Person Fifteen (AKA Mark Grods), Another Roger Stone Security Staffer, Flips

Sometime in the recent history of Tucker Carlson’s fever dreams, he claimed that the long list of numbered unindicted co-conspirators in the Oath Keepers case were actually paid FBI informants setting up the militia members.

I guess with the news that Person Fifteen, AKA Mark Grods, will plead guilty and enter into a cooperation agreement with prosecutors today, Tucker gets partial credit: the government asked and received permission to keep Grods’ charges sealed so he could testify to the grand jury before pleading guilty today.

Delaying the government’s need to notify other defendants about Mark Grod[’]s related case between the filing of the criminal Information on June 28 and his public plea hearing on June 30, 2021, will ensure the defendant’s safety while he cooperates pursuant to his plea agreement and testifies before the grand jury.

So, it turns out, Grods was informing on his buddies. But not for pay, but in hopes of lenience at sentencing for a conspiracy and an obstruction charge.

Here are all the things — based on comparing the Fourth Superseding Indictment with Grods’ Statement of Offense— to which Grods is a direct witness:

55. At least as early as December 31, 2020, [Jessica] WATKINS, KELLY MEGGS, [Joshua] JAMES, [Roberto] MINUTA, PERSON ONE [Stewart Rhodes], PERSON THREE, PERSON TEN, and others known and unknown joined an invitation-only encrypted Signal group message titled “DC OP: Jan 6 21” (hereinafter the “Leadership Signal Chat”).

[snip]

58. On December 31, 2020, KELLY MEGGS and JAMES attended a 4-participant GoToMeeting titled “SE leaders dc 1/6/21 op call.” KELLY MEGGS was the organizer of the meeting.

[snip]

67. On January 2, 2021, [Grods] messaged JAMES on Signal and asked, “So, I guess I am taking full gear less weapons? Just reading through all the posts. Would rather have it and not need it.” JAMES responded, “Yeah full gear… QRF will have weapons Just leave em home.”

[snip]

95. MINUTA, using his personal email address and his personal home address, reserved three rooms at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., under the names of MINUTA, JAMES, and PERSON TWENTY. A debit card associated with [Grods] was used to pay for the room reserved under MINUTA’s name. A credit card associated with JAMES was used to pay for the room reserved under JAMES’s name.

[snip]

128. Between 2:30 and 2:33 p.m., MINUTA, JAMES, WALDEN, and others rode in a pair of golf carts towards the Capitol, at times swerving around law enforcement vehicles, with MINUTA stating: “Patriots are storming the Capitol building; there’s violence against patriots by the D.C. Police; so we’re en route in a grand theft auto golf cart to the Capitol building right now . . . it’s going down, guys; it’s literally going down right now Patriots storming the Capitol building . . . fucking war in the streets right now . . . word is they got in the building . . . let’s go.”

[snip]

129. At 2:33 p.m., MINUTA, JAMES, WALDEN, and others parked the golf carts near the intersection of Third Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest. They then continued on foot towards the Capitol.

[snip]

165. Shortly after 4:00 p.m., individuals who breached the Capitol, to include YOUNG, STEELE, KELLY MEGGS, CONNIE MEGGS, HARRELSON, MINUTA, JAMES, WALDEN, HACKETT, DOLAN, and ISAACS, among others, gathered together with PERSON ONE and PERSON TEN approximately 100 feet from the Capitol, near the northeast corner of the building.

[snip]

195. On January 8, 2021, JAMES instructed [Grods] to “make sure that all signal comms about the op has been deleted and burned,” and [Grods] confirmed [Grods] did in fact do so.

In addition, Grods entered the Capitol shortly after others allegedly assaulted the cops.

And because he was at the Willard with Roberto Minuta, Joshua James, and Jonathan Walden, he may have been witness to the James side of key conversations involving Person Ten.

And Grods is one of nine Oath Keepers who provided security for Roger Stone, and the second to have entered a cooperation agreement.

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30 replies
  1. TooLoose LeTruck says:

    Man… that’s gotta suck…

    There you, happily plotting in private to overturn an election and overthrow the government, and then, BAM!

    You get up one day and learn the the hard way that one of your co-conspirators, someone you trusted, has turned tail, copped a plea, and is now testifying against you…

    That’s gotta leave a mark.

    What’s that old saying… there’s no honor amongst thieves?

    Apparently there’s none amongst seditious a**holes either…

    • PieIsDamnGood says:

      We’re really fortunate that most white nationalists and neo-nazis are not very well functioning people.

      Although if they were well functioning maybe they wouldn’t be extremists…

    • Leoghann says:

      While some of them are obviously not too sharp, and some simply lacked real-life experience (oops!–cosplay isn’t the same), another big element in their bad outcome is their narcissism, which is a common trait among people with that mindset. There was a bad chain of command simply because so many thought himself or herself needed to be the first link. You can see that jockeying, as well as the angry, hurt feelings, in a lot of the messaging threads.

  2. Pat says:

    22% of Roger Stone’s security detail has turned states’ evidence against him?

    Must not inspire a whole lot of loyalty…

    • Silly but True says:

      If only he could have gotten into iOS game development 20 years earlier, he’d have spent the 00’s churning out esoteric versions of Solitaire.

      • punaise says:

        As Charles P. Pierce pithily puts it:

        You Go to Hell With the Alibis You Have

        Donald Rumsfeld died on Wednesday. He was 88 years old, an age thousands of Iraqis will never reach because of him.

    • Wajim says:

      You go to the grave with the body you have, not the body you might want or wish to have at a later time. Hopefully, Kissinger is next.

      • DrFunguy says:

        Cheney?
        Abraham’s?
        Our recent history has a surplus of those whose obituary I would read with some, perhaps guilty, satisfaction.

  3. Alan says:

    I have a question that has been bothering me. Where did they obtain the golf carts … seem to many of them used

    • P J Evans says:

      I wouldn’t be surprised to find that you can rent them for large events, where people and equipment may need moving.

    • Catgirl says:

      They were at the Willard Hotel. They were being used by Roger Stone and others to get about. They are not typically used in Washington, so seeing two golf carts careening throught the streets to the Capitol got a lot of attention. The FBI has clear video. They also know what was being said during the ride. When Minuta and James learned that the Capitol was breached, they took off in the golf carts. Among those riding shotgun was Mark Finchem, a Republican Arizona State Representative who was in deep with Ali Alexander and Stop the Steal. If you haven’t already checked out Seth Abramson’s Proof Substack, you’ll find the bigger political conspiracy there, backed up by sources, as well as lesser stories like Grand Theft Golf Cart. A lot of Seth’s articles are behind a paywall because it’s required by Substack and because it’s his day job, but he’s unlocked many of his articles. It also only costs $5 month to access the whole archive. It was well worth it for me. https://sethabramson.substack.com/s/january6?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=menu

      [Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the same username each time you comment so that community members get to know you. This is your second user name. Thanks. /~Rayne]

  4. Dutch Louis says:

    What about a link not only to Jan. 6 but also Jan. 5? Cindy Chafian, a former Group Administrator of the Stop the Steal Facebook group, met in December 2020 Alex Jones “by complete happenstance” at the Willard Hotel [sic!] in Washington. Later that month, Jones contacted Chafian to discuss staging a January rally in support of an effort by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results. Jones directed her to Caroline Wren, who, she was told, had ties to a wealthy donor who wanted to support the January affair. (Wren served as a deputy to Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at Trump Victory, a joint presidential fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign). By the end of December Chafian was sidelined – or so she claimed – and started her own group, The Eighty Percent Coalition, which held a rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 that was largely sponsored by Alex Jones. At the rally Cindy Chafian told the crowd that it wasn’t police who were keeping them safe, but rather the Proud Boys, anti-government militias and other far-right groups. “All of those guys keep us safe,” she told the crowd.

    • timbo says:

      I hope the select committee being formed in the House right now will concentrate on why the original rally plan was shifted from after Jan 20 to during the Congresses certification process on Jan 6th. And how it was that Trump became the primary speaker when he wasn’t even slated to speak in the original rally plan.

  5. CD54 says:

    Question for lawyers:

    Would establishing a communications link from within the District of Columbia to any gun holding QRF constitute a qualifying overt act in a conspiracy to violate Municipal CCW law (§ 22–4504 includes “or any dangerous or deadly weapons”)?

    That’s 5 years max/10 years for convicted felons (§ 22–1805a Conspiracy sentence mirrors the underlying offense).

    I know it’s out of their hands and just trading material, but if I were Executive D.C./MPD I’d be dog-piling on every one of these gun cosplayers I could get to.

  6. person1597 says:

    Yeah…anybody designated person15whatthefuckever is going to be found out somehow someday… Oh! … Wait!!
    “Save it for later, don’t run away and let me down
    Sooner or later you’ll hit the deck, you’ll get found out…”
    https://youtu.be./0bM0wVjU2-k

  7. e.a.f. says:

    On some level this is funny, They are attempting to over throw the government of the U.S.A. and they’re doing it in golf carts. OMG, Makes you wonder about their intelligence levels. golf carts. reminds me of the movie Caddy Shack

    • Leoghann says:

      They would have played hell trying to get to the Capitol Building that quickly in a car at that time.

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