“March to the Capitol after,” reads unsent Trump tweet
Perhaps the most damning revelation in Tuesday’s Jan. 6 investigation committee hearing was an unsent Donald Trump tweet drafted days before his Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse. The draft obtained from the National Archives was marked “President has seen.”
“I will be making a Big Speech at 10AM on January 6th at the Ellipse. Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!”
No march had been permitted. Yet the one that happened after Trump’s speech was planned. Trump aides inside the White House knew it might occur. Trump allies outside the White House knew about it in advance.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified in her appearance before the Jan. 6 committee that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told her on Jan. 2, “We’re going to the Capitol. It’s going to be great.” When she related the conversation to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, he said (in her words), “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) presented to the committee information regarding the unsent tweet and emails sent among rally organizers:
Katrina Pearson sent an email to fellow rally organizers. She wrote, “POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the Ellipse and call on everyone to march to the Capitol.” President’s own documents suggest that the President had decided to call on his supporters to go to the Capitol on January 6th but that he chose not to widely announce it until his speech on the Ellipse that morning.
The committee has obtained this draft updated– undated tweet from the National Archives. It includes a stamp stating President has seen.
The draft tweet reads, “I will be making a big speech at 10:00 AM on January 6th at the Ellipse, south of the White House. Please arrive early. Massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the steal.” Although this tweet was never sent, rally organizers were discussing and preparing for the march to the Capitol in the days leading up to January 6th.
This is a January 4th text message from a rally organizer to Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO. The organizer says, “You know this stays between us. We’re having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the Ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol. It cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the National Park Service and all the agencies. But POTUS is going to just call for it, quote, unexpectedly.”
The end of the message indicates that the president’s plan to have his followers march to the Capitol was not being broadly discussed. And then on the morning of January 5th, Ali Alexander, whose firebrand style concerned Katrina Pearson, sent a similar text to a conservative journalist. Mr. Alexander said, “Tomorrow. Ellipse then US Capitol. Trump is supposed to order us to the Capitol at the end of his speech, but we will see.”
For more than a year, Mr. Trump and his defenders have described the violence at the Capitol as a freewheeling peaceful protest gone awry. But the hearing on Tuesday laid out how the former president took a guiding role not only in bringing the mob fueled by his election lies to Washington that day, but also in the plan to direct it up to Capitol Hill, disregarding the advice of his closest aides.
[…]
While it did not draw any direct link between Mr. Trump and the domestic extremists who orchestrated and stood at the forefront of the Capitol attack, the committee set forth in meticulous detail how Mr. Trump’s words and actions united a disparate set of far-right groups and militias and spurred them to plot a violent effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
Power was eventually transferred, albeit for the first time in U.S. history not peacefully.
The committee may not have drawn a direct link Tuesday between Trump and the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who led the riot, but the way the committee has orchestrated its presentations suggests members know more than they are letting on. There is more to know about what happened among Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and others in the Willard Hotel “war rooms” before Jan. 6, and what is in their communications with the Oath Keepers and the White House.
Committee members likely have testimony and documentation in reserve for the “big reveal” in their final hearing. Sources say the next will be in prime time on July 21. Committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) would say only it would be “the last one — at this point.”
Cipollone believed if that if the rally moved to the Capitol, “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”
I can imagine quite a lot. Can Attorney General Merrick Garland?
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