The House select committee investigating the events of January 6 has shifted its focus to former President Trump’s efforts to protest the results of the 2020 election, bringing attention to one Tweet in particular that they claim was the catalyst for the incident.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted Dec. 19, 2020.
The investigators claim that the tweet was the message that led groups of Trump supporters who believed that the election had been stolen from the former president to congregate at the Capitol and enter the building. Jan 6 was the day that Congress met to certify the victory of President Joe Biden.
The committee plans to investigate the events that occurred both before and after the Tweet. The prosecutors seek to prove that Trump acted with the intention of promoting a violent uprising and acted in cooperation with the groups that would eventually enter the Capitol building.
Trump’s tweet cited a report from Peter Navarro, a top aide, which claimed to demonstrate proof of massive voter fraud. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election,” read a preceding tweet from Trump before his call to protest.
“Donald Trump sent out the tweet that would be heard around the world, the first time in American history when a president of the United States called a protest against his own government, in fact, to try to stop the counting of electoral college votes in a presidential election he had lost,” Raskin said Sunday on CBS News’ “Face The Nation.” “People are going to hear the story of that tweet, and then the explosive effect it had in Trump World and specifically among the domestic violent extremist groups, the most dangerous political extremists in the country.”
The primary focus of the hearing will be groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers as well as movements such as QAnon, a movement tied to extreme conspiracy theories.
“We’ll show how some of these right-wing extremist groups who came to D.C. [and] led the attack on the Capitol had ties to Trump associates,” said a select committee aide on Monday.
The committe will also discuss how the tweet from Trump sparked excitement on pro-Trump platforms, such as theDonald.win. Users believed the tweet was a coded call to prepare for violence.
“He can’t exactly openly tell you to revolt. This is the closest he’ll ever get,” one user wrote on theDonald.win.
“I read that as armed,” another user wrote.
“Then bring the guns we shall,” wrote a third.
“’Will Be Wild’ is a hidden message for us to be prepared ….as in armed.” said another.
While some may have taken such messages from Trump’s tweet, it falls to the committee to prove that Trump made the tweet with the intention of inciting violence.
The committee had previously used the testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide under former President Trump, who alleged that the former president had attempted to take the wheel of a moving vehicle and assaulted a Secret Service agent. These claims were later denied by the Secret Service, and Hutchinson’s testimony was largely discarded.
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