Samuel Armes
Back in July 2018, Liz Cheney and the January 6 Committee called in Samuel Armes to testify. Armes is a young college grad who just started his professional career in Florida.
The J6 Committee called in Armes after Erika Flores told the shame anti-Trump committee that Armes told her to pass on his “1776 Returns” document to Enrique Tarrio, Flores’s love interest who Armes had met at least two times.
Flores already told the committee that Armes, who was being groomed by the FBI and CIA while in school, told her to pass the insurrection document on to Enrique Tarrio.
There is NO EVIDENCE that Tarrio ever looked at the document. There is NO EVIDENCE that the Proud Boys studied the document.
And there is NO EVIDENCE that the Proud Boys used any of the tactics that Armes wrote about in the document on January 6.
On Monday Cara Castronuova reported on the explosive news that a love interest sent Enrique Tarrio the incriminating “1776 Returns” document at the behest of Samuel Armes.
And Julie Kelly at American Greatness filled in the details in Monday post on Armes and the Proud Boys Trial.
https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/13/did-a-government-intel-asset-plant-key-evidence-in-proud-boys-case/
During his testimony, Samuel Armes admitted he was being groomed by the FBI and CIA.
Samuel Armes: I went to the University of South Florida, and I got a degree in international finance, economics, and intel studies, which was part of a program at USF. I was being groomed to work for the CIA and the FBI.
J^ Committee: Did you ever end up working for either of those agencies?
Samuel Armes: Not formally, but I’ve done work for the State Department and for United States Special Operations Command out of MacDill Air Force Base, which is in Tampa…
(…)
Mr. Armes. So, when I was at USF and I was being groomed to be in the CIA, FBI, or any intel agencies, a lot of what we did was wargaming exercises. Are you familiar with wargames?
J6 Committee: Yes.
Mr. Armes. Yeah. So I would often go through day courses where we would wargame different scenarios as a part of my college education. And that actually is partially what served me at SOCOM. So at SOCOM —
(…)
J6 Committee: Okay. And just a quick clarification. When you say “getting groomed” to be part of the CIA, FBI, what do you mean by that?
Mr. Armes. Yeah, I don’t know what a better term would be, but —
Ms. Santos. Trained.
Mr. Armes. Trained. Yeah, I guess trained.
Ms. Santos. Educated.
Mr. Armes. Yeah.
Ms. Santos. Trained and educated through the university program.
Mr. Armes. And my mentor. So the goal was to do everything that I was doing and then, by the time I graduated, actually move to D.C. and work for one of the intel agencies.
Armes then admits to authoring a document, later titled the “1776 Returns” attack plan, that he started after the release of the highly organized and controversial Transition Integrity Project document.
The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) was organized by deep state operatives, intel officials and campaign leaders who met for several meetings and for some reason warned about “a highdegree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape. We also assess that President Trump is likely to contest the result by both legal and extra-legal means, in an attempt to hold onto power.
It was uncanny how the TIP officials knew about the controversial election to come and the likelihood that Americans would be upset to see an election stolen from the people!
Mr. Armes: So, given my education and kind of everything that I’ve discussed, I had really watched heavily the riots in the U.S., especially during COVID, the pandemic, as well as, you know, riots from the left and the right. And given my working background, I saw the release of the TIP document, the Transition Integrity Project document, in August, and upon seeing that and given my prior knowledge of just how these things play out, I began tinkering with a Google document on my own, just what I thought might happen in a worst-case scenario based off of that document that was released by TIP.
Note that Armes talked about “riots by the right” during COVID that never happened.
Armes then ties his insurrection document to the Terry Shiavo case which makes no sense and is further proof that the intel communities are lacking in capable thinkers.
Armes then told the committee he believed Trump was “an unpredictable character”
Mr. Armes: A So I want to say it was almost neither of those. The practical viewpoint I was looking at is, what if there is just any kind of scenario where you just didn’t know who was in charge? What would happen if, from election day to 2 weeks out, we didn’t know who the President was?
And, given that we know the former President was a very unpredictable character, certainly one of my thoughts was, what if he just doesn’t leave, right? I mean, there were multiple options, right?
But my viewpoint of the document was simply, how are people going to take advantage of the situation? Because I think, in times of chaos, you have radical parties that actually don’t care about what the actual circumstances are; they just view it as an opportunity to push forward their agenda, right? So that was kind of what I was thinking of. Yeah.
And I saw that happen in riots before in the U.S. and throughout 2020, where, you know, people really weren’t sure what was going on, and so you saw people take to the streets, do a variety of things that were obviously unlawful. And by the time we figured out what was true and what wasn’t, you know, buildings had already been destroyed or, you know, people’s lives had already been affected.
So that was kind of my frame of reference. I tried to be as agnostic as possible in my line of thinking to try to avoid any, like, internal bias. Does that give you any clarity?
Samuel Armes then told the J6 Committee that he was “shocked” that the document was used as a “terroristic document” on January 6.
Mr. Armes: So I had told her (Erika Flores) that I was kind of brainstorming what I think might happen, and she seemed interested. And she asked if she could see it, and I said sure.
And so I ended up sharing it with her on a Google Drive. And after that, I thought nothing of it. I would’ve never imagined that it turned into the document that I was shown last week, would’ve had zero clue, zero idea. I mean, it’s pretty horrifying to think that that document was even used and actually took from what I had written, which — obviously, you know, it’s horrific for me to even imagine that something that I would’ve written would’ve been used to source this kind of, like — I guess call it “terroristic document,” right, if I want to be nice about it. But, you know, never in a million years.
And because that was never my frame of reference, when I shared it with Erika, I completely forgot about it. So, until you called me, I didn’t even think that I would even be in the situation that we are today where I’m talking to you about something that I wrote and forgot about up until now.
Samuel Armes admitted to meeting Enrique Tarrio a couple of times.
J6 Committee: Do you know Enrique Tarrio at all, like, personally?
Mr. Armes: I want to say, personally, I’ve met him maybe twice. And that was because Erika had a lot of men that she was pursuing in boyfriend relationships. I wasn’t sure what their relationship was, but it was actually a very contentious thing in the Miami community.
So sometimes I would go to do work in Miami, I would meet up with Erika, and there was a time when Enrique was there with her. Ran into other people as well. She did add him to this Telegram group of all the crypto/blockchain people in Miami, and he would talk in that group.
But certainly not a friend of mine. Was never interested in pursuing any kind of a relationship, as I was pretty familiar with what he stands for and represented, so I kept my distance. But I was never entirely sure how close he was with Erika. So, obviously, given the situation, a lot closer than I had ever presumed —
Now we hit pay dirt in the questioning.
Erika Flores testified that Samuel Armes TOLD HER to send the 1776 Returns document to Enrique Tarrio!
Samuel Armes denies this and says she is blame-shifting.
He’s quite a guy.
J6 Committee: So my next question to you was going to be: Do you have any idea why Ms. Flores would tell us that you wrote “1776 Returns” and that you asked her to send it to Mr. Tarrio?
Mr Armes: I guess she’s just blame-shifting. I mean, she’s just throwing me under the bus for a document that — and I don’t know if she even authored the document. All I know is that I shared stuff that I had written, material that I had written with her. I don’t know who even created the “1776” document. All I know is that I shared it with her.
So she probably — I mean, I don’t know if this is — I’m extrapolating. But on the end point, right — because I originated this idea in my mind of what I think might happen.
And, obviously, given that I’ve now seen this, she took my ideas as an inspiration, and her or some group of people then turned it into “1776 Returns.”
And that’s why I can confidently say I’ve never seen this document in my life. It uses stuff that I talked about, but even the name, I’ve never even heard of the name, right? So, yeah, I’m just a scapegoat, I guess is the best way to word it.
The Biden DOJ is using the “1776 Returns” document to build a flimsy case against the Proud Boys and indirectly against President Trump.
So who do you believe?
Erika Flores or FBI-groomed Samuel Armes?