Authorities have so far arrested more than 950 people for alleged crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection for all manners of misdeeds, from weapons offenses to illegal entry to assaulting law enforcement officers.
Six members of the Oath Keepers have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. A separate seditious conspiracy trial for five leaders of the Proud Boys is now underway.
In all, hundreds of people have gone to — or will go — to prison.
But Ali Alexander — the GOP political operative most publicly identified with efforts to overturn the 2020 election save for Donald Trump himself — isn’t among them.
No matter that Alexander launched the “Stop the Steal” project one day after the Nov. 3, 2020, election that Trump lost but refused to concede.
Or that Alexander called for a rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021 — before Trump, on Twitter, urged supporters to “be there” because it “will be wild.”
Or that he led a chant of, “Victory or death!” on the eve of the attack on the Capitol.
On Jan. 6 itself, Alexander helped lead a march from the Ellipse, a tract of land behind the White House where Trump addressed his supporters, to the U.S. Capitol.
Alexander has displayed an uncanny ability to walk right up to the line of incitement, eluding prosecution in the largest criminal inquiry in the Justice Department’s history.
Proof of Alexander’s legal elusiveness came in late January. Amid the pre-trial phase of a looming court drama, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta dismissed Alexander and co-defendant Roger Stone from a federal lawsuit brought by seven Capitol Police officers injured by Trump supporters who converged on Capitol Hill.
Mehta, a nominee of President Barack Obama, reasoned that nothing Alexander said ahead of the attack could be described as being “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” or “likely to incite or produce such action.” — the definition of unprotected speech as set forth in the Supreme Court’s 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio decision.
“Moreover,” Mehta added, “neither is alleged to have participated in the attack on the Capitol on January 6th or done anything in support of the alleged conspiracy other than engage in protected expression.”
The court proceeding served to underscore what Alexander believes is true: that he’s done nothing wrong.
“It was alleged I was violent or whatever, and Judge Mehta correctly pointed out that I was not, and my speech was normative under our laws,” Alexander told Raw Story in an email. “This proves I never directed, conspired or wished any violence to interfere with my peaceful protests.”
Meanwhile, Alexander has cooperated with other parts of the government hunting for J6ers to bring to justice. That includes the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, which grilled him with questions for eight hours but failed to extract from him any admission of guilt.
He also appeared before a federal grand jury last year and said that he was told that he was not the target of the investigation.
This is the story of how Alexander became the nation’s most untouchable J6er — for now.
‘YOU DON’T OWE YOUR ENEMIES AN APOLOGY’
Alexander is a convert to Catholicism with a messianic streak who has described himself as a “prophet in our times.” He has expressed support for blasphemy laws while claiming that the political establishment is “rigged” by “Satanists” and a “Jewish mafia.”
Born Ali Akbar, Alexander might seem like an unlikely candidate to lead the banner MAGA movement in support of Trump’s desperate quest to cling to power after the 2020 election. He chose “Ali Alexander” as his “professional name,” as he explained to the January 6th Committee.
“I’m the American Dream,” he told the committee in a prepared statement. “My mother was a Black woman in Section 8 housing. My father was an Arab man who disappeared when I was just two years old. About 15 years ago or so, I was arrested on two different occasions for petty crimes. I won’t re-litigate the merits of those offenses in this short time, but two arrests in your early twenties as a Black man often set people back, so far back that they never again find firm footing on which they can succeed.”
Alexander said his left-leaning mother considered moving the family out of the country after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But she didn’t, and the event shaped Alexander into a “war hawk” who believed, along with his fellow teenage Republicans, that he “must shepherd the general public into war.”
Alexander dropped out of college and “entered full-time politics” in 2007, he told podcaster Chrissie Mayr on Jan. 30.
“We had an internet problem, this Black guy was running, and I support John McCain,” Alexander said, referring to then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. “I’m more moderate in my politics. And because we’re up against this Black guy, and we suck at the internet, I was a very good web designer, and I was Black.”
In 2009, Alexander threw himself into organizing with the Tea Party, and he aligned himself with the emerging conservative media ecosystem of the Obama era. He adopted an ethos of refusing to disavow more right-leaning associates, and later told the January 6th Committee that he was influenced by Andrew Breitbart, the late founder of Breitbart News Network, who took the stance “that you don’t owe your enemies an apology.”
As a self-described “far-right” political operative, Alexander demonstrated a willingness to associate with white nationalists. In 2009 — a decade before he brought Groyper leader and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes into the Stop the Steal coalition — he befriended Robert Stacy McCain, a one-time member of the secessionist group League of the South and then-reporter for the Washington Times.
“When this guy was listed by the [Southern Poverty Law Center] as a white nationalist, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can associate with the guy,’” Alexander recalled during a livestream last November. “And he basically became my best friend for a number of years — this 55-year-old white journalist, you know, I don’t know what I was, 24, 25-year old Black political operative. We caused hell!”
During the same livestream, Alexander defended Fuentes while urging the Republican Party to better protect the interests of white men.
“So, we’ve got to become a party that wages a culture war, that protects the white plurality or the white majority, that has an open door for other people that want to assimilate,” he said. “And we need less white, female political power in this world. You know, it’s an interesting juggle act that we’re doing.”
Ali Alexander on white nationalism
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Immediately following the 2020 election, Stop the Steal became ubiquitous as a social media hashtag that represented the far right’s protest of Joe Biden’s election and Alexander’s own personal brand.
It also marked the evolution of the slogan “Stop the Steal” into its contemporary form. The phrase “Stop the Steal” had been coined in 2016 by Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump, to gird against a delegate fight at the Republican National Convention.
“Stop the Steal” received a test run following the 2018 election. During a late-night Periscope livestream in November 2018, Alexander called for conservative activists to get in the streets as results came in from tight US Senate and gubernatorial races in Florida. Alexander himself booked a flight to Florida’s Broward County and led “seven to 10 days of consecutive protests to protest the bureaucrats” after receiving a prod from far-right social media influencer Jack Posobiec, Alexander later recounted to the right-wing Catholic outlet Church Militant.
Alexander told the January 6th Committee during his deposition in December 2021 that he “created Stop the Steal in 2018” and that he has a “gentleman’s agreement” with Stone to have “perpetual use of the license.”
Even before the first election results came in on Nov. 3, 2020, Alexander was laying the groundwork for Stop the Steal in its current iteration.
“In the next coming days, we’re going to build an infrastructure to stop the steal,” Alexander said in a livestream on Sept. 7, 2020, according to a report by Right Wing Watch. “What we are going to do is we’re going to bypass all of social media. In the coming days, we will launch an effort concentrating on the swing states, and we will map out where the votes are being counted and the secretary of states. We will map all of this out for everyone publicly and we will collect cell phone numbers so, that way, if you are within 100 miles radius of a bad secretary of state or someone who’s counting votes after the deadline or if there’s a federal court hearing, we will alert you of where to go.”
‘I’M BACK IN’
Alexander was initially reluctant to activate Stop the Steal.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Ali, you gotta be prepared to stop the steal again,’” Alexander recounted to Michael Voris of Church Militant. “And I was pretty bitter. I said, ‘The Republican Party doesn’t deserve me. So, I’m not going to do it.’”
But Alexander relented. In a now-deleted tweet from Nov. 4 that was provided to Raw Story by the owner of the @Betoangelmommas Twitter account, Alexander outlined a wish list under the heading “#STOPTHESTEAL.”
Then, Alexander tagged right-wing figures he wanted on the ground in states narrowly carried by Biden. In Pennsylvania: Posobiec and Scott Presler, an activist who had organized anti-Muslim marches in 2017.
In Arizona: Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich.
For Georgia, he recruited Daniel Bostic, producer of the pro-Trump documentary The Plot Against the President, and C.J. Pearson, who came to notoriety as a 12-year-old in 2015 for a viral video questioning Obama’s patriotism.
He also urged Tom Fitton, president of the conservative legal outfit Judicial Watch, to spearhead his “legal network.” Alexander likewise tagged Amy Kremer, the veteran Tea Party organizer who would go on to organize the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, and Ed Martin, president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, as “national” advocates.
The tweet ended with an ultimatum: “This or you lose now, enjoy!”
Tweet sent by Ali Alexander outlining who he wanted involved in the Stop the Steal projectTwitter screengrab
The contents of the tweet mesh with a Periscope broadcast on Nov. 4 during which Alexander said he was “busy organizing thousands and thousands of people” to join “voter integrity” rallies.
“We’re matching influencers with operatives, so every influencer will have an operative there also working with local media,” Alexander said, as reported by Right Wing Watch, a project of the liberal group People for the American Way.
“If you need a plane ticket, I’ll PayPal you money, because people have sent me money,” he continued.
The individuals singled out by Alexander — particularly Fitton, Kremer and Martin — share one distinct commonality: they’ve been part of the Council for National Policy, a “secretive right-wing organization that brings together people from all aspects of the right-wing movement, including extremists, and connects them all,” said Kristen Doerer, the managing editor of Right Wing Watch.
“It’s hard to know if the CNP directly provided support, but there’s a number of people in the CNP that did,” Doerer said.
As one example, Doerer cited Fitton, who submitted a draft to White House staff on Oct. 31, 2020 — three days before the election — proposing that Trump declare: “We had an election today — and I won.”
According to the document, which the January 6th Committee obtained from the National Archives, Fitton also suggested that Trump say that “the ballots counted by the Election Day deadline show the American people have bestowed on me the great honor of reelection to President of the United States,” despite the fact that there is no such Election Day deadline.
Whatever reservations Alexander might have initially harbored, they dissipated amid Trump’s refusal to concede. On the evening of Nov. 4, Alexander tweeted: “I’m back in. #StopTheSteal.”
BANKROLLING FLIGHTS AND HOTELS FOR INFLUENCERS
Alexander’s utility to the conservative movement was his personal and professional network and estimable social media presence.
“I am one of four or five people in the entire country who has the Rolodex that I have,” Alexander told podcaster Chrissie Mayr. “So, when you think about it, because I worked in 35 states, and I have a network that most people don’t have over 15 years, I can call on a lot of GOP county chairs. If you watch me walk through the Republican National Convention, you will see me shake hands with no less than 10,000 people, literally.
“Other GOP operatives aren’t livestreaming regularly like I did starting in 2017; a lot of people know me,” he continued. “I don’t make money being a public figure. I make my money building and scaling large organizations, campaigns, nonprofits, working with lawyers and PR teams.”
Alexander’s swing state prospectus had a hole in it for Michigan, and Brandon Straka, the influencer who created the pro-Trump #WalkAway campaign, stepped up to lead a rally in Lansing. Straka told the January 6th Committee that he was recruited to help promote Stop the Steal through a private Twitter DM thread called “MAGA Verified” that was set up for Trump supporters who held Twitter’s coveted blue checkmark.
“And I remember at some point, I believe it was Ali, telling me, it’d be great to have someone in Michigan, we don’t have anyone in Michigan,” Straka told the committee. “And I said, ‘I’ll go.’”
Alexander incorporated Stop the Steal LLC a few days days after Election Day. He immediately began collecting donations through payment processors such as Donorbox and Stripe, he told the January 6th Committee.
During the Million MAGA March in D.C. on Nov. 14, 2020 — at best, the event attracted tens of thousands of Trump supporters, a few of whom became violent — Stop the Steal was “buying people’s flights” and “buying hotels,” Alexander testified.
Recounting the national blitz of rallies and social media activity after Nov. 4, 2020, Alexander told Mayr that the “coalition of influencers” that he assembled made a compact “where all of us had to retweet each other’s offline events, and no offline event was allowed to have our own branding.”
“You’ve got to read True Believer,” he told Mayr. “You’ve got to read Propaganda. You’ve got to read Persuasion. You’ve got to read Influence. There’s a lot of books and a lot of experience that allowed me to create something that looks — that is organic — but is more manufactured than people think.”
When Trump supporters converged in D.C. for a second time on Dec. 12, Stop the Steal again “needed to fundraise money for travel for our people, hotels for our people, expenses for our people,” Alexander testified. Alexander also used the popular Stop the Steal brand to help a Christian nationalist event called Jericho March raise money to cover the cost of its own rally on the National Mall, he testified.
‘I DID COME UP WITH JANUARY 6TH’
On Dec. 16, Alexander issued a call for people to come to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 even before Trump, in a tweet, summoned his supporters on Dec. 19, 2020.
That day, Alexander tweeted to his 100,000-plus followers that “Stop the Steal is coming back to DC” on Jan. 6 — a tweet the January 6th Committee staff would later note in its research.
“I did come up with January 6th. The White House joined after I came up with it. They asked my permission to take it over. I let them take it over,” Alexander told Mayr. “And I deeply regret letting them take it over.”
Trump’s Dec. 19 tweet served as a “call to arms” for many extremists and conspiracy theorists, and “created a ‘fire hose’ of calls to overthrow the US government,” the January 6th Committee found in its final report.
But Alexander and his Stop the Steal partners, including Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), had already laid the groundwork.
Alexander testified that he assumed Trump’s tweet referred to Stop the Steal “because I was — literally everyone was going to capitals, and I had had a conversation — a direct conversation with, you know, Paul Gosar. And so, I just figured the president had to be tweeting about, you know, our presence or us.”
Alexander told the committee that he did not have any foreknowledge that Trump was going to promote the Jan. 6 rally on Twitter.
‘BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, BUT AS PEACEFULLY AS POSSIBLE’
As Jan. 6 approached, Alexander’s rhetoric became increasingly militant.
“In 2021, we will decide whether the Second Amendment militia talk and 1776 is rhetoric or whether it is a threat against tyrants,” he said during a Jan. 2 Periscope livestream that has since been deleted but is archived. “In 2021, we will literally decide whether we have a trans-humanist future and the Great Reset, or whether we put them to bed. And I vote we put them to bed. I vote that we put them to bed. And I vote that we put them to bed by any means necessary, but as peacefully as possible. And peacefully as possible. And only escalating as morally allowed.”
In the same livestream, he predicted that Jan. 6 would be “a top three moment of American history,” adding, “So, what I’m here to tell you is you’re supposed to rebel. You’re supposed to kick dust in their eye. You’re supposed to throw a fit. Do not walk into the concentration camp. Fight back. Spit, claw, cut, bite. You should not play to the whistle. You should play past the whistle, and then you should punch the referee.”
During the same period, records obtained by the January 6th Committee show that Alexander participated in a Signal group named “Jan 5/6 DC OK security/VIP Chat” that was described by Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes as “a group for all event organizers and VIP speakers who need Oath Keepers PSDs or event security on Jan 5/6.”
The chats show Rhodes announcing on Jan. 1 that the Oath Keepers, a far-right group that targeted military veterans and retired law enforcement for recruitment, planned to provide personal security details to Alexander and Stone.
In another text on the same day, Alexander asked “how many guys” would be available to provide security at a rally he was organizing at Freedom Plaza on Jan. 5.
Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs, using the moniker “OK Gator 1,” responded that the Florida chapter would provide 5-10 people early in the day, and 20 in the afternoon.
“Perfect,” Alexander responded.
On Jan. 3, Alexander told the Signal group that his “influencers” would be promoting a website at MarchToSaveAmerica.com headlined “Fight to #StopTheSteal, with President Trump.”
The website offered the explanation that “at 1 p.m., we will march to the US Capitol building to protest the certification of the Electoral College.”
“Then I’m gonna blast all events tonight to our lists,” Alexander told the other participants in the “Jan 5/6 DC OK security/VIP Chat.” He added, “Trump campaign is doing paid digital ads too to boost attendance. Today, we flex.”
Ali Alexander unveils the MarchToSaveAmerica.com website in the “Jan 5/6 security/VIP Chat” Signal group. Courtesy January 6th Committee
Alexander and Rhodes both talked about the possibility of civil war ahead of Jan. 6.
Speaking in December at the Jericho March, which Alexander helped organize, Rhodes called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to deploy military forces across the country to suppress civil disorder or rebellion. If Trump failed to do so, “we’re going to have to do it ourselves later, in a much more desperate, much more bloody war,” Rhodes said.
Alexander, for his part, predicted during his Jan. 2 livestream: “We’re going to get the outcome we need. That outcome might lead to civil war.”
Rhodes and Meggs are among six Oath Keepers who were recently convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the insurrection.
MARCH TO THE CAPITOL
When Trump addressed his supporters at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, he appeared to give a nod to Alexander, who was seated in the front row.
“Our country has had enough,” Trump said. “We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal.”
Beyond building the infrastructure for a national protest movement and issuing the call for Trump supporters to come to DC, Alexander and InfoWars host Alex Jones helped shepherd Trump supporters from the Ellipse, where the president was speaking on Jan. 6, to the Capitol.
There was a plausibly legitimate reason for Alexander to go to the Capitol: He had organized a permitted rally in “Lot 8” on the Capitol grounds, although the rally would never take place amid the chaos to come.
“Alex Jones and myself were escorted out by Secret Service early before Trump ended his speech so that we could lead marchers to the US Capitol and help the flow of hundreds of thousands of people who were in the massive overflow,” Alexander recounted in a livestream on Periscope the following day. “We wanted to put them on the path to the US Capitol, knowing it would take everyone a half an hour to an hour to walk up there. So, Alex and I left the president’s speech.”
Before proceeding to the Capitol, Alexander and Jones stopped at Freedom Plaza. As Alexander looked at his phone, Jones began rallying passersby.
“The New World Order is on the ropes. That’s why they’re having to steal these elections. That’s not the actions of a strong group. That’s the action of a weakling. And we declare 1776 against the New World Order,” a video posted on right-wing social media site Parler shows Jones saying.
Phone texts that Alexander submitted to the January 6th Committee show that during his march to the Capitol, he was in communication with dozens of people, including two text groups related to Stop the Steal — “STS Patriots” and “STS Management.”
“Get out early and get those golf carts down Pennsylvania [Avenue] ahead of the president,” Alexander instructed the STS Management group at 1:15 p.m., as he marched with Jones and a security detail surrounding the InfoWars contingent.
To Caroline Wren, a fundraiser for the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee who had stayed back at the Ellipse, Alexander texted: “Is POTUS walking? Can you give me an update every five minutes?”
“He is not,” Wren responded.
Wren did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.
When they reached the Capitol shortly before 2 p.m., the InfoWars crew climbed atop a stack of metal chairs. Jones addressed the crowd through a bullhorn.
“We’re not antifa, we’re not BLM,” Jones said. “You’re amazing. I love you. Let’s march around to the other side. Let’s not fight the police and give the system what they want. We are peaceful and we won this election. And as much as I want to see the Trump flags flying over this, we need to not have the confrontation with the police.”
Shortly afterwards, Alexander sent a text to Wren and fellow influencer Michael Coudrey, whom he described as “a right hand to me at Stop the Steal”: “We are D escalating the front side of the Capital.”
Coudrey, whom Alexander described as “a right hand to me at Stop the Steal,” led a group of Stop the Steal influencers accompanied by three Oath Keepers to the Capitol separately from Alexander and the InfoWars crew.
At 2:10 p.m., Coudrey reported to Alexander: “It’s over. They broke through and stormed the Capitol.”
Alexander and the InfoWars crew trekked from the west side to the east side of the Capitol and ascended the building’s steps, snaking through the crowd in a line with hands on one another’s shoulder.
C.J. Pearson, one of the Stop the Steal influencers, also wound up on the east side. Video posted on Parler shows Pearson, dressed in a suit and tie, climbing atop an official vehicle parked in front of the Capitol and raising his fist in exultation. Later, he texted a photo of himself to the STS Patriots chat.
Coudrey responded with a heart emoji, and wrote, “A moment in history folks.”
But Alexander was growing concerned.
“CJ, get off the car. Everyone get out of there. And do not text message each other start a signal group,” he wrote, referring to the encrypted messaging app.
C.J. Pearson at the US Capitol on Jan. 6
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“The FBI,” Alexander added, “is coming hunting.”
The January 6th Committee staff asked him about his recommendation to move to Signal.
“I just did not think that it was good for people to willy-nilly be texting each other with all of the campaign to frame people and violate our privacy rights,” Alexander said in response.
Coudrey had already advised the STS Patriots group to leave the Capitol, after announcing that the permitted rally was canceled. He told the group they were going back to their hotel.
Brandon Straka, the #WalkAway founder, responded seven minutes later: “F*** no!! I’m at the Capitol and I just joined the breach!!! I just got gassed! Never felt so f***ing alive in my life!”
He later described the text message to the January 6th Committee as a “hyperbolic joke.”
After leaving the Capitol, Alexander went to 101 Constitution Ave. parking deck, which overlooks the Capitol.
“I don’t disavow this,” Alexander said, pointing toward the crowds in front of the Capitol as sirens wailed. “I do not denounce this. This is completely peaceful, looks like so far. And there are a couple of agitators that I obviously don’t endorse. But this is completely peaceful.”
‘SOME PORTION OF THIS ATTACK WOULD COME BACK TO YOU’
In a Periscope video posted the day after the insurrection, Alexander appeared rattled, and contradicted himself on whether he had told people to go inside the Capitol.
“And so, I did call for people to enter the US Capitol,” he said. “The hundreds of thousands of people who are here are here at the behest of the president, but at the behest of the people, at the behest of the Constitution, at the behest of all of those things.”
Then alluding to his permitted rally, he said, “We were never going to be on the steps of the Capitol, and we certainly were never going to enter the US Capitol.”
Still later, Alexander said, “I would not have entered. I don’t think that people should have entered. I’m against entering.”
Alexander has hedged some of his provocative rhetoric by publicly stating that he tends to exaggerate.
“I am prone to hyperbole, exaggeration, and victory laps,” he told the January 6th Committee in December 2021.
In a boastful moment during a livestream last November, Alexander alluded to his role in the events of Jan. 6, as well as his friendship with rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, that could be read as either an admission of guilt or a ploy to build social capital with Trump’s hardcore base.
“I red-pilled the most famous rapper in all of human history,” he said. “I started a riot for the sitting president of the United States. Kiss my Black ass.”
Ali Alexander on Ye and Jan 6
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To date, Alexander has faced no criminal charges for his involvement in the rallies that set the stage for the attack on the Capitol. Last June, he said in a statement that he testified before a federal grand jury, adding that he was assured by prosecutors that he “was not a target but a fact witness.”
Straka, in contrast, pleaded guilty in August 2021 to engaging in disorderly and disruptive conduct in the Capitol building or grounds. He received a sentence of 36 months of probation and a $5,000 fine.
Doerer with Right Wing Watch noted that unlike Straka, Alexander did not go inside the Capitol or tell other rioters, as Straka did, to take a police officer’s shield.
“He does, like, this stochastic terrorism where he will generally attack one subject, but add, ‘But we’re not violent,’” Doerer said of Alexander. “He’ll talk about general terms of violence, but say, ‘We’re not going to do that.’ He’ll add a shadow of doubt on these incitements of violence.”
Doerer also noted a subtle, but important distinction between Alexander and Rhodes, the Oath Keepers leader, that likely colored how the government views the two men’s actions at the Capitol.
“[Rhodes] was deliberate in organizing Oath Keepers to storm the Capitol, where Ali Alexander just generally used violent rhetoric and led people to the Capitol,” Doerer said. “But when it started getting super violent, [Alexander] was quick to take a perch where he could oversee it and not be directly involved in it.”
Beyond his email to Raw Story, Alexander declined an interview request and did not respond to specific questions about his activities. Among those questions: whether he received assurances from any backers before launching Stop the Steal, whether he communicated with anyone at the White House or the Trump campaign before putting out a call for people to come to DC on Jan. 6, how he learned that the Trump campaign paid for digital ads to boost attendance on Jan. 6, and what he hoped to accomplish by leading a march to the Capitol.
The January 6th Committee tried in vain to pin Alexander down after eight hours of testimony in December 2021. Citing a text from Wren on Jan. 6 telling him he should leave the Capitol, committee staff pressed Alexander on whether his provocative rhetoric had caused the violence that day.
“Why didn’t you push back on Ms. Wren’s assertion that this would come down on you hard?” the staff member asked.
“I was escaping tear gas,” Alexander responded.
“It’s because you know she was right, right?” the staffer continued. “You knew that… some portion of this attack would come back to you, because, for the previous three months and leading up to January 6, you had advocated for a revolutionary war? You had tweeted ‘1776,’ and that message came to fruition on January 6th, didn’t it?
“No,” Alexander replied.
