WASHINGTON (AP) – The Jan. 6 committee is preparing to highlight how far-right violent extremists responded to Donald Trump’s “siren call” to come to Washington for a large rally as some now face charges of sedition over the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. and the effort to cancel the 2020 presidential election.
The panel investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol siege will meet Tuesday for a public hearing to investigate 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 tweeted the invitation to the rally, a crucial moment, the committee said. Far-right Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others now facing criminal charges responded easily.
“We’re going to expose the set of evidence we have that talks about how the president’s tweet on the morning of December 19 of‘ Be there, be wild ’was a siren call to these people,” a panel member said. the representative. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., Over the weekend on “Meet the Press.” In fact, Trump tweeted, “Be there, it’ll be wild!”
This is the seventh hearing in a series that has featured numerous highly successful revelations from the January 6 committee. Over the past month, the panel has created a harsh narrative of a defeated Trump “detached from reality,” clinging to his false allegations of election fraud and working feverishly to reverse his electoral defeat. It all culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol, the committee said.
What the committee intends to investigate Tuesday is 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.
The panel is also expected to highlight the new testimony of Pat Cipollone, the former White House attorney, who “was aware of all the major moves” Trump was making, said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. ., who will lead the session.
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.
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 Cipollone in Friday’s private session did not contradict the previous testimony. Raskin said the panel planned to use “a lot” of Cipollone’s testimony.
The group is expected to highlight a December 18, 2020 meeting at the White House at which former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and others came up with ideas for annulment. Election results, Raskin. he told CBS over the weekend.
That was days after the Electoral College met on Dec. 14 to certify Biden’s results, a time when other key Republicans were announcing that the election and its challenges were over.
On Dec. 19, Trump would send the tweet signaling to supporters in Washington for the Jan. 6 rally, the day Congress was to certify the Electoral College count: “Great protest in DC on Jan. 6 “Be there, it will be wild!”
The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, far-right extremist groups whose leaders and others now face rare sedition charges for their roles in the attack, are preparing to come to Washington, according to court documents.
On Dec. 29, the president of Proud Boys posted a message on social media saying members planned to “get a record number on Jan. 6,” according to a federal indictment.
The group had planned 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 claimed that the number of members grew after Trump, during his first debate with Biden, refused to directly condemn the group, but instead told them to “back down and stay on the sidelines.”
The night before Jan. 6, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio met with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes in an underground parking lot, according to court documents, along with images that a documentary filmmaker following the group provided 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 that his client wants to testify publicly. Rhodes has already been interviewed by the committee in private, and the panel is unlikely to agree.
The panel also intends to discuss how many of Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 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 Jan. 6 attack was a shirtless Arizona man named “QAnon Shaman,” wearing a spear and wearing face paint and a Viking hat with skin and horns.
One of the basic beliefs among QAnon supporters is that Trump was secretly fighting a group of profound state agents, prominent Democrats, and Hollywood elites who worship Satan and engage in child sex trafficking.
The panel has demonstrated, throughout the quick hearings and with witnesses from the former president’s inner circle, how Trump was told “over and over again,” as Vice President Liz Cheney, R-Wyo, said. he had lost the election and his false claims of electoral fraud were not true. However, Trump summoned his supporters to Washington and then sent them to the Capitol in what President Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Has called a “coup attempt.”
___ Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland, contributed to this report.
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