Joseph Bolanos was a pillar of his community. As president of his Upper West Side block association for 23 years, he looked out for his neighbors. During the Covid lockdowns, he dropped off masks and kept extra heaters in his apartment for seniors. He raised morale with a weekly street dance to show his support for essential workers.
A Red Cross volunteer after the Jihad slaughters on 9/11/01, the 71-year-old security consultant once received a police commendation for heroism after saving a woman from being mugged. Unmarried, and caring for his 94-year-old mother, he was a well-loved character in this quiet residential area.
FBI & NBC CHANGED ALL THAT
An FBI agent phoned Bolanos January 11, 2021 and left a message. He returned the call the next day, but never heard back. At the time, he was staying at his mother’s apartment in Washington Heights because she had been moved to rehab and he was facing the difficult decision of whether she should move into permanent care.
On February 4th, four FBI agents arrived unannounced and interviewed him for 25 minutes. They asked if he was a member of BLM,* Antifa^ or the Proud Boys. He said no. He told them he caught a train to DC on January 6th and arrived at the Ellipse to meet a friend who had flown from California with a girlfriend to watch Trump’s speech. He filmed the crowd, which he described as “friendly, like a political Woodstock.” He naively gave them a video compilation of peaceful crowds and told them he could provide more videos from a camera in his apartment. They said they would call Monday, but never did. Instead, they beat down his door, with guns drawn on February 11th.
With NBC cameras rolling, the FBI anti-terrorism task force handcuffed Joseph, drug him out of his apartment, paraded him outside in his underwear while his apartment and his mother’s apartment were ransacked, and the rest of his devices confiscated. All polices states throughout the world make a public spectacle of arresting or detaining their targets in order to terrorize the masses into submission. While locked in the FBI van for four hours, he suffered the first of two strokes. He was never charged, yet America’s police state has not returned his devices. His neighbors, who have known him for decades, now shun him because they either 1) view him as a domestic terrorist or 2) they don’t want the police state to turn on them for maintaining friendships with Joseph.
AMERICANS BECOMING NAZI GERMANS, TURNING IN NEIGHBORS^^
The FBI told Bolanos he was raided because of a tip to the January 6th hotline from a neighbor who said he had overheard him “boasting” about being at the Capitol. [The snitch turned out to be a neighbor Joseph had gone out of his way to help and was heard bragging to other neighbors about his role in targeting Joseph.]
Bolanos is a registered Democrat, but calls himself “an independent at heart.” He liked Trump’s policies, but was never a Trump fanatic. Joseph and his two friends attended part of President Donald Trump’s rally. Trump’s speech was boring, Joseph said, plus the day was cold and blustery, so at about 12:40 p.m., they left early and made the eight-minute trek back to the Marriott. He was in the friend’s room at the JW Marriott a 30-minute walk away when the Capitol breach occurred.
That’s where they were when the Capitol barricades were breached at 12:57 p.m. Bolanos has time stamps on photographs he took in the hotel to prove it. One inside the room was taken at 1:41 p.m. Another out the window of the street below was taken at 1:45 p.m. Another photo was taken at 2:04 p.m. inside a hotel elevator. He says that is when they decided to head back to the Capitol to see what had happened with the Electoral College count.
Bolanos videotaped the scene as they walked slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue. They were still about a mile away at 2:12 p.m., when invaders smashed windows and entered the Capitol. They arrived at the rear of the Capitol at about 2:45 p.m. Unbeknownst to Bolanos, inside the building, Ashli Babbitt has just been murdered by a Capitol policeman. He and his friends stood on a patch of muddy lawn about 400 feet from the wall of the Capitol taking photos. The so-called riot was all over.
“There was no hint of violence … If you were shooting a movie at that location, you would never know anything had happened.” No police were there. The only disorder Joseph remembers seeing was a pile of overturned bike racks. In the distance he could see people climbing a wall of the Capitol. “But I couldn’t process it. I thought, why they are climbing it?”
UNCONSTITUTIONAL SEARCH & SEIZURE
Joseph Bolanos told the FBI agents all of this, which was backed up with evidence, his photos & videos. FBI Director Wray wanted scalps so they had to find them, regardless how many Americans were hurt in the process.
A week later, on February 11th, at 6 a.m., Joseph was awakened in his mother’s apartment by loud banging. “I opened the door and there’s about 10 tactical police soldiers and one is pointing a rifle at my head. They had a battering ram and a crowbar.” Blocks away, the front door of his apartment was being broken down in a simultaneous raid.
The warrant authorized the FBI to seize his property as evidence relating to crimes including “obstruction of Congress,” “civil disorders,” “conspiracy to impede/assault federal agents,” “interstate travel to participate in riot,” and “unlawful entry on restricted buildings or grounds.”
When the FBI applied for the search warrant to invade Joseph’s home and his mother’s home they already knew, based upon his cellphone pings and the time stamps on his photos, that he did not commit any crimes. He was merely an American visiting his nation’s capital to hear his president speak. The FBI wanted all his photos and videos so they could create the false narrative against Trump supporters Americans have been subjected to for almost three years now. The more information that leaks out, the more We The People learn that the “insurrection” did not happen.
But, like thousands of other law-abiding Americans who went to Washington on January 6th to see the president speak, his life has been ruined by a hysterical witch hunt for phantom domestic terrorists. The dragnet of innocents and the overkill stinks of the sort of political purge you see in Communist China.
Meanwhile, the violent rioters, looters and murderers of 2020 continue to get off scot-free. One of Merrick Garland’s first actions as attorney general was to dismiss 400+ cases against BLM’s 2020 rioters who damaged federal property, including half of the terrorists who damaged the Portland Federal Courthouse.
In Joseph’s own words, he described the abuse he suffered at the hands of America’s police state:
If the FBI SWAT team was acting legally, why did they cover up Joseph’s surveillance camera? More details from this police state victim:
“If only I had said something!”