Trump Told Stop the Steal Organizers He Would Speak at the Front of the Capitol After His January 6 Speech at the Ellipse
New revelations about Trump's schedule for January 6 confirm that the White House was indispensable to the events that led to an armed assault on the U.S. Capitol.
In November 2020, filmmaker, libertarian, and avid Ron Paul supporter Jason Rink produced a short video romanticizing the then-nascent post-election Stop the Steal movement led by convicted felon and far-right activist Ali Alexander.
Alexander quickly sent Rink his thanks for the short, and afterward the two continued their conversation via email, with Rink agreeing to go to Georgia to produce a one-day documentary on Alexander’s operation. That one day expanded into several days, and eventually into a feature-length documentary, The Steal, that Rink hopes to release by mid-2021. {Note: Ali Alexander claims to have planned the pre-breach events of January 6 along with three Trump Congressional allies: Reps. Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, and Andy Biggs.}
A trailer of The Steal—a still from which tops this article—reveals that Jason Rink’s weeks of shadowing Alexander, whom he now calls a “friend”, involved him also getting substantial footage of the pre-insurrection activities of Trump adviser and Stop the Steal organizer (as well as “Stop the Steal” phrase-coiner) Roger Stone, in addition to footage of conspiracy theorist, InfoWars host, and third Stop the Steal organizer Alex Jones. It appears, too, that insurrectionist and far-right activist Nick Fuentes, often referred to as a white supremacist, is featured in Rink’s documentary.
Following the insurrection, Rink conducted a January 13, 2021 podcast interview with fellow libertarian Tatiana Moroz, during which chat he made the following striking statement (see 34:10 in this video; emphasis supplied):
“I was actually right at the front of the breach [of the Capitol] because I left Trump’s speech like 15 minutes into it [approximately 12:13PM on January 6] because I was helping to set up a stage that was permitted [had received a permit to be erected] on the other side [the front] of the Capitol. And so I walked over early....[and] when I got to the Capitol, I actually have a little video clip, when people started first coming up to the gates and people started jumping over the fence to get onto the Capitol lawn. And it was kind of, like, regular angry MAGA people trying to get to the Capitol steps, is what I saw. And there was very little security out front of there. Surprisingly little.”
Those who haven’t been tracking the shocking statements made by Ali Alexander, Roger Stone, and Alex Jones on January 6 and January 7 may not immediately see why Rink’s statement is so striking, so I’ll unpack it in five steps:
During his January 6 speech, Trump repeatedly told the crowd that he would be going to the Capitol once his speech at the Ellipse was concluded.
Stop the Steal organizer Alex Jones has said he was asked by the White House to lead the march to the Capitol following Trump’s speech at the Ellipse.
Stop the Steal organizer Roger Stone has also said that he was asked—he does not say by whom—to lead the march to the Capitol following Trump’s speech at the Ellipse.
Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander has said that he spoke by telephone to Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., the night before the insurrection—doing so right as Guilfoyle was meeting with Trump’s 20-person pre-insurrection war council inside Trump’s “private residence” at Trump International Hotel in DC.
Per videos published by ProPublica, after Alex Jones arrived at the Capitol on January 6, he repeatedly told Trump voters massing at the rear of the Capitol that they should move to the “front” of the Capitol because Trump was shortly going to arrive and would be “speaking” to the crowd. Jones repeats his announcement several times to the massing crowd at the rear of the Capitol building.
Rink, who was shadowing Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander on January 5 and January 6—and at various points Stop the Steal organizers Roger Stone and Alex Jones as well, including possibly on Insurrection Day and the day before—now says that as part of this filming he had to leave Trump’s speech early so he could “help[ ] to set up a stage that was permitted [had received a permit to be erected] on the other side [the front] of the Capitol.” There can be no doubt, from this, that the pre-permitted stage in question was for a Stop the Steal event that was slated to occur at the front of the Capitol after Trump’s speech at the Ellipse—an event that would include the president himself speaking on the “Capitol steps” (see below) with the Capitol as his backdrop.
As we now know, Trump fled to the White House after his speech, instead. We know, too, that the Secret Service told him before January 6 that he wouldn’t be permitted to go to the Capitol. We also know that Jones was not told this, and indeed was induced by the White House to lead the march on the Capitol under the premise that he was in fact leading the crowd toward an event at which the president himself would appear.
Now explained, therefore, is this bizarre Roger Stone video from either December 30, December 31, January 1, or January 2—the date remains unclear, but is immaterial in this instance—in which the longtime Trump adviser claims that he will be speaking at an event on January 6. Coupled with Stone’s subsequent claim that he was asked to lead the post-Ellipse march to the Capitol, a clear picture of what occurred manifests itself:
The Stop the Steal team (Alexander, Stone, and Jones) was in direct contact with Trump’s top advisers prior to Insurrection Day;
the Stop the Steal team was initially led to believe that Trump would speak on the Capitol steps following his speech at the Ellipse;
to this end, the White House asked Alex Jones to lead marchers to the front of the Capitol so they could hear Trump speak;
given that Jones says he accepted this invitation, whereas Stone says he rejected his, either Jones and Stone were given this invitation at the same time (in which case, both were in contact with the White House) or Stone was given an invitation first—from whom we don’t know, through his friend Donald Trump or a White House liaison are possibilities—and his declining of it led to it being offered to Jones, instead (it remains unknown whether Alexander was given the chance to “lead” the marchers to Trump’s second speech of January 6, or if his criminal record precluded it, but in the event, Alexander did a broadcast far from the violence at the Capitol); and finally,
at some point in this series of events, Stone decided not to appear at the January 6 event at all, and so did Trump. Whether Stone’s non-appearance at the event was coordinated with his good friend Trump—the two are in regular contact by telephone—remains unknown, but it is clear that, while Alexander is in contact with Trump’s team just 15 hours before the breach of the Capitol, and Jones believes he is acting in accord with the White House’s wishes as the breach is ongoing, Stone somehow comes to learn prior to the Insurrection Day march that he should neither lead the march to the Capitol, speak at any Stop the Steal rally scheduled to occur at the end of it, nor even attend any such event.
The stage Jason Rink was helping to set up at approximately 12:43PM at the Capitol would have to be, according to the January 6 protest guide distributed to Trump voters below, the Wild Protest event that was scheduled for the “steps” of the Capitol (with the alteration that Trump’s decision to speak at the Ellipse had bumped its start time, though it is equally possible that some of those “angry MAGA people” Rink saw trying to get to “the Capitol steps” as Trump was speaking at the Ellipse were doing so to get the best possible seats for a speech Trump was slated to soon give on those very steps):
{Note: the “Wild Protest” took its name from a Trump tweet in which the former president promised the main event on January 6 would be “wild.”}
How Trump came to make a similar decision about the Wild Protest as Stone (who as you can see from the pamphlet above was slated to speak at it), we don’t know—but we do know that Roger Stone was in touch with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in the 15 hours prior to the insurrection, and was friends with members of the former group who were subsequently arrested for pre-planning an attack on the Capitol (in cases involving unindicted co-conspirators whose names are still unknown), potentially putting Trump’s longtime friend and adviser in a position to warn the President of the United States not to go to the Capitol and to avoid going to the Capitol himself. {Note: the plot that certain Oath Keepers have been implicated in is worse by far than even what the Proud Boys allegedly planned.}
Note too that the January 6 Stop the Steal/March to Save America organizers seem to have believed Trump would still come to the Capitol building itself—shortly after his Ellipse speech—at the time they put together this digital brochure:
This significantly clearer picture of what occurred on January 6 has implications it will take federal investigators weeks to wrestle with, but chief among them is this one: the Stop the Steal organizers believed—at least one of them, up through the breach of the Capitol—that Trump was coming to the Capitol, and this belief wasn’t just encouraged by the White House (in direct contacts with Jones, and in Trump’s public remarks at the Ellipse) but was deliberately never erased, as least with respect to Jones. Indeed, it is possible Trump’s false promise to go to the Capitol during his speech at the Ellipse was intended for Jones’ ears specifically; Jones had been seated by the campaign in the VIP section of Trump’s speech, just a few yards from the president’s podium.
What investigators can, should, and indeed must take from all this is that the White House was not convinced the mass of attendees at Trump’s Ellipse speech would go to the Capitol building unless they were led there, and that leading needed to be done by the Stop the Steal organizers. Moreover, the White House knew that the Stop the Steal organizers would not lead the crowd to the Capitol as the White House desired if the organizers did not believe they were leading the crowd toward a permitted stage at the front of the Capitol at which Trump himself would speak—which is why Trump’s team hid from at least one (possibly more) of the Stop the Steal organizers the fact that the president had no intention—or permission from the Secret Service—to go to the Capitol. In this way, the White House functionally orchestrated moving the maximum amount of people from the White House Ellipse to the Capitol grounds, only to at the last moment pull out of the sordid operation in a bid to preserve plausible deniability.
Now Trump’s friend Roger Stone says (see his Gab post below) that he knew “nothing about” about the January 6 march, even though he is on video both consorting with insurrectionists later arrested for breaching the Capitol and raising money for their protective equipment.
The key question now is what were the points of contact between the White House and the three chief Stop the Steal organizers: Alexander, Stone, and Jones. Alexander spoke to Guilfoyle; Stone has a long history of speaking to Trump; Jones says only that he spoke to “the White House”, which could mean White House political director Brian Jack—who, according to Rep. Mo Brooks, arranged the speakers for Trump’s Ellipse speech—or any of the dozen individuals connected to the Trump campaign or administration who were involved in the planning of the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally and march.
A final possibility is the use of intermediaries from Trump’s January 5 pre-insurrection war council, held at his “private residence” at Trump International Hotel; one of the attendees, January 6 Jericho March organizer and longtime Trump adviser Michael Flynn, was interviewed (see video) by Jones less than 24 hours before the insurrection began, and war council attendee Adam Piper had been involved in orchestrating robocalls for Alexander, Stone, and Jones’ Stop the Steal events in DC.
Worth noting, too, is that top Trump post-election adviser Steve Bannon was one of the first to push the “Stop the Steal” meme post-election, putting him in a position—given his simultaneous ties to Trump, Stone, and Jones—to act as an intermediary between the Stop the Steal team and the president; this would, of course, require further investigation to confirm, though Trump’s extraordinary decision to pardon Bannon before leaving office may be relevant to this fact pattern. {Note: Certainly, if the communication chain ran from Trump to Bannon to Stone, it would help explain why Trump’s other truly extraordinary post-departure pardon was of Stop the Steal’s Stone, and why Stone is now so livid at Bannon, calling him on Gab a “fat fuck”, a perjurer, and disloyal to Trump. It is telling, too, that Bannon—possessed of so much information about what Trump knew about January 6 and when, is now telling media that Democrats have a “compelling” case on Trump.}
Even if Trump were at some point aloof to the coordination between the Stop the Steal organizers and the White House, at some point pre-insurrection his aloofness had to have ended—as he or his agents went from promising multiple individuals that he would speak at the front of the Capitol on January 6 (not just Jones, but presumably Stone as well, or else Stone wouldn’t have planned on going to the Capitol on January 6 and speak at the same event Trump was to speak at) to making the decision not to do so. For Trump to have made such a decision, some sort of intelligence had to have been delivered to him justifying his sudden decision.
{Note: The only alternative hypothesis this former investigator at a federal public defender can imagine is one in which the Secret Service denies Trump’s request to go to the Capitol and Trump decides, for strategic reasons, to keep this information from Stop the Steal organizers; however, even this scenario imagines Trump with ulterior motives for lying to the organizers, and does not explain why Stone—Trump’s longstanding confidant—suddenly altered his plan to appear at the January 6 front-of-the-Capitol stage Jason Rink eventually helped set up.}
I think it’s important to make a note about both Rink and the fellow libertarian with whom he spoke to via podcast, Tatiana Moroz. Rink, while a libertarian rather than a Trumpist, is—by any measure—a political radical, so any references to him at Proof can in no way be taken as an endorsement of any of his views.
In his podcast interview with Moroz, Rink calls the U.S. government the “enemy”, says all governments are definitionally “criminal”, and declares that in putting together a documentary (now in post-production) starring a man—Alexander—currently hiding from federal law enforcement, his goal is to “get[ ] people to understand, ‘oh my God, this thing [our right to vote in federal elections] isn’t legitimate.’ Our voice [vote], it’s been fake for a long time, but really was this time [in the 2020 presidential election], because they [Democrats] had to get rid of Trump.” Rink adds that if he can “shake…[Americans’] belief in voting and the legitimacy of government through what we do [the documentary on Alexander]—because people understand what happened [in the 2020 election]—I think that’s a win.”
Rink also tells Moroz that Americans are “at war for our own liberty” and will have to face “battle[s]” ahead that—while he says he does not endorse violence—will require citizens to “fight back” against their government. Rink says that his startling reason for spending weeks with the Stop the Steal operation to make a movie about their so-called “movement” was to “shake the foundation of [America’s] belief in voting.”
{Note: Moroz is also a radical—if not a Trump supporter—and could properly be called an insurrectionist. In her interview of Rink, she speaks in favor of the seditionists’ storming of the Capitol; spreads conspiracy theories about Biden putting everyone in “camps” and calls the Biden administration “evil”; repeats Trump’s “Big Lie” about winning the 2020 presidential election; and even flirts with the idea that the January 6 insurrectionists’ assaults upon at least 70 Capitol police officers may have been morally justified.}
Per Rink, besides his upcoming documentary The Steal, he is also working on another documentary related to January 6, Buffalo Guy, based around a series of interviews with so-called “QAnon Shaman” Jake Angeli. Rink anticipates Buffalo Guy will be released before The Steal, which is currently seeking a distributor. A previous documentary by Rink, Nullification, was sold on Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory-oriented Infowars website, and was the subject of an Infowars interview. During his InfoWars interview, Rink describes himself as the founder of an entity called The Foundation for a Free Society.
Please stay safe, Seth.
I knew you'd find the smoking gun! finding this guy is like finding the Zapruder tapes.