Evidence Of Trump Guilt Revealed At Jan. 6 Committee

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At its public hearing planned for Tuesday, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot and surrounding circumstances will focus upon a Twitter post made by then-President Donald Trump early on December 19, 2020, a new report in The Guardian explains. The committee will connect this Twitter post to extremist groups’ actions.

The groups in question include the violent organizations known as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. The panel “is expected to make the case at its seventh hearing Tuesday that Donald Trump gave the signal to the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol to target and obstruct the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college win,” as summarized in The Guardian. In the actual Twitter post, which Trump shared shortly after a lengthy meeting at the White House involving extremist allies of his including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn, he wrote: “Be there, will be wild!” in reference to planned January 6 demonstrations in D.C.

According to The Guardian’s reporting, the committee plans to pin quite direct responsibility on Trump. According to the panel’s planned characterization, Trump’s December 19 remarks on Twitter constituted “the catalyst that triggered” action by extremists (including those involved with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers) to target the certification in Congress of the 2020 presidential election outcome, as The Guardian summarizes it. The panel also plans to pin knowledge of the potential ramifications of his Twitter post on Trump. “Trump sent the tweet knowing that for those groups, it amounted to a confirmation that they should put into motion their plans for January 6, the select committee will say,” according to The Guardian.

There’s also going to be a quick turnaround on getting clips from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s recent hours-long testimony out to the public. Committee investigators are planning to share clips on Tuesday afternoon. Those with knowledge of the testimony have characterized Cipollone as relatively, even if not entirely, forthcoming. There’s also been no apparent indication he contradicted other witnesses, including former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, whose prominent public testimony featured at the committee’s most recent public hearing prior to Tuesday. The Tuesday hearing is slated to feature the live testimony of Jason van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers who left the group in 2017 but is obviously well-positioned to explain some of their internal operations.

Trump’s post to Twitter on December 19 provided a substantial boost to organizing efforts surrounding January 6. Eventually, “WildProtest.com” even went up in association with planned demonstrations, obviously referencing the then-president’s language. It was also shortly after Trump’s post that a special chapter was formed inside the Proud Boys called the “Ministry of Self Defense.” Participants went on to be charged with seditious conspiracy in connection to their roles in what happened at the Capitol.

Separately, it was after Trump’s December 19 post that leaders in the “Stop the Steal” protest movement applied for a permit to hold a protest at a particular location near the Capitol. Although violence wasn’t a publicly planned component of some of the more high-profile rallies, demonstrations across D.C. in the lead-up to the Capitol breach helped provide the springboard for it. Meanwhile, the Tuesday hearing will also deal with Trump’s speech at the large rally where he spoke in D.C. preceding the breach. There’s only one hearing planned for this week.