The parliamentary commission investigating January 6 established on Tuesday a direct link between former US President Donald Trump’s “call to action” to his followers on Twitter and the organization of the Capitol robbery.
On December 19, the former president posted on his official Twitter account:: “Great protest in DC on January 6. Come out, it’s going to be wild.”
Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy affirmed, during the seventh public hearing of the congressional commission, that “this The tweet served as a call to action and, in some cases, a call to arms.“.
The commission showed a compilation of videos of far-right elements, including Alex Jones of InfoWars, anticipating a bloodbath. Members of the extremist organizations Oath Keepers and Proud Boys took the president’s words as an order to defend him.
Jason Van Tatenhove, one of the allies of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, testified in person at the hearing and said the organization is “a dangerous militia” and that fortunately no more people died in the robbery.
Murphy said the administration was aware of this potential for violence and did nothing to cancel the rally that preceded the Capitol robbery.
Former Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson exchanged messages with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, expressing her fears about what was going to happen on January 6 because the situation “went crazy.”
The tweet was published five days after the electoral college votes were certified, confirming Joe Biden as president-elect, and at a time when none of the voter fraud lawsuits — more than 60 — have been concluded.
The post coincided with the aftermath of an explosive meeting between Donald Trump and several White House allies, including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, that lasted six hours on the night of December 18 and ended in shouting and insults.
At that meeting, a draft executive order was discussed directing the Department of Defense to seize all voting machines and appoint Sidney Powell as special prosecutor to oversee this operation and initiate criminal proceedings as a result.
The plan was something White House counsel Pat Cipollone vehemently opposed.
“For the federal government to seize voting machines is a terrible idea for the country,” Cipollone said in closed-door testimony. “That’s not the way we do things,” he continued, noting that “there is a way to challenge the election” in court and that there was simply no evidence of fraud to change the outcome of the election.
Cipollone said that, in the contentious meeting, he repeatedly asked where the evidence of Sidney Powell’s alleged fraud was and got no concrete answers. “There was a clear disregard for the idea of substantiating claims.”
The commission also showed the draft of a tweet that ended up not being published in Donald Trump’s account and announcing “a great speech” for January 6 and the call to march on Capitol Hill.
This shows, according to the commission, that the idea of sending armed protesters marching to Capitol Hill was not an impulse at the time, but something that was already planned in advance.
This was confirmed in a text message from far-right activist Ali Alexander on January 5, where he wrote that Trump was supposed to order them to march on Capitol Hill the next day.
The commission also revealed that Trump had two phone conversations with former strategist Steve Bannon on January 5. That same day, Bannon said on his show that people should prepare for what was about to happen, anticipating a descent into hell of unexpected proportions.
The hearing also heard anonymous testimony from a former Twitter employee who for months made “desperate attempts” to draw attention to escalating rhetoric from both Trump and his supporters.
“I tried to show the reality that if there was no intervention, people would die,” he said. “On January 5, I realized that no one was going to intervene and we were at the mercy of a violent and armed mob.”
Source: Observadora
