“Trump has called all patriots”: 210 Jan. 6th criminal defendants say Trump incited them

Two hundred ten defendants from 40 states and the District of Columbia who were charged for their participation in the January 6th insurrection have said they were answering Donald Trump’s calls when they traveled to Washington and joined the violent attack on the Capitol. CREW’s examination of court filings, transcripts, and news items regarding defendants in January 6th cases shows that defendants—ranging from convicted seditionists such as members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to individual members of the public—considered Trump their leader and believed they were following his lead by joining the insurrection.

In letters to federal judges, federal court filings, and appeals to the public, these defendants and their legal representatives have made it clear that Trump’s repeated false statements and calls to action drove their actions that day. These findings bolster those of the January 6th Select Committee which found Trump was the “central cause” of the attack on the Capitol.

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The defendants who argued that Trump called them to the Capitol and to violence on January 6th were residents of 40 states, from Hawaii to Florida, and Maine to California. Far from a convenient protest of residents from DC and neighboring states (only 12 of the 210 defendants came from Virginia, Maryland or DC), this was a mass mobilization. 

On December 19, 2020 Trump tweeted, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump’s tweet, and others like it, generated a massive response from his supporters, who received them as “marching orders.” Kelly Meggs, a Florida member of the Oath Keepers, wrote in a message around the time of the post, “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC pack your shit!!” 

Another defendant wrote in her group chat, “[W]e’re going back to Washington January 6th. Trump has called all patriots. If the electors don’t elect, we will be forced into civil war.”

While many rank-and-file Trump supporters responded to Trump’s rallying cries in the run-up to January 6th as calls to action that ultimately led to the attack, members of at least two hate groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, understood them to be direct orders. According to CREW’s analysis, 18 members of these groups were following perceived instructions from Trump to come to D.C. and attack on January 6th. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and his allies repeatedly called for a “violent overthrow” of the government. Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio coordinated directly with the Trump campaign to have members of the Proud Boy attend the Stop the Steal rally. 

Both groups have a history of violence and intimidation, and it was apparent that both groups prepared for violence to occur on January 6th. In addition to calling for a violent overthrow of the government, Rhodes shared with Tarrio, Roger Stone, Stop the Steal campaign organizer Ali Alexander and others a “proposal for storming Congress.” On January 6th itself, Oath Keeper members staged an “arsenal” of weapons in nearby hotels and came to DC in tactical gear. Fourteen members of these two groups have pleaded guilty to or been convicted for seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the insurrection.

While Trump had already convinced members of these groups to attack the Capitol before even arriving in Washington, many who came to the city at Trump’s request were finally convinced to join the attack by his direct appeals to the crowd at his Stop the Steal rally on the morning of January 6th. During that speech, Trump went off script to tell the massive crowd, many of whom he knew were armed and prepared for violence, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol” to “fight like hell.” According to CREW’s analysis, of the 210 people charged for crimes committed on January 6th who said they were answering Donald Trump’s calls, 120 specifically cited Trump’s remarks as the reason they went to the Capitol. That does not include rally-goers who were incited by Trump and swarmed the Capitol but were not arrested. As a New Mexico judge determined last year in a case removing a January 6th participant from public office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, also known as the Disqualification Clause, members of the mob that did not individually engage in violence or enter the Capitol building were nonetheless critical to the insurrection and contributed to law enforcement’s difficulty in regaining control of the Capitol. 

Many of the most violent insurrectionists acknowledged that they were incited by Trump. Two members of the mob who led life-threatening attacks against Metropolitan Police officers Daniel Hodges and Michael Fanone both claimed that they were incited to violence by Trump. Fanone’s attacker, Daniel Rodriguez, said, “I thought [Trump] was calling for help. I thought we were doing the right thing.” 

Nicholas Languerand, who assaulted officers with a traffic barrier, pepper spray can, and other objects, posted a “#MessageFor45” on Twitter four days after Trump’s “will be wild” tweet, saying “We’re picking up your messages, and we’re listening. We’re ready to do this thing. We’re ready to fight to defend our republic against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Douglas Austin Jensen, who chased Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman up a flight of stairs inside the Capitol, told investigators, “Trump posted make sure you’re there, January 6 for the rally in Washington, D.C. … and then he got us all fired up to go to [the Capitol].”

Maybe most illustrative of Trump’s control of the mob is that many who violently resisted leaving the Capitol grounds for hours as Trump egged them on immediately left when Trump, finally caving to pressure after his attempt to disrupt the transfer of power failed, instructed them to do so. As defendant Stephen Ayres told the January 6th committee, Trump’s 4:17 pm tweet telling those at the Capitol to “go home” finally dispersed the crowd. Ayres had gone to the Capitol because, as he put it, “the President got everybody riled up and told everybody to head on down. So we basically was just following what he said.” 

Among those known to have left in response to Trump’s tweet are “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley and Garret Miller, who threatened a member of Congress on Twitter shortly after the attack. That evening, Trump celebrated and justified his mob’s violence, tweeting “These are the things and events that happen” when a so-called election victory is “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots. … Remember this day forever!”

The January 6th Select Committee minced no words in laying blame for the insurrection directly on Donald Trump. The Committee found that “the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.” The Committee’s report documented in painstaking detail how, in the months leading up to Election Day in 2020, Trump began laying the groundwork at his rallies and online that any election results that did not ultimately declare him the winner should be rejected and would be the result of massive voter fraud. Once it was clear he had lost, Trump attempted to pressure, coerce, and intimidate government officials at every level to help him unlawfully stay in office. He continued to falsely claim that the election had been stolen, despite top officials in his administration and campaign repeatedly objecting and presenting him with evidence of the contrary. 

Trump’s campaign devised a plan to reverse the outcome of the election using fake electors, which the January 6th Committee referred to as “an unlawful, unprecedented and destructive break from the electoral college process” that “led directly to the violence that occurred on January 6th.” Ultimately, the January 6th Select Committee pointed to these actions and the former president’s repeated callings that urged his supporters to come to Washington, DC, to “stop the steal” as the catalyst for the insurrection. He used violent rhetoric to whip his supporters into a frenzy and then directed them to march down to the Capitol to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history. 

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. Based on his actions surrounding the insurrection, Donald Trump is disqualified from ever holding public office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and who then engaged in insurrection or gave aid or comfort to insurrectionists from holding state or federal office. Protecting our democracy means preventing those who tried to overthrow our government on January 6th from trying to lead it. This is not merely a policy preference; it is a constitutional imperative.

This table includes information on all those defendants incited by Trump: 

Header insurrection photo courtesy of Nate Gowdy