultaneous raid.   
      
   The warrant authorized the federal agents to seize his property as   
   evidence relating to crimes including “obstruction of Congress,” “civil   
   disorders,” “conspiracy to impede/assault federal agents,” “interstate   
   travel to participate in riot,” and “unlawful entry on restricted   
   buildings or grounds.”   
      
   The FBI ransacked both apartments, upending drawers, trashing his mother’s   
   bedroom.   
      
   He was handcuffed and taken outside to an FBI car to be interrogated for   
   four hours.   
      
   An NBC camera crew had been tipped off and was there to film his shame.   
   NBC quoted “sources” saying charges against him were imminent. The story   
   would be repeated in two local publications.   
      
   He started feeling sick at about 11 a.m., so the FBI called an ambulance.   
   When he was admitted to Mt. Sinai, his blood pressure was through the roof   
   and he had suffered a stroke.   
      
   The neighbors he had helped all those years have turned their backs on   
   him. One woman who cooked him a nice dinner last Thanksgiving wrote him a   
   nasty note: “I hope Antifa gets you.”   
      
   Bolanos is bereft. He has not been charged, and insists he has committed   
   no crime.   
      
   But like thousands of other law-abiding Americans who went to Washington   
   on Jan. 6 to see the president speak, his life has been ruined by a   
   hysterical witch hunt for phantom domestic terrorists.   
      
   The violence that day was terrible and those responsible are being   
   prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as they should be. But the   
   overkill stinks of the sort of political purge you see in Communist China.   
      
   Meanwhile, the violent rioters and looters of the “Summer of Love”   
   continue to get off scot-free. This is not justice.   
      
      
      
      
   https://nypost.com/2021/06/23/fbi-tears-new-yorkers-life-into-shreds-   
   devine/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)