'Cowering in your house': How Michael Flynn’s private security group moved into Staci Burk’s home

She spoke to a woman in Seattle who claimed to have seen illegal ballots at a FedEx facility but was reluctant to come forward. She talked to a group of Trump partisans who claimed to have uncovered a similar incident at the Phoenix airport. Then, two men appeared at her doorway and disabled her home security system.

Then, a man named Scott Koch who claimed to work with the Department of Defense, made a bizarre confession that he was personally involved in illegal ballot trafficking. Surrounded by election deniers, it was easy for Burk to at least question whether shadowy forces were at work to cover up widespread election fraud.

A law student and former local school board member, Burk resisted pressure to write an affidavit about Koch’s allegations for Sidney Powell, who was then officially part of the Trump campaign legal team, alongside Rudy Giuliani. Instead, she started researching Koch on her own.

A Google search took Burk to Koch’s LinkedIn page, which identified him as director of development for Mayhem Solutions Group — a private security firm in Pinal County. She made a screengrab of Koch's LinkedIn page and texted it to John Shattuck, an operative with ties to the Trump administration who had initially put her in touch with an Arizona couple collecting affidavits for Giuliani and Powell.

Shattuck responded around mid-morning on Saturday, Nov. 21.

“Wait, Mayhem?” he wrote.

“Yes,” Burk said.

“I got this,” Shattuck wrote, adding a sunglasses emoji.

This is the second installment in a three-part series about Burk’s experience following the 2020 election that is based on extensive interviews and unrivaled access to audio recordings of her conversations and text messages during that period. You can read the first installment here.

Shattuck asked to come over to Burk’s home because he didn’t want to talk on the phone, Burk recalled in an interview with Raw Story. Shattuck told Burk that he knew Shawn Wilson, Mayhem’s founder and CEO. Burk said that Shattuck told her that Wilson was planning on firing Koch.

Burk told Raw Story that at the time, she wasn’t sure if Koch should get fired if his wild story about overseeing an operation to unload illegal ballots at the Phoenix airport turned out not to be true. So, she decided to call Wilson to try to clarify the matter. When she reached Wilson on the phone, Burk said he reiterated that he would cooperate with any investigation and see to it that Koch was prosecuted. And he encouraged Burk to make five copies of her recording of Koch’s purported confession.

Before going to Walmart to buy USB flash drives to copy the Koch recording, Burk called a friend in Los Angeles to ask for advice about personal security. The friend recommended that she call a man named Daryl who lived in her neighborhood. Daryl, who requested that Raw Story not publish his last name, confirmed that he agreed to accompany Burk “to lend some emotional support.”

While Daryl was at her home helping her make copies of the Koch recording, Burk said, someone attempted to break in through the laundry room window. Daryl confirmed to Raw Story that he saw security footage of a man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties running through the yard, and that the police later found evidence that someone had attempted to pry open the window. After the police arrived, a neighbor named Wanita Panza, who is opposed to Donald Trump, came over to see what the commotion was about.

By then, Burk had notified Shattuck, and he came over to her house with Shawn Wilson, the CEO of the Mayhem private security firm.

According to Burk, Shattuck mentioned Trump’s former White House strategist, saying, “That’s it. I’m calling Bannon. He’s an hour away.”

Panza told Raw Story she thought she overheard Shattuck talking on the phone with Bannon, although she couldn’t be sure. In any case, the overheard phone conversation made enough of an impression on Panza that she made a coarse comment about Bannon to Shattuck.

With Burk’s home security challenges escalating, Shattuck proposed an odd solution, with Burk’s agreement. He suggested that a security detail be assigned to Burk’s home staffed by the same company that employed the man under suspicion of illegal ballot trafficking.

“John Shattuck said to me in front of Wilson and the police: ‘Can you get a team on her?’” Burk recalled. “I was like, ‘I don’t have that kind of money.’ [Shattuck] said, ‘I’ve got it covered. I’ll send you some of my tier-one guys for the border stuff.’”

Burk told Raw Story that fear clouded her judgment during the final two months of 2020 and that in less fraught circumstances she believes she would have been thinking more clearly and made different decisions.

Burk suffers from pulmonary hypertension, and she explained her agreement to go along with the arrangement by citing “the fact that I was on oxygen — I was panicked, terrified.” Both Shattuck and Kelly Townsend, a friend who was then serving in the Arizona House, told her that her life was in danger, Burk said. “I was freaked out,” she said. “I was shaking and crying.”

Between pulmonary hypertension and back problems, Burk’s mobility was limited. In hindsight, she says if she had been able to get out more, her suspicions might have been raised by the web of relationships among the people who were offering to help her. For one, she didn’t learn until eight months later that Townsend had known Koch since at least the summer of 2020.

“If I was part of Stop the Steal — I don’t know — I wouldn’t have fallen into this rabbit hole, because I would have seen that all these people knew each other, not just Stop the Steal, but also the anti-mask and vaccine stuff,” Burk told Raw Story. “They were doing rallies every week. I was not part of that. I had a health issue. I didn’t leave the house.”

Shattuck also appears to have not considered the apparent conflict of interest in bringing a private security firm that employed someone suspected of ballot fraud into the home of a person who was investigating that very activity. He declined to comment for this series other than to minimize his involvement with Burk and disparage her credibility.

Beyond Mayhem Solutions Group’s association with Shattuck, the private security firm and its CEO also maintain ties with Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb. Shattuck described Wilson to Burk as “a paid contractor to act as security for people who want to go down to the border and see for themselves.”

Footage of Wilson accompanying Sheriff Lamb during two high-profile tours of a migrant corridor through Pinal County — one for a February 2021 episode of “Lara Logan Has No Agenda” on Fox Nation, and another for a March 2022 publicity visit by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to highlight immigration concerns — fit that description.

Sheriff Lamb has been a conspicuous backer of Donald Trump, joining the former president with a group of sheriffs at the White House in 2019. He was also spotted at the Nov. 7, 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally in Phoenix, and reportedly told a crowd at a rally in the state capital on Jan. 6, 2021: “I don’t know how loud we have to get before they start to listen to us and know that we will no longer tolerate them stripping our freedoms away.”

Last month, Lamb spoke at a Trump rally in Prescott and told the crowd to support a slate of state candidates who back the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, according to a report for the digital magazine Bolts. The outlet also reported that Lamb is collaborating with True the Vote, “a far-right group peddling unfounded voter fraud conspiracies.”

Despite Lamb’s professed concern about election fraud, there is no indication that the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office ever investigated Koch, who made his purported confession of ballot fraud in the sheriff’s jurisdiction.

Sheriff Lamb could not be reached for comment for this story.

Shattuck professed to be unhappy about Lamb’s handling of the situation in a conversation with Burk, in which he described receiving a phone call from Shawn Wilson.

“I told Shawn:… ‘I’m not too damned pleased with what Mark Lamb did on this, because he kicked the can,’” Shattuck told Burk. “And I said, ‘Unless he’s doing an investigation and he doesn’t want to tell people what they’re doing — which is understandable.’ If he did, great; if he didn’t, that’s disappointing.

“I told him: ‘Please, please, someone investigate this guy before this thing gets — and this is early on, right — before this gets out of control,’ which it is,” Shattuck continued “I mean, let’s face it: It’s out of control because of how much time is spent. I mean, you’ve been living it every day.”

More than just someone who wanted to ensure that his employee exhibited integrity, Wilson presented himself as someone who would support militant action to prevent the election from being stolen.

“I mean, there’s a Second Amendment for a reason, and it’s for this very thing,” he told Burk. “I hate to tell ya — everybody screams about the Second Amendment, but not — it’s written explicitly in the Constitution that when the government becomes tyrannical and we don’t have a voice anymore, it’s the job of the people to take it back from the government.

“I’m a firm believer in doing it the way the Constitution says, but then you’re labeled a domestic terrorist,” he added.

Burk resisted pressure from an array of election deniers to turn over her recording of Scott Koch and put her account of the meeting into a legal document, but she relented after Wilson moved into her house with a security detail on Nov. 21.

“Then, after the break-in, it was apparent that I was already in deep,” she said. “I switched. At that very point.”

Burk gave one copy of the recording to Shattuck and another to Wilson. She also incorporated an account of her meeting with Koch into a lawsuit that she filed in state court on Dec. 8 alleging “denial of her fundamental right to vote.”

Burk’s lawsuit mixed claims of election fraud with a complaint that she had been disenfranchised because her voter registration was canceled during a purge. The Arizona Secretary of State’s office had mistakenly cut her from the rolls because they were unable to verify her address, which was protected due to her history as a domestic violence victim. An irony few but Burk appreciated was that her disenfranchisement claim aligned more with the Democratic Party agenda of protecting the right to vote than the restrictionist aims of the election denier crowd.

Burk said she also cut and pasted Powell’s lawsuit, which had been recently filed in federal court in the District of Arizona, into her pleading. Burk said she had Powell’s permission to incorporate her material, but that Powell didn’t know that Burk’s lawsuit would also feature the vote denial claim.

Even as she prepared to litigate her own — and Powell’s claims — Burk said she remained skeptical of the broader narrative of widespread election fraud. As evidence of her continued skepticism, Burk shared a screenshot of a text exchange with Shattuck on Nov. 30, 2020, when Giuliani held a hearing to air election fraud claims at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix.

Burk booked a room at the Hyatt — and Townsend was encouraging her to testify — while she sensed that others on the Giuliani team wanted to put on different witnesses. But ultimately, she soured on the hearing and started packing her bags to go home. Burk told Raw Story that at the time she felt that if the Republican leadership in the Arizona Legislature wasn’t going to call an official hearing, “then this is just a dog and pony show.” (A phone text to Shelby Busch that Burk provided to Raw Story shows her saying on Nov. 28: “It’s apparently a dog and pony show. My impression.”)

In a phone text on Nov. 30, Burk texted Shattuck: “I’m regretting spending any time at all on this right now. I genuinely appreciate you and I am extremely thankful for you and your help. I’m just done.”

Shattuck responded by asking if he could bring Congressman Paul Gosar up to her hotel room. Burk assented, and was surprised to find an entourage of not only Gosar, but also far-right broadcaster Ann Vandersteel and Michelle Malkin, a conservative commentator with ties to the white nationalist movement. Burk recalled that she gave Gosar an account of the Korean Air allegations and the security breaches at her home, as Vandersteel filmed.

Afterward, Shattuck proposed that he, Burk and Malkin pose for a selfie, which he posted on his Facebook page later that day, writing, “It’s been an incredibly long day of meetings and arm twisting at these election hearings. One fun spot of the day was having Michelle Malkin up to the suite for an interview — keep up the great work my Patriot friend.”

While the battleground states were in the process of certifying the election in advance of the Dec. 15 meeting of the Electoral College, Trump’s allies engaged in a full-court press to get state officials to unwind the process. Casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election through the testimonies of so-called “whistleblowers” was a key component of the effort.

“The president has clear paths to victory,” retired Lt. General Michael Flynn told conservative broadcaster Brannon Howse on Nov. 28. “And they don’t actually require a lot of courtroom action. What they require is a lot of honesty out of elected officials, and frankly, a lot of Americans that are coming forward and telling us their stories. I mean, the hundreds and hundreds of Americans around the country, not just the swing states, but many, many other states that are coming forward with their stories and putting them down on affidavits.”

Texts from Carissa Keshel, Powell’s assistant, one day after the Giuliani-led hearing in Phoenix, suggest that the Powell-Flynn camp steered Burk away from directly reporting her troubling information to law enforcement.

“I did get a call from the Phoenix FBI Field Office,” Burk told Keshel. “Do we know if this is the right FBI person for me to talk to?”

“We are going to get a lawyer for you to be with you to speak with him, and record the conversation,” Keshel replied. “Sidney says for now, email the FBI contact and tell them your lawyer will contact them as soon as possible. Don’t say anything besides that. In the meantime, we’re getting Sidney’s lawyer in AZ to be able to cover you — we’re just setting it up.”

Powell could not be reached for this story.

Shattuck encouraged Burk to put her trust in Flynn and Powell. “We expected law enforcement or somebody to do their job — and they haven’t,” he told Burk. “And that’s why I was excited to see that Flynn and Powell was interested in this. And I thought, ‘Okay, a proper investigation’s going to get done.’ And I don’t blame them for saying you should not contact anybody. I don’t blame ’em. I mean, that would be prudent. That’s why I backed off. I backed way off, because what am I supposed to be doing now? It’s in their hands. They should be doing this.”

Within a week of the Giuliani hearing in Phoenix, Michael Flynn and his brother Joe Flynn arranged to replace the security detail from Mayhem Solutions Group with members of another security group called 1st Amendment Praetorian.

As previously reported by Raw Story, Joe Flynn, the brother of Michael Flynn, has publicly acknowledged that “we sent a team out to watch over her out in Phoenix.” And Geoffrey Flohr, a former Michigan State Police officer, has said that Joe Flynn called him and put Michael Flynn on the line. Then, Flohr said, Michael Flynn asked him to go to the Southwest to provide security for a “whistleblower.” He arrived at Burk’s home on Dec. 4.

Robert Patrick Lewis, a retired Army Special Forces soldier who co-founded 1st Amendment Praetorian, or 1AP, alluded to the arrangement in a fundraising appeal on YouTube on Dec. 9.

“But there’s other whistleblowers that still haven’t been made public,” Lewis said. “And unfortunately, some of them have been discovered by the people who are on the other side, who are — who want to ensure that the fraud is not made public — and so some of these whistleblowers have been getting credible threats against them. And some of their houses have been vandalized. There have been attempted break-ins. A lot of stuff like that. And so, the Flynn organization reached out to us and asked us if we could help them with some of these different whistleblowers and have a security detail on them, and so we’ve been doing that. We got — ah, I’m not going to say exactly when — I’ll just say that we’ve had a team and we have other teams that are ready to go protect some of the other ones, and some that already are.”

Lewis appeared to jest in an email to Raw Story for this story.

“I’m glad that you, your outlet, and your colleagues have taken such a strong stance to elevate 2020 election fraud whistleblowers like Staci Burk,” he wrote.

The replacement of Mayhem with 1AP occasioned clashing rumors that the respective teams posed a threat to Burk. Marko Trickovic, a Phoenix-area Three Percenter militia activist who introduced Burk to John Shattuck wrote in a declaration that based on Mayhem Solutions Group CEO Shawn Wilson’s suspicious behavior “getting back to the legal team, it was assessed that Staci might not be safe with that team, and they arranged for another team to come take over on 12/4/20 for Staci. Staci then let me know that Mr. Wilson threw a fit yelling at her saying that this new team would come here and kill her, and other outrageous claims.”

Months later, Joe Flynn explained to Burk that the decision to replace Mayhem Solutions Group had nothing to do with concerns about professionalism or considerations for Burk’s safety.

“We couldn’t afford it,” Flynn told Burk. “We weren’t going to be able to pay them. They wanted us to pay them thirty thousand dollars. We don’t have that kind of money. So, we said, ‘Okay, we got this other group that can do it for free.’”

Lewis has described 1AP as “a group of military, law enforcement and intelligence community veterans, who provide pro bono intelligence and security service to patriotic and religious events.”

Wanita Panza, who lived across the street from Burk, was alarmed by the presence of the two security groups in the neighborhood. She told Raw Story that she remembers the personnel from 1AP as being “less unkempt” and also “even more heavily armed” than Mayhem. Once, after Panza went outside to speak with one of the 1AP members standing guard outside Burk’s home to gauge the threat to her own family, her husband quipped, “I see you’re talking to the hillbilly contingent of the American Taliban.”

The mission of 1AP, Lewis said in his December 2020 fundraising appeal, was to provide security so that conservative Americans felt safe in exercising their First Amendment rights.

“We feel that’s a vital step to taking our republic back,” he said. “If you are sheltered and cowering in your house and Americans aren’t coming together to talk, to be together, to commune with each other and make their voices heard and use those First Amendment rights, then we have no community.”

Burk learned that she was not like Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne, Ali Alexander, Brandon Straka and the other VIPs who were able to speak and move freely with the protection of 1AP.

“They were literally saying, ‘You can’t leave the house,’” Burk said.

“Technically, it’s kidnapping. When you think you’re in danger and the security team is protecting you, it gets really fuzzy. It wasn’t like they just held me hostage; they manipulated me.”

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