Among those being sued by seven U.S. Capitol police officers for allegedly cooking up a Jan. 6 insurrection plot is the far-right activist Ali Alexander and his LLC, Stop the Steal, which was registered by Montgomery attorney and talk show host Baron Coleman.
The chairman of the U.S. House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in an Oct. 7 letter to Alexander said the committee was subpoenaing him requesting documents from him and ordered Alexander to attend a deposition on Oct. 29. Coleman is also named in the letter.
Alexander is the key figure behind Stop the Steal, an LLC incorporated in Alabama by Coleman and the entity behind the Stop the Steal rally outside the Capitol that turned deadly violent.
Stop the Steal was registered as an LLC with the state of Alabama on Nov. 13, and dissolved on Oct. 4, state records show. Supporters of the Stop the Steal movement believed inaccurately that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Donald Trump, a myth Trump himself continues to actively support.
Coleman has also represented another far-right extremist, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, who sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for the center’s designation of the group as a hate group.
The seven Capitol Police officers behind the civil suit, filed by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, allege a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government on Jan. 6.
“Because of Defendants’ unlawful actions, Plaintiffs were violently assaulted, spat on, tear-gassed, bear-sprayed, subjected to racial slurs and epithets, and put in fear for their lives. Plaintiffs’ injuries, which Defendants caused, persist to this day,” the lawsuit reads.
Alexander has other Alabama ties. Days prior to the riot Alexander posted a video in which he named Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, and Arizona U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs as helping him plan the Jan. 6 rally aimed at pressuring Congress as members counted electoral votes.
“So I want to let you guys know how we’re responding, because I was the person who came up with the January 6th idea, with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks and then Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said in the live stream video, which was archived by Jason Paladino, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight.
“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress, while they were voting, so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” he said.
Brooks’s spokesman told APR in January that Brooks did not plan the Jan. 6 rally with Alexander.
Brooks gave a speech at that Jan. 6 rally near the Capitol in which he told the crowd it was time to start “taking down names and kicking ass.” Brooks was wearing body armor when he gave that speech.
The federal civil lawsuit filed Aug. 26 also names as defendants Brandon Straka, a key figure behind the Stop the Steal movement and a speaker at the rally who pleaded guilty on Oct. 6 to disorderly conduct.
An FBI affidavit alleges Straka told the mob steps away from the entrance to the Capitol to take a police officer’s shield from him.
“Take it away from him,” Straka told the mob, the affidavit states.
The website is now down, but in archived versions, Marchtosaveamerica.com listed as participating organizations in the Jan. 6 rally Stop the Steal, Women for America First, Eighty Percent Coalition and the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a dark-money arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.
Prior to the protest, the Rule of Law Defense Fund sent out robocalls detailing when and where citizens should meet. Marshall, in a Jan. 8 message to APR, said he had no knowledge of his organization’s role in the robocalls and said he had “directed an internal review of this matter.”
Numerous staffers at the Republican Attorneys General Association resigned amid the fallout after the robocalls the Jan. 6 attack.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has sent subpoenas to people connected to three of the 11 organizations listed on the March To Save America’s website.
In addition to the subpoena to Alexander with Stop the Steal, Amy Kremer and Kylie Jane Kremer, founders of Women for America First, which helped organize the rally, have been ordered to supply documents and sit for depositions by Nov. 3. Cynthia Chafian, founder of Eighty Percent Coalition, was also subpoenaed by the committee.
