Before the Capitol Riot, requires money and speak of revolution

Written by David D. Kirkpatrick, Mike McIntire and Christiaan Triebert
Keith Lee, an Air Force veteran and former police detective, spent the morning of Jan. 6 casing the entrances to the U.S. Capitol.
In on-line movies, the 41-year-old Texan identified the flimsiness of the fencing. He cheered the arrival, lengthy earlier than President Donald Trump’s rally on the different finish of the mall, of far-right militiamen encircling the constructing. Then, armed with a bullhorn, Lee referred to as out for the mob to hurry in, till his voice echoed from the dome of the Rotunda.
Yet even within the warmth of the occasion, Lee paused for some impromptu fundraising.
“If you couldn’t make the trip, give five to 10 bucks,” he informed his viewers, in search of donations for the authorized prices of two jailed “patriots,” a frontrunner of the far-right Proud Boys and an ally who had clashed with police throughout an armed incursion at Oregon’s statehouse.
Much continues to be unknown concerning the planning and financing of the storming of the Capitol, aiming to problem Trump’s electoral defeat. What is evident is that it was pushed, partly, by a largely advert hoc community of low-budget agitators, together with far-right militants, Christian conservatives and ardent adherents of the QAnon conspiracy concept. Lee is all three. And the sheer breadth of the motion he joined suggests it could be far harder to confront than a single group.
In the months main as much as the riot, Lee had helped set up a sequence of pro-Trump automobile caravans across the nation, together with one which quickly blockaded a Biden marketing campaign bus in Texas and one other that briefly shut down a Hudson River bridge within the New York City suburbs. To assist pay for dozens of caravans to fulfill on the Jan. 6 rally, he had teamed with a web-based fundraiser in Tampa, Florida, who secured cash from small donors and claimed to go out tens of 1000’s of {dollars}.
Theirs was considered one of many grassroots efforts to convey Trump supporters to the Capitol, typically amid requires revolution, if not outright violence. On a web-based ride-sharing discussion board, Patriot Caravans for 45, greater than 4,000 members coordinated journey from as far-off as California and South Dakota. Some 2,000 individuals donated not less than $181,700 to a different website, Wild Protest, leaving messages urging ralliers to halt the certification of the vote.
United States Secret Service officers verify the inauguration stage on the Capitol in Washington on Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)
Oath Keepers, a self-identified militia whose members breached the Capitol, had solicited donations on-line to cowl “gas, airfare, hotels, food and equipment.” Many others raised cash by crowdfunding website GoFundMe or, extra typically, its explicitly Christian counterpart, GiveSendGo. (On Monday, cash switch service PayPal stopped working with GiveSendGo due to its hyperlinks to the violence on the Capitol.)
A couple of distinguished firebrands, an opaque pro-Trump nonprofit and not less than one rich donor had campaigned for weeks to amplify the president’s false claims about his defeat, stoking the anger of his supporters.
A chief sponsor of many rallies main as much as the riot, together with the one that includes the president Jan. 6, was Women for America First, a conservative nonprofit. Its leaders embody Amy Kremer, who rose to prominence within the Tea Party motion, and her daughter, Kylie Jane Kremer, 30. She began a “Stop the Steal” Facebook web page on Nov. 4. More than 320,000 individuals signed up in lower than a day, however the platform promptly shut it down for fears of inciting violence. The group has denied any violent intent.
By far probably the most seen monetary backer of Women for America First’s efforts was Mike Lindell, a founding father of the MyPillow bedding firm, recognized on a now-defunct web site as one of many “generous sponsors” of a bus tour selling Trump’s try to overturn the election. In addition, he was an vital supporter of Right Side Broadcasting, an obscure pro-Trump tv community that offered blanket protection of Trump rallies after the vote, and a podcast run by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that additionally sponsored the bus tour.
“I put everything I had into the last three weeks, financial and everything,” Lindell mentioned in a mid-December tv interview.
In a tweet the identical month, he urged Trump to “impose martial law” to grab ballots and voting machines. Through a consultant, Lindell mentioned he solely supported the bus tour “prior to Dec. 14” and was not a monetary sponsor of any occasions after that, together with the rally Jan. 6. He continues to face by the president’s claims and met with Trump on the White House on Friday.
By late December, the president himself was injecting volatility into the organizing efforts, tweeting an invite to a Washington rally that may happen as Congress gathered to certify the election outcomes.
“Be there, will be wild!” Trump wrote.
The subsequent day, a brand new web site, Wild Protest, was registered and rapidly emerged as an organizing hub for the president’s most zealous supporters. It seemed to be related to Ali Alexander, a conspiracy theorist who vowed to cease the certification by “marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of patriots to sit their butts in D.C. and close that city down.”
Alexander couldn’t be reached for remark, however in a video posted to Twitter final week, he denied any accountability for the violence.

While different teams like Women for America First had been selling the rally the place Trump would converse — on the Ellipse, about 1 mile west of the Capitol — the Wild Protest web site directed Trump supporters to a distinct location: the doorsteps of Congress.
Wild Protest linked to a few accommodations with discounted charges and one other website for coordinating journey plans. It additionally raised donations from 1000’s of people, in keeping with archived variations of an online portal used to gather them. The web site has since been taken down, and it isn’t clear what the cash was used for.
“The time for words has passed, action alone will save our Republic,” a consumer donating $250 wrote, calling congressional certification of the vote “treasonous.”
Another contributor gave $47 and posted: “Fight to win our country back using whatever means necessary.”
Lee, who sought to lift legal-defense cash the morning earlier than the riot, didn’t reply to requests for remark. He has typically likened supporters of overturning the election to the signers of the Declaration of Independence and has mentioned he’s keen to present his life for the trigger.
A gross sales supervisor laid off at an tools firm due to the pandemic, he has mentioned that he grew up as a conservative Christian in East Texas. Air Force information present that he enlisted a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults and served for 4 years, leaving as a senior airman. Later, in 2011 and 2012, he labored for a non-public safety firm at a U.S. navy base in Afghanistan.
In between, he additionally labored as a police detective in McKinney, Texas.
He had by no means been politically energetic, he has mentioned. But throughout Trump’s presidency, Lee started to immerse himself within the on-line QAnon conspiracy concept. Its adherents maintain that Trump is attempting to save lots of America from a shadowy ring of pedophiles who management the federal government and the Democratic Party. Lee has mentioned that resonated along with his expertise coping with youngster crimes as a police officer.
His energetic help for Trump started in August when he organized a caravan of drivers from round Texas to point out their help for the president by circling the capital, Austin. That led him to discovered an internet site, MAGA Drag the Interstate, to arrange Trump caravans across the nation.
By December, Lee had achieved sufficient prominence that he was included in a roster of audio system at a information convention previous a “March for Trump” rally in Washington.
“We are at this precipice” of “good versus evil,” Lee declared. “I am going to fight for my president. I am going to fight for what is right.”
He threw himself into corralling fellow “patriots” to fulfill in Washington on Jan. 6, and on the finish of final month he started linking his web site with the Tampa organizer to lift cash for members’ journey.
The fundraiser, who has recognized himself as an online designer named Thad Williams, has mentioned in a podcast that sexual abuse as a baby finally led him to the web world of QAnon.
While others “made of steel” are reduce out to be “warriors against evil” and “covered in the blood and sweat of that part,” Williams mentioned, he sees himself as extra of “a chaplain and a healer.” In 2019, he arrange an internet site to lift cash for QAnon believers to journey to Trump rallies. He couldn’t be reached for remark.
By the gathering on the Capitol, he claimed to have raised and distributed not less than $30,000 for transportation prices. Expression of thanks posted on Twitter seem to substantiate that he allotted cash, and a day after the assault on-line providers PayPal and Stripe shut down his accounts.
Lee’s MAGA Drag the Interstate website, for its half, mentioned it had organized automobile caravans of greater than 600 individuals certain for the rally. It used military-style shorthand to designate routes in several areas throughout the nation, from Alpha to Zulu, and a brand on the positioning mixed Trump’s distinctive coiffure with Pepe the Frog, a logo of the alt-right that has been utilized by white supremacists.
Participants traded messages about the place to park collectively in a single day on the streets of Washington. Some organized midnight rendezvous at freeway relaxation stops or Waffle House eating places to drive collectively on the morning of the rally.
On the night of Jan. 5, Lee broadcast a video podcast from a crowd of chanting Trump supporters within the Houston airport, ready to board a flight to Washington.
“We are there for a show of force,” he promised, suggesting he anticipated avenue fights even earlier than daybreak. “Gonna see if we can do a little playing in the night.”
A co-host of the podcast — a self-described Army veteran from Washington state — appealed for donations to lift $250,000 bail cash for Chandler Pappas, 27.
Two weeks earlier in Salem, Oregon, throughout a protest towards COVID-19 restrictions, Pappas had sprayed six law enforcement officials with mace whereas main an incursion into the state Capitol constructing and carrying a semi-automatic rifle, in keeping with a police report. Pappas, whose lawyer didn’t return a cellphone name in search of remark, had been linked to the far-right Proud Boys and an allied native group referred to as Patriot Prayer.
“American citizens feel like they’ve been attacked. Fear’s reaction is anger, anger’s reaction is patriotism and voilà — you get a war,” mentioned Lee’s co-host, who gave his title as Rampage.
He directed listeners to donate to the bail fund by GiveSendGo and thanked them for serving to to lift $100,000 by the identical website for the authorized protection of Enrique Tarrio, a frontrunner of the Proud Boys who’s accused of vandalizing a traditionally Black church in Washington.
By 10:45 a.m. the following day, greater than an hour earlier than Trump spoke, Lee was again on-line broadcasting footage of himself on the Capitol.
“If you died today and you went to heaven, can you look George Washington in the face and say that you’ve fought for this country?” he requested.
By midday, he was reporting that “backup” was already arriving, bypassing the Trump speech and rally. The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers had been among the many teams that went on to the Capitol.
“Guys, we got the Three Percent here! The Three Percent here that loves this country and wants to fight!” Lee reported a bit later, referring to a different militant group. “We need to surround this place.”
Backed by surging crowds, Lee had made his means into the Rotunda and by 3 p.m. — after a fellow assailant had been shot, law enforcement officials had been injured and native authorities had been pleading for assist — he was again exterior utilizing his megaphone to induce others into the constructing.
“If we do it together,” he insisted, “there’s no violence!”
When he knew that lawmakers had evacuated, he declared victory: “We have done our job,” he shouted.