Neo-Nazis & White Supremacists Storm the Capitol with Support from the White House and GOP
On January 6, 2020, neo-Nazis, QAnon believers, Trump supporters, and white supremacists stormed the Capitol building, following a “March to Save America” organized in partnership with the Trump White House to prevent or delay the certification of the 2020 presidential election. They climbed walls, broke windows, forced open doors, broke into and vandalized congressional offices, lit up cigarettes, stole items they could carry, and smeared feces on the floor. Some wore suits. One had painted his face red, white, and blue. Another wore a sweatshirt reading “Camp Auschwitz.”
Some were conspiracy theorists, convinced that their takeover of the Capitol was part of a larger and preordained plan, under the apparent impression that crossing the threshold into the building might magically set off a chain of events that would result in Donald Trump remaining president. Some were simply taking advantage of the moment to wreak havoc, take selfies, and snag souvenirs. Others came more prepared, armed with what appears to have been a terrifying plan to take members of Congress hostage — and possibly even assassinate them.
Collaboration with Law Enforcement & Military
Not everyone had to break their way into the building. Video footage shows that some members of Capitol Police opened gates and doors for the crowd, standing by as they streamed into the building. Politico reported that “videos have circulated online appearing to show a Capitol police officer taking selfies with the protesters, and some Metro D.C. police officers were seen chatting and joking around with protesters who had breached the perimeter.” Also according to Politico, a “current Metro D.C. police officer said in a public Facebook post that off-duty police officers and members of the military, who were among the rioters, flashed their badges and I.D. cards as they attempted to overrun the building.”
The Capitol Police did not request support from the DC National Guard in advance of Tuesday’s attack, despite numerous public threats from militia leaders and white supremacist groups. As the violence escalated, the DC National Guard’s presence was requested, but not initially granted. Reports indicate that Trump resisted giving the order. Congressional leaders hiding from intruders called Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R), who immediately asked the Department of Defense for permission to send the Maryland National Guard into DC. Hogan’s request was also not granted for over one hour, during which the attack continued. The DC National Guard was also finally deployed. It is unclear if Trump eventually gave in to requests for the National Guard, or if Vice President Mike Pence intervened to issue the order.
Organizers of the “March to Save America” that Preceded the Attack on the Capitol
The “March to Save America” rally (also advertised as “Wild Protest”) that preceded the storming of the Capitol was organized by a number of groups — many of them, such as Women for America First and Stop the Steal, were the same organizations behind the November 14, 2020 “Million MAGA March.”
Stop the Steal is led by Ali Alexander, a far-right operative with a documented history of racism and antisemitism. In 2017, Alexander, who then went by the name Ali Akbar, participated in a livestreamed conversation with neo-Nazi Matt Colligan. During the conversation, Colligan, who goes by the name “Millenial Matt” online, held up a swastika:
Lucian Wintrich of the Gateway Pundit (left), Ali Alexander (top-right), and Matt Colligan (bottom-right). Screenshot obtained by Right Wing Watch.
StopTheSteal.us lists additional organizers, including: Michael Coudrey, who marched in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017 and has deep connections with some of the neo-Nazis who stormed and vandalized the Capitol; Scott Presler, a white nationalist collaborator; and, most notably, Rep. Paul Gosar, a sitting Republican Congressman from Arizona.
A screengrab from StopTheSteal.us listing Rep. Paul Gosar as the organized for Arizona.
A screengrab from StopTheSteal.us listing Michael Coudrey and Scott Presler as organizers for Nevada and Pennsylvania, respectively.
Coudrey (center) with neo-Nazi Tim Gionet, or “Baked Alaska” (right), and a man giving the “Heil Hitler” salute (left).
Tim Gionet, or “Baked Alaska,” (right) in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Capitol attack.
Coudrey is not the only Stop The Steal organizer who is connected to the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists. Alexander spent the two months between Election Day and the insurrection organizing with both Rep. Gosar, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes — who helped lead the storming of the Capitol on January 6.
Support from Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
On November 5, 2020, Gosar helped organize Arizona’s first “Stop the Steal” protest — something he proudly recounted in an open letter to Arizona voters one month later. Gosar tagged Alexander (as well as Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich and white nationalist Michelle Malkin) on Twitter in videos he posted from the rally. In the following days, Gosar amplified and publicly praised Alexander’s efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election.
On November 18, three days after Gosar extolled Alexander’s work organizing the Million MAGA March in DC, writing, “America thanks you and the rest of the patriot team,” Alexander and his “patriot team” rallied outside and walked into the Georgia State Capitol. This team included conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who had organized a Stop the Steal rally in Michigan one week prior.
Ali Alexander (center) speaking into a black megaphone, and Nick Fuentes (right) holding a white and red megaphone. They are standing outside the Georgia State Capitol. Image obtained by Atlanta Antifascists.
Ali Alexander pictured inside the Georgia State Capitol, wearing an orange scarf around his neck. Alex Jones is behind him and to his right, wearing a black t-shirt. Nick Fuentes is next to Jones, wearing a green jacket. Image obtained by Atlanta Antifascists.
Undeterred by Alexander’s public involvement with a white nationalist like Fuentes, Gosar continued to organize with him. Twelve days after Alexander and Fuentes rallied for their Georgia Stop the Steal action, Alexander and Gosar organized another Stop the Steal protest in Arizona. Both men spoke at the protest, and video footage from the event shows Gosar interacting with Alexander:
Not only did Gosar make no effort to distance himself from Fuentes; he may have even interacted with him on November 30, during the rally. In a Twitter thread recapping her activities from 2020, white nationalist Michelle Malkin stated:
“[I] Joined @repgosar @vanflein @NickJFuentes @ali @MichaelCoudrey @BarnettforAZ @JadenPMcNeil & several hundreds of Arizona patriots at #stopthesteal rally/GOP legislators' hearing @MarkFinchem @WendyRogersAZ.”
Along with the tweet, Malkin shared a photo of herself with Fuentes and McNeil — who also stormed the Capitol on January 6 — as well as a photo of Gosar in which she appears in the background:
Photo 1: Michelle Malkin (left), sitting next to Nick Fuentes, across from Jaden McNeil (right).
Photo 2: In the background, Ali Alexander helping Malkin down from a podium, with Rep. Gosar in the foreground.
Regardless of whether or not they met, Gosar and Fuentes were working in the same circles, and Gosar has actively embraced the idea that he and Fuentes are part of a collective effort to “change history.”
On December 9, 2020, Gosar shared a tweet from an anonymous account that read: “Donald Trump joined the race for us in 2016. Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes mobilized the country in the streets. Doug Mastriano pressured the PA legislature. Paul Gosar has been one of the few in Congress to speak up. All it takes is a few good men to change history, STAND UP!” Accompanying the text is an image of Fuentes, Gosar, Trump, Mastriano, and Jones under the banner “defend the nation.” Fuentes, Mastriano, and Jones all participated in, or were present for, the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Nick Fuentes (center) holding a megaphone while standing on the steps of the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, during the insurrection. Jaden McNeil stands directly to Fuentes’ right, clapping. In front of Fuentes, wearing a gray cap, is Vincent James Foxx, a Holocaust denier and founder of Red Elephants. Image obtained via Eyes on the Right.
Throughout December 2020, Gosar continued to promote Stop the Steal on social media, often tagging Alexander in his posts. On December 24, Gosar asserted that Georgians’ votes were “stolen” and that everyone should “come to DC Jan 6 to protect Donald Trump.” The following week, he restated his intention to “fight back” against “sedition.”
![“I’ll be in DC with Ali and the rest of America. We will fight back against the leftists who’ve have [sic] engaged in sedition to run a Technology Coup. No tanks needed when you can drop hundreds of thousands of ballots or switch votes electronicall…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5daf53c30e17a4220c767a1e/1610391853173-F5260GGBYNPZQY7RUGNM/image-asset.png)
“I’ll be in DC with Ali and the rest of America. We will fight back against the leftists who’ve have [sic] engaged in sedition to run a Technology Coup. No tanks needed when you can drop hundreds of thousands of ballots or switch votes electronically. #StopTheSteal”
Fuentes also spent much of December promoting Stop the Steal, speaking to a group of his America First / Groyper Army during a DC rally on December 12. In early January, just days before he stormed the Capitol building and shouted into a megaphone that he would “accept nothing less than four more years of President Donald Trump,” Fuentes floated the idea of executing legislators.
As Eyes on the Right reported, Fuentes later claimed that he had never encouraged “massive violence against the government,” specifying that this was only because he believed “it wouldn’t succeed.” He went on to call the storming of the Capitol “beautiful,” “righteous,” and “American.” Driving the point home, Fuentes added that he “[could] not say anything negative” about the attack, calling it “completely justified.”
“If I’m being totally honest, I loved what happened yesterday. And we will see what the consequences will be of yesterday, and we will deal with them, and we will adapt to them, and they’re not gonna be good…Our ancestors from our founding smiled upon us yesterday. And I have nothing to apologize for.”
Gosar did not publicly revel in the storming of the Capitol the way Fuentes did. His criticism on Twitter was mild, but he simultaneously expressed sympathy for the insurrectionists on Parler, a now-defunct alternative to Twitter with a primarily right-wing user base: While the Capitol was under siege, Gosar lightly chided the rioters on Twitter, writing, “let’s not get carried away here. I don’t want anyone hurt,” and urged people to “come back.” On Parler, however, he struck a different tone, simply writing, "Americans are upset.”
On Twitter: “Ok. I said let’s do an audit. Let’s not get carried away here. I don’t want anyone hurt. We are protesting the violation of our laws. We are builders not destroyers. BLM burns and loots. We build. If anyone on the ground reads this and is beyond the line come back.”
On Parler, shared with the same photo (the platforms automatically cropped them differently): “Americans are upset.”
Fuentes and Alexander may not even be Gosar’s only direct ties to the insurrectionists. The Phoenix New Times reported that Jake Angeli, a Phoenix-based QAnon supporter who was widely photographed inside the Capitol, posing by the President of the Senate’s podium, rallied alongside Gosar in Maricopa County in early November. These early Stop the Steal rallies in Arizona, during which local election officials were threatened while diligently counting votes, were not only a precursor to the violence and intimidation that ensued on January 6; They were also a sign of Gosar’s involvement in extralegislative efforts to overturn the results of the election, and his willingness to work alongside far-right actors while doing so.
Support from Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
On January 3, Rep. Sessions tweeted that he met with Stop the Steal organizers at the Capitol, and “encouraged them to keep fighting.” One day before the attack on the Capitol, Sessions waved a Stop the Steal flag as he told News Ten he planned to attend the protest: “I believe that President Trump is the one that won this election so I will be there and ready with my flag.” The day after the attack, Sessions deleted his tweet about meeting with the organizers.
“Had a great meeting today with folks from ‘Stop the Steal’ at our nation’s Capitol. I encouraged them to keep fighting and assured them I look forward to doing MY duty on January 6th. #StopTheSteal #LegalVotesCount”
Incitement from Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC)
Newly-elected Rep. Cawthorn spoke at the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol, opening his remarks with the comment, “wow, this crowd has some fight in it!” Cawthorn went on to rail against members of his own party who he deemed “cowards” “hiding and not fighting” with “no backbone.” He noted that the Capitol was only two miles away from the rally location.
Cawthorn did not instruct the audience to threaten lawmakers during his speech. However, he did offer that exact instruction one month before, at an event with Turning Point USA — the sister organization of one of the rally’s sponsors, Turning Point Action:
“Call your congressman and feel free, you can lightly threaten them and say, you know what, if you don’t start supporting election integrity, I’m coming after you, Madison Cawthorn is coming after you, everybody’s coming after you.”
Incitement from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL)
Ali Alexander claimed in a since-deleted video that he had “schemed” with three members of Congress to plan the January 6, 2021 rally. In addition to Gosar, Alexander named Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Mo Brooks (R-AL). Brooks spoke at the rally, giving an incendiary speech in which he instructed the audience to “stop at the Capitol” as they marched, and stated “today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” Brooks refused to apologize for these comments, or to take any responsibility for the violence that he helped to incite.
Incitement from Donald Trump and Don Jr.
Brooks and Cawthorn were far from alone in inciting violence and identifying targets for the crowd that proceeded to storm the Capitol. On December 19, 2020, Trump tweeted about the planned rally. He wrote, “be there, will be wild,” prompting the alternate name for the event, “Wild Protest.”
In the final days of 2020, Trump continued to lie about the results of the 2020 election, allude to impending violence, and encourage his supporters to “fight.” It is unlikely that Trump and his team did not know how these calls were being interpreted by his supporter. As digital forensics and far-right extremism researcher Jared Holt has explained, given the structure and practices of Trump’s social media staff, it is virtually impossible that the administration — and Trump himself — would be unaware of the plans for violence that were circulating online in “Trumpworld.”
At the rally, Don Jr. offered a warning to Republicans who if they voted to certify the election results: “We’re coming for you and we’re going to have a good time doing it!”
Then Trump took to the stage to address his supporters. He repeated false claims of election fraud, stated that the election was “illegal,” and criticized “weak Republicans” who he felt were insufficiently loyal to him. Over the course of the speech, Trump named Vice President Mike Pence seven times, each time falsely asserting that Pence could refuse to certify the election results, and emphasizing how disappointed in him Trump would be if Pence failed to do so. The crowd chanted “Fight for Trump!” and “We love you!” at various moments during the over-one-hour-long speech. Trump closed his remarks by instructing the crowd to march to the Capitol and urge the “weak” Republicans to block the certification process:
“So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
As his supporters were breaching the interior of the Capitol, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” Soon after, chants of “find Mike Pence!” and “hang Mike Pence!” rang through the air.
“Pride and boldness” was not what Trump wanted his supporters to give to Republicans who disobeyed him. His words at the beginning of his speech made his directive clear: “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” They heard him loud and clear.
The Republican State Legislators in the Crowd
Among the crowd of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and QAnon believers who marched to the Capitol after Trump’s speech were at least eight Republican State Legislators: West Virginia State Delegate Eric Evans, who livestreamed himself participating in the storming of the Capitol; State Senator Doug Mastriano; Tennessee State Representative Terri Lynn Weaver; Newly-elected Nevada State Assemblywoman Annie Black; Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem; Virginia State Senator Amanda Chase; Alaska State Representative David Eastman; and Missouri State Representative Justin Hill.
Continued Efforts to Overturn the Results of the 2020 Presidential Election
After the Capitol Building was secure, and Congress returned to the work of certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, Gosar and Brooks along with 137 of their fellow House members, objected to the certification. Despite the violent attack they themselves validated and helped to incite, these 139 House members, along with eight Senators, opted to advance the goal of the insurrectionists and attempt to overturn the results of the election. Gosar, as well as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), has continued to falsely claim that the violence was perpetrated by anti-fascists, despite ample evidence of right-wing actors — including people with whom he is familiar — leading the charge.
Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) have led efforts in the Senate to overturn the election results. Both men led the legislative effort in the Senate prior to the attack on the Capitol, and did not even hesitate to continue their attempts in the immediate aftermath. While both made flimsy efforts to condemn the violence, their support for the insurrectionists and complete alignment with the insurrectionists’ demands are on the record. Prior to the attack, Hawley raised his fist in support of the crowd as he passed them by. During the attack, Cruz sent out a fundraising text to his list:
“Ted Cruz here. I’m leading the fight to reject electors from key states unless there is an emergency audit of the election results. Will you stand with me?”
There are almost certainly more elected officials and White House staffers who supported and were connected to the January 6 attack than the people listed above. Few things make this clearer than CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta’s update at 4:13pm ET on January 6, while the Capitol was still occupied by neo-Nazis:
“A source close to the White House who is in touch with some of the rioters at the Capitol said it's the goal of those involved to stay inside the Capitol through the night.”
A “source close to the White House” was in touch with some of the rioters.