According to The Times, the FBI learned that a member of the white supremacist group Proud Boys was in direct contact with someone in the White House in the days leading up to the January 6 riot. This includes using “metadata” – a topic that Senator Josh Hawley frequently deals with – to connect a call from a Proud Boy member directly to someone in the White House. The FBI has not yet made it clear who this could be exactly.
However, the same FBI contact who made the link with a White House official also points out that “there was no evidence of communication between the rioters and members of Congress during the fatal attack.” This is surprising considering how Rep. Lauren Boebert provided text updates on actions in the Chamber of the House and how others, like Hawley, have asked if the FBI checks the phone records of congressmen at every hearing on the Capitol attack.
So if the source behind the Times story is correct – which is doubtful given the reliability of previous FBI claims in the New York Times – the connection between the people frolicking in the halls of Congress may not exist right between those who were hiding elsewhere in the same building.
While it is not clear who the Proud Boys spoke to in the White House, the report released by The Guardian may provide some clues. Top culprits when it came to extracting false information about the elections included Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the dead Venezuelan dictator fan, Sidney Powell. Perennial liar and pathetic video forger James O’Keefe was also on the worst offender list. O’Keefe doesn’t appear to be a candidate for contact with the White House during the Pizzagate, however Coup.
But it wasn’t just White House insiders who got calls from white nationalists. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, already made it clear that he was in contact with Roger Stone. That was an easy admission as Tarrio put Stone on the speakerphone and let him speak to the rest of the violent racist extremist group. And of course Stone cheered them on. After all, a month after the Capitol attack, Stone went to the CPAC to shoot a rap video describing the deadly attack as “patriots knocking on the Capitol.”
But Stone does not appear to be the White House contact who was in direct contact with the Proud Boys prior to the attack.
Just because the FBI may not have been able to find records of members of Congress who pounced on the attack during the ongoing attack doesn’t mean Republican lawmakers are clear. As the New York Times noted back in January, records show that almost all of the groups that stormed through the doors of the Capitol had friends inside. The Oath Guardians had ties to the openly racist MP Paul Gosar and MP Andy Biggs. Before Boebert kept her up to date on the uprising on site, she made up with the three percent militia group (and led these mysterious tours). MP Matt Gaetz also appeared in person at a Proud Boys event.
Both reports make it clear that the attack on the Capitol, whether it was social media or face-to-face contact, did not come from some twisted form of grassroots form. This was a top-down operation in which Republican politicians who cultivated and directed white supremacists for political purposes carried out agitation and coordination. Also … they are not embarrassed. Not even a little.
While Senate Republicans may have shown that their ability to cover Trump is infinite, the social media report shows something about how these companies can deal with disinformation that continues to be made public, and what they can do right now. What it shows is that the most important step, unsurprisingly, is to contain the most important people – those with the check mark and the number of followers who will best enable them to spread a lie.
In short, Twitter rightly closed Trump’s account. They should only have done it about five years earlier.
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