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Mr. Biggs’s activities that day were chronicled at length by himself and others. His walk from the Washington Monument was filmed by Eddie Block, a Proud Boy on a motorized scooter who rolled behind and identified Mr. Biggs and others in his commentary. Mr. Biggs appeared repeatedly in photographs and recorded himself ascending the Capitol steps.
It was a long, circuitous road that brought him to that point. Mr. Biggs, 37, also known as Rambo, was a D.J. in Florida, “running around popping Ecstasy in the nightclubs all the time dancing” before joining the military in 2007, he has said in his broadcasts. He was deployed to Iraq for a year, and then to Afghanistan. He made his news media debut after leaving active service in 2012.
In 2008, Michael Hastings, a reporter embedded with Mr. Biggs’s unit in Afghanistan, encouraged him to pursue an on-camera news media role upon his return to the United States, Mr. Biggs has said. Before Mr. Hastings died in a car crash in 2013, he wrote a profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for Rolling Stone that ended the general’s military career.
Mr. Biggs’s break came after he fueled conspiracy theories around Mr. Hastings’s death. Mr. Jones invited him onto Infowars, the far-right, conspiracy-mongering radio and online show.
Mr. Biggs joined Infowars in 2014, traveling to racial justice demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., the next year and to the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon by armed far-right extremists in 2016. Accompanying Mr. Jones to the 2016 Republican National Convention, Mr. Biggs got into a fracas with Communist protesters, including one who burned an American flag.
He and another Infowars associate claimed they had been burned trying to put out the fire. In a profanity-laced video titled “Joe ‘Rambo’ Biggs: Commie Crushing Crusader!” Mr. Biggs said he had “jumped over” the “cops,” ripped the protester’s shirt off and gave him a “pounding.”
Yet the police charged the protester, Gregory “Joey” Johnson, with misdemeanor assault.
When Mr. Johnson’s lawyers saw the videos with Mr. Biggs’s claims, they demanded that the assault charges against Mr. Johnson be dropped, which they were. Mr. Johnson sued the city of Cleveland and its police, saying that they had violated his First Amendment rights. He received a $225,000 settlement.
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