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Ties between Trump allies and extremist groups to be focus of Jan. 6 panel hearing
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Ties between Trump allies and extremist groups to be focus of Jan. 6 panel hearing

The Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday plans to demonstrate how right-wing militia groups that led the assault on the U.S.

Politics

The Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday plans to demonstrate how right-wing militia groups that led the assault on the U.S. Capitol were connected to key Trump allies, including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who were at the center of the plot to overturn the 2020 election.

“We’ll show how some of these right-wing extremist groups who came to D.C. and led the attack on the Capitol had ties to Trump associates, including Roger Stone and General Flynn,” a committee aide said Monday on a conference call with reporters.

“And we know that both members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with seditious conspiracy by the DOJ in relation to their actions on Jan. 6.”

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The hearing will also include clips of taped testimony from Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, multiple sources told NBC News. Cipollone met with the panel on Friday for around eight hours and was involved in a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting at the White House that included members of Trump’s outside and internal White House legal teams, as well as the president.

In linking the domestic extremist groups and the Trump inner circle that was aggressively working to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, the committee is making the case that actions by President Donald Trump and his allies resulted in the violence at the Capitol, which claimed the lives of both police officers and Trump supporters.

Aides said the hearing will also reveal ties between some Trump associates and the QAnon movement, which subscribes to a set of bizarre, sometimes antisemitic conspiracy theories in which Trump is viewed as a savior fighting the evil forces of the deep state.

Tuesday’s hearing, the committee’s seventh public hearing in this series, will be led by Reps. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md. A former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, Jason Van Tatenhove, is among several witnesses who are expected to testify live, although the Jan. 6 panel declined to name them for security reasons.