The following day, prosecutors say, Mr. Reffitt started to make preparations to journey to Washington and arrive in time for “Armageddon all day” on Jan. 6, he wrote within the Three Percenters group chat. He informed his compatriots that he deliberate to drive as a result of flying was unattainable with “all of the battle rattle” he deliberate to deliver — a reference to his weapons and physique armor, prosecutors say.
Some within the group appeared to share his anger. On Dec. 22, one member wrote within the chat, “The one manner it is possible for you to to do something in DC is for those who get the gang to tug the traitors out.”
Mr. Reffitt responded: “I don’t assume anybody going to DC has some other agenda.”
The Home committee has additionally sharpened its concentrate on how the tweet set off a sequence response that galvanized Mr. Trump’s supporters to start military-style planning for Jan. 6. As a part of the congressional inquiry, investigators are attempting to ascertain whether or not there was any coordination past the submit that ties Mr. Trump’s inside circle to the militants and whether or not the teams plotted collectively.
“That tweet may very well be seen as a name to motion,” mentioned Consultant Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “It’s positively one thing we’re asking questions on by our discussions with witnesses. We wish to know whether or not the president’s tweets infected and mobilized people to take motion.”
On the day of the submit, members in TheDonald.win, a pro-Trump chat board, started sharing ways and methods for attacking the Capitol, the committee famous in a report launched on Sunday recommending contempt of Congress costs for Dan Scavino Jr., Mr. Trump’s former deputy chief of employees. In a single thread on the chat board associated to the tweet, the report identified, an nameless poster wrote that Mr. Trump “can’t precisely brazenly inform you to revolt. That is the closest he’ll ever get.’’
Attorneys for the militants have repeatedly mentioned that the teams had been merely appearing defensively in getting ready for Jan. 6. They’d real issues, the attorneys mentioned, that leftist counterprotesters may confront them, as they’d at earlier pro-Trump rallies.
Mr. Trump’s submit got here as his efforts to hold onto energy had been shifting from the courts, the place he had little success, to the streets and to difficult the certification course of that might play out on Jan. 6.
