Weapons of Mass Delusion

Chapter One

The Dentist-Patriot

At eight thirty in the morning on January 6, 2021, a tall and wispy-haired man in a gray tweed overcoat with a red necktie stood at the Ellipse with his back to the Washington Monument-seemingly alone, except that he happened to be posing for a photograph that would soon be posted to his Twitter account beneath the phrase "Morning in America." He wore a COVID face mask decorated with the American flag, pulled well below his nose. He moved with a slightly rolling gait from a hip injury and twitched a bit from an unspecified neurological disorder but otherwise cut an indistinct figure-the kind of man who managed to draw attention only through painstaking effort.

Paul Gosar was his name. He was a dentist by trade and by disposition, the kind of fellow one could easily imagine pleasantly humming ancient melodies and cracking cornball jokes while his fingers rifled through the mouth of a captive audience.

Gosar was no one's idea of a history maker. But history swivels, more often than not, from rogue acts committed by rogue actors who trip the wire and blow up the bridge and then are barely heard from again.

This, at least, was Paul Gosar's intention, except for the barely-heard-from-again part.

For the past decade, Gosar had been a U.S. congressman. He was a Republican whose district in Arizona was one of the most conservative in America. His ten-year span of legislative accomplishment was relatively thin: a few post office renamings, several federal land exchanges, a couple of lucrative federal works projects in his district, and most of all, four years of assisting the Trump administration in slashing environmental protections on Arizona's federally owned lands.

Until that day, Paul Gosar's reputation, to the extent that he had one, was not the kind an officeholder traditionally sought to cultivate. His fellow House Republicans found him odd and occasionally offensive. Some harbored deeper concerns about the man. As one of Gosar's office staffers was advised by a top Republican operative, "You need to get out of there. That man is insane."

And as another senior GOP aide would reflect, "Gosar was my nominee to be that guy who comes in with a sawed-off shotgun one day."

But Gosar was in fact ahead of his time. He had dedicated much of his political career to building a portfolio of outrageous conduct even before social media's "attention economy" was fully capable of rewarding him for it. First, as a candidate in 2010, he espoused doubts about President Obama's American citizenship. Then came Obama administration mini scandals-the tragic attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya; the gunrunning fiasco gone awry in Operation Fast and Furious; the appearance that the IRS was targeting conservative groups-each of which Gosar cast as Watergate-scale malfeasances.

As his congressional tenure wore on, the Arizona dentist appeared to drift increasingly further from the mainstream. In 2015, Gosar, a devout Roman Catholic, became the only legislator to refuse to attend the historic address of Pope Francis to Congress organized by Gosar's Republican leader in the House, Speaker John Boehner. The reason for his boycott, he said, was that the pope's views on climate change amounted to "socialist talking points." Two years later, Gosar speculated to an astonished journalist from Vice that the violent white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville was actually "created by the left" and underwritten by the Hungarian-born Jewish liberal donor George Soros, who, Gosar baselessly claimed, "turned in his own people to the Nazis." By 2019, he and a fellow Republican outlier, Louie Gohmert from Texas, were insisting to bewildered colleagues that all social media companies had conspired to design and install a kind of uber-algorithm to suppress conservative speech. In early 2020, Gosar implored Trump's secretary of education to withhold federal funding from the University of Arizona, as two of its faculty members had exhibited the temerity to voice criticisms of Israel.

But everything would change for Paul Gosar later that same year. On the evening of November 3, he was watching the election returns in a casino conference room outside of Prescott, Arizona. His own race had been called early, with Gosar's routing his Democratic opponent in the state's ultraconservative Fourth District by nearly 40 points. When the Fox News Decision Desk projected, at 9:20 p.m. local time, that Joe Biden would win Arizona, a loud gasp overtook the conference room.

Immediately, Gosar smelled a rat. Trump could not possibly have lost Arizona. Gosar knew this for a fact. He had spent the past three months campaigning around the state for the president-attending rallies, knocking on doors, handing out flyers. Enthusiasm for Trump was off the charts. Meanwhile, Gosar did not encounter a single voter who claimed to support Biden. And as Gosar would later write in a letter to his constituents, "We all remember when candidate Joe Biden held a rally in downtown Phoenix and precisely zero people attended. Nada. Zilch."

In fact, the Biden event referred to by Gosar was not a public rally but instead a private meeting in a museum with Arizona tribal leaders. Somehow, Gosar's mind failed to capture this information. In similar fashion, he had managed not to know that the Sharpie pens being handed out in Maricopa County's polling stations on Election Day were in fact disseminated to all voters, not just Republicans, and that the Sharpie ink could reliably be read by the Dominion voting machines that the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors had approved for use in the 2020 elections. It was apparently far easier for Gosar to imagine a dark conspiracy of election theft than to consider the possibility that his door-to-door sampling of voters fell somewhat short of scientific.

As it would soon become clear, Paul Gosar's suspicions were shared by tens of millions of conservative Americans. That their beloved Donald J. Trump might somehow be a historically unpopular president-one whose Gallup approval rating never topped 49 percent at any point during his four-year term-was a reality from which right-wing media and self-segregation had thoroughly buffered them.

At the same time: that Democrats, led by a career politician Trump termed "Sleepy Joe," might be diabolical enough to cheat their way to victory? This was an eventuality for which the same influencers had fully prepared them.

The following day, November 4, Congressman Gosar's longtime chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, reached out to Mike Cernovich, the forty-three-year-old right-wing activist who had promoted the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory in which Democrats were said to be operating a pedophilia ring in the basement of a Beltway pizza parlor.

Cernovich's lunatic-fringe claims were hardly disqualifying in certain circles. His social media following was immense, dwarfing that of Congressman Gosar. Van Flein therefore recruited him to publicize a march that Gosar intended to stage that night, from the State Capitol in Phoenix to the Maricopa County Recorder's Office. Cernovich vowed to do so, and to drive from California to be present himself.

That same post-election evening, Gosar drove from Flagstaff to Phoenix. With an aide dutifully recording the episode on her iPhone, the congressman trudged slowly but purposefully through downtown in a navy jacket and baggy jeans, clutching a white megaphone in his left hand. A few staffers and allies walked alongside him. One carried the American flag. Another brandished a flag bearing Trump's name. Others fell in with the entourage. A few trucks bearing Trump signs whizzed past, honking encouragement. Someone else in a passing car yelled at Gosar, "Racist!"
Several hundred Trump supporters had already gathered in the parking lot of the Recorder's Office. Someone announced that the congressman had a few words to say.

Through his megaphone, Gosar hollered out: "Patriots! They're not gonna steal this election from us, are they?"


Paul Gosar's event in downtown Phoenix received only cursory attention at the time. Three days later, on November 7, every major network would call the election for Biden. The notion that any such countermovement would gain meaningful traction did not take hold until the day Gosar stood at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021.

In fact, Gosar's ad-hoc protest was the first "Stop the Steal" rally in America. Several others would soon be staged by Gosar's friend, the right-wing agitator Ali Alexander, in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada-all contested states that Biden had carried but each of which now seethed with elaborate counternarratives in which the president had been robbed of legitimate victory.

Gosar was at the vanguard of these counternarratives as well. On the evening of November 7, as the streets of the nation's capital filled with Democrats celebrating Biden's victory, Gosar's chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, sped to a private airstrip two miles from Phoenix's airport. He was there to meet a right-wing "citizen-journalist" named Ryan Hartwig. Earlier that day, Hartwig had attended two "Stop the Steal" rallies in which Trump supporters breathlessly speculated about election theft. Hartwig then received word that a Korean Air chartered jet had landed on the Phoenix airstrip-crammed with "illegal" ballots, according to a flight attendant who had seen them but whose name and whereabouts no one seemed to know. Hartwig asked a friend to transmit the information to Gosar's chief of staff, knowing the Arizona congressman's concerns about the election.

At the airstrip parking lot, Van Flein, Hartwig, and a few other likeminded sleuths watched as two large black sedans arrived at the tarmac. Several men in suits emerged from the vehicles. They loaded what appeared to be one or two large boxes onto the plane. The men in suits drove off, after which the Korean plane departed, bound for Seattle. Van Flein photographed the license plates of the two black sedans, which belonged to a Phoenix limousine company.

And after that? Dark intimations swirled. The plane's cargo records had been scrubbed from the flight manifest. One of the men in suits had a drug record. A Federal Express worker in Seattle was aware of ballots' being unloaded. The CEO of a major South Korean semiconductor company was possibly involved. Oprah Winfrey was possibly involved as well.

Or none of this was the case, and the proper reaction was the one provided that evening of November 7 by a Phoenix police officer when he was dispatched to the scene and was told that Tom Van Flein, Ryan Hartwig, and the others believed they had seen illegal ballots being loaded onto a Korean airplane.

"The cop," Hartwig later recalled, "laughed in our faces."

Still, it was fitting that Paul Gosar would come to be associated with the first of several international conspiracy theories of the 2020 election. The dentist-patriot maintained an operatic fever pitch about sweeping fraud from his very first rally, when he declared to a right-wing journalist, "We will not allow Biden and his thugs to steal this election"-adding, "God is on our side."

On Twitter, Gosar urged Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr, to seize Arizona's ballots and search for "stolen votes." Gosar's fellow election protesters, he wrote, were "beautiful people saving their beautiful country."

On November 18, he tweeted: "THIS ELECTION IS A JOKE!"

And on December 7, he published "An Open Letter to Arizona" that began with a rhetorical question: "Are We Witnessing a Coup d’État?"

(Gosar wrote the latter missive while self-quarantining. A week earlier, on November 30, he had attended a ten-hour "election hearing" in Phoenix organized by Trump's lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. In the futile hopes of halting the official certification of Arizona's election that same day, a procession of supposed experts and witnesses to election fraud offered their testimony. Even Gosar found some of their claims to be dubious. He ducked out several hours early-but not before contracting the coronavirus, just as Giuliani did, though Gosar never acknowledged his affliction publicly.)

On the afternoon of Monday, December 21, Gosar and several other Trump allies in Congress met with the president in the White House. The topic was no longer rallies. The group was there to discuss January 6, 2021, when Congress would meet for the pro forma ratification of the final Electoral College tally. Trump and his legal adviser, Giuliani, wanted to know if there was an appetite within the House Republican Conference to mount a vigorous objection to the election results. Gosar and the others assured the president that the appetite to do so was indeed strong.

But every attendee at the White House meeting well knew that the January 6 certification challenge would not be taking place in a hermetically sealed vacuum. Indeed, two days before the meeting, Trump had tweeted: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!"

Subsequently, Gosar himself would amplify Trump's invitation: "I'll be in DC with @Ali and the rest of America."

"Every American who wants to take a stand against a Technology Coup and protect the lawful victor of the election should join us. Biden is an illegitimate usurper."

"Patriots: The time is now. HOLD THE LINE. Join me in DC January 6th. #FIGHTFORTRUMP."

"Patriots start your engines."

The morning in America had arrived. Paul Gosar stood for a moment on the north side of the Washington Monument while his chief of staff, Van Flein, took the photograph. Then the two men walked across the Ellipse, where the rallyÕs organizer, Amy Kremer, ushered them through security and into the VIP section.

Gosar took his seat among the Make America Great Again semi-elite: big donors, current and former cabinet members, loyalist agitators like Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and General Mike Flynn and still others who had contrived their own way in. It was cold and Gosar had reason to feel bittersweet. His place in the speaking lineup had been scuttled at the last minute. Likely this had occurred because of his closeness to Ali Alexander, whom the other organizers had decided was too unpredictable.

Thus relegated to the audience, Gosar took in the soundtrack, familiar to any MAGA rally-goer. "YMCA" by the Village People, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John. He dutifully tweeted his approval of the early speeches. He sat through music from Michael Jackson, CŽline Dion, and the Backstreet Boys. He gamely sang along to a chorus of "Happy Birthday" to Trump's son Eric at the direction of the latter's wife, Lara. Gosar endured speeches by Eric and his older brother, Don Junior, along with their significant others.

But as more songs of Elton John and the Village People blared through the cold air and across the Mall, it became apparent to Gosar that he would not be able to wait around long enough for President Trump to address his supporters. He excused himself and snaked his way through the crowd of over 25,000 to the edge of the Ellipse, where a car awaited him.
Back in his Capitol office, Paul Gosar gathered his thoughts. In less than two hours, he would be giving the only historic speech of his career to date: anattempt to overturn the election results in his state of Arizona, in hopes ofrestoring Donald Trump to the presidency.

It was just after one in the afternoon in the House chamber of theCapitol. In the alphabetical recitation of each state, Alabama’s and Alaska’selectoral tallies had been certified without objection.

The presiding officer that day, Vice President Mike Pence, then asked, “Are there any objections to counting the certificate of vote of the state of Arizona that the teller has verified appears to be regular in form and authentic?”

Pence had not completed his question when a tall and wispy-​haired man with a star-​spangled mask pulled down below his chin stood and briskly madehis way toward the podium. “Mr. Vice President, I, Paul Gosar, from Arizona—I rise up for myself and sixty of my colleagues to object to the counting of the electoral ballots from Arizona.”

“Is the objection in writing and signed by a senator?” intoned the vice president.

Looking to his direct right, at the Texas senator Ted Cruz, Gosar declared,“Yes, it is.”

Standing as well, Cruz said, “It is.”

An audible groan from the few Democrats in the chamber—their numbers limited at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because of COVID-​related social distancing—was quickly drowned out by applause. The Republicans,who had defied Pelosi’s social distancing request, stood and clapped for Gosar and Cruz. For the first time in American history, a U.S. senator had joined a U.S. congressman to object to a state’s presidential election result.

Gosar had held the line. The senators filed out of the chamber. Subsequently,the two legislative bodies separately debated the Gosar/ Cruz objection. In the House chamber, Gosar sat with quiet satisfaction while a half dozen members from each side of the aisle argued for or against the Arizona matter.

Then it was Gosar’s time to speak again. “Madam Speaker, I rise in supportof my objection,” he began. In a somewhat stumbling cadence, his head swaying about from his unnamed neurological disorder, the Arizona congressman demanded “a forensic audit” of the Arizona election— analogizing it to a football game, where “a slow-motion review from multiple angles” would likely reveal fraud. Gosar then proceeded to recite a litany of already-discredited claims. That Dominion machines had “a documented history of enabling fraud.” That a court-ordered audit determined “a 3 percent error rate against President Trump” but was then mysteriously halted. That “over 400,000 mail‑in ballots were altered” to Biden’s favor.

He was just getting to the part in his speech where he would falsely assert that “over 30,000 illegal aliens voted in Arizona.” But a growing din had overtaken the room. It was 2:17 p.m., and members had just received a system-wide text from the U.S. Capitol Police, instructing all Capitol staffers to “move inside your office . . . find a place to hide or seek cover . . . remain quiet and silence electronics.”

Gosar had been looking down at his prepared remarks and thus had not seen the text. Neither had he seen the presiding officer, Speaker Pelosi, third in line to the presidency, being ushered off the House floor by Capitol security agents.

“Madam Speaker,” Gosar protested. Then, seeing that the person now holding the gavel was the Democratic chairman of the House Rules Committee, Jim McGovern, he started again: “Mr. Speaker, can I have order in the chamber?”

It was 2:18 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, Paul Gosar would be fumbling to open his gas mask.