The Illustrated Primer

Statement About The Washington Times False Claim that XRVision Detected Antifa in the Capital Building Riots

Washington Times Cease and Desist

Several individuals brought to my attention a Washington Times article titled: “Facial recognition firm claims Antifa infiltrated Trump protesters who stormed Capitol”, written by Rowan Scarborough on January 6, 2021.

The article claims that:

“A retired military officer told The Washington Times that the firm XRVision used its software to do facial recognition of protesters and matched two Philadelphia antifa members to two men inside the Senate.

The source provided the photo match to The Times.

One has a tattoo that indicates he is a Stalinist sympathizer. antifa promotes anarchy through violence and wants the end of America in favor of a Stalinist-state. “No more USA at all” is a protest chant.

XRVision also has identified another man who, while not known to have antifa links, is someone who shows up at climate and Black Lives Matter protests in the West.”

I don’t know where the Washington Times got this information or who that “retired military officer“ is.

XRVision didn’t generate any composites or detections for the Washington Times or for any “retired military officer,” nor did it authorize them to make any such claims or representations. Additionally, The Washington Times never attempted to contact XRVision to verify their false claim prior to publication.

Shortly after the rioting started, XRVision performed an analysis on the video footage and identified several individuals. This information was shared with Federal LEA. We concluded that one individual could be Matthew Heimbach (low probability) or Will Watson (high probability-based on two tattoos and face match). Heimbach is affiliated with the Maryland Skinheads and the National Socialist Movements. Neither one of them are Antifa. The third individual identified, Jake Angeli, is an actor with some QAnon promotion history. Again, no Antifa identification was made for him either.

Due to the sensitive nature of the imagery, the composites were distributed to a handful of individuals for their private consumption and were not to be made public. XRVision views the Washington Times publication as outright false, misleading, and defamatory.

Our attorney has contacted the Washington Times and has instructed them to ‘Cease and Desist’ from any claims regarding the sourcing of XRVision analytics, retract their current claims, and publish an apology.


Image 1
: Sample video analytics performed on two Capital Building rioters. The matches for POI-1 are potential leads, they are not confirmed identities and should not be treated as such.

*** Update 01/07/2021 ***

The Washington Times has deleted the original article and issued an apology to XRVision.

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