The Morning Dispatch: It Could Have Been So Much Worse

Source: The Dispatch | January 11, 2021 | The Dispatch Staff

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The More We Learn, the Worse It Gets

In the immediate aftermath of last Wednesday’s D.C. riot, it was all many Americans could do to process the brute fact of what had happened: A pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol in a furious effort to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. But in the days since—as we’ve studied the video, reviewed social media postings, and analyzed the background of the assault’s leaders—a clearer picture has started to emerge of an attack that was not just deliberate, but even planned in advance.

Let’s start by (again) dispensing with one viral lie: that the people who stormed the Capitol were Antifa interlopers there to make Trump supporters look bad. Over the weekend, the Associated Press examined the histories of more than 120 people who have been publicly identified as having participated in the attack:

Many of the rioters had taken to social media after the November election to retweet and parrot false claims by Trump that the vote had been stolen in a vast international conspiracy. Several had openly threatened violence against Democrats and Republicans they considered insufficiently loyal to the president. During the riot, some livestreamed and posted photos of themselves at the Capitol. Afterwards, many bragged about what they had done.

As more video footage of the attack itself emerged, it became increasingly plain that many in the crowd had come to the event already prepared for violence. Video of men kitted out in tactical gear moving in tandem up through the crowd on the Capitol steps and into the building itself went viral on social media, as did horrific photos of a man leaping through the Senate chamber with flex cuffs in hand.

Unearthed pre-riot posts from pro-Trump forums like social network Parler and Reddit spinoff TheDonald.win show show similar evidence of hardline Trump supporters trading tips and plans for how to smuggle firearms into D.C., which has very restrictive gun laws. “Those coming armed should meet outside the city and then move en masse,” said one commenter on the latter site in a post documented by investigative journalism site Bellingcat. “Too easy to get picked off moving onesies and twosies.” Another replied: “There is not enough cops in DC to stop what is coming.”

Not all such planning was done in such visible public forums, of course. A number of right-wing paramilitary groups participated in the attack, including at least one chapter of the Proud Boys, whose chairman Enrique Tarrio was arrested as he arrived in D.C. several days before the rally.

This isn’t to say that the riot wasn’t in some respects a spontaneous event. Many of those who traveled to D.C. to gather on the Mall and hear Trump speak—even many of those who stormed past police barriers to climb the Capitol steps—had no intention when they showed up that morning of participating in an attempted armed insurrection against the U.S. government. But the most bloodthirsty elements of the crowd took charge once they arrived at the Capitol, and the mob was happy to follow along.

Another thing that became clear over the weekend was how close things came to being much worse. There was a shockingly short span of time between the locking down of the Senate chamber and the arrival of the rioters in the building. The quick thinking of one officer who lured protesters away from the chamber door may have been all that prevented actual shooting on the floor of the Senate.  

As reporters spent the days following the brawl poring over the photos and footage, law enforcement was doing the same. Dozens of arrests have been made, including some of the people who achieved the most notoriety on social media: Jake Angeli, who breached the Capitol shirtless in red, white, and blue facepaint and a fur-and-horns headdress; Richard Barnett, who was photographed with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and stole mail from her office; and Eric Muncel and Larry Brock, the men photographed with flex cuffs in the Senate chamber.

Federal investigators are looking carefully at the planning of the January 6 march, with a particular focus on who planned the storming of the Capitol. Alt-right activist Ali Alexander claimed in a video posted before the protest that he was working with three House Republicans—Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Mo Brooks—to organize the event. Alexander said he consulted the lawmakers as he “schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting…” Alex Jones, the InfoWars conspiracy theorist who claimed the Sandy Hook shootings were faked and has been publicly praised by President Trump, claimed in a video that the White House asked him three days before the event to lead the march to the Capitol. And sources familiar with the investigation tell The Dispatch that there are indications some of the militia groups involved had plans that included harming lawmakers and harming or capturing Vice President Mike Pence.

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