Thread by @SethAbramson

(WILLARD HOTEL WAR ROOM THREAD) Now that Congress has acknowledged the 8 months of reporting at PROOF on Trump's pre-insurrection Willard Hotel "war room," I'm creating a thread with links to every Willard report at PROOF.

Please RETWEET if you think this reporting is important.

(NOTE) Some of these reports are free to the public, some are for subscribers only. A subscription to PROOF is just $5/mo, can be cancelled any time, and gives you access to 180 reports—totaling several hardcover books' worth of content—on the insurrection and other vital topics.

1/ After months of writing about the war council held by Trump's inner circle at Trump International on January 5—reporting that was then covered both domestically and internationally—PROOF turned to the Willard war room over 4 months ago with this report: sethabramson.substack.com/p/major-breaki…

2/ After outlining the basics of the war room, PROOF turned to logistical questions: what was its layout, how many people attended, who was in the hotel during Insurrection Week, were there other Willard war rooms—there were—and so on. That report is here: sethabramson.substack.com/p/inside-the-w…

3/ Using photos stupidly posted online by insurrectionist Robert Hyde—a well-connected far-right dirty trickster I first wrote about in 2020 bestseller Proof of Corruption (Macmillan)—PROOF then began crowd-sourcing IDs on additional war room participants. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

4/ The discovery that domestic extremist Joe Oltmann was a war room participant led to a lawsuit threat from Oltmann and false claims about whether he'd called Giuliani's Willard suite a "war room." More research revealed OANN-DHS-Trump campaign collusion. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

5/ It soon became impossible to talk about Giuliani's war room at the Willard Hotel without also talking about Stone's war room there—an easy walk from Giuliani's.

It became impossible because Stone, who can never shut his mouth, started talking about it. sethabramson.substack.com/p/roger-stone-…

6/ PROOF next turned to the most obvious and pressing question about all of the pre-insurrection pro-Trump war rooms at the Willard Hotel—there were three—which is this: what were they for? PROOF began answering the question as to Giuliani's war room here: sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

7/ Of course, the question wasn't just why the Willard war room participants gathered in the war room, but what communications they were sending *out* of that room to help coordinate the January 6 insurrection. The answers to that question were harrowing. sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-troublin…

8/ PROOF then—and this is still in June 2021, when no one was discussing the Willard—wrote up an overview of *every* Trumpist war room convened across D.C. on January 4, January 5, and January 6 so that Americans could see the full picture of the plotting. sethabramson.substack.com/p/exclusive-a-…

9/ Certain of the incidents at the Willard that PROOF reported on in June 2021 continue to go unreported elsewhere—for instance, a highly coordinated arson at the Willard on Insurrection Eve that helped set off a planned riot at BLM Plaza 30 minutes later. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

10/ PROOF then returned (we're now at almost exactly four months ago, in late June) to the pressing question of what Rudy Giuliani and his team were doing inside the Willard Hotel "war room." And the level of seditious premeditation uncovered was stunning. sethabramson.substack.com/p/major-breaki…

11/ A major break in PROOF's exclusive reporting on the Willard came on the last day of June 2021, with the crowd-sourced revelation of who the mysterious "man in the white shirt" was in Robert Hyde's photos. It turned out he's a domestic extremist leader. sethabramson.substack.com/p/major-breaki…

(INTERLUDE)

1⃣ Members of Congress read this research as it was published.
2⃣ Many have now stolen this research to claim it as their own.
3⃣ When Woodward published PERIL in late September, media falsely declared him the first to write about the Willard.
sethabramson.substack.com/p/proof-some-n…

12/ In early July 2021, PROOF—having written about the Willard Hotel for well over a month—turned to the question of coordination *between* Willard war rooms, taking a deep dive into Roger Stone's war room, its occupants, its purpose, and its dissolution. sethabramson.substack.com/p/roger-stone-…

13/ Just as PROOF's exclusive "Insurrection Eve Willard arson" report had shown that events outside the Willard implicated Stone, PROOF discovered that the video of Stone's return to the hotel on Insurrection Eve contained a shocking, unreported discovery. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

14/ While most of what Giuliani was doing in the Willard war room involved insurrection, *some* of it involved implausible legal maneuvers that dovetailed with what paramilitaries aimed to accomplish on Insurrection Day. PROOF began reporting on that here: sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

15/ PROOF continued reporting on how the "Gohmert suit" was seen as an ultimate Hail Mary for the Trump presidency by the ragtag Trump legal team that gathered at the Willard Hotel during Insurrection Week—and how the suit required violence at the Capitol. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

16/ Having written extensively on Willard Hotel war room participants Giuliani, Luelsdorff, Oltmann, Bobb, and others, PROOF turned its attention to the man who called himself "Trump's lawyer," and who was in the Oval with Trump on January 4: John Eastman. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

17/ When Woodward's extremely tardy reporting on the Willard war room came out in late September—falsely hailed by media as the first revelation of such a room—PROOF quickly curated it into the (by then) massive stock of reporting it'd done on the subject. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

(INTERLUDE 2) And now for a twist! I said PROOF began reporting on Trump's "war room" in early June, but of course PROOF subscribers know this isn't true—as PROOF began reporting on pre-insurrection war rooms just 20 days after January 6, with this report: sethabramson.substack.com/p/january-5-me…

18/ PROOF's reporting on the Trump International Hotel "war council"—which covers too many reports (more than a dozen) for me to include here (you can find them at PROOF, many for free)—quickly turned to the *Willard Hotel*. This was still in January 2021. sethabramson.substack.com/p/what-michael…

19/ Not only did PROOF first publish the photographs Robert Hyde posted on Instagram of Giuliani's Willard war room in late January 2021—8 months before PERIL was released—it also began focusing on a war room in the Willard no one discusses: InfoWars'. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-mic…

20/ As soon as PROOF began writing on the Willard, Roger Stone threatened to sue me. Then Michael Flynn threatened to sue me. Then Joe Oltmann threatened to sue me. All these were public threats.

By looking at Alex Jones, I was getting closer to *them*. sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-five-mus…

21/ Most folks don't realize that the highest-traffic, most "celebrity"-laden war room at the Willard Hotel on January 5 wasn't Giuliani's—it was Alex Jones's. Roger Stone was there. Michael Flynn was there. Patrick Byrne—who's contacted me also—was there. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

22/ Indeed, Stone and Jones *couldn't stop talking publicly* about the Willard—so PROOF kept reporting what they said about their activities there.

All this reporting happened back in March 2021, more than half a year before Woodward wrote on the Willard. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

23/ It turned out that Alex Jones was—and is—central to everything. We know Trump spoke to Giuliani and Bannon pre-insurrection, but PROOF was able to report over and over again about Trump's contacts with Jones, the January 6 march's "leader", pre-attack. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

24/ In the midst of all this spring 2021 reporting at PROOF on the pro-Trump war rooms at Trump International and the Willard—and for that matter, other locations discussed in detail at PROOF—PROOF wrote a comprehensive overview of Trump's January 6 plan: sethabramson.substack.com/p/here-is-the-…

25/ I hope that—via this relatively brief thread—I've given you a quick primer on just a *few* of the 180 articles at PROOF, most of which are detailed investigative reports on the insurrection just like these (some of them even more important than these). sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

(PS) If you found the information in this thread helpful, I hope you'll support my further research on the insurrection by subscribing to PROOF ($5/month). PROOF is the #1-ranked culture substack in the United States and is doing work major media will not. sethabramson.substack.com