The far-right activist behind the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally who said Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, helped him plan the rally the day of the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol appears ready to throw other organizers under the bus.
In a draft of an opening statement, Ali Alexander plans to read to the Jan. 6 committee, obtained by The New York Times, Alexander doesn’t name Brooks or the other two Republican lawmakers who he has said helped him plan the Jan. 6 rally to put “maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” but Alexander does name others.
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.
Days prior to the riot, Alexander posted a video in which he named Brooks and Arizona U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs in 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.
Alexander, in his draft’s opening statement, alleges he had nothing to do with planning the violence that spilled into the Capitol on Jan. 6, and instead proposes other organizers of the ellipse rally, who kicked him off that planning team, were nowhere to be seen as the violence ensued.
“While I was actively trying to de-escalate events at the Capitol and end the violence and lawlessness, it’s important to note that certain people were nowhere to be found, including Amy Kremer, Kylie Kremer, and Katrina Pierson; essentially, the Women for America First leadership of the Ellipse Rally that was originally titled the ‘March for Trump’ in their National Park Service permit application,” Alexander writes in the opening statement.
Alexander wrote that the three other organizers “may have had their feet up drinking donor-funded champagne in a War Room in the Willard. I don’t know where they were. But they weren’t working with police trying to de-escalate the chaos like I was.”
He was part of that ellipse rally planning, Alexander writes, until he protested removal of instructions on the rally’s program that would “provide clarity on exactly where to go following the Ellipse event.” Alexander said he did attend the ellipse rally as a VIP, however.
Previous statements from Alexander paint a different picture than the one his opening statement seems to attempt to make. As protestors began storming the Capitol, Alexander posted a video of himself overlooking the scene and saying: “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this,” according to ABC News.
Speaking at a pro-Trump rally on Dec. 19 in Arizona along with Gosar, Alexander said “we will not go quietly. We’ll shut down this country if we have to.” Later in his speech, Alexander led the crowd in a chant of “1776,” referencing the American Revolution.
“One of our organizers in one state said, ‘You know, we’re nice patriots. We don’t throw bricks.’ I leaned over and I said, Not yet. Not yet,” Alexander told the crowd. “Haven’t you read about a little tar-and-feathering? Those were second-degree burns!”
“We’re going to convince them to not certify the vote on January 6 by marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patriots to sit their butts in D.C. and close that city down, right? And if we have to explore options after that…‘yet.’ Yet!” Alexander said, using the word “yet” as code for the violence he spoke of just before regarding throwing bricks and tar-and-feathering.
Brooks’s spokesman told APR in January that Brooks did not plan the Jan. 6 rally with Alexander. A Rolling Stone article cited two people who helped organize the rally and other demonstrations who said Brooks or his staff helped organize the Jan. 6 rally and a series of demonstrations in several states that occurred between the election and the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the capitol.
In response to the Rolling Stone article, Brooks told AL.com on Oct. 25 that he could not say whether his staff interacted with two Rolling Stone sources because he had not spoken to them about it.
“Quite frankly, I’d be proud of them if they did help organize a First Amendment rally to protest voter fraud and election theft,” Brooks said of his staff, AL.com reported.
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.
