Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Group Chat Linked to Roger Stone Shows Ties Among Jan. 6 Figures

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      The roster of participants highlights how Mr. Stone, the pro-Trump political operative, was involved with a strikingly large number of people who sought to overturn the 2020 election.It was known as F.O.S. — or Friends of Stone — and while its members shifted over time, they were a motley cast of characters.There were “Stop the Steal” organizers, right-wing influencers, Florida state legislative aides and more than one failed candidate loyal to former President Donald J. Trump. One participant ran a website that promoted disinformation about the Capitol attack. Another was an officer in the Army Reserve allied with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser.At least three members of the group chat are now facing charges in connection with the riot at the Capitol in January 2021. They include Owen Shroyer, the right-hand man of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the Proud Boys; and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia.But the focus of the chat was always the man whose photo topped its home page: Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime political operative and adviser to Mr. Trump.While little is known about what was said on the chat, the membership list of Friends of Stone, provided to The New York Times by one of its participants, offers a kind of road map to Mr. Stone’s associations, showing their scope and nature in the critical period after the 2020 election. During that time, Mr. Stone was involved with a strikingly wide array of people who participated in efforts to challenge the vote count and keep Mr. Trump in the White House.Some of the 47 people on the list are identified only by nicknames or initials, and Mr. Stone had pre-existing political ties with many of them. Still, as prosecutors deepen their inquiry into the storming of Capitol, the list suggests that Mr. Stone had the means to be in private contact with key players in the events of Jan. 6 — political organizers, far-right extremists and influential media figures who subsequently played down the attack.Reached by email, Mr. Stone said that he did not control who was admitted to the group chat and noted that Stop the Steal activities were protected by the First Amendment.“There is no story,” he wrote. “Just harassment.”Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the Proud Boys, maintained close ties to Mr. Stone.Eva Marie Uzcategui/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile the origins of the group chat remain somewhat obscure, Friends of Stone has existed since at least 2019, when Mr. Stone was indicted in connection with the Russia investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, said one of its participants, Pete Santilli, a veteran right-wing radio host. According to Mr. Santilli, the group chat — hosted on the encrypted app Signal — was a kind of safe space where pro-Stone figures in politics and media, many of whom were banned from social media, could get together and trade links and stories about their mutual friend.“The primary reason for the chat was to have a place for supporters to share stuff,” Mr. Santilli said. “You drop a link and everyone shares it on their nontraditional channels.”But after Mr. Trump’s defeat, Friends of Stone seemed to assume another purpose as Mr. Stone found himself in the middle of the accelerating Stop the Steal movement devised to challenge the results of the election. The Washington Post, citing footage from a Danish documentary film crew that was following Mr. Stone, said that in early November 2020, he asked his aides to direct those involved in the effort to monitor the chat for developments.In recent weeks, the Justice Department has expanded its investigation of the riot from those who physically attacked the Capitol to those who were not at the building but may have helped to shape or guide the violence. Investigators appear to be interested in finding any links between organizers who planned pro-Trump rallies at the Capitol that day and right-wing militants who took part in the assault.The group chat’s membership list includes several people who fit that description.Named on the list are activists like Marsha Lessard and Christina Skaggs, leaders of a group called the Virginia Freedom Keepers who helped to organize an anti-vaccine rally scheduled for the east side of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Ms. Lessard and Ms. Skaggs worked with another anti-vaccine activist, Ty Bollinger, who was also on the list.Members of the group were among those who took part in a conference call on Dec. 30, 2020, when a social media expert who formerly worked for Mr. Stone urged his listeners to “descend on the Capitol” one week later, promising that Joseph R. Biden Jr. “will never be in that White House.”Ms. Lessard, Ms. Skaggs and Mr. Bollinger did not return phone calls seeking comment.Ali Alexander, one of the most prominent Stop the Steal organizers who planned his own event at the Capitol that day, was on the list as well. His lawyer did not return a phone call seeking comment.In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Mr. Stone was scheduled to speak at both Mr. Alexander’s event and the rally hosted by Ms. Lessard, Ms. Skaggs and others, including Bianca Gracia, the leader of a group called Latinos for Trump, according to permits and event fliers. Mr. Stone never spoke at those events, however, and hurried out of Washington even as the police were still securing the Capitol, according to the film footage cited by The Post.Ali Alexander planned his own event at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesMr. Stone’s connections to Mr. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were based, at least in part, on the fact that the militia group provided security for him on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. The Oath Keepers also protected Mr. Alexander and his entourage on Jan. 6 and served as security at the events hosted by Ms. Skaggs, Ms. Lessard and Ms. Gracia, court papers say.At least one of Mr. Stone’s Oath Keeper bodyguards, Joshua James, has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges in the Capitol attack and is cooperating with the government’s inquiry. Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for the Oath Keepers, was part of the Friends of Stone chat as well and is also said to be cooperating with prosecutors in the riot investigation.Mr. Stone, a Florida resident, has long maintained close ties to the Proud Boys, especially to Mr. Tarrio, who lived in Miami before his arrest. Members of the Proud Boys have acted as bodyguards for Mr. Stone and have served as some of his most vocal supporters.In 2019, after Mr. Stone was indicted by Mr. Mueller on charges including obstruction and witness tampering, Mr. Tarrio responded by wearing a T-shirt reading “Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong” at one of Mr. Trump’s political rallies. At one point, Mr. Tarrio’s personal cellphone had a message recorded by Mr. Stone.Nayib Hassan, Mr. Tarrio’s lawyer, declined to comment on his client’s role in the chat.During his prosecution, Mr. Stone posted an image on social media of the federal judge in his case, Amy Berman Jackson, with cross hairs next to her head. When questioned in court about the image, he acknowledged that he had been sent a series of photos by Mr. Tarrio and two other Florida Proud Boys whose names appear on the Friends of Stone membership list: Jacobs Engels and Tyler Ziolkowski.Mr. Engels was with Mr. Stone in Washington on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. He initially agreed to talk about the group chat but then did not return a phone call seeking comment.Another person who appeared on the Friends of Stone list — under the name “Ivan” — was Ivan Raiklin, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who promoted a plan after the election to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several disputed swing states. This plan, which Mr. Raiklin called the “Pence Card,” was ultimately taken up by Mr. Trump and some of his legal advisers, like the lawyer John Eastman.Mr. Raiklin, who did not return phone calls seeking comment, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but showed no sign of entering the building. Closely aligned with Mr. Flynn, he has continued to question the results of the 2020 vote, appearing at so-called election integrity events and arguing that Mr. Trump was set up by members of the “deep state.”While the government has gathered thousands of pages of private messages in its vast investigation of the Capitol attack, it remains unclear if prosecutors have gotten access to the Friends of Stone group chat. Along with the membership list, The Times was given images of a few snippets of conversations to verify the chat’s authenticity.In one of them, Ms. Skaggs told the group that she had just spoken with the pro-Trump lawyer L. Lin Wood, who took part in the effort to overturn the election. Ms. Skaggs’s message, which does not bear a date, said Mr. Wood was claiming that the Insurrection Act — a form of martial law — had been invoked the night before.Responding to her message, Mr. Rhodes, who had repeatedly urged Mr. Trump to use the Insurrection Act to stay in power, answered incredulously.“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he wrote, dismissing the account with an obscenity. More

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      Democrats, the Midterm Jinx Is Not Inevitable

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      In November, the Democrats are widely expected to lose the House and probably also the Senate. Large defeats are the norm for a new president’s first midterm. A harbinger is a president’s approval rating, and President Biden’s stands at a lackluster 41.1 percent.But standard political history may not be a good guide to 2022. The Democrats are facing long odds, but there are several reasons this could be an unusual political year.For starters, Donald Trump is just as likely to hobble Republicans as he is to energize them. Mr. Trump will not be on the ballot, but many of his surrogates will. He has endorsed over 175 candidates in federal and state elections, and in his clumsy efforts to play kingmaker, Mr. Trump has promoted some badly compromised candidates and challenged party unity.In the Georgia primary for governor, a Trump surrogate, Sonny Purdue, is polling well behind Mr. Trump’s nemesis, the incumbent Brian Kemp. In the Georgia Senate race, Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, Herschel Walker, is running away from his past and locked in a tight race against the incumbent Raphael Warnock. It may not happen again, but in 2020, Mr. Trump’s meddling backfired and helped Democrats take two Senate seats.To hold the Senate, Democrats need to defend incumbents in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. But they have pickup opportunities in several states.In Pennsylvania, the popular lieutenant governor John Fetterman, an economic populist, will run against the winner of a close Republican primary, either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick. Mr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, has a very slight edge, as well as a very slight connection to Pennsylvania, having lived in New Jersey for many years. Either nominee would most likely alienate part of the Trump base, and neither is remotely populist.In Ohio, Mr. Trump’s endorsement helped the author and venture capitalist executive J.D. Vance prevail. In the general election, we will get a test of the divisive culture-war populism of Mr. Vance versus the genuine pocketbook populism of Representative Tim Ryan — the kind that keeps re-electing Ohio’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.For Democrats to succeed in many of these races, their base will have to be energized — but at the moment, it is not. Still, there’s hope: Even if the ubiquitous lunacy of Mr. Trump doesn’t wake Democrats up, the likelihood of abortion being banned in half the country probably will.If the leaked opinion in the Supreme Court abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, becomes law in an official June decision, it will not just allow states to criminalize abortion, but will turn doctors into agents of the state when they treat women for miscarriages. This extremism on women’s health does not have the support of most voters.The Democratic revival of 2017-20 began with the epic women’s marches of January 2017. If Democrats are more competitive than expected this year, it will be in part because women are galvanized, especially women in the Democratic base but also independent or “soft Republican” college-educated suburban women.Something like this happened in 2017, when large numbers of liberals and moderates, appalled by Mr. Trump’s presidency, saw the 2018 election as a firebreak. That year, Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats in the House, and historic turnout gains in 2018, relative to the previous midterm, were a great benefit for Democrats.All will depend on how closely 2022 resembles 2018. With the electorate so divided, there are relatively few swing voters — but potentially dozens of swing districts. How they swing depends entirely on turnout.A Democratic effort reminiscent of grass roots groups in 2017 is beginning to gear up. For example, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland sponsors a Democracy Summer for college students who want to get out and organize. This idea has been picked up in dozens of other congressional districts.Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, in the January 2021 runoff election that won him a Senate seat, helped pioneer a technique called paid relational organizing. He hired some 2,800 Georgians to reach out to their own peer networks to win support for Mr. Ossoff. Now several people who worked with Senator Ossoff are taking this strategy national.Other events this summer may have bearing on the fall. The House panel investigating the attack of Jan. 6, 2021, will hold public hearings in June. Closer to the midterms, it will release its final report, which will put Republicans on the spot to answer for their defense of an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Mr. Trump will surely continue to insist the 2020 election was stolen, but most Republicans will be whipsawed between the demands of Mr. Trump and his base and their wish to focus on more winning issues.Mr. Trump’s own behavior is exposing all the latent fissures in the contradictory coalition that narrowly elected him. Democratic candidates will be reminding Americans of the potential menace of a second Trump term. If Mr. Trump rejoins Twitter, he will remind them himself.Even so, Republican extremism is at risk of being overshadowed by economic conditions, none more than inflation. Federal Reserve economists project that inflation could begin to subside by fall. As with so much in politics, sheer luck and timing will play a role in the Democrats’ prospects and the future of our Republic.Stranger things have happened than a Democrat midterm resurgence. A wipeout is still likely, but far from inevitable — if Democrats can get organized.Robert Kuttner is a co-editor of The American Prospect and the author of “Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.”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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      Trump Endorses Doug Mastriano for Pennsylvania Governor

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      Mr. Mastriano, who has promoted many false claims of a stolen 2020 election, was the leading Republican candidate for governor even before Donald Trump’s endorsement.Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday endorsed Doug Mastriano, a retired colonel and state senator who has propagated myriad false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, in the Republican primary race for governor of Pennsylvania.Mr. Trump made his choice three days before the state’s Tuesday primary, a political blessing that serves to increase the former president’s standing as much as Mr. Mastriano’s.“There is no one in Pennsylvania who has done more, or fought harder, for election integrity,” Mr. Trump said in a statement, adding that Mr. Mastriano would also “fight violent crime, strengthen our borders, protect life, defend our under-siege Second Amendment, and help our military and our vets.”A Fox News poll released Tuesday showed Mr. Mastriano with a lead of 12 percentage points over his closest primary rival, former Representative Lou Barletta.Since then, Mr. Barletta has sought to coalesce support from Republicans wary of nominating Mr. Mastriano. Two fellow candidates dropped out and endorsed Mr. Barletta, as have a few prominent former elected officials, including former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.Mr. Trump, whose chosen candidate for governor of Nebraska lost a primary on Tuesday, is at risk of another blemish on his record in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. His pick, the television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, has failed to put daylight between himself and a field of candidates.Mr. Mastriano has long been an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump. He used campaign money to organize buses to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and, last month, campaigned at an event that promoted the outlandish QAnon conspiracy theory.Pennsylvania Republicans not aligned with the Mastriano campaign have said he cannot win a general election against Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor. Mr. Shapiro’s campaign recently began airing television advertisements that appeared intended to lift Mr. Mastriano’s standing among Republican primary voters.In a statement after the endorsement on Saturday, Mr. Barletta said, “Throughout this campaign I have proved that I’m the best Republican to unite the Republican Party and defeat Josh Shapiro, and I will continue unifying our grass-roots conservatives towards our shared goal.”He added, “I look forward to having President Trump’s endorsement Wednesday morning.” More

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      What the Jan. 6 Panel Wants to Learn From 5 G.O.P. Lawmakers

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      The committee’s subpoenas to five House Republicans underscore the potential importance of their testimony to producing a full account of the effort to overturn the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — In deciding to take the highly unusual step of issuing subpoenas to five Republican members of Congress, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack concluded that trying to compel their testimony was important enough to justify an escalatory step involving their colleagues.All five of the Republicans subpoenaed on Thursday have previously refused to appear voluntarily before the committee. The most prominent of them, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, is his party’s leader in the House and in line to become speaker if Republicans win control of the chamber in November. He has sought legal advice in recent months on how to fight a subpoena, though he has yet to say how he will respond to the panel’s action.But the committee has made clear that it believes all five may have information that is important to its efforts to document efforts by President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which culminated in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a pro-Trump mob.Here are the subjects that the committee could be interested in hearing about from each of the five Republicans.Representative Kevin McCarthyThe committee is seeking to question Mr. McCarthy about conversations he had with Mr. Trump during and after the attack about his culpability in the assault and what should be done to address it. The committee has also suggested that Mr. Trump, whose political support is vital to Mr. McCarthy, may have influenced the congressman’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation.Mr. McCarthy has acknowledged getting into a heated argument with Mr. Trump during the Capitol attack, in which the president appeared to side with the rioters as they were tearing through the grounds.According to Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican who has said that Mr. McCarthy recounted the exchange to her, Mr. Trump ignored Mr. McCarthy’s pleas to call off the rioters and sided with them instead, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”Interest in the details of those conversations has only increased in light of leaked audio in which Mr. McCarthy told colleagues that Mr. Trump had expressed feeling partly responsible for the attack.The audio, obtained by The New York Times and released in April, showed Mr. McCarthy recounting an exchange with the former president, in which he claimed Mr. Trump had been relatively contrite about how his language concerning the election might have contributed to the riot.“Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened, and he’d need to acknowledge that,” Mr. McCarthy said in the recording.Earlier, Mr. McCarthy had told colleagues that he was going to push Mr. Trump to resign.Representative Scott PerryThe committee first publicly approached Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania in December with a letter requesting information, in the panel’s first formal attempt to interview a sitting member of Congress.Committee members have argued that Mr. Perry, who leads the deeply conservative House Freedom Caucus, was one of main architects behind a plan to install Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, as the acting attorney general after he appeared sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s false allegations of widespread voter fraud.Mr. Clark appeared eager to pursue various conspiracy theories about hacked voting booths and other forms of election fraud, as well as to pressure state elections officials to overturn results in Georgia.Committee members and investigators have said that Mr. Perry introduced Mr. Clark and the former president. They have also found evidence that Mr. Perry was frequently in touch with Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, over encrypted messaging services in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6.After the election, Mr. Perry helped assemble a dossier of purported instances of voter fraud and also encouraged Mr. Trump’s supporters to take part in the march on the Capitol that resulted in the riot.Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Meadows and another of the Republicans now under subpoena, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office. His colleagues referred to him as General Perry; he retired from the Pennsylvania National Guard in 2019.Representative Mo BrooksMembers of the committee have expressed interest in testimony from Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama after he broke with Mr. Trump and accused the former president of pressing him to find a way to remove President Biden from power.While Mr. Brooks was initially among Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies in questioning the election outcome, their relationship soured after the former president withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in the Republican primary for Alabama’s Senate seat in March.Before then, Mr. Brooks had campaigned on false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. He had been one of the speakers alongside Mr. Trump at the rally in Washington that preceded the riot.But after the former president withdrew his endorsement, Mr. Brooks came forward with startling claims that Mr. Trump had repeatedly called on him to find a way to invalidate the election and somehow remove Mr. Biden. If the assertions are true, they would show that Mr. Trump continued his efforts to overturn the outcome long after leaving office. Mr. Trump has not denied making the statements.“President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency,” Mr. Brooks said in a statement in March.His account of the conversations was the first time a lawmaker close to Mr. Trump had suggested that the former president had encouraged steps that, if taken, would have violated federal law.Representative Andy BiggsIn a letter to Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona in May, the committee’s leaders described evidence linking the congressman to a range of organizational efforts including “planning meetings” aimed at attracting protesters to Washington on Jan. 6.The letter also described a scheme by several House Republicans to seek presidential pardons for “activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”“Your name was identified as a potential participant in that effort,” it said.It is unclear whether Mr. Biggs or other House Republicans formally approached Mr. Trump about what would amount to a pre-emptive pardon, or what crime those pardons would have been for. Mr. Biggs declined this week to answer questions about the potential pardons.A former leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, Mr. Biggs also tried to persuade state legislators to join Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election.Representative Jim JordanAs one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress, Mr. Jordan stood by him through several ordeals during his presidency, including operating as his chief defender during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment proceeding.In the weeks after the election, Mr. Jordan met regularly with White House advisers to coordinate messaging about the outcome, often following up with false claims of fraud during media appearances.Members and investigators on the House panel have pushed aggressively for details surrounding conversations between Mr. Jordan and Mr. Trump on the day of the riot, after call records indicated that the two spoke over the phone that morning.Mr. Jordan was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s effort to fight the election results, including participating in planning meetings in November 2020 at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., and a meeting at the White House in December 2020.On Jan. 5, 2021, Mr. Jordan forwarded to Mr. Meadows a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.“On Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence,” the text read.Mr. Jordan has acknowledged speaking with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6, though he has said that he cannot remember how many times they spoke that day or when the calls occurred. One of Mr. Jordan’s conversations with Mr. Trump that day, a 10-minute phone call, was included in the official White House call log. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy

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      The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack demanded testimony from Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, and four of his colleagues.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued subpoenas on Thursday to five Republican members of Congress, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, a significant escalation as it digs deeper into the role Republicans played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The panel’s move was an extraordinary step in the annals of congressional investigations — a committee targeting sitting lawmakers, including a top party leader, who have refused to cooperate in a major inquiry into the largest attack on the Capitol in centuries.It reflected the belief among investigators that a group of Republican members of Congress loyal to former President Donald J. Trump had played crucial roles in the events that led to the assault on their own institution, and may have hidden what they know about Mr. Trump’s intentions and actions before, during and after the attack.Mr. McCarthy, the Californian who is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House majority in November, had a heated phone call with Mr. Trump during the riot, in which he implored the president to call off the mob invading the Capitol in his name. When Mr. Trump declined, according to Representative Jaime Herrera Buetler, a Washington Republican who has said Mr. McCarthy recounted the exchange to her, Mr. Trump sided with the rioters, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”Mr. McCarthy also told fellow Republican leaders privately days later that Mr. Trump had conceded in another phone call that he bore “some responsibility” for the attack.The panel also issued subpoenas for other Republicans who it said played central roles in the former president’s scheme to use Congress to help him overturn the 2020 election. Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general after he resisted Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread voting fraud. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken defenders, was deeply involved in the effort to invalidate the election results.Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama was a ringleader of the Republican effort to lodge formal challenges to the counting of electoral votes from battleground states on Jan. 6, 2021, and has said Mr. Trump has pressured him in the months since to help reinstate him to the presidency. The committee also summoned Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, the former leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus who tried to persuade state legislators to join Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election.All five have refused requests for voluntary interviews about the roles they played in the buildup to the attack by supporters of the former president who believed his lie of widespread election fraud, and most continued to denigrate the committee after the subpoenas were issued.Mr. McCarthy told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday that he had not yet seen the subpoena.The panel wants to question Representative Andy Biggs about evidence it had obtained on efforts by certain House Republicans to seek a presidential pardon after Jan. 6.Tom Brenner for The New York Times“My view on the committee has not changed,” he said. “They’re not conducting a legitimate investigation. It seems as though they just want to go after their political opponents.”Mr. Perry called the investigation “a charade” and a “political witch hunt” by Democrats that is “about fabricating headlines and distracting the Americans from their abysmal record of running America into the ground.”The subpoenas come as the committee is preparing for a series of public hearings next month to reveal its findings. The eight hearings are scheduled to take place over several weeks beginning on June 9, some during prime time in an effort to attract a large television audience.“The select committee has learned that several of our colleagues have information relevant to our investigation into the attack on Jan. 6 and the events leading up to it,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “Before we hold our hearings next month, we wished to provide members the opportunity to discuss these matters with the committee voluntarily. Regrettably, the individuals receiving subpoenas today have refused, and we’re forced to take this step to help ensure the committee uncovers facts concerning Jan. 6.”The committee’s leaders had been reluctant to issue subpoenas to their fellow lawmakers. It is a rare step for a congressional panel, other than the House Ethics Committee, which is responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct by members.For weeks, members and investigators on the special House panel have privately agonized over how aggressively to pursue sitting members of Congress, weighing their desire for information about lawmakers’ direct interactions with Mr. Trump against the potential legal difficulty and political consequences of doing so.Behind closed doors, committee and staff members researched the law, parliamentary rules and past precedents before deciding to proceed, people familiar with the inquiry said.In letters to the lawmakers sent on Thursday, Mr. Thompson wrote that their refusal to cooperate had left the panel with “no choice” but to issue subpoenas.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, said the decision was not made lightly. “It’s a reflection of how important and serious the investigation is, and how grave the attack on the Capitol was,” she said.The subpoena to Mr. McCarthy is particularly noteworthy given his position at the top of his party. Should he refuse to comply, it could set in motion a process that could lead to a Democratic-controlled House holding him in contempt of Congress as the midterm elections loom.The committee has thus far recommended four criminal contempt of Congress charges against witnesses who have refused to cooperate. That charge carries up to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.Panel members declined to comment on Thursday about whether they would recommend a charge against the sitting Republican lawmakers should they refuse to comply.Representative Liz Cheney said the decision to issue subpoenas was not made lightly.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMr. McCarthy has long feared being subpoenaed in the investigation. In recent months, he has been in discussions with William A. Burck, a longtime Washington lawyer, about how to fight a subpoena.Congressional Republicans were deeply involved in several aspects of the plans to keep Mr. Trump in office: They joined baseless lawsuits, spread the lie of widespread election fraud and objected on Jan. 6 to certifying President Biden’s victory in multiple states.The committee wants to question Mr. McCarthy about conversations he had after the attack about the president’s culpability in the assault and what should be done to address it. The committee has also suggested that Mr. Trump may have influenced Mr. McCarthy’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation.Mr. McCarthy issued a blistering statement in January condemning the committee as illegitimate and saying he would not cooperate with its inquiry. He has argued that the panel was violating the privacy of Republicans through subpoenas for bank and phone records. Mr. McCarthy also denounced Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California for having rejected two of his five choices to sit on the panel, one of whom was Mr. Jordan, and boycotted the inquiry.Ms. Pelosi added two Republicans of her choosing — Ms. Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, both outspoken critics of Mr. Trump — to the panel.The committee informed Mr. Jordan by letter in December that its investigators wanted to question him about his communications in the run-up to the Capitol riot. Those include Mr. Jordan’s messages with Mr. Trump and his legal team as well as others involved in planning rallies on Jan. 6 and congressional objections to certifying Mr. Biden’s victory.In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Perry, a member of Congress since 2013 who is close to Mr. Jordan, compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations and coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general, who was resisting Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, with a more compliant official. Mr. Perry also endorsed the idea of encouraging Mr. Trump’s supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6.In a letter to Mr. Biggs, the committee’s leaders wrote that they wanted to question him about evidence they had obtained about efforts by certain House Republicans to seek a presidential pardon after Jan. 6 in connection with Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.And the panel said it wanted to question Mr. Brooks about statements he made in March claiming that Mr. Trump had asked him repeatedly in the months since the election to illegally “rescind” the results, remove Mr. Biden and force a special election so that Mr. Trump could return to the presidency.The panel has conducted more than 1,000 interviews with witnesses, but needed to hear from members of Congress who were involved in the president’s plans, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, who called the subpoenas a “big step” for the inquiry.“What I’m most concerned about is that if Republicans should ever get near the gavel, that they will overturn the next election if Trump loses again,” Mr. Schiff said, adding that more subpoenas for members of Congress were “possible.”The Republicans could argue that their official actions — such as objecting to Mr. Biden’s victory on the floor of the House on Jan. 6 — are protected by the so-called speech or debate clause of the Constitution, intended to preserve the independence of the legislative branch.The clause says that senators and representatives “shall not be questioned in any other place” about any speech or debate in either chamber. It has been broadly interpreted to cover all legislative actions, not just words. On its face, however, that clause is limited to questioning them in “other” places, like courtrooms.The committee has also sought an interview with Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, Mr. Trump’s former White House doctor, about why he was mentioned in encrypted messages from the Oath Keepers militia group, some of whose members have been charged criminally in connection with the attack.Mr. Jackson has also refused to voluntarily cooperate, but he was not among those issued a subpoena on Thursday.Ms. Pelosi declined to comment on the action. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said he was not worried about whether Republicans would try to seek revenge by issuing their own subpoenas of Democratic lawmakers if they won the House.“We ought to all be subject to being asked to tell the truth before a committee that is seeking information that is important to our country and our democracy,” Mr. Hoyer said.Michael S. Schmidt More

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      John Eastman Pressed Pennsylvania Legislator to Throw Out Biden Votes

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      The lawyer argued that mail ballots in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election could be culled in a way that would reverse President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in an electorally critical state.WASHINGTON — Even by the standards of other ideas promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House after his election loss in 2020, a newly revealed strategy he proposed to take votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Pennsylvania stands out as especially brazen.Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic, according to emails from Mr. Eastman released under a public records request by the University of Colorado Boulder, which employed him at the time.The emails were the latest evidence of just how far Mr. Trump and his allies were willing to go in the weeks after Election Day to keep him in power — complete with anti-democratic plans to install fake pro-Trump electors and reject the votes of Biden supporters. Mr. Eastman would go on to champion the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally block congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, an idea Mr. Pence rejected even as Mr. Trump was promoting the protests that turned into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.On Dec. 4, 2020, using his university email account, Mr. Eastman wrote to State Representative Russell H. Diamond, Republican of Pennsylvania, with plans for the legislature to appoint pro-Trump electors.He suggested that a mathematical equation could be applied to the vote tallies to reject mail-in ballots for candidates at “a prorated amount.”Mr. Eastman said he was basing his recommendations on his belief that the Trump legal team had presented “ample evidence of sufficient anomalies and illegal votes to have turned the election from Trump to Biden” at public hearings around the country, including in Pennsylvania. But he admitted that he had not actually watched the hearings.“Having done that math, you’d be left with a significant Trump lead that would bolster the argument for the legislature adopting a slate of Trump electors — perfectly within your authority to do anyway, but now bolstered by the untainted popular vote,” Mr. Eastman wrote. “That would help provide some cover.”He also encouraged Mr. Diamond to have the legislature make a specific determination that “the slate of electors certified by the governor,” and chosen by the voters, was “null and void.”In one email, Mr. Diamond responded that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had not presented strong evidence of fraud at the Pennsylvania hearing.“Honestly, the Trump legal team was not exactly stellar at PA’s hearing, failed to provide the affidavits of their witnesses and made a glaring error by purporting that more ballots had been returned than mailed out,” he wrote.On Dec. 13, the day before all 50 states were set to cast their votes in the Electoral College, Mr. Eastman again urged Mr. Diamond to keep up with the plot to create an alternate slate of electors in Pennsylvania.“The electors absolutely need to meet,” Mr. Eastman wrote to the lawmaker. “Then, if the legislature gets some spine, AND (politically) proofs of fraud and/or illegal votes sufficient to have altered the results of the election is forthcoming, those electoral votes will be available to be certified by the legislature.”In one email, Mr. Diamond introduced Mr. Eastman to the Republican House majority leader in the state, crediting Mr. Eastman with “opening my eyes to our ability to exercise our plenary authority to decertify presidential electors (without ANY ‘evidence’ of retail ‘voter fraud’).”A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.In a brief interview on Tuesday, Mr. Diamond said he first learned about Mr. Eastman and his theories about the power of state lawmakers to shape elections when the lawyer testified in front of the Georgia legislature in early December 2020.Mr. Diamond added that when he started to correspond with Mr. Eastman about election results in Pennsylvania, he thought that Mr. Eastman was merely a law professor and did not realize that he was associated with the Trump campaign. Mr. Diamond said he never pursued the idea of disqualifying mail ballots containing votes for Mr. Biden, though Pennsylvania Republicans tried multiple avenues to fight the election results, including filing a lawsuit, appealing to members of Congress and conducting a forensic investigation.The university released more than 700 of Mr. Eastman’s emails and other documents to The New York Times in response to a public information request. The documents were released earlier to the Colorado Ethics Institute, and were reported earlier by The Denver Post and Politico.The Colorado Ethics Institute, a nonprofit that tries to hold public officials accountable to ethics and transparency rules, provided the emails on April 19 to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the nonprofit, called for a “thorough audit” of Mr. Eastman’s tenure at the university to “determine the school’s connection — wittingly or unwittingly — to one of the darkest days in the history of this country.”A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.Justice Department officials have said they are investigating some of the schemes that Mr. Eastman supported to overturn the election — chief among them, a plan to use so-called alternate slates of electors in key swing states that were won by Mr. Biden. But Mr. Diamond said he had not been contacted by anyone from the Justice Department.The records show the university paid for Mr. Eastman’s trip the weekend after the election to an academic conference in Philadelphia, where he told The Times that his role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power began. At the time of the trip, Mr. Trump’s closest aides, including Corey Lewandowski, were at a nearby hotel putting together a legal brief to challenge the results in Pennsylvania. One of Mr. Trump’s aides reached out to Mr. Eastman to see whether he could go to the hotel to help Mr. Trump’s team.In the beginning of December, Mr. Trump called to see whether Mr. Eastman could help bring legal action directly before the Supreme Court. In the days that followed, Mr. Eastman filed two briefs with the court on Mr. Trump’s behalf, but those efforts quickly failed.The emails also paint a portrait of Mr. Eastman as a visiting professor in Colorado who was respected as a conservative thinker — winning praise from conservative students, including one who thanked him for “having the courage to stand up for your beliefs” and complained of being harassed by liberal professors “for being a white male” — until he fell into disrepute at the university as his efforts to overturn the election became known.After more than 200 professors and students signed a petition against him for questioning the results of the election on Twitter, he wrote: “Oh, brother. These people are indefatigable.”And he complained in emails that he was overworked, as he rushed to challenge the election on behalf of Mr. Trump and teach his classes over Zoom.For a while, he retained the support of his supervisors, including one who cheered him on when Mr. Eastman told him he was doing legal work for Mr. Trump.But after Mr. Eastman spoke at the pro-Trump rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the riot at the Capitol, baselessly claiming that Democrats had placed ballots in “a secret folder” inside voting machines in a bid to rig the results, he became a lightning rod for criticism.That same afternoon, a former colleague at the university wrote him to say that he had engaged in “seditious actions” during his speech. Within hours Mr. Eastman fired back, calling the accusation “defamatory.”As the days went on, Mr. Eastman defended himself against a blizzard of attacks from those who called him “a traitor” or worse.He often disavowed the violence that erupted at the Capitol and sometimes blamed it on the leftist activists known as antifa.Citing low enrollment, the university canceled Mr. Eastman’s spring courses and his contract expired with the college.In the months since, more information has emerged about Mr. Eastman’s central role in trying to overturn the election, including writing a memo laying out steps he argued Mr. Pence could take to keep Mr. Trump in power.In March, a federal judge ruled in a civil case that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump had most likely committed felonies as they pushed to overturn the election, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.The actions taken by Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman, the judge found, amounted to “a coup in search of a legal theory.” More

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      Giuliani Pulls Out of Interview With Jan. 6 Committee

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      The former personal lawyer to Donald J. Trump withdrew from an interview scheduled for Friday after the panel would not let him record it, his lawyer said.WASHINGTON — Rudolph W. Giuliani, who helped lead President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election as his personal lawyer, on Thursday abruptly pulled out of a scheduled Friday interview with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol after the panel refused to let him record the session.Mr. Giuliani has been negotiating with the panel about testifying for months, and had finally reached an agreement to speak about matters other than his conversations with Mr. Trump or any other topic he believes is covered by attorney-client privilege, said his lawyer, Robert J. Costello.Mr. Giuliani’s sudden withdrawal threatens what could have been a major breakthrough for the investigation. His testimony could have included details about interactions with members of Congress and others involved in the plans who were not Mr. Giuliani’s clients, Mr. Costello said. And with Mr. Giuliani under a subpoena to testify, the standoff raises the specter of yet another protracted legal battle between the committee and a former Trump aide.The impasse began when Mr. Costello told the committee on Thursday that Mr. Giuliani intended to record the interview on video. When the panel’s lawyers refused to allow him to do so, he canceled the meeting, Mr. Costello said.“He’s willing to talk about anything that is not privileged,” Mr. Costello said. “The only sticking point we’ve had is recording the interview. Now, that tells me they’re more interested in keeping things secret than getting to the so-called truth. If you’re interested in the person’s testimony, why would you not agree to this?”Mr. Costello said that Mr. Giuliani’s testimony was not yet off the table, and that he would continue to negotiate with the panel’s lawyers. He said that Mr. Giuliani, a former New York mayor, “simply doesn’t trust” members of the committee, specifically Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, and believes that they will selectively edit his testimony.“If they changed their mind and they said, ‘Listen, we’ll jointly record the interview,’ then we would participate,” Mr. Costello said.Tim Mulvey, a spokesman for the committee, said the panel would consider enforcement actions against Mr. Giuliani if he does not change course and comply with the committee’s subpoena.“Mr. Giuliani had agreed to participate in a transcribed interview with the select committee. Today, he informed committee investigators that he wouldn’t show up unless he was permitted to record the interview, which was never an agreed-upon condition,” Mr. Mulvey said. “Mr. Giuliani is an important witness to the conspiracy to overthrow the government, and he remains under subpoena. If he refuses to comply, the committee will consider all enforcement options.”The committee has interviewed more than 970 witnesses and has recommended criminal contempt of Congress charges against four of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, who have refused to fully cooperate.Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges after refusing an interview with the committee. Another former aide, Stephen K. Bannon, was indicted in November after refusing to provide information to congressional investigators.Last month, the House voted to recommend criminal contempt of Congress charges against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr., two other close allies of Mr. Trump, after the pair defied subpoenas from the committee.The Justice Department has yet to act on the referrals for Mr. Meadows, Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino.As a key figure in Mr. Trump’s attempts to stave off electoral defeat, Mr. Giuliani would be in a position to tell investigators about a series of extraordinary measures undertaken last fall and winter in a bid to maintain the losing president’s grip on power.Among those efforts was a scheme to disrupt the normal workings of the Electoral College by persuading lawmakers in contested swing states to draw up alternate slates of electors showing Mr. Trump was victorious in states that were actually won by President Biden.Mr. Giuliani was also instrumental in vetting a plan to use the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines and examine the data housed inside them for supposed evidence of fraud. At Mr. Trump’s direction, Mr. Giuliani asked a top homeland security official if the department could legally take control of the machines — a notion the official shot down. Mr. Giuliani later opposed an even more explosive proposal to have the military seize the machines.Mr. Giuliani was subpoenaed with other members of a legal team that billed itself as an “elite strike force” and pursued a set of lawsuits on behalf of Mr. Trump in which they promulgated conspiracy theories and made unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the election.The committee’s subpoena sought all documents that Mr. Giuliani had detailing the pressure campaign that he and other Trump allies initiated targeting state officials, the seizure of voting machines, contact with members of Congress, any evidence to support the conspiracy theories he pushed and any arrangements for his fees.On Jan. 6, speaking to a crowd of Trump supporters before a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol, Mr. Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” Later, after the building was under siege, both he and Mr. Trump called lawmakers in an attempt to delay the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. More

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      Oath Keepers Leader Sought to Ask Trump to Unleash His Militia

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      A dramatic account of how the militia leader, Stewart Rhodes, tried to reach Donald J. Trump on Jan. 6 with a message that the group could help keep him in power was revealed in federal court.Even as the beleaguered police were still trying to disperse a violent mob at the Capitol last January, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, undertook a desperate, last-ditch effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House, according to court papers released on Wednesday.In a suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel, just blocks from the Capitol, Mr. Rhodes called an unnamed intermediary and, the papers said, repeatedly implored the person to ask Mr. Trump to mobilize his group to forcibly stop the transition of presidential power.But the person refused to speak with Mr. Trump, the papers said. And once the call was over, Mr. Rhodes, turning to a group of his associates, declared, “I just want to fight.”Witnessing this scene, which unfolded in the twilight hours of Jan. 6, 2021, was William Todd Wilson, a midlevel Oath Keepers leader from North Carolina. On Wednesday, Mr. Wilson, 44, pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington to charges of seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation of the Oath Keepers’ role in the Capitol attack.Mr. Wilson’s tale of what took place at the Phoenix Park — the same hotel that Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys, had stayed at days earlier — was among the most dramatic accounts to have emerged so far in the government’s monthslong investigation of the Oath Keepers.Phillip Linder, a lawyer for Mr. Rhodes, said he did not know who his client had called from the hotel in his effort to reach Mr. Trump.In a 15-page statement of offense released in conjunction with his plea, Mr. Wilson also admitted to helping stockpile weapons in hotel rooms in Virginia for a so-called quick reaction force assembled to “provide firearms or cover to co-conspirators” who were “operating inside of Washington” on Jan. 6.With his guilty plea, Mr. Wilson, a military and law enforcement veteran, became the third member of the Oath Keepers charged with sedition to reach a deal with the Justice Department to help in its most serious criminal case connected to the Capitol attack. As part of their inquiry, prosecutors have fanned out across the country interviewing dozens of members of the group. More than 20 Oath Keepers have been charged.The new court papers paint a picture of Mr. Wilson as a man enraged by the results of the 2020 election. In early November, for example, he expressed outrage in an Oath Keepers group chat after Georgia was called for Joseph R. Biden Jr.“Rigged,” he wrote. And then, “I’m ready to go coyote hunting.”On Dec. 14, 2020 — the day that a majority of electors cast their votes for Mr. Biden in the Electoral College — Mr. Wilson saw an article posted in the group chat that was written by Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s onetime national security adviser. The article warned about “unelected tyrants,” and Mr. Wilson wrote to his compatriots, “It is time to fight.”After several phone calls with Mr. Rhodes in early January, Mr. Wilson admitted driving from North Carolina to the Washington area on Jan. 5 with an AR-15-style rifle, a 9-milimeter pistol, 200 rounds of ammunition, body armor, pepper spray and a pocketknife. As he traveled, court papers say, he posted a message in the group chat, saying, “It’s going to hit the fan tonight!”On the day of the attack, the papers said, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Rhodes and other Oath Keepers bypassed barricades at the Capitol, unlawfully entering a restricted area. As plumes of smoke rose from the ground, the papers said, Mr. Wilson heard Mr. Rhodes declare that they were in the middle of a “civil war.”Moments later, the papers say, Mr. Wilson entered the Capitol armed with his pocketknife — the first Oath Keeper to have breached the building. He admitted that his goal in entering the building was to gather intelligence and to disrupt the final certification of the Electoral College count.The sedition case against the Oath Keepers — one of two separate cases brought against members of the group — was made public in January with the arrest of Mr. Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper who went on to earn a law degree at Yale. In an indictment of Mr. Rhodes and 10 of his subordinates, prosecutors fleshed out a detailed portrait of a plot to disrupt the transfer of power from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden, starting shortly after Election Day and continuing even after the Capitol was attacked.Just two days after voting ended, prosecutors say, Mr. Rhodes told several members of his group to refuse to accept Mr. Biden’s victory — by force, if necessary.“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he wrote on the encrypted chat app Signal. “Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, spirit.”Throughout November and December, Mr. Rhodes issued an increasingly threatening — and paranoid — series of communiqués, calling on Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and saying he had men stationed outside Washington ready to act on the president’s command. In the days leading up to the storming of the Capitol, Mr. Rhodes went on a gun-buying spree, spending thousands of dollars on military-grade firearms, ammunition and other tactical gear, prosecutors say.While Mr. Rhodes never entered the Capitol, several members of the Oath Keepers did. Some have been accused of seeking to hunt down Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Others have been charged with assaulting police officers.Through their lawyers, those facing charges have repeatedly said they converged on Washington just before Jan. 6 not to attack lawmakers, but instead as part of a security detail tasked with protecting conservative celebrities like Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime ally of Mr. Trump.According to the group’s internal communications, the Oath Keepers sometimes performed security work in the chaotic postelection period with another far-right paramilitary outfit, the 1st Amendment Praetorian.By pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, Mr. Wilson appeared to put Mr. Rhodes in even more legal jeopardy.He will most likely be able to help the government better understand the composition and mission of the quick reaction forces, which were stationed in Virginia and were said to have been poised to aid the Oath Keepers at the Capitol if Mr. Trump had invoked the Insurrection Act. According to the new court papers, Mr. Wilson also heard Mr. Rhodes discussing the need on multiple occasions to “engage in force, up to and including lethal violence, in order to stop the transfer of power.”Mr. Wilson joins two other Oath Keepers charged with sedition — Brian Ulrich and Joshua James — in reaching cooperation deals with the government. In the past month or so, prosecutors have also struck similar arrangements with three key members of the Proud Boys, which also played a crucial role in the Capitol attack.When Mr. Ulrich, 44, pleaded guilty last week, he admitted to rushing to the Capitol with five compatriots in golf carts then marching into the building while the police were trying to clear it. In the days leading up to the attack, he also acknowledged sending messages in a private Oath Keepers group chat, saying that “civil war” would be necessary if Mr. Biden took office.“Trump acts now a few hundred radicals die trying to burn down cities,” Mr. Ulrich wrote in the chat on Dec. 19, 2020 — the same day Mr. Trump posted a tweet urging his supporters to go to Washington for a “wild” protest. “Trump sits on his hands Biden wins … millions die resisting the death of the 1st and 2nd amendment.”During his own guilty plea in March, Mr. James, the leader of an Alabama Oath Keepers chapter, said he had gone with Mr. Ulrich to the Capitol in a golf cart and assaulted a police officer in the building. After the riot, Mr. James acknowledged helping Mr. Rhodes get out of Washington by taking some of the arms and ammunition that the Oath Keepers leader had stored in his vehicle.Mr. James, 33, has admitted to being involved in meetings with Mr. Rhodes within weeks of the election where he learned about the Oath Keepers’ “plans to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power,” court papers say. He has also acknowledged helping Mr. Rhodes arrange a conference call on the online meeting site GoToMeeting to “facilitate planning” for Jan. 6.While Mr. James served on Mr. Stone’s protective detail before the Capitol was stormed, it remains unclear if he has provided prosecutors with any information about the longtime Trump adviser. According to private group chats seized by the government, the leader of the Oath Keepers’ Florida chapter, Kelly Meggs, reached a deal to protect Mr. Stone in early January. More