Thread by @SethAbramson

(🆚) BREAKING NEWS: The revelation, at PROOF, of the seventh participant in Trump's January 6 Willard Hotel "war room" has led to the discovery of a strange-but-critical narrative that will change how you see January 6. Please share widely; more in thread. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

1/ This is the longest article ever published at PROOF; it'll probably forever be the longest article published at PROOF. It's the most complex article ever published at PROOF; it'll probably forever be the most complex article published at PROOF. You won't see where it's going.

2/ That last part is important: I need to promise you, in advance, that you do *not* know where this article is headed until you get to its fulcrum point—you'll know the one—which comes after you've already done a *lot* of reading. You'll say "WTF???" out loud, almost guaranteed.

3/ But I also want to emphasize how carefully sourced this article was, and how long I spent on it, and how many sources it uses, and how many hours of video-watching led to it, and how many tips I followed up on to confirm it, and how careful I am about what we know and don't.

4/ The article is well over 11,000 words—and they're dense, hyperlinked, sometimes semantically tricky words—so I admit that it'll take a lot of dedication to get to the end and join the conversation that I hope will happen both here and at PROOF. Because frankly I want feedback.

5/ The article addresses very quickly who the seventh person we now know was in the Willard Hotel "war room" is, as—while the revelation may well end up leading to *significant* future investigations—for the moment it is somewhat beside the point of the lengthy story told here.

6/ What the discovery of "Person #7" did was lead to an actually far more important revelation: that Team Trump opened up its high-end "war rooms" (there were as many as five active on January 6) *prior* to January 6, not merely on the day or in response to the events of the day.

7/ What this means is that Trump had comms, legal, and lobbying teams that already had an idea—likely as an outgrowth of the White House meetings on December 18 and December 21, and the Stone-Trump Mar-a-Lago "summit" in late December—of what was being asked of them individually.

8/ As PROOF long ago detailed in a free essay, Team Trump's plan for January 6—based on the evidence—wasn't specifically focused on violence. It was ambivalent on violence. What it *required* was that the Capitol be occupied and the certification delayed. sethabramson.substack.com/p/here-is-the-…

9/ Major-media sources *confirm* that everyone in Trump's inner circle—specifically Trump—believed and wanted antifa to show up at the Capitol and engage in acts of violence. The ensuring violence, chaos, and destruction would *maximize* Trump's options for a certification delay.

10/ Team Trump was actually up front about this: (1) they wanted a 10-day delay in the certification; (2) they thought those days might expand to more, but it was OK because—they falsely said—the inauguration could also be postponed; (3) they didn't care how the delay came about.

11/ This is why Trump was gleeful on January 3 in telling the Pentagon it'd need "10,000" troops. This is why Trump watched the attack on the Capitol from the White House like it was the Super Bowl. This explains the content of the Ellipse speeches and Rudy's calls to Congress.

12/ But here's what everyone forgets now: while both the White House *and* its many paramilitary allies—the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the QAnoners, the 8kuners, et. al.—*wanted* antifa and/or (less likely) BLM to show up, they *knew* that they might not.

13/ It's not just Seth Abramson saying, "There had to be a Plan B!" There *was* a Plan B. It was announced publicly.

I'm serious.

A man the Washington Post has described as Roger Stone's "aide" *publicly* announced what Plan B was to win on January 6. A stupid but simple plan.

14/ The plan was to have the Proud Boys—who were to lead the attack, and per WSJ/DOJ *did* lead the attack on 1/6—dress as antifa.

I know, I know—stupid and juvenile. But then, so was the Trump crowd on 1/6. It would (and did) take *nothing* for them to see antifa *everywhere*.

15/ We all know—everyone knows—that the defense Team Trump and literally every organ and sub-organ and peon inside the GOP uses to exculpate itself for 1/6 is that "antifa and BLM did it." But we've all assumed that this was an *after-the-fact* PR maneuver. A reaction to failure.

16/ That theory never made sense, of course. If the plot to pin everything on antifa was cooked up publicly by a highly influential Roger Stone aide pre-insurrection, and then that line was used by Trump's team post-insurrection, why do we assume there's no line between A and B?

17/ This article—at well over 11,000 words—is the line between "A" and "B."

18/ The evidence suggests the comms team at the Willard was well aware of the "blame antifa" plan—*before* the insurrection.

And there's evidence that it's not a coincidence that Roger Stone's aide—Stone, who was in a hotel room steps from the comms team on 1/6—hatched the plan.

19/ PROOF has written at length about the lies Stone has told about his stay at the Willard—and the sort of data those lies were focused on protecting (the article below is "🆚"). I've made no secret of trying to find out if Stone entered the comms center. sethabramson.substack.com/p/roger-stone-…

20/ Do I believe Stone was in the—variously described as—a "comms" center, "command center," or "war room" at the Willard on 1/5 and 1/6? Yes. Has it been proven yet? No—but we're getting very close. There's already overwhelming circumstantial evidence. And here's why it matters:

21/ If a top Stone aide pre-fabricated the story that Team Trump knew it could use to a) get a 10-day delay, or b) use to justify martial law or a half-measure, or c) exculpate itself if 1/6 failed, and if Stone was in the comms center at the Willard, it's a historic conspiracy.

22/ Did a Stone aide fabricate the "antifa did it" plan? Yes. Was the plan executed? Yes. The Proud Boy comms director confirmed it. Are the Proud Boys linked to the story Rudy ran with immediately after seeing 1/6 failed? Yes—I prove it. Was Stone steps away at the Willard? Yes.

23/ But the reason I say this article is a particular challenge to readers—and was certainly the most difficult article to structure, of the 150+ I've published at PROOF—is because the story of how "A" gets to "B" is the wildest true story I think I've ever read in U.S. politics.

24/ It's the wildest because it doesn't feature pols as main characters. It involves two brothers locked in a Count of Monte Cristo-level battle with one another, and an ingenious plot by one to destroy the other and *in the bargain* become a national hero and save a president.

25/ Those of you who've already read about the brothers may think you know what's in the article, as some of the story has been told across scattered major-media reports. This article doesn't just curate these reports—it draws on evidence that just emerged and changes everything.

(PS) I have to respect my work and the commitment of PROOF's subscribers, so I won't say more here, but this gives you a very good and detailed sense of where the PROOF investigation is going—including the next report (the fourth big one this week) which is coming in 24-48 hours.

(PS2) I want to say how appreciative I am of the response to this. Of all the PROOF articles I've written, I think this is the one I worked the hardest on—and as you know, I work hard on all of them. My head kinda disappeared for three days, writing this. I'm so glad it's valued.