From Baker’s now suspended Twitter account
The process of justice around a wave of political unrest last month including a violent crowd that formed in Olympia and the storming of the Capitol in Washington D.C. has netted another individual with a connection to our Capitol Hill.
Florida man Daniel Baker has been charged with transmitting an interstate communication “containing a threat to kidnap any person or threat to injure the person of another” after he “issued a call to arms for like-minded individuals to violently confront protesters gathered at the Florida Capitol.”
The FBI describes Baker as a heavily armed “hardcore leftist” who traveled the world including fighting the Turkish government with the Syrian Kurdish Army, the YPG, in the Middle East and allege the army veteran posted threats against military officers and police on social media.
According to the FBI, Baker’s 2020 travels “to participate in protests that have resulted in violence” also brought him to Seattle where he became part of the scene at CHOP including on the late June night of this deadly shootout that left a 16-year-old dead and a 14-year-old gravely wounded.
On August 1,2020, BAKER posted a video to his YouTube account which portrayed footage from CHAZ/CHOP. In the description section of the video, BAKER wrote that footage shows him treating the wounded in CHAZ/CHOP and states that the video is his response to the “domestic terrorists trying to accuse [him] of murdering the kid [he] helped save” and that he will be filing lawsuits against those who slandered his name.
Bellevue Ave resident Damon Huseman was another armed white male reported to have been drawn to CHOP. CHS reported in January on the arrest of the Capitol Hill man wanted for assaulting and threatening media as part of the mob at the Gov. Jay Inslee’s Olympia residence the same day as the storming of the Capitol in Washington D.C.
Huseman has pleaded not guilty and is held in Thurston County Jail awaiting trial. People familiar with the man said his presence at CHOP was unwelcome as his behavior was increasingly provocative.
Baker also found CHOP to not be his style, according to the FBI’s takeaways from an article about the occupied protest that featured Baker:
BAKER stated he had traveled to Seattle to participate in the “Revolution.” BAKER talked about fighting with the YPG during the interview and stated that once the war was over, “the revolutionary ideals that made them appealing were applied to the civil rights movement of today.” The article noted that BAKER “seemed disappointed in the lack of violent opposition here.”
“I told them, if they really wanted a revolution, we needed to get AK’s and start making bombs,” Baker says in the article. “No one listened to me.”
Two days after the June 29th shooting, Under executive order from Mayor Jenny Durkan, Seattle Police swept in to retake the East Precinct and clear the Capitol Hill protest zone. It’s not clear if Baker was still at CHOP at the time.
There have been no arrests associated with the June 29th shooting of the two teens at CHOP.
Meanwhile, the United States Department of Justice has announced the man arrested and charged in an August 24th arson outside the East Precinct has pleaded guilty. Desmond David-Pitts, 20, of Alaska, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson, punishable by up to five years in prison, according to the DOJ.
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Mostly peaceful hardcore leftist FTFY
Another problem with the right-wing talking points pushed by local media and later exaggerated even more on outlets like Fox News is that it made other people think that CHOP/CHAZ was an incredibly violent place and it just wasn’t so they traveled here to participate in violence, some did and some left dissapointed.
Tell that to the dead.
“I told them, if they really wanted a revolution, we needed to get AK’s and start making bombs,” Baker says in the article. “No one listened to me.”
haha they prolly thought he was planted by the cops lulz
Deemed a disastrous failure from the beginning by those who recognized it for what it really was a stand off between Seattle’s local government and anarchists. The attempted insurrection few admit ever took place. It being referred to as an autonomous zone for weeks should have been an obvious clue.
Right wing media mischaracterized CHOP in the beginning. Left wing media responded with the “peace, love, art, and gardens” narrative. Unfortunately, it devolved into an anarchist Marxist shitshow within days and attracted extremists and narcissists from all over the country to the power vacuum to push their own agendas. They co-opted the Black Lives Matter movement as their own battle against capitalism. It became WTO 2.0. The homelessness crisis also provided cover for increasingly violent attacks on people and businesses. Anyone that lived here could see the change. Unfortunately, The Stranger and other center and left wing news outlets ignored the shift because it didn’t fit their preferred narrative of “mostly peaceful protests for social justice”. Several teenagers died as a result of the stupidity. It is about time that the truth is coming out.
Thank you…what you write is entirely accurate.
I’m glad that the “long arm of the law” is reaching criminals like Baker, and as many as possible of the right-wing nuts who participated in the January 6th assault on our Capitol. Such people need to be held accountable, whether on the right or the left.
“In 2017, Baker joined the People’s Protection Units, a group fighting in Syria against ISIS and the Turkish government. People’s Protection Units is designated by the U.S. government as a “foreign terrorist organization.“
Why was he not arrested and charged with offering material support to a terrorist organization the moment he returned to US soil?
Since when is fighting ISIS bad? Do you even read the words you write?
Because the YPG has never been designated as a foreign terrorist organization — Politico got that wrong. The YPG was supported by the United States as a part of the Syrian Democratic Forces coalition that was fighting ISIS.
Politico got YPG and PKK confused.
CHOP wasn’t violent. So tired of that talking point.
Tell that to the families of the murdered.
the murder rate, (per day, per square foot) was astronomical compared to the rest of Seattle.
Watch the video.
It was very often violent. It was all the things, but violence was a daily occurrence almost from the very first day. It escalated over time. There were fights between different camps of protesters, between protesters and right wing provocateurs, between residents and protesters, there was a little gang violence, and no lack of domestic violence.
Anyone who says it wasn’t violent wasn’t there
Exactly. They weren’t there or they are still trying to spin it for propaganda purposes.
It depends on where in CHOP and when one was there.