Trump Denies Inciting The Capitol Attack, But 174 Jan. 6 Defendants Blame Him For It

Nearly 200 of the people arrested and charged for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have said they were responding to calls by Donald Trump to help keep him in the White House, according to a new analysis by a government watchdog group.

“CREW’s analysis bolsters the evidence that January 6th was the result of organized efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to halt the certification of a free and fair election by force,” the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wrote in a report released Thursday.

The group argued that Trump’s actions subject him to the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists from holding office: “This is not merely a policy preference; it is a constitutional imperative.”

The coup-attempting former president and his supporters claim that he had nothing to do with the hours-long siege that left 140 police officers injured and led to the deaths of five. But 174 of those charged said they were only doing as Trump had asked.

“The defendants who argued that Trump called them to the Capitol and to violence on January 6th were residents of 37 states, from Hawaii to Florida, and Maine to California,” CREW’s report said. “This was a mass mobilization.”

Among those arrested and charged ― many of whom are now serving years in prison ― are leaders of extremist paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, as well as everyday citizens who believed Trump’s lies that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him.

CREW went through the Justice Department’s list of all 1,069 people arrested to date in the Jan. 6 investigation, hundreds of whom have already been convicted and sentenced. The watchdog group searched through statements made in court, on social media and in interviews.

The view that Trump wanted his people to use violence, if necessary, to keep him in power was common among those arrested and charged with crimes ranging from trespassing to assaulting a police officer, said Walker Davis, one of the handful of CREW researchers who spent months scouring court files, news reports and internet posts.

“These are not outliers,” Davis said. “The fact nearly 200 defendants shared a reason for going shows how central Trump’s rhetoric was to what happened.”

Trump’s staff did not respond to HuffPost’s queries about CREW’s work. In the past, Trump has pointed out that he told his followers to go “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol to make their voices heard ― but has failed to address language that included exhortations to “fight like hell” or risk losing their country.

At least some of his supporters took Trump’s statements literally, CREW concluded.

“Trump has called all patriots,” wrote Deborah Sandoval, a supporter who traveled from Des Moines, Iowa, in a Facebook post. “If the electors don’t elect, we will be forced into civil war.”

Sandoval, 56, reported to a federal prison last month to start a five-month sentence after taking a plea bargain to a misdemeanor.

Zvonimir Jurlina, who was charged with destruction of property and in April accepted a plea deal, wrote on his Facebook page: “Donald Trump, please pay for my legal fees, because this all happened because of you.”

CREW’s findings mirror those of the House Jan. 6 committee, which placed the blame for the Capitol assault squarely on Trump for lying about the election for weeks and then ― after his loss was made official with the Dec. 14, 2020, vote of the Electoral College ― telling his millions of followers to descend on Washington the day that Congress would conduct its election certification ceremony.

For three hours that afternoon, Trump ignored pleas from his advisers and even his own daughter to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol, as live television coverage showed them beating police officers and forcing their way into the building. Indeed, Trump at 2:24 p.m. exacerbated the situation by attacking his own vice president in a Twitter post, telling his followers that Mike Pence had lacked the “courage” to do what Trump demanded of him.

Nevertheless, Trump, his staff and his supporters are now trying to rebrand those who were arrested as “patriots,” and attacking the FBI and prosecutors for charging them.

Trump is under investigation by special counsel Jack Smith as well as the Fulton County district attorney in Georgia for his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 coup attempt. He has been indicted by Smith on unrelated felony charges for retaining top-secret documents and then hiding them from authorities. He also faces trial in New York City on felony charges that he falsified business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to an adult film star in the days leading up to the 2016 election.

Despite the various criminal charges and investigations, Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.