In the summer of 2020, a woman who referred to herself as a sex worker,
she had pink hair, called herself Chelsea, joined the Chinook Center,
which is a group of left wing activists in Colorado Springs.
Now, over that year, the activists learned that her name actually
wasn't Chelsea, and she wasn't actually a sex worker, strange.
In fact, Chelsea's real name was April Rogers, and
she was an undercover cop enlisted by the FBI to spy on the Chinook Center.
Now, here's a picture of Rogers at a housing rights march with other activists.
And what I find so
hilarious is how the FBI just buys into stereotypes about left wing activists.
So it's like, we need to find a spy.
So let's find a woman with pink hair and have her claim that she's a sex worker
because that's what left wing activists are.
>> And it was not really emphasized in the article at all, but
I had the same exact reaction.
>> Yeah.
>> It's hilarious what they think the left wing is.
>> 100%.
>> All left wing protesters have to have their hair dyed and are probably hookers.
That's probably the conversation they had.
>> Yeah.
>> Police had covers.
>> And that's probably the language they use in regard to sex workers as well.
>> Exactly.
>> So now, Rogers goal was to gather information for
the FBI, and essentially try to entrap the activists.
Let's just be clear, that is what that is, entrap the activists,
that means persuade the activists to engage in a legal activity, okay?
And should they take that bait, well, they would be arrested.
Now, here's how her strategy works, okay?
Rogers volunteered with administrative tasks which gave her access to information
of all the organizations that used that particular center as an office.
She sent that information to the FBI like any good spy would.
Rogers also invited at least two young male activists to her apartment and
implied to them that there was a possibility of
a sexual encounter among them, okay?
Now, here's what one activist found when they showed up to her apartment.
One of the activists lured to a meeting with Rogers described walking into
the apartment, and there's two guys sitting there with her, he said.
Rogers asked if he could find her an illegal gun to buy, the activist recalled.
I'm not going to sell one to you illegally, the activist,
a firearms enthusiast, told Rogers and her two companions.
He then left.
Now, another activist admitted to enjoying the honey pot scheme.
But luckily, the scheme didn't work.
Rogers invited over a second man, Gabriel Palcic.
Like the first activist, Palcic entered the apartment to find two men with Rogers.
They said their names were Mike and Omar.
Mike was missing his left leg from the knee down.
Omar was kind of a Middle Eastern looking guy with a big beard, he said.
Both had tattoos.
Both were very buff.
Now, according to Palcic, Mike and Omar told him that they could get
him illegal weapons like TNT and grenades if he wanted it.
But luckily, he didn't fall for it.
He continued to hang around with Mike and Omar because they were generous,
buying him meals, drinks, and cigars when they met.
But Palcic eventually told the two men that he didn't want any weapons and
stopped return their calls and text messages.
So again, the effort to try to entrap some of these activists failed,
which I'm really happy about.
But eventually, Rogers got caught as an informant for the FBI.
I'll tell you how in just a moment.
But Cenk, so far, what are your thoughts?
>> So, look, this is an ironic result of this investigation,
but I began to have a little bit of sympathy for the right wingers.
And so because the FBI and the cops do the same trick every time, they come in and
they go, hey, you guys want some weapons, and hey, you guys wanna kill people?
It's classic entrapment that they do it mostly to the left wing,
not to the right wing, okay?
In fact, they let a Nazi go while they were busy doing this and
he wound up murdering a lot of people.
We'll get back to that story in a second.
But now with some of the right wingers, when they say, hey,
you guys want some weapons?
The right wingers always say yes, right?
Not always, you'll see some cases where they go, no, I don't want it, or
they probably already have some, etc.
And a bunch of cases where they said no, I don't wanna do the violence, right?
>> Right.
>> But for right wingers who've been trained to believe that your gun is to
protect you against the tyranny of government.
Someone comes by and goes, hey, shouldn't you kill that government official?
That becomes alluring, and so I don't have sympathy for
the guys who get allured by that.
>> Right. >> But guys, whether you're right wing or
left wing, watch out, okay?
The FBI does entrapment all the time,
doesn't mean everything the FBI does is wrong.
Stop thinking in binary ways.
FBI is purely evil deep state or FBI is all angels, right?
And by the way,
the right wing has believed both of those things at different times, right?
So here they are doing a classic sting operation on the left.
One of the things that they targeted was a protest against the rents that were
too high.
>> It's insane.
No, it's insane.
It really is.
And look, understand that this is happening with the backdrop of endless
politically motivated mass shootings that the FBI does not foil.
You get what I'm saying?
>> Yeah. >> You have message boards with
these extremists talking about how they're gonna shoot up grocery stores and
writing their manifestos about white replacement theory.
None of that gets foiled, but they've got time to spy in on a housing protest.
>> Yeah, and to be fair to the FBI, some of them do get foiled.
We do talk about it on the show and some are legitimate investigations, but
tons and tons of them go unaddressed.
Cuz there's a mindset in American law enforcement that the left
protesting companies or wage issues or capital is so
much more dangerous than the right that is actually planning violence, right?
And in fact, they said the cops in those reports are like, they're on the red
protest, they're like, there was a couple of people with the red flags.
We think that means communism, so we went to go kick their ass and arrest them.
>> I mean, this country.
>> What does that have to do with breaking no more?
>> I mean, let's just keep it 100.
The critique from the left in regard to the FBI really has a lot to do with that.
The FBI's long history of deploying violence and
spying in on left wingers or anyone that they suspected
of being communist, that's the FBI's history.
So I understand where that binary thinking comes from from the left because of that
history.
But nuance is important, and that's what we're trying to do here.
So how exactly did Rogers plot get foiled, right?
How was she discovered by the activists?
That's my favorite part of the story for obvious reasons.
So, an activist by the name of Jacqueline was accused of assaulting a police
officer with her bike at the housing rally with other Chinook Center activists, okay?
Now, she maintains that she threw her bike down to the ground out of alarm when
the officer dressed in riot gear charged at her.
The bike never touched the officer.
As part of the evidence in her case,
Jacqueline was given access to the officer's body cam footage, and
that is where things started to unravel for Rogers.
So in the footage,
the officer mentioned there were two undercover cops among the activists.
April with her giant boobs,
the officer said referring to one of the cops.
>> So the person who's undercover for the cops.
>> Yeah. >> The one with the pink hair.
>> Yeah.
>> Is the one that cops behind the scenes are going, ha, remember, don't arrest her.
She's the one with the giant boobs.
>> Unbelievable. >> So classy.
>> Now, after watching that video, the activists were eventually able to figure
out that Chelsea was not actually Chelsea.
Chelsea was in fact April Rogers and was an FBI spy.
Now, has April ever confessed to her role in being an FBI spy?
When called as a witness in a state court hearing,
she testified that the Justice Department instructed her not to answer questions
about the FBI investigation.
Quote, I've been told to respond, I respectfully decline to answer,
end quote, Rogers said under oath.
The Colorado Springs Police Department declined to make her available for
an interview.
All she told the state court was that she participated in a housing march
with activists under the authority of the FBI.
Rogers has left the center for obvious reasons, but
the scars of her infiltration leaves an impact, right?
Because once that happens, even if the FBI plot to spy in on these
left wing activists didn't work, it still leads to a climate where
people don't know whether they can trust each other, right?
So it still accomplishes something on behalf of the FBI, which really,
really sucks.
>> Yeah, that's very true.
I mean, it has a chilling effect on all these protesters.
>> Right.
>> And they do very often infiltrate, which leads to last couple of things here.
Number one, don't ever, ever fall for any of these traps.
If someone is telling you, let's go commit violence,
there's two excellent reasons why you shouldn't do it.
One, they're very likely undercover officers, okay?
And you're gonna go to jail for a long time.
Number two, you should never do violence anyway.
What are you doing?
I mean, look, but again, this is the second story out of many that
Trevor Aaronson at the intercept has covered.
And in none of the cases that the left wing actually fall for it,
none of them did the violence, okay?
>> Could it be that the left wing isn't actually violent at all?
Could it be? >> Yeah, I mean,
the ironic thing of all these thing operations,
is that the overwhelming evidence is that the left wing will not do violence.
>> Yeah. >> No matter how much you egg them on,
no matter how easy you make it for them and encourage them to do it,
they won't do it, right?
So now, that's exactly right, we're progressives.
We battle people politically and
with our ideas cuz our ideas are better than theirs.
If you resort to violence, that is a form of surrender,
saying, my opinions are not as good as yours.
I can't win this argument, so I'm gonna resort to something physical.
Don't ever do that.
It's immoral, okay?
By the way, we're gonna have the link to Trevor's article in the description
box below which you should always check out, brilliant reporting on his part.
Look at that independent outlets like The Intercept doing great reporting as opposed
to mainstream media.
And lastly, Ana, one other thing I figured out from the story.
The right wing is so enraged by they're being cops within the crowd or
whatever they theorize about January 6.
And then all the militia groups or the right wing groups that have
been infiltrated right before they did the violence.
And so I'm like, can you believe it, right?
I figured, realize why, cuz they've never had to deal with it before.
They're not used to it.
The left wing is used to it because it's been done to them for
time immemorial, right?
But for the right wing, it's like a totally new thing.
They are cops?
They can investigate me too?
My God, it's never occurred to them.
The cops let them walk into the Capitol and they're like, can you believe these
deep state monsters, these gestapo that didn't open the door for
us as we were breaking things down and threatening to kill people.
>> I mean, some of them did.
>> Yeah, but the right winger's not used to ever having their actions being
checked by the authorities cuz the authorities are almost always right wing.
So now, right wingers,
welcome to our world where the government is not on your side.
They're on the side of the powerful, okay?
Not just the government, but the corporate interests, and they work in tandem here.
And so that's why they're busting out protests of oil pipelines and
rent that's too high.
>> Yeah, protests about, yeah, rent that's too high.
It's insane.