Jan. 6 panel to examine extremist groups, ties to Trump
by Mike Lillis and Rebecca Beitsch - 07/10/22 12:00 PM ET
The House committee investigating last year’s Capitol rampage will soon turn its gaze to the role played by far-right extremists, examining not only the influence of nationalist networks in carrying out the attack but also what coordination, if any, the Trump White House had with those groups leading up to the violence.
The panel’s investigators have already teased the potential connection between former President Trump and the ring-wing extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, using last month’s public hearing with a former West Wing aide to suggest direct links between some of Trump’s closest allies and leaders of several prominent nationalist groups now accused of spearheading the attack.
Heading into the next hearing on Tuesday, members of the panel are already promising to reveal previously undisclosed information they say will substantiate those ties.
“We will be connecting the dots, as people know,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the select committee, told MSNBC on Thursday. “This wasn’t just an event that unfolded. It was planned. Who did the planning, and who were they connected with? How did it unfold?”
The cast of characters the committee has already implicated in the scheme to overturn the election results reads like a who’s who of Trump’s inner circle.
It includes John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, two legal advisers to the former president who set up a “war room” at a Washington hotel on Jan. 5; Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, two allies in the “Stop the Steal” movement who were indicted for unrelated crimes but pardoned by Trump; and Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff who was acting as a liaison between Trump and the other four men, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, a former senior Meadows aide who testified before the select committee on June 28.
On the periphery were the extremist groups, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, that gathered in Washington on Jan. 6 as part of Trump’s effort to overturn his election defeat.
The lines between the two worlds form a complex matrix, and the committee has not yet demonstrated direct connections between the Trump confidantes and the extremist groups that were on the front lines of the violence at the Capitol.
Yet Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional lawyer who sits on the select committee, has promised to dig into those associations when he leads the questioning, along with Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), at Tuesday’s hearing. And outside experts who monitor hate groups are eager to see what turns up.
“If coordination did exist, what form did it take? Who were the conduits for information?” said Cassie Miller, senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups of all stripes around the country.
more
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3550291-jan-6-panel-to-examine-extremist-groups-ties-to-trump/ 
