Inspiration but no clear co-ordination between Trump and Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Jan. 6 hearing suggests

Tuesday's instalment of the congressional hearings into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, introduced evidence that former U.S. president Donald Trump and his advisers talked about a march on the U.S. Capitol days in advance — and that some of those who eventually turned up were paying close attention.

But it did not necessarily show the kind of explicit co-ordination between Trump and the more militant groups that came to Washington armed and determined to stop the certification of the 2020 election results that some had been anticipating.

The House committee investigating the Capitol riot showed, through social media posts, that Trump was rallying his supporters to Washington for the Jan. 6 certification as early as Dec. 19. 

Agitated by a fractious late-night meeting in which advisers argued over whether and how to overturn the election without sufficient evidence of fraud, Trump sent an early-morning tweet promising the Jan. 6 rally "will be wild."

"Just hours after President Trump's tweet, Kelly Meggs, the head of the Florida Oath Keepers, declared an alliance among the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Florida Three Percenters, another militia group," committee member Jamie Raskin said.

"We have decided to work together and shut this shit down," Meggs had written on Facebook, the committee said.

By early January, some of the organizers of Trump's Jan. 6 rally on the grounds south of the White House known as the Ellipse had gotten wind he was planning to urge supporters to march to the Capitol but was keeping that quiet. 

"POTUS is going to just call for it, quote, unexpectedly," one organizer wrote in a text message Jan. 4.

Ali Alexander, head of the Stop the Steal organization, which had been amplifying Trump's false claims that the Democrats had stolen the 2020 election, also learned of the plan, texting a journalist on Jan. 5: "Trump is supposed to order us to the Capitol at the end of his speech, but we will see."

All of that, said Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy, who led Tuesday's hearing along with Rep. Raskin, "confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the president."

But showing that the strategy was an effort co-ordinated with two of the high-profile groups whose leaders, along with several members, have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the riot will be more difficult, says Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and a frequent commentator on legal matters.

"What we still don't have is a specific agreement between the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and somebody in the Trump inner circle saying, 'Yeah … this is the plan. We're going to go breach the Capitol, and we're going to be sure they don't certify that vote,'" she said. "I would think that if they had the evidence, they would have shown it by now."

The committee said it obtained encrypted chats that showed members of the two groups communicating with Trump allies Roger Stone and Michael Flynn about rallies contesting election results and making security arrangements on Jan. 5 and 6. But those did not reveal communications explicitly co-ordinating actions at the Capitol.

Stone and Flynn have associated with the groups in the past and used their members as security on several occasions, including, in Stone's case, the night of Jan. 5 at a rally near the White House. It got Trump's attention and included speakers whose rhetoric Trump's aides had considered too extreme for his Jan. 6 rally, according to witness testimony played Tuesday.