John Sullivan
Sullivan started attending
Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests from June 2020. According to
Lex Scott, the founder of Black Lives Matter-Utah, none of the activists knew him before that.
[7] He also has engaged in anti-government commentary, calling for burning down the current political system and replacing it with another system to benefit the people and grant them more freedoms.
[3]
Sullivan founded Insurgence USA, a group participating in the protests against police violence.
[4][10] Sullivan organized events in
Provo, Utah.
In one event, he invited the Proud Boys to speak to the black activists. He also organized another event, a counter-protest to a pro-police event on June 29, 2020,
[11][12][13][14] where a
Back the Blue protest was held consisting of a number of vehicles driving around the Provo police station. Sullivan and others organized a counter-protest blocking vehicles. At the protest, shots were fired into a vehicle and one driver was injured. One man, Jesse Taggart, was charged with attempted murder.
[15][16] According to a police affidavit after the shooting, Sullivan damaged vehicles and cooperated with Insurgence USA to recruit protesters for a protest. Sullivan indicated that he thought the driver who was shot at was trying to run over protesters.
[17][18]
On July 22, 2020, Sullivan held a solo, armed protest at the
Utah State Capitol, carrying an
AR-15. The protest lasted a couple of hours, during which he was confronted by twenty armed men from
Utah Citizens' Alarm.
[4][19]
Sullivan was treated with suspicion in left-wing activist circles. Labor activist Talia Jane said he is "reviled throughout the activist space", noting he had been escorted from a December 12 event at Black Lives Matter Plaza after he was identified.[3] Many
suspected him to be a double agent working for law enforcement. An activist from Portland warned people not to trust him, after he got local activists arrested in September 2020 by leading them down a wrong route and into a police kettle. Anonymous activists from
Seattle published a memo in November 2020
accusing him of being an agent provocateur, pointing to his getting activists arrested or exposing their identities. Activists noted that his
brother is a pro-Trump supporter, a
supporter of the "Blexit" movement and speaking at a Proud Boys rally. After a man was shot in Provo during the protests in summer 2020, a
right-wing militia started appearing to police Sullivan's group. During one of his rallies,
Sullivan handed the microphone to a Proud Boys member. According to Lex Scott, he told them that his group wanted to work with them, which led to other left-wing activists
refusing to work with him. He later got his group firearms training. As he began carrying assault rifles to protest, this invited hostility from both the right and the left.
[3][7]
Others believe Sullivan exploited the racial justice movement for self-gain. Lex Scott said that Sullivan seemed to have "a death wish" as he thought it would be "cool, or amazing, if he was killed at a protest and it started a revolution". She has also denied Sullivan is a member of BLM-Utah and
expressed suspicions of his seeking fame, adding he never attended any BLM meetings nor worked alongside them to advance their agenda. The Salt Lake Tribune reporter Robert Gehrke also stated that he had been selling merchandise and indulging in self-promotion on many websites; his Insurgence USA website sells protest-related gear, such as black clothing, gloves, and gas masks, branded "bloc gear collective".
[3][7] In
Signal chat groups, Sullivan would discuss himself from various
sock puppet accounts.
[6]