Tax Increment Financing has become a household phrase in Missoula, Montana. So much so that it seems local authorities will do whatever is necessary to protect the financial bottom line over the good of the people. Now that locals are mobilizing against cronyism, waste and shady taxpayer giveaways, a few local bureaucrats have sunk to a new low to defend their piggy bank, smearing a local activist as a threat to the community. And our local media are doing their job to exacerbate the fear mongering, suggesting that maybe all activists are dangerous, oversimplifying this  extraordinarily complex tale of greed, lies and betrayal. Our team dove head-first into the cesspool this week, not because we’re thrilled about telling this difficult story, but because it needs to be told and our local “journalists” don’t feel comfortable doing anything other than corporate PR. There is an elephant in the living room, but his name is not Brandon Bryant.

   

On February 4^th, the Missoula Current published a smear piece against Air Force veteran and award-winning drone whistleblower, Staff Sergeant Brandon Bryant. Not only does the piece’s author, Martin Kidston, allude to Bryant as a case of Stolen Valor, he goes so far as to paint him as a violent lunatic:

One man’s threat to “hunt down and eliminate” members of the Missoula City Council has gained the attention of local law enforcement, which for now has banned the man from city property … Brandon Bryant, who claims to be an Air Force veteran, posted the video to YouTube in mid-December, where he railed against Missoula’s development community, the city’s elected officials, his past girlfriend and military commanders.

If Kidston were really a reporter it would be easy to confirm that Bryant is not only a veteran, but extremely high-profile and highly decorated to boot, with 36 Aerial Achievement Medals and Squadron with Valor. Propaganda is just part and parcel of the Missoula Current.

What Missoula’s fib factory doesn’t know, however, is that several months ago, someone claiming to be embedded within Missoula Mayor John Engen’s camp contacted Missoula local Brandon Bryant, providing a mysterious dossier of information purportedly verifying systemic corruption by the Mayor and his associates. The anonymous contact alleged that this evidence would be enough to entirely destroy Mayor Engen’s political career, as well as the careers of complicit parties, while simultaneously undermining the highly controversial development regime Engen has spent his career spearheading.

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Bryant was once represented by Jesselyn Radack, an American national security and human rights attorney known for her defense of whistleblowers, journalists, and hacktivists, including NSA whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake. This latest batch of small-town drama began when Radack was contacted at her DC office by Adam West – Missoula City Councilwoman Heidi West’s husband – about a terrifying death threat made against his wife. And the video, when viewed out of context, indeed looks very scary.

But Heidi West recently sat down for coffee with the man accused of making these so-called death threats. In fact, Councilwoman West met with Brandon Bryant on at least 2 occasions this winter to discuss Missoula’s complex problems.

So how did Mrs. West become so convinced that Bryant meant her harm as to prompt action by law enforcement? It certainly wasn’t because she’s made a habit of viewing Brandon Bryant’s youtube page. She’s raising kids and who has the time.

So how was all this brought to our attention? What youtube channel was it that created so much upset in Missoula this week? That youtube channel, ladies and gentlemen, belongs to dedicated youtube troll Rick Rynearson.

Rynearson reposed a short segment of one of Bryant’s longer videos before directing Heidi’s husband Adam to embrace the fear. And the video has a hypnotically scary caption, again compliments of Rynearson:

Brandon Bryant identifies people for “extermination” including the entire Missoula City Council and people in the military that he worked with, saying that he is “preparing” his soul to make those people “submit” and “die.”

Rynearson was himself an Air Force fly-boy for over 20 years, retiring as a Major. Now residing outside Seattle, has been accused of stalking and cyberbullyng against anti-war activists and public officials alike.

As reported by the Seattle Times:

“Richard L. Rynearson III, a retired Air Force major, sued to overturn the law in 2017, saying he had been threatened with prosecution by Kitsap County for writing posts that criticized a local activist… The Bainbridge island Police Department referred a police report to the Kitsap County Prosecutor’s Office finding probably cause for a cyberstalking charge, but the prosecutor did not file charges, instead saying the office would wait to see how Rynearson behaved in the future. And while the activist obtained a restraining order against him in a city court, a Kitsap County judge dismissed it, saying Rynearson’s posts were protected by the First Amendment.”

CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT

As mentioned, someone claiming to be in the Mayor’s camp contacted Sgt. Bryant several months ago, providing a mysterious dossier of information purportedly verifying systemic corruption by the Mayor and his associates. The anonymous contact alleged that this evidence would be enough to entirely destroy Mayor Engen’s political career, as well as the careers of complicit parties, while simultaneously undermining the development regime Engen has spent his career spearheading.

Bryant’s family and Mayor Engen’s family aren’t exactly strangers to each other. The Mayor even attended high school with one of Bryant’s uncles. In fact, when the two men recently encountered each other on the street, they had a friendly exchange, inquiring about each other’s families. Mayor Engen asked Bryant how his Grandparents were. Bryant admitted that they had to move away because they couldn’t afford their property taxes anymore. And that’s the crux of the controversy generated by TIF.

Bryant has no criminal record whatsoever and was discharged from the military honorably. Furthermore, the police report to the Council indicates that law enforcement “
Don’t believe he’s an immediate threat to any council safety”.

The Mayor and members of the Council are perhaps justified in their concern. Their response may be proportional and appropriate, but as we’ve all seen over the last decades, the fear of violence dominates the narrative and distracts from the issues. The onus for such terror can be traced to powerful people in our culture who wage war against distant societies and against their own increasingly medicated and impoverished population, creating victims and trauma at home and abroad.

Bryant isn’t the only one who feels angry. He’s surrounded by folks who don’t know how to express their anger and also avoid confrontation. This lack of engagement is further exacerbated by the City Council’s belief that since there aren’t angry mobs of people showing up to decry taxpayer giveaways, “nobody has any problems with any of this”.

When thoughtful public comment is delivered on the subject of — not even stopping TIFs but merely slowing them down — those citizens are, at best, patted on the head and assured they “just don’t understand what’s going on,” and at worst, apparently, smeared for all they’re worth by Martin Kidston’s impotent rag.

If only Kidston understood that so much of the anger felt by this community has stemmed from a universal feeling of being ignored. Call it learned helplessness if you like, but people in Missoula – especially contractors – are terrified of upsetting Herr Engen’s apple cart, for “fear of political retribution.”

Given his willingness to accuse a veteran of stolen valor, it seem interesting that Martin Kidston also claims to have served with the Marine Corps, according to his biography page from the Missoula Current, wherein he alleges that he deployed to Iraq during the Bush Dynasty’s first attempt to overthrow Saddam.

Perhaps Martin has been reading a little fiction lately, maybe from forums like Valor Guardians:

Bryant served in one of America’s most elite military units. The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is an organization that didn’t officially “exist” when Jeremy Scahill published his expose/documentary on JSOC: Dirty Wars. At the time of Scahill’s reporting, the White House dismissed his reporting as a “conspiracy theory”. It wouldn’t be until JSOC officially took credit for the death of terrorist kingpin Osama Bin Laden that US officials ever publicly admited to the organization’s existence.

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The so-called dossier didn’t appear until after tempers “boiled over” at City Council on the 18th of November 2019 (Bryant’s birthday). As reported by Shannon MacNeil of NBC Montana:

MISSOULA, Mont. — Tempers boiled over at Monday night’s City Council meeting. One resident accused the city of taking from the poor to gild their own pockets.

“You are that rich man,” resident Brandon Bryant said. Mayor John Engen responded, “We are not going to yell in this chamber, sir.”

Then Bryant said, “You need to understand, Mister, what you have done. You have sold out this community — you have wrecked the trust in this community.”

Engen ended the exchange with, “We’re off until you can calm down; let’s take a five-minute breather.”

Bryant and members of the group walked out during the break, although one stayed to urge the Council to continue the conversation.

Martin Kidston didn’t have to throw shade over the other citizens who spoke out against TIF alongside Bryant at City Council meetings, but he did anyway:

“…Bryant is among a handful of recent attendees who address the council at nearly every meeting, mostly with disdain over development and their inability to find meaningful work. Along the way, they’ve referred to “ivory towers of ideology” and the “dark underbelly of Missoula’s slave ship” while making other questionable statements used in their arguments….”

The citizen activists that showed up to Council chambers on Monday nights did not typically comment about “their inability to find meaningful work,” but rather, the wrongs endured by Missoula’s working class residents; wrongs which are spun as prosperity and growth by the media whores and PRESStitutes serving the town’s oligarchs.

As William Skink observed:

The author of this piece, Martin Kidston, seems to be casting doubt on whether or not Brandon Bryant is an Air Force Veteran. I find this odd, considering the power of Google mentioned above produces articles from media outlets like the Rolling Stone. In this Rolling Stone piece there doesn’t seem to be any doubt as to the “claims” Brandon Bryant is making about his experiences in the military killing the enemy for Uncle Sam.

It appears to me that the intent of the Missoula Current piece is to maximize the gift of these alleged threats toward City Council to character assassinate Bryant and to cast the guilt-by-association net over the other critics of Council policies…

How convenient for City Council. They get to look like the victims here, AND they get to increase the police presence for themselves while those in this community without protection–like homeless individuals living and dying in our shelters and on our streets–are left to fend for themselves.

While I don’t condone threats or acts of violence, I do understand how frustration for many is reaching a boiling point here in Missoula. This one video made by someone who let their frustration get the better of him is now going to be used to depict all critics of Council as jobless losers who pose a threat to the safety of Councilors. Just watch.

The Missoulian followed Kidston’s lead, further inflaming the city with lies and even suggesting that Bryant is a Trump supporter who  hates democrats.

At another committee meeting in January, Bryant brought a large stick to the podium that he identified as a weapon, which led councilors and city staff to express concerns for safety, von Lossberg said.

Von Lossberg added that he thinks the incident points to “the polarized environment that we’re living in” and the rhetoric that elected officials use at every level of government.

Von Lossberg’s claim that Bryant identified his antique bokken as a “weapon” is completely untrue. Anyone who bothers to analyze the video feed from that meeting (start @ 8:30) will quickly observe what a liar von Lossberg is, and how unbelievably complicit local media are in perpetrating this obvious distortion.

Bryant speaks in metaphors to illustrate how using an “imperfect tool” can lead to disastrous consequences. Since Council repeatedly refer to TIF as an “imperfect tool”, Bryant attempted to demonstrate how a warrior would never enter combat with the wrong tool, like a wooden sword. Bryant clearly states the bokken resembles a weapon because of its SHAPE, and went on to say  that looking at it reminds him to him priority number one is always doing the right thing, and that he swore an oath after his military service never to visit violence upon another human being ever again. If you need additional context, America’s drone assassination of an Iranian general took place the weekend prior to this January meeting involving the wooden bokken, illustrating a parallel to another “imperfect tool”: drones.

“You cannot use an imperfect tool to do a correct job. Just like if a sword is made incorrectly, it doesn’t protect the people who depend on it. And this tool of Tax Increment Financing, if you do not use it correctly, it will end people’s lives in ways that are worse than death.”

Nobody in the audience seemed to think anything one way or the other about it at the time. Committee members can even be seen joking around and laughing. Is that how people who feel threatened act? The demeanor in that room at time was one of boredom. Not terror.  It’s a show-and-tell segment, not a death threat.

Perhaps the Perception Managers at The Missoulian missed all that critical context somehow. But they nevertheless succeed in evoking a similar tone to Kidston’s smear, albeit with slightly toned down wording; this time Bryant is “identifying himself as an Air Force veteran”. I suppose that’s a step-up from saying he “claims to be an Air Force veteran” but it still leaves unnecessary doubt about his service where none need exist. Why even make such a suggestion?

Like Kidston, The Missoulian reporters appear to be deprived of Google search, because Bryant is easily the most high-profile Air Force veteran in the state who was just featured in yet another explosive expose on America’s murderous drone program:

 

England’s Independent picked up the story the following day:

This all highlights something we’ve been asserting for months: that Missoula’s “leaders” can’t debate TIF because they know they’ll lose public support if people find out about its correlations with gentrification. So instead they continue silencing the noise around TIF.

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So just what was in the mysterious dossier?

The pages seem to suggest (among other things) that Mayor John Engen may have received some kind of kickback for awarding Jackson Contractor Group a $3 million job to build a new evidence facility for the City, and that kickback may have come to him in the form of property, perhaps at less than market rate, or as they say in the Real Estate business, “with money left on the table”.

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Gabrielle Lafayette is the executive producer for the Outer Limits Radio Show.
This cache of thought is presented free of charge as a service and gift to you.
May our eternal vigilance help liberate all beings from the smoke-and-mirrors deceptions of the Samsaric Panopticon.