‘My Initial Reaction Was Shock’: MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin on Investigating the Capitol Rioter Next Door

Virginia Sherwood/MSNBC

MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin’s new podcast, American Radical, investigates how Rosanne Boyland evolved from an apolitical person to a pro-Trump rioter who died in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Mohyeldin has a particular connection to Boyland’s story: They share the hometown of Kennesaw, Georgia. He was compelled to investigate her life after receiving a Facebook message from an old high school friend — Boyland’s brother-in-law Justin Cave.

His investigation into Boyland’s life and death, featuring on-the-ground reporting by American Radical producer Preeti Varathan, examines the causes for Boyland’s transformation from politically disengaged to someone who died for Donald Trump.

Mediaite sat down with Mohyeldin and Varathan this week to discuss their reporting, Mohyeldin’s personal connection to Boyland’s family, and how Boyland’s transformation parallels those of terrorists and radicals overseas.

What was your initial reaction when you saw Justin Cave’s message?

Mohyeldin: My initial reaction was shock and a little bit of disbelief. In the immediate aftermath of the protest, or riot, or the insurrection, I hadn’t really processed the victims, or on the police side, or the rioters on the protestor side. We were kind of taking a big picture approach and looking at what was happening. The moment that I got that message from Justin, who is an old high school classmate of mine, it really just made me zero in on this one woman, and I just couldn’t believe it because I knew Justin. So when he told me that she had been radicalized and that they believed it happened just inside of six months, I was completely drawn to her story.

He didn’t just put it out there and leave it there. He asked me if I wanted to hear what her story was all about. And, for me, I was just, as a journalist, as a friend, as somebody from the community, I was extremely fascinated and drawn to it. So I reached out to him, we connected, I started hearing the details of it and we started this whole process in motion. But I was shocked, I was fascinated, I was surprised.

Had you seen Cave in the news prior to receiving his message, considering he was speaking to the press?

Mohyeldin: No, but I had actually heard the headline, which said something such as, “Family of Rioter Calls on President Trump to Resign or Invoke the 25th Amendment.” That was the big, shocking headline from that. I think that was one of those headlines that pierced on the national stage. I had no idea who it was that made that headline, I had no idea that it was a person in Georgia that was connected to Rosanne Boyland.

And so, when he sent me his message, it also included something along the lines of, “You’ve probably seen I made a statement,” and it still didn’t process that he was the guy who stood in front of the cameras and said, “It is my personal belief that President Trump incited the riot that killed four of his biggest fans, and you should immediately invoke the 25th Amendment.”

So I would have to say that maybe two or three days later, after I was able to sit down, really do a deep dive into her, see the statements that Justin made, my mind was totally just blown by the person that I knew and the connection that I had with this part of the story.

Were there any surprising parallels between your reporting on Rosanne Boyland and on terrorists and radicals overseas?

Mohyeldin: What I observed overseas in my reporting when it came to radicals and extremism was, there’s always this triangle of three characteristics that happen. People are down on their luck, they’ve suffered, they’re destitute, they’re impoverished, they’re in war-stricken countries. There’s a lot of disinformation that goes around. There are people pushing these theories onto them. There are people that are saying to them, “Your life is bad because X, Y, and Z,” or, “Let’s go and liberate X, Y, and Z,” or, in the context of countries overseas, “We have to get the Americans and the infidels and the Western powers out of our lands.” There was a lot of misinformation, and then there was this always kind of central figure who functions as a demagogue and oversees. In the context of terrorist organizations, it’s usually a religious figure. It’s an Osama bin Laden, or any of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi types, or Baghdadi types that radicalize these people into action.” The takeaway is there was this triangle of destitution, disinformation, and demagoguery.

I think Rosanne had a little bit of that. She definitely had a very hard and difficult life. She was a victim of physical abuse, according to people who knew her. She struggled financially. She had some self-esteem issues. So I think she was definitely in that category of destitute. She was definitely a victim of disinformation and she contributed to it because she consumed a lot of disinformation with her beliefs and conspiracy theories in QAnon, and I think it pivoted when we saw the presence of Donald Trump to include him as a demagogue.

He was a person who manipulated and exploited the vulnerabilities of people and tried to promise them that he could fix their societal ills and that the way to do it was to follow him. And he was able to convince thousands of people if not millions of people across this country that “We must stop this handover and keep me in power in order for me to protect your interests and to save your interests. So come be a foot soldier in my movement.”

The similarities were that you had those three. That nexus of disinformation, destitution, and demagoguery.

The episode features an interview with Philip Anderson, who was a rioter at the Capitol on January 6. Were you surprised he was willing to speak with you?

Varathan: A hard thing happens when you’re trying to talk to people about someone’s death. There’s always a spectrum, where there are people who are very eager to talk to you because they feel like they have something to say, and they’re so relieved a reporter is finally contacting them — to let them say that thing.

Prior to talking to Phil Anderson, he’d already talked to The Gateway Pundit. Phil is definitely one of those people that when I approached him I thought, 50-50 chance that this individual wants to talk to me. He got back to me and goes, “I know you’re on MSNBC,” which is always a thing I hear from folks who were rioting that day. “But I care about Rosanne and I want to tell you about my side of her story.”

The family definitely agreed to talk to us. They know Ayman personally. They wanted to get Rosanne’s story out there. That doesn’t mean that every single time we interviewed them, it was easy to talk about someone who had died. We’ve basically been talking to this family for over a year. So, that really had its ebbs and flows.

The first episode is titled “Who Killed Rosanne?” and includes Anderson’s account from that day, which pins her death on Capitol Police. Yet the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office has determined her cause of death as “acute amphetamine intoxication.” What are your thoughts on her cause of death? Did your reporting look into that discrepancy?

Mohyeldin: I don’t think, as reporters, we ever made a conclusion or determination one way or the other. We were just reporting the different perspectives surrounding her death and what the family is asking for, and what the questions that they have. I specifically asked Lonna, Rosanne’s sister, “Do you believe the police killed your sister?” Preeti, correct me if I’m wrong, basically her answer was no, she doesn’t believe that. But she does have questions surrounding the investigation and whether the investigation was thorough and complete and whether they’ve been able to access all the body camera footage from all of the police officers that were in that specific location at that specific time.

Did you have any intention to humanize the rioters through your reporting on Boyland, especially considering how they’re depicted in the media?

Mohyeldin: That was not the objective of why I wanted to do this story. The way that I approach any story, certainly one that has a personal connection is, what are we going to learn about this, and how is what we’re going to learn about this going to make a difference in our understanding of a broader issue?

As we began to dig into her life, we realized like any life you’re going to look into, it’s nuanced, there’s texture, it’s complex. Your job is, as a reporter, is to really talk about that evolution. Because the evolution of how she was radicalized, according to the family, in just six months, was so alarming.

Varathan: I completely agree with Ayman. I like to tell a lot of people in my life that every day in the last six months, I learned a new thing about Rosanne Boyland. Whether it was good, a lot of times it was bad, but a lot of times it was really enlightening. Just by virtue of spending so much time with someone’s family, they become a fuller human to you.

If listeners have a better understanding of what was going on in the mind of a person who was at the Capitol on January 6th, and of a person who is radicalized, then we’ve accomplished what we set up to do. Whether she’s humanized to them or not is an incidental part of the process of storytelling. Both of us are hoping we’ve told a compelling rich story here.