New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Before Jan. 6

Mar 29, 2022
New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Before Jan. 6

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The following day, prosecutors say, Mr. Reffitt started to make preparations to journey to Washington and arrive in time for “Armageddon all day” on Jan. 6, he wrote within the Three Percenters group chat. He instructed his compatriots that he deliberate to drive as a result of flying was unimaginable with “all of the battle rattle” he deliberate to deliver — a reference to his weapons and physique armor, prosecutors say.

Some within the group appeared to share his anger. On Dec. 22, one member wrote within the chat, “The one means it is possible for you to to do something in DC is if you happen to get the gang to tug the traitors out.”

Mr. Reffitt responded: “I don’t suppose anybody going to DC has another agenda.”

The Home committee has additionally sharpened its concentrate on how the tweet set off a series response that galvanized Mr. Trump’s supporters to start military-style planning for Jan. 6. As a part of the congressional inquiry, investigators are attempting to determine whether or not there was any coordination past the publish that ties Mr. Trump’s interior circle to the militants and whether or not the teams plotted collectively.

“That tweet may very well be considered as a name to motion,” mentioned Consultant Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “It’s undoubtedly one thing we’re asking questions on by means of our discussions with witnesses. We wish to know whether or not the president’s tweets infected and mobilized people to take motion.”

On the day of the publish, individuals in TheDonald.win, a pro-Trump chat board, started sharing ways and strategies for attacking the Capitol, the committee famous in a report launched on Sunday recommending contempt of Congress prices for Dan Scavino Jr., Mr. Trump’s former deputy chief of employees. In a single thread on the chat board associated to the tweet, the report identified, an nameless poster wrote that Mr. Trump “can’t precisely overtly let you know to revolt. That is the closest he’ll ever get.’’

Legal professionals for the militants have repeatedly mentioned that the teams had been merely appearing defensively in making ready for Jan. 6. They’d real issues, the legal professionals mentioned, that leftist counterprotesters may confront them, as they’d at earlier pro-Trump rallies.

Mr. Trump’s publish got here as his efforts to hold onto energy had been shifting from the courts, the place he had little success, to the streets and to difficult the certification course of that might play out on Jan. 6.

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