Mr. & Mrs. Smith Out of the Theatre & in Our Home

The next morning Travis left early to go meet with the agents.  He had never been involved in anything like this ever, and he didn’t want to be late.  The interview took longer than they had told him it would.  As the minutes ticked by my anxiety grew stronger and stronger.

Had they detained him?  Would he be able to call me if they had?  What could possibly be so complicated they would need to speak with him for hours?

When he finally arrived home, it was clear he was a suspect and not a witness in the case.  My mind raced in a thousand directions as I asked him what they had wanted to know, what was going on, what evidence they had showed him, and what he had done.  This is one of my biggest regrets.  Even in knowing Travis as well as I do, my extensive criminal justice background caused me to assume he was guilty before I even knew the details of the case.  Before I even looked at one piece of evidence. 

He explained there was an Instagram (IG) account with the handle d_h_mazer that had made threats to various political figures.  This account was connected to five different devices and somehow his phone was one of the devices connected to the account.  He had no other devices that he used for social media.  His work phone was blocked so social media could not be used on it.  He never used his laptop for social media, and he had no other devices.  The d_h_mazer account was established with his brother’s email address.  Travis has never had access to this email account.

We discussed the political figures involved. (I later came to discover President Joe Biden, VP Kamala Harris, Nanci Pelosi, Anthony Fauci, Jenna Griswold, and Mark Zuckerberg were victims of the threats.)  He told me about some of the comments he remembered the FBI shared with him, things about swamp creatures and blowing up Facebook.  I had never heard Travis say things like that.  It was well outside of his typical vernacular, and I had never heard of this IG handle.  When I looked up the IG account, I didn’t recognize the profile picture either. 

The investigator in me wanted to create a spoof account and mole my way into the d_h_mazer account, but there was nothing to see.  They had zero posts.  Over 400 followers and zero posts.  What is the point of that?  Despite threats deemed worthy of an FBI investigation made from this account, the account is likely still active today.  It was still active at the time of sentencing.  If the account was being used in such a malicious and nefarious way, why is it still active?

Travis was not questioned about his personal IG account which had been closed toward the end of 2021.  He had been censored for sharing others’ memes and posts regarding the origins of COVID, vaccine dangers, holistic treatment of COVID, and election integrity. 

And that’s essentially all the more I understood about the case as this point in time.  Travis volunteered his phone for forensic analysis, allowing them to take everything off his phone except his pictures; we’ll loop back to this detail in the future, it’s a very important one.  He even had all of his passwords to all of his accounts saved on his phone.  He authorized them to have all of that information.  He volunteered his device because he was confident in his innocence, wanted to be eliminated as a suspect, and wanted to get back to his regularly scheduled life.

This may have been the mistake of a lifetime.  A mistake that every single attorney we’ve spoken to has said “I wish you wouldn’t have…”  And as we observe those being federally indicted and prosecuted for crimes such as this, the defendants have regularly incriminated themselves when they thought they were being helpful or removing themselves as suspects.

Travis left home to return to work for the rest of the week at his remote assignment.  I was overcome with more emotions and thoughts than I knew what to do with.  I had asked for the agent’s card and wanted to call them, but Travis asked me not to.  Could he trust me?  He had never lied to me in the past, but could I trust him?  It felt like a game of cat and mouse. 

Had I become one of those people you watch on true crime TV who lives with a monster and is completely oblivious?  Had loved disillusioned my very accurate intuition…the same intuition who spotted the FBI outside my house the moment it drove by?  And I was trained for this; years of working with criminality and deceit.  Would I really not notice it in my own home yet notice it on the streets in a heartbeat? 

I was angry this had been brought into our lives, into our home.  We were engaged to get married, but could I marry someone who was wanted by the FBI?  Did I even know the person I had been living with for years?  It was all so overwhelming, tears relentlessly streamed down my face, how was this my real life?  It seemed more like a scene from Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

And then the doorbell rang and the panic I experienced was unforeseeable and completely catastrophic.  Trembling, shaking, wondering if the FBI was at the door?  Coming for me?  Coming back for Travis?  Would they break down my door?  It was a simple delivery of dog food that arrives every two weeks, and it was in this moment I realized the extent of trauma I had experienced in less than 24 hours.  (Trauma responses cause very irrational thoughts.)  My home—my most sacred space– was no longer safe or secure. 

Even after months of trauma work and healing, as I write this now, tears weep from my eyes and I still have an unnerving and overwhelming compulsion to look outside to see who’s there whenever I hear a car door shuts—even though the FBI agent never left their vehicle.  Sometimes as I fall asleep at night, I envision the FBI raiding the house.  Security in your sacred space is priceless.  It didn’t matter I was a law abiding citizen.  It didn’t matter I was a government officer with a security clearance.  It won’t matter for you either, whether with or without integrity you become a target of an FBI investigation.

Lesson learned:  There are no brownie points for cooperation.  Let the investigators go through the formal legal process to show cause for collecting evidence from you.

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Peace & Love,

Janessa