Two neo-Nazis who filmed One America News Network personality Jack Posobiec while he roamed the streets of a Washington, D.C., to create propaganda for the Seth Rich conspiracy theory on behalf of Rebel Media are suspected to have schemed violence in relation to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 murdered, court documents show.
Jeffrey Clark, who police arrested on November 9, was active on Gab, where he used his profile honoring white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof to connect with the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. Prior to his arrest, he had attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he was photographed alongside the young man who killed counter-protester Heather Heyer. Clark’s relatives told the FBI that he sought to “expedite” a race war.
Clark’s brother, a fellow neo-Nazi named Edward, committed suicide after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting when it was revealed that Gab, a Twitter spin-off overrun with violent extremists, had provided the shooter’s profile information to law enforcement. Apparently concerned that he’d soon be receiving a visit from the FBI, he shot himself in a park.
The tie-ins don’t stop at Gab. The neo-Nazi Clark brothers were connected to a web of white nationalists who ushered in the “alt-right,” including Posobiec.
The brothers were photographed filming Posobiec while he worked on footage about the murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich, which served as rich fodder for pro-Trump conspiracy theorists online in 2016. Posobiec also notably traveled to Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza restaurant and bar that was at the center of wild internet conspiracy theories about satanic pedophile rings, to “infiltrate” the scene. When a believer in the conspiracy theory took matters into his own hands and entered the restaurant with a firearm, Posobiec deleted evidence of his visit and began lying about his role in spreading the hoax.
In the images and reporting published by HuffPost, the Clark brothers are seen filming Posobiec. Jeffrey Clark reportedly told Laura Sennett of One People’s Project that “Posobiec absolutely was” aware of their neo-Nazi beliefs and had told his brother “that he was sympathetic to those beliefs.” HuffPost reports:
In May 2017, the Clark brothers teamed up with far-right “Pizzagate” propagandist Jack Posobiec, who was then the D.C. bureau chief for the far-right website Rebel Media, to shoot footage for a film Posobiec was working on about Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer whose murder near the Clarks’ home in Bloomingdale has spawned numerous far-right conspiracy theories.
Laura Sennett, an anti-fascist researcher who works with One People’s Project, spoke with Jeffrey Clark a few weeks after he and his brother were spotted in Bloomingdale with Posobiec, who by then had been fired from Rebel under mysterious circumstances after plagiarizing Jason Kessler, the white nationalist who organized the Unite the Right rally.
“[Clark] told me that Jack Posobiec hired him and his brother to follow him with a camera to take video of his investigation of Seth Rich,” Sennett told HuffPost. “Not sure if it was a documentary or a news story, but [Posobiec] was doing some kind of reporting for Rebel Media. I asked him if Posobiec was aware of his Nazi beliefs. He told me that Posobiec absolutely was and had told Jeff that he was sympathetic to those beliefs.”
The Clark brothers would stand alongside Posobiec again at a rally he led alongside white nationalist Richard Spencer, of whom the brothers and Posobiec were both seeming fans. Alexander Reid Ross, the author of the book “Against the Fascist Creep,” tweeted that the Clark brothers had infiltrated a book talk he gave last year. According to Ross, a Daily Caller reporter was filming the incident. Later that night, Posobiec published the PDF of Ross’ book.
That evening, Jack Posobiec posted a pirated copy of the PDF of my book online -- total coincidence, i know. Here's an article that was published about the evening's affairs...https://t.co/DmWlApyX5m pic.twitter.com/ww7RrDO09K
— (((Alexander Reid Ross))) (@areidross) November 14, 2018
In a video interview recorded by One People’s Project, Spencer detailed his relationship with Posobiec going back to the Republican National Convention in 2016.
“He introduced himself as, ‘Oh, I work for Roger Stone, I’m Roger Stone’s man, kind of thing.’ He definitely introduced himself as really tightly connected with the campaign—the Trump campaign—and he was maybe two degrees of separation from Trump himself, that kind of thing,” Spencer says in the video, adding that Posobiec expressed gratitude to the alt-right for joining a pro-Trump “coalition” in a tone Spencer described as “a smoke-blown-up-ass kind of way.”
Spencer alleged that while Posobiec was at The Rebel, the outlet had edited him out of rally footage while feeding his talking points to Posobiec to reiterate as if they were Posobiec’s opinions.
“It was highly dishonest, to put it mildly,” Spencer said.
Spencer said he had an “ongoing connection” with Posobiec over the years, but that the relationship was “not intimate.” Spencer described Posobiec as being “highly complimentary” to him “in a way that no conservative would be.”
Posobiec has documented ties to the alt-right dating back to his formative years at Rebel Media. In the most public example, he was fired for plagiarizing a video published by the organizer of the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Posobiec was also spotted sitting with Marcus Epstein, who was once charged with assault after karate-chopping a black woman and calling her a racial slur, during this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. He’s also tweeted anti-Semitic tropes (and since deleted those tweets).
Posobiec’s tie-ins to the alt-right are not entirely severed. In September, Posobiec released a book that Theodore Beale, an “alt-right” writer using the pseudonym “Vox Day,” edited and published. Beale has been openly identified as “alt-right” as recently as August 9, 2018.
