Thread by @Satiristas

“In the 20 yrs since the country created fusion centers in response to the attacks of 9/11, Sena couldn’t remember a moment like this. For the first time, from coast to coast, the centers were blinking red. The hour, date & location of concern was the same: 1pm, USCapitol, 1/6.”

https://twitter.com/postroz/status/1454849025795100679

“Alerts were raised by local officials, FBI informants, social media companies, former national security officials, researchers, lawmakers and tipsters, new documents and firsthand accounts show.”

“After months of the president threatening to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, the agency’s senior leaders worried that any public statements by the director might be ‘asking for a desperate president to come after him,’ one person familiar with the discussions said.”

“At one point, Milley suggested locking down the city & revoking permits for protests, and acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller said he feared a bloody ‘Boston Massacre-type’ altercation that could be exploited by extremists to claim they were under attack by the govt.”

“Agency leaders also never moved to put the Secret Service in charge of security planning for an event that would bring together all members of Congress, the vice president & the vice president-elect, a move that could’ve elevated intelligence sharing & security coordination.”

This plot to overturn the election on 1/6 was all planned - and Trump himself even publicly announced the strategy - a month before the election itself:

“Researchers on Trump’s own campaign circulated a 14-page memo refuting many of their [stolen election] theories, including the notion that the company Dominion Voting Systems had ties to Venezuela or antifa, a loosely knit group of far-left activists.”

“Some senior law enforcement officials felt Trump’s demands would eventually abate, & others argued that if push came to shove, Barr himself could end it w/ a public statement.
‘We can stop this whenever we want, but we’d rather not. It’s not our place,’ said a senior official”

“#AliAlexander, the Stop the Steal activist, raised the stakes in a tweet: ‘I am willing to give my life for this fight,’ he wrote. The post was retweeted by the Arizona GOP — which asked its followers whether they, too, were willing to die.”

“Please be in DC, armed, on the 6th,” read an online post highlighted in an FBI memo shared with Capitol Police and local law enforcement. “You might have to kill the palace guards. Are you okay with [that]?” read one comment. Another said: “Drop a handful, the rest will flee.”

“‘Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,’ Trump tweeted on Dec19, sending out the pivotal message that set the congressional certification as the final showdown: ‘Big protest in DC on Jan 6th. Be there, will be wild!’
That exhortation, more than…

…almost any other words or action by Trump after the election, seemed to electrify his most devoted followers in chat groups and websites like TheDonald.win. Some took it as an order.”

“A confidential informant voluntarily sent his FBI contact dozens of exchanges between self-described members of the ThreePercenters. Trump’s tweet, combined w/a video Trump posted titled ‘Fight for Trump’ were ‘literally’ taken as a ,call to arms,’ the informant said.”

“One messages the informant flagged from a MeWe chat group for members of the self-styled militia:
American Patriots III% Recruiting (MeWe chat group)
Jan 6th is the last opportunity we’ll ever have. For a brief moment, we still hold power, we have the opportunity of...

…a disputed election, and a call has gone out from our President. This, here, in two weeks is the fight. This is what all the preparation has been for.”

There was nothing spontaneous about 1/6:

“Where people would meet to travel to DC was being plotted on Discord... Posters were inserting iterations of the word ‘peaceful’ to prevent their comments from being deleted by moderators, the caller said, citing the example, ‘Mitt Romney peacefully gets it first.’”

“By Tuesday morning, Dec 22 – less than 48 hours after the first call was recorded in the FBI’s system — the threat assessment was closed, marked at the top: ‘Does not warrant further investigation at this time.’”

“On extremist chat groups, Brookie, Holt and McCord saw a new tone of desperation take hold. Trump supporters were going further than before — talking about being citizen soldiers who might have to die for their cause.”

“Members of self-styled militias from all over the country were sharing plans for protester convoys to DC. A map was circulated on MeWe showing 3 rally points — code-named Cowboy, Minuteman & Rebel — for the ‘MAGA Cavalry’ that would ride on Jan 5.”

MarkMeadows “was talking out of both sides of his mouth, telling Pence: ‘We’re going to calm everything down. Don’t worry. We’re turning the temp down.’
And then he’d tell Trump: ‘I’m telling Pence he has to do it. It’s gonna be great. Eastman’s right. We’ll get Pence to do it. ”

“Donell Harvin, head of intelligence at DC’s homeland security office, led a team that spotted warnings that extremists planned to descend on the Capitol and disrupt the electoral count.”

“The Jan 6 assignment went to the office’s most junior analyst, who was quickly spooked about what he saw. Almost daily, he brought Harvin disturbing new posts found online.
Extremists from different parts of the country were now coordinating logistics. They were mobilizing…

…an informal army, exchanging tips about how to smuggle weapons into D.C., where to meet, what to wear, he noted.”

“Prominent members of the Proud Boys — the group that Trump had told months earlier to ‘stand back and stand by’ and that had been at the center of violence at the previous two Trump rallies — was soliciting money online for communications equipment and protective gear.”

“Harvin called his boss, Christopher Rodriguez, director of the city’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. The city might not be ready for the ‘unholy alliance’ of extremist groups and masses of Trump supporters about to descend on the city, he said.”

“Rodriguez, who had served as a counterterrorism analyst at the CIA for more than 10 years, wanted a full briefing. They brought in the analyst, went through the data and Rodriguez agreed. The chatter about bringing guns to DC in particular was off the charts.”

“Trump’ supporters were following his lead, bombarding GOP officials in states such as GA, PA & AZ to take action. “It’s pretty apparent you don’t know everything that is going on,” GOP AZ Senate Pres Karen Fann reassured a constituent in an email, adding that the Senate had…

…gone to court to enforce a subpoena on Maricopa County, in part to inspect its voting machines.
‘We have the full support of Trump and Giuliani,’ she added.”

“Ominous messages were posted on Parler, which had recently begun communicating with the FBI after its attorneys had decided some posts were so threatening that they required law enforcement notification.”

“On Jan 1, an amateur historian of architecture who maintains a website on tunnels, including those under the Capitol, filed a report on the FBI’s website about an unusual spike in hits to his site from outside the DC area, including…

…from the domains TheDonald.win, AR15.com & MyMilitia.com. He traced some of the traffic back to posts about Jan. 6.”

“In another batch of messages to the FBI, a bureau informant in the Midwest characterized the talk among members of self-proclaimed militias as heavy on planning to travel to DC, and said the tone had become significantly more ‘anti-law enforcement.’”

“The National Park Service allowed the number of people expected under a permit filed for the rally at the Ellipse to balloon from 5,000 to 30,000.

On Twitter, Trump kept hyping the event.”

“There was so much material now bubbling up about Jan 6 that bureau analysts running the FBI’s online portal where social media companies were reporting suspected criminal behavior had begun using a hashtag to track and organize incoming threats: #CERTUNREST2021. “

“Sena wrote in an email to all 80 fusion centers: ‘A significant number of individuals plan to, or are advocating for others to, travel to Washington, DC to engage in civil unrest and violence.’”

“Over at the Pentagon, officials remained worried about the level of preparedness.
On a Jan 4 call w Cabinet members & top security officials, Milley questioned why protesters were being allowed on Capitol grounds at all, given the threats against Pelosi and McConnell, and…

…noted that extremists had begun boasting on social media that they planned to come armed and attack lawmakers.”

Huh.

“For nine weeks, the coda to Trump’s presidency had blared like a siren song.
His false claims of election fraud had lured followers to act on their worst instincts.
A wave of them had come to Washington, and more were on the way.”