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      Macron to Face Le Pen for President as French Gravitate Toward Extremes

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      President Emmanuel Macron and the hard-right leader Marine Le Pen will compete for a second time in a runoff on April 24.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France’s presidential elections.With 92 percent of the ballots cast on Sunday counted, Mr. Macron, a centrist, was leading with about 27.4 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 24.3 percent. Ms. Le Pen benefited from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration.With war raging in Ukraine and Western unity likely to be tested as the fighting continues, Ms. Le Pen’s strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. Extreme parties of the right and left took some 51 percent of the vote, a clear sign of the extent of French anger and frustration.An anti-NATO and more pro-Russia France in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.But Mr. Macron, after a lackluster campaign, will go into the second round as the slight favorite, having fared a little better than the latest opinion polls suggested. Some had shown him leading Ms. Le Pen by just two points.Marine Le Pen speaking after the first-round results were announced on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe principled French rejection of Ms. Le Pen’s brand of anti-immigrant nationalism has frayed as illiberal politics have spread in both Europe and the United States. She has successfully softened her packaging, if not her fierce conviction that French people must be privileged over foreigners and that the curtain must be drawn on France as a “land of immigration.”Ms. Le Pen’s ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are close, although she has scrambled in recent weeks to play them down. This month, she was quick to congratulate Viktor Orban, Hungary’s nationalist and anti-immigrant leader, on his fourth consecutive victory in parliamentary elections.“I will restore France to order in five years,” Ms. Le Pen declared to cheering supporters, appealing to all French people to join her in what she called “a choice of civilization” in which the “legitimate preponderance of French language and culture” would be guaranteed and full “sovereignty reestablished in all domains.”The choice confronting French people on April 24 was between “division, injustice and disorder” on the one hand, and the “rallying of French people around social justice and protection,” she said.Mr. Macron told flag-waving supporters: “I want a France in a strong Europe that maintains its alliances with the big democracies in order to defend itself, not a France that, outside Europe, would have as its only allies the populist and xenophobic International. That is not us.”He added: “Don’t deceive ourselves, nothing is decided, and the debate we will have in the next 15 days is decisive for our country and for Europe.”A polling station in Pontoise on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesLast week, in an interview in the daily Le Parisien newspaper, Mr. Macron called Ms. Le Pen “a racist” of “great brutality.” Ms. Le Pen hit back, saying that the president’s remarks were “outrageous and aggressive.” She called favoring French people over foreigners “the only moral, legal and admissible policy.”The gloves will be off as they confront each other over the future of France, at a time when Britain’s exit from the European Union and the end of Angela Merkel’s long chancellorship in Germany have placed a particular onus on French leadership.Mr. Macron wants to transform Europe into a credible military power with “strategic autonomy.” Ms. Le Pen, whose party has received funding from a Russian and, more recently, a Hungarian bank, has other priorities.The runoff, on April 24, will be a repeat of the last election, in 2017, when Mr. Macron, then a relative newcomer to politics intent on shattering old divisions between left and right, trounced Ms. Le Pen with 66.9 percent of the vote to her 33.1 percent.The final result this time will almost certainly be much closer than five years ago. Polls taken before Sunday’s vote indicated Mr. Macron winning by just 52 percent to 48 percent against Ms. Le Pen in the second round. That could shift in the coming two weeks, when the candidates will debate for the first time in the campaign.Reflecting France’s drift to the right in recent years, no left-of-center candidate qualified for the runoff. The Socialist Party, long a pillar of postwar French politics, collapsed, leaving Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left anti-NATO candidate with his France Unbowed movement, to take third place with about 21 percent.Supporters of Mr. Macron in Paris on Sunday.James Hill for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen, who leads the National Rally, formerly the National Front, was helped by the candidacy of Éric Zemmour, a fiercely xenophobic TV pundit turned politician, who became the go-to politician for anti-immigrant provocation, which made her look more mainstream and innocuous. In the end, Mr. Zemmour’s campaign faded, and he took about 7 percent of the vote.Mr. Zemmour immediately called on his supporters to back Ms. Le Pen in the second round. “Opposing Ms. Le Pen there is a man who allowed 2 million immigrants to enter France,” Mr. Zemmour declared.The threatening scenario for Mr. Macron is that Mr. Zemmour’s vote will go to Ms. Le Pen, and that she will be further bolstered by the wide section of the left that feels betrayed or just viscerally hostile toward the president, as well as by some center-right voters for whom immigration is the core issue.More than half of French people — supporters of Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Zemmour and Mr. Mélenchon — now appear to favor parties that are broadly anti-NATO, anti-American and hostile to the European Union. By contrast, the broad center — Mr. Macron’s La République en Marche party, the Socialist Party, the center right Republicans and the Green Party — took a combined total of about 40 percent.These were numbers that revealed the extent of anxiety in France, and perhaps also the extent of distrust of its democracy. They will be more comforting to Ms. Le Pen than to Mr. Macron, even if Mr. Mélenchon said his supporters should not give “a single vote” to Ms. Le Pen.He declined, however, to endorse Mr. Macron.At Ms. Le Pen’s headquarters, Frederic Sarmiento, an activist, said, “She will benefit from a big transfer of votes,” pointing to supporters of Mr. Zemmour, but also some on the left who, according to polls, will support Ms. Le Pen in the second round.Immigrant families awaiting emergency accommodation outside the Paris city hall last April.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“I am very worried, it will be a very close runoff,” said Nicolas Tenzer, an author who teaches political science at Sciences Po university. “Many on the left will abstain rather than vote Macron.”Mr. Macron gained the immediate support for the second round of the defeated Socialist, Communist, Green and center-right candidates, but between them they amounted to no more than 15 percent of the first-round vote. He may also benefit from a late surge in support of the Republic in a country with bitter wartime experience of extreme-right rule.In the end, the election on Sunday came down to Mr. Macron against the extreme right and left of the political spectrum, a sign of his effective dismantlement of the old political order. Now built essentially around a personality — the restless president — French democracy does not appear to have arrived at any sustainable alternative structure.If the two runoff qualifiers are the same as in 2017, they have been changed by circumstances. Where Mr. Macron represented reformist hope in 2017, he is now widely seen as a leader who drifted to the right and a top-down, highly personalized style of government. The sheen is off him.On the place of Islam in France, on immigration controls and on police powers, Mr. Macron has taken a hard line, judging that the election would be won or lost to his right.Addressing his supporters after the vote Sunday, he said he wants a France that “fights resolutely against Islamist separatism” — a term he uses to describe conservative or radical Muslims who reject French values like gender equality — but also a France that allows all believers to practice their faiths.A polling place at the Versailles town hall.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesHis rightward shift had a cost. The center-left, once the core of his support, felt betrayed. To what extent the left will vote for him in the second round will be a main source of concern, as already reflected in Mr. Macron’s abrupt recent catch-up paeans to “fraternity,” “solidarity” and equality of opportunity.Throughout the campaign, Mr. Macron appeared disengaged, taken up with countless telephone calls to Mr. Putin that proved ineffectual.A comfortable lead in polls disappeared in recent weeks as resentment grew over the president’s detachment. He had struggled during the five years of his presidency to overcome an image of aloofness, learning to reach out to more people, only to suffer an apparent relapse in the past several weeks.Still, Mr. Macron steered the country through the long coronavirus crisis, brought unemployment to its lowest level in a decade and lifted economic growth. Doing so, he has convinced many French people that he has what it takes to lead and to represent France with dignity on the world stage.Ms. Le Pen, who would be France’s first woman president, is also seen differently. Now in her third attempt to become president — Jacques Chirac won in 1995 after twice failing — she bowed to reason (and popular opinion) on two significant fronts: dropping her prior vows to take France out of the European Union and the eurozone. Still, many of her proposals — like barring E.U. citizens from some of the same social benefits as French citizens — would infringe fundamental European treaties.The leader of the National Rally, formerly the National Front, toned down her language to look more “presidential.” She smiled a lot, opening up about her personal struggles, and she gave the impression of being closer to the day-to-day concerns of French people, especially with regard to sharply rising gas prices and inflation.But many things did not change. Her program includes a plan to hold a referendum that would lead to a change in the Constitution that would ban any policies that lead to “the installation on national territory of a number of foreigners so large that it would change the composition and identity of the French people.”She also wants to bar Muslim women from wearing head scarves and fine them if they do.Polling booths in Trappes on Sunday. The first round of voting saw the highest abstention rate in decades.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe abstention rate Sunday, at between about 26 and 28 percent, was several points above the last election. Not since 2002 has it been so high.This appeared to reflect disillusionment with politics as a change agent, the ripple effect of the war in Ukraine and lost faith in democracy. It was part of the same anger that pushed so many French people toward political extremes.Aurelien Breeden More

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      How Marine Le Pen Threatens to Upend French Elections

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      The far-right presidential candidate has opened up about her personal life and tweaked her policies to gain sympathy and credibility among more mainstream voters.STIRING-WENDEL, France — Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader making her third attempt to become president of France, already had the backing of voters who came to listen to her recently in Stiring-Wendel, a former coal-mining town struggling to reinvent itself.But after a 40-minute speech focusing on the rising cost of living, Ms. Le Pen succeeded in doing what even few of her supporters would have predicted just months ago: impressing them. Voters trickling out of an auditorium into the cold evening said she had become “less extreme,” more “mature” and “self-assured” — even “presidential.”“She has softened, she is more composed, calmer, more serene,” said Yohan Brun, 19, a student who grew up in Stiring-Wendel and had come to listen to Ms. Le Pen because “she cares more about the French people than the other candidates.”As France votes on Sunday, polls are predicting that this election will be a rematch of the previous one, pitting Ms. Le Pen against President Emmanuel Macron in a second-round showdown. But that does not mean that precisely the same Ms. Le Pen is running.Ms. Le Pen has revamped her image since the last election five years ago. She has pragmatically abandoned certain ideas that had alienated mainstream voters. She has held on to others that certify her far-right credentials. And she has shifted emphasis toward pocketbook issues.Some who attended Ms. Le Pen’s speech in Stiring-Wendel said she had become “less extreme,” more “mature” and even “presidential.”Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut as important, she has self-consciously sanded the rough edges off her persona in an effort to make herself appear more presidential and voter-friendly.The makeover is part of a long and deliberate strategy by Ms. Le Pen to “undemonize” herself and her party, and ultimately gain the French presidency. While the effort remains unconvincing to many who consider her a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it has nonetheless succeeded in giving her a last-minute surge in the polls before Sunday’s election that is worrying Mr. Macron’s camp.“Marine Le Pen appears more sympathetic than Emmanuel Macron,” said Pierre Person, a national lawmaker of the president’s party, adding that he was worried that she could win. More

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      Even Before France Votes, the French Right Is a Big Winner

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      The dominance of right-wing ideas in France’s presidential election campaign follows years of cultural wars waged successfully by conservatives on television, in social media and in think tanks.PARIS — With just days to go before the first round of France’s presidential election, President Emmanuel Macron is still the odds-on favorite to make it through the political juggernaut and win a second term. But even if he does succeed, and before a single ballot is cast, another clear winner has already emerged from the race.The French right.Despite a late surge by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leading left-wing candidate, virtually the entire French campaign has been fought on the right and far right, whose candidates dominate the polls and whose themes and talking points — issues of national identity, immigration and Islam — have dominated the political debate. The far right has even become the champion of pocketbook issues, traditionally the left’s turf.Mr. Macron himself has pivoted to the right so consistently to confront the challenge that there is even discussion now of whether he should be regarded as a center-right president, though he emerged from a government run by the now-moribund Socialists in 2017.In a tightening race, the candidate he is most likely to face in a runoff two weeks from Sunday’s initial voting is Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Rally, according to polls. It would be her second consecutive appearance in the final round of the presidential election, cementing her place in the political establishment.“The great movement to the right — that’s done, it’s over,” said Gaël Brustier, a political analyst and former adviser to left-wing politicians. “It won’t set off in the other direction for 20 years.”Ms. Le Pen is the candidate most likely to face President Emmanuel Macron in a runoff two weeks from initial voting, according to polls.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen and her party for decades softened the ground for the growth of the right. But the right’s recent political ascendancy follows many years in which conservatives have successfully waged a cultural battle — greatly inspired by the American right and often adopting its codes and strategies to attract a more youthful audience.Not only has the French right in recent months wielded the idea of “wokisme” to effectively stifle the left and blunt what it sees as the threat of a “woke culture” from American campuses. But it also has busily established a cultural presence after years with few, if any, media outlets in the mainstream.Today the French right has burst through social barriers and is represented by its own version of a Fox-style television news channel, CNews, an expanding network of think tanks, and multiple social media platforms with a substantial and increasingly younger following.These things “did not exist in France or were at the embryonic stage” just a few years ago, said François de Voyer, 38, a host and financial backer of Livre Noir, a year-old YouTube channel focusing on politicians on the right and far right.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.Suddenly Wide Open: An election that had seemed almost assured to return President Emmanuel Macron to power now appears to be anything but certain as the far-right leader Marine Le Pen surges.The New French Right: A rising nationalist faction has grown its coalition by appealing to Catholic identity and anti-immigrant sentiment.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in Mr. Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put Mr. Macron on the defensive.“We told ourselves, ‘Let’s do like CPAC in the United States,’” said Mr. de Voyer, referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of the right wing of American politics.So he did.In 2019, Mr. de Voyer co-organized “The Convention of the Right,” a one-day conference that featured leading figures of the right and the far right. It constituted a political launchpad for Éric Zemmour, the TV pundit and best-selling author.Mr. Macron has consistently pivoted to the right, so much so that there has been discussion of whether he should be regarded as a center-right president.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMore than any other presidential hopeful, Mr. Zemmour has embodied the effects of the right’s cultural battle on the campaign.In his best-selling books and on his daily appearances on CNews, Mr. Zemmour over a decade became a leader of the new right-wing media ecosystem that painted France as being under an existential threat by Muslim immigrants and their descendants, as well as by the importation of multicultural ideas from the United States.Though he has now receded in the polls, to about 10 percent support, Mr. Zemmour’s meteoric rise last year captured France’s attention and ensured that the presidential campaign would be fought almost exclusively on the right’s home turf, as he successfully widened the boundaries of what was politically acceptable in France.Mr. Zemmour brought into the mainstream a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants, said Raphaël Llorca, a French communication expert and member of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès research institute.The “great replacement,” as the theory is called, was later picked up as a talking point even by Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the establishment center-right Republican Party.Such penetration into the mainstream is the result of a decade-old organizational effort by the right.Thibaut Monnier, a former councilor for Ms. Le Pen’s party who then joined Mr. Zemmour’s movement, said that in the mid-2010s conservatives like him set for themselves a “metapolitical” project of creating new political institutions and their own media.Éric Zemmour, right, and a French TV host before a French political show in February. Mr. Zemmour has embodied the effects of the right’s cultural battle on the campaign.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2018, along with Marion Maréchal, the niece of Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Monnier co-founded a conservative political institution in Lyon called Issep, or the Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences. The school is an alternative to what he describes as higher-education establishments dominated by the left.But even as it elbowed its way into the educational establishment, the far right also succeeded in a parallel campaign to spread its ideas on social media to make itself appear attractively transgressive.Central to Mr. Zemmour’s cultural battle has been his command of social media and pop culture codes, Mr. Llorca said.The far-right candidate is very active on networks like TikTok and Instagram, where he posts daily messages and videos aimed at a younger audience. His YouTube campaign-launching video, riddled with cultural references, drew millions of viewers.Mr. Llorca said that Mr. Zemmour had successfully waged a “battle of the cool” designed to “play down the radical content” of his ideas without ever changing their substance. He has been helped by a network of internet users who defuse with humor the violence of his extremist ideas. On Facebook and Instagram, accounts followed by tens of thousands of people frequently post lighthearted memes about Mr. Zemmour.Mr. Zemmour has received support from far-right YouTube influencers mocking everything from feminism to veganism to trade unions. One such influencer, Papacito, whose videos sometimes reach one million views, endorsed Mr. Zemmour recently.Families waiting for emergency accommodation in Paris. Mr. Zemmour has brought into the mainstream a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“Our goal is really to make a countercultural Canal+,” he told the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, referring to the entertainment TV channel that dominated the progressive cultural scene in the 1980s and 1990s. “One that is just as fun, but carrying patriotic and more reactionary ideas.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Ahead of Jan. 6

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      Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators are documenting how the former president’s “Be there, will be wild!” post became a catalyst for militants before the Capitol assault.Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators have gathered growing evidence of how a tweet by President Donald J. Trump less than three weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, served as a crucial call to action for extremist groups that played a central role in storming the Capitol.Mr. Trump’s Twitter post in the early hours of Dec. 19, 2020, was the first time he publicly urged supporters to come to Washington on the day Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College results showing Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential vote. His message — which concluded with, “Be there, will be wild!” — has long been seen as instrumental in drawing the crowds that attended a pro-Trump rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and then marched to the Capitol.But the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the riot and the parallel inquiry by the House select committee have increasingly shown how Mr. Trump’s post was a powerful catalyst, particularly for far-right militants who believed he was facing his final chance to reverse defeat and whose role in fomenting the violence has come under intense scrutiny.Extremist groups almost immediately celebrated Mr. Trump’s Twitter message, which they widely interpreted as an invitation to descend on the city in force. Responding to the president’s words, the groups sprang into action, court filings and interviews by the House committee show: Extremists began to set up encrypted communications channels, acquire protective gear and, in one case, prepare heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington.They also began to whip up their members with a drumbeat of bellicose language, with their private messaging channels increasingly characterized by what one called an “apocalyptic tone.” Directly after Mr. Trump’s tweet was posted, the Capitol Police began to see a spike in right-wing threats against members of Congress.Prosecutors have included examples in at least five criminal cases of extremists reacting within days — often hours — to Mr. Trump’s post.The mob attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesOne of those who responded to the post was Guy Wesley Reffitt, an oil-field worker from Texas who this month became the first Jan. 6 defendant to be convicted at trial. Within a day of Mr. Trump’s Twitter post, Mr. Reffitt was talking about it on a private group chat with other members of the far-right militia organization the Texas Three Percenters.“Our President will need us. ALL OF US…!!! On January 6th,” Mr. Reffitt wrote. “We the People owe him that debt. He Sacrificed for us and we must pay that debt.”The next day, prosecutors say, Mr. Reffitt began to make arrangements to travel to Washington and arrive in time for “Armageddon all day” on Jan. 6, he wrote in the Three Percenters group chat. He told his compatriots that he planned to drive because flying was impossible with “all the battle rattle” he planned to bring — a reference to his weapons and body armor, prosecutors say.Some in the group appeared to share his anger. On Dec. 22, one member wrote in the chat, “The only way you will be able to do anything in DC is if you get the crowd to drag the traitors out.”Mr. Reffitt responded: “I don’t think anyone going to DC has any other agenda.”The House committee has also sharpened its focus on how the tweet set off a chain reaction that galvanized Mr. Trump’s supporters to begin military-style planning for Jan. 6. As part of the congressional inquiry, investigators are trying to establish whether there was any coordination beyond the post that ties Mr. Trump’s inner circle to the militants and whether the groups plotted together.“That tweet could be viewed as a call to action,” said Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “It’s definitely something we’re asking questions about through our discussions with witnesses. We want to know whether the president’s tweets inflamed and mobilized individuals to take action.”On the day of the post, participants in TheDonald.win, a pro-Trump chat board, began sharing tactics and techniques for attacking the Capitol, the committee noted in a report released on Sunday recommending contempt of Congress charges for Dan Scavino Jr., Mr. Trump’s former deputy chief of staff. In one thread on the chat board related to the tweet, the report pointed out, an anonymous poster wrote that Mr. Trump “can’t exactly openly tell you to revolt. This is the closest he’ll ever get.’’Lawyers for the militants have repeatedly said that the groups were simply acting defensively in preparing for Jan. 6. They had genuine concerns, the lawyers said, that leftist counterprotesters might confront them, as they had at earlier pro-Trump rallies.Mr. Trump’s post came as his efforts to hang onto power were shifting from the courts, where he had little success, to the streets and to challenging the certification process that would play out on Jan. 6.A week before his message, thousands of his supporters had arrived in Washington for the second time in two months for a large-scale rally protesting the election results. The event on Dec. 12, 2020, which Mr. Trump flew over in Marine One, showed his ability to draw huge crowds of ordinary people in support of his baseless assertions that the election had been stolen.But it also brought together at the same time and place extremist and paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the 1st Amendment Praetorian, who would be present on Jan. 6.On Dec. 14, the Electoral College met and officially declared Mr. Biden the winner of the election.An event in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020 showed the former president’s ability to draw huge crowds in support of his lies that the election had been stolen.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut behind closed doors, outside advisers to Mr. Trump were scrambling to pitch him on plans to seize control of voting machines across the country. The debate over doing so came to a head in a contentious Oval Office meeting that lasted well into the evening on Dec. 18, 2020, and ended with the idea being put aside.Hours later, the president pushed send on his tweet.“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he wrote at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19. “Be there, will be wild!”Almost at once, shock waves rippled through the right.At 2:26 a.m., the prominent white nationalist Nicholas J. Fuentes wrote on Twitter that he planned to join Mr. Trump in Washington on Jan. 6. By that afternoon, the post had been mentioned or amplified by other right-wing figures like Ali Alexander, a high-profile “Stop the Steal” organizer.But Mr. Trump’s message arguably landed with the greatest impact among members of the same extremist groups that had been in Washington on Dec. 12.On Dec. 15, Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers, posted an open letter to Mr. Trump urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act. The next day, the national council of the Three Percenters Original group issued a statement, saying their members were “standing by to answer the call from our president.”Once the call came, early on Dec. 19, the extremists were ecstatic.Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers, declared a few days after Mr. Trump’s tweet that there would be “a massively bloody revolution” if Joseph R. Biden Jr. ever took office.Susan Walsh/Associated Press“Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!!,” Kelly Meggs, a Florida leader of the Oath Keepers, wrote on Facebook on Dec. 22. “He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying. He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC.”That same day, Mr. Rhodes did an interview with one of his lieutenants and declared that there would be “a massively bloody revolution” if Mr. Biden took office.On Dec. 23, Mr. Rhodes posted another letter saying that “tens of thousands of patriot Americans” would be in Washington on Jan. 6, and that many would have their “mission-critical gear” stowed outside the city.The letter said members of the group — largely composed of former military and law enforcement personnel — might have to “take arms in defense of our God-given liberty.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Trump’s tweet. More

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      Alex Jones and Donald Trump: A Fateful Alliance Draws Scrutiny

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      The Infowars host tormented Sandy Hook families and helped elect President Donald J. Trump. His role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is now of growing interest to congressional investigators.The day President Donald J. Trump urged his supporters to “be there, will be wild!” at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Alex Jones spread the message to millions.“This is the most important call to action on domestic soil since Paul Revere and his ride in 1776,” Mr. Jones, the Infowars broadcaster, said on his Dec. 19, 2020, show, which airs live online and on a network of radio stations. Mr. Jones, whose lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting fueled years of threats against the 26 victims’ families, urged his listeners to take action.A little more than two weeks later, Mr. Jones joined his followers at the Capitol as a behind-the-scenes organizer — a crucial role in the riot that is under increasing scrutiny by congressional investigators.It is part of a reckoning Mr. Jones faces on multiple fronts. He is still fighting a half-dozen defamation lawsuits filed by the targets of his false claims, including the relatives of 10 Sandy Hook victims. Late last year the Sandy Hook families won four default judgments against him after he for years resisted court orders, and in upcoming trials, juries will decide how much he must pay them.For Jan. 6, Mr. Jones helped secure at least $650,000 from a Publix grocery-store heiress, Julie Fancelli, an Infowars fan, to underwrite Mr. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse the morning of the attack, $200,000 of which was deposited into one of Mr. Jones’s business accounts, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack said. The night before the riot Mr. Jones was at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, where Trump aides and allies had set up an outpost. He has longtime ties to at least a half-dozen people arrested after the riot, including the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, Stewart Rhodes, still a regular guest on Infowars, and Joseph Biggs, a former Infowars employee and Proud Boys leader.The House committee has subpoenaed Mr. Jones, and included a three-page list seeking his related communications and financial records. The panel is also seeking Mr. Jones’s communications with Mr. Trump, his family and anyone from the White House or Congress in the days before the riot. Questioned by the panel this year, Mr. Jones invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times, and is trying to block the committee’s demand for records in court.Whatever the outcome of the Jan. 6 investigation, Mr. Jones’s journey from Sandy Hook to the assault on the Capitol is a reflection of how conspiracy theories in the United States have metastasized and corroded public discourse in the digital age. A defender of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a former regular on RT, the Kremlin-funded international television outlet, Mr. Jones espoused such extreme views of American democratic society — he has cast airport security screenings as a plot to usurp Americans’ freedoms — that in 2011 RT stopped inviting him on air.But after Mr. Trump appeared live in an interview on Infowars’ website in December 2015, Mr. Jones traveled from the fringes to become part of a newly radicalized Republican Party. Infowars grossed more than $50 million annually during the Trump presidency by selling diet supplements, body armor and other products on its website, records filed in court indicate. During and after the Jan. 6 riot, Infowars promoted its merchandise alongside graphic videos, including footage by an Infowars cameraman of the shooting death of a pro-Trump rioter, Ashli Babbitt, by a Capitol Police officer during the attack.Mr. Jones did not respond to messages seeking comment. His lawyer, Norm Pattis, said his client had done nothing wrong on Jan. 6. Video footage from the Capitol that day shows Mr. Jones using a bullhorn to try to discourage people from rioting.“Over many years Infowars has become a go-to source for people deeply suspicious of the government, so it should come as no surprise that many of the attendees at the rally had passed through Infowars’ doors,” Mr. Pattis said. “But that doesn’t mean any of them are guilty of criminal conspiracy or misconduct.”Dan Friesen, whose podcast, “Knowledge Fight,” explores Mr. Jones’s place in America’s conspiracist tradition, said that people should not be shocked by what happened on Jan. 6, given Mr. Jones’s history. “This kind of flare-up just seemed inevitable,” he said.A Trump campaign rally in Dallas in 2019.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressMr. Jones owes some of his core conspiracy themes to Gary Allen, a speechwriter for the former Alabama governor George Wallace who in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the far-right John Birch Society’s most revered writers and thinkers. As a teenager, Mr. Jones found Mr. Allen’s 1971 “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” on his father’s bookshelf, and came to share Mr. Allen’s view that a cabal of global bankers and power brokers, not elected officials, controlled American policy. Mr. Allen, who died in 1986, sold his theories by mail order in books, filmstrips and cassettes, a marketing model later adopted by Infowars.Mr. Jones got his start in broadcasting in the early 1990s with simultaneous shows on the Austin radio station KJFK and on Austin community access TV. In 1993, a siege by federal law enforcement ended in an inferno at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, killing about 80 Davidians and four law enforcement officers. Mr. Jones asserted, evidence to the contrary, that the sect and its leader, David Koresh, were a peaceful religious community marked by the government for murder. He raised $93,000 from his listeners to rebuild the compound’s church.The deed made Mr. Jones a celebrity among “patriot” militia members, including some involved in armed standoffs with the federal government. In 1995, Mr. Jones pushed bogus claims that the government plotted the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including 19 children. The perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, had also expressed rage at the Branch Davidian compound’s destruction.Mr. Jones and his wife at the time, Kelly Jones, founded Infowars around 1999, when they began producing feature-length, conspiracy-themed videos that they sold by mail or gave away, urging people to pass them around and spread the word.After December 2012, when Mr. Jones falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a government pretext for draconian gun control measures, traffic to his website surged. In 2013, at a gathering in Dallas marking the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Mr. Jones met Roger J. Stone Jr., a Trump friend and adviser shunned by mainstream Republicans.Mr. Stone, who saw a valuable new constituency for Mr. Trump in Infowars’ disaffected audience, joined the show as a host and brokered Mr. Trump’s December 2015 interview with Mr. Jones. In that interview, broadcast on the Infowars website, Mr. Trump joined Mr. Jones in casting America as a nation besieged by “radical Muslims” and immigrants, and predicted he would “get along very well” with Mr. Putin. He ended by praising Mr. Jones’s “amazing reputation.”The next year Mr. Jones was a V.I.P. invitee to Mr. Trump’s speech accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where the Infowars broadcaster stood on the convention floor with tears streaming down his face as Mr. Trump spoke.Mr. Jones on the first day of the Republican National Convention in 2016.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesThe Trump era also brought Mr. Jones new scrutiny. In 2017, he dodged a lawsuit by publicly apologizing and removing from Infowars his shows promoting Pizzagate, the lie that top Democrats were trafficking children from Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizzeria. The conspiracy theory inspired a gunman to enter the restaurant and fire a rifle inside. No one was hurt, but the episode shocked the capital and many Americans. By 2019, Mr. Jones had been barred from all major social media platforms for violating rules banning hate speech.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The potential case against Trump. More

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      In Greene and Boebert, Democrats See a Helpful Political Target

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      The antics of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, as well as recent stumbles by other Republicans, have drawn unflattering attention to their party.WASHINGTON — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are two backbench freshmen in the House minority, powerless in the official hierarchy and unlikely to gain much power even in a likely Republican majority next year.But their antics, violations of decorum and association with white nationalists have elevated their profile far beyond their positions, and Democratic operatives are determined to make them the face of the Republican Party in the looming election season.The two are not the only Republicans bringing unwanted attention to the party, and some of the division in the party’s ranks is being amplified by internal disputes, not by Democrats. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, earned a public rebuke this week from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, for putting out a campaign manifesto that called for raising taxes on the poor and cutting Social Security.On Wednesday, a little-known Republican, Representative Van Taylor of Texas, abruptly dropped his re-election bid after operatives on the party’s right flank — angered by his vote to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — revealed pornographic text messages that he had sent to a paramour.But it is the faces of Ms. Boebert of Colorado and Ms. Greene of Georgia that are splashing across social media, political videos and advertising, after they both stood and heckled President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Ms. Boebert shouted at the president just as he was referring to the death of his son Beau Biden.Not since President Donald J. Trump used racially charged language in 2019 to castigate the liberal women of color in “the Squad” have freshmen House members received quite so much attention. Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and Mr. Trump’s favorite Squad target, said there were big differences.For one, Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene intentionally provoke responses to stay front and center, she said, while she and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan were more often sought out by critics.On Monday, Ms. Greene was publicly rebuked by the House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, over her appearance at a far-right conference with ties to white supremacy. The next day, she and Ms. Boebert heckled Mr. Biden and tried unsuccessfully to strike up a chant of “build the wall” during his State of the Union address.And while Democrats routinely condemn their own for statements they consider out of the mainstream, Republicans rarely do, instead providing Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert and others on the far right with platforms to broadcast their messages, such as the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida.“With us, the opinion pieces by Democratic pundits are already prewritten, and there’s a lot of scolding that happens within the caucus,” Ms. Omar said. “That’s not what happens with their party.”Mr. McCarthy did say that Ms. Greene’s appearance last week at the far-right conference was “appalling and wrong,” promising to have a talk with her, but that does not compare to the criticism that rained down on Ms. Omar when she used an antisemitic trope to suggest that support for Israel was driven by money. Mr. McCarthy has also said Ms. Greene will be given back the committee assignments that Democrats stripped from her if Republicans control the House next year.Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at her weekly news conference on Thursday, repeated perhaps the only criticism that a Republican leveled at Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene after their heckling at the State of the Union.“Let me just say this,” Ms. Pelosi said. “I agree with what Senator Lindsey Graham said: ‘Shut up.’”Republican leaders have an easier political task than Democrats as they seek to keep voters focused on what they are seeing in their daily lives, such as inflation, soaring energy prices and ongoing frustrations with the coronavirus pandemic.“Democrats don’t have a clue what moves voters and are desperately trying to distract from their record of higher prices, soaring crime and a crisis along our southern border,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.Ms. Boebert’s staff did not respond to requests for comment, and Ms. Greene declined to speak to The New York Times. But she has remained defiant in the face of criticism. In December, she told the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, “We are not the fringe; we are the base of the party.”For that reason alone, Democratic operatives say they have every right to elevate the visibility of Ms. Greene and Ms. Boebert and tie them to other Republicans who have refrained from criticizing them even as they have castigated the two Republicans serving on the committee investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the House Democrats’ campaign arm had not decided how central to make the two lawmakers in the coming campaign season.The committee is “making investments where they do the most good,” he said. “If that means making them the face of the party, we will do it. If it means ignoring them, we will do it, because the point is to win the House, not to win an argument.”“But,” he added, “their actions are disgraceful, from attending white supremacy conferences to yelling at the president when he’s talking about his fallen son.”Democratic allies are not so reticent. Jon Soltz, the chairman and co-founder of VoteVets, a liberal veterans organization, said the group was testing messages with voters to tie incumbent House Republicans in districts that lean Democratic to far-right figures in the Republican Party.The attack might not work in conservative-leaning districts, he said, but it could against Republicans whose seats emerged from redistricting as more Democratic, such as Representative Nicole Malliotakis’s in New York and Representative Mike Garcia’s in Southern California.Representative Lauren Boebert shouted at President Biden just as he was referring to the death of his son Beau Biden.Pool photo by Sarahbeth Maney“There’s some rather crazy rhetoric that comes out of their mouths, and behavior like you saw from them at the State of the Union,” Mr. Soltz said. “There are a lot of independents in suburban districts that might have leaned to Biden by five or six points, but Democrats now have to go get those voters back.”Another Democratic political operation, American Bridge, is tying Ms. Greene to Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football star recruited by Mr. Trump to challenge Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, this fall.Jessica Floyd, the president of American Bridge, said on Thursday that the group’s efforts were crafted to make the midterm elections a choice between what she called a Republican Party of extremists against a Democratic Party focused on the economy and governance — not a referendum on Mr. Biden, whose approval ratings are dangerously low.Voters “know and don’t like the sort of extreme positions that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert embody,” she said.She added, “That’s an opportunity for Democrats, and I think that we should seize on it.” More

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      CPAC: A Bacchanal of Right-Wing Pageantry, Passion and Grievance

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      While U.S. leaders are dealing with war in Europe and disruption of the global order, the leading lights of MAGA America are in central Florida this week for that annual bacchanal of right-wing pageantry and passion known as the Conservative Political Action Conference.With all the serious challenges the nation has faced of late, now seems like a perfect moment for serious conservative thinkers and activists to come together in pursuit of serious solutions. That, alas, is not what happens at CPAC.Put on annually by the American Conservative Union, whose name pretty much explains its aim, the confab may once have been about ideology or actual policy. But for years, the gathering has been better known as a multiday fringe fest featuring some of the most outrageous players on the political right.This time, it promises to be largely a celebration of former President Donald Trump and his angry MAGA vision for the nation — which makes it less distinct from the broader Republican Party than it once was. But such is the debased state of modern conservatism, and — for those who have the stomach for it — this circus can tell you a lot about the state of American politics.For most of its nearly five decades, CPAC was held in the Washington, D.C., area, the better to lure Very Important Politicos to the festivities. Last year, the Covid pandemic drove it out of the region — way too many local mandates for this freedom-loving crowd — and the event landed in Florida, the adopted home of one Donald J. Trump. But even if the former president were not a Florida Man, there is arguably no place more conducive to letting one’s freak flag fly than the Sunshine State. And providing a safe space to fly those flags has long been at the heart of CPAC.Damon Winter/The New York TimesThis year’s lineup provides the same caliber of thought-provoking offerings that the conference’s fans and foes alike have come to expect. Among the scheduled panel discussions are “The Moron in Chief” and the more baroquely titled “Put Him to Bed, Lock Her Up and Send Her to the Border.” The latter session will feature crack analysis by Jack Posobiec, the conspiracymonger known for scampering down the rabbit holes of crank theories such as Pizzagate.Asinine titles aside, the presentations offer a glimpse into what is obsessing the G.O.P.’s activist base. Among this year’s hot topics is clearly the threat of wokeness, inspiring multiple offerings, including “Awake Not Woke,” “Woke Inc.” and “Fighting Woke Inc.” A legal chat about “defending the canceled” seems to fit the theme as well.There are several presentations related to schools, including “School Boards for Dummies,” “Domestic Terrorists Unite: Lessons From Virginia Parents” and a town hall on the fittingly misspelled “Pupil Propoganda.”Mock if you will, but Republicans will wrap these culture war issues around Democrats’ necks in the coming midterms. CPAC is a prime venue for test-driving their material.Some offerings are more incendiary than others. Take “The Truth About Jan. 6: A Conversation With Julie Kelly,” who wrote the book “January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right.”Then there’s “Lock Her Up, for Real,” featuring the former representative and enduring Trumper Devin Nunes; Kash Patel, a Nunes aide turned controversial Pentagon staff member; and Lee Smith, the author of a book purporting to show how Mr. Nunes uncovered the secret deep state plot to bring down Mr. Trump. So. Much. Fun.The conference set list includes some classics as well. “Obamacare Still Kills” should provide a warm dose of nostalgia. Ditto “I Escaped From Communist North Korea.” The enduring menace of Communism is always a crowd-pleaser at CPAC.The gathering’s educational component should not be pooh-poohed. Attendees tired of all the pandemic hubbub will want to catch the Saturday morning breakout session “Lock Downs and Mandates: Now Do You Understand Why We Have a Second Amendment.” And aspiring public servants surely learned a lot from the session “Are You Ready to Be Called a Racist: The Courage to Run for Office.”A couple of the presentation titles go so far as to name-check individuals who really rile up conservatives, so it is illuminating to see who rises to that level of distinction. This year’s honorees are the CNN host Don Lemon (“Don Lemon Is a Dinosaur: The New Way to Get Your News”) and Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia (“Sorry Stacey, You Are Not the Governor”).The lineup of speakers is as telling as the panels and town halls. Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s got the loser time slots? This year features appearances by conference old-timers like Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s longtime frontman, as well as rising MAGA stars like Donald Trump Jr., who scored the closing speech, and his fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, an infamously high-octane orator. (One word for her: decaf.)An array of presumed presidential hopefuls/Trump lickspittles are having have their moments as well. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are all on the program. Former Vice President Mike Pence is not, having declined his invitation.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is generating the most buzz, mostly because the chattering class is giddy at the prospect of spotting even a hint of friction between Team DeSantis and Trumpworld. Mr. DeSantis is considered a top — maybe the top — 2024 presidential contender.Unlike some 2024 hopefuls, he has not pledged to sit the race out if Mr. Trump runs. This has not gone over well in Trumpworld. It is perhaps unsurprising then that the governor was given a not-so-great speaking slot this week: early on the opening afternoon, wedged in between a presentation by Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, and a speech by Florida’s lieutenant governor.Mr. Trump will speak at 7 on Saturday evening, serving as basically the keynote of the gathering.As the convention unfolds, look for breathless updates on the dynamic between the governor and the former president — especially as the time draws nigh to announce the results of the annual straw poll on who should be the next president.Last year, Mr. DeSantis was the solid winner when Mr. Trump was not among the options. This year’s results are likely to get more scrutiny than President Biden’s upcoming Supreme Court pick (OK, maybe not quite so much). That said, it’s worth remembering that, in the pre-Trump age, Senator Rand Paul won the poll three years running — 2013, 2014 and 2015 — with a Cruz win in 2016. So it’s best not to get too wrapped up in the predictive power of these things.Until recently, it was best not to take CPAC in general that seriously as a political barometer. But with the G.O.P. eaten alive by Trumpism, there isn’t much left of the party beyond its raging MAGA base. Which makes this four-day spectacle as representative of Republican politics as any event.Just one more thing to keep you up worrying at night.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Another Far-Right Group Is Scrutinized in Effort to Aid Trump

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      The organization, called 1st Amendment Praetorian, is not as well known as the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, but it worked closely with pro-Trump forces in the months after the 2020 election.Days after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year, federal law enforcement officials pursued two high-profile extremist groups: the far-right nationalist Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia. Members of both organizations were quickly arrested on attention-grabbing charges, accused of plotting to interfere with the certification of the 2020 vote count.Now congressional investigators are examining the role of another right-wing paramilitary group that was involved in a less publicly visible yet still expansive effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in power: the 1st Amendment Praetorian.Known in shorthand as 1AP, the group spent much of the postelection period working in the shadows with pro-Trump lawyers, activists, business executives and military veterans to undermine public confidence in the election and to bolster Mr. Trump’s hopes of remaining in the White House.By their own account, members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian helped to funnel data on purported election fraud to lawyers suing to overturn the vote count. They guarded celebrities like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, at “Stop the Steal” rallies, where huge crowds gathered to demand that Mr. Trump remain in office. And they supported an explosive proposal to persuade the president to declare an emergency and seize the country’s voting machines in a bid to stay in power.None of 1AP’s top operatives have been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot, and it remains unclear how much influence they exerted or how seriously criminal investigators are focused on them. Still, the group had men on the ground outside the building on Jan. 6 and others at the Willard Hotel, near some of Mr. Trump’s chief allies. And in the days leading up to the assault, 1AP’s Twitter account posted messages suggesting that the group knew violence was imminent.“There may be some young National Guard captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours,” read one message posted by the group on Jan. 4.Last month, citing some of these concerns, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack issued a subpoena to Robert Patrick Lewis, the leader of 1AP. On the same day, it sent similar requests to Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?As part of their inquiry, congressional investigators have obtained numerous audio recordings of 1AP members and are trying to determine how they fit into the broader investigation. Mr. Lewis did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but in recent months he has told parts of his story in online videos and podcasts.Made up largely of Special Forces veterans and former intelligence officials, 1AP was founded in September 2020 to protect Trump supporters from harassment at rallies and to safeguard free speech rights from “tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups,” Mr. Lewis wrote in a thread of tweets announcing the creation of the group. In a video attached to the thread, he said it would be “a tactical mistake” to discuss how many members 1AP had, noting only that it was several times more than the dozen in a standard Special Forces operational unit.By the time he founded 1st Amendment Praetorian, Mr. Lewis, who once served as a medic for a Special Forces team, had been out of the Army for a decade and reinvented himself as an author and commentator with an interest in military issues and right-wing politics. Among his works were two action novels describing how the Green Berets saved the American homeland from a fictional invasion and a memoir depicting his rise from poverty and adoption to success in the 10th Special Forces Group, an elite unit stationed in Germany.1AP’s first “mission” — protecting conservative V.I.P.s — came in October 2020, when the group provided security at a march in Washington led by the Walk Away Foundation, an organization that seeks to persuade Democratic voters to leave the party, Mr. Lewis said in a YouTube video posted that December. The foundation’s leader, Brandon Straka, a former hairstylist in New York, was among those arrested in the Capitol attack. Court papers suggest that he recently began to cooperate with the government.At least one member of the 1st Amendment Praetorian was on the ground outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, while the group’s leader said he was at the Willard Hotel.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesAt that event and others, 1AP provided more than bodyguards, Mr. Lewis said. Its protective detail also included “low-viz operators” dressed in plainclothes moving in the crowd. “We had eyes and ears everywhere,” he added.As the presidential election drew closer, Mr. Lewis branched out beyond personal protection and started giving interviews, casting himself as a security expert, to right-wing news outlets, including those connected to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Among his claims — so far unsubstantiated — was that “professional analysts” working for 1AP had infiltrated “encrypted forums” visited by members of the loose left-wing collective known as antifa and had discovered plans for a nationwide attack.“Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they are planning a massive ‘antifa Tet offensive’ bent on destroying the global order,” he told Fox News two days before Election Day.Once the votes were cast, Mr. Lewis turned his attention back toward guarding pro-Trump luminaries at rallies in Washington, where throngs of people showed up in support of the lie that the election had been rigged. One of his clients was Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer, who was a featured speaker at the so-called Million MAGA March on Nov. 14, 2020. (Mr. Alexander has since given testimony to the House select committee.)Around the same time, 1AP became involved in another project connected to challenging the election. Members of the group, as Mr. Lewis put it in his video in December, began to scour the internet for “OSINT” — or open source intelligence — about allegations of election fraud. Whatever evidence they found, he said, they sent to Sidney Powell, a Dallas-based lawyer who filed four federal lawsuits in late 2020 contesting the results of the presidential vote.The lawsuits, which ultimately failed and resulted in a federal judge imposing sanctions on Ms. Powell, described without any credible evidence a plot by a cabal of international powers to hack U.S. voting machines and flip the count away from Mr. Trump.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More