Thread by @SethAbramson

(🧵) LIVE THREAD: I’m live-tweeting the House January 6 Committee primetime hearing from 1PM ET on. I’m an attorney, journalist and historian who has been contacted by the Committee and whose J6-focused substack, PROOF, the Committee has cited. I hope you will RETWEET and follow.

1/ At times I may make reference in this thread to evidence previously published in the 200+ reports on January 6 that appear at PROOF (link below). About half of these reports are free at PROOF, while the other half are for subscribers ($5/month). sethabramson.substack.com

2/ This live thread is of course free. If, as you follow along, you feel moved to use the tip jar in my bio (see the image below for its location) I appreciate it, even as I add that it is—as ever—100% optional. You can also donate by PayPal by going here: sethabramson.net/pp

3/ PROOF also now offers an expansive House January 6 Committee archive for subscribers (🔐). It includes all PROOF HJ6C live threads—hundreds and hundreds of tweets in total—and all House January 6 Committee hearing videos in full. You can find it here. sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-house-ja…

4/ Today’s hearing marks more than just a shift from June to July, from the House January 6 Committee’s first 6 hearings to their next 2 to 10 more. It marks a shift from a bifurcated (dual) narrative track—one focusing on paramilitaries, one on plotters—to a “nexus” paradigm.

5/ Whereas the first hearing focused on the movements of the Proud Boys, and the next 5 on the actions of Trump and his agents, this seventh hearing begins drawing the line between paramilitaries on the one hand (not just the Proud Boys but the Oath Keepers and others) and Trump.

6/ This is, in fact, the *biggest* piece of the January 6 narrative pie—it dwarfs everything else in size, scope and complexity. I realize that seems hard to believe—as the first 6 HJ6C hearings have been perhaps the most historic and startling congressional hearings in history.

7/ On a personal note, I’ll say that the hearings have finally reached the topics PROOF has published 200+ articles on since January 14, 2021. I am extremely humbled by the fact that Congress has cited PROOF, reads PROOF, and has reached out to me about my 18 months of research.

8/ Whereas the NYT Visual Investigations Unit has worked with excellent indie researcher partners to catalogue the movements of every on-the-ground, recorded January 6 insurrectionist, PROOF has focused on what we might think of as the insurrectionist “middle men” (and women).

9/ Trump’s inner circle isn’t particularly sophisticated, but it takes little intelligence to know you don’t deal with your soldiers—if you’re plotting a coup—directly. You have people, entities, and organizations that act as go-betweens. And that’s what happened pre-January 6.

10/ This hearing starts the narrative’s movement toward some of those people, entities, and organizations, so you will be hearing certain names for the first time (and others simply for the first time in these hearings). But there’s another key difference for us to consider here.

11/ We are now, increasingly, going to be talking about people who (a) had direct contact with Trump and/or his family, (b) who are not in government, and (c) who have already (at a minimum) acknowledged they *may* have committed crimes by pleading the Fifth Amendment repeatedly.

12/ Roger Stone says he did nothing wrong—but refuses to answer questions on the grounds that his answers *to almost any January 6 query* may tend to incriminate him. As we’re not in a courtroom, we’re free to draw our own inferences from his invocations of the Fifth Amendment.

13/ Just so, Michael Flynn has repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment. I mention Flynn and Stone first in part because, on Insurrection Eve, hours before the attack on the Capitol, Trump asked his chief of staff Mark Meadows to call *these two men* to check in about the next day.

14/ But the number of people pleading the Fifth Amendment before Congress or fighting their subpoenas is much longer than this. For instance two Flynn bodyguards—Robert Patrick Lewis and Philip Luelsdorf of 1st Amendment Praetorians (1AP)—have also said they will plead the Fifth.

15/ Lewis and Luelsdorf worked security post-election—up to January 6—for Flynn, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Ali Alexander, and Patrick Byrne. Lewis drove Flynn, Powell, and Byrne to the White House on December 18, 2020 for a coup-plotting meeting I will discuss more in a moment.

16/ Lewis also conferred several times (he called it “war-gaming”) with Trump lawyer John Eastman and others tied to Trump’s legal team; as you know, Eastman pleaded the Fifth Amendment 100+ times under questioning. Lewis also spoke to Stewart Rhodes before and after January 6.

17/ Rhodes—leader of the Oath Keepers—is charged with Seditious Conspiracy along with about a dozen other Oath Keepers. Just so, about a dozen Proud Boys are charged with Seditious Conspiracy. Why do I mention them now? Because like 1AP, they acted as far-right security details.

18/ Just as 1AP leaders—now pleading the Fifth—protected Flynn, Alexander, Powell, and Byrne as the latter plotted a coup, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys protected Stone, the Proud Boys protected Ali Alexander, and both groups repeatedly dealt with Stop the Steal’s Alex Jones.

19/ So as you are already seeing, the middle-man class had several layers—as many as three. There were people Trump’s inner circle would deal with directly, like Alexander and Jones and Stone and Flynn; lieutenants who dealt with those four; and on-site commanders like Rhodes.

20/ To be sure, there was a great deal of discourse between these layers; heck, Stewart Rhodes used to *work for* Alex Jones, and was friends with Proud Boy leadership, and certainly Ali Alexander knew many of the top people at the Proud Boys. But the important thing to know...

21/ ...is that the class of people we’re talking about now is incredibly diverse and includes lawyers (e.g., Powell), advisers (Byrne), pseudo-media (Jones), bodyguards (Lewis), would-be coup leaders/inciters (Flynn), paramilitary men (Rhodes), and others. Maybe 50 people in all.

22/ Interestingly, the *live* witnesses we hear from today were not part of the middle-man class. Jason van Tatenhove is a former Oath Keeper spokesman who’ll simply outline what that group is for America (as the Proud Boys, but not the Oath Keepers, were introduced previously).

23/ Meanwhile, Stephen Ayres was arrested for his actions at the Capitol on January 6—so he’s a mere foot-soldier (but the first to testify live). In a certain sense, that’s a risk for the HJ6C. He’ll talk about how Trump’s tweets inspired his conduct. nbcnews.com/politics/congr…

24/ We are also expecting to see a number of clips from former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s recent deposition. Cipollone isn’t an insurrectionist at *all*—though he defended Trump at one of his impeachments, he consistently tried to stop Trump from executing his coup plot.

25/ All of this sets a sort of paradoxical theme for today’s hearing: while it’s focusing on nexuses between Trump’s circle and extremists, it *also* is going to be jumping around in time a lot—from December 18, 2020 to January 6, 2021—and using many different types of witnesses.

26/ Understand that part of the heterogeneous nature of this hearing comes from what I said atop of this thread: this part of the January 6 narrative is *huge* and *complex* and *unwieldy* and *littered* with major actors. I’ve written the equivalent of three books on it already.

27/ Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) will be handling the questioning—and says he’s already rewritten his remarks and questions 5 times. This underscores both the stakes here *and* how hard it is to do hearings on *this* time-/subnarrative-spanning part of the vast January 6 narrative.

28/ The easiest thing to do is what federal criminal investigators—and I briefly was one—always do: build a timeline via key events and associations between people. Needless to say, I can’t summarize all the key events in the subject area the HJ6C is focused on now. Nor can they.

29/ We still don’t know how deep down the well they’ll go. Stone’s visit to Mar-a-Lago in late December? Maybe. Stone recording a video raising funds for the Proud Boys’ and Oath Keepers’ war gear? I sure hope so. Ali Alexander and Alex Jones at the Georgia State Capitol? Maybe.

30/ But one event we *know* will be focused on today is the craziest White House meeting of the Trump administration—and possibly the craziest White House meeting that did not occur during a national civil war. It happened on December 18, 2020, and is almost impossible to fathom

31/ Briefly: within Trump’s legal team there’s a divide between Rudy Giuliani and his people and Powell and her people. The latter are more radical than Giuliani. They want martial law, seized voting machines, insist the 2020 election was stolen by a 9-nation transnational cabal.

32/ Powell’s team is commonly called Team Kraken, but today they may be called Team Crazy because one Trump aide called them that. The team includes: Powell, Flynn, Byrne, Michael Lindell, Peter Navarro, Peter Navarro aide Garrett Ziegler, and several others. These are whackjobs.

33/ Team Kraken/Crazy used 1AP as its security (Lewis and Luelsdorf and other 1APers) and of course had many dealings with both Giuliani (as normal as Team Crazy got; you should view Team Kraken almost as a subset of Team Crazy) and Eastman, who—as it were—tended to lean Kraken.

34/ As soon as Biden’s win was state-certified by 50 states and DC on December 14, 2020, many Trump coup plots sprung (e.g. the DOJ plot a whole HJ6C hearing covered). Team Kraken pushed Rudy to come to its side and he wouldn’t—he wanted to fight in the courts almost exclusively.

35/ Mark Meadows had banned Team Kraken from the White House; they weren’t allowed to see Trump. But after Trump adviser Peter Navarro released a post-election "report" ("The Immaculate Deception") on December 17, his fellows on Team Kraken sprang into action in the weirdest way.

36/ Navarro aide Ziegler let Team Kraken (Powell, Flynn, Byrne) into the White House, which they’d been driven to by 1AP (Lewis). Through what Byrne has since described—in a video confession PROOF exclusively reported on—as a covert op, they slowly made their way toward the Oval.

37/ MID-THREAD BREAKING NEWS: The House January Committee will privately interview Patrick Byrne on Friday, per MSNBC.

38/ Once at the Oval, Team Kraken had Trump’s ear for 30 minutes. Then Cipollone and the lawyers came in, and things got *heated*. Team Kraken was advocating for an end to American democracy, and Cipollone was trying to keep the nation together. It was that intense and historic.

39/ After the lawyers left, the Team Kraken-Trump conference moved to the Presidential Residence for 2 hours. We only know so much about what was said, but we know what the Krakeners were asking for: Powell as a White House Special Counsel, a national re-vote that would...

40/ ...be conducted under the watchful eye of an armed USAF and National Guard, seized voting machines, martial law—again, an end to our democracy. (Navarro *openly* said, on Fox News on January 2, that Trump could stay president past January 20 and choose to do so unilaterally.)

41/ The second the Krakeners left—in the wee hours of December 19—Trump sent his tweet signing onto Ali Alexander’s planned January 6 event and saying it’d be "wild." *This* is the tweet that Stephen Ayres will testify under oath to day radicalized and militarized him and others.

42/ It’s not clear that Stop the Steal’s Alexander, Stone, and Jones—who spent November and December swarmed by Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who would later be indicted for Seditious Conspiracy—could have mounted a major event on January 6 without Trump agreeing to participate.

43/ It is for this reason (among others) that so much focus lands on the "Kraken Conference": it took Trump from filing crappy lawsuit after crappy lawsuit via Giuliani—fruitlessly—to announcing that he wanted to activate his most militant, dangerous followers on January 6, 2021.

44/ So the focus today—we were told on Sunday shows; it’s of course subject to change—will be on how the December 18 meeting, which Cipollone saw a key part of, launched the component of Trump’s massive coup conspiracy that didn’t just involve but *required* dangerous extremists.

45/ But from that "hub" event so *many( different spokes can be looked at that we’ve no *idea* what the Committee will do. Again, if we *only* looked at Stone, we’d see him fundraising for the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, protected by them, meeting with Trump, and so much more.

46/ If we *only* looked at Flynn we’d find a similar flurry of activity involving many groups. Indeed, one comparatively minor event in the timeline is that everyone—Flynn, Byrne, Lewis, Jones, Alexander, Stone—spoke to a Stop the Steal crowd at Freedom Plaza on Insurrection Eve.

47/ I don’t know how well any pundit can predict what’s going to happen starting in seven minutes—let alone how the Committee might use future hearings in July and August and possibly September and beyond to build out this critical but almost unsummarizable part of the narrative.

48/ MID-THREAD BREAKING NEWS (CNN): The next House January 6 Committee hearing is expected to come next week—likely in primetime—and will focus on the 187 minutes that Trump was doing nothing on January 6 while the Capitol was under attack (featuring lots of Cipollone testimony).

49/ I’ll only add to the foregoing that I think the House January 6 Committee is *so eager* to get Cipollone’s testimony before America that I think it has shifted slightly even *today’s* hearing. We will hear more from Cipollone via video today, possibly, than many would expect.

50/ The Committee is now entering the room.

51/ Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is starting out by saying that "any real leader" has a "responsibility" to stop his or her followers from misunderstanding how we settle political disputes in America: we do it at the ballot box, not with violence.

52/ Thompson notes that after Biden’s win was certified by 50 states and DC in mid-December 2020, the election was over—Joe Biden was president-elect. Trump had a responsibility to tell his followers that. Instead, he did the opposite and summoned his followers to D.C.

53/ Now Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is speaking. She goes *right* to Cipollone, saying his testimony was incredibly important—and that we’ll hear much more about it next week. She confirms today we’ll see some segments of Cipollone’s testimony, and hear about how Trump summoned a mob.

54/ Cheney says the Committee has seen a change in its prospective witnesses: they now understand that the Committee is making a serious case and that is changing how they deal with Committee. She says Trump supporters now concede basic facts but seek to blame Trump’s *advisers*.

55/ CHENEY: "Trump is a 76 year-old man—not an impressionable child....no rational or sane man in his position could" ignore the information he had that he’d lost the election.

This is interesting; Cheney is seeing a real change among Trumpworld provoked by these HJ6C hearings.

56/ Cheney closes by saying that Trump and his team knew he lost. Trump and his team knew they had no evidence of fraud. But they nevertheless acted like he won and said they had evidence of it because they *knew* Trump supporters did not have the info *they* did to know better.

57/ Correction of an earlier tweet: Rep. Raskin (D-MD) will be *joined* in the questioning today by Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), who is giving her opening statement today. She’s using her statement to summarize the past HJ6C hearings and the case the Committee has made thus far.

58/ She says December 14—the state-by-state certification of the Biden win—was a transition point that turned attention to January 6 within Trumpworld.

And Trump knew he had to call for "backup" for that day.

59/ Murphy says the armed January 6 mob was *one* "tool" Trump planned to use on January 6.

60/ She says the hearing will include Trumpworld dealings with rally organizers, speechwriters, members of Congress, grassroots activists, and others.

Now Rep. Raskin is speaking, confirming we will be focused in part on the December 18, 2020 "Kraken Conference" today.

61/ Raskin says that Trump apparently rejected the options Team Kraken put before him on December 18. He turned instead to a) trying to bring extremists to DC on January 6, and b) building his pressure campaign on Mike Pence.

Raskin says the extremists then formed an "alliance."

62/ MID-THREAD BREAKING NEWS (CNN):

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1546878553421144065?s=20&t=UQcvmIVeeip4Xg22wkMDrQ

63/ The implication Raskin is making is that Trump *knew*, from the start, that he and his agents were "deploying" a mob upon the Capitol on January 6.

It is clear we will have a little more "exposition" than usual from members of Congress today. Because this stuff is confusing.

64/ Murphy is summarizing Trump’s failed *legal*—in both senses of that word—efforts to stay in power and how December 14 ended Trump’s campaign (Mitch McConnell admitted it at the time—on December 15). She is emphasizing that this *should* have been the end of the 2020 election.

65/ We are seeing depo video from Eugene Scalia (Antonin’s son), Trump’s Secretary of Labor, saying he *told* Trump he needed to concede the election after December 14 happened. Needless to say, Trump ignored this and all other Cabinet/non-Cabinet advice (e.g., from DOJ).

66/ Murphy says Cipollone agreed that there was no evidence of systemic fraud in the 2020 election. We are now seeing the first video of Cipollone at depo (and he says this). In a second video, Cipollone testifies that he believed Trump should have conceded in mid-December 2020.

67/ Now we have depo video of former AG Bill Barr saying that December 14 was "the end of the matter" and should have "led inexorably to a new [Biden] administration." Cipollone testifies that Mark Meadows *also* told Trump things were over beginning in late November of 2020.

68/ Kayleigh McEnany depo, now, where she says that the end of Trump campaign litigation should have meant the end of the administration and attempts to preserve it. Ivanka Trump depo now in which she agrees that December 14, 2020 should have been the end of her father’s efforts.

69/ Judd Deere, former White House press secretary, now says in recorded depo that he told Trump that after December 14 the Electoral College had spoken and "the. means for him to pursue litigation was probably closed." Trump, Deere says, disagreed.

70/ Now Barr saying (depo) that Meadows and Kushner said to him they and others were working on getting Trump to accept his loss. Now Cassidy Hutchinson in depo says then-DNI John Ratcliffe told her that he was worried Trump’s reticence was creating new national security dangers.

71/ The point of *all* of this is that Trump was *not* just listening to his advisers, as his defenders now say. (That is part of the Big Lie.) Cipollone also says that a president has to abide but court rulings. (As we have seen, he refused to do so.)

72/ Raskin is now speaking again, showing—again—a Barr depo video in which Barr says he told Trump theories of the voting machines being hacked were crazy nonsense and that there was no systemic fraud. Pat Cipollone, via depo, is saying he agreed with Barr’s December 1 findings.

73/ Barr says Trump raised with him the idea of seizing voting machines and Barr directly said no and that there was no reason for it.

Raskin is now moving to the December 18, 2020 Trump-Kraken meeting.

74/ Team Kraken brought a draft executive order to the Oval on December 18 which would have the *Pentagon* seize voting machines—Team Kraken member Kash Patel had already been installed by Trump as a top Pentagon aide to the Secretary of Defense—and make Powell a Special Counsel.

75/ Pat Cipollone makes clear that he opposed everything about this plan, including Powell being given any power to do anything whatsoever. He also says that Team Kraken was never able to provide any evidence to him whatsoever of systemic fraud in the November 2020 election.

76/ On the federal government seizing voting machines (Cipollone seems to indicate that this is what he told Team Kraken): "I don't even know why we have to tell you why that's a bad idea....that's not how we do things in America."

77/ RASKIN: "Even Rudy Giuliani's own legal team admitted that they didn't have any evidence of fraud sufficient to change the election results." Bernie Kerik (who was leading the investigation for Rudy) told Meadows this clearly and said Trump would have to lobby *legislators*.

78/ Even Trump comms guy Jason Miller is now admitting via depo that only "very, very general evidence" of fraud was ever sent to any member of Congress from the campaign. He admits that it was minimal content.

79/ A series of videos, now, from others surrounding Trumpworld saying they never saw any evidence of fraud. Even Giuliani said "we have lots of theories"—rather than evidence.

80/ Cassidy Hutchinson now saying that at some point Trump CoS Meadows realized there was not enough evidence of fraud to change the election outcome and Meadows *switched* to looking for "constitutional loopholes" to try to keep Trump in power (the ideas pushed by John Eastman).

81/ Holy crap—bombshell. The Committee says the Kraken Conference lasted SIX HOURS, not just three. And there was screaming during it.

82/ Team Kraken member Sidney Powell (via depo) admits that Team Kraken *did* get time alone with Trump prior to Cipollone and other White House lawyers coming in. Cipollone said he was not at all happy to see any of these people in the Oval. None were providing "good advice."

83/ POWELL: "He [Trump] was very interested" in the ideas Team Kraken was giving him prior to Cipollone arriving, and to a degree afterward.

84/ Derek Lyons, former White House staff secretary says it was "not a casual meeting"—there was shouting and insults.

85/ Cipollone says Team Kraken "was attacking me forcefully, verbally." He, Eric Hershmann, and Derek Lyons were trying to fight back. Cipollone said he kept asking for evidence of anything Team Kraken was saying and they would provide him with none.

86/ Team Kraken insisted that every judge they had gone before (and lost before) was "corrupt"—including the ones appointed by Trump.

Trump told Pat, Eric, and Derek that "only they" (Team Kraken) were "offering him solutions."

87/ At some point Trump took his White House team to the Yellow Oval, Team Kraken went to the Roosevelt Room, and Giuliani was left alone in his own room.

88/ HUTCHINSON (via text to unknown party, during meeting): "The west wing is UNHINGED."

89/ During the meeting, Trump asked Cipollone if he had authority to make Sidney Powell Special Counsel and give her security clearances and Cipollone said yes and so Trump said, "Okay, I am doing that then" (or words to that effect).

90/ Pat Cipollone says he was unclear, at the end of the meeting, whether Powell had been appointed to anything. He concedes that Powell *or Trump* may have had a different view. This is scary; only Cipollone urging her not to think she had been appointed kept it from happening.

91/ Cipollone admits Powell *believed* she’d been appointed after the meeting. So scary—remember, Powell wanted the power to seize machines, make arrests and effectively end American democracy.

Powell is now being disbarred and has admitted many of her 2020 statements were lies.

92/ At the end of the meeting, Trump sent his infamous "be there, will be wild!" tweet. Cindy Chafian of Women for America First quickly petitioned to move her January event to January 6. Alexander registered the website WildProtest[.]com. January 6 events popped up *everywhere*.

93/ Video of Alex Jones now, talking about the tweet and everyone coming to DC January 6. Wow! We’re getting Ali Alexander mentioned for the first time, Alex Jones mentioned for the first time. Even video of Matt Bracken and Tim Pool and other far-right agitators. All talking J6.

94/ The Committee is proving that Trump lit up the internet with his wee-hour December 19 tweet, and *everyone* understood that Trump wanted them to go to the Capitol building itself on January 6 and some understood that he wanted his people to come to Washington *armed*.

95/ Now a Twitter employee is saying via audio-distorted depo (to protect him/her) that Twitter considered changing its content moderation policy after Trump’s "Stand back and stand by" comment directed to the Proud Boys (at a fall 2020 presidential debate). They feared violence.

96/ TWITTER WHISTLEBLOWER: "If [Trump] were any other Twitter user, he would have been permanently suspended a long time ago....it felt as though a mob was being organized. They were gathering together their weaponry and their logic...behind why they were willing to fight."

97/ After December 19, the TWITTER WHISTLEBLOWER says, Twitter knew that Trump was asking the very people who had been riled up toward violence (in fall 2020) to join him in DC.

And the WHISTLEBLOWER says public responses to the December 19 Trump tweet openly discussed violence.

98/ Twitter apparently began to feel certain there would be violence in D.C. on January 6 *as soon as* Trump fired off his December 19 tweet. Now we have the founder of "8kun" (Jim Watkins, who helped birth "Q") saying the December 19 tweet convinced him to go to DC on January 6.

99/ Now we have countless tweets and internet comments from the post-December 19 period that are so vile and hateful and *horrifically violent* I will not repeat them here. The founder of one website hosting such content, Jody Williams, admits that December 19 changed everything.

100/ These tweets discuss weapons, attack plans, routes of entrance/egress... very specific, *very* violent plans, all suddenly appearing post-December 19. Raskin notes that Trump tweeted about that date (January 6) at least a dozen more times, inciting.

Ten-minute recess, now.

101/ CNN calls today’s testimony "terrifying." While most PROOF readers have known much of what we heard for over a year, there were some bombshells—the Kraken meeting was 6 hours; Trump really *did* appoint Powell; the December 19 tweet changed the course of history *instantly*.

102/ I will also say that it is a big deal that the Committee introduced some new figures to its narrative: Ali Alexander, Cindy Chafian, Tim Pool, Alex Jones, certain insurrectionist YouTubers.

It is a new cast of characters that have not been part of the narrative until today.

103/ What the CNN legal analyst is saying is just what I would say: we need to know what happened between December 19 and January 6 *in* the White House and *in* Trump’s war rooms. This is where we get to Trump asking Ali Alexander and Alex Jones to lead his march on the Capitol.

104/ This is where we get to Stone fundraising for the insurrectionists even as he’s meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. This is where we get to the Insurrection Week Trump war rooms in DC. And this is where we get to Trump’s January 2, 2021 Zoom call (🔐): sethabramson.substack.com/p/new-trump-ad…

105/ I want to be clear: there’s *no way* the Committee can cover more than a *fraction* of these topics today. The point is that there *is* an answer to the question "What did Trump and his team do between December 19 and January 6?" They did a *lot*. It’d take several hearings.

106/ The other problem, as I mentioned earlier, is that most of the key witnesses as to this *critical* sequence of facts have pleaded the Fifth Amendment, are still fighting their subpoenas, or have yet to be spoken to by the Committee (like Byrne, who will be interviewed soon).

107/ I think it is best to take what we are about to hear—from the two witnesses about to testify—as simply an *introduction* to a subject and a period in history that the Committee will need to hold *multiple future hearings on*. These two witnesses can’t tell the story we need.

108/ I know readers of PROOF will understand that I am *only* saying the following because it is true: PROOF has covered this period, and these figures, more than any outlet in America. It is why all of Stone, Flynn, and the co-founder of the Proud Boys have threatened to sue me.

109/ My point here is that this information exists. I do not believe we will hear it today—today is merely an *introduction* to the topic—but I remain hopeful we will hear it eventually. The fact that folks like Alexander have now been "introduced" is a very good signal, I think.

110/ And the fact that Hutchinson introduced USSS’s Ornato is also important, as the Secret Service was *critical* to the information being provided to Trump about January 6 between December 19, 2020 and Insurrection Day. Again, with so many witnesses having pleaded the Fifth...

111/ ...it’ll be the biggest challenge the Committee faces (and that PROOF has faced!) to tell this story based on past statements by some of these people (particularly the Stop the Steal co-organizers: Alexander, Stone and Alex Jones). So telling this vital story will take time.

112/ I will say, though, that the Committee has so focused itself on *Trump* that it has made it *harder* for the Committee to tell any part of the story that is Trump-connected and Trump-adjacent but *not* Trump *centeed*—like the Stone, Flynn, Alexander, and Jones narratives.

113/ And yet, Trump met with Stone; had Meadows call Stone and Flynn; his daughter-in-law-to-be spoke to Ali Alexander; Trump spoke to Jones; Trump asked Alexander and Jones to lead the march... beyond any doubt, Trump himself *is* all *over* this key part of the January 6 story.

114/ The Committee has re-entered the room and gaveled the hearing back in.

115/ Former DC intel chief in depo now saying that after Trump’s December 19 tweet "all red flags were up" because the intel signals showed conspiracy theory groups, militias and white supremacist groups creating a "blended" ideology surrounding January 6, Trump, and the Capitol.

116/ An Oath Keeper capo announced on December 19 that the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters would be forming an alliance to aid Trump. This was clearly a direct result of Trump’s tweet. Secret paramilitary planning immediately began. Raskin says they communicated...

117/ ...with ROGER STONE and MICHAEL FLYNN. Raskin says they have encrypted content from a channel that included Rhodes (Oath Keepers), Stone, Ali Alexander, and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

118/ Scary video of Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes calling for martial law in December 2020. Scary video of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers confronting police on December 12, 2020. Now Raskin is bringing in InfoWars. Fast and furious new information coming out now, folks.

119/ It is clear that the Committee is *very* focused on Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, *very* focused on the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. He now reveals that Stone has gone through the first-level initiation to *become* a Proud Boy.

120/ Oath Keeper lawyer Kelly SoRelle is now confirming what PROOF first reported in January *2021*: the top three Stop the Steal organizers were (1) Ali Alexander, (2) Roger Stone, and (3) Alex Jones.

This is huge: it means the Committee *will* focus on Jones and the others.

121/ Awesome! Rep. Raskin just said something that speaks *directly* to what I said during the break: he emphasized to America that this is only the *tip of the iceberg* of the evidence the Committee has about this part of the story. He says there is much, *much* more to come.

122/ Key text message between Katrina Pierson—Trump presidential aide—and a Kremer (Women for America First) who’d expressed concern about January 6 violence prompted by Alexander, Stone, and Jones.

Pierson admits they were involved between TRUMP WANTED THEM INVOLVED. Bombshell.

123/ This confirms PROOF reporting from 2021 that Trump *personally* insisted on the involvement of Ali Alexander and Alex Jones and that he did so over the concerns of his presidential aides.

124/ Holy cow! We’re talking about Alexander and Jones at the Georgia State Capitol, and Pierson warning Meadows about them. It’s like we’re talking a waltz through the 200+ articles that are up at PROOF right now. sethabramson.substack.com

125/ Pre-insurrection Kremer-Lindell text *admits* Trump had told grassroots organizers he was going to march to the Capitol—but didn’t reveal it publicly—as PROOF reported. It appears Alexander also knew—as PROOF also reported. Stunning stuff. Trump brought people into the loop.

126/ This is almost too much info to live-tweet. Rep. Murphy is talking about the December 21 meeting at the Oval to plan January 6. It involved Trump, Meadows, Giuliani, and the insurrectionist House Freedom Caucus (Gohmert, Jordan, Biggs, Hice, Gosar, Perry, MTG, Gaetz et al.).

127/ The December 21 meeting was about Eastman’s coup plot.

Now Cipollone testimony saying that he saw no legal validity whatsoever to any of Trump lawyer John Eastman’s "nutty" constitutional theories.

128/ Cipollone says he was kept out of (for reasons he cannot explain because of privilege) a meeting between Trump, Eastman, and Pence in the Oval Office in early January 2021 (pre-insurrection).

129/ Cipollone says he made clear to everyone in the White House that he did not believe Pence had the ability to do anything but what he actually did on January 6. So Trump knew the White House Counsel’s Office did not support Eastman’s "nutty" constitutional law theories.

130/ Rep. Murphy notes that a federal judge has already held it is "more likely than not" Eastman and Trump participated in a criminal conspiracy—one of many reasons a recent NYT article saying that DOJ has not yet moved to openly discussing a criminal probe of Trump is amazing.

131/ Trump spoke to Bannon twice on January 5—Insurrection Eve. And it was after the first call that Bannon announced that "all hell would break loose" on January 6 and that it would be surprising to everyone exactly how things would play out.

But apparently not Trump or Bannon.

132/ Several Trump aides are now testifying via depo about how visibly excited Trump was while hearing the Freedom Plaza/Ellipse crowd on Insurrection Eve. Sarah Matthews said Trump was in a "very good," even "fantastic" mood that night after *not* being in a good mood for weeks.

133/ Matthews said Trump asked staff on Insurrection Eve what he could do to "make the RINOs do the right thing" the next day. It was clear aides wanted him to just give a speech about his policy accomplishments on January 6... but Trump wanted more. More... involving the crowd.

134/ Trump was obsessed with the crowd’s size, energy, volume. He was clearly asking his aides how he could harness the crowd to coerce members of Congress. The Committee is now playing video from the January 5 Freedom Plaza event that PROOF has been writing about for 18 months.

135/ It’s being implied here that Trump may even have been able to *hear*, through an open door between the Oval Office and the Rose Garden, some of the violent, inciting rhetoric coming from the January 5 Stop the Steal event (e.g. Stone, Alexander, Jones, and Flynn). Wow.

136/ Trump responded to what he was hearing by tweet, saying, "we hear you from the Oval Office"—directly addressing the crowd and its energy.

137/ The aforementioned TWITTER WHISTLEBLOWER said he was certain "people would be shooting at each other" in D.C. the following day because of what Twitter was seeing on its platform. Again, all of this is just the tip of the iceberg, as PROOF (and now Rep. Raskin) has now said.

138/ This is all just really scary stuff, folks. If you are watching and listening, you know.

139/ Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ)—GOP!—was asking for more security for the Capitol *on Insurrection Eve* because she acknowledged that Trump supporters would be coming *to the Capitol* the next day and when they realized the election would not be overturned they would all go "nuts."

140/ Now we have a summary of how Trump kept editing his January 6 speech to make it more inciting. He did this with input—a 26-minute call—with... Stephen Miller.

Miller! How *very* unsurprising. Trump and Miller conspired to put Pence’s name into the speech to inflame the mob.

141/ Now depo testimony from Miller—!—in which he admits that other Trump advisers wanted Trump to avoid mentioning Pence. Particularly Eric Hershmann of the White House Counsel's Office worked *successfully* to get the language about Pence *out*.

Know who put it back in? Trump.

142/ Trump single-handedly made his January 6 speech focus on Pence. He was angry—very, very angry—about a call he’d just had with Pence, in which Pence confirmed he was not going to help Trump steal the election. Now an Ivanka aide testifies to how angry Trump was at that point.

143/ Trump made one planned reference to Pence *8*. Trump made one planned reference to the march *4*. He reduced the mentions of being peaceful and ad-libbed a big part of his speech—particularly the many references to "fighting" that PROOF and others identified in January 2021.

144/ Text message post-attack from Brad Parscale to Katrina Pierson saying Trump was pushing for civil war in his speech and his rhetoric got Ashli Babbitt killed—that he felt guilty about helping Trump win election (Parscale was for a time Trump’s presidential campaign manager).

145/ Incredibly damning words from a Trump campaign manager that will be written in the annals of history. Wow.

146/ The two live witnesses have now been sworn in. I mentioned previously (above in the thread) who the two witnesses are.

147/ Jason van Tatenhove is now describing how he got involved with the Oath Keepers and what they are—he admits the Oath Keepers are a "violent militia" and they are "largely Stewart Rhodes." He says the best expression of what the Oath Keepers are is "what we saw on January 6."

148/ He says during his time with the Oath Keepers they "drifted into white nationalism and...straight racism." He says the group is "very dangerous" and that Rhodes sees himself as a "paramilitary leader."

149/ Jason van Tatenhove says the Oath Keepers’ vision *does not necessarily include* "rule of law", but definitely includes "lies, deceit, intimidation, and the perpetration of violence."

This man is pulling no punches whatsoever. I do fear for his safety after this testimony.

150/ Van Tatenhove says he left the Oath Keepers when he heard a group of them discussing, while they were all in a supermarket in Eureka, Montana, that the Holocaust—in their (white supremacist, anti-Semitic, deranged, far-right militant) view—never happened.

151/ Now Stephen Ayres is testifying. He is laying out that he was not always a political radical. He was, as he outlines it, just a regular guy. Ayres has not been sentenced yet, so this is very high-stakes testimony for him. He used to be a Trump supporter, but is not anymore.

152/ Ayres says Trump’s tweets/other far-right social media content convinced him to come to D.C. and made him believe the election was stolen. He now says he doubts it was stolen. He says he may not have come to DC if he knew Trump had no evidence of fraud despite saying he did.

153/ This is interesting: Ayres did *not* go to the Ellipse planning to march to the Capitol. He said "I was basically just following what he [Trump] said" in going to the Capitol after Trump told the crowd to do so January 6. He said he believed the election could be overturned.

154/ Ayres says "everyone" who marched believed Trump was going to be marching with them. And he says he left the Capitol "right" when Trump tweeted out that people should leave. He said he would have left the Capitol earlier if Trump had tweeted that people should leave earlier.

155/ Now van Tatanhove is testifying that Stewart Rhodes—head of the Oath Keepers—wanted the Insurrection Act invoked by Trump because he wanted an "armed revolution" and a "new civil war." Van Tatenhove is clear that Rhodes wanted January 6 to spark widespread national violence.

156/ Rhodes believed that the Insurrection Act would elevate him from a "paramilitary leader" to a man to whom Trump had specifically "given the nod" to forge a "path forward" to the Oath Keepers becoming a viable paramilitary force fighting—w/ violence—on Donald Trump’s behalf.

157/ Jason van Tatenhove says that the Oath Keepers wanted him to create a "deck of cards"—like the Gulf War deck of cards that were a Who’s Who of who needed to be taken out from the Hussein regime—that would identify politicians and judges whom the Oath Keepers planned to kill.

158/ Van Tatenhove says that the Oath Keepers planned to use not just guns but military-grade explosives as part of their armed revolution and new civil war.

159/ Van Tatenhove says America is "lucky" that there hasn’t been "more bloodshed" so far. He says "so much more [violence]" could’ve happened on January 6. And "I do fear for this next election cycle" if Trump ends up in the White House, as he wants to "encourage" a "civil war."

160/ I did not expect these two civilian witnesses to be this compelling, honestly. Wow.

161/ Ayres said that when Trump tweeted that people should leave the Capitol on January 6 it "definitely dispersed" the insurrectionist crowd—immediately—that was then in the Capitol.

162/ Ayres says he is "mad" that Trump is still spreading lies about the election, because believing those lies changed his life dramatically for the worse. He also says that if Trump is re-elected we could "be going [back] down the same path" the country was going on January 6.

163/ Ayres urges those who are still insurrectionists to "take the blinders off [about the 2020 election] before it’s too late." It is hard to explain—Ayres did not seem scripted at all, and he is not a great speaker, and yet his Congressional testimony today was oddly eloquent.

164/ I believe the structure and text of these Congressional hearings will be studied by historians not just for decades but for hundreds of years. I’m serious.

165/ Raskin is now giving an eloquent closing statement that reminds me of his eloquence at the second Trump impeachment. It is a speech about freedom, democracy, insurrection, and violence. He is telling the story of Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, a soldier who helped defend the Capitol.

166/ Sgt. Gonell’s injuries are so severe that he is going to have to leave law enforcement because he cannot physically perform such duties.

Raskin says that Trump had brought "American carnage" to this country, after saying he’d protect us from *just that* at his Inauguration.

167/ REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): "The Watergate break-in was like a Cub Scout meeting compared to this [the January 6 insurrection]."

168/ RASKIN: "He [Trump] threatens to take one of America’s two great political parties down the road to authoritarianism with him."

169/ This is a long speech but a very good one. It underscores that Donald Trump remains a clear and present danger to the United States of America and our democracy.

170/ Rep. Murphy is now giving her final statement, talking about how she was born overseas during the Vietnam War and that she does not want to see America become like the part of the world her family fled to America from. We are now "fight[ing] fiction with facts", she says.

171/ Rep. Cheney (R-WY) is now giving her final statement. As in the past, she’s summarizing the evidence and past hearings. She is quickly walking through each past House January 6 Committee hearing. She says only one more hearing is required to outline the *basics* of the case.

172/ She says all the HJ6C hearings circumscribe a discrete "serious" matter connected because Donald Trump was at the heart of each one.

She says that next week’s hearing will focus on the 187 minutes on January 6 during which Trump *chose* to do nothing to relieve the Capitol.

173/ It’s clear that Cipollone’s testimony will be a huge part of the next hearing. Part of it is playing now; Cipollone is agreeing that at any point in the now-infamous 187 minutes Trump could’ve issued a statement that likely would have *ended* the conflict almost immediately.

174/ Holy cow! Cheney says Trump personally tried to call a witness he knew was a January 6 witness—doing so *after* the Cassidy Hutchinson testimony (but the witness was not Hutchinson; Cheney says that it was someone who the Committee has not heard from yet). Could it be Byrne?

175/ I hope we’ll eventually learn who the witness was—as clearly it was someone Trump believed still loyal to him who *instead* refused to take the call and notified their lawyer of the call attempt.

Now that’s the sort of witness one really wants to hear from, needless to say.

176/ Rep. Thompson (D-MS) is now giving a closing statement. This hearing was incredible, but I do think that the HJ6C needs to avoid ending a hearing with four straight statements from members of the Committee, even if—as here!—all of them were actually very eloquent and urgent.

177/ Rep. Thompson’s closing speech is actually the best he has given thus far.

It is amazing that we are alive to witness hearings like this. I never thought I would see or hear anything like this in my entire life.

The hearing has just been gaveled closed.

178/ In post-hearing coverage, we are already hearing about those stunning Parscale texts. And about Trump seeking to tamper with a federal witness—which we heard only in the final moments of the hearing. But frankly so much of what we heard today was newsworthy—and so startling.

179/ I will be adding the video of this hearing—and this entire live thread—to the House January 6 Committee Archive at PROOF (link below; 🔐).

I can truly say that PROOF has *books* worth of additional information in the same vein as what we heard today. sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-house-ja…

180/ As ever, I can’t thank you all enough for going on this journey with me. I hope you found this live thread helpful and instructive, especially if you were unable to watch or listen to the hearing yourself.

Any tips (wholly optional) can be left here: sethabramson.net/pp

PS/ When Cheney said "no rational or sane man" could believe what Trump says he did—the law’s *objective* "reasonable person" standard—and that he doesn’t have the right to be "willfully blind" (legal language) she’s *directly* saying he had the criminal intent to commit a crime.

PS2/ Those of you who follow this feed know that I have been begging the Committee to discuss "willful blindness" publicly. I am thrilled that a follower of this feed—Liz Cheney—has now done so. Not saying this feed played a role, but I sure as hell am happy if it did in any way.

PS3/ For those looking to brush up on Ali Alexander in advance of us hearing, I think, much more about him, Stone, and Jones in the weeks ahead—as Raskin implied—this PROOF article about him (one of dozens) is a good start, I think (open to the public;🔓): sethabramson.substack.com/p/new-the-comi…