This development was anticipated by some of those who engaged in explicit violence. In private discussions from the days before the riots, members of the right-wing group Proud Boys discussed if “the normies” – that is, the other demonstrators – and other participants “were going to cross the police lines and storm the Capitol buildings”. On the day of the riot, members of the group engaged to “annoy the normies”. The thousands of people who marched that day from President Donald Trump’s speech south of the White House to the Capitol were a force multiplier.
On the day of the riot, there was not supposed to be a march from the speech to the Capitol — at least, not according to permits obtained by the group that organized the day’s events, Women for America First (WFAF). ). But these permits differed from what WFAF presented publicly.
A new report from the inspector general of the Ministry of the Interior, details that divide. Like us documented In February 2021, WFAF played a central role in efforts to merge disparate protests planned by Trump supporters (including organizers of the “Stop the Steal” movement) into a single intertwined series: an event in the evening of January 5, the rally at the Ellipse the next morning, and a protest at the Capitol itself as Congress prepared to finalize Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. All of this was promoted under the guise of ” March to Save America” – itself an evolution of the “March for Trump” which had powered a demonstration in Washington in December.
How the “March to Save America” would get from the Ellipse to the Capitol was not much of a mystery. Yet in permit applications submitted by WFAF (having postponed a post-inauguration protest until January 6 following Trump’s December 2020 tweet “be there, will be wild”), no marches were identified. In fact, according to the inspector general’s investigation, WFAF representatives consistently denied that a march was taking place.
The U.S. House of Representatives select committee that investigated the riots and Trump’s efforts to retain power uncovered evidence that a march was in fact planned — and known to the White House. There was a post on social media drafted for Trump, for example, in which the president would announce that he would give “a big speech at 10 a.m. on January 6” with a “march to the Capitol afterwards.” The draft was marked “The President has seen,” but the message was not published.
The committee also heard testimony from Max L. Miller, a Trump aide who was later elected to Congress in Ohio.
“I mean, he literally – they had sent out the invitation, and it said ‘Save America March,'” Miller said. said investigators. “It’s… I’m not trying to say what I think, but it’s more than implicit in the rally title.”
Still, WFAF’s Kylie Kremer told the committee there were no plans to call for a march.
If Trump supporters “want to come to the Ellipse and the event presented by Women for America First,” she said, “and then they want to go to an event with… ‘Stop the Steal’ or whatever thing” – the one planned for the Capitol: “people are free to make their own decisions.”
But the committee obtained a text message she sent to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the potential speakers, on Jan. 4. In that message to Lindell, Kremer made it clear that a march was planned — and kept secret. The Inspector General’s report includes the full disclosure:
“It only remains between us, we are once again experiencing a second stage at the Supreme Court after the ellipse. POTUS is going to march us there/to the Capitol.
“It can’t get out of the second stage because people will try to install another one and sabotage it. He can’t participate in the march either, because I’ll get in trouble with the National Park Service and all the agencies, but POTUS is just going to call him ‘out of the blue…’
“Only myself and (the White House liaison) know the whole story of what’s really going on and we have to appease a lot of people by saying a lot of things.”
According to the IG report, there would have been no negative repercussions for WFAF if the march had been reported. Instead, it would have simply required more planning, including identifying people who would act as marshals to ensure the march took place safely. But the White House and its allies have instead opted for secrecy.
We don’t really know why. Trump’s lawyers had warned his team about the possible legal repercussions of his visit to the Capitol itself, warnings that failed to stop Trump from telling the crowd at the Ellipse that he was going there and, according to reportsfor trying to go there that day.
The aforementioned White House liaison would likely be Katrina Pierson. She was also questioned by committee investigators and told them that in the days leading up to January 6, she tried to dissuade Trump’s team from letting the president engage with far-right actors like the theorist of the Alex Jones plot, which was implied with “Stop the Steal”.
Jones would later tell people that he had been invited by the White House to “lead the march” to the Capitol.
Whatever the reason for the effort at secrecy on the part of the White House and its allies, the effect of masking the intent to march is evident. Law enforcement had been alerted to rumors about the Ellipse’s movement toward the Capitol (as the IG report notes), but there was no planning for it, no accommodation for the huge mass of people who ended up making the trip.
So, as it turns out, there were a lot of Normans on Capitol Hill that day and far fewer police officers than were needed to contain them.
