Trump associates’ ties to extremists probed
After members of the farright Oath Keepers extremist group stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, their leader called someone on the phone with an urgent message for then-president Donald Trump, another extremist told investigators.
While gathered in a private suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel, an Oath Keeper member says he heard their leader, Stewart Rhodes, repeatedly urge the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep the president in power.
“I just want to fight,” Rhodes said after hanging up with the person, who denied Rhodes’ appeal to speak directly to the Republican president, court records say.
Federal prosecutors have not said who they believe Rhodes was speaking to on that call, which was detailed in court documents in the case of an Oath Keeper member who has pleaded guilty in the riot. An attorney for Rhodes says the call never happened.
The story, however, has raised questions about whether the extremist group boss may have had the ear of someone close to
Trump on Jan. 6 — an issue that could take center stage when the House committee that’s investigating the insurrection holds its next public hearing on Tuesday.
The Jan. 6 committee has said it is looking closely at any ties between people in Trump’s orbit and extremist groups accused of helping put into motion the violence at the Capitol.
Top leaders and members of the Oath Keepers have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the most serious cases the Justice Department has brought so far in the Jan. 6 attack.
Neither federal prosecutors nor House investigators have alleged that anyone in the Trump White House was in communication with extremist groups in the run-up to Jan. 6.
But at least two men close to Trump — longtime friend Roger Stone and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn — have known contacts with farright groups and extremists who, in some cases, are alleged to have been involved in Jan. 6.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, also told the House committee that she heard the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers mentioned leading up to the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6. But no further details about that have been revealed.
Cassie Miller, a Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst who has provided the committee with information about extremists, said she expects lawmakers to build on that testimony and possibly reveal more information about connections between people close to Trump and groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
During the committee’s last televised hearing, Hutchinson told lawmakers that Trump instructed Meadows to speak with Stone and Flynn the day before the riot. Hutchinson said Meadows called both Flynn and Stone on the evening of Jan. 5, but she said she didn’t know what they spoke about.
In posts on the social media platform Telegram after the hearing, Stone denied ever speaking to Meadows on the phone. When asked by The Associated Press for comment about the call, Flynn’s brother replied in an email that the Jan. 6 hearing “is a clown show.”
Neither Stone nor Flynn has been charged in connection to the Capitol riot, and both of them have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against selfincrimination before the House committee. Trump pardoned each of them after they were convicted in cases unrelated to Jan. 6.
During events in Washington before the riot, Stone used members of the Oath Keepers — a far-right militia group that recruits current and former military, first responders and law enforcement — as security guards.
Photos and video on Jan. 5 and 6 show Stone flanked by people dressed in Oath Keepers gear. Among them was Joshua James, then the leader of the group’s Alabama chapter, who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and is cooperating with authorities.