NEW: The Coming Collapse of Donald Trump’s January 6 Conspiracy, Part 8: Ali Alexander
One of the most dangerous men in the U.S. remains at large, subpoenaed by DOJ and Congress but not yet held accountable for January 6—a day he did as much to shape as anyone in America.
{Note: This is Part 8 of an ongoing series in the January 6 section of Proof. You can find prior entries in the series here.}
Introduction
He has been subpoenaed by both the Department of Justice and the U.S. House of Representatives. He’s admitted to “scheming” up a way to put “maximum pressure” on Congress as it did its constitutionally mandated duty on January 6, 2021, saying on camera that his partners in this scheming were Donald Trump congressional allies Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ). He has admitted that he spoke directly with one of Trump’s top political advisers—Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was then and is now engaged to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.—on both Insurrection Eve and Insurrection Day. Proof has reported, with full sourcing, that in the days prior to the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol he was in touch with many U.S. senators and members of the House. He was formerly associated with the shadowy Groundswell group run by far-right insurrectionist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He spent November 2020, December 2020, and early January 2021 surrounded by three far-right paramilitary groups whose members acted as his bodyguards—the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the First Amendment Praetorians—and admits he was the one who encouraged and legitimized the Oath Keepers’ presence at the Capitol on January 6 by asking them to provide security for an event he’d scheduled (under a false name) for the Capitol grounds at the same time Congress was slated to confirm the November 2020 election of Joe Biden as President of the United States. The extremists who first breached the Capitol at that hour, the Arizona Proud Boys, had travelled to D.C. in conjunction with him and had even dressed themselves in a fashion he’d prescribed for them prior to their Capitol attack.
And he was handpicked by then-president Donald Trump to be the leader of the march on the U.S. Capitol that devolved into the worst attack on America’s capital since the War of 1812.
From the moment in summer 2020 when Ali Alexander picked up a phrase, “Stop the Steal”, coined by longtime Trump friend and political adviser Roger Stone—Stone being one of Alexander’s two primary political mentors—the twice-convicted ex-con was obsessed with the color orange. Alexander has since claimed that God spoke to him and “gave” him that color as his chromatic sigil, but as with nearly everything else Alexander (real name: Ali Akbar) has ever said about himself, it lies somewhere between highly improbable and an outright fabrication. In any case, by the time the investigation of January 6 had begun in earnest, the man Trump affectionately called “Sammy” every time he met with him in person or spoke to him by phone was on the lam and in hiding from the FBI.
After centuries of red being generally deemed the color of revolution in the West and in Russia, the color orange came to be associated with revolution beginning with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. I know a bit about this era in Europe’s history because I got my start in political journalism covering two political events: the 2004 U.S. presidential election and the Orange Revolution, both of them turning points in the history of voting rights (the former in the United States, the latter internationally). The 2004 presidential election saw Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, now a close associate of Ginni Thomas, move voting machines out of black neighborhoods in Cuyahoga County (OH) en masse, producing voting lines as long as fourteen hours in the battleground state solely responsible for keeping Republican George W. Bush in the White House for a second term; the Orange Revolution was a grassroots effort in Ukraine to overturn an election slightly more fraudulent than America’s 2004 one, which had been made so by the machinations of future Ginni Thomas advisee Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort (then working as a Rasputin-like puppetmaster for Vladimir Putin’s puppet president in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych).
The Orange Revolution was striking for another reason that hits much closer to home now that we know that Ali Alexander’s explicit plan for January 6 was to occupy the U.S. Capitol long enough for the plan Trump had outlined to state legislators and Stop the Steal leadership 96 hours earlier—a group that included Alexander mentor, Oath Keeper, and Arizona state legislator Mark Finchem—to be effectuated. This seditious plot, devised by Ginni Thomas and others and known as the “Green Bay Sweep” ever since just-subpoenaed Trump co-conspirator and top Trump adviser Peter Navarro admitted (live on MSNBC) that it existed and that that’s what it was called internally at the White House, was intended to see Chuck Grassley (as advised by Ginni Thomas friend Barbara Ledeen) sitting in for VP Mike Pence on January 6 and adjourning the joint session of Congress prematurely so the results of the 2020 presidential election could be (as Trump repeatedly put it publicly and privately) “sent back to the states.”
This euphemism for a coup simply meant Trump needed more time for three things to happen: (1) for GOP state legislators to meet in special session to invalidate their prior certifications of the 2020 election results; (2) for Trump partisans to form slates of fake “electors” in at least six of the battleground states Trump lost, with these fraudsters filing forged documents with federal officials and offices as quickly as possible and thereafter travelling to Washington, D.C. for a rescheduled joint session of Congress; and (3) for a far-right Supreme Court ideologically led by Ginni Thomas’s husband Clarence to have started hearing the appeal in the Gohmert Lawsuit at such time as Congress reconvened, which would give House Republicans sufficient basis to refuse to certify Biden’s landslide election victory and instead force a “delegation” vote for POTUS in the U.S. House (which Republicans believed they had the numbers to win).
But none of this could happen if Ali Alexander couldn’t effectuate his American-style Orange Revolution. Indeed, the specific idea of occupying a politically sensitive and highly visible space long enough to cause a regime change comes from—you guessed it—the Orange Revolution, in which Ukrainian citizens decked out in bright-orange garb just like Ali Alexander was throughout November and December 2020 occupied Independence Square in Kyiv for long enough to produce the demise of the Kremlin-backed, Manafort-advised regime that had taken power there. In a cruel perversion of history, Alexander would use not only the same technique and chromatic symbology as the Ukrainians had but would do so to keep in power a Kremlin-backed American politician, Trump, who had been advised by none other than Paul Manafort for years.
About Ali Alexander
This report can’t possibly fully circumscribe the character or history of Ali Alexander, and won’t attempt to do so. But given Alexander’s torrent of lies about his actions on January 6 it is necessary to provide not just facts confirming those lies as fabrications but also background information about Alexander that substantiates the opinion of this author that Alexander has acted in the mode of a domestic terrorist—meaning that he is a U.S.-based political actor who uses threats of violence to achieve political ends.
Alexander is known for consorting with white supremacists; benefitting from tens of thousands of dollars in donations from far-right financier-agitator Robert Mercer at a time he was fraudulently casting himself as a skilled “interpreter of energies”; calling those who criticize far-right toxic masculinity “white fat bitches” (for unclear reasons the rail-thin Alexander has a years-long habit of publicly ridiculing the overweight); and spouting anti-semitic propaganda, including despicably claiming that “Jewish people do hate crimes against their own communities to get press” and identifying journalists who happen to be Jewish by their religion as a dog-whistle to conspiracy theorists on the far-right fringe who claim American media is controlled by the Jews.
He has been convicted of multiple felonies; he uses a false name (his real name, one he likely deemed unpalatable for far-right activism for obvious reasons, is Ali Akbar); he has been caught faking death threats to get press (ironic, given his anti-semitic claims about Jews engaging in such behavior); he monetizes all aspects of his public persona (Mother Jones reports that “he sells various tiers of access to himself, ranging from $25 a month, which gets you a spot on conference calls, all the way up to $250 a month, which not only comes with the ‘raw analysis’ of his ‘private notes’ but…the ability to spend an extra $50 for a [2020] election night cheat sheet”); and he used the encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate with the Oath Keepers in the run-up to January 6, including contact with Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes, who is now in federal detention awaiting trial on Seditious Conspiracy charges. The other two men who headed paramilitary organizations Alexander used as personal protection in the days before January 6, Enrique Tarrio (the Proud Boys) and Robert Patrick Lewis (the First Amendment Praetorians) have now been subpoenaed by Congress, with the former facing federal charges of Criminal Conspiracy. Lewis has yet to be charged with any crime, though recent breaking news reveals that Lewis’s organization may have threatened to kill a federal witness in Arizona who was communicating with the House January 6 Committee.
{Note: This author is also a federal witness in contact with Congress, as was revealed on this website—which is regularly read by Robert Patrick Lewis and members of his organization by their own admission—in early February 2022. The threats against my fellow congressional witness Staci Burk came in March 2022; I expect that Congress, the FBI, and the Department of Justice will be looking into whether Lewis and/or his organization took any other actions in March or April of 2022, either themselves or by and through individuals connected to their known associates (such as Michael Flynn, Joseph Flynn, Devin Nunes, and Kash Patel) that aimed to harass, punish, intimidate, or otherwise criminally tamper with federal witnesses Mr. Lewis knew had critical information about him and were in contact with Congress as part of its ongoing January 6 investigation. It’s unknown when or whether the ongoing federal probes of Lewis and his organization will lead to the arrest of him or his compatriots, which arrests (along with allegations of financial loss) his 1AP paramilitary subordinate Michael Kenny told Burk 1AP leaders worry about to the point of being willing to commit acts of violence in response. Certainly, any and all in-court or out-of-court documents or depositions affiliated with Lewis and/or 1AP sent by either or both to federal witnesses will end up in the hands of federal investigators.}
While Alexander claims that he only contacted the Oath Keepers about coming onto the Capitol grounds on January 6 with arms and armor to act as security for an event that (video documentation confirms) Alexander made no attempt whatsoever to set up or attend on January 6, 2021, Politico reports that Alexander has previously admitted that he was in touch with the Proud Boys for this purpose as well. It should be noted that both Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio and 1AP leader Robert Patrick Lewis have admitted to being in contact with current Seditious Conspiracy defendant (and current federal detainee) Stewart Rhodes; all three men—the arrested Rhodes and Tarrio and the still-free Lewis—were subpoenaed by Congress on the same day in November 2021, with Congress unambiguously stating, in writing, that it believed all three had non-public information about January 6. The New York Times reports that Alexander was also on a separate, long-running private pre-insurrection chat that involved four dozen individuals in many instances either facing criminal charges over January 6, under a federal subpoena related to the insurrection, or under investigation by DOJ and the FBI; the roster includes Tarrio, Rhodes, Oath Keeper lawyer Kellye SoRelle, Proud Boys Jacobs Engels and Tyler Ziolkowski, Michael Flynn associate Ivan Raiklin, Owen Shroyer, Roger Stone, far-right radio-show host Pete Santilli, Virginia Freedom Keepers co-leaders Christina Skaggs and Marsha Lessard, and anti-vaccine activist Ty Bollinger. Many of these individuals had tasked themselves with ensuring that the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was as large as possible, even as Alexander had told federal investigators he was completely floored and blindsided when even a single one of the 100,000+ people he helped bring to D.C. on January 6 decided they wanted to enter the Capitol (an action identical to the one Alexander, Alex Jones, and other Stop the Steal leaders had taken a few weeks earlier when they entered the Georgia State Capitol as a dry run for the January 6 protests).
{Note: Based on 2022 reporting, Alexander also appears to have been in contact with Michael Flynn himself in December 2020 at a minimum. Michael Flynn and Alexander both used the First Amendment Praetorians as paramilitary bodyguards in the weeks before January 6.}
Alexander’s current claim—notably, only post-subpoena—that he had no inkling that anyone he was corresponding with prior to January 6 had any intention of committing or aiding/abetting the federal crime of Obstructing a Congressional Proceeding is belied by everything he ever said when he had a camera before him and didn’t believe he was being watched by federal investigators (as in fact he has been for months, as have his associates and the paramilitary bodyguard units he used post-election, all of which are referenced above; some of the persons in these categories of witnesses or suspects now seek to evade congressional subpoena in part because the Department of Justice has announced it will review all House January 6 Committee transcripts).
For instance, in this video clip Alexander boasts that “Stop the Steal—me and my friends—are responsible for 90% of everything that happened post-election.” As for Congress, it has described Alexander this way in writing: “Ali Alexander is an early and aggressive proponent of the Stop the Steal movement who called for violence before January 6th.” Alexander’s self-described friends and co-conspirators in many cases now claim not to know him; Rep. Mo Brooks, for instance, who is now running for the United States Senate, told a local Alabama media outlet that he has “no recollection of ever communicating in any way with whoever Ali Alexander is”, a lie Brooks later had to retreat from after Alexander released a tranche of his digital correspondence, which release caused Brooks to “admit[ ] to [a] communication [between him and Alexander].”
{Note: Brooks’ public lies about January 6 stand alongside those of the man he aims to join in Alabama’s senatorial delegation, GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville, who lied about whether he participated in an Insurrection Eve “war room” at Trump International Hotel that Ali Alexander called into at least once. Tuberville’s lie was first reported on by Proof; Tuberville subsequently, like Brooks, admitted that he had lied. These lies, like all those told by Trump’s closest associates regarding January 6—a group that includes scores of persons with special access to the former president—suggest “consciousness of guilt” of possible criminal conduct.}
Generally speaking, Alexander’s current denials regarding January 6 are a transparent laundry list of things he has never been accused of, indicating that he is strategizing his denials to be responsive only to allegations he invented himself. With this in mind, we find him denying, to Politico, (a) that he personally financed the equipment used for the White House Ellipse rally at which Donald Trump incited an insurrection (which equipment has long since been known to have been largely financed by far-right donor Julie Jenkins Fancelli, whose donation was lined up by the co-organizer of Stop the Steal with Alexander, Alex Jones); (b) discussing his plans to use the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and First Amendment Praetorians as personal paramilitary security in the weeks before January 6 with the White House (which discussions there would have been no reason whatsoever for him to have); (c) supervising the individuals who ran security for Trump’s Ellipse rally (as again there would have been no reason whatever for him to have done, as the rally wasn’t his event and the U.S. Secret Service offered nearly all the consequential event security); (d) and, most controversially, coordinating his own movements “with” the Proud Boys “on January 6.” Though he has never been accused of this last activity, Alexander here chooses his words carefully, as he indeed coordinated his January 6 movements with the entity most responsible for the January 6 seditious conspiracy—the Oath Keepers, a group he well knew were in contact with the Proud Boys. And he’d in fact been in regular contact with the Proud Boys in the days before January 6; while he may not have seen the Proud Boys on January 6, that would be consistent with what appears to have been the plan for the march on the Capitol, which was intended to be preceded by a first wave of Capitol attacks from paramilitary units, followed at a distinct interval by a second wave of largely unarmed pro-Trump “protestors” led by Alexander and Jones. While Alexander also told Politico that (e) he “wasn’t in communication with any of the aforementioned groups [the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers] while I was near the Capitol”, this again carefully parsed denial underscores that he was in contact with other groups while he was near the Capitol on January 6 (he admits, for instance, being in regular contact with the Trump campaign while he was near and even at the Capitol) and he was in contact with the aforementioned groups at various points before entering the Capitol grounds.
Even Alexander’s evidentiary denials are carefully constructed. He tells Politico that “I am not in possession of evidence that anyone else had plans to commit unlawful acts” (emphasis supplied); of course, as we will see below, Alexander and others involved in the planning of January 6 used encrypted, self-deleting messaging apps to ensure that they were never in personal possession of any evidence of anyone else’s intent, and in fact Alexander was quite paranoid about instructing—sometimes openly—his most radical and violent followers not to send him any digital evidence of their plans. But this does not alter the testimonial evidence Alexander possesses by virtue of having been present as plans for a march on the United States Capitol on January 6 were laid.
Alexander’s Orange Revolution
American journalists focused on the intersection of the color orange and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have generally given their attention to persons associated with the insurrection other than Ali Alexander. Why? Because shortly after January 6, the founder of the insurrection-leading Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, threatened to sue Proof because it had just become the first media outlet in the United States to link the “blaze orange” knitted hats worn by the Proud Boys on January 6 with the group of “blaze orange”-hatted men the Wall Street Journal had just reported led the attack on the Capitol. McInnes was keen to use litigation to suppress any journalistic report indicating that the January 6 rioters had been wearing orange non-coincidentally, let alone that this color had been worn on January 6 by the Proud Boys in particular. That Ali Alexander had spent the last two months being guarded by Proud Boys, that he is a known associate of Gavin McInnes, and that the blaze orange-hatted Proud Boys who led the attack on the Capitol were all from the state Alexander had done much of his post-election agitating in, Arizona, went without much notice or comment in the early days after the insurrection.
Until Proof started pointing that out, too.
Indeed, this outlet came under even greater fire when it began reporting on the so-called Eddie Block Video—a video which was subsequently seized by the FBI during a raid on Block’s home, per Block—which depicted the blaze orange-hatted Proud Boy contingent as hailing from Arizona.
But the Proof exposé on the Block Video went still further, noting that it wasn’t just rank-and-file Arizona Proud Boys who were attired in orange caps on January 6, but the Proud Boys and others who were kitted out in paramilitary gear. Many of these young white men were wearing blaze orange armbands or strips of blaze orange tape on their combat helmets. I noted this on my Twitter feed and here at Proof at the time, suggesting that it seemed like some of the leading Capitol attackers used blaze-orange identifiers to ensure allies could quickly spot them (and vice versa) in what they surely presumed would be a massive melee or, at a minimum, a sustained level of chaos inside the building they and Ali Alexander intended to occupy for as long as Trump needed them to (and for as long as Trump was able to keep the National Guard away from the building through his inaction, which as it turned out was over three hours).
Alexander’s Role on January 6
As Proof has reported previously—with video sourcing—Donald Trump personally selected Ali Alexander and his co-conspirator Alex Jones to lead the march on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, so Alexander’s words and actions must be seen as occurring at a time he was acting as an agent of the sitting president. While Alexander was in the legal sense only a “special agent” (he’d been tasked with one function, meaning Trump wouldn’t be responsible for any “frolic” deviating considerably from that sole task but would be responsible for any “detour” by Alexander from his designated role as march leader), he was an agent nevertheless.
{Note: While agency law, which encompasses the legal terms frolic and detour, typically arises in the context of contractual employment, it can also arise where there is a non-employment oral contract between parties that benefits—in legal terms, offers “consideration”—to both parties, and/or a situation in which one party believes, as Alexander apparently did prior to January 6, that the person who has tasked him with doing something is legally entitled to do so because that person is an elected law enforcement official executing constitutional duties: namely, a President of the United States fighting off what Alexander may have falsely believed was a coup by enemies of the state. Alexander and Trump’s subjective beliefs, as demonstrated by their respective actions, would be relevant to the agency analysis to be conducted here.}
Indeed, messages between the insurrectionists Ali Alexander was coordinating with reveal that Alexander and his compatriots almost certainly deemed themselves to be under the direction of the nation’s commander-in-chief either directly or indirectly, even to the point of having a clear sense of the scope and duration of this oversight: Wednesday, January 6 through Friday, January 8. (Alexander would erroneously cite Tuesday, January 5 through Thursday, January 7 as the duration of his task in the pre-insurrection speech discussed later in this article, but it is now clear that the Stop the Steal operation of Insurrection Week—partnered as it was with far-right extremist groups of a paramilitary nature—was intended to last from January 6 through the end of the work-week and into the weekend if necessary.)
All this is a way of saying that on January 6 Ali Alexander may well have been the most important figure in Washington who did not work at either the White House or the Capitol. He was in regular contact with Republican members of the U.S. Senate, Republican members of the U.S. House, individuals who worked in the White House; the leaders of every far-right organization (there were at least seven of them) that had an event planned for downtown Washington on January 6; the leaders (and many foot-soldiers) of every far-right paramilitary unit acting as security for those organizations (there were at least four of these); and maintained these contacts with such regularity that he’s said he was in real-time text-message contact with the 2020 Trump campaign as the Capitol was being stormed. Even beyond this, he had past contacts with major insurrectionist figures like Ginni Thomas and on-the-day January 6 contacts with individuals pretending to be journalists but apparently connected to Trump’s political efforts in some way, such as pro-Kremlin former intelligence agent Jack Posobiec, who was “working” for OANN on January 6 but may have been doing so in the same pretextual way his OANN colleagues Christina Bobb and Chanel Rion were; we now know that both of these “journalists” were in fact working with Trump’s legal team.
The only man in downtown Washington on January 6 who was not working in either the Capitol or White House and rivaled Alexander in power, knowledge, and influence was Alex Jones—who, not coincidentally, was by Alexander’s side the whole day (and nearly all of the evening of January 5) and is on camera taking his cues from Alexander.
So Alexander’s boast that at least “90%” of everything that happened post-election was attributable to his efforts is true. In fact, it’s one of the only truths Alexander is known to have uttered about the 2020 presidential election.
Just so, apart from storming the Capitol, it appears the only task the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys shared on January 6 was protecting members of the Stop the Steal Committee (see below), some of whom were also protected by a third far-right extremist group that does not appear to have had members enter the Capitol, the First Amendment Praetorians. The first two of these three groups met secretly in a parking garage in D.C. late on January 5, as Proof was one of the first media outlets to report.
{Note: One of those present at this secret meeting, Oath Keeper attorney Kelly SoRelle, tried to contact this author via private message in late 2021, and then, in early 2022, blocked the Twitter feed associated with Proof after publicly writing to this author, “your sick [sic].” Proof did not respond to SoRelle’s outreach; she has now had her phone seized by the FBI and is cooperating with federal investigators. She also now claims to be the acting head of the Oath Keepers, underscoring the power she may have held in the organization when she met with the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio, on Insurrection Eve. Presumably she has also been in a position to inform the FBI of the nature and number of contacts between the now-indicted Stewart Rhodes, former Oath Keeper leader, and First Amendment Praetorian leader Robert Patrick Lewis. Lewis has publicly boasted of his contacts with a number of key insurrectionist figures, including Rhodes, Alexander, and Michael Flynn, the latter two members of the Stop the Steal Committee that Alexander claims planned the events of January 6. See more below.}
Stop the Steal’s Insurrection Day HQ
In its reporting on the many Trump war rooms across D.C. on Insurrection Eve and Insurrection Day—from several such rooms at the Willard Hotel to one big one at the Trump International Hotel, from the Vice President’s Mansion at the United States Naval Observatory to several small downtown hotels—one location Proof focused on was the Washington-center Marriott at which Ali Alexander and Stop the Steal set up camp when they arrived in Washington on January 4, 2021.
While Alexander and his compatriots quickly linked up with some other powerful and influential insurrectionist figures who were staying at the Willard Hotel and Trump International, a number of photos emerged from Alexander’s more modest haunts at the Marriott, solidifying it as one of the high-traffic locales for insurrectionist activity in the 24 hours before the attack on the Capitol. The unresolved question, of course, has long been how much contact the Stop the Steal power center at the Marriott had with other powerbrokers, whether those at the Willard or Trump International or the White House.
Proof has reported, citing research by Olivia Little of Media Matters for America, that besides the fact that a component of Stop the Steal’s leadership attended Trump’s January 2 conference call outlining the “Green Bay Sweep” coup plot, Ali Alexander himself “attended” the Insurrection Eve war room at Trump’s private residence in Washington—the Trump Town House at Trump International Hotel—by speaking with January 6 coup plotter Kimberly Guilfoyle by phone as the war room was in full swing. Proof has also reported extensively on President Trump’s repeated contacts with Alexander co-conspirator Alex Jones (and possibly, though it’s unconfirmed, Alexander himself) in the days before the attack on the matter of the logistics for the march on the Capitol.
Proof has reported on a blaze-orange-hatted Alexander leading a “Victory or Death!” chant in Freedom Plaza on Insurrection Eve—his blaze-orange hat identical to the ones worn by the contingent of Arizona Proud Boys that launched the attack on the Capitol at midday on January 6—and has reported on Alexander’s boasts (which we now know were, incredibly, wholly accurate) of having been in contact by phone or in person with a number GOP members of Congress on January 4 and January 5. Proof has noted that in Alexander’s Insurrection Eve speech, he boasted of having spoken directly to President Trump so often that Trump had a nickname for him: “Sammy” (a recognition of Alexander looking remarkably like late entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.).
It’s clear, from Alexander’s words, that the use of blaze-orange paramilitary signifiers during the attack on the U.S. Capitol was his idea, and indeed was framed by him—consistent with his pseudo-religious rhetoric in various speeches and interviews (see below for more)—as a sign from God that the insurrectionists were doing the Lord’s work. In other words, the Arizona Proud Boys didn’t convince Alexander to wear a blaze-orange knitted cap on Insurrection Eve; it was the other way around. The Proud Boys tasked with launching the storming of the Capitol on January 6 didn’t wear blaze orange armbands and stickers because they’d devised that symbology, but because Ali Alexander had.
But do we have any evidence of the very moment that Alexander’s political operation, working hand-in-glove with Trump’s political operation via Kimberly Guilfoyle and Katrina Pierson, transmuted into the paramilitary operation Trump needed it to be?
Yes—we now do.
New Video Offers a Possible January 6 Smoking Gun
On January 5, 2022—the one-year anniversary of Insurrection Eve—a video appeared on Twitter of the lobby of Ali Alexander’s and Stop the Steal’s Insurrection Eve hotel.
The video seemed innocuous enough, until a Twitter user pointed out this still image:
In the image, a woman wearing an orange neckerchief, sitting at a table across from an orange coat visually similar to one commonly worn by Ali Alexander, is cutting orange armbands of the sort worn by many Proud Boys as they breached the Capitol on January 6. {Note: See this video—in Proof articles known as the Eddie Block Video, and taken by the Proud Boys communications director on Insurrection Day—for more.}
The table this woman is sitting at appears to be directly next to—in fact, just three feet from—the table that Ali Alexander and his Stop the Steal co-organizer Michael Coudrey (who fled the country and renounced his far-right politics after January 6) used as their Marriott lobby headquarters on January 5, as you can see by cross-referencing the lobby video linked to above and this Insurrection Eve image:
Is the orange jacket on the far seat in the first photo Ali Alexander’s infamous orange jacket (pictured below)? Truthfully, we don’t know. But they appear to be the same color and make when the photographs are chromatically equalized, and if you zoom in on the first photo you’ll see a black zipper identical to the one on Alexander’s jacket:
Ali Alexander’s most ardent followers also sometimes wear orange neckerchiefs (as you can see in the photograph above) in honor of his own tendency to do so, as here:
And here:
Can we be sure that the orange strips being made in the first photo above ended up in use by Proud Boys the following morning? Reasonably sure, yes. First, as you can see in the following sequence of photos—all still images from the Eddie Block Video—armbands of exactly the sort being prepared in the first photo above were widely worn by the Proud Boys on Insurrection Day.
This said, one of the photos above shows a Proud Boy with a roll of blaze-orange tape rather than cloth, so certainly some of the armbands above are adhesive bands from a roll (though of course the use of orange armbands in any configuration on January 6 links the Proud Boys and Stop the Steal no matter how any one armband was formed).
But just as important as anything above is the fact that on Insurrection Eve—when the first photo in this section was taken—the Proud Boys were headquartered at the very hotel we see in that first photo. The Marriott hotel lobby was the hotel lobby of both Stop the Steal and the Proud Boys.
So is there a link between Ali Alexander and the Proud Boys beyond them staying at the same hotel on January 5? Yes—and this link goes beyond the fact that Alexander had been using the Proud Boys as his personal protective service for the two months preceding January 6, and the fact that he devised the color scheme the Proud Boys used on January 6, and that he even wore the same blaze-orange knitted hat the Proud Boys wore on January 6 during a public speech on January 5 in which he led a “Victory or death!” chant.
In fact, as the pre-insurrection Alexander speech analyzed at length in this report (see below) details, Alexander was personally responsible for the Proud Boys’ lodgings the night before the attack on the Capitol—as he had first arranged to stay at the same hotel as the Proud Boys (the Hotel Harrington), and then, when the Hotel Harrington terminated its bookings for January 5, January 6, and January 7, Alexander personally “coordinated” with the Proud Boys to move his headquarters and theirs to the same hotel: one of the Marriotts in downtown D.C., pictured in the first photograph above.
So the reason the woman cutting the blaze-orange strips in the still image above—possibly one of the many women the Proud Boys allowed to be unofficial adjuncts to their men-only operation in January 2021—was in Ali Alexander’s hotel preparing the apparent January 6 war kit for the Proud Boys is because Alexander himself, by his own admission, set up their HQ there. While these could be mere coincidences, the volume of other evidence related to Alexander and the Proud Boys militates against it.
Given that Alexander directly coordinated with the White House on both January 5 and January 6—and given that, as he was coordinating with the White House, he was also coordinating with the very men who breached the Capitol first on January 6—there can no longer be any doubt that Ali Alexander, chosen to be (as it were) the co-Grand Marshal of the march on the Capitol by President Trump himself, and indeed a man close enough to the then-president that Trump had an affectionate nickname for him, is the linchpin to the January 6 investigation. No one individual touches more January 6 co-conspirators than Alexander does.
Ali Alexander: A History of Violent Threats and Promoting Violence
The tweets below are just the smallest sampling of what Alexander has been saying in public over the last 48 months. If you for even a moment doubt any of the statements in this article about Alexander’s rhetoric and incitements, feel free to use Google to find scores or even hundreds more examples like the ones offered here and via links in this Proof article and others.
Incredibly, after weeks of issuing threats involving bricks and fire in Georgia during the month of December 2020, one of Ali Alexander’s worst public threats of violence came just a week before January 6 and focused on the U.S. Capitol building itself. In a December 30, 2020 tweet, Alexander said that if a joint session of Congress were not held on January 6 as planned—and as his “Wild Protest” event required, for it to have any political impact at all—any American could “guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building [the Capitol].” He went on to erase any doubt about what he meant (as if there had been any) by repeating his now-infamous personal slogan, “1776 [violent revolution] is always an option.”
Proof has published countless articles about Alexander that link to and summarize his specific public threats in the lead-up to January 6, 2021—which also explains why he went into hiding from the FBI, indeed for many months, almost immediately after the attack on the Capitol.
The Alexander Periscopes
At a time when no one but his most radical supporters was following his activities, and—as importantly—when he didn’t yet know that his efforts to overturn the November 2020 presidential election would fail, Alexander recorded a set of incriminating videos on Periscope that may now be some of the best evidence available for collection by the House January 6 Committee.
One video in particular, titled “MUST WATCH FOR JANUARY 6TH GATHERING” (emphasis in original) and recorded the weekend before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, is particularly harrowing. Now archived as an “unlisted” video on YouTube—one that could disappear at any moment—the video confirms the violent intentions of Stop the Steal for January 6.
{Note: This video cannot be embedded here—or anywhere—as Alexander or one of his agents disabled embedding to make the video harder to share with individuals outside the Stop the Steal “movement.” Click the link above to see the video; note that there’s no sound or speech for the first seventy seconds of the video, so the link skips that portion of the Periscope upload.}
The first key component of the video relates to the Hotel Harrington, the D.C. hotel that had originally been Stop the Steal’s intended headquarters for Insurrection Week.
The Hotel Harrington
Wary of the possibility of violence on January 5 and January 6—as, to be very clear, everyone in Washington was by the weekend before Insurrection Week, including all of the Republicans (Trump included) who nevertheless deliberately incited violence in downtown Washington that week—the Hotel Harrington decided, just days before the January 6 joint session of Congress, to temporarily shut down.
Specifically, the Harrington closed itself to all customers for January 5, January 6, and January 7, effectively terminating the reservations of any parties, including Stop the Steal’s leadership, who had made plans to stay at the Harrington during that period.
To be clear, this closure affected—it seems—all Harrington guests, and wasn’t solely targeted at Stop the Steal, the Proud Boys, or any other individual pro-Trump party.
The Harrington was considered an ideal war room (or, rather, war hotel) by Alexander and his co-conspirators because it was close to the White House Ellipse, close to the Capitol, and, just as importantly, less than 500 feet from Trump International Hotel—which we now know was the location of at least one critical pre-insurrection Trump war room. It is because of the Harrington closure that Stop the Steal and the Proud Boys ended up headquartered at the downtown D.C. Marriott, as described above.
When he recorded one of his Periscope videos the weekend before the Capitol riot he helped orchestrate, Ali Alexander had just learned about the Harrington closure and was livid about it. In fact, he was rather more than angry—he was moved to violence.
Indeed, Alexander appears to want to incite a firebombing of the hotel.
Ostensibly (but not really) directing his comments to the American media, which he would have known wasn’t watching his Periscopes—even as he did know his most radical supporters were—Alexander says the following in the video linked to above:
If something bad happens at the Hotel Harrington [on January 5 or January 6], don’t ask me to denounce it. I’m not taking your call. If something bad happens to the Hotel Harrington because they violated the civil rights [of Trump supporters], I’ll call it karma. I don’t even believe in karma—but I will then! I will then! Hopefully nothing bad happens to the Hotel Harrington. {He shrugs.}
Likely aware that he is largely being watched by violent extremists, not journalists, and that he’s just intimated to them that he would be well pleased if “something bad happens at the Hotel Harrington” in the next 96 hours, he tries to protect himself from potential criminal liability for incitement by addressing his ardent followers:
Do not DM me [“direct-message” me on social media] or text me anything about that [attacking the Hotel Harrington].
Alexander, who’s been an organizer many years, knows exactly what he’s doing here: he’s informing individuals he knows are violent because they’ve in the past urged him to openly support and advocate for political violence—individuals that include the very same Proud Boys who (by early January 2021) had been his conspicuously ready-for-violence bodyguards for months—that (a) he’d be happy if the Hotel Harrington were attacked, (b) he expected that those listening to him would now be (in part due to his expression of an interest in the Hotel Harrington being attacked) preparing to communicate with one another privately about attacking the Hotel Harrington, and/or would begin such preparations because Alexander had just given them the idea to do so, and (c) he knows that what his followers will discuss with respect to attacking the Hotel Harrington on Insurrection Eve or Insurrection Day is an illegal conspiracy to commit property crimes or violent crimes and that therefore they must not alert him to their plans to keep him safe from federal arrest in the lead-up to the “protest” he’d planned for Capitol Hill on January 6. {Note: Of course, we’ve no idea what Alexander was at the time telling his soldiers backchannel; we know only that he didn’t want to be seen on this early January 2021 video as being in possession of any evidence of a criminal conspiracy.}
Alexander is so violent—and so desperately wanted the Hotel Harrington attacked during the period his forces were in D.C.—that he couldn’t help himself from making his desires even more explicit to his followers (to whom he’d previously and repeatedly used the phrase “Not yet!” to keep them from becoming violent prior to Insurrection Week, which phrase indicated he and they felt violence would eventually be necessary):
I’m telling you [NB: he here addresses his followers], like the families in the Middle East that dance when something awful happens to their enemies, I will dance—I will dance!—if there are bricks through the [windows of the] Hotel Harrington. I will dance!....because it’s written in the hearts of all red-blooded men that this [the Harrington closing its January 5 and January 6 bookings] is wrong! This is wrong! This is wrong! And wrong things should not exist.
And our government, if it is legitimate, will defend us [if we throw bricks through the Hotel Harrington]. If our government is not legitimate, then we [the Trump supporters about to enter D.C. to march on the Capitol] are the government. That’s it. It’s really that simple.
{Emphasis in original.}
But Alexander wasn’t done ranting about the Harrington.
And as you read this next section, I hope you will think about the recent massacre in Uvalde, Texas. Why? Because in this video Ali Alexander knew he was speaking to men who had publicly urged him to condone violence in the past; knew he was speaking of a public establishment that had done nothing more than cancel all customers’ reservations due to reasonable concerns about violence; and knew that because the Harrington was (and is) a high-traffic building generally accessible to the public, any terrorist attack against it would run a significant risk of harming a large number of innocents.
Despite this knowledge as a veteran of far-right political organizing—indeed, more specifically a veteran of that type of political organizing which, as Alexander has conceded, brings into its fold violent radicals as part of its premeditated agenda to draw large crowds—Alexander said the following less than 96 hours before an armed, violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that killed several and injured well over a hundred:
May God have his vengeance on the Hotel Harrington! I will pray a special prayer tonight—and I hope that other believers, if their spirit says, ‘Okay, Ali’s not doing this in anger,’ because I could be—but if your spirit is telling you what my spirit is telling you [sic], [the prayer you should make tonight] is, ‘God, may your vengeance be carried down like a holy fire on the Hotel Harrington. Let chaos…rain [sic] its chaotic hell on the Hotel Harrington. May those [hotel] walls come tumbling down. May they [the workers at the Harrington] walk into a fiery pit and cease to exist.’
{Emphasis in original.}
Aware that he is calling for a firebombing, Alexander subsequently—in a half-hearted aside—says that “we” (Stop the Steal) should not attack the hotel, but that instead the “lightning” will be sent by “God.” As Alexander has repeatedly referred to himself and his new “movement” as instruments of God’s wrath whose actions are not just directly condoned but even mandated by the Lord, this aside is as meaningless in practice as it likely was intended to be in execution. {Note: See below for much more on the many overt religious dimensions of Alexander’s “movement.”}
Ali Alexander’s “War”
As you will have seen in the Twitter images above, one of Alexander’s favorite words is “war.” He has repeatedly said that the moment he believed America’s government was no longer legitimate—a point he makes clear had been reached by January 6—he will authorize the most violent of his followers to engage in the “war” they have long begged him to publicly support and advocate for.
So it was no coincidence when Alexander declared, in the Periscope video linked to above, that (a) he wanted his march on the Capitol to intimidate members of Congress so severely that they would change their votes on January 6, and (b) that what he was expecting would intimidate members of Congress in this way was the “loud war” that his event would create on Capitol grounds.
Not “roar”—war.
Indeed, it’s because Alexander knew he’d set up a “war” for the Capitol grounds that he pre-justified this “war” by saying the following in his pre-insurrection address:
The [American political] left is trying to push us [Stop the Steal and its supporters] to war! I’m telling you, the left wants there to be a shot fired [on January 6]! The left wants that.
This is disgusting. So I want to let you guys know how we [Stop the Steal] are responding [to the alleged desire of the American political left for a “war”], because I was the one who came up with the January 6 idea—with Congressman [Paul] Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and then Congressman Andy Biggs, we four schemed up [the idea]—of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who [in the U.S. Congress] we couldn’t [successfully] lobby [to change their vote at the January 6 joint session of Congress to oppose certification] we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body [Congress] [by] hearing our loud war from outside.
{Emphasis in original.}
On Insurrection Eve, at the Stop the Steal event at Freedom Plaza Alexander had organized, Alexander’s Stop the Steal co-organizer Alex Jones would shriek these words at the top of his lungs to an angry mob before him he knew he’d be leading in a march on the Capitol the following day: “IF THEY [THE POLITICAL LEFT] WANT A FIGHT, THEY BETTER BELIEVE THEY’VE GOT ONE!” Jones, like Alexander, not only told his followers that the left had provoked a war, and that the left wanted a war, but that the battleground for that war would be the U.S. Capitol, the date of that war would be January 6, and the purpose of that war (or, as Alexander had termed it, the “loud war” on January 6 at the Capitol) would be to influence the actions of duly elected officials. Alexander and Jones had personally helped populate the front lines of their “war” by asking an armed paramilitary group, the Oath Keepers, to come with them onto Capitol grounds as they led 100,000+ angry Trump voters on a march there.
{Note: The degree to which the rhetoric of the three Stop the Leaders—Alexander, Jones, and Roger Stone—dovetailed in the hours before the attack on the Capitol is remarkable. Just as Alexander would say in his pre-insurrection Periscope speech that “This [January 6] is Good versus Evil! This is Dark versus Light!”, in an Insurrection Eve speech that Alexander set up for him, with Alexander standing nearby, Stone declared, “This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this country between Dark and Light, between the godly and the godless, between Good and Evil!”}
Alexander’s Occupation
Alexander’s primary focus, in his hour-long pre-insurrection address to his followers, was on making sure they could stay on or near Capitol grounds for as long as humanly possible. Proof uses the term “humanly” advisedly, here; Alexander actually commands his followers not to “eat anything on [January] 6” and not to “drink anything on [January] 6” because the number of public toilets available on Capitol grounds would likely be small enough that the Trumpists’ need to urinate and evacuate their bowels could draw them away from the site of Alexander’s “war.” What goes without saying here is that the goal of the rioters was to get themselves into a space (i.e., the Capitol) where public restrooms were plentiful, allowing them to stay in that space longer than they ever could (due to the Alexander-bemoaned shortage of “Porta Potties”) outside it.
Lest it seem that Alexander’s anger over the hotel situation in Washington during the week of the insurrection was merely the rage of a dissatisfied customer, it must be understood that Alexander was in fact intent on transforming an isolated incident involving a single hotel into a cause célèbre that would both prepare Trump rioters for the possibility of a long-term occupation of downtown Washington and provide them with a plausible new justification for such an occupation. Specifically, at a time when only a single hotel in Washington was known to have closed booking for the week of January 4, Alexander told his followers the following on Periscope:
If all hotels [in D.C.] shut down, we will make [Washington] a tent city. I’m not kidding!
So now there’s new rules. Now you’re escalating with me, D.C., so let’s escalate!
If you are driving in [to Washington for the week of January 4], I want you to have a tent in your trunk. You hear me? If you are driving in, I want you to have a tent in your trunk. If you are driving in, I want you to have a sleeping bag for a friend.
I want you to have granola bars and some water. Everyone [understand]? Tent, sleeping bag, granola bars, and water.
We’re not leaving [D.C.] until the president [Donald Trump] says we should leave.
It is easy to read the above and forget that all that had happened was that a single D.C. hotel, worried about the chaos universally known to be descending on Washington for the week of January 4, had cancelled all bookings for (at a maximum) a 72-hour period.
The cancellations were decided upon by a private business; did not specifically target Alexander or his organization; and were in response to legitimate safety concerns of which Alexander was not only well aware but—arguably—had helped to author. Yet immediately upon being slightly inconvenienced by a private business, Alexander was ready (a shrewd federal investigator might say conveniently ready) to demand a citywide occupation. In fact, as you can see from the excerpt above, in just a few sentences Alexander went from detailing a minor personal inconvenience to declaring that the 100,000+ Trump supporters he was bringing to D.C. would “not leav[e]” the city—indeed, would build a “tent city” to stay in downtown D.C., the site of their “protest,” long term—until a presidential proclamation ordered them to cease their occupation.
If this dramatic, several-sentence transformation from a lodging quibble to a citywide occupation seems bizarre to you, it should: it was, it turns out, merely a pre-planned performance. As Proof has reported, Alexander had already made it known, including in public marketing materials for the January 6 “Wild Protest” at the Capitol, that Stop the Steal planned to occupy the Capitol on January 6 and for at least two days afterward (adding up to, at a minimum, the three-day delay of the joint session at the Capitol Trump’s legal team would publicly ask during the White House Ellipse event).
So it turns out that the Hotel Harrington incident was merely a pretext. Stop the Steal planned to say that it had to start an occupation in Washington because all the hotels had closed, when in fact at the time the Stop the Steal plan to occupy the U.S. Capitol Complex was hatched no D.C. hotels had closed—and at the time Alexander first put in a Periscope video his occupation plan only one D.C. hotel had (for a 72-hour period).
And so it was that Alexander, using the Hotel Harrington as a pretext, issued an edict to his followers that reporting confirms had already been decided upon: “They call it the District of Columbia? We will turn it inside-out and turn it into the District of Trump. I’m not playing with you!” As Alexander’s recorded rant continued, it became even clearer that his plan for an occupation was not an extemporaneous reply to a perceived slight by a single hotel but had long been the goal for him, for Stop the Steal, and for the broader Team Trump that we now know he was in contact with all along.
“And I’m telling you this: we will continue to escalate!” Alexander raved on. “If we’re there [occupying the Capitol grounds] for days, I will have people start [getting] Amazon [to] ship[ ] in tents. I will have people drop them off at Richmond [VA] and Raleigh [NC] and Charlotte [NC] and Pennsylvania—Philly. And I will have them driven in by [professional] truck drivers and patriots. If ‘Occupy D.C.’ [a 2011 left-wing protest] was legal, than so will ‘Occupy MAGA’ and the ‘District of Trump’ [be]. If it’s a hundred of us, 100,000 of us, or a million of us. You can shut down Uber Eats, you can shut down Lyft, you can shut down the hotels, you can shut down everything, but we [Stop the Steal adherents] are red-blooded creatures—and we can survive any terrain, let alone D.C.”
Again, nothing Alexander described above had actually happened. Uber Eats had not been shut down in the nation’s capital, nor Lyft; there was no evidence whatsoever of a massive hotel shutdown.
Certainly, the way to communicate that you “hope[ ]” nothing “bad happens to the Hotel Harrington” is not to repeat the phrase “something bad happens to the Hotel Harrington” three times in six sentences while saying that it would only be deserved if something bad happened to the Hotel Harrington; that if something bad happens to the Hotel Harrington, you won’t denounce it; and you fully expect that the people you are speaking to are planning to make something bad happen at the Hotel Harrington.
Speaking—it bears repeating—of a decision by the Hotel Harrington that did not target him specifically, Alexander fumes, “I am not a person who believes you can trample all over me! I’m not a person who believes in that! I believe in, ‘Do Not Tread on Me’ [the motto of the most radical of the revolutionaries who plotted a violent rebellion against their tyrannical government in the American colonies in the 1700s]. I have given you guys [elected officials in D.C.] warnings; I have said, ‘Let me petition my government, let me and my friends march on D.C.’; I started the original march on D.C. in November [2020] with one tweet fired off, and we had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in D.C. in November. I did that with one tweet!”
Proof quotes this excerpt from Alexander’s rant because it is, of course, a threat: those who cross Alexander provoke him to anger, and in his anger (he contends) he can raise “hundred and hundreds of thousands of people” to “march on D.C.” instantaneously.
But Alexander wasn’t done threatening the nation’s capital. He said that he expected at least “1.5 million” to march on Washington on January 6, but that he believed it would be possible to swell that number almost overnight to (as he put it) “millions and millions and millions and millions. So many millions [of pro-Trump supporters] that there are no speakers [on the Capitol grounds on January 6], there are no stages, just Americans. It needs to be butt-to-butt traffic [on the U.S. Capitol grounds on January 6], where nobody moves. And patriots are sending in food. Truck drivers are driving in troo—{NB: he stops himself from saying the word he was apparently about to say, “troops”}—food. We’ll figure out a way, won’t we? We’ll figure out a way. They’re going to shut down cell phone towers. They’re going to call us terrorists….[but] I’m done caring about what they think.”
The picture Alexander paints is of an occupation of the Capitol grounds so vast and so pervasive that nobody can “move[ ]” on the grounds—which would presumably include those members of Congress who would be stuck in their Capitol Complex offices or the main Capitol building when Alexander’s forces arrived—and so disruptive that it would receive the federal designation of “terrorism” and require that law enforcement shut down communications to the area as part of its counterterrorism protocol.
{Note: If Alexander could keep members of Congress stuck in their offices around the Capitol Complex, he could also make it impossible for them to get to the House chamber to vote on certifying Biden’s landslide November 2020 election victory. Alexander would’ve known this.}
Needless to say, Alexander’s plot required violence. How else could his imagined truck-driving “patriots” penetrate a permanent far-right camp in downtown Washington that would have by then (he admits) been designated a terrorist outpost by federal law enforcement? And what bathrooms could these “millions and millions and millions and millions” of Trump voters on the Capitol grounds have used—given Alexander’s concession that there would be no Porta Potties on the Capitol grounds on January 6—besides the ones in the Capitol building and other buildings in the Capitol Complex, (which could only be entered by a mob using illegal force)? Alexander had a permit—albeit under a false name—to play host to a small gathering of protestors on January 6, but the plot he unfolded on Periscope just days before January 6 bore no relationship whatsoever to any he had revealed publicly, let alone to federal permitting officials.
{Note: Perhaps the most comical example of how pretextual Ali Alexander’s pre-insurrection ire was can be seen in his complaint that “All of the hotels [in D.C.] have jacked up their fees to three to five times their normal rate!” Alexander claimed that this was evidence of a left-wing plot to keep Donald Trump’s supporters from exercising their constitutional rights on the Capitol grounds on January 6. Of course, as we now know, and as Alexander would’ve known at the time given how many of his close associates were staying there, Donald Trump’s Trump International Hotel had in fact raised its prices for January 6 more than any other hotel in the city. Indeed, Alexander had dramatically understated Donald Trump’s price-gouging of his own voters. As Forbes has reported, Trump didn’t raise rates at his hotel by merely “three to five times [its] normal rate” for an event he’d publicly invited his followers to attend, he raised his rates by more than sixteen times their normal level: from $476 for his least expensive room to $8,000 for his least expensive room. Comical as it may seem in retrospect, this underscores that Stop the Steal’s self-justifications for plotting an attack on the Capitol for January 6 were—from the start—farcical and only barely comprehensible. Alexander had used hotel prices in Washington for the week of January 4, led by the price-gouging Trump, as proof that “Either we win this fight [by ensuring Trump remains POTUS], or there are no other fights!” Trump price-gouging his own voters thereby became, incredibly, a rallying cry supporting a revolution on his behalf.}
What Alexander Wanted to Have Happen on January 6
Alexander told his supporters that the plan on January 6 was to “yell at Congress”—though of course he had only received a permit for a small event far from the Capitol at which Trump supporters would listen to speakers and not yell at them (or anyone).
From the start, it was clear Alexander knew his followers would have to go inside the buildings of the Capitol Complex. Not merely because they had been given tours of the Capitol Complex less than 24 hours before the Capitol attack by GOP members of Congress; not only because the absence of Porta Potties on the Capitol grounds on January 6 meant that protesters would almost certainly demand access to Capitol buildings; not only because one can’t meaningfully “yell at Congress” from hundreds of yards away from a brick-and-marble building they’re gathered deep inside; not only because if the number of people Alexander said would be showing up on January 6 were to actually show up the outdoor areas of the Capitol Complex would not be able to contain them (with Alexander foreseeing a situation in which “nobody could move,” meaning that protesters would be pressed against buildings and in response to their discomfort would surely attempt to enter them); not only because he told his followers during his pre-insurrection address that the purpose of them showing up on the Capitol grounds on January 6 was to ensure that there was a “transparent counting” of the electoral votes, which of course no Trump supporter could ensure from outside the building where the counting of votes was happening; not only because Alexander told his followers in the same video that their mission was to “depose tyrants” and that it was “now or literally never”, words that couldn’t possibly have any meaning if all he was asking them to do was listen to a few speakers standing on a small stage far from the Capitol; but because Ali Alexander was explicit about the fact that there would be violence on January 6—as we will soon see.
The Timeline
It is first important to understand that Ali Alexander’s plan didn’t merely encompass January 6. In fact, he ordered all his followers who run businesses “within 500 miles of D.C.” to “consider the fifth [of January], the sixth, and the seventh holidays” and “close it [business operations] down” because, as he put it, “You must come to D.C.”
Given that the weekend before Insurrection Week included New Year’s Day; that January 7 was a Thursday (and it’s hard to imagine a business closing its doors from Tuesday through Thursday and then opening for a day before closing again for the weekend); and that in other statements associates of Stop the Steal leadership have said the occupation of the Capitol would run through at least “January 8”, it’s clear that Alexander and his team—while they were in contact with the White House, as Proof has established repeatedly in the last year—intended to buy the White House, Trump’s lawyers, Trump’s state-level GOP-legislator allies, Trump’s fake “electors,” and Trump’s allies in the House of Representatives and various Attorney General offices around the country (many of which had pending lawsuits to block or delay certification of Biden’s 2020 victory) not just the “three days” Trump and his legal team had asked for publicly but something closer to the “ten days” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and “Green Bay Sweep” coup plot co-author Peter Navarro believed necessary.
A Capitol occupation–enforced delay until Monday, January 11 would have gotten the president’s team half the full delay it was seeking, though of course if the occupation had been of the size and scope Alexander imagined over New Year’s Day weekend, it likely would’ve been impossible to disperse by January 11. Indeed, as Alexander and his InfoWars/Stop the Steal co-conspirators Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer were in contact with Team Trump by text and phone on Insurrection Eve and Insurrection Day, it seems likely that, once the occupation was sure to commence, Stop the Steal’s leaders would have entered the Capitol themselves—which, in the event, they did not do—and held on there as long as Team Trump commanded, ideally beyond January 11.
The Methods
“If you are a veteran”, Alexander told his followers, “get your butt to D.C. [for January 5, January 6, and January 7].”
Why was the presence of U.S. veterans critical to Alexander? Because he knew his plot required violence. And how do we know he knew this? Because he said as much.
Wagging his finger at the camera, he said, “If you are police officer in D.C. watching this, don’t you dare—don’t you dare—enforce an immoral order. Don’t enforce an illegal order. Don’t enforce one that infringes on our rights to petition Congress. That [the Capitol] is our building, and we are going to do what we want with it.”
This is a confession to federal crimes.
Recall that, at this point, Alexander had nothing more than a permit to hold a small protest on a corner of the Capitol grounds far from the building itself—a legal permit (albeit one acquired through fraud, so perhaps not entirely legal) that would’ve given police no cause to interrupt Alexander’s event. But as we have seen across dozens of Proof reports, by January 5 at the very latest Stop the Steal had decided that there was no purpose in actually trying to hold or attend the event it had received a permit for; indeed, in his pre-insurrection address Alexander painted a picture of “so many millions [of pro-Trump supporters on the Capitol grounds on January 6] that there are no speakers [on that day], there are no stages”, suggesting that by the weekend before January 6 Stop the Steal leadership already knew the event it was advertising, which involved speakers and a stage, wasn’t going to happen—and didn’t want it to.
So when Alexander tells his followers, speaking of the Capitol building, That is our building, and we are going to do what we want with it”; and when he warns both the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Capitol Police that they better not “dare [to]….enforce [an order] that infringes on our rights to petition Congress”, he is confirming what Proof has reported for over a year now: that Stop the Steal not only intended its followers to storm the Capitol on January 6, but knew that in order to do so they would likely have to take their “loud war” directly to law enforcement.
While Alexander may have hoped his almost unspeakably arrogant finger-wagging at uniformed police officers the weekend before a coordinated attack on them—a part of his pre-insurrection address that has to be seen to be believed—would be enough to convince a few officers not to stop his followers from illegally storming the Capitol, under no circumstances could any person (even one as arguably unwell as Alexander) have a reasonable belief that a Periscope video could change the standard operating procedures (SOPs) of the entirety of two federal law enforcement institutions as they fought to protect the seat of American Government. {Note: A further irony is that, after the attack on the Capitol, many of Alexander’s followers would claim that a few police officers apparently standing down in the face of the mob—as Alexander had demanded of them—was proof of a vast left-wing plot to encourage and even facilitate an armed attack on the Capitol.}
Alexander knew his words were unlikely to be heeded by most Capitol defenders. And yet he says, in his speech, that if his followers can’t have the “protection of the police” via a mass stand-down as Trump supporters “petition the Congress” from inside the Capitol, it’s “Enough! Enough! Enough!”—meaning so beyond the pale it warrants Stop the Steal adherents escalating their conduct to previously unimagined depths.
Alexander notes that anyone who wants to complain about Trump supporters violating—for instance—D.C. mask ordinances on the sixth of January “can’t call the police on the sixth [because] nobody can move anywhere” (confirming that Alexander’s plan for “butt-to-butt-traffic” on the Capitol grounds on January 6 was in many respects a plot to hamper the movements of law enforcement on that day). Alexander goes on to say that the elimination of “indoor dining” in Washington for the week of January 4, 2021 meant that there were “no more rules”—of any kind whatever—in D.C. for that week.
{Note: Proof must make an aside here to note that, like anyone inciting a violent insurrection—including Donald Trump on January 6—Alexander did sprinkle in the occasional gesture toward law-and-order that he knew would be ignored and even overlooked amidst his violent rhetoric, but that he perhaps believed would protect him against legal liability down the road. For Alexander, this brief and half-hearted gesture toward being a law-abiding citizen comes when he urges his followers to “be moral, be kind, be just” on January 6; the problem is that he’s also told them that it is moral and just to storm the Capitol and prevent the certification of Biden as president, and that if kindness does not effectuate that goal it can be abandoned.
But mostly, Alexander’s law-and-order rhetoric appears to be deliberately nonsensical. He tells his followers to “acknowledge due process” on January 6; due process is a responsibility of the state and federal governments of the United States after a citizen has been seized by its agents, but since this term is almost always applied to post-arrest in-court proceedings, it is unclear what an admonition to “acknowledge due process” would mean when directed to a protestor.
Just so, Alexander urges his followers to “[not] be quick to enact a punishment, even against the guilty”—another admonition that appears to treat his followers as though they are the rightful government of the United States, a precept consistent with his earlier statement, in the same video, that “If our government is not legitimate, then we [the Trump supporters about to enter D.C. to march on the Capitol] are the government.” Indeed, one could argue that Alexander’s supposed admonitions to his followers to follow the law bizarrely presuppose that they, not the police, will be deciding what the law is, and how it should be applied, once they get to the Capitol on January 6. Neither Proof nor anyone else can give Alexander credit for his admonitions when they are, in their parameters, seditious—and further evidence that he was speaking literally in advocating the creation of a District of Trump. It appears Alexander anticipated that some individuals within the jurisdiction of the District of Trump would suffer that status involuntarily—as hostages—and therefore he had to urge his followers, in advance, not to “enact a punishment” on hostages without “due process.” Given that his followers, en masse, were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” on January 6, we cannot say that Alexander was wrong to foresee his directives—however fundamentally seditious—as nevertheless necessary.
Indeed, Alexander follows up his facially pro-law-and-order admonitions by saying “THOSE are the rules we will live by on [January] 5, the sixth, and the seventh”—emphasizing the first word in the sentence in a way that confirms that he intended his maxims to replace federal laws as the guide for his followers during Insurrection Week. He capped this thought by thundering, “I will not abide by this [the existing situation in Washington]! We MUST escalate! Don’t you understand?”}
And come some sentences that one imagines will be uttered over and over at a future federal trial of AliAlexander: “If we don’t get rowdy, they will know they can put us [our attempts to stop the certification] down! So yes—I’m advising you to leave your kids at home. Do not bring your kids, anymore, [on] January 6 to witness history. Do not bring your kids. If we have to lock arms with one another on the Capitol lawns [to avoid being moved by law enforcement], we lock arms with each other. But I’m done with this: there’s not a Mayor, there’s not a Congress, there’s not a president, there’s not a president-elect, there’s not a media, there’s not a judge who can order immoral acts that violate my natural rights to depose tyrants or my civil rights to petition [from inside the Capitol building] MY government—MY government! MINE! It’s OUR government!….they are our public servants, [and] they MUST say ‘Yes sir’ or ‘Yes ma’am’ [on January 6], they MUST give us an explanation [about how Biden won] even if they know better than us. And the explanation better be CLEAR. CRYSTAL CLEAR. 1776 [a violent, bloody revolution] is always an option! Always!”
{Emphasis in original.}
It goes without saying that Alexander’s mob couldn’t have gotten an “explanation” from Congress on January 6 that was “crystal clear” without being in the House or Senate chambers themselves—or, at a minimum, taking over such a large portion of the Capitol that members of Congress couldn’t assemble in those two spaces without first corresponding at length with the rebels. And indeed one of the most infamous scenes from Insurrection Day saw a number of insurrectionists rifling through paperwork in the U.S. Senate chamber apparently looking for evidence of a plot against America—exactly the search for a “crystal clear explanation” of events that Alexander had urged. In a viral video of this incident, a Stop the Steal adherent says “While we’re here we might as well set up a government”, an apparent reference to the “District of Trump” Alexander spoke of in his pre-insurrection speech.
Alexander would get even clearer about his intentions in his pre-insurrection address, going so far as to confirm that federal felonies in the nature of property crimes—such as trespassing—and miscellaneous non-violent crimes (such as deliberate obstruction of a congressional proceeding, the criminal object of the Seditious Conspiracy some of Alexander’s co-conspirators now face) were acceptable to him and his movement on January 6 because of a mayoral action in Washington so far below a national election-related petition for redress to Congress as to almost be comical: D.C.’s temporary ban on indoor dining.
Per Alexander, who begins this section of his speech by repeating a refrain he uses throughout his address and issuing more complaints on things that haven’t happened,
Enough! Enough! Enough! It is immoral for them to starve us out of a city—which makes most acts that do not harm another human being moral [on January 6]. Let me repeat myself: if they [government agents of any stripe or position] are committing [what you individually deem to be] immoral acts—like depriving us of commerce, food, water, sewage, and now hotels and shelter—they are committing an immoral act. That means that all acts used to combat that immoral act that don’t harm another person physically become necessary. Necessary!
{Emphasis in original.}
Shortly hereafter, Alexander would drop from his pre-January 6 instructions even his rock-bottom “don’t harm another person” standard—which already implicitly permitted the overwhelming majority of crimes listed in federal statute books.
“The District of Trump”
As an attorney as well as a journalist, I know some readers will read the words above and wonder what their legal significance is. What does it mean if a man orchestrating an illegal coup preceded by a “rowdy” insurrection says that he and his followers will be, during the pendency of the said coup, the true government of the United States?
What does it mean when such a man declares the District of Columbia to the District of Trump for the duration of his coup? What does it mean when this insurrectionist leader goes so far as to unilaterally, by fiat, invalidate, in advance, every federal statute other than those that involve initiating physical harm upon another? The simple fact is that many Americans may think that so many of our laws involve the initiation of physical harm that in the statement above Alexander is leaving almost the entirety of America’s system of justice intact, and that his declaration of constituting America’s valid government is mere rhetorical excess. He is not, and it is not. What Alexander is preaching is pseudo-theocratic anarchy—and premeditated sedition against America.
It is important, in this instance, to see matters from the perspective of Alexander and his followers. They “earnestly” believed that, beginning on January 6, 2021, the future governance of the United States of America would be in a state of ambiguity; it would be unclear when or where or how the next presidential administration would or could take power, and what set of circumstances would produce that eventuality. Alexander and his compatriots believed, however—this much is clear—that the decisions they’d make during the week of the insurrection would be something close to determinative of the future form and context of American governance. So it’s not unsurprising that Alexander would want to speak to his followers, prior to the insurrection, of the legal and juridical framework within which (in his view) their actions in Washington could be set, and moreover that he’d want to do so in a way that explicitly distinguished the operations of the District of Columbia—which is what the nation’s capital had been up until the time of his pre-instruction address—and the temporary operations of what he dubbed the District of Trump. Alexander believed the District of Trump, a space that encompassed only the Capitol grounds rather than the whole of Washington, D.C., would precede a second Trump presidential administration in which legal and juridical frameworks would of course be set by President Trump and his top advisors (a cadre Alexander had been given good reason to think he’d be a leading member of).
It’s for this reason Alexander spent such a large portion of his pre-insurrection speech establishing the immorality and indeed illegitimacy of the government in the District of Columbia, including both the mayor of D.C. and the city’s most influential denizens— members of Congress—and why he further gave a name to the transient governance system (the “District of Trump”) that he believed would control the Capitol Complex for a period of at least five days beginning on January 6, 2021.
Below are some examples of how Alexander believed the District of Trump would be managed during the period of time it was occupied by “millions and millions and millions and millions” of pro-Trump/anti-democracy activists devoted to overturning the legitimate results of a free and fair democratic election because they disliked them.
Property Crimes and Sustenance
“If people cannot eat in D.C. [from January 6, 2021 for at least five days thereafter], then you will see me say, take [steal] the food [from businesses]!”
Violent Crimes That Do Not Leave Permanent Injury*
“I am not going to tell the people [I’ve brought to D.C.] that they can’t get rowdy. I’m not going to tell the people that rowdiness is never an option.”
*This contradicts Alexander’s previous (apparently only gestural) admonition for those in the District of Trump not to initiate harm against any person.
Interactions with Those Protecting Members of Congress
“I will make Martin Luther King [a famous advocate for nonviolent resistance to law enforcement] look like a speed bump! [While] I’m against depraved [violent] acts—I’m against senseless acts; I’m against acts of unjustified violence; I’m against acts that are cruel; I’m against acts that are used for show and show alone—I’m not against [violence in] self-defense [before a government that is acting immorally]. I am not against deposing tyrants. I’m not against putting down evil [by force].
I am not against fighting for survival. I do not believe that acts of ‘survival’ are acts of {NB: he is about to say “terror” but visibly stops himself} theft. I do not believe stigma should cause inaction—that little phrases like ‘conspiracy theorist’ or ‘racist’ or ‘grifter’—should make us afraid….No! No. No no no no no. I’m done with that paradigm. It’s over. It ended. It ended. This is Good versus Evil! This is Dark versus Light! This is opaque [sic] versus what we know in our hearts is moral clarity!
We know what they [Congress] are doing is wrong. We know what they’re doing is wrong. We know it! We know it’s wrong. The only thing that’s cooperating with them is our [own] comfort. So let’s get uncomfortable, patriots! Let’s get uncomfortable, believers! Let’s get uncomfortable, Americans! Let’s get uncomfortable, [pro-Trump/anti-democracy] Democrats and Republicans!
I’m telling you [that], like the families in the Middle East that dance when something awful happens to their enemies, I will dance—I will dance!—if there are bricks [through the window] of the Hotel Harrington. I will dance! They’ll say, ‘Ali, your reckless comments caused them [the crimes against the Harrington].’ No! No. Because it’s written in the hearts of all red-blooded men that this [Ali having his reservation cancelled by the Harrington] is wrong. This is wrong! This is wrong! And wrong things should not exist.
And our government, if it is legitimate, will defend us [on January 6]. If our government is not legitimate, then we [Trump supporters congregated in the ‘District of Trump’ on January 6] are the government. That’s it! It’s really that simple. You want to know what can make me say [to my followers], ‘Hey, it’s time to sit down and be civil and [part of a] polite society [that] has order?’ Give it order. Make ‘polite society’ mean something. Make ‘polite society’ mean something.
….
There will be more of us in D.C. than there will be of them. I’m not that worried about our safety. We will have numbers—and we are coordinating with security [armed far-right paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and others]. There are about seven events happening, and all of us organizers are talking. So yes we [Stop the Steal] have the main event—yes, we started this—but we are fine with the other events happening, and we are coordinating with them [and] their [far-right paramilitary] security….[including ensuring] that our members of Congress [who are speaking at these events] are protected.”
{Emphasis in original.}
Public Urination and Defecation
“Frankly, I don’t care if their [Washington’s] streets and alleys run full of piss [on January 5, January 6, and January 7].”
Trespassing on Private Property
“Don’t wear your mask on the sixth at all. That’s dumb. If you’re in D.C., that’s dumb. They can’t enforce [the D.C. masking ordinance that was then in effect]. They can’t even enforce it, anyway. If someone [in a business] tells you to leave [because you are not wearing a mask], [they] can’t call the cops [to have you removed because] there’s too many people in town. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? It’s our town. What are you going to do [if someone refuses to leave your property]? ‘I’m going to call the cops! Leave, sir, leave!’ [You reply,] ‘No!’ And if you see someone [about] to get kicked out [of a business for violating a city ordinance], stand by them. Stop what you’re doing [to stand by them]. If you see someone in D.C. on [January 6] get kicked out [of a private business], just say ‘No!’ And then stand with them. Stand a hundred deep inside of a restaurant and say, ‘Serve us, or we’re not moving.’ I don’t care if you’re late for the [Stop the Steal] event. I don’t care if you miss the event. Stand with your brother and your sister. So this is what we’re doing [January 5, January 6, and January 7].”
{Note: This is the textbook definition of Incitement. Alexander is telling people in advance to violate a city ordinance, criminally trespass on private property, and then form a mob of such trespassers. He even says that forming a lawless mob of this sort is more important to him than attending any of the D.C. events he’s scheduled. One can only imagine the chaos and violence that would have occurred on January 5—beyond what already occurred on the following day—if Alexander’s followers had done en masse as he commanded them and trespassed maskless on private property “a hundred [people] deep” while daring business owners to call the police.}
Trespassing on Public Grounds in Downtown Washington*
“If they close more than five hotels in the city [Washington], we’re starting a tent city [in downtown Washington]. Quote me on that. Just quote me on that. If they close five hotels—{he snaps his fingers}—tent city. Lafayette Park, right next to the lobbyists [of K Street NW]. So play with us at your own peril, tyrants! You thought you were going to ‘slow-pace’ us into March and February and all these months. No no no no no. Not today, Satan—not today.”
*As there are 132 hotels in D.C., Alexander is here calling for an illegal long-term encampment just 1.5 miles from the Capitol Complex if a mere 3.8% of Washington hotels close to business on January 6—a day Alexander declared he’d be seeking to bring “millions and millions and millions and millions” of people to an area that can’t comfortably accommodate one million. Under such a threat by Alexander, it wouldn’t have been at all surprising if a hundred D.C. hotels had closed to business on January 6, let alone the figure of just “five” Alexander had set.
Conduct at the Doors of the U.S. Capitol
“We must have a great act of peaceful civil disobedience. {NB: He now corrects himself.} Of peaceful, rowdy civil disobedience. {NB: He now corrects himself a second time.} Of peaceful, rowdy civil disobedience that makes the government afraid of us! The government [Congress] must be afraid of its people [on January 6]. That’s healthy. That is healthy! That’s very healthy! The government should be afraid to cross the line of tyranny—they’re abusing our civil rights! I would argue they’re already tyrants! But I’m trying to give them a couple steps of grace before I turn away, and [if I turn away] who knows what will happen [on January 6]?”
Response to Use of Force, Including Legally Authorized Use of Force By Law Enforcement Officers*
“Do not take a punch [on January 6] without delivering one back, out there [on the Capitol grounds]…self-defense [is] perfectly legal.”
*There was no evidence counter-protesters would be traveling to D.C. for January 6—and in fact Alexander doesn’t mention counter-protesters even once in his nearly hour-long speech—so the only individuals at the Capitol Complex who might be punching Trumpists on January 6 were those men and women Alexander had in fact discussed repeatedly in his address: law enforcement officers trying to keep Trumpists from storming the Capitol. His words on use of force in response to uses of force, including his false claim that if a police officer uses force on a civilian that civilian has a legal right to respond with force, must be taken with this in mind.
Because U.S. media writ large has thus far done little to inform American citizens of Stop the Steal and Team Trump’s actual object of January 6—not the overturning of a presidential election, as that could not logistically be accomplished on January 6, but the establishment of a short-term fiefdom in the center of the nation’s capital via the occupation of the Capitol Complex—few Americans have spent time contemplating what such an occupation would have looked like. In contrast, Ali Alexander and his compatriots thought about almost nothing else following the November 2020 election.
So when Alexander told his followers that while they were on the Capitol grounds they could be “rowdy”, steal merchandise from businesses, and “[not] be civil” or act like they live in a nation with “[law and] order”, he’s referring to a state of insurrection that would persist on the Capitol grounds until his personal political demands had been met. At twenty minutes into his pre-insurrection speech, Alexander begins a deranged rant that Proof will not quote at length or excerpt in which he proposes—it must be heard in its entirety to be believed—a Christo-fascist system of government in the United States rather than a democracy, demanding specifically that Amazon, Apple, “consumerism”, “commercialism”, “Big Sugar”, “Big Pharma”, “Big Defense” and “[media] fact-checking and footnotes and fancy headlines” must be cast down and replaced with “the God of the Bible”—adding that it is in service of the Biblical God that his followers will be “willing to risk it all [even their lives]” on January 6.
No federal investigator will understand this rant to mean anything but that Alexander anticipated that his followers would engage in a level of lawlessness and rebellion at the Capitol Complex from January 6 to January 10 that would potentially get some of them killed, but that was necessary to cast down the existing institutions and systems of the United States—including its secular democracy. Alexander concludes this part of his sermon by admitting his plan is “scary”, so his followers will have to “be brave” on January 6 and execute a number of “brave acts” that America has “conditioned” them to believe are immoral. And he underscores repeatedly that these acts will take place over a series of days, even saying that his followers must be prepared to wear the same clothes “days in a row” when they get to Washington.
And the pretext for all of this is the cancellation of his hotel reservation, though even this is a lie of sorts—as nearly 24 minutes into his rant he admits that he and Stop the Steal already have a “hotel room” in the city. He even admits that hotel rooms remain available all over the city, saying that his “team” will “find a [hotel] room” for anyone who needs one.
Ali Alexander and the Proud Boys
So if the business about the Hotel Harrington was just a pretext to even more robustly call for an occupation of the Capitol Complex—if, as Alexander concedes, by the time of his address his team already had a new hotel room, hotel rooms were available all across the city, and the decision by the Hotel Harrington to close its bookings had not in fact targeted only Alexander and his Stop the Steal co-leaders—was there anything about the Harrington’s business judgment regarding Insurrection Week bookings that genuinely had Alexander upset?
It appears there may have been.
Nearly halfway through his almost hour-long address, Alexander reveals a key fact about the Harrington for the first time: that it was the primary headquarters being used by the Proud Boys as they prepared for January 6, the same Proud Boys who, we now know, led the attack on the Capitol intended to produce to the brief occupation Alexander had committed himself to. The Harrington’s understandable decision to cancel all its bookings for January 5 and January 6 therefore had a material effect on Stop the Steal that went beyond its leadership needing to (as they almost immediately did) find another hotel room: it threatened the size of Trump’s January 6 paramilitary army.
Whereas Stop the Steal was only taking up one or two rooms at the Harrington when the hotel announced its bookings cancellation, the Proud Boys were importing from across the country hundreds of soldiers whose plan—we now know—was to storm the Capitol so that Alexander’s Stop the Steal followers could thereafter occupy it. And Ali Alexander was not only in touch with Proud Boy leadership as it formed its battle plan; he was not only being personally protected by the very same soldiers who would be storming the Capitol on January 6; but, as he admits in his pre-insurrection speech, when the Harrington’s unexpected business decision put at risk on a massive scale the housing of Trump’s invading forces, it was Alexander who immediately got in touch with Proud Boy leadership to ensure that their ground troops would have shelter in Washington the night before they attacked the seat of America’s federal government.
This, then, explains at least some of the deranged frenzy in Alexander’s big speech: he saw, in the Harrington’s announcement, how fragile a grassroots activist–paramilitary coalition necessarily is, as it (a) requires constant coordination between civilian and paramilitary leadership, and (b) can be quickly threatened when the resources of one component of a battle plan are suddenly and unexpectedly put under threat by outside actors. If the Harrington’s closure had left the men who used police riot shields to break into the United States Capitol on January 6 without a place to sleep on January 5, those men might not have entered D.C. to attack the U.S. Capitol in the first place.
{Note: Alexander is thinking of more than just the Proud Boys. He was quite evidently mindful of how much outside muscle would be needed on January 6, specifically noting that he knows that there are “veterans” coming to D.C. to because “their nation is calling on them to” (and he emphasizes this word) “act”—after a notable pause, he half-heartedly appends the word “peacefully”—but that some of these soldiers may not have lodging unless it is found for them.}
Confirming his personal involvement in the housing of Trumpist irregulars prior to the attack on the Capitol, Alexander boasts, “I’m not going to let people [the Proud Boys] who have been demonized lose hotel rooms. I don’t care if someone is a racist. What if someone is a racist? Do they not deserve food or shelter or access to a bathroom [in D.C. the week of January 4]? That’s insane. So if you are a racist and you get kicked out of your hotel room for being a racist, know that you can call on Ali. Know that if someone has written something bad about you, I don’t care. I do not care what the media has written [about pro-Trump paramilitaries]. They’re liars, they’re jackals, they’re Sadducees [Christ-denying Jewish villains according to the New Testament], they’re Pharisees [Christ-denying Jewish villains according to the New Testament], they would cheer on a murderer before Jesus Christ. And I’m not with them. I’m not with that program.”
Alexander (who is Black) making an open appeal for white supremacists to join forces with him because they hate Jews more than Blacks—particularly Jews in the media, who, as noted above, Alexander had deliberately been pointing out for years—and his confession that he doesn’t care what those he is joining forces with have done in the past underlines that, above all, Stop the Steal needed as many Trumpist irregulars in D.C. from January 5 through January 10 as possible, no matter how violent they were, no matter how dangerous, no matter how contemptuous of law and order. Just as the then-president knew he needed the loyalty of hordes of unsavory persons for them to do on January 6 as he wished them to do, Alexander (who was in regular contact with Team Trump during this time) was part of the same amoral insurrectionist “program.”
So when Alexander said in his pre-insurrection address, “I’m trying to give them [Congress] a couple steps of grace before I turn away, and who knows what’ll happen [if I ‘turn away’ on January 6]?” he is referring to his coordination with the far-right paramilitary units that—at that time—he believed he could get to stand down if, for instance, he and Team Trump were to learn that Vice President Mike Pence did plan to “return the election to the [far-right GOP legislators of the battleground] states” on January 6 as Trump had demanded. If Mike Pence (or Rep. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, filling in for Pence as Senate president pro tempore, per the “Green Bay Sweep” plot) did not do as he had been commanded, Alexander would “turn away” from keeping January 6 peaceful and allow the far-right paramilitary irregulars he’d been in touch with to do precisely as he knew they’d been planning.
In the event there could be any doubt about what Alexander meant in saying “[if] I turn away…who knows what’ll happen [on January 6]?”, he follows up this ominous warning by saying, “Have you not read your history? Have you not read your history? It is the Christians who go to war. It is the moral men who go to war. It is the philosopher-kings who go to war. And we put down tyrants. That is moral! That is an Act of God! That [going to war] is an act of mercy on the people being terrorized by these punks [in Congress]! Period! We are the heroes, you [Congress] are the villains!”
He continues: “So I’m angry. But I’m resolved. And let them not test our resolve, because I will tell you this. I will tell you this. I am resolved to the end—and beyond. Okay? I’m resolved to the end and the beyond. And let’s say I’m a fool, and I’m the only one in D.C. doing something crazy [on January 6] and they arrest me. They beat me. They kill me. Great! Great. But I know this: I won’t be the only patriot there [at the Capitol doors on January 6]….We must resist tyranny by any means necessary. Let me say that [again]….by any means necessary….we should always escalate. We should always escalate. If they are [as I say] doing immoral things, we should always escalate. If they [the Congress] don’t abide by the Constitution, they cease to exist.”
Of all the insurrectionists whose conduct fits the description of the what Alexander is attempting to incite here, the Platonic ideal is—of course—Ashli Babbitt, a “veteran” of precisely the sort Alexander had repeatedly focused upon in his address, whose “crazy” decision to climb through a broken window in the Speaker’s Lobby outside the chambers of the House of Representatives got her “kill[ed].” Ms. Babbitt’s action, blessedly not repeated in quite the same form by any other insurrectionist, is precisely the sort of conduct Alexander was urging “millions and millions and millions and millions” of Trump supporters to engage in on January 5, January 6, and January 7.
Had more people than just Babbitt answered Alexander’s call, Insurrection Day would have been a bloody hellscape—and it is not impossible to imagine scores of members of Congress having been kidnapped or even killed. And needless to say, as Babbitt was being shot while following through on the vision Alexander put forward the weekend before the Capitol attack, Alexander himself was outside the Capitol, on video camera, creating the evidence of a “peaceful intent” he would later use to try to stave off arrest.
The Stop the Steal Committee
In his address, Alexander does federal investigators the enormous favor of listing all the “leaders” of the Stop the Steal Committee, men and women who he says helped him orchestrate the events of January 6—nearly all of whom thereafter falsely claimed to have had almost no involvement in what occurred that day. Unfortunately for them and their attorneys, Alexander fingered them as his co-conspirators at a time neither he nor any of them knew exactly the extent of their civil or criminal liability for the events of January 6. The Alexander-thanked insurrectionists, in alphabetical order, are:
Megan Barth
Tracy Beanz
Alexander Bershowitz [ph]
Matt Couch
Michael Coudrey
Chandler Crump
Jenna Ellis
Kimberly Fletcher
Michael Flynn
Nick Fuentes
Rudy Giuliani
Jim Hoft
Courtney Holland
Alex Jones
Vernon Jones
Debbie Kraulidis
Chuck [LNU]
Ed Martin
Jenny Beth Martin
Shameka Michelle
Kevin Mooneyhan
C.J. Pearson
Andrew Pollock [ph]
Sidney Powell
Scott Presler
Ricky Rebel
Ian Smith
Ashley St. Claire
Brandon Straka
Rose Tennet
L. Lin Wood
This is not necessarily a full accounting of the co-conspirators in Alexander’s dark vision—as identified by Alexander—but it is certainly a good start for investigators.
Alexander’s Christofascism
It is important to understand that the District of Trump was fueled—and quite openly—by not just a nativist but a specifically Christofascist agenda. This report would need to be double or triple its current length to unpack the evidence of this in Alexander’s pre-insurrection speech; fortunately, at points in his address he summarizes his vile, idiosyncratic take on Christofascism extremely succinctly. For instance, at one point he says, speaking of what is in fact a constitutionally secular American Congress,
We [the Stop the Steal leaders referenced above] are unified [in being of] the same mind that we answer to a God [and our] government must answer to a God. That our rights exist above the [American] government because there is a God. And if the [federal] government seeks to exist above our [religiously defined] rights than it should cease to exist. And it is not just a right to challenge that government, it is a moral obligation to challenge that government. It is a moral obligation to put down [destroy] that government, and by any means necessary. By any means necessary.
So pray for us [the Stop the Steal Committee]. Pray for us. Pray for our discernment. Pray for prudent leadership. Fast for us. Use spiritual weapons. Pray the rosary for us. Meditate. And give us clarity on what your role in all of this should be. Use your body as a shield for the Republic. Because tyrants fear [formerly] peaceful people willing to risk it all. We are the most powerful weapon. Guns are very useful—and we need guns—but in a lot of ways, we don’t need guns. We are so powerful. We are these metaphysical creatures, blessed and endowed by Heaven, for this physical test [on January 6] here on Earth. And what we must do is we must show them [Congress] that we are not afraid.
….
I am owed transparency. I am owed a receipt. I am owed respect. I am owed a “yes sir” from my bureaucrats. That is my money that funds them. It is my rights that I lend them a ministerial title [to oversee]. It is my decisions that make them [Congress] legitimate or illegitimate. You understand that?
And I’ve got to let you guys [from the media who are watching] know: there will be a list of all of you in the media [made by Trump supporters when Trump is reinstalled as president], and a list of all of you in [the] bureaucracy, and lists of all of you in [state and federal] government. There’ll be lists of all of you who seek to put down the people from asking simple questions. You’re the worst tyrants of them all! You [may] think, ‘Oh, [Ali] won’t go that far!’* [But] you’ve already gone the furthest. {He angrily points his finger at the camera.} You coward! You cuck! You Sadducee! You Pharisee! You banking bastard!
{Emphasis in original.}
*You might wonder why Alexander believes his critics would decry it being “[too] far” for him to make “lists” of tyrants. He appears to say this because the lists he refers to are “kill lists.” This reading is consistent with Alexander’s contemporaneous claim that all tyrants must be killed. Note also that the Biblically tinged phrase “banking bastard” may well be referring to Jews, as the terms “Sadducee” and “Pharisee” are known Biblical terms that irrefutably do.
Many Americans believe in God; many Americans believe in natural rights which, if violated, can make resistance to a government warranted. What is unacceptable in a democracy—what produces a movement obsessed with establishing a Christofascist theocracy headed (ironically) by a non-churchgoing philanderer like Donald Trump—is when a religious zealot uses the word “I” hundreds of times in a single speech to circumscribe how natural rights are conceived. In a civil society, and particularly in a civil society organized as a democracy, the personal affront an individual feels when their idiosyncratic moral atmosphere is (in their subjective view) compacted doesn’t authorize a violent rebellion. This is why courts exist to hear election challenges, and why we respect the findings of those courts when—as had happened with every Team Trump legal suit at the time Alexander was speaking—those election challenges are resoundingly turned away under a body of law we agree to live under as U.S. citizens. This is why we have a Constitution that mandates the public certification of elections by elected officials, and this is why we have elected officials overseeing our elections. If we feel personally insulted by the result of an election but cannot gain support for our indignation among either members of the judiciary or sufficient members of Congress to upset the will of the people, “we the people” as a people cannot say our belief in a God supersedes our responsibilities as citizens attempting to live in a secular society.
Alexander’s view—that a national rebellion is warranted whenever a private business ends a hotel reservation of his for a reason he deems inadequate—is Christofascism, in other words the rule of the many by the pseudo-religious vision and dogma of a self-selected few, which vision tends to be conveniently linked to whatever inconveniences or infelicitous feelings those few happen to be experiencing at the moment. This is why, at the end of the Christofascist rant Alexander gives above, he and the “Stop the Steal Committee” are already, in his terrifying delusion, making “lists” of members of the media and elected officials who will face punishment at the hands of his regime. He indicates that these “lists” will identify those “tyrants” who (being tyrants) need to be “put down”, which one presumes means at a minimum imprisonment for life and at a maximum means public execution. Note: executions of journalists and elected officials.
The Phases of Alexander’s Revolution
So it is important to understand the “phases of revolution” Alexander sets out in a pre-insurrection address billed as mandatory viewing for anyone planning to help overrun American government on January 6, 2021.
(PHASE 1: PRE-JANUARY 6). The District of Columbia, an immoral and illegitimate administrative entity in the view of the insurrectionists, holds sway in Washington and—as Alexander puts it, rather oddly—“exists.”
(PHASE 2: JANUARY 6 UNTIL THE SECOND TRUMP INAUGURATION). The new District of Trump—run by the Stop the Steal Committee, occupying the Capitol Complex for as long as necessary to ensure the reinstallation of Donald Trump as the President of the United States—is America’s only functioning central government.
(PHASE 3: JOINT GOVERNANCE BY TRUMP AND HIS AGENTS). Overseen by the unelected Trump—at this point in the narrative, a dictator rather than an elected official—the Stop the Steal Committee would, in a fashion reminiscent of Maximilien Robespierre after the French Revolution, produce “lists” of those in media and state and federal governments who pose a threat to Trump’s autocratic regime (by virtue of having opposed its ascension to power) and therefore must be imprisoned or executed.
That Alexander was intellectually and philosophically ready for Phases 2 and 3 by the weekend before January 6 was melodramatically exhibited in the final ten minutes of his pre-insurrection address, in which he revealed that beneath a “Kanye sweatshirt” he was wearing a huge “battle rosary.” As soon as he pulls out his rosary he declares, slapping one fist into his other hand with force, “These guys [at the Capitol] have no idea what’s coming for them. We are resolved. This is what this fist means: we are resolved.” And lest it be unclear that his resolution for violence is religious in nature, he goes on to call Trump supporters “God’s chosen people” and adds that anyone who fails to aid them on the sixth will be “obliterated” (an oft-repeated word in his speech) and “cease to exist.” He says that those in his movement are “called [by God] to be a higher being who here is on Earth to test [their] resolve and [their] love for God” by working to overturn the 2020 election and “bring down a corrupt Satanic system.”
“We all must do something [on or before January 6]”, he says, “so that we may change everything.” Confirming that his Christofascism is evangelical in nature, Alexander closes his address by declaring, “They say ‘keep the faith’—we say ‘spread the Faith!’”
Alexander’s Exhortations to Violence
Referring to the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the first protecting freedom of speech, the second providing (per Supreme Court rulings) a right to bear arms—Alexander says, harrowingly, “Speaking up is my first right [in the Constitution]. Putting you [tyrants in Congress] down [via a gun] is my second.”
He adds,
I hope that God enacts his vengeance on his enemies, and that God protects his people, and that people who come against people exercising their civil and natural rights [to ‘do what we want to do with the Capitol building’ on January 6, 2021]…get obliterated. Obliterated!
{Emphasis in original.}
Of course, by this point in his address Alexander has already made clear that he and his followers are the instruments of God, and that therefore they will be the weapons through which Heaven will get “vengeance” on “tyrants” by “obliterat[ing]” them. In fact, Alexander makes clear over and over again that on January 6 he and his followers can’t just “stand there” and hope that something—for instance, some form of divine intervention—occurs, but that they must themselves “act” in defense of their perceived God-given “natural rights.” Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine a jury hearing Alexander’s address and believing that he expected there to be any violence against the Congress or the Hotel Harrington wrought by anyone but adherents of his Stop the Steal group.
And if you had cause to doubt this, Alexander erases any such doubt himself—as this, in fact, is the full quote from the part of his speech excerpted above (addition bolded):
I hope that God enacts his vengeance on his enemies, and that God protects his people, and that people who come against people exercising their civil and natural rights [to ‘do what we want to do with the Capitol building’]…get obliterated. Obliterated! And may not one patriot get caught on camera doing anything bad. May not one patriot get caught on camera doing anything bad. May everyone be—you know—peaceful as a dove and wise as a serpent [a misquoting of Matthew 10:16]. You know what I’m saying? May everyone just be extremely high IQ as God enacts his vengeance against the Hotel Harrington and other places that seek to discriminate against us. Discrimination. So, [does it] sound like we were treaded [sic] on [like the serpent in the Gadsden Flag who resorted to violence after being trod on]? It does sound like we were treaded [sic] on! [And] may the viper bite.
….
Everyone who does not help God’s children [on January 6] will be obliterated. Okay? OBLITERATED. OBLITERATED.
{Emphasis in original.}
Alexander’s point is clear: we must be violent now, but smart enough about it to not get caught. Thus his next words:
“They want you to be violent. They want us to be violent. [But] I’m telling you [Trump opponents], you should not want that. Because if we have moral clarity and moral permission, then like a dumb rat, you will be put down [killed].”
This rhetorical technique is one Alexander uses often. He implies that the other side is provoking violence and therefore responsible if any violence occurs, but then sets a series of preconditions for violence which he’s already said have been met. He has told his followers over and over in his speech that they do have “moral clarity” and “moral permission” to be violent in the face of (as he sees it) tyranny, and therefore all that is left, by Alexander’s calculation, is for his enemies to be “put down” via “obliteration.”
{Note: He also says that he will be sending out “security teams”—plural—in the area of the Capitol on the night of January 5 to look out for “mischievous things.” This may be of some interest to federal investigators, given that in the area of the Capitol on the night of January 5 a hooded individual planted multiple pipe bombs near strategic Capitol Complex targets. That Alexander conceded in advance that far-right paramilitary operators under his direction would be roaming the very area in which this “mischievous thing” was done should put some new federal scrutiny on his, his lieutenants’, and his security teams’ Insurrection Eve activities.}
What Alexander Actually Did on January 6
Alexander closed his address seemingly aware of its potential reach and impact beyond his followers, predicting that “They’re going to try to take me down now because I’ve told the American people what God allows of them, and that’s what they’re terrified [of]. They’re terrified that you will not worship government. I’m not worshipping government [on January 6].”
So what did Alexander ultimately do on January 6, after persuading tens of thousands of his followers to do “crazy”, “rowdy”, “uncomfortable” things in supposed service of the Lord? What did he do, after repeatedly assuring his followers that they could act violently on January 6 and be morally justified in doing so? Well—candidly—he hid.
He wasn’t crazy, rowdy, or violent on January 6, 2021. He did nothing uncomfortable.
Indeed, he didn’t even do what he’d promised the President of the United States he’d do and lead a march on the U.S. Capitol. Instead, he did his best to hide in plain sight.
Specifically, he and his entourage, after making sure they were seen throughout the VIP section of Trump’s speech at the White House Ellipse—they worked so hard to get their seats moved up to the front that the police had to be called because of the major disturbance it caused—Alexander (a) did not wait for instructions post-speech in the area the United States Secret Service had told him to wait; (b) did not leave the speech with sufficient alacrity to be at the head of the first large group of rally-goers headed to the Capitol; (c) did not march directly to the Capitol as he had promised to do, but stopped for ten minutes at Freedom Plaza for no reason that’s been explained publicly (though a video taken by someone in his entourage and published at Proof confirms that the reason for the stop was to try to ensure President Trump reached the Capitol before Stop the Steal leadership, the better to ensure the latter had legal cover for anything that happened there); (d) did not celebrate or express any emotion when he learned that his supposed ambition—the breaching of the Capitol—had just occurred; (e) did not enter the Capitol or exhort others to do so once he’d gotten there, though everything he’d said January 6 needed to achieve could only be accomplished if the Capitol were breached; (f) did virtually no speaking at all at the Capitol, letting his compatriot Alex Jones man a bullhorn (after Alexander had been the most loquacious individual in the whole of the Stop the Steal movement prior to January 6); (f) quickly fled the Capitol to an overwatch position on the Newsmax building, in view of all the turmoil he’d caused; and (g) throughout all this, exercised no leadership function at all.
So why did Ali Alexander melt into the background the moment all he’d set in motion finally sprung?
I can only speculate here, having represented thousands of criminal defendants as a criminal investigator and criminal attorney in three jurisdictions—one of them D.C.— and surmise that Alexander knew his plan had already worked and that he could only expose himself to criminal liability if he made a public gesture on January 6 to confirm everything had gone precisely as he’d planned. If his forces held the Capitol, he could descend from the Newsmax building and enter the Capitol; if his army were scattered, instead, he could flee.
What neither I nor any criminal defense attorney could have imagined, however, was the sheer brazenness and cravenness of Alexander’s post-January 6 attempts to escape any consequences for his actions.
Shortly after January 6, Alexander’s January 6 partner Alex Jones took to the InfoWars airwaves to say that the easiest way to be certain neither he nor Alexander had wanted the Capitol to be breached was that had the breach not occurred the joint session would’ve been adjourned, and Trump would have “won.” That the entire nation knew by the time of Jones’s self-exculpation on his own and Alexander’s behalf that none of this was true appeared not to daunt Jones in the slightest. And as Proof has reported, Jones later interviewed Alexander on InfoWars, during which interview Alexander confirmed that it was his view also that only a peaceful protest far from the U.S. Capitol would have achieved Trump’s (and by extension, Alexander’s and Jones’s) desired ends.
Later on, Alexander—the man who had said, prior to January 6, “They’re going to call us terrorists....but I’m done caring about what they think”; “We must escalate…if we don’t get rowdy, they will know they can put us down”; “Do not bring your kids [to the Capitol on January 6]”; “Either we win this fight [on January 6] or there are no more fights....It’s either now or it is literally never”; “There’s not a Mayor, there’s not a Congress, there’s not a president, there’s not a president-elect, there’s not a media, there’s not a judge who can order immoral acts that violate my natural rights to depose tyrants or my civil rights to petition MY government—MY government! MINE! It’s OUR government!….[and] 1776 [a violent, bloody revolution] is always an option!”—would continue to sing an almost comically different post-January 6 tune, telling Politico as he was facing congressional subpoena and congressional deposition:
I did not finance the Ellipse equipment. I did not ever talk with the White House about security groups. Any militia working security at the Ellipse belonged to Women for America First, not us. I did not coordinate any movements with the Proud Boys or even see them that day. I did take the Oath Keepers’ offer to act as ushers for the Area 8 event [I had gotten a permit for] but all of that was lost in the chaos. I wasn’t in communication with any of the aforementioned groups while I was near the Capitol working to get people away from the building….I did nothing wrong and I am not in possession of evidence that anyone else had plans to commit unlawful acts. I denounce anyone who planned to subvert my permitted event and the other permitted events of that day on Capitol grounds to stage any counterproductive activities.
This is a wholly different Ali Alexander—one simultaneously conveniently detached from reality and seeking to maintain a vise-like death-grip over his tenuous freedom from incarceration.
And yet, Alexander’s behavior in this regard is identical to that of the powerful and influential figures within the GOP—from Donald Trump to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), from Ted Cruz to pre-insurrection Trump war room attendee and subsequent failed Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster—who wanted to be present and engaged and on the phone or in meetings or at the White House as the planning for a coup unfolded but would be nowhere to be found once the violence was underway.
These men, and they were nearly all men, knew they would not face accountability or even questioning for their plot; such preposterous eventualities were for the working-class—and they were nearly all working class—foot-soldiers who had been placed on the Capitol Hill chessboard like pawns by their “betters.” Yet indeed, for all this, in his post-January 6 videos Alexander would opine that he and Donald Trump had suffered far more than anyone else in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, despite the fact that, as Proof issues this report, Alexander and Trump are free men and hundreds of their pawns will sleep in cells tonight. Justice, in the United States, isn’t blind—she understands the sort of man that America fits for chains and the sort of man it doesn’t.
Alexander worked for years and years alongside rich white men like Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone to ensure that he’d become the latter sort of person.
Alexander’s Post-January 6 Videos
In early March 2021, just a few weeks after the insurrection, a video was uploaded to YouTube that appears to have been recorded at the end of Insurrection Week. This video features what is perhaps Alexander’s most terrifying monologue ever—one that gives insight into his state of mind pre-January 6 as well as after his insurrection failed.
This is just one excerpt from his 25-minute address:
I’m hurt. I’m hurt. I’m hurt. And I think that I’m trying to concentrate on being hurt because I know what happens if I get mad. If I get mad, it [my anger] is going to engulf billions and billions of people.
We already saw what happened when I got mad about the election fraud: 100 million Americans got engulfed in Stop the Steal on one side or the other.
He goes on to repeat his view that the American government “ought to be deathly afraid of us [Stop the Steal].” He declares that “I’m not stopping Stop the Steal. We are going to punish the traitors. We are going to punish the traitors. We are going to punish the traitors.” He accuses an unnamed “they” of “ruin[ing] [his] life”, appearing to be referring to elected government officials and their Capitol Complex agents as he adds that “in the process they killed someone”; this “someone” would appear to be the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, who Alexander boasts was “a supporter of mine.”
He says he will “continue to talk to the American people” through videos, but “they [the mainstream media] don’t want me to call for peace and that should tell you everything about their plans for us.” As we have seen above, accusing his enemies of wanting violence in a way that implicitly or even explicitly provokes violence among his own followers is Alexander’s rhetorical calling card, and he draws it from his deck again here. He also plays another card for which he is famous—the “martyr” card—by complaining that of all the Trumpists in America suffering post-January 6, only the President of the United States himself (at the time Trump) is suffering as much as him.
{Note: Today is May 31, 2022, and nearly 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes over January 6. Ali Alexander and Donald Trump have not yet been charged with any crimes.}
Alexander predicts a “wave of suicides” among his followers—possibly “hundreds”—and says that Stop the Steal’s new plan is to “find one tech giant to sue” in “one state with a friendly Attorney General.” This appears to be a prescient reference to Texas, where insurrectionist Ken Paxton, a Stop the Steal adherent and Insurrection Day speaker at the White House Ellipse, oversees the justice system of a state where any social media user can now sue Twitter and Facebook. {Note: Ali Alexander lives in Fort Worth, Texas. “I want a lot of people moving to Texas”, he says in the video, declaring that he is starting a “ministry” from there. “I want us moving to Texas. We’re going to be living right outside of Austin…[or] right outside of Houston, or in Argyle [a town just northwest of Dallas] or in Rhome, Texas [a town north of Fort Worth].”}
Alexander says that the purpose of such a lawsuit would be to beat the “ever-loving shit” out of a single tech giant. “And then we need to use those funds [won at trial] to fund the next lawsuit [against a tech firm], and the next lawsuit, and the next lawsuit, and we need to beat the ever-living [sic] shit out of them”, he says, adding that tech executives should be “heckled” everywhere they go in public because “these are the Gestapo, these are the Nazis, these are the people who would separate us from our families and gaslight people into suicide and there should be no civility granted for them.” He says that he personally is the target of numberless “curses and hexes and evil thoughts” being “channeled” his way by unnamed “sick” people. He says that he has a “hedge of protection” because he enjoys “God’s favor” and at least “150,000” Americans pray for him by name regularly.
He says that “our government [the Biden administration] is illegitimate” but that he is not yet “calling for war” because “I don’t believe that [civil] war is yet necessary.” In the meantime, he says, his followers must either “commit yourself to be with God or you must commit yourself to burn with the comfort of decadence. Those are your only choices right now.” (emphasis in original). He repeats a long-running refrain on whether he’s explicitly demanding (as opposed to just implicitly suggesting) his followers become violent en masse: “Not yet. Not yet.”
He also threatens his followers over the matter of money he has demanded from them: “If you all don’t raise the money [$40,000 for me via GiveSendGo] in a week, I’m gone [from the public eye forever]”, he says.
But he saves his scariest words for last. “When I am ready—and when I do unleash The Plan—I will unleash a legion of angels to bring Hell to our enemies. So rest assured in this: the Lord says vengeance is His, and I pray that I am the tool to stab these motherfuckers. I have a bunch of ideas, and I have a bunch of ways to get it to the public, and our enemies will feel Hell and be delivered there by angels” (emphasis in original). Note his confirmation here that he sees himself and his followers as tools of the Lord, meaning that when he says the Lord will do something, he does indeed mean that he and his followers will actually be the ones doing it. Hold this in mind as you re-read any of Alexander’s pre-January 6 statements on God’s coming vengeance.
Alexander concludes his early March 2021 video with a message to his flock:
I need you [spiritually] called into the service of Liberty. I need you to take up your cross and follow me. I need some of y’all to move to Texas. I need security forces. I need IT [Information Technology] specialists. I need video editors.
This [video] begins the rebellion.
I will not bow before an illegitimate government. Not now, not tomorrow, not if they imprison me, not if they question me, not if they poison me, not if they behead me. They can go to Hell—I’m going to Heaven.
And if you ever give me advice [via Periscope chat], I’m going to block you, okay? Don’t give me advice. You have no idea what this feels like. You have no idea of the expertise it takes to survive this. You’re not keeping me alive by giving me advice. Give [me] money. Give [me] prayers. Don’t give [me] advice. Kill your ego.
He also tells his followers that he is willing to accept “houses” as donations and that he is “a king amongst idiots” who has literal angels at his right and left hands at all times because he’s one of God’s favorite human beings. He also says that he is “not cooperating with fat people” and that anyone who asks him to produce receipts for the expenditures he’s making with the donations he’s taking in is working with both Lucifer and (for some reason) deceased political activist Saul Alinsky (1909-1972).
“All the fat people who refuse to sign up to Jenny Craig can go fuck yourselves, okay, you can go fuck yourselves”, is how he ends his odd sermon, adding that “all the people who call patriots ‘domestic terrorists’, y’all can go fuck yourselves, [and] to all the people who say that Christians can’t cuss, y’all can go fuck yourselves. The nation is in peril! They’re trying to rape our children! They’re closing our churches and keeping us from the Sacrament so they can open a gateway to Hell! Go fuck yourself if you want a receipt [for my expenditures]. There’s a receipt for you! Satanism has no hold here! None! None! I will not cooperate with polite society! None!…Everyone can go to Heaven or they can go straight to Hell, do not ‘pass Go,’ do not ‘collect $200,’ I’ll even boot-kick you in [to Hell] to expedite the process!”
This is the man a sitting President of the United States tasked with leading a march on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
{Note: In another post-January 6 video apparently recorded a matter of days after the one described above, Alexander again rambles incoherently, boasting that he is investing in “tools” that “create chaos” on social media, that he has been “scheming” on how to “do away with this whole system”—including “abolishing” the “free press”—and that he predicts that “a lot of [far-right] people will end up rioting in a couple months [in late spring of 2021]” as a key element of his “comeback.” He says that he will be creating a new “mega-city” just for Trump voters, with its own “language” and “culture” and a “back-up city in South America.” He says he will be making “lists” of “evil people” who will not be welcome in his “new society.”}
A Federal Court Ruling Could Put Alexander Even More Under the Gun Than He Already Is
Even as Alexander deals with Congress and interrogation before a federal grand jury, he must also worry about whether exhorting a mob will lead him to face massive civil liability.
A recent federal ruling may well turn this worry into a five-alarm five.
Discussing the known reaction of then-President Trump to the attack on the Capitol—namely, silence for nearly two hours (though Proof has provided evidence to confirm that, according to eyewitnesses, he was happy and even gleeful over what was going on on Capitol Hill)—federal judge Amit Mehta stated, in a hearing seeking to advance several civil lawsuits against Donald Trump and other insurrectionists, the following:
[President Trump’s] words [at the White House Ellipse] are hard to walk back. You have an almost two-hour window where the President does not say, ‘Stop, get out of the Capitol. This is not what I wanted you to do.’ What do I do about the fact the President didn’t denounce the conduct immediately…and sent a tweet that arguably exacerbated things? Isn’t that, from a plausibility standpoint, that the President plausibly agreed with the conduct of the people inside the Capitol that day?
If this sort of conduct presents a civil liability issue for Donald Trump, it’s a devastating concern for Alexander. Why? Because as Proof has reported, Alexander filmed a video as the riot was ongoing behind him on January 6 clearly stating, “I do not denounce this.”
So as Alexander faces congressional and criminal inquiries, he also faces the fact that it certainly appears judges will permit future civil lawsuits against him to go forward.
And apparently, some already are.
As Alexander left his eight-hour deposition with the House January 6 Committee, he was instantly served with not one but two subpoenas for civil lawsuits arising from January 6. Meanwhile, Alexander himself has indeed filed a lawsuit against a tech company, though not quite as he’d hoped—unfortunately for him, it was a suit against Verizon to try to keep his phone records hidden from Congress even as he continues to insist that he has nothing to hide and is willing to cooperate fully with all federal investigators. As independent journalist Marcy Wheeler has noted, even Alexander’s civil filings appear to be a desperate attempt to keep his fractious insurrectionist coalition intact in the face of possible future federal interrogations and indictments:
The Verizon lawsuit seems significantly intended to provide information to others involved in the coup, both by identifying which texts Alexander shared with Congress and which (by omission) he did not, but also by communicating that everything he did provide to Congress constituted telephony communication. That seems to suggest that Alexander did not share any communications involving Signal, Telegram, or other messaging apps.
…
Alexander is represented by Paul Kamenar, the lawyer who played a key role in attempting to cover-up Roger Stone’s role in [the Trump campaign] coordinating with Russia in 2016 by delaying the testimony of Stone’s aide, Andrew Miller.
Meanwhile—as if to underscore his current desperation—Alexander is now falsely claiming that the video he filmed atop the Newsmax building is actually “a deep fake.”
Conclusion
So why is this article on Ali Alexander part of an series of reports titled “The Coming Collapse of Donald Trump’s January 6 Conspiracy”? In what way does what we know now about Alexander’s participation in the January 6 plot augur an imminent collapse of that conspiracy?
As noted in the Introduction, Alexander has been subpoenaed by both Congress and the Department of Justice. While Proof does not hold out much hope that he will tell the truth to either body, if he lies to either body—given that all transcripts gathered by Congress will be sent to DOJ—he’ll likely face federal charges for doing so, at which point his only escape from long-term federal detention will be to finally tell the truth about everything he has lied about thus far, which appears to be, in two words, nearly everything.
So far, Alexander has responded to his congressional subpoena by publishing a video in which he blames America’s “intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies” for inciting the attack on the Capitol on January 6, an event he now claims to have no useful information about whatsoever. Based upon his presaging of his future defense via this video, it appears he’ll blame the entirety of January 6—or, rather, that portion of it not the responsibility of the Deep State—on Trump presidential adviser Katrina Pierson, whose feud with Stop the Steal on January 6 was reported on at length by the Washington Post in a recent major investigative report.
More recently, Alexander has been on Telegram—one of the high-security messaging apps he used as he helped plan a coup, which federal investigators undoubtedly know he used because he realized what he was doing was illegal and that all evidence of it needed to be destroyed—getting caught by enterprising screen-shotters trying to set up precisely the same sort of stochastic terrorism he aimed at prior to January 6, 2021, though this time it is aimed squarely at the life of the sitting American president:
Here we see, yet again, the consequences of prosecutorial inaction by the Department of Justice. Because Alexander remains free, he is—literally and figuratively—free to do as he did prior to January 6 and engage in a rhetorical gambit that is now almost 300 years old and has its own Wikipedia page: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Scholars of contemporary reading material rather than the Robert Dodsley book Chronicle of the Kings of England use the term stochastic terrorism, instead. In both instances, the result is the same: a man of influence gets others to commit violence on his behalf by publicly urging someone to “do something” about a high-profile figure.
Alexander’s slight variation on this last recourse of cowardly scoundrels is to assure his violent followers that they would be doing the work of God if they committed acts of violence at his suggestion; of course, this rhetorical ploy wasn’t available to Henry II of England when he said (allegedly), “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Four of Henry’s followers killed the archbishop shortly thereafter, exactly as their leader had intended and hoped for.)
If he has his way, Ali Alexander would see the same result with respect to Joe Biden, and would surely assure his followers after such a deed, as he already has done in his tremulous anticipation of it, that it is just what God wants. As he wrote on Telegram:
Joe Biden…is illegitimate, tyrannical, and wholly unrepresentative of the [American] people. May God strike [him] down.
….
This country, taken over by despots [like Joe Biden], is currently unworthy of [our soldiers’] sacrifice. Have a [God-]blessed and reflective Memorial Day. Be brave. Do something.
Alexander, accustomed to seeing his followers as stupid—see the video below—may think the whole country is as ill-educated as all those who follow him, and therefore cannot see his methods. But his contempt for others is evident in episodes like this one, which occurred as Alexander and Stop the Steal were inside the Georgia State Capitol in late 2020 using a large group of followers to stage a trial run for January 6:
Standing next to Alex Jones in the video above is white supremacist Nick Fuentes, underscoring that Alexander has indeed made himself (as he often discusses being) the Black face of what is perceived as a racist movement willing to suffer him as a leader because he and his followers share a bond transcending race: a hatred of Jews.
As America prepares for six televised (two primetime) congressional hearings run by the bipartisan House January 6 Committee between June 9 at 8PM ET and June 23 at 8PM ET, Alexander not only remains at large but one of the most dangerous men in the United States. He is quite clear in believing, as we have seen above, that he can put America in a state of civil war if he chooses to do so. While he likely overstates his influence—which is considerable—by a fair margin, the sheer capacity of Alexander for lasting destruction, as evidenced by his orchestration (with Trump, Jones, and a few others) of America’s most shameful act of domestic terrorism since the Civil War, may in part explain why the Department of Justice appears to remain in fear of him.
That Alexander’s apparent crimes occurred in December 2020 and January 2021 and it’s now May 2022 and Alexander is on Telegram threatening the life of the American president is all one needs to know about the federal criminal justice system’s failures with respect to Mr. Alexander. While it is a promising sign that Alexander has now (in April) been subpoenaed by DOJ—well over a year after the critical historical records DOJ seeks were first created, giving Alexander ample time to destroy them and to see to it that his compatriots have destroyed any companion records—this former federal investigator, who like every other legal analyst in America is unable to understand why DOJ thinks this is any way to run a criminal investigation (where time is always of the essence), must nevertheless concede that it’s better that Alexander be subpoenaed, however tardily, than not. Not much more can be said on the matter than that.
As to Alexander himself, however, so much more can be said. This report, voluminous as it is, has only scratched the surface of Ali Alexander’s past. It is not, by any means, a full accounting of what Alexander has done and what he may yet do. The details of Alexander’s December congressional testimony, which has only been lightly reported on so far, cannot be recounted here because no transcript of that testimony has been made available yet. The specific reasons for Ali Alexander being banned from almost every major social media and fundraising platform in America have not been explored here, though they can be guessed at given what has been revealed in this report. His ties to white supremacists like Fuentes—who infamously said “Trump was awesome because he was racist”—have only been touched upon here, but at least readers may glean from Alexander’s openness about working with violent racists in the speech excerpts above that he has indeed repeatedly done so, and happily, over the years. The lessons he learned from his two mentors—insurrectionist Oath Keeper and coup plotter Mark Finchem of Arizona and self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone of Florida—could probably comprise a novella, but have been skipped over here entirely.
In short, understand that just as the Proof project required 2,500 pages in three books merely to circumscribe Donald Trump’s foreign policy scandals as POTUS—leaving out almost all of his domestic scandals and his scandalous proto-scandal deceptions—the full story of Ali Alexander is as unlikely to be told by a single report (or a single set of televised congressional hearings) as the story of the almost unimaginably complex Trump-Ukraine scandal was capable of being reduced to a single ill-advised phone call or five-day impeachment trial. Proof recommends a deep dive into the largely “evergreen” archives of this site to find the several dozen reports on Alexander that act as a prelude to the report you’ve just read. And more reporting on Alexander will surely be forthcoming. In the meantime, America can only hope that the upcoming House January 6 Committee hearings, focused as they will and should be on Trump’s malfeasance, will leave room to explore the conduct of the Trump associate without whom the armed insurrection and attack on the U.S. Capitol could not have happened.
Great job as usual Seth. One question though: With Trump's tenuous grasp of history and fact do we know FOR A FACT that he DIDN'T think that Ali Alexander WAS Sammy Davis, Jr.?
Read from my perspective as a mental health professional for over two decades, it’s an easy reach to see that AA is afflicted with a florid Bipolar I disorder, comorbid with Antisocial Personality Disorder.
As to his current freedom from detention, I may be showing great ignorance when I hazard a guess about why: DOJ has him under surveillance so that he might continue to produce evidence against other seditionists? In other words, a useful idiot too crazed to conceal his and others guilt. I say this knowing that there are many encrypted apps in this world.
As much as I worry that the DOJ is actually flubbing the prosecution of the massive Trump-led conspiracy, I still hold faith that its fist is still balling up and precisely gauging where and how it will strike, and against whom, so that victory is certain (even if not a one-punch knockout).
Even as Seth has repeatedly fretted over what’s (not) happening at DOJ, as a Proof reader from its inception, I cannot believe that his multi-year effort at uncovering blatant evidence has been squandered by prosecutors. I hold faith that they have more evidence than even the amazing Seth Abramson has uncovered.