TPM connects some dots between the sedition and Trump organizing:
The night before a Trump-inspired mob attacked the Capitol, the assembled masses at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. chanted the name of the leader of a right-wing street gang.
“Enrique!” the crowd chanted, referring to Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys.
Tarrio had been arrested the day prior — on suspicion of burning a historically Black church’s Black Lives Matter banner during the previous pro-Trump protest in D.C. — but the event’s main organizer, Cindy Chafian, argued that he and his violent group were heroes, referring to them as “the ones who protect us.”
“Enrique, if you’re hearing us right now, know that we have you,” Chafian told the crowd after leading the chant, lamenting that Tarrio’s arrest had prevented him from speaking at the event. The same night, Roger Stone used members of the Oath Keepers militia group as private security.
As Tierney Sneed and I showed in a lengthy report yesterday, Trump spent months cultivating the mob that attacked the Capitol. Put another way, as the investigative website Bellingcat keenly observed on Jan. 5, “the Insurgent and MAGA Right are Being Welded Together on the Streets of Washington D.C.”
Chafian’s speech that night represents one of the many ties between the popular pro-Trump events leading up to the Capitol attack and the violent far-right groups that, prosecutors allege, made up some of the violent actors that attacked the Capitol. (A compelling Wall Street Journal visual investigation out today shows the Proud Boys’ involvement in detail.)
Chaffian is the founder of the Eighty Percent Coalition, an offshoot group of one of the primary organizers of the Jan. 6 events, Women for America First. Trump himself thanked that group’s chairwoman, Amy Kemer, in the speech he gave before the mob stormed the Capitol.
“I want to thank that Amy and everybody,” Trump said. “We have some incredible supporters, but we didn’t do anything, this just happened!”
Another key bridge to the far-right fringe is Ali Alexander, the leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement, who coordinated rallies in several states around the country after Election Day. Alexander was a central player in the three pro-Trump rallies held in D.C. after the election, one each in November, December and January. One of Alexander’s Georgia events is pictured above, where he, on the left, stands alongside the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Alexander has networked in far-right circles for years. A few years ago, for example, he appeared on a web talk show that featured an alt-right personality’s swastika flag. When a hotel popular with Proud Boys decided to close on Jan. 4-6, during the riotous pro-Trump event, Alexander said it would be “karma” if “something bad happens” to the hotel.
After the attack, Alexander dipped from the public eye somewhat only to reemerge on Gab, a social media network popular with the far-right. He posted: “Illegal Invaders should be shot” and “Toss commies out of helicopters.”
Alexander also spoke at the Jan. 5 rally, and he was scheduled to hold an event the following day as well — at 1 pm at the Capitol building.
“We the People must take to the US Capitol lawn and steps and tell Congress #DoNotCertify on #JAN6!” a website for the so-called “Wild Protest” advertised.
The point here isn’t that the movement attracted fringe figures, because of course it did. Rather, those figures were leading the movement, scheduling its events and working (at least in Amy Kremer’s case) to coordinate the President’s speaking time.
As BuzzFeed News reported, Trump promoted Women for Trump’s bus tour in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack, and the tour featured the type of violent rhetoric that would later bear fruit.
One prominent organizer and speaker on the tour was Dustin Stockton, a former Breitbart writer. Before his 2020 election-related work, Stockton worked for We Build The Wall, the GoFundMe-powered border wall effort, where he was chummy with an armed militia group that patrolled the border and detained undocumented people.
In city after city, Stockton worked up crowds with talk about firearms and instructions to “study tactics.”
“I’m so angry, I’m in like pitchforks mode today, I really am,” he told an Ohio rally in December. “Let’s grab the pitchforks, let’s go to D.C., and let’s stay there until this crap is changed and we’re Americans again.”
On Jan. 4, after landing in D.C. and preparing for a speech he’d give the next day to Chafian’s rally, Stockton posed for a picture with a pitchfork-wielding woman at the airport. “Do you believe in signs?” he tweeted.
By the way, Amy Kremer was a major Tea Party organizer:
Amy Kremer is an American political activist associated with the Tea Party movement. She became involved in the movement in 2009 and campaigned as part of the Tea Party Express until 2014. During the 2016 presidential election she was a co-founder of two political action committees supporting Donald Trump‘s campaign. In 2017 she unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district.
They are all the same people.