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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The House Select Committee investigating January 6 violent attack at Congress will soon turn its attention to examine possible links between far-right extremists who carried out the attacks at the U.S. Capitol and former President Donald Trump.
The committee will also examine the influence of nationalist networks in carrying out the attacks as well as coordination, if any, the Trump White House had with those groups leading up to the violence, according to a report by The Hill.
The panel
has also tried to establish a connection between former President Trump and the
far-right extremists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 using testimony
from a former White House aide to suggest direct links between some of Trump’s
closest allies and leaders of several prominent white nationalist groups who
are facing charges over the insurrection.
The next
hearing of the House Select committee is on Tuesday and members of the panel
are already promising to reveal previously undisclosed information they say
will substantiate those ties, The Hill reported.
“We will be
connecting the dots, as people know,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of
the select committee, told MSNBC on Thursday, according to The Hill. “This
wasn’t just an event that unfolded. It was planned. Who did the planning, and
who were they connected with? How did it unfold?”
A number of
close Trump allies are already implicated in plots to overturn the 2020
election victory of President Joe Biden including John Eastman and Rudy
Giuliani, the two legal advisers to Donald Trump who set up a “war room” at a
Washington hotel on January 5, as well as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, two
allies in the “Stop the Steal” movement who were indicted for unrelated crimes
but later pardoned by Trump.
Others are
former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who acted as liaison between
Trump and the other four men, according to a testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson at
the January 6 panel. She served under Meadows at the time of the unrest.
The
extremist groups Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and other white supremacist
groups gathered in Washington on January 6 as part of Trump’s “Stop the Steal”
crusade in a bid to overturn his election defeat.
According to
The Hill Yet Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional lawyer who sits on the
select committee, has promised to dig into those associations when he leads the
questioning, along with Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), at Tuesday’s hearing.
“If coordination
did exist, what form did it take? Who were the conduits for information?” said
Cassie Miller, senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center,
which tracks extremist groups of all stripes around the country, according to
The Hill.
“But we
should also recognize that formal coordination wasn’t necessary for Trump to
impact the actions of groups like the Proud Boys during the months leading up
to the insurrection or during the day itself,” Miller quickly added. “This is a
group that has long wanted to act as the foot soldiers for Trumpism, and the
Stop the Steal movement and insurrection gave them the opportunity to do so.”
Both Flynn
and Stone have long used security details provided by far-right groups
including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and 1sr Amendment Praetorian, which
protected Flynn during an election protest in Washington in mid-December,
according to The Hill. Stone has also reportedly rallied with Proud Boys
leaders including Chairman Enrique Tarrio, at a similar protest the same month
and was reportedly protected by members of the Oath Keepers at the Capitol on
Jan. 6, The Hill reported.
Hutchinson
told investigators that on January 5, Trump asked Meadows to contact Stone and
Flynn about their plans for the following day, when congress would convene to
certify President Joe Biden’s victory.
Hutchinson
also suggested that Giuliani had associated with the extremist groups.
“I recall
hearing the word ‘Oath Keeper’ and hearing the word ‘Proud Boys’ closer to the
planning of the Jan. 6 rally when Mr. Giuliani would be around,” Hutchinson
said.