The Bizarre Path of John Sullivan

John Earle Sullivan made his first appearance in federal court in Utah on Friday on charges that he participated in the violent riot at the American Capitol.

There is not much question as to who he participated in. He filmed it and posted it on social media – including cold footage of a woman shot by Capitol police and trying to crawl through a broken window – and then posted videos describing the experience.

The real question, in my opinion, is: What did he do there?

As I tried to answer the Big Question, I was left with a rabbit hole of contradictions.

Let’s start with the basics: Sullivan was raised in a military family. His father was a lieutenant colonel, a devout believer in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who raised his sons in a conservative household and taught them to love the Constitution, his brother James on the Tooele Happy Hour podcast said week (later more about James).

John worked as a successful salesman, earning his brother more than $ 200,000 in some years. He was paying cash for a Mercedes and building a house in Sandy when his political views radicalized.

“He did amazing things with his life and he came out and said that capitalism is a cancer for black society, when capitalism literally gave him the Mercedes and the house he built,” James Sullivan said.

In June 2020, John attended his first Black Lives Matter event, according to Lex Scott, the founder of the group’s Utah chapter. No one had seen him before or knew who he was. Sullivan also started his own group, Insurgence USA, in response to the murder of George Floyd and he organized his first protest in Provo.

“His very first protest he held was the one that hit someone,” she said.

According to police, protesters an SUV that tried to turn the, blocked when one of the demonstrators a turning shot through the window and the driver was wounded in the arm. Sullivan was arrested days later, charged with rioting, threatening violence and criminal mischief. According to indictment documents, Sullivan was with the shooter most of the day and did nothing to stop the act.

But Scott said he did something that was ‘just a big no-no’.

“At his second demonstration, he invited the Proud Boys on stage, he invited the militias on stage and said, ‘We want to work with you, we want to be friends with you,'” Scott said. “It was then that he officially made blackball through the activist community.”

Scott said Sullivan never attended any of the BLM meetings, never worked on any of their initiatives, and also never helped with their push for police reform.

“This man is a leader, someone who’s just here for fame or money, or someone who just needs attention,” she said. “He’s a thorn in my side.”

In addition to being banned from the Black Lives Matters events in Utah and avoided by groups in other cities, he is also accused of taking advantage of the case.

On his Insurgence website, he wears face masks, gas masks, bulletproof vests, spear knives, T-shirts and jogging pants. And he promotes himself relentlessly on a network of social media accounts.

But how did he not only end up among a group of Trump supporters who looted the Capitol, but really rode on the crest of the wave?

In a video recorded after the riot, Sullivan said he did not support Trump or President-elect Joe Biden. He is not with BLM or Antifa. But he knew that, based on social media messages, there would be an attempt to overwhelm the Capitol and that he wanted to be there to film what happened like a civilian journalist.

“Was I an agent provocateur? Was I there to invite violence? I can tell you no, ”Sullivan said in the video. “I was there to document the events and be a part of history.”

But he did much more than document. In a video, he can be heard shouting, ‘Let’s go! This s *** is ours! … We have reached this s ***! We did it together … Let’s burn it! ‘

He is seen climbing through a broken window, he confronts the law enforcers and tells them to go home, then enters an office and – it turns out and the federal charges against him claim – broke a window that opened on the plaza overlooks.

Eventually, he and the mob arrive at the barred doors at the Speaker’s Lobby, where he films Ashli ​​Babbitt trying to climb a broken window before being shot by a police officer. Sullivan later shared the video with news outlets and he has watched more than 18,000 times since Friday.

His participation in the riot is seen by Trump supporters as proof that the events were provoked by left-wing infiltrators. Chief among them is Sullivan’s brother, James.

James Sullivan has launched Civilized Awakening which joins the “Patriot Movement” and is definitely pro-Trump. He spent 90 minutes on the Tooele Happy Hour podcast exchanging right-wing grievances with the hosts, claiming that his brother was ‘indoctrinated by a radical socialist ideology’.

‘The only way I see that he has a way out is for him to go to jail to be honest. He will not stop. He will not listen to anyone, “said James Sullivan. “He is so indoctrinated that he is logical.”

The two brothers are the subject of a documentary film and, after not talking for months, are placed in the same room for filming. The producer asked John what he would do if James was stabbed and he got a phone call. Would he call an ambulance? James said John’s response was, “I will step on his face and make him bleed.”

At the end of the day, I’m not sure any of these things bring us closer to understanding Sullivan’s motives. He strikes me more that I am thirsty for chaos and violence as a coherent philosophy or agenda.

“He incited violence,” his brother said, “people got hurt, and he stood back and watched it with a camera.”

But on a certain level, it does not matter. The notion that Antifa made good people do bad things seems absurd. Everyone who took part in the Capitol riot is responsible for their own actions and must be held accountable.

Hopefully they will – and so does John Sullivan.