WARNING: This video includes strong and disturbing language.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., spoke on July 12 as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack presented its findings to the public. The focus of the hearing was on extremist far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the role they played in the Capitol insurrection.
Raskin said that the purpose of former president Donald Trump’s activity on Twitter was to mobilize a crowd, and that his December 2020 tweet inviting his supporters to a protest scheduled in Washington, D.C., for Jan. 6, 2021, in particular galvanized his followers, unleashed “a political firestorm” and changed “the course of our history as a country.”
The representative then played a profanity-laced montage of prominent Trump supporters including Alex Jones using their platforms to encourage viewers to attend the protest on Jan. 6 that would result in the insurrection.
He added that the Jan. 6 committee interviewed a former Twitter employee who testified that the company considered adopting a stronger content moderation policy after Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate prior to the 2020 election, but chose not to do so.
“My concern was that the former president — for, seemingly, the first time — was speaking directly to extremist organizations and giving them directives,” the former employee, who remained anonymous to protect their identity, testified. ”We had not seen that sort of direct communication before.”
In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day.
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