Watkins, Q, and a Great Deception

In this episode we’re finally naming who we think is currently behind the QAnon account. This will be the beginning of the end of our case against Q, as we join the dots and name names.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Q and On is the world's largest online political conspiracy movement.
Followers believe someone code named Q is provided them with
secret information from inside the White House. No one really
knows the real identity of Q, though we aim to
change that. I'm Jake Hanrahan and this is Q Clearance
podcast series aimed unmasking the true identity of Q. This

(00:25):
is brought to you by i R Radio QU Data Media.
In this episode, will be taking a look at the
infamous Watkins family and their deep connections to Q and On. First, though,
I want to take a look at some recent Q drops.
These ones are specifically relevant, I think, as they come

(00:47):
at a point of huge post election turmoil within the
Q and on community. As we mentioned in the last episode,
So after nine days of silence in which Q and
on has made up new theories, lost faith, and turn
up to a voting center with a rifle, Q posted
his first post Biden victory drops on November twelve. The

(01:12):
first was just a graphic of an American flag and
the message nothing can stop what is coming nothing Q.
The second was a little bit more detailed, though it
reads as so quote, shall we play a game? Nothing
can stop what is coming, and then he's showing the

(01:32):
abbreviation of ncs W I C means nothing can stop
what's coming. There's a link to the CSA dot gov website,
and then he says who stepped down today? Forced he's
referring to Brian s where there's a link to the
CISA website. There then he says more coming. Why is

(01:53):
this relevant? How do you show the public the truth?
How do you safeguard U S elections post potus? How
do you remove foreign interference and corruption and install US
owned voter I D laws and other safeguards. It had
to be this way. Sometimes you must walk through the
darkness before you see the light. Q end quote. Now,

(02:19):
I'm not going to go into what all of this
is alluding to, because frankly, it's just a waste of time.
It's a lot of nonsense as usual. But basically Q
is now trying to form a new narrative that this
was all part of the plan Biden was meant to
win and everything is going smoothly. He's basically mirroring what
the most hardcore Q supporters have been saying in the

(02:42):
nine days of silence before these drops on November there
was another drop that simply read Durham. Q. Durham presumably
refers to a Justice Department lawyer named John Durham mcguy
with a big kind of niets a look in mustache.
He's been looking into possible corruption within the Clinton Foundation.

(03:07):
Now I'm guessing here that Q is trying to insinuate
that Durham will be investigating the election results or something.
But at this point it all feels like whoever is
behind Q and On is just playing for time. To me,
it feels like they don't quite know what their next
move is. As I said in the previous episode, everyone

(03:29):
in the Q and On the universe was sure Trump
would win the election. Now it's Biden. Q can't exactly
keep the hopes going for four more years, so I
think he's not quite sure what to do. This brings
us back to the Watkins family, the people currently running

(03:49):
eight con where Q posts all his drops. As you'll
probably remember, the Watkins name has cropped up a lot
in the last five episodes of Q Clearance. I've resisted
diving straight into who they are so we could set
the seed and get a grip on the Q and
On extended universe. Now, though, it's time to look into

(04:10):
who this family actually is. To do this, we have
to start with Jim Watkins. Like I said, he's the
current owner of a Kun and the former owner of
a Chan before it was shut down. As we mentioned,
h N was eventually pulled offline by its service providers,
at which point Jim Watkins and his son Ron Watkins

(04:31):
started Akun, which is essentially a clone of h H
and Akun became and is currently still the place where
Q posts his drops. Just want to repeat that as
there are a lot of strange names going about, just
to help you remember what's going on now. I've tried
many times to reach out to the Watkins family. They
ignored me each time until recently. I waited for Jim

(04:55):
Watkins to go on a live stream on his YouTube
channel where he reads out messages from the Bible and
speaks about right wing US politics, all of that strange guy.
I asked him that he come on and speak to
us hit at Q Clearance because I have a lot
to ask him about his role within Q and on. Finally,
on this YouTube live stream, he replied telling me that

(05:19):
he doesn't speak to people at Viace News. I haven't
worked for Virus News for three years, and I'm quite
sure that he knows that I am an independent journalist
running my own platform, Popular Front. I explained this to Jim,
but he ignored me, and within about two minutes of
this exchange between me and Jim, he ended his live

(05:40):
stream on his YouTube channel. I guess he just doesn't
want to talk. Anyway, We'll look into it from the
perspective of doing the research without even speaking to him.
We tried to give him a go, he didn't want
to speak tough. Look, so who is Jim Watkins. I'll
be answering this question using research which I gathered from

(06:01):
work by many different writers and journalists, including Travis Review,
Rachel E. Greenspan, Jovis Littleton, Ethan Chill, and many more.
Be sure to do your own research after this. If
you're still interested, I suggest checking out the work of
those people I mentioned. Anyway, let's begin, believe it or not.

(06:26):
Jim Watkins is a fifty seven year old pig farmer
who currently lives in the Philippines. He looks after the
pigs whilst running a coun with his son, Ron Watkins,
better known online by his moniker code Monkey. Ron recently
claimed to have quit a coun on November three, But

(06:48):
we'll get more into Roun later. So Jim Jim Watkins.
He was born in ninety three and grew up mostly
in Washington State. Aged eighteen, he joined the US Army
as a helicopter mechanic. Later he'd become a recruiter and
was eventually sent by the Army to Virginia to learn

(07:10):
computing in nine seven. This started a life online for
Jim Watkins. While still in the Army, he'd go on
to launch some of the first porn websites. One now
defunct site that he still owns the domain for was
the Asian Bikini Bar. Jim began making money online via

(07:35):
pawn He left the Army in to seize his opportunity
amidst the boom of the dot com bubble that of
course burst, which led Jim to relocate to the Philippines
in two thousand and one. According to immigration records there,
the Philippines is a place that's cheap to live, but

(07:56):
also has a well established seed year side that would
accommodate Jim's well documented over obsession with sex. This is
something Frederick Brennan, the former founder of h N noticed
a lot when he met Jim and began working for him.
When I was in the Philippines working with Watkins, I

(08:20):
have never in my life before or since, met a
man who has a higher sex drive, never like he.
It is just on his mind every every frigging minute.
He cannot he can't help himself. And not only that,
I've never met a man who sheets on their wives

(08:42):
and doesn't feel bad about it and gets mad if
their wife even complains about it. We mentioned it in
a previous episode, But Frederick Brennan met Jim Watkins because
Watkins made a move to take over h N in October.
This is when the Watkins family really began to become

(09:03):
known on the darkest parts of the Internet. Now, Brennan
was struggling with the server costs of running the increasingly
popular h and so Jim Watkins began to take over
after his programmer's son, Ron Watkins, apparently brought the site
to his attention. Brennan explains, had the Watkins is not

(09:24):
swooped in and started hosting it, that would have been it.
It would not have even made it into I would
have moved on UH for sure, because I didn't have
the money to keep this going, and not really even
the will to keep it going, you know. So. But
Ron Watkins contacts me in September and he basically very

(09:48):
hypes up his association with two Channel. To Channel is
a legendary site amongst image board enthusiasts. It was one
of the most popular text boards founded in nine Now.
I don't want to go too deeply into it, as
it moves away from what we're looking at too much,

(10:09):
but there are some very credible allegations that the Watkins
family stole two Channel away from its owner after effectively
cunning him out of it. As you can probably tell
by now, Jim Watkins is by all accounts a particularly
seedy individual. Whilst HM was at the height of its

(10:29):
popularity when Q and on really began to emerge as
a big deal, images of child abuse were allowed to
be freely shared on h N. Neither Jim Watkins nor
Ron Watkins chose to ban such horrific material. They claim
to be free speech absolutists. Somehow, they think that means

(10:52):
it would be against their morals to stop pedophiles abusing
children and organizing via their web site. It's sickening and
it's nonsensical. Their claims of being a free speech absolutists
don't line up with their far right political beliefs either.
Well they actually believe in is essentially we can say

(11:13):
whatever we want, but you can't if it deviates from
our ideas. Now, I'm not advocating for censorship. I am
anti censorship, and I am very much in favor of
free speech. And I do not like people that say, oh,
free speech is just a code word for right wing
populism or whatever it is people say now. But the
idea that being a free speech absolutist means you allow

(11:36):
people to be victimized and abused on your website is absolute, complete,
fucking nonsense. This is not what it's about. The Watkins
just want to steamroll people with their ideas and say
whatever they want, whenever they want. This is most apparent

(11:57):
with something called the gold Water that was Jim Watkins
has failed. At Trump obsessed online talk show that posed
as kind of right wing news media alternative news, Jim
would spread conspiracy theories and populist right wing talking points
with no evidence whatsoever, very similar to what Q was
putting out at the time, and he's still doing now.

(12:20):
Jim's undying sycophantic love for Trump was apparent for everyone
to see any time you would watch the Gold War.
Have a listened to this clip of Watkins talking about
Trump from a video titled Hardline. God Bless the President
that was published July. We have to see more and

(12:46):
more of the president in the wild where he is
actually changing lives and literally spreading love. Can't you see
that his love for our country is overflowing. It's up
spending his golden years enjoying the fruits of what he
planted through his life. He is spending his fortune and

(13:07):
quite honestly, we all know the last few years of
his good health helping you and I keep our country great.
This is real patriotism. It is genuine love of our country.
The news is disreputable. This is why we need to
have more of the President speaking and doing and just

(13:29):
being lovable American guy. We all enjoy. God Bless our
President in the United States of America. Right. I know
it might sound like Jim is taking the piss there,
but he isn't. That's just how he sounds when reading
off of a script. It sounds like he's mocking someone
It sounds very creepy, but that's just the way he sounds.

(13:53):
Jim Watkins openly idolizes Trump. If you ask me, his
language also sounds a lot like someone else who idolizes Trump. Q.
We know for a fact that Jim Watkins is a
Q and ON follower himself. It's no secret. I mean,
even if you just click on the only website listed

(14:14):
on Jim's YouTube page where you'll find many of these
strange MAGA videos, it takes you to a website called
is It Wet Yet, where he promotes Q and on
websites amongst them are the following US, the que Patriots
United Disarmed, the Deep State Q. The more you know,

(14:35):
and JFK Jr. Is Alive, which that is one of
the more wackier Q and on conspiracies where they think
JFK Jr. Is alive, He's coming back. He's on the
side of Q. It's all very crazy, but anyway, Jim
clearly has a fascination with Q. This is also something
Frederick Brennan witnessed himself firsthand when he went to work

(14:59):
with Jim in the Philippines after Jim brought out now
when Ron Watkins told Frederick Brennan that they would take
over the servers. Jim Watkins got involved and said that
they wanted Frederick to work with them, not just from
New York, where fred Brennan was living in very hard
circumstances because he has quite a serious disability, but they

(15:21):
wanted to fly him all the way over to the
Philippines that would look after him. This is exactly what
they did, Frederick Brennan explains, So he offered hosting, that
was the first thing, and I accepted that. So I
moved the server, like all the contents to their host.
And then after that, his dad offered for me to

(15:43):
actually come to the Philippines. And they said basically they
would roll out the red carpet, they would find me
a place to live, they would pay a nurse to
take care of me all the time. I could just
work on h n all the time and it would
be a sixty forty split a future profits. That was
the deal. I mean, it sounded good to me. I

(16:04):
had a really hard life in New York City. You know.
Um my condition is osteogenesis and perfecta. I've had it
since I was born. Uh clauses brittle bones. I've broken
in my lifetime over a hundred ten bones or something
like that. Just obviously the same one again and again mostly,
but so I got emailed by them first they took

(16:28):
over the hosting. Uh. They knew that my situation was
kind of tough and that I couldn't do a lot anyway.
Jim Watkins met me in Hong Kong and brought me
to Manila on the last leg of the flight. My
life was all different now, and I just worked on
h N all the time. After a while working with
Ron and Jim Watkins, Frederick Brennan began to realize that

(16:52):
Jim was fully involved with Q. He says he thought
he was going senile because he believed in these wild
conspiracy theories. All of us it. And if you look
at the days, the times add up at this time
it would have been when I think Paul Ferber was
controlling the Q. And on account I've listened to what
Frederick Brennan has to say. The thing that I regret

(17:12):
the most is not caring about Q when I worked there,
like even when I resigned in December eighteen, I did
not care necessarily about Q, like even enough to read
the drops, you know, the only thing that made me
start to care a little bit was I I became
concerned because I thought Jim was going senile and kind

(17:34):
of believing in it. The way Jim was talking at
that time, he was already repeating a lot of q slogans,
you know, and talking about the Clinton body count and
how there could be mass arrests, you know what I mean.
So I was very concerned he was losing his marbles
and being taken for a ride by these chan users,
you know, because he was spending way too much time

(17:54):
on H and two. This point, Frederick Brennan came up
with a kind of pray where he had this big
blue queue and he put it on the h and
basically to try and prove to Jim that it wasn't
all real. This is when Jim turned around and said
the following. He kind of just flippantly was like, this

(18:19):
represents so many users essentially, and it might not be real. Okay,
fred you proved that. But it behooves me to take
advantage of the fact that I'm CUES publisher. You know,
I think that the super Pact plan was already in
the making, even all the way in. I think I

(18:41):
think that Q started on four Chune, Paul Ferber stole it,
brought over to HUM and they very consciously either realized
that this represented a lot of users, and just like
they've done to two Channel, they decided to appropriate it
as well. Yes, you did hear that right. Frederick Brennan,

(19:03):
the creator of h CHAN, who worked physically alongside the
Watkins family for years, thinks that Q and On is
now under the control of Jim and Ron Watkins and
has been since Paul Ferber had his Q and On
account hijacked from him on h N shortly after he
crossed over from Fortune. It's not just Frederick Brennan who

(19:27):
thinks this either. I think this as the many Q
and On researchers. To be clear, Jim and Ron Watkins
are very likely behind the Q and On hoax. There
will be a lot more on this in the next episode.
But to end this one, I want to talk about
something very interesting the crop Top online only this week

(19:50):
in regards to Ron Watkins and his connections to Q
and On. Remember earlier I said that Ron announced that
he'd quit a coun on November three. He said this
in a statement on Twitter. It reads as so quote,
I am resigning as admin of eight coun effective immediately.

(20:12):
Extensive battles have been fought tooth and nail during a
self imposed civic duty protecting the final fortifications of online
free speech. Guardedly navigating these tumultuous times, today, I bring
ship to Doc Farewell. End quote. Interestingly, the formatting of
this tweet is quite similar to the way that Q

(20:35):
puts his stuff out. There are a lot of line
breaks right in the middle of sentences. I think that's
quite interesting. Anyway. On November this is when things went
a bit mad. A verified account claiming to be Ron
Watkins on that new no rules social media website Parla
posted the following message quote, I'm burnt, can't say much more.

(21:01):
Meet me on a con in two hours on the
board Slash news plus Slash Yes Jim has posted as
cube before fuck you Dad. End quote. Now. Of course,
all this seemed like a bit of a smoking gun.
The account on Parlor was verified after all. However, Ron

(21:23):
quickly hopped on Twitter to say the following quote, I
have seen screenshots of someone impersonating me on your Parlor website,
he was adding the creator of Parlor, I have never
used Parlor I don't have a Parlor account. I have
never submitted any identification to Parlor. I have never asked

(21:43):
to be verified on Parlor. What's going on? End quote.
He also attached an image of an email to Parlor
that said this quote, Hello Parlor, I am Ron Watkins
at code Monkey's head on Twitter. I don't have a
part her account and have never used parlor. Why is
there an apt code monkeys that account on parlor posting

(22:06):
as me that is verified. I have never submitted any
identification to you, and I don't even have an account
on Parlor. Thanks, Ron Watkins end quote. The email, for
some reason I just read off appears to be a
draft as opposed to an email that has been sent.
Make of that what you will. I don't know if
that's relevant. It's just something people online have been pointing

(22:29):
out when discussing this situation. After Ron refuted to claim
that it was him on the Parlor account, Fred Brennan
posted the following tweet quote. The Ron Watkins Parlor account
Code Monkeys was registered on July one. Shortly before that
Ron mentioned Parlor for the first time. I guess he

(22:50):
reconsidered this is strong evidence the account is his and
he's lying about a hacker. End quote. The accompanied screenshot
that Frederick Brennan is referring to. That tweet was a
tweet of Runs sent on July six, and it reads
as so this is what Ron wrote on Twitter. Quote.
I dislike how parlor set up all content behind the

(23:13):
registration wall and require a phone number to register. It's
a hard pass for me right now, but let's see
where they are in a few months. I might reconsider
end quote. Now, I disagree with Brennan that this is
strong evidence of any kind. I don't know if the
parlor account was run or not. Apparently it's not hard

(23:34):
for verified parlor accounts to change their name and handle. However,
I do think this is all very interesting in regards
to the timing of it. Run Quit eight coun has
allegedly had to flee the Philippines and then this parlor
incident happened. If it is someone impersonating Ron, I think
it's also deeply ironic. Considering like I said, I think

(23:57):
he's part of the Q and On hoax. There are
many dots to connect here. In the next episode of
Q Clearance will begin peacing together the huge online coincidences
that further connect the Watkins to Q and On, including
trip codes, IP addresses, and fountain pens. We're not relying

(24:21):
on flimsy evidence here, no, he says. She says. We're
going to build a solid case that we show Jim
and Ron Watkins are in fact, very very likely behind
Q and On. Q Clearance is brought to you by
I Heart Radio and cou Data Media. I'm Jake Hanrahan.

(24:43):
You can find me online at Jake Underscore Hand Rahan.
That's h A N A H A M. This episode
was produced by myself, with fact checking by Sarah Hightower.
The music is by Sam Black and the sound levels
were mixed by Thomas Griffin at Splicing Block