Webber, who is the writer and director of the documentary 2020: The Dumpster Fire, says investigators are falsely using footage from a trailer for the film – in which Webber and his team burn an effigy of Donald Trump and blow up a mannequin with the word “truth” written on what agents passed off as the word Trump – as evidence of an assassination plot. A photo from 2020: The Dumpster Fire, showing Webber being arrested.
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The FBI and BPD have made numerous visits to Weber and his friends, and have served them with grand jury subpoenas. A subpoena from January 2021 addressed to Webber that has been reviewed by The Daily Beast refers to a “formal investigation … of suspected violations of federal criminal law.” They have not been formally charged with anything, but Weber says investigators have told him they are looking into a plot to kill Trump. Webber’s wife, co-producer and activist Lauren Pespisa says the accusation and the attention from law enforcement are unwarranted. “It’s just art,” he says. “Art of Confrontation”. Their film is a chaotic showcase of Webber’s performance as he hits the campaign trail. He appears at events hosted by everyone from Joe Biden to Andrew Young to Donald Trump. It’s a mish-mash of earnest interviews and Weber trolling, an attention-grabbing way to break the election cycle and expose the hypocrisy of the many candidates. It culminates in a skit shown in the trailer to draw attention to the various sexual misconduct allegations against the then-newly elected president. Webber, Pespisa and co-producer Embry Galen — dressed as Trump — attend a rally in downtown Boston, holding a large piece of the president. Pespisa identifies herself as E. Jean Carroll, the journalist and author who in 2019 alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in 1995. The mannequin was allegedly used to instigate the investigation.
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“I am here on behalf of all women who [Trump’s] dirty hands have groped to perform a ritual,” Pespisa tells the crowd. “To make sure his dirty feet never touch our beautiful country again.” He continues his impersonation by ripping out the heart of Galen impersonating Trump and Webber sets their effigy on fire. To understand how Weber and his friends got into this situation, one must understand how they mark. To the uninitiated, Weber’s world is nothing short of strange and difficult to understand. He maintains that he is first and foremost an artist. “My way of invoking authority is through art,” he explains in an interview with The Daily Beast. But that can lead to trouble: he’s been arrested 10 times since 2016. Webber has had a knack for mischief since high school. He remembers filling his schoolyard with pitchforks stuck in the ground as a prank. As a graduation gift, he left a pine tree in the school bell tower. However, this streak has always been balanced by a desire to create serious art. Earlier in his career, that meant making anti-folk music and directing indie films like I Thought You Lost It and Northern Comfort, starring Greta Gerwig. His interests in the intersection of art and politics came together in the making of the documentary, A Man Among Giants. Through it, Webber watched WWE wrestler Doug “Tiny the Terrible” Tunstall’s mayoral campaign in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Webber, who remained politically active throughout this time, attending protests and events, realized he could use this footage for more documentaries. He has since become one of those characters who pops up wherever something happens in the political world of the United States, devoting much of his energy to challenging people in power through what he calls “moral trolling.” “That means we hit high,” he explains. During election cycles, this includes showing up at campaign events and protests to make noise and try to catch politicians in an embarrassing or hypocritical moment. This approach led to some surreal moments, including a clip of Trump supporters chanting “Suck Trump’s cock” at the request of Webber and fellow Vermin Supreme. His 2016 indie documentary Flowers for Peace has amassed over a million views on YouTube and includes absurd scenes of Webber, an ardent leftist, praying next to then-candidate Jeb Bush during rallies. Webber and Vermin Supreme mock The Comedian, a 2019 artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which was at Art Basel 2019.
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As a painter and digital media artist, another natural arena for Webber’s trolling is in the art world. In late 2019, Webber was arrested and made headlines for writing “Epstien [sic] Didn’t Kill Self” on the wall in lipstick in the showcase area of ”The Comedian” from Art Basel — which is, as you know, a $120,000 banana stuck to the wall. The spelling mistake is intentional. “That’s how shit goes viral,” laughs Webber. “I am like Don Quixote. I tilt at windmills and then I write about it.’ “I’m like Don Quixote,” he explains. “I tilt at windmills and then I write about it.” And indeed, at times he seems like a mad knight charging politicians, holding a bull’s head or a guitar, only to be restrained by campaign staff and gallery guards. A piece of Webber’s AI artwork.
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But unlike the character, Webber occasionally strikes a nerve with lasting consequences. While filming Flowers for Peace in 2015, Webber confronted the Trump campaign at an event in Rochester, New Hampshire, and paused in Trump’s speech as an opportunity to quote him the Bible. Trump listens as Webber rattles off a paraphrased version of 1 Timothy 3, which states that anyone who “aspires to hold the office of overseer” must be “honorable, sober” and “not quarrelsome, nor a lover of money.” Weber says the subsequent escort out of the building by the Trump campaign’s private security resulted in multiple injuries to himself. He was later arrested at an event in Manchester, New Hampshire, when he tried to ask Trump why he was beaten in Rochester. But the charges were dropped and Webber turned around and sued the Trump campaign and the Manchester Police Department. Years later, in 2020, Webber and the Trump campaign settled. Webber received $20,000 in damages and, in a separate case, Webber and the Manchester Police Department agreed to $15,000 in damages. To Weber, the FBI’s investigation is unwarranted, but it fits a familiar pattern. He points to the court case for the terrorist convicted of the Boston Marathon bombing, in which Agent Kimball had to admit that the online evidence he tried to use to show radicalization were memes and pop song lyrics. “Damn the bomber, but that’s basically what they’re doing to us,” says Webber. “They are taking this trailer out of context and falsely accusing us of a murder plot.” The FBI declined to comment and the BPD did not respond to requests for comment. Although Webber is often ready to provoke, what he does is protected by law – and is always, he claims, victimless. Of course, the line between art and vandalism is a thin one for Weber and is often crossed by the perspective of his targets. “On the afternoon of December 8, 2019, a visitor entered a gallery booth and used lipstick to deface a wall at the Miami Beach Convention Center (MBCC),” an Art Basel spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “The vandalism is a clear violation of the fair’s rules and regulations, and as such, he was escorted out of the fair by the Miami Beach Police Department.” His charges in Soho and Basel were dropped, barring a $60 disorderly conduct fine in New York, which Webber says he only paid because he was dealing with the latest and most stressful harassment by the FBI. “Everything becomes zero-sum,” Pespisa says of Webber’s arrests. “For a guy who gets arrested so much, it’s amazing that a cross-examination doesn’t turn up anything.” He recalls that the case in Florida was dismissed almost immediately. “I was ready to stand up for myself and as soon as my butt hit the seat, I was told everything was falling apart.” Webber says he was disappointed. “I wanted to stand in the depths.” Weber is often so sure of his innocence that he chooses to defend himself in court by conducting his own legal research. He won the settlement from the Trump campaign without representation. “He puts me to sleep reading a jurisprudence book he got from his grandfather,” laughs Pespisa. “It’s not all unicorns and political performance,” says Webber. “Like the ACLU, I pick cases because setting precedent is how we keep legal authority in check.” For them the means are justified. In making their films and ruffling feathers, they strive to speak truth to power and make light of an often sad situation. “A protest without joy becomes a chore,” he says. “As long as my team and I can put a smile on some people’s faces, I feel like we’re doing well.” Webber and his production team.
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Underneath the trolling is a legitimate desire to make a difference by documenting social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock in their documentary The War of North Dakota. “Sometimes you have to put the silliness down and just act as a faithful documentarian of history,” explains Webber. But Webber and Pespisa had to slow down in the face of the federal investigation into them. “We had to take the time to read and understand what they were charging us and how to defend against it,” explains Webber. And…
