Florida substitute Teacher is FIRED for 'telling her students that the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were paid Antifa members'
A Florida substitute teacher has been fired after allegedly telling her students that the Capitol riots were paid Antifa members.
In a video taken by a student from the back of the teacher's class and posted to Instagram and shared by an account called 'Know your racists', the teacher can be heard ranting to the class about last week's Capitol riots.
She falsely claims that it was members of Antifa - not Trump's MAGA supporters - who started the Capitol riots on January 6, despite the conspiracy theory alleging Antifa's involvement being debunked by the FBI and politicians on both sides.
According to the video's caption, the incident took place during a language arts class at Bok Academy in Lake Wales, Florida.
The principal of the school Dr. Damien Moses told TMZ that the teacher in the video had bee dismissed.
He said: 'We met with her and she has been dismissed not only from our school, but also from the Lake Wales Charter School System.'
The student who filmed the video claims that the unnamed teacher brought up the claims about antifa unprompted.
'She (the teacher) just randomly started talking about this in first period,' the caption said. 'It was language arts class and we were about to do work when she started talking about the Capitol raid.'
In a video taken by a student from the back of the teacher's class and posted to Instagram and shared by an account called 'Know your racists', the teacher can be heard ranting to the class about last week's Capitol riots, claiming Antifa were behind the violence
The teacher can be heard falsely claiming that three members of Antifa, the anti-fascist movement, were paid to storm the Capitol during last week's failed coup attempt that saw five people lose their lives, including a police officer.
These three people, the teacher said, were solely responsible for the riot.
In the video, you can hear the student recording the video disputing the teacher's claims, telling the teacher that the rioters were wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump flags.
'Anybody can put on a MAGA hat,' she replies. 'When they're paid to be there, and cause a riot, they want to make it look like Trump supporters, so they wear Trump hats and carry Trump flags. 'Does that make them Trump supporters? No.'
The false claim that Antifa were behind the Capitol riots on January 6 has been touted by a number of Trump's supporters, with an Axios report on January 12 claiming that the president himself made the claim on a phone call that day.
The FBI, however, have dismissed such claims, with FBI Assistant Director Steven D'Antuono saying on January 8 'we have no indication of that (Antifa being involved), at this time.'
The mostly maskless crowd, wearing pro-Trump clothing and holding 'Stop the Steal' banners flooded the halls of the Capitol with little resistance from Capitol Police
Trump on January 6 had told his supporters during a 'Save America' rally that they needed to 'fight' to overturn the election in the hours leading up to the Capitol riots
Where Capitol rioters were when they posted gloating Parler siege videos: Hack of banned right-wing app geo-locates
GPS tracking data obtained through a hack of the suspended Parler shows that many users of the social media app stormed into the US Capitol Building and posted about it during the riot.
Many of the thousands of supporters of President Trump who stormed the Capitol in last week's riots have since have been identified as users of the app which had billed itself as a 'free speech' alternative to Twitter.
The app has since been blocked by Google and Apple, and vanished from the web on Monday when Amazon pulled its web hosting services because Parler did not do enough to stop 'incitements to violence'.
Using the data, technology news website Gizmodo mapped almost 70,000 geo-located Parler video posts, finding hundreds published on January 6 from near or even inside the Capitol. Researcher Kyle Mcdonald also created a map of the posts nationwide.
Hailed by Donald Trump supporters as a conservative-friendly alternative to Twitter - which permanently suspended the president on Friday - the site was a magnet for die-hard Trump supporters who believe discredited claims that the election was 'stolen' through fraud.
Before it was removed, a hacker archived all of Parler's deleted posts, saying they provide 'very incriminating' evidence in the wake of the attack at the US Capitol.
The GPS metadata legally obtained by the hacker, who asked Gizmodo to use her Twitter handle @donk_enby, shows that some Parler users reached as far as both chambers of Congress as well as the offices of key politicians.
Pictured: When MacDonald's data map is superimposed over the Capitol, it shows many of the posts were made from inside the building
The substitute teacher was likely referring to an article published by the Washington Times from last week with the headline 'Facial Recognition Claims Antifa Infiltrated Trump Protesters who Stormed Capitol.'
But the story has since been retracted after the Singapore-based tech company XRVision refuted the report.
Kevin McCarthy, the fiercely loyal House Minority Leader, strongly pushed back against Trump's claim that the rioters were Left-wing agitators intent on discrediting Trump and his followers - a claim made by staunchly pro-Trump congressman Matt Gaetz, and repeated by Fox News' anchors and pundits.
'It's not ANTIFA, it's MAGA,' McCarthy replied, according to Axios.
'I know. I was there,' McCarthy said, according to a White House official and another source familiar with the call.
McCarthy later reiterated his position during a two-hour meeting with Republicans in the House, telling them there is 'undisputedly' no evidence that people linked to ANTIFA participated in the insurrection.
The theory that anti-Trump agitators stirred up the unrest has been decisively debunked. Those arrested so far for their part in the riots have in many cases a long and public history of supporting the president: none of those detained has been a supporter of ANTIFA.
Trump, during the tense 30 minute conversation with McCarthy on Monday morning, also continued to insist that the election had been stolen from him.
McCarthy, exasperated, told him: 'Stop it. It's over. The election is over.'
Other Trump supporters also parroted the false claims.
Speaking on the house floor after the riot, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said 'If the reports are true, some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters.
'They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,' he said, according to USA Today.
Alabama Republican, Rep. Mo Brooks, shared similar beliefs on Twitter.
'Please, don't be like #FakeNewsMedia, don't rush to judgment on assault on Capitol,' Brooks wrote. 'Wait for investigation. All may not be (and likely is not) what appears. Evidence growing that fascist ANTIFA orchestrated Capitol attack with clever mob control tactics.'
According to the New York Times, the conspiracy theory was shared more than 150,000 times on Twitter and thousands of times more on Facebook by the evening of January 6.
'Altogether, the accounts pushing the rumor had tens of millions of followers,' the Times reported.
The Times cited tweets from Trump supporters that posted pictures of people who they alleged were members of Antifa, when in reality the pictures were of people with ties to far right movements.
Even the president, the Times pointed out, acknowledged that his supporters - not left-wing activists - had invaded the Capitol, telling them at one point on Wednesday: 'We love you.'
In addition to the FBI, the Associated Press also undertook extensive analysis of those involved in the riot, reviewing social media posts, court files, public records and voter registrations for more than 120 people involved.
'The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president’s behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals,' the news agency reported last week.
'Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently released from prison for attempted murder.'
AP 'reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee.
'The evidence gives lie to claims by right-wing pundits and Republican officials such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs rather than supporters of the president.'
Trump supporters, egged on by the president himself, stormed the Capitol on Wednesday
Capitol police officers point their guns at a door that was vandalized in the House Chamber during a joint session of Congress