J6 Committee: Hearing 7 Recap
The Armies
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On 12/18, a team of advisors that included Mike Flynn and Sydney Powell paid Trump a visit at the White House. They had lots of theories, but no evidence of fraud. Trump had previously asked Barr to seize the voting machines but Barr said there was no evidence for such a seizure. These clowns brought a draft Executive Order proposing the seizure of election machines by the Dept of Defense and a proposal to make Powell a Special Counsel to investigate the fake fraud. The Committee interviewed SIX participants of the meeting, plus staff who overheard it. There was screaming, yelling, insults, and the meeting almost became violent as White House staff tried to persuade Trump not to listen to these crazy ideas. One such idea was that Nest brand thermostats hooked up to the internet were changing votes. Cassidy Hutchinson texted that night, “the west wing is UNHINGED”. I’ll say.
On 12/19, running out of options, Trump sent the tweet telling his followers to come to DC on January 6th because it “will be wild”.
This tweet set off a chain reaction. First, the right’s media ecosystem of people like Alex Jones, countless You Tubers, QAnon adherents, and notoriously gross social media personalities told their followers to show up and take action and the language was immediately violent.
Examples (and apologies that these are disgusting):
- Calls for a “red wedding”, which means mass slaughter,
- “‘will be wild’ means we need volunteers for the firing squad”
- “White revolution is the only solution”
- “why don’t we kill them, every last democrat”
- “I’m ready to die for my beliefs, are you ready to die police?”
- “Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels”
- “Join your local Proud Boys chapter”
Just hours later, Trump’s tweet united extremist groups. According to Homeland Security testimony, the groups were organizing to come to DC and they were working together, ALIGNING. The head of Oath Keepers announced via Facebook that they aligned with Proud Boys to “shut this shit down”.
The leader of the Proud Boys launched an encrypted chat group that they would use to mobilize through…