Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/547

 no leverage." Fuentes then asked: "What can you and I do to a state legislator, besides kill them?" He then quickly added: "Although we should not do that. I am not advising that, but I mean, what else can you do, right?

On January 5th, Casey advertised the marches in Washington, DC on his Telegram channel and provided repeated updates on the logistics of getting into the city. Casey also spoke to his followers about the next day's rally on a livestream on DLive. As discussed in Chapter 8, the Groypers clearly played a role in the January 6th attack. They even planted their flag in the inner chambers of the U.S. Capitol. Fuentes crowed about the attack the day after, tweeting: "The Capitol Siege was fucking awesome and I'm not going to pretend it wasn't." In another tweet on January 7th, Fuentes wrote: "For a brief time yesterday the US Capital [sic] was once again occupied by The American People, before the regime wrested back control."

Despite his boasts on Twitter, Fuentes exercised his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to provide information about his organizing activities to the Select Committee.

The Oath Keepers were not the only anti-government extremists who viewed President Trump's December 19th, tweet as a call to arms. Militias around the country were similarly inspired to act. "People were retweeting it right and left. . . . I saw people retweeting it, talking about, yeah, it's going to be crazy, going to be a huge crowd," Michael Lee Wells, a militia leader in North Carolina, told the Select Committee. Members of militias known as the "Three Percenters" were electrified.

The Three Percenters believe that three percent of American colonists successfully overthrew the British during the American Revolution. This is not true. Far more than a tiny fraction of the colonial population fought in or supported the Revolutionary War. Regardless, this ahistorical belief has become an organizing myth for militias around modern-day America.

As with the Oath Keepers, many Three Percenters have turned against the U.S. Government, such that they equate it with the British monarchy and believe it should be overthrown. The movement does not have one, centralized hierarchy. Instead, semi-autonomous branches organize and run themselves. The Three Percenter cause was growing prior to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Jeremy Liggett, a militia leader in Florida, told the Select Committee it was "trendy" in far-right circles to identify with the Three Percenter movement in the months leading up to January 6th.

President Trump tapped into this well of anti-government extremism. The President's repeated insistence that the election had been stolen resonated with militia members who were already inclined to believe in shady