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Far-right activist who says Mo Brooks helped plan Jan. 6 rally will testify

Ali Alexander, the man behind the Stop the Steal group, said he will comply with the congressional subpoena.

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Alabama., speaks Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, at a rally in support of President Donald Trump called the "Save America Rally." (AP PHOTO/JACQUELYN MARTIN)

The far-right activist who has said Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, helped him plan the Jan. 6 rally outside the U.S. Capitol will comply with a congressional subpoena and provide testimony in December. 

Ali Alexander, the key figure behind Stop the Steal, the entity responsible for the Stop the Steal rally outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 that turned deadly, said on Saturday he’d comply and give testimony, first reported by Business Insider

The chairman of the U.S. House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in an Oct. 7  letter to Alexander said the committee was subpoenaing him requesting documents from him and ordered Alexander to attend a deposition. 

“The only reason I’m going is because I don’t want to go to jail,” Alexander said in a Telegram post, according to Business Insider. “So under the threat of imprisonment and spending tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers, I will be privately deposed before this committee in December.”

Days prior to the riot Alexander posted a video in which he named Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, and Arizona U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs as helping him plan the Jan. 6 rally aimed at pressuring Congress as members counted electoral votes. 

“So I want to let you guys know how we’re responding, because I was the person who came up with the January 6th idea, with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks and then-Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said in the live stream video, which was archived by Jason Paladino, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight. 

“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress, while they were voting, so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” he said.

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Brooks’s spokesman told APR in January that Brooks did not plan the Jan. 6 rally with Alexander. A Rolling Stone article cited two people who helped organize the rally and other demonstrations who said Brooks or his staff helped organize the Jan. 6 rally and a series of demonstrations in several states that occurred between the election and the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the capitol. 

In response to the Rolling Stone article, Brooks told AL.com on Oct. 25 that he could not say whether his staff interacted with two Rolling Stone sources because he had not spoken to them about it.

“Quite frankly, I’d be proud of them if they did help organize a First Amendment rally to protest voter fraud and election theft,” Brooks said of his staff, AL.com reported. 

Brooks gave a speech at that Jan. 6 rally near the Capitol in which he told the crowd it was time to start “taking down names and kicking ass.” Brooks was wearing body armor when he gave that speech. 

“If you’re talking about someone participating in meetings, setting the agenda, raising the money, I don’t know of anything that suggests my staff as doing that stuff,” Brooks told The Montgomery Advertiser on Oct. 25. 

At least one top organizer of the Jan. 6 rally, Kylie Kremer with the March for Trump group, used hard-to-trace burner cell phones when speaking with top White House and Trump campaign officials during the planning, according to Rolling Stone, which cited three unnamed sources who were involved with the rally. 

“They were planning all kinds of stuff, marches and rallies. Any conversation she had with the White House or Trump family took place on those phones,” one of those sources said of Kylie Kremer, Rolling Stone reported.

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Eddie Burkhalter is a reporter at the Alabama Political Reporter. You can email him at [email protected] or reach him via Twitter.

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