Mounting evidence suggests last week's assault on the U.S. Capitol was more brutal -- and had darker intentions -- than many originally had imagined, according to a report from Andrew Kreig at the D.C.-based Justice Integrity Project (JIP). Kreig notes that Ali (Akbar) Alexander, with ties to Alabama and Montgomery attorney/talk-show host Baron Coleman, was front and center in organizing the protest that turned into a riot.Writes Kreig:
This editor, whose office is located within two blocks of the protest march route in the District of Columbia, has reported for years on the topic of election fraud and several of the leading figures suspected of corrupting elections.These tactics include propaganda via blogs, broadcast and social media, plus courtroom efforts necessary to steal elections.
As one of many examples, we helped investigate in 2012 a Republican operative named Ali Akbar, a convicted felon who helped found with the help of Republican patrons the National Bloggers Club. That "club" helped orchestrate a right-wing propaganda army when useful for the patrons' election or other political interests, with the website Crooks and Liars providing an in-depth report.
Akbar, now using the name Ali Alexander was a speaker at last week's pro-Trump rally at the White House. Via his association with the affiliated Proud Boys gang of white nationalists, Alexander played a significant role in organizing sinister activities in both the Georgia and Washington political events last week, according to an expose published on Jan. 9 by investigative reporter Greg Palast, a pioneering investigator of election fraud, including illegal vote suppression of racial minorities.
The Palast story Why did the Georgia GOP Team up with a riot instigator? is a cutting-edge column by the former BBC investigative reporter and author of multiple books on election fraud.
Another is the NBC News investigative report, Republican AGs group sent robocalls urging march to the Capitol by Laura Strickler and Lisa Cavazuti. It is another of the pieces suggesting that the march, mob action and failure of federal authorities to protect Congress with adequate security stemmed from a high-level plot to overthrow the elected government and certified November elections, not just the enthusiasm of ordinary Trump supporters recruited for diversion.
The robocalls story has strong ties to Alabama and the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) -- and its affiliate, the ironically named Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF.) Alabama AG Steve Marshall is head of the RLDF and claims he had no knowledge of the group's efforts to promote the Jan. 6 protest. Jessica Medeiros Garrison, one-time campaign manager and alleged mistress (per former State Sen. Lowell Barron) to former AG Luther Strange -- and once an of counsel attorney at scandal-plagued Balch and Bingham -- is a former executive director of RAGA.
As for the Palast story, it unmasks Ali Alexander with surgical precision--and notes his incendiary role in working with the GOP on the Georgia Senate run-off. Palast writes under the headline "Why did the Georgia GOP team up with a Riot Instigator? “WE’LL LIGHT THE WHOLE SH*T ON FIRE!”
The star of the GOP’s get-out-the-vote door-knocking program in the Georgia Senate run-off, standing next to Alex Jones, was blasting his threat through a megaphone in front of the Governor’s home. “We’ll light the whole sh*t on fire!”
Ali Alexander’s threat in December would become all too real when he repeated his performance on January 6 in Washington, DC.
In the US Capitol that day, looking over the scene of screams, teargas, and mayhem, Alexander said, “I warned you this would happen.”
Yes, he did. Nevertheless, the Georgia Republican Party’s Metro Atlanta Field Director Kevin Mason was more than happy to team up with Alexander. With his huge reach within the Alt-Right, Alexander could bring in a swarm of volunteers for the door-knocking campaign they desperately needed to hold back the looming Democratic victory in the US Senate run-offs.
The far-right celebrity was the magnet to draw scores of young enthusiasts to a January 3 training session at the DoubleTree Hotel in Roswell, an Atlanta suburb. The Palast Investigative Fund’s photojournalist, Zach D. Roberts, a specialist in white fringe violence who’d been tracking Alexander’s pitch for mayhem across the nation, signed up.
Roberts, who joined up through Alexander’s website, StopTheSteal.US, was quite surprised to receive instructions, not from the right-wing group, but from Daniel George of the National Republican Senate Committee.
Why would the GOP team up with Alexander, a leader of the Stop the Steal extremists, especially after his well-broadcast warning of violence? The threat was not out of character. There are widely circulated films of Alexander with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. And there is a video chat with Alexander yucking it up with a right-wing jokester holding up a giant flag with a Nazi Swastika flag.
That is, if “Alexander” is his real name. He adopted it after his reported conviction for a felony crime under the name “Ali Akbar.”
Alexander is a shapeshifter, sometimes the eye-swiveling crazy, sometimes the dapper guest for Alt-Right podcasts. We cannot link to his most incendiary outlets such as WildProtest.com because they’ve been taken down for inciting violence.
Palast had questions, so he sought answers:
Curious, I called both the Georgia Republican Party’s Field Director, who worked with Alexander, as well as the National Republican Senate Committee to ask why they’d join forces with a known Neo-Fascist instigator of violence. So far, my calls have gone un-returned.
In Georgia, with Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes, a known white nationalist, Alexander hid nothing of his hopes for Washington on January 6. “Either they take Trump, prove that they won or they’re not going to hand them back the country again. We’ll light the whole sh*t on fire!”
Looking down on the Capitol, as the mayhem unfolded, he told his Twitter audience, “I don’t disavow this,” but later insisted, without evidence, that the Capitol violence was committed by slyly disguised Antifa rioters.
To fire up its base, the GOP is apparently willing to cavort with the violence-threatening fringe. The Grand Old Party dismissed Alexander’s warnings. And they also forgot John Kennedy’s warning that “Those who ride the tail of the tiger soon end up inside.”
As ugly as the Capitol riot became, it could have been much worse, Kreig reports:
A major new factor over the weekend was increasing recognition of the brutality and scope of the pro-Trump mob's action. It resulted in the murder of a Capitol Hill policeman, the wounding of an estimated 50 others, plus the deaths of four participants the protest-turned-riot that ostensibly began with a Trump speech to a crowd assembled on the south side of the White House. The crowd then marched east on Pennsylvania Avenue a little over a mile to reach the historic Capitol building.Most shocking to many has been new evidence of the brutality of some protesters — including discovery of pipe bombs, explosives and plastic "ties" that terrorists would use to take hostages.
There exists also significant but still-evolving evidence that parts of the mob action have long been planned by Trump, top aides and allies scattered through government, quasi-government and private organizations, including Republican office-holder funded by major corporations that are now facing heat for how their political donations were being used.
