On December 18, 2020, President Donald Trump tweeted, “Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud ‘more than sufficient’ to swing victory to Trump.” He called it “a great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
On January 6, 2021, his supporters went wild.
The House committee investigating the failed MAGA coup on the U.S. Capitol will be hearing a lot about that tweet — a tweet that The Hill called a “pivotal moment in the violent effort to overturn his election defeat” — in the coming days.
“We left off [in the last hearing] with Republicans seeking pardons, John Eastman seeking pardons, and Rudy Giuliani seeking a pardon,” Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell said on Tuesday’s episode of Morning Joe. “Now we’re going to focus today on the tweet that Trump sent, a call to extremist groups to storm the Capitol and the groups surrounding the protests surrounding January 6th. They’re going to start with the 18th of December meeting at the White House, according to my reporting.”
Lowell reported:
The select committee will say at the hearing – led by congressmen Jamie Raskin and Stephanie Murphy – that Trump’s tweet was the catalyst that triggered the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups, as well as Stop the Steal activists, to target the certification. And Trump sent the tweet knowing that for those groups, it amounted to a confirmation that they should put into motion their plans for January 6, the select committee will say, and encouraged thousands of other supporters to also march on the Capitol for a protest.
Trump sent out the tweet after meeting with a who’s who of conspiracy theorists, including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn. “This [meeting] goes on for hours and hours, they go to the residence,” Lowell said. “At some point, a decision gets made, whether it’s by Trump or whether it’s been his aides, we’re not entirely clear, but at some point, he makes the decision, and at 1:42 in the morning Trump sends [the] tweet.”
Nothing good ever comes from tweeting at 1:42 a.m.
NEW: Jan. 6 committee to say at next hearing that Trump directed far-right groups to obstruct Biden’s certification with a 19 Dec 2020 tweet about a “wild protest” — and will play the most compelling parts of Cipollone’s testimony. @GuardianUS https://t.co/W6kWlbZzNJ
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 11, 2022