Interview: Soslan Temanson returns for a channel first interview to respond to an article alleging paramilitary activities during Jan 6th. Soslan explains and maintains his innocence against the article published on The Gateway Pundit.
Transcript:
Preview
William: Welcome to Blue State Conversations. I’m your co-host William, and on today’s episode, we’re discussing the article titled, “NEW FOOTAGE Shows Trained, Plainclothes Operatives Coordinating Break-In Through Capitol Window on January 6,” published on TheGatewayPundit.com on February 12th, 2022. In this article, it shows video footage and pictures of a small group of “unidentified individuals working in tandem to break a window on January 6th.” However, as there are always pictures of these people and they’re specifically listed, these are real people. They have real names, and they have real lives. And one of them is joining us today, and his name is Soslan Temanson. And he’s here to tell us about his experience on January 6th at the Capitol. Thanks for joining us today. And let’s get right to the interview.
Intro
William: Welcome to Blue State Conversations. This is our place to discuss the political theory from all sides, bridging the political divides that split our society.
Background
Matthew: Hello and welcome everybody back! It’s Matthew here. Today’s a little bit different. We have Soslan Temanson back, for something a little bit different. Now normally we’re doing a podcast, but this is the first for our channel, which is we’re going to be doing an interview.
So this is going to be a little bit different than talking about theory today. And basically, we want to talk to Soslan, as people know we’ve had them on the show before. He’s been working in a lot of different, Republican and conservative circles. He’s worked on the Trump campaign.
He has his own podcast, so we don’t have to reintroduce him there. But we did want to bring him back because there is an article that’s been going around. And, uh, we wanted to kind of have him give an explanation for it. Because you know, when you read the article, there’s a lot of questions left on answered, but there’s also some pretty good photos and video in here that also beg some questions.
So Soslan, welcome back!
Soslan Temanson: Thank you. Thank you. Wish we were here under different circumstances.
Matthew: Don’t we, yeah, no one likes being written about, even if it ended up being true or not true, nobody likes it either way. All right.
The Article
Matthew: So basically there’s an article that has come out, um, and it’s from The Gateway Pundit, which is a news site, more of a right-wing news site, I believe would be pretty fair to say,
Soslan Temanson: Which is odd that they go against another, like they know that I’m a strong conservative, so it’s a little bit odd how they come out in this kind of a stance, because it doesn’t make sense. Does it?
Matthew: Yeah, well, it was written by Nick Mastrangelo and Laura Elizabeth Jenkins. And they’re from American Gulag. That’s where they’re from. It was a cross posted from there as well, I believe. Right?
Soslan Temanson: Yup.
Matthew: All right. So basically they’ve got some footage and the title of this article is, NEW FOOTAGE Shows Trained, Plainclothes Operatives Coordinating Break-In Through Capitol Window on January 6.”
And the general thrust of this article is that they have video of people who seem to be operating in a very coordinated manner. And they imply that these people are not just random people caught up in the flow of things to the capital that they have basically. Are are a team of operatives who are trained to do something. They’re accomplishing a goal.
They’re not just standing there. They’re attempting to, either cause a distraction caused damage, smear the name. There’s a whole bunch of kinds of assumptions that are made here and allegations that are made against the people. Um, basically saying here’s footage. These people don’t seem to be, the normal type of people in the crowd. They seem to have a goal. They seem to be working together. And this raises questions, that’s kind of the general thrust of the article. I don’t know if you would agree with that, or as the general tone of the article or not, but…
Soslan Temanson: I agree with you a hundred percent.
Matthew: So, then of course they’ve got you, um, in stunning, 480p here throughout the article, identified as one of the people. And the reason that’s important is… has this hurt you in any way in terms of your career, or any other things going on?
Soslan Temanson: Well it definitely has affected me kind of, well politically in the political world, I noticed is that, it’s affected me because when you’re campaigning for someone and when you’re trying to look for you know, a campaign and when you’re trying to look for credibility. And all they have to do is look up your name and they see this and they see like The Gateway Pundit.
It makes you like a kind of a liability risk. If you’re a public figure, you know, they expect you to be like in a good light, but in the limelight. You know, they’re going to have something against you, but not to this extreme, not to the point where they pinpoint you.
You know, it was odd actually. How I found out about this article is that CNN, out of all the news organizations… CNN called me and said, hey by the way, you’re in this article. I said, ah, I’m like, no, I’m not. I’m probably just in the back photo if I am. But I didn’t know. And so they sent me the article, and that’s how I found out. It was through them.
Matthew: It is impressive that you got attention from CNN. Did anybody else give you a phone call or was it just them?
Soslan Temanson: No, it was, it was a local channels in Wisconsin, NBC, and a whole bunch of others. And, you know, I said, no, I don’t want to do an interview at this moment because, I don’t really trust you guys. You know, that’s why I kind of reached out to you and.
Matthew: No, thank you very much. That definitely means a lot to us that, uh, you know, because obviously trusting somebody with an article that isn’t flattering to you is, is, is a big thing. So we’re definitely appreciative of that no matter what.
Soslan Temanson: And, you know, those big news things, with everything that’s going on. And I don’t know if we have the January 6th committee right now, and that’s why it’s such a hot topic and that. You know, I notice is that they, if you go to any of those big news medias, they’re going to crawl out your door, but they’re going to put a very bad twist on it to make it like really bad.
And so, I just also want to tell you that I do have lawyers that are on my side right now. They are the ones that gave me the green light. So I’m at their helm, by the way.
Matthew: Okay. All right. So I guess I just wanted to kind of go through here. Just to start, the article starts by basically giving a video, obtained from Tommy Tatum. And it’s basically a black hooded man. He carries an Asian woman dressed in red, with a red hood, U.S. flag scarf, and a MAGA hat… onto a window sill on the Capitol building.
So where, this is the outside. Nobody is inside the Capitol building in this article whatsoever, right?
Soslan Temanson: Nope.
Matthew: Nope. Okay And so then they kind of do a bunch of different descriptions of people in here. And then the big thing that kind of happens is they claim that this woman, tries to break in and then she signals to people in the crowd. So this is kind of where you come in after this. They say “within minutes, the individual in the green cap, black eyeglasses, and black mask motions for a man in a black helmet with an asp to proceed forward, striking the window.” And then, so this, this is you, so there’s about 11 seconds here of the video and it’s kind of got you in it.
And what they’re saying is, it appears that you’re motioning for this guy to come over. He comes over and then he appears to strike something with the asp. It’s actually not in the frame of the video.
What is your side of the story?
Matthew: What I want to do, is pause here and give you… if you can just give an… how you got to where you are in this point and what was going on.
Soslan Temanson: Oh, absolutely. Okay. So I ended up there as, you know, a free Americans and I wanted to go and be in support of President Trump. And so what happened was that I’m like, okay, why don’t I go to DC. And so I went to DC, and I stayed up all night watching the Georgia election and there was fraud in the Georgia election. But then that still didn’t stop me because I’m like, okay you know what, I’m going to go where President Trump is going to speak on Wednesday.
So I’m going to go early. So I woke up, pretty much stayed up the whole entire night, and then I got to the Capitol around three in the morning. And so from three in the morning, you know stood in a two and a half mile long line. And so we just got to the area around 8:30 AM.
And it was very busy. And so then nine o’clock to 9:30, our cell service was actually dropped. You know, we couldn’t call, we couldn’t text people and it was just a little bit odd. The only thing that was allowed to do was take photo. And so that’s one thing that I’m like, okay, that’s a little bit odd. You know, I thought it was because you know, people are like, they were jammed in or like there was too much cell service and so it couldn’t sustain, so then it just dropped automatically.
So then, you know, President Trump comes out at noon and then he said, hey, why don’t we mark over there peacefully? That’s the key word… is that peacefully? And so it was so cool having people marching over to the Capitol, very peacefully.
It was very cool, we were all walking and we were like celebrating and we were like, you know, singing like God Bless America. And it was like one of his rallies. And so what happened was, was that I went there and I saw from a far distance that people have already broken in the Capitol. I said, oh, okay. This is not gonna be good.
And this isn’t going to be a very good, uh, it’s not going to be a good ending. Because people are already waving up and they’ve already like stood up on the way top of the Capitol. So already things were already playing. So I’m like, okay, now it doesn’t hurt us. You know, as an investigator, I’m like, okay, what else can happen?
So I’m like, might as well just get myself up there to see, get a closer picture. Cause I wanted to like, know what was really going on.
Matthew: So just to stop you for one second. Um, so you’re saying that by the time you arrived at the Capitol in front of the Capitol.
Soslan Temanson: At two o’clock.
Matthew: People had already gotten inside… two o’clock. Right? So people had already gotten inside. So you’re not the initial wave of people getting inside.
Soslan Temanson: No, we’re like about the third wave.
Matthew: Third wave. Okay. You’ve, you’ve arrived at the front here. You’ve basically, you’re headed up to just sort of see what’s going on. Right. Cause this is part of what you do since you’re involved in politics.
Soslan Temanson: Yes. Yes.
Matthew: All right. So at some point here, what they’re claiming is you’re, you’re waving this guy over. So I guess the big question right off the bat, do you know either of these two people.
Soslan Temanson: No. And that’s the whole thing is, you know, what I was trying to do is, I was trying to wave down that girl, like to get off the steps… and I was looking at her and then apparently this one guy, this guy that came with a stick, he pushed me aside and then started hitting, took about three blows at the window, you know? And so of course I didn’t want to get in his way.
But ended up like thinking, I could see how if you’re looking at the photo or if you’re looking at the video, I could see how, you know, when you’re telling that girl the signal, the guy just like pushes himself up there and then hits the window a couple of times, you know, but that was completely false.
I was telling her to get down. And I was like screaming at the top of my lungs.
Matthew: Oh, I see. So you’re and of course, you know, you’re wearing a mask, so that doesn’t help. But basically what you’re saying is you don’t know these two people, and you’re trying to tell her get off. Okay. so then he says, the man looks directly at you. What’s going on here?
Soslan Temanson: So what happened was, was that once he took about three blows, I yanked his arm down. I said, no, what are… an explicit came out of my mouth. And I said, what are you doing pretty much. That’s what I stated but I had an explicit word. And then he like got all mad. And then he looked at me and said, well screw you, I’m still going to do it… and then he just left.
Matthew: And then he just leaves. Okay.
Soslan Temanson: Leaves, yeah. And probably goes to a different window.
Matthew: Yeah, a lot of windows there. Um, so, all right so… then the big thing here is, they kind of say that there are Antifa members working alone or in small groups to break windows. So are you a member of Antifa?
Soslan Temanson: No, no, I am far… no. I would, that’d be the last, no. I’m not part of Antifa, BLM, or a Proud Boys. I’m neither of those three.
Matthew: Um, they’re also saying that you have a common, they said that this is a triangular formation, common in military law enforcement. Do you have a background in military law enforcement?
Soslan Temanson: I was in the military. Yes. And I, you know, I was in the United States Air Force, but I was more, I had top secret clearance. And so, yes… I am familiar with that triangular thing.
Matthew: Okay. So, but again, you, you do not know who these individuals are, you weren’t working with them, or anything like that.
Soslan Temanson: No. Cause if you were to do that triangular thing, at least they would all like have specific, uh, hand signals and you would always have an ear piece inside of you, one way or the other. And I didn’t have neither of those.
Matthew: Okay. I see. So basically, this article is saying that there’s coordination going on in this group.
What happened beyond what the article described?
Matthew: What happened after this? Do you have any information that happened after this, beyond what the article was?
Soslan Temanson: So what happened afterwards was that, then we had one individual gal, her, she was blonde, and then… she actually was an FBI operative. Um, and here’s what you can tell, but she had an earpiece and she was dressed up and you can tell that she had, you can tell that she was FBI operative, because there are other people that kind of surrounded her.
That we’re kind of stating that, you know, you couldn’t get too close. Cause if you did, you got pushed back… and she was doing hand signals and she had a cell phone that was working. And so I’m like, okay, that’s a little bit odd, you know? And it was at that same window where that, you know, is that same window where that gal was.
I was telling her to get down and so it didn’t make sense. And so she was kinda on the phone, she was making phone calls, and then I saw people from inside the Capitol that kind of looked like the Capitol police. And they kinda, they kinda like was breaking the windows from within. And I saw with my own eyes but she had people kind of lined up and kind of gathered around.
So you couldn’t see that. And so then they had people like with a sign. I don’t know, you want to, like people can zoom in or not. But like, if they look at other photos, you can see that there was a sign, particular sign. I don’t really know what it is, but they were kind of covering up, while the Capitol police were breaking the windows from within the lower half of the window.
Um, enough to where people can like crawl through or kind of get underneath. You know, cause you had that podium and then you kind of have like to another tall window, but you got to, uh, enough of a space where you can just jump in and they were coordinating. So what happened was that as it was kind of getting a little bit hectic and a little bit crazy, I kind of got up a little bit closer and I said, hey, what’s really going on.
But then, one of the Antifa people in that, one of the dressed up individual told me to back away. You know, and then he… I’m like, okay, I’m not going to deal with this anymore. You know, I’m going to, I know this is, this is looking very suspicious. This is not going to be good ending.
So I’m going to get out as soon as I can, because once a tear canisters started kind of getting dispersed or like getting handed out and shields, I said, yep, this is my time to go. And I stayed there until 6:00 PM. So I stayed at about four and a half hours. Kind of experiencing this whole thing.
But I slowly kind of get myself out because you know, you can see that good people you’re, you know, you’re law abiding citizens, trump supporters… were trying to get out cause they knew that things are going to turn south once the sun went down and sure enough it did.
Matthew: Hmm. Okay. So, did you do anything to let the authors of the article know about this? Did you contact them? Did you do anything?
Soslan Temanson: Not that I can rec(all)… No.
Matthew: Okay. So they wrote this article without contacting you, because they didn’t know who you were.
Soslan Temanson: They didn’t know who I was… No.
Have you reached out to the authors of the article?
Matthew: Okay. So once you became aware of the article, did you then reach out to them?
Soslan Temanson: So when somebody actually told me about that article, I contacted my lawyers as soon as possible. And I sent them the articles.
Matthew: Okay. All right. So basically these people have written this article… and have you done any sort of attempt to get them to change it or include a comment or like that?
Soslan Temanson: Uh, so my lawyers actually reached out to them and according to them, they just kind of left it up. They didn’t do anything to it.
Matthew: They didn’t do anything. So you you’ve, you’ve attempted to reach them for comment,
Soslan Temanson: My lawyers did.
Matthew: Okay. So your lawyer, your lawyers did on your behalf. And so they, so basically these two authors left the article up in its original state, even though you’ve kind of attempted to contact them and get at least a quote or a statement or something going… what’s going on here you.
Okay. All right. Yeah. To me, that does seem a little, a little bit of malpractice just in terms of usually if somebody finds there in an article, you want what their side of the story was. Otherwise you’re not reporting the whole thing, which I think it’s good you’re here to do that. You know? Cause the first thing you should do obviously is attempt to get the record straight. And if they won’t do that, then you gotta figure out a different way of doing it.
Um, so I, I guess, to kind of end this here, when people write articles like this, you know, they’re talking about there’s some suspicious stuff going on, and all this stuff. Again, you said you don’t know who these people are. You know, you are from the military, but you’re saying that the strategy that talking about is not being actually done correctly so it’s not all professionals.
Soslan Temanson: No, it’s not even correct. It’s not even a correct formation. Well, it is a correct formation, but their malpractices. It’s malpractice formation.
Matthew: So they’re just, they’re not doing it right is basically what you’re saying.
Soslan Temanson: Haha, no.
Matthew: Okay. And your role in all of this is you’re attempting to get her off. And this guy is just kind of coming by you. And he’s hitting the window, but you had no idea he was going to do that. There’s just some guy coming by us and then all of a sudden he’s hitting the window. That’s a good wrap up of what you’re saying here.
Soslan Temanson: Yes. Yes.
Speculation: Why do you think the authors have not engaged with you?
Matthew: Okay. I guess that kind of leaves the, the fact that we can go into a little bit more speculation here. Is there a reason why you think somebody would write an article like this… and then when somebody who’s in the article would contact them, they would not with you.
Soslan Temanson: So kind of speculations… well, here’s the whole thing. Is that, if you’re a public figure and stuff, I understand for Gateway, and I understand for like The Tatum, you know, if you’re on, if you’re based on getting likes and stuff and if your base, and if you’re like in a heated moment, for instance, right now there’s a January 6th committee going on and that’s right now, very tense moment. And it was like very, it was very hot moment and a hot topic.
So if you’re trying to get likes and stuff, I understand that’s where you’re coming from. That you post something so outlandish, that you like, people are like, oh really? Somebody has a fuel the fire. You know, and if you try to make that, if you try to contact them, or if you have people contact you on your behalf and they refuse it, then that’s just very poor judgment.
That’s like your, then you have a wrong agenda set, you know? Um, and another thing is that, you know, I was speaking with politicians and allowing to interact with people. I understand that you’re also going to have people not liking you and that there’s going to be things coming up, you know, uh, coming against you.
Do, you know, just try to discredit you are just trying to hurt, tarnish your ability to like, for the people that you’re campaigning for, or even if you have an agenda, like for instance, I want to spread the good news about the God and through my podcasts and through the, you know, ministry I do, and this kind of dampers it, this kind of hurts it… because it discredits my credibility.
You know what I mean? Right.
Matthew: Yeah you’re basically saying that, this type article has taken a shot at your credibility and at your prospects for the future, because anytime somebody looks you up to do a vet, do a background check, especially on campaign. So they’re going to vet just kind of your name and your background. This is going to come up.
And so this is now going to follow you forever and these writers have basically just decided that sure… we think our reporting is fine.
Soslan Temanson: Yes. And I’ve noticed this is that, like for instance, if I were to run for an opponent, the opponent’s going to have the same. They’re going to reach out.
Matthew: They’ll have this, yeah.
Soslan Temanson: They’re all… yeah. And they’re also going to have this and so… and see thats the whole thing I kind of disagree on is that, you know, and then… they can take this as a field day you know? And stating that well, you know, you call this a man of God… but at the same time he coordinated a coup or he was a part of a coup.
What kind of a person is that? You know, what kind of a candidate do you want? Like what kind of a person that he’s campaigning for. This is what kind of far, far right wing group that he’s campaigning for. You know, or kind of candidate he’s affiliated with. You know, so that’s kind of a thing that I’ve been kind of affected on that end, you know. And I have, you know, been suspended and I have, and I’ve also been affected, you know, somebody decides to send a death threat over and stuff, and it’s like, man, it’s like, come on, give me a break. You know?
Matthew: So you, you were saying that you got a death threat after the, after this kind of became… after this was written.
Soslan Temanson: Yes, it was more of a scare tactic.
Matthew: Yeah. No, that’s a, nobody, nobody should be receiving that any point. Um,
Soslan Temanson: But some of the other side acts though, look at the poor life, building a Milwaukee, you know, look how they reacted, you know, no arrests were made if we were to do it, you know, if we would go out about that, we’ll be tarnished, we’d be tarred and feathered, you know, it’s that devil hypocrisy, you know, that happens.
Matthew: Okay. All right. Well, I do definitely want to thank you for coming on. You know, I think this was very important, uh, for you to get out here and be able to sort of talk about this. For me, I think one of the problems that I’ve been having… one of the reasons that I definitely wanted to do this is that one of the things I see happening… especially on the right wing is they’re so convinced that the left wing media does a bad job of journalism and reporting that they don’t take the time to check whether their own media and reporting is up to par as well.
Soslan Temanson: Bingo!
Matthew: Yeah. And I think, you know, when I’m reading this, a lot of this stuff is allegations and then it just puts people’s faces. Um, and I think, you know, again, that when that affects somebody and then the writers don’t take the time to change it. That to me, sounds like there, there’s a little bit too much of, I’m just here to write for the clicks. Thats what that sounds like to me.
I do not want the right wing media in the United States to just become CNN, RNC. I don’t, I really don’t want that to be the case. Because that it’s, it just becomes a race to the bottom. If we’re going to say that CNN is a bias network and just writing our own bias network is, is not, it’s not useful. So
Soslan Temanson: No.
Matthew: Thank you for coming on. Uh, very excited to have you and, um, we’ll definitely have to get together again on some more topics on our regular podcast.
Soslan Temanson: Oh, absolutely and be more of a better, a better circumstances.
Matthew: Yep. You definitely bring a perspective and I thank you again for coming on and addressing this.
Soslan Temanson: Oh no probs. And thank you so much and have a blessed day.
Outro
Matthew: Thanks for listening and if you have a comment, question, or rant… we’d love to hear it. Email us at BlueStateConversations@Gmail.com, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and find our articles on Medium. If you liked this podcast, share it with a friend. No matter what state you’re in, blue, red, or purple… there is always room at the table to discuss your views in a way that lets us all grow.