Among the many MAGA myths, this may be one of the most enduring and at the same time the most ridiculous. Even though they have deliberately chosen not to watch the January 6 hearings, they have plenty of opinions about them. Antifa implemented the attack, it was part of a false-flag plot by the FBI using informants, it was all Nancy Pelosi’s fault because she didn’t call the National Guard. And the hearings are a “Which Hunt” with a “Narrative.”
They have no regrets for the Insurrection, they have no apologies to give. They think that they are the ones who have been wronged, they believe that they were justified. [Even though they totally weren’t.]
This is a very deep belief by the MAGA faithful.
The very first point linking Trump to the rally is the fact that the entire rally and the plan to march on the Capitol was initiated by Trump himself personally in a tweet.
At 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19, 2020 - shortly after a six-hour Oval Office meeting described by a White House aide as "unhinged" - Donald Trump sent a tweet "that would galvanize his followers, unleash a political firestorm, and change the course of our history as a country," in the words of Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
"Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election," Trump tweeted, even after he had heard from many of his top political and legal advisers that he had, in fact, lost.
"Big protest in D.C. on January 6th," he wrote, referring to the day Congress was set to formally certify Joe Biden's victory in the electoral college.
"Be there, will be wild!"
There was no event scheduled for Jan 6, prior to Trump’s tweet about it. After the tweet Former Tea Partier Amy Kremer changed the rally her group “Women for America First” had scheduled to Inauguration Day on Jan 20th, to the 6th.
As attendees made their way into the Save America rally in front of the White House on the morning of Jan. 6, Amy Kremer welcomed them by shouting: “Hello deplorables,” from the stage.
That event, organized by Kremer’s Women for America First group, featured the now-infamous speech from President Donald Trump when he urged followers to march on the U.S. Capitol. Thousands of Trump fans answered that call and proceeded to carry out a violent attack that left five people dead and may have contributed to four police officers present on the day taking their own lives in the months since.
Kremer has denied responsibility for what happened that day, but it was the culmination of a coordinated plan. The former Tea Party activist, together with a group of right-wing and extremist Trump supporters, had spent weeks criss-crossing the country on a 27-city bus tour stoking rage among Trump supporters and urging them to travel to Washington DC on Jan. 6.
Without this tweet, this change wouldn’t have been made. This rally wouldn’t have happened, there wouldn’t have been a crowd and no one would have marched to the Capitol while the electoral votes were being counted for the presidential election.
Even the idea of “flooding the buildings” wasn’t at all new. It’s something that Marjorie Taylor Greene had stated as a goal in 2019 when she was running for Congress.
Once the rally was set, various Trump supporters started planning online for violence and attacking the Capitol.
WASHINGTON — FBI officials have repeatedly said they gathered no credible intelligence in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection suggesting that pro-Trump extremists intended to storm the U.S. Capitol.
And even after months of intensive investigation, Justice Department prosecutors have presented no evidence so far that any of the 420 individuals charged to date for their actions Jan. 6 planned in advance to attack the building in which Congress was certifying Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election.
But a new report by a nonprofit research group, and a separate review by NBC News, uncovered hundreds of social media posts discussing plans to move on the Capitol, including a map of the building and talk of how to create a stampede that would overwhelm Capitol Police.
"You know there will be riot police preventing us from getting in the capitol building," one anonymous poster wrote in December. "What if we created a stampede/crush situation? Start pushing from the back. Surely they will have to get out of the way or get crushed. They're not going to start shooting people."
One post on a very active forum for angry Trump fans called the TheDonald.win was titled "If we occupy the Capitol building, there will be no vote." The top response to that post reads: "GOTTA OVERWHELM THE BARRICADES AND COPS."
The Proud Boys generated an attack plan they called “1776 Returns.”
A document allegedly given to Proud Boys Chairman Henry "Enrique" Tarrio prior to the Jan. 6 insurrection lays out detailed plans to occupy more than half a dozen buildings surrounding the U.S. Capitol and describes tactics to be used by occupiers as they "Storm the Winter Palace."
The full document titled "1776 Returns," attached as an exhibit in a court filing Wednesday by Tarrio's co-defendant Zachary Rehl, was described by one former federal prosecutor as "an absolutely devastating piece of evidence.
[...]
"The authors are clearly planning multiple, multiple felonies; they're saying how they're going to do it, and it's all in service, apparently, to a broader crime, which is the sedition." Cotter said. "The purpose of the of the whole plan is, as they put it, 'No Trump, No America.' Either Trump will be given the presidency, election be damned, or they will shut down America and they will take violent action."
This plan documents how the Proud Boys planned to lead the attack while “riling up the normies” to follow them, using them to increase their numbers and the intensity of the attack.
The Oath Keepers planned to create a “Quick Reaction Force” with long guns that they held in reserve across the Potomac during the attack.
Federal prosecutors alleged in a new court filing that members of the Oath Keepers militia group who joined in the Jan. 6 insurrection appear to have stashed weapons at a hotel in Virginia as part of a so-called "Quick Reaction Force" they could activate if violence escalated that day.
In a court document filed Monday seeking the continued detention of Kenneth Harrelson, one of a dozen members of the Oath Keepers charged in a sweeping conspiracy case against the group, prosecutors cited newly discovered communications allegedly showing members discussing storing their weapons at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Virginia, knowing that possessing such arms within Washington, D.C., would be illegal.
"The evidence suggests that Defendant Harrelson was both aware of the presence of an armed Quick Reaction Force and likely contributed weapons to it," prosecutors said.
Emails from the Oath Keeper Seditious Conspiracy trial indicate that they not only had their own plans, but they reached out to other groups to coordinate their efforts.
"Three days after President Donald J. Trump posted a tweet summoning his followers to Washington for a 'wild' protest on Jan. 6, 2021, Kelly Meggs, the leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers militia, started reaching out to allies in other far-right organizations," The New York Times reported. "Among them was a man named Jeremy Liggett who ran a group in Florida called the B-Squad, an offshoot of the pro-gun Three Percenter movement."
In addition to seditious conspiracy, Meggs was also charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging any duties, and tampering with documents or proceedings.
“He wants us to make it wild that’s what he’s saying,” Meggs wrote. “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!!”
He referred to the Proud Boys as a "force multiplier."
“1776,” Liggett said. “We are gonna make history.”
What do the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have to do with Trump? It’s a good question, but they are clearly not strangers. Trump’s good friends Mike Flynn and Roger Stone have the Oath Keepers work for them as bodyguards. They both also have ties to the Proud Boys, and it was through them and also Rudy Giuliani that the subject of the Proud Boys and Mike Flynn were were discussed in the Oval Office. After talking to Guiliani, Mark Meadows stated on Jan 2nd that “things might get real real bad on January 6.” Yeah, I wonder why he would say such a thing?
Not only did the Oath Keepers have links to Trump through Stone, Flynn and Guiliani they also had links and were receiving regular updates from the Secret Service.
The House Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection has asked the Secret Service for records of all communications between the far-right Oath Keepers group and Secret Service agents prior to and on the day of the attack, after a preliminary accounting by the agency indicated multiple contacts in 2020, according to a Secret Service spokesman.
The spokesman said the Congressional request follows a short telephonic briefing from the Secret Service to committee staff, in which the agency said an agent from its protective intelligence division had “numerous” contacts with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and other group members prior to Trump rallies in fall 2020, but that they were all part of common practice to inform the group of security protocols to follow.
[...]
The Jan. 6 committee made the request for all records of communications between the Secret Service and the Oath Keepers, including the days surrounding Jan. 6 2021, after an NBC News inquiry about the level of information provided by the Secret Service.
The Washington Post first reported an agent from the protective intelligence division was in communication with the Oath Keepers prior to Jan. 6, 2021.
The Secret Service found that multiple members of the organization, not just Rhodes, spoke to an agent in the protective intelligence division ahead of Trump rallies, the most recent conversation coming before a Dec. 12, 2020, rally, Guglielmi said.
MAGA arguments have been that the attack was instigated by an “FBI Informant” who on Jan 5th had publically stated, “We need to go into the Capitol” but it turns out that this person, Oath Keeper Ray Epps, was not an FBI informant at all.
The committee on Jan. 11 revealed that it had interviewed Ray Epps, an Arizona man accused by right-wing politicians and pundits of being an undercover law enforcement agent who set out to goad the pro-Trump rioters into violence. The committee said Epps confirmed he has no ties to the FBI or law enforcement.
The disclosure poked new holes in the already-tenuous FBI conspiracy theory pushed by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and embraced by other prominent voices, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and former President Donald Trump.
The situation with Epps wasn’t the first time the rioters themselves disputed false claims about the attack. Court documents show at least 10 defendants denied in social media posts and messages the bogus rumors that antifa was behind the siege.
The fact is that lots of people say they needed to “go into the Capitol” including Majorie Taylor Greene. Epps wasn’t alone and he wasn’t at all special in that regard.
New reports from the January 6 Committee indicate that the Secret Service was aware of these various threats and that the crowd at the Ellipse for the rally was clearly armed, even though they had to identify this by locating deleted emails from Secret Service which had been subpoened.
During the last January 6th commute hearing, we learned that the White House knew there was ample time to act before the rioting on the capitol started.
"The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot took a broader look Thursday at the plot to overturn former President Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.At the close of the hearing, the panel subpoenaed Trump for his testimony.
Committee members kept Trump front and center as they stitched together some of the findings of their prior hearings with new clips and information. They put a spotlight on multiple former Trump staffers who testified that they knew at the time of the election that Trump lost to Biden.The committee also played clips of Trump allies Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, who spoke prior to the election about how Trump might challenge the results."
Recovered Secret Service emails from December 26 stated:
They think they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped.
And...
Their plan is to kill people, please, please take this tip seriously and investigate further.
But the Secret Service didn’t investigate, and they didn’t share this information with the FBI or the Capitol police. Then they deleted their text messages and email in an effort to hide their lack of action. Frankly, I think that there’s doubt that even the FBI would have acted because apparently
many of them were personally sympathetic to Trump.
NBC News reported Friday that not only did the FBI fail to act ahead of Jan. 6, but a top FBI official was also warned after the fact that there were many agents who stood in solidarity with the Jan. 6 attackers.
As members of Congress referred to the attack as a "violent coup," the FBI proved that U.S. government employees were supportive of the murderous crowd that abused law enforcement and tried to assassinate former Vice President Mike Pence.
“There’s no good way to say it, so I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and second-hand information from conversations since January 6th there is, at best, a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol," said the email, saying that the agents said it was nothing more than the same thing as the Black Lives Matter protesters.
The plan for the rally was always to also march to the Capitol, but the organizers never put in a permit for the march, at the time arguing that they didn’t have the funding to pay for security.
Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, claimed Wednesday that the "Save America" rally did not have a permit to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 until President Trump stepped in.
Plaskett posted a photo of the permit, requested by organizing ‘Women for America First," stating that the group was authorized to occupy the Ellipse from Jan. 2 until Jan. 8. The Ellipse is a park south of the White House. "This permit does not authorize a march from the Ellipse," the permit posted by Plaskett read.
[...]
"The permit stated in no uncertain terms that the march from the ellipse was not permitted," Plaskett said. "It was not until after President Trump and his team became involved in the planning that the march from the Ellipse to the Capitol came about."
But while a "march" was not allowed, the permit for the Jan. 6 rally also mentioned that some participants would head to the Capitol.
According to the rally permit, provided by the National Park Service to Fox News:
"Women for America First will not conduct an organized march from the Ellipse at the conclusion of the rally. Some participants may leave to attend rallies at the United States Capitol to hear the results of Congressional certification of the Electoral College count."
They didn’t have security to march to the Capitol, but they were going to march anyway. What could possibly go wrong with that idea?
Despite the fact this was a Trump rally, his fans have repeatedly claimed that Trump supporters didn’t implement the attack. They say time and time again that it was “Antifa.” It doesn’t matter to them that the people arrested for their involvement in the January 6 attack have openly admitted that they aren’t Antifa — they are Trump supporters as noted by Reuters.
Social media users have been sharing content online that suggests those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were Antifa, not Trump supporters. Many have been using compilations of pictures as purported evidence, but examination of these images shows they do not support this claim. Meanwhile, the FBI has said there is “no indication at this time” that Antifa had played a role in the mob that stormed the Capitol.
Examples of posts presenting various different men as evidence can be seen here , here , here , here , here , here and here .
Hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday in a stunning bid to overturn his election defeat, battling police in the hallways and delaying the certification of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s victory for hours (here).
In addition to that Reuters report, this has been echoed by the AP.
WASHINGTON (AP) — They came from across America, summoned by President Donald Trump to march on Washington in support of his false claim that the November election was stolen and to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden as the victor.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted a week before Christmas. “Be there, will be wild!”
The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president’s behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals. Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently released from prison for attempted murder.
The Associated Press reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee.
The evidence gives lie to claims by right-wing pundits and Republican officials such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs rather than supporters of the president.
And as documented by CNN as they interviewed “Stop The Steal” protestors who went to the Capitol.
So we know that Trump personally initiated the rally and the march. The Secret Service — whose job it is to protect Trump — was aware of planning to make the rally into a violent attack, but didn’t share that information and may have taken steps to conceal this. There was a plan to march to the Capitol, but the organizers didn’t specially request a permit for that march even though Trump himself insisted that it happen. Trump knew the crowd was armed, as it turned out with guns, pepper spray, bear spray, spears and poles, shields, ballistic vests and helmets, walkie-talkies and zip ties.
But he didn’t care.
He didn’t care because he knew they were going to use those weapons to attack Congress, and he was fine with that.
“They aren’t here to hurt me”, he reportedly told Secret Service while arguing that they remove the magnetometors so that the crowd could unite and appear larger.
At no point did Trump even try to do the right thing. He told the crowd “You have to fight like hell, or you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He told them “You have to show strength, you can’t show weakness.”
Trump supporters tend to ignore those statements and only focus on the portion of his speech where he said they would march “Peacefully and respectfully” to the Capitol. This is the march they were not supposed to have. This is the march that they didn’t have a permit for and didn’t have authorization for. This march was Illegal. Also, he didn’t tell them what they were supposed to do once they were done marching.
We’ll come back to this “Peacefully” statement later.
The fact is that despite his protestations Trump knew that he had lost the election and all of this was part of his plot to remain in power at any cost.
"This was laying out a fact pattern truly damning to the extent the president and his allies were telegraphing an intent to declare victory well before the election," he said. "We know that Brad Parscale was talking about plans that were in discussion to have the ex-president declare victory as early as July. We've seen Roger Stone saying we'll declare victory regardless of the results. Steve Bannon, we heard him in October saying that was Trump's plan. And then yesterday we saw an email from Tom Fitton to senior members of the White House, basically proposing talking points for the former president saying, 'We had an election today and I won.'"
Avlon went on to explain that this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Trump's plan to stay in power no matter what.
In particular, he zeroed in on evidence that Trump legitimately knew he lost the 2020 election and continued to push false claims about it as "the most damning aspect of yesterday's testimony," as it could go a long way toward proving his state of mind in the leadup to the deadly riots that sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives
We also have to recall that while all this was going on Trump had also initiated the John Eastman plan attempting to get State officials to reverse the results of the election. Failing in that, he had convinced local GOP party reps to generate their own batches of fake electors, and he had had meetings with members of Congress to have them object when the voters for their state came up, then in the final pillar of his plan have VP Mike Pence — or the Senate Pro Tem Chuck Grassley — block the original electors from the contested states and have the alternate “fake” electors approved which would grant him the election.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of the Congresspersons who met in the White House to be briefed on this plan.
Just like the Proud Boys — they put this idiot plan in writing.
1. VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).
2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.
3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.
4. Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe’s prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where the “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote . . . .” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.
5. One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one — a constitutional no-no (as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone – Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. – should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.
6. The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.
They also had a PowerPoint presentation which they used to brief members of congress on the plan.
Those comments track with one of the pages found in a similar, 36-page PowerPoint that has surfaced online, which recommends briefing members of Congress on alleged "foreign interference," and a retired colonel who was involved in creating the document said those meetings actually happened in the weeks before Jan. 6.
"[Retired Col. Phil] Waldron told the Washington Post that he briefed Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and other members of Congress who he did not identify," Legum wrote. "Neither Johnson nor Graham denied Waldron's claims."
The former president ultimately did not declare a national emergency, as the PowerPoint recommended, but he did cast certification of Joe Biden's election win as a national security threat during his Jan. 6 speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally, and that language aligned with his public statements casting doubt on electronic and mail-in votes.
Trump was specifically told that this plan was “not legally sound” and yet he pursued it anyway.
The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s win.
“Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president,” Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican party in Wisconsin said in the text, seemingly referring to the Trump campaign and then vice-president Mike Pence.
The fake electors scheme – so-called because Republican electors in seven battleground states signed certificates falsely declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified” to affirm Donald Trump won the 2020 election – was part of Trump’s strategy to reverse his defeat.
The select committee believes, according to sources close to the inquiry, that the scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the outcome of the election was in doubt and refuse to announce Biden as president.
This is where the attacking crowd becomes crucial to Trump’s plan. With Pence reluctant to oppose certifying the valid electors — he needed a way to either force Pence to change his mind, or to vacate the premises in fear so that Chuck Grassley could be put in his place and implement the plan.
On their own, all the crowd could do was delay the vote. Without the crowd, all the various members of Congress could do was also — delay the vote. He needed both events to happen simultaneously. One was intended to compliment the other.
Then again, Trump could also use the rally to declare martial law and implement the insurrection act, then he could use that to force the fake electors to be implemented.
"It made my heart race to watch today's hearing, really, because they brought up Trump's mindset, and the question was, what was his mindset?" Taylor told anchor Nicolle Wallace. "I'm going to demystify that for America right now. I've spent time with the guy in the Oval Office, the White House situation room, and Air Force One. I'll tell you what his mindset was on January 6th."
"I believe Donald Trump wanted people to die," said Taylor. "He wanted people to die … who were elected officials, en masse, so he could call out the military, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, so he could prevent the peaceful transfer of power. That's not a conspiracy theory. In fact, in hindsight, it's pretty damn clear to me this is what he had in mind from day one in office."
To follow this up, in their trial the Oath Keepers have also stated that they had the same hope — they wanted Trump to invoke the insurrection act and call them up to be his personal militia. Stewart Rhodes, during the attack, attempted to contact Trump and get this authorization from him.
The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.
Once the Oath Keepers finished storming the Capitol, Rhodes gathered the Oath Keepers leadership at about 5pm and walked down a few blocks to the Phoenix Park hotel in Washington, the justice department said on Wednesday in a statement of offense against Oath Keepers member William Wilson.
The group then huddled in a private suite, the justice department said, where Rhodes called an unidentified person on speakerphone and pressed the person to get Trump to authorize them to stop the transfer of power after the Capitol attack had failed to do so.
“Wilson heard Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” the document said. “This individual denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly with President Trump.”
All of this is likely why Trump didn’t respond to the attack at all. He didn’t call the FBI. He didn’t call Homeland Security. He didn’t call the Capitol Police. And he didn’t call the Pentagon to call out the National Guard.
As new documentary footage shows — Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer did that despite the claims by MAGAs that she “wanted” the attack to occur and didn’t make such calls to protect the Capitol. The fact is — she did.
She called the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army and the Governors of Virginia and Maryland all in order to the get National Guard deployed.
Trump didn’t respond to the attack other than to say that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what it takes” — which was that he didn’t reject the votes from the contested states. He didn’t implement the John Eastman plan — which was frankly, the Real Insurrection.
In the end, Pence refused to leave the Capitol and then was available to continue the proceedings once the crowd was finally cleared and ultimately validated Joe Biden as President. The plan was foiled.
Eventually, after it was clear that the vote was disrupted and he decided he wasn’t going to call for martial law — three hours after the attack started Trump “gave in” and finally issued a statement asking for the crowd to leave.
What excuse could there be for the 187 minute delay other than — he wanted the attack to happen? He wanted it to keep going until he was satisfied.
When he finally said the words, they left. They walked out of the Capitol on his orders — just as they could have done during the previous 3 hours. Just as they walked into the Capitol under his direction in the first place, even if he did try to hide the ball on that.
He refused to read the statement that had been prepared for him. He said “leave” but he also said “You’re very special” and “we love you.”
He didn’t criticize them for violently attacking the Capitol, he said “Stay Peaceful.”
“STAY Peaceful?”
“Stay!!”
There is no way that Trump didn’t know that these people did not “Stay” peaceful, thousands of them weren’t peaceful at all. This was part of him constructing a narrative, he had said at the ellipse we're going to “peacefully march” but that was bullshit because he already knew there were weapons in the crowd. He already knew how angry they were. His saying “Stay peaceful” here was part of his plot to blame that violence on Antifa, or whoever — which he did during a phone call with Kevin McCarthy — and pretend that his supporters didn’t enter the Capitol and didn't fight with police.
But they did.
Trump supporters were the ones who gave Officer Fanone a concussion, a heart attack and tased him repeatedly. They were the ones who attacked Sgt Gonell and gave him a permanent shoulder injury. They were the ones who caused Officer Sicknick to have a stroke, and several other officers to commit suicide. They were the ones who injured 150 Officers leading to five of them dying, and also four protestors dying during the attack.
This is the final straw, with this statement he made it clear that he was on the same side as the rioters. And they were on his side.
He initiated the rally. He instigated the attack. He picked the time, date and place. He used the people and the MAGA members of Congress as tools in his two-pronged assault on democracy. He didn't care that they were armed and dangerous. He didn't lift a finger to *stop* the attack while it was in progress until he was satisfied that they had stopped the vote and couldn't accomplish anything more.
He said “Peacefully” just to cover his ass and set up the narrative that the violence was from someone else.
But then if it really was Antifa, why is it that he’s since offered to pardon and offer a governmental apology to the rioters if he gets re-elected. Why would he do that for the “Violent Leftists?”
And he’s not just offering this pardon to the people who were actually “peaceful” and stood outside the Capitol. [Even though just being past the sidewalk and on the Capitol grounds was a crime, since the facility was closed to the public at that time.] He wants to pardon the people who are currently in jail for violent acts, who fought with the police, who vandalized the building and smashed their way inside, who were trying to hunt down and kill Nancy Pelosi, who wanted to “Hang Mike Pence.” This is a reward, and those the people he wants to give it too.
He’s on the side of the worst of the crowd, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the III Percenters, the racists and the domestic terrorists.
And they’re on his side.
This was not a boating accident. None of this happens, not the rally, not the march, not the attack, not the attempt to implement the fake electors, without Trump being behind all of it.
Every step of the way.