The second was that there were enough people at the Capitol that afternoon to overwhelm the Capitol Police who were protecting the building and force their way inside. Had two dozen people shown up Jan. 6 to protest the counting of electoral votes in the presidential election, there’s no violence and the police officer and four others who died that day would likely still be alive.
House impeachment managers on Feb. 10 made the case that President Donald Trump spent months laying the groundwork for January’s riot at the Capitol. (Mahlia Posey/The Washington Post)
While presenting their case that Trump incited the day’s violence at the former president’s impeachment trial on Wednesday, House impeachment manager Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) raised an intriguing point. At some point, the decision was made to direct attendees at the rally outside of the White House toward the Capitol that day, ensuring a critical mass of people that might not otherwise have been there. Why? When did that particular decision emerge?
A review of the available evidence and prior reporting indicates how that plan was developed — but not necessarily who made it.
Here’s what we know happened, starting the month prior.
December
On Dec. 19, five days after the electoral votes had been cast in all 50 states, Trump first drew the public’s attention to the day those votes would be counted.
There would be a “big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he wrote on Twitter. “Be there, will be wild!”
The next day, someone registered the domain WildProtest.com, leveraging Trump’s tweet to promote an event that does not appear to have existed previously. It appears to have been the brainchild of Ali Alexander, a far-right provocateur who was also the driving force behind StopTheSteal.com, a lucrative group leveraging Trump’s claims about voter fraud.
The location of the “wild protest” moved slightly, but by Dec. 31 the protest still had the same general logistics: meeting just northeast of the Capitol at 10 a.m. for an hours-long rally with various right-wing speakers.
Jan. 1
Trump leaned into promoting the nebulously identified protest, tweeting repeated enticements for supporters to attend.
“The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C., will take place at 11.00 A.M. on January 6th,” he wrote in one tweet. “Locational details to follow.”
Jan. 2
The next day, those details appeared to emerge. Amy Kremer of the group Women for America First announced that her group would be holding a rally at the Ellipse, just south of the White House.
In an interview on One America News, her daughter Kylie Kremer was vague about whether Trump would make an appearance — though she strongly suggested he might.
Behind the scenes, the White House was likely already intimately involved.
“At the turn of the year,” the New York Times reported earlier this month, “Mr. Trump decided to join the rally himself, and the event effectively became a White House production, with several people close to the administration and the Trump campaign joining the team.”
Trump himself was actively involved in decision-making, according to the Times report: “The president discussed the speaking lineup, as well as the music to be played, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations.”
Jan. 3
The following day, Trump made clear that he would attend the Women for Trump rally.
“I will be there,” he tweeted, sharing a promotional tweet from Kylie Kremer. “Historic day!”
Trump’s involvement in the rally at the Ellipse meant booting some of the originally slated speakers. Dustin Stockton, a former Breitbart employee who was helping plan the event, helped find space for them at a rally the prior evening, which had been organized by a group called the 80 Percent Coalition.
The three discrete protests — Wild Protest, the one at the Ellipse and the one on Jan. 5 — became part of one coordinated event, renamed the March to Save America. (The domain MarchtoSaveAmerica.com was registered on Dec. 30.)
At some point on Jan. 3, the event’s website was updated to include an actual march. That morning, the event details simply identified that a rally would be held at the White House on the morning of Jan. 6.
“In a 12-page report on Jan. 3, the intelligence unit of the congressional police force described how thousands of enraged protesters, egged on by Trump and flanked by white supremacists and extreme militia groups, were likely to stream into Washington armed for battle.”
The acting defense secretary met separately with Trump, who agreed that the D.C. National Guard should be activated.
Jan. 4
A permit issued by the National Park Service delineates what was expected at the event on the evening of Jan. 5, the rally that had originally been organized by the 80 Percent Coalition.
Five thousand people were expected to attend an all-day event. But, the permit notes, “there is no march associated with this permitted demonstration.”
One of the individuals identified as speaking at the rally is conspiracy theory peddler Alex Jones. According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, Jones obtained a prominent speaking slot by donating $50,000 to the effort — and helped secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional funding from a prominent Republican donor.
Jan. 5
The Wild Protest website is updated with the three-part plan: the rally in Freedom Plaza that afternoon, the rally at the Ellipse the next morning and the rally at the Capitol early in the afternoon — right as Congress was convening to count the electoral votes.
That plan only implied a march. The final permit issued for the rally at the Ellipse, like that issued for the rally at Freedom Plaza, explicitly indicated that no march was authorized.
This was the point Plaskett focused on during the Senate impeachment trial on Wednesday.
“The permits stated in no uncertain terms that the march from the Ellipse was not permitted,” she said. “It was not until after President Trump and his team became involved in the planning that the march from the Ellipse to the Capitol came about — in direct contravention of the original permit.”
“This was not a coincidence,” she added.
That’s not quite right. The final permit says that no march is authorized — but it also includes an “activity overview” that mentions movement between the two sites.
“Some participants may leave,” it reads, “to attend rallies at the United States Capitol to hear the results of Congressional certification of the Electoral College count.”
This appears to be what the groups had planned: the Ellipse event with the Capitol event soon after.
One of the groups supporting the March to Save America was the Rule of Law Defense Fund, the policy arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association. In a robocall sent out on Jan. 5, which was obtained by the watchdog group Documented, it promoted the next day’s events — and a march.
“The March to Save America is tomorrow in Washington, D.C., at the Ellipse in President’s Park between E St. and Constitution Avenue on the south side of the White House, with doors opening at 7:00 a.m,” the message read. “At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”
Jan. 6
Speaking at noon on the day of the short-lived insurrection, Trump also announced a march.
“We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated,” Trump said at the outset of his comments. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Near the end of his speech, after many people had already begun walking toward the Capitol, he made the same pitch.
“We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said, implying for the second time in his comments that he would go with them. “ … And we’re going to the Capitol, and 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. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Stockton, the organizer who’d helped shuffle the speaking lineup once Trump was confirmed as a speaker, told the Times that he was surprised to learn a formal march had been added to the mix.
“Before the White House became involved,” the Times reported him saying, “the plan had been to stay at the Ellipse until the counting of state electoral slates was completed.”
It’s not clear why Stockton might have been surprised by the plan to transition from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Perhaps he wasn’t aware that the Wild Protest had been folded in. Perhaps he understood the transition as something less formal than a march.
But by 1 p.m. on Jan. 6, the mechanic behind the move didn’t really matter. Thousands of people were at or on their way to the Capitol, and within 90 minutes, hundreds would be inside.
