Committee investigators have already teased a possible connection between former President Trump and the extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, using last month’s public hearing with a former West Wing aide to suggest direct ties between some of the Trump’s closest allies and leaders of several prominent nationalist groups are now accused of masterminding the attack. Heading into the next hearing on Tuesday, committee members are already promising to reveal previously undisclosed information they say will substantiate those ties.
“We’re going to connect the dots, as people know,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the select committee, told MSNBC on Thursday. “This was not just an event that unfolded. It was planned. Who did the planning and who were they associated with? How did it turn out?’
The cast of characters the committee has already implicated in the scheme to overturn the election results resembles a who’s who of Trump’s inner circle.
It includes John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, two of the former president’s legal advisers who set up a “war room” in a Washington hotel on January 5. Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, two allies in the “Stop the Steal” movement who were charged with unrelated crimes but pardoned by Trump. and Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who acted as a liaison between Trump and the other four men, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, a former senior aide to Meadows who testified before the select committee on June 28.
On the periphery were the extremist groups, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who rallied in Washington on January 6 as part of Trump’s bid to reverse his election defeat.
The lines between the two worlds form a complex matrix, and the committee has yet to show direct connections between Trump confidants and the extremist groups that have been at the forefront of violence on Capitol Hill.
But Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional lawyer who sits on the select committee, has promised to look into those associations when he leads the inquiry, along with Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), in hearing. And outside experts who monitor hate groups are eager to see what happens.
“If there was coordination, what form did it take? Who were the conduits of information?’ said Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups of all stripes across the country.
“But we should also recognize that official coordination was not necessary for Trump to influence the actions of groups like the Proud Boys in the months leading up to the riot or during the day itself,” Miller quickly added. “This is a group that has long wanted to act as the foot soldiers of Trumpism, and the Stop the Steal movement and uprising has given them an opportunity to do so.” Some connections between Trump associates and far-right groups were established long before the select committee began a series of public hearings last month.
Both Flynn and Stone, for example, are known to use security details provided by far-right groups, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and 1st Amendment Praetorian, who protected Flynn during an election rally in Washington in mid-December. Stone had rallied with Proud Boys leaders, including President Enrique Tarrio, in a similar protest the same month and was reportedly protected by members of the Oath Keepers at the Capitol on January 6.
While neither Stone nor Flynn were part of the Trump campaign or administration on Jan. 6, the investigation found a direct connection. On. On Jan. 5, Hutchinson told investigators, Trump asked Meadows to contact Stone and Flynn about their plans for the next day, when Congress would convene to certify President Biden’s election victory. He said he was “under the impression” that Meadows spoke to both men, but had no clue what was said.
Meadows refused to speak to investigators, even after being subpoenaed, leading the House to hold him in contempt of Congress.
Hutchinson also testified about the West Wing’s interest in a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotel, a luxury location near the White House, on the evening of January 5. The gathering included Eastman and Giuliani, she said: and Meadows had sought to join them there. Hutchinson told Meadows it was a bad idea, he testified, and Meadows eventually called the meeting. Hutchinson suggested that Giuliani also associated with extremist groups. “I remember hearing the word ‘Oath Keeper’ and hearing the word ‘Proud Boys’ closer to planning the Jan. 6 rally when Mr. Giuliani was going to be there,” Hutchinson said. Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Trump campaign has courted militia groups from the beginning, praising their participation in rallies as they have increasingly become part of security at events. Those messages will become more specific over time, including a message to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in a debate during the 2020 election cycle. “Trump knew that the militia groups liked him, were very supportive of him, and were willing to protect him, and were willing to volunteer to protect him. He knew he could mobilize these groups through tweets and through messages such as “stand back and stand by,” which the Proud Boys [documentarian] at the first hearing they said they tripled their membership,” Kleinfeld said. Both Stone and Flynn spoke with committee investigators only to refer to the Thursday multiple times. The commission has shown little of that filmed testimony beyond a clip of Flynn refusing to answer whether he believes in the peaceful transfer of power. The documentary reviewed by the Washington Post earlier this year shows a member of the Oath Keepers, later charged with conspiracy, in Stone’s suite at the Willard Hotel on the morning of January 6. The video also showed Stone using an encrypted messaging app to talk to Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers, later that month. Both Tarrio and Rhodes have been indicted, along with other members of their respective groups, on felony conspiracy charges for their roles in the Capitol attack. If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison. Lofgren says Steve Bannon likely to be removed from committee Jan. 6 Committee member Jan. 6: Cipollone provided ‘relevant information about what was going on in the White House’ Kleinfeld said that even if there is no evidence of direct contact between Trump and extremists, the former president’s success in mobilizing those groups was a major factor in the violence on Capitol Hill. “It’s not like Trump was calling the Oath Keepers — although Roger Stone might have been,” he said. “It’s that Trump or the Trump campaign orchestrated this response so that it was ready and so that he could pressure Republicans who wouldn’t do his bidding and ultimately pressure the actors who would [were needed] to carry out one or the other part of this plan’. “As all the different dominoes kept falling and his plan wasn’t working,” he added, “this was the last ditch effort for January 6.”