The Jan. 6 committee focused Tuesday on the ways in which violent far-right extremists responded to Donald Trump’s tweet for a large rally in Washington as a “call to arms,” as the panel investigated if they were coordinating with White House allies in the deadly U.S. Capitol. attack and effort to annul the 2020 presidential election.
The panel investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol is delving into what it calls the final phase of Trump’s multidisciplinary effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory. As dozens of false claims and allegations of election fraud failed, Trump met late December 18 night with White House attorneys before tweeting the invitation to the rally: “Be there, it will be wild! “
Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups now facing infrequent sedition charges readily responded to the invitation.
“This tweet served as a call to action and, in some cases, a call to arms,” said a panel member, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.
Tuesday’s hearing is the seventh for the Jan. 6 committee. Over the past month, the panel has created a narrative of a defeated Trump “detached from reality,” clinging to false allegations of electoral fraud and working feverishly to reverse his electoral defeat. It all culminated in the attack on the Capitol, the committee says.
MIRAR | Trump should be held accountable for his role in the attack on the Capitol, says Cheney:
“Donald Trump can’t escape responsibility by being deliberately blind,” Cheney says
In her opening remarks during Tuesday’s hearings on the Jan. 6 bombing, Rep. Liz Cheney called for the former president to be held accountable for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“What they were proposing … was crazy”
The panel presented a new video testimony of Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House attorney, recalling the explosive nightly White House meeting when Trump’s external legal team filed a draft order executive to seize state voting machines, a “terrible idea.” He said.
“That’s not how we do things in the United States,” Cipollone said.
He and other White House officials struggled to intervene in Trump’s nightly meeting with attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, retired National Security Assistant Michael Flynn and the head of online retailer Overstock. He erupted in screams and shouts, another assistant declared.
“Where is the evidence?” Cipollone demanded on the false allegations of electoral fraud.
“What they were proposing, I thought, was crazy,” said another White House official, Eric Herschmann.
But Trump was intrigued and essentially told his White House lawyers that at least Powell and his outside allies were trying to do something.
“We’re not tough enough,” Giuliani recalled in a video testimony the president told White House lawyers. “You are p —– s,” he said, using rude language.
Graphic and violent text messages
When night came back in the morning, Trump tweeted a call for supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress would count the results of the Electoral College. He wrote, “Be there, it will be wild!”
Immediately, the extremists reacted.
The panel displayed graphic and violent text messages and played videos of right-wing figures, including Alex Jones and others, exposing that January 6 would be the day they would fight for the president.
In vulgar and often racist language, the messages they broadcast through far-right forums planned for the big day that said Trump was asking Washington. It would be a “red wedding,” one said, a reference to an episode of the Game of Thrones television show that featured mass murders. “Wear shackles.”
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio speaks to the media in Washington on January 14 after he was released from prison at the DC Central Detention Facility where he had been detained since September 2021. Tarrio and others Proud Boys face federal charges related to January 6, 2021. 2021, attack on the Capitol. (Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters)
Several members of the U.S. Capitol police who fought the crowd that day sat with stone faces in the front row of the committee room.
“The problem of politicians encouraging crowd violence to destroy a fair election is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy,” MP Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Said in the opening statements.
Jason Van Tatenhove, an ally of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, was expected to testify in person. Another witness was to be Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty last month to disorderly conduct in a restricted building. He said that on January 2, 2021 he posted an image stating that Trump “was asking us to go back to Washington on January 6 for a big protest.”
The committee is investigating whether extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon supporters who had met for Trump earlier, coordinated with White House allies by Jan. 6. The Oath Keepers have denied any plan to storm the Capitol.
It’s the only hearing set for this week as new details emerge. So far, the hearing scheduled for Thursday at peak hours has been filed.
Impressive testimony of the former assistant
This week’s session comes after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided impressive stories under the oath of an angry Trump who consciously sent armed supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then left. refusing to dismiss them quickly when violence erupted, standing next to the mutineers as they were being made. sought threateningly Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump has said Cassidy’s story is not true. But in Friday’s private session, Cipollone did not contradict the previous testimony. Raskin said the panel planned to use “a lot” of Cipollone’s testimony.
On Dec. 29, the president of Proud Boys posted a message on social media stating that members were scheduled to “get a record number on Jan. 6,” according to a federal indictment.
The group was scheduled to meet at the Washington Monument, its members ordered not to wear their traditional black and yellow colors, but to be “incognito.”
The Proud Boys have said their membership grew after Trump, during his first debate with Biden, refused to directly condemn the group and instead told them to “step back and stand on the sidelines.”
Committee member Jamie Raskin tweeted Monday:
When he sent this tweet, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to call for a protest against the peaceful handover of power.
At tomorrow’s hearing, America will see how it mobilized dangerous extremists & white nationalist groups to come armed to “Stop the Robbery”. pic.twitter.com/z6muqx3AlZ
– @RepRaskin
Oath Keepers had a “rapid response force”: court documents
The night before Jan. 6, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio met with Oath Keepers leader Rhodes in an underground parking lot, according to court documents along with images that a documentary filmmaker following the group went provide to the panel.
The Oath Keepers had also been scheduled for Jan. 6 and set up a “rapid response force” at a hotel near Virginia, according to court documents.
After the siege of the Capitol, Rhodes called someone with an urgent message for Trump, another group member said. Rhodes was denied the opportunity to speak with Trump, but urged the person on the phone to tell the Republican president to call on militia groups to fight to keep the president in power.
A Rhodes lawyer recently told the committee he wants to testify publicly. Rhodes has already been interviewed by the committee in private, and the panel is unlikely to agree.
WATCH l Update on the highlights of the committee’s previous television hearing:
Trump knew January 6 participants had guns, according to a key aide
Donald Trump ruled out the danger of armed protesters heading to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a former key White House aide told investigators on Tuesday.
The panel also intends to point out that many of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol appeared to be QAnon believers. Federal authorities have explicitly linked at least 38 rioters to pro-Trump conspiracy theory, according to an Associated Press review of court records.
One of the most recognizable figures in the attack was a shirtless Arizona man named “QAnon Shaman.” He wore a spear and wore face paint and a Viking hat with skin and horns.
One of the basic beliefs of QAnon supporters is that Trump was secretly fighting a group of “deep state” agents, prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites, some of whom worship Satan and engage in child sex trafficking.
The panel has shown, throughout quick hearings and with witnesses from the former president’s inner circle, that Trump was told “over and over again,” as Vice President Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Said. he had lost the election and his allegations of electoral fraud were not true.
However, Trump summoned his supporters to Washington and then sent them to the Capitol in what panel chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, has called a “coup attempt.”