The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection issued more subpoenas Tuesday, this time to extremist organizations, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers as well as their leaders, in an attempt to uncover the plotting and execution of the deadly attack.
“The Select Committee is seeking information from individuals and organizations reportedly involved with planning the attack, with the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, or with efforts to overturn the results of the election,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said in a statement.
The subpoenas are the latest in a wide net the House panel has cast in an effort to investigate the riot, when supporters of former President Donald Trump, fueled by his false claims of a stolen election, assaulted police and smashed their way into the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
The committee has already interviewed more than 150 people across government, social media and law enforcement, including some former Trump aides who have been cooperative. The panel has subpoenaed more than 20 witnesses, and most of them, including several who helped plan the “Stop the Steal” rally the morning of Jan. 6, have signaled they will cooperate.
The latest subpoenas were issued to the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and 1st Amendment Praetorian organizations as well as their members, requesting documents and testimony.
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys, was among those subpoenaed. He hasn’t been charged in the riot as he wasn’t there on Jan. 6. He’d been arrested in an unrelated vandalism case as he arrived in Washington two days earlier and was ordered out of the area by a judge. Law enforcement later said Tarrio was picked up in part to help quell potential violence.
But despite him not being physically present, the committee believes he may have been involved in the Proud Boys’ preparation for the events at the Capitol.
The committee highlighted a line from another Proud Boys leader’s podcast shortly before Jan. 6 in which he said, “When police officers or government officials are breaking the law, what are we supposed to do as people? Discourse? What are we supposed to do debate? No, we have to use force.”
Jason Lee Van Dyke, a lawyer previously affiliated with the Proud Boys and subpoenaed as part of the congressional investigation, said he would give the committee records that aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege, but emphasized that his affiliation with the Proud Boys International LLC ended in November 2018.
Van Dyke added that he didn’t have any records from November 2020 through the present that the subpoena seeks. “I can’t give them what I don’t have,” Van Dyke said.
More than 30 Proud Boys leaders, members or associates are among those who have been charged in connection with the attack. The group of self-described “Western chauvinists” emerged from far-right fringes during the Trump administration to join mainstream GOP circles, with allies like longtime Trump backer Roger Stone. The group claims it has more than 30,000 members nationwide.
The committee on Tuesday also subpoenaed the Oath Keepers — a militia group founded in 2009 that recruits current and former military, police and first responders — and its founder and leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes. The panel says Rhodes may have suggested members should engage in violence to ensure their preferred election outcome and that he was in contact with several of the more than a dozen indicted Oath Keepers members before, during and after the Capitol attack, including meeting some of them outside the Capitol.
Rhodes has said there were as many as 40,000 Oath Keepers at its peak, but one extremism expert estimates the group’s membership stands around 3,000 nationally. Rhodes didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment that was left on the organization’s website.
The last organization on the committee’s list Tuesday was the 1st Amendment Praetorian, founded by a QAnon believer, which claims to provide free security for “patriotic and religious events across the country.”
Its chairman, Robert Patrick Lewis, is wanted by the committee after being listed as a speaker on the permit for a Jan. 5 rally on Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington. On the day of the attack, Lewis tweeted: “Today is the day that true battles begin.”
The subpoenas narrowing in on the organizations come one day after the panel issued subpoenas to five more people, including Stone and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Some Trump allies have not cooperated. Steve Bannon, a longtime ally, was indicted on Nov. 12 on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House committee. The committee is giving former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows more time to comply with a subpoena before moving forward with a contempt vote.
(AP)
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5 Responses
The sham continues.
Will this fake bipartisan committee honestly look at the role Nancy pelosi and top Democrats played in this blowing way out of proportion? We know they were told they should increase police presence etc for January 6th, yet they refused. The question is why? Did they want something to happen? Were they hoping something was going to happen? Something to happen so that this way they could against stick at the Donald Trump? I think the answer to that is a resounding yes!
The Democrats spent all spring and summer of 2020 telling us that the riots, the damage, the carnage, the killings caused by BLM yms’h and antifa yms’h were perfectly fine because they were for social justice – a new phrase meaning let the animals run the asylum – and everyone saw nothing was ever done to them. In fact you had the. socialist Democrat party joining up with them hand in hand. You had the future vice president paying to bail people out of jail. All this was happening when we were supposed to be wearing masks and social distancing and all that other cockamamie garbage thrown upon us by various government officials who seized power, UNCONSTITUTIONALLY.
We saw how all the leftist gatherings were perfectly fine but anything having to do with anything on the right, well that was horrible and illegal and spreader of all things Fauchi China Virus.
So while I am not condoning anyone who did any physical damage to the Capital building, I think that if this fake bipartisan committee was truthful and honest with themselves, they would look internally at themselves, at their leadership to see where problems were. Why this happened? Look at the vote! Look at all the shenanigans that took place throughout the election cycle of 2020. Of course they won’t do it because they can’t be honest with themselves and say that executive orders were issued as opposed to laws being made in the various state houses.
Finally, what’s going to be when and if these people do testify and they testify that despite what the Democrats have been telling everyone for the past 2 years, they have no connection with President Trump? I think we’ll see some Democrat heads explode on Capitol Hill.
Like I said, this investigation is a complete sham.
These “organizations” are white supremacists, meaning by definition anti Semitic. Republicans refused to have a 50-50 bipartisan commission.
If in any way you support what these terrorist criminals did on January 6, you are by definition anti American and anti constitution.
RT lies and lies and lies, as usual. No, they are not white supremacist, or racist in any way, and also “white supremacist” does not by definition mean antisemitic. And they are certainly not terrorist criminals. That would be the entire Democrat Party, including you. I bless you that all your children will be Republicans and will be heroes like Kyle Rittenhouse.
rt – If you cannot see where the real live vicious antisemitism resides, just know that there is medicine for your condition.
I know that the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and not nice guys and mot of them are probably anti-Semties
That said in relation to groups like BLM they are a group of absolute Tzadikm . If the government was also investigating and coming down on BLM rioters I would not oppose them being called in. Being that they aren’t this is clearly for political purposes. Therefore I strongly oppose the government coming down on them for political purposes. It also counterproductive. The more a group like this feels the government is persecuting them the the more likelihood there is they will engage in violence.