Thread by @DrDenaGrayson

‼️ Donovan Crowl—a 50 yo former @USMC who served as a helicopter mechanic—was among the uniformed #seditionists. While storming the Capitol, he wore a combat helmet, ballistic goggles, and a tactical vest with a handheld radio.

ARREST HIM NOW.🤬
#sedition
newyorker.com/news/news-desk…

A patch on Crowl’s sleeve identified him as a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government group identified as one of the largest and most dangerous extremist groups in the country that's been involved in several armed standoffs with law enforcement in recent years.🤬

Mary McCord, a former acting assistant AG for national security in DOJ, said that while “these types of modern unlawful militias have been around for decades, ever since Ruby Ridge and Waco,” Trump’s incitement had encouraged their #insurrection.🤬

#TrumpInsurrection #sedition

McCord: “All his false statements about the election being stolen, that he won in a landslide, that ballot boxes were being stuffed & dead people were voting en masse—those were all predicates to setting the stage for these groups to ‘fight like hell,’ as he said that morning.”🤬

During the Obama era, family members and friend say Crowl expressed fury at @BarackObama, along with wider animosity toward Blacks. His mother, Teresa Joann Rowe, recalled Crowl saying “The only good Black person is a dead Black person”—though she said he used a racial epithet.🤬

Crowl's mom had become estranged from her son owing to his views & had not been aware of his involvement in the attack on the Capitol until she saw photos. “I would have called the Ohio state police if I had known he was going to that place. I’m sitting here sick to my stomach.”

During the Trump Administration, Crowl began to express increasing ardor for Trump and to embrace conspiracy theories. “It’s stuff he heard from that psychopath Alex Jones and those echo chambers on the Internet,” per his sister Denissa Crowl, who is also a nurse like her mom.

Crowl's sister Denissa Crowl, said that such far-right radicalization was a familiar phenomenon in Crowl’s rural Ohio community. “That’s like ground zero. I fear him. He’s very skilled in firearms. He was an expert sharpshooter.”😳

#TrumpInsurrection #GOPSeditionists

Crowl made vague threats to interviewer @RonanFarrow, saying: “I already know where you live.”

He repeatedly denied being a #racist, but said he believed in phrenology, the discredited pseudoscience that infers intellectual ability from skull shape.🙄

#RacistGOP #GOPSedition

😱Crowl's sister and mother said that they were helping to identify him because they nevertheless worried about the threat posed by armed militias like his.

Denissa: “I don’t want him to come after me. But I’d rather he come after me than a bunch of people at the #Inauguration.”