In the weeks since Adam Newbold, a former member of the Navy SEALs, was identified as part of the angry crowd that descended on the Capitol on January 6, he has been questioned by the FBI and has resigned under pressure from work as a mentor. . and as a volunteer wrestling coach. He expects his business to lose large customers due to his actions.
But none of that shook his conviction, against all evidence, that the presidential election was stolen and that people like him would stand up right.
This is surprising, because the body of Mr. Newbold seems to him better than most against the lure of unfounded conspiracy theories. In the Navy, he was trained as an expert in sorting information from disinformation, a secret commando that has been working in intelligence for years, linked to the CIA, and he once thought of the idea of shady anti-democratic conspiracies as a ‘tin foil hat’.
Nevertheless, like thousands of others who flocked to Washington this month to support President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Newbold bought into the fictional theory that the election was marred by a shadowy cabal of liberal power brokers that pushed the nation to the abyss. of civil war. No one could persuade him otherwise.
In the photos of the Capitol, Mr. Newbold with a black “We the People” shirt put on and over a Capitol Police motorcycle, just steps from where officers are fighting rioters.
Mr. Newbold says he did not enter the Capitol, nor was he charged with any crimes. But his presence there reflects the erratic brew of partisan politics and viral misinformation that led to the assault.
Mr. Newbold’s worldview is evident from his Facebook account. In a battle video loaded with explicit remarks he made a week before the riot, he reiterated repeated but widespread allegations about the election, saying: ‘It is absolutely incredible, the mountains of evidence of election fraud and voter fraud and machines and people who voted, dead people who voted. When commentators challenged him, he responded with expressions and additions such as: “Yes, keep laughing, you will laugh when you are trampled.”
One striking aspect of the angry crowd at the Capitol was that many of its members did not appear to come from the fringes of American society, but from the white backgrounds of the main street in Main Street – firefighters and real estate agents, a marketing manager and a member of the city council, all handcuffed by faint conspiracy theories. The presence of mr. Newbold has shown how convincingly the story of the election has grown.
His experience must have made him hard to fool. A few years earlier, when he was helping to organize a military training exercise known as Jade Helm 15, he was on the receiving end of the same kind of unfounded and potentially dangerous zeal over a supposedly sinister government intrigue – and he laughed it off.
But even after the riot in the Capitol, he expressed certainty that he was not misled about the election.
“I have been in countries around the world that have been indoctrinated by propaganda,” he said. Newbold said in a lengthy telephone interview last week, adding that he knows how misinformation can be used to manipulate the masses. ‘I do not doubt; I am convinced that the election was not free and fair. ”
He said he believed unnamed elites had quietly pulled off a coup by manipulating the election software, warning that the country was still on the brink of war.
Mr. Newbold, 45, lives in the rural hills of eastern Ohio and is one of three brothers who all became Navy SEAL commandos. He spent 23 years in the elite force, the Navy records show, including seven in naval reserves, before retiring in 2017 as a senior chief officer. He received two Navy Medals of Merit for bravery in combat deployments, and several others for good behavior.
A former SEAL who served with him at the Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia said Mr. Newbold was smart and had a good reputation in the SEAL teams, and worked with the CIA to gather information.
After the navy, Mr. Newbold moved to the small town of Lisbon, Ohio, opened a coffee shop, and started a business called Advanced Training Group, which taught members of the military and police SEAL-style tactics, and maintained a gym and shooting range. club for locals.
Through his venture, he became involved in the design and execution of Jade Helm 15, an eight-week military training exercise in Texas and other Southwestern states in the summer of 2015 that included more than a thousand special operations and conventional troops engaged in simulated missions, including covert reconnaissance and raid attacks.
When a PowerPoint slide summarizing the exercise was leaked, it was seized by extraordinary Facebook groups and professional conspiracy theory promoters such as Alex Jones, who began claiming that Jade Helm was a secret conspiracy to infiltrate federal troops in Texas. to lay on civilians’ guns and impose martial law. Basic rumors have been circulating about ‘black helicopters’ and Walmart stores allegedly being turned into detention camps.
The storm of political paranoia that flared up over a straightforward military exercise became so fierce that some members of Congress, who later won the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. questioned, began demanding answers, and Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas National Guard to keep watching.
Eventually the exercise went smoothly. Mr. Newbold said in the interview that he and the other former special operators who planned the training laughed at the paranoia and even made T-shirts with the words “I went to Jade Helm and all I had was this tin foil hat. “
Last week, he admitted that the madness of misinformation surrounding Jade Helm could be deadly. Locals in Texas were scared to the brink of violence. Three men were arrested after they planned to attack the exercise with pipe bombs.
“There were actually some farmers and landowners who made threats that if anyone was on their land, they would shoot, so there was real concern,” he said. Newbold said. “It’s funny, but it’s something we need to take seriously.”
At the time, Mr. Newbold dismissed what he saw as a fringe attack because he did not know it was a precursor to the fantasies that many Americans came to suck, including military troops, police officers, members of Congress and a sitting president – not Mr. . To call Newbold.
Mr. Newbold is a long-time registered Republican who said he was for Mr. Trump voted. In the past four years, as the mainstream media coverage of the president has worsened, and Mr. Newbold’s sometimes harsh support on Facebook drew more reprimands, he migrated to news sources and chat rooms that shared his view.
By the end of the fall of 2020, he was spending time on private Facebook pages, where the right-wing of the far-right spread had increased. He posted long, often vicious video loneliness about how the country is being stolen. He seems to be becoming increasingly convinced that people are not just against Mr. Trump did not, but also planned against the Constitution, and as a veteran it was his duty to defend it.
Mr. Newbold began holding private meetings at his shooting club with other like-minded members, according to a former member who said he quit because he was concerned about the growing extremism.
“It has become a super cult,” said the former member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was afraid of retaliation. “I tried to reason with him, to show him facts, and he just became core.”
After the election in November, Facebook posts from Mr. Newbold predicting a predictable war has alarmed people in Lisbon to the point that at least one has said she warns the FBI
Last week, when he discussed his convictions, Mr. Newbold rejected dozens of court rulings in which he rejected the challenges of the election results, and the logistical obstacles to averting an election held by independent officials in more than 3,000 provinces. Without indicating evidence, he suggested that it would be naive to assume that the results do not rest.
In a long video posted in late December, the former member of the SEALs predicted a communist takeover if people did not stand up to stop it. “As soon as things start to get violent, I’m in my element,” he said in the video. “And I will defend this country. And there are many other people who will do the same. ”
A week later, Mr. Newbold organized a group of employees, club members and supporters of his company to travel in a caravan to Washington, and he joined the crowd carrying flags on January 6th.
In a video posted that evening, he is seen as members of his group were on the “very front line” of the unrest. “Guys, you’ll be proud,” he said. Newbold to his viewers. “I do not know when you last stormed the Capitol. But that’s what happened. It was historical, it was necessary. He adds that members of Congress “shook their shoes.”
In the interview last week, Mr. Newbold tries to reduce his involvement in the events at the Capitol. He said he only sat on the police motorcycle to keep vandals away from it, and that he traveled to Washington not to incite violence, but to protect the Capitol from angry liberals in the event that the Senate would agree to discontinue the certification of the election. .
After the attack on the Capitol, he removed some of his more contagious online posts. But what happened in Washington apparently did not prompt him to question his convictions. He said he was still sure the election had been stolen and that the country was on the road to global autocracy.
And in a video published six days after the riot, when it was announced that people were dead, Mr. Newbold said he felt at the Capitol a sense of pride that Americans were finally getting up. “He did not rule out that he himself had resorted to violence.
“I do not apologize for being a rough man who can do rough things in rough situations,” he said. “It’s absolutely necessary sometimes, and it’s been throughout our history.”