The Oat Squeezers were more than First Amendment Praetorians, they were going medieval with a lengthy siege to ensure the coup would succeed. It does explain why the riot turned into an insurrection and no fires were set. With previous guy in power and a sympathetic core of current and former military and police, they hoped for the best and planned for the worst of overthrowing democracy, complete with zip-ties. It was going to resemble the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation with eventual demands for snacks.
But prosecutors say the Oath Keepers were prepared for a long-haul fight, one that stretched past Jan. 6 to the inauguration. Messages exchanged by Vallejo and others suggested the group cased the Capitol on Jan. 7 and discussed plans to continue working against the transfer of power up through Biden’s inauguration.
But the most salient details in the new memo describe the planning and stockpiling of weapons at the Comfort Inn. Among them, prosecutors say, were “at least three luggage carts’ worth of gun boxes, rifle cases, and suitcases filled with ammunition.”
Oath Keepers planning to violently subvert the 2020 election stockpiled 30 days of supplies and a cache of rifles and ammunition just outside of Washington, D.C., prosecutors alleged in a late-night court filing.
In a memo seeking the pretrial detention of Oath Keeper Ed Vallejo — one of 11 members of the group charged last week with seditious conspiracy to violently prevent Joe Biden from taking office — prosecutors provided new details about the weapons stockpile Oath Keepers had assembled at a Comfort Inn in nearby Arlington, Va.
Three “quick reaction force” teams set up at the hotel, prepared to ferry weapons into Washington to support the effort to prevent Congress from finalizing Biden’s victory. But the cache became “unnecessary,” prosecutors said, because the Oath Keepers at the Capitol — using the force of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the building — were able to get inside without additional support.
www.politico.com/...
Now congressional investigators are examining the role of another right-wing paramilitary group that was involved in a less publicly visible yet still expansive effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in power: the 1st Amendment Praetorian.
Known in shorthand as 1AP, the group spent much of the postelection period working in the shadows with pro-Trump lawyers, activists, business executives and military veterans to undermine public confidence in the election and to bolster Mr. Trump’s hopes of remaining in the White House.
By their own account, members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian helped to funnel data on purported election fraud to lawyers suing to overturn the vote count. They guarded celebrities like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, at “Stop the Steal” rallies, where huge crowds gathered to demand that Mr. Trump remain in office. And they supported an explosive proposal to persuade the president to declare an emergency and seize the country’s voting machines in a bid to stay in power.
None of 1AP’s top operatives have been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot, and it remains unclear how much influence they exerted or how seriously criminal investigators are focused on them. Still, the group had men on the ground outside the building on Jan. 6 and others at the Willard Hotel, near some of Mr. Trump’s chief allies. And in the days leading up to the assault, 1AP’s Twitter account posted messages suggesting that the group knew violence was imminent.
“There may be some young National Guard captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours,” read one message posted by the group on Jan. 4.
Last month, citing some of these concerns, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack issued a subpoena to Robert Patrick Lewis, the leader of 1AP. On the same day, it sent similar requests to Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers.
www.nytimes.com/...