Pro-Trump factions plan protests

WASHINGTON — Protests planned in support of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, when Congress is to convene to certify Electoral College votes, are multiplying.

Four seemingly competing rallies to demand that Congress overturn the results of the presidential election, which their participants view as illegitimate, are scheduled on the day Congress is to declare President-elect Joe Biden the winner.

The events will be headlined by Trump’s most ardent supporters, including recently pardoned George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russia investigation; and longtime ally Roger Stone, whose sentence for seeking to impede a congressional investigation into Russian election interference was commuted by Trump in July before being upgraded last month to a full pardon.

Formal rallies are planned most of the day and are expected to draw pro-Trump demonstrators to the Washington Monument, Freedom Plaza and the Capitol. But online forums and encrypted chat messages among far-right groups indicate a number of demonstrators might be planning more than chanting and waving signs.

Threats of violence, ploys to smuggle guns into the District of Columbia and calls to set up an “armed encampment” on the National Mall have proliferated in online chats about the protest. The Proud Boys, members of armed right-wing groups, conspiracy theorists and white supremacists have pledged to attend.

Trump, meanwhile, has continued to issue calls to supporters to converge on the District of Columbia.

“JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” he tweeted Wednesday.

Women for America First — a group of conservative women behind a pro-Trump march in November and last month’s Million MAGA March, which ended in a night of chaos on District of Columbia streets — requested a permit from the National Park Service to hold a protest with about 5,000 attendees at Freedom Plaza.

Another protest, dubbed the “Wild Protest” in reference to Trump’s tweets earlier this month, is scheduled for the northeast quadrant of the Capitol lawn.

A smaller rally organized by Trump supporter James Epley of South Carolina will lead a few hundred people from the Mall to the Capitol, according to a permit application filed this month.

A new group called the Eighty Percent Coalition — a reference to the roughly three-quarters of Republicans who have said in polls that they do not trust the results of the presidential election — filed a permit request this week for a rally that organizers estimate could draw up to 10,000 people.

The application was filed by Cindy Chafian, an organizer with Women for America First who seems to have broken off from the group to form a new organization. Though she originally asked that the Eighty Percent Coalition rally be at Freedom Plaza — which is still the venue for the Women for America First event — Park Service officials said her application was amended to request space at the Sylvan Theater near the Washington Monument.

Representatives from Women for America First and the Eighty Percent Coalition did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week.

Incoming District of Columbia Police Chief Robert Contee III, who will take over the department Saturday, said police are prepared to facilitate peaceful protests but that “violence will not be tolerated.”