Things To Come: Land Of The Free IV

30-year Navy chaplain flagged as a potential terrorist by FBI after being at the Capitol on Jan. 6

Emily Mangiaracina

 A retired 30-year Navy chaplain revealed last week that he had been repeatedly harassed as a potential security threat by the TSA while at airports, following a voluntary conversation with the FBI about his peaceful time on the Capitol steps shortly following the January 6 Trump rally.

Pressley Stutts was completely law-abiding during his time outside the Capitol, having been “invited” onto the Capitol steps by a police officer, but refusing to go any further, as he explained to the FBI during a voluntary interview. Despite this fact, he was repeatedly treated like a potential terrorist while at airports, where TSA agents repeatedly unpacked his luggage, even holding up a flight to do so, and read his personal notes.

One TSA agent reportedly admitted to Stutts, “We know where you were on January 6th.” The agent then warned that the so-called “random” stops would become more frequent.

Stutts explained to Jim Hoft and Patty McMurray of Gateway Pundit how it all started when he took a group of about 200 people from South Carolina to Washington D.C. for the Trump rally. After Trump finished his speech, they made their way up to the Capitol grounds.

“We were up about half way to two thirds up on the steps of the Capitol. Barricades had been removed. We were invited to go up. I saw one police officer, I don’t know if he was DC police or Capitol police, but he said just go on up. There were bicycle barricades, but they had been removed,” said Stutts.

“The closer we got, we heard people yelling: ‘No Antifa, no Antifa, no Antifa.’ And we could hear the banging of something where they were trying to bang the doors in. I literally saw them poking at the windows with sticks,” Stutts continued.

“The narrative was this — that these were all Trump supporters, going to take over that Capitol. But I can tell you, all of us Trump supporters, we were in our red MAGA caps, we were wrapped in flags and things such as that, but the guys that we saw, working to try and get in, they were dressed in black and gray. We didn’t see any Trump shirts or hats on them,” he explained.

Footage released by Rudy Giuliani in January showed BLM and Antifa agitator John Sullivan teaching fellow rioters to dress in all black. In the video, Sullivan explained “proper” dress for riots: 

“Black block. A lot of people get the misconception, maybe you can wear a black t-shirt that has a logo on it, on the sleeve or on the chest?”

Stutts continued his account of his time near the Capitol: “Now it was wrong for people to break through those doors. But we got up on the steps, and at one point we were so crowded in there like sardines, and I lost my ability to keep my feet on the ground, I kind of got pushed up into the crowd, and when I did I looked up into that scaffolding and to the people that were with me I said we better leave, because if that scaffolding comes down not only are they dead, but we’re dead. So we left.”

Interrogated by the FBI

“I got a call the following morning from a friend of mine, she is the largest talk show host in the Greenville South Carolina area. She wanted a report from me. A congressman happened to hear me. He texted me and asked me if I’d be willing to talk to the FBI,” said Stutts.

“I said, ‘Why?’ He said well, they’re spinning the narrative that this was all Trump supporters breaking into the Capitol. And I said, I know it wasn’t. And he said: ‘Well, that’s why I would like you to tell your story to the FBI’.”

“So I had agreed to tell my story to the FBI. Things went fine the first 30 minutes or so. But then they turned the statement around and started interrogating me…It turned very hostile to me and finally I stopped them and I said: ‘Let me ask you a question. Am I under investigation? And they would not answer the question,” Stutts continued.

Stutts explained that after his interview-turned-interrogation, he didn’t hear back from the FBI again — but was to later have a disturbing experience while flying that, which seemed to be a direct result of that encounter. 

“So to fast forward, on Friday, when I went to check in at the counter at the Greenville airport in South Carolina, I wasn’t able to pull up my boarding pass on my phone. I thought: ‘that’s weird.’ I thought maybe there was just a hiccup in the reservations.”

After an American Airlines reservation agent took 20 to 30 minutes to verify Stutts’ identity and he made his way up to the second level of the airport, the next obstacle reared its head.

“Everyone in front of me, their boarding pass is scanning green, green, green. And I scan mine and it lit up bright red. Then about three or four agents walked over to me and say, ‘sir, would you follow us please?’ They said: ‘you’ve been randomly selected to come to this line.’ And I’m thinking, yeah right.”

After Stutts got to the second line, he said, they had him completely unpack his suitcase, after which they “went through everything with a fine-tooth comb.” 

“So I get to my gate, and again at the gate there’s another set of TSA agents, who said they were randomly checking bags. I said I just had my bag checked, they stamped it with a special stamp and said I wouldn’t have to go through this again. They said: ‘oh no sir, we need to check your bag again.’ So they unzip my bag and go through this whole thing over again. Held up the plane from leaving actually. I get on the plane and I’m just fuming. Because at this point, I’m going, there’s nothing random about this.”

“As we were getting onto the plane in Charlotte, coming back to Greenville, one of the TSA agents said, ‘Oh yeah, we know where you were on January 6th.’ He had a wry smile on his face. And he said, these random stops are going to increase, is what he said. And that came from a badged TSA agent talking to us,” Stutts said.

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