Donald Trump supporters charged in Capitol riots full of extremist rhetoric

Former President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate from the charges of incitement of an insurrection that was the Capitol riots last January 6. With more and more rioters getting arrested and charged, court filings have revealed that the rioters were spewing far-right extremist rhetoric.

Court filings on more and more rioters that have been arrested by law enforcement revealed text messages from the radicalized Trump supporters suggesting getting a boat to transport their arms across the Potomac River by January 6. Authorities have dismissed the messages as “idle talk” as during investigations, officials found over a dozen invoices for live ammunition worth over $750 and a firearm that was designed to look like a mobile phone in the home of one Thomas Caldwell in Virginia. Caldwell was charged with conspiring with the members of a far-right extremist militia group Oath Keepers.

With over 200 federal cases that came from the Capitol riots, officials found proof that the insurrectionists were inspired by a mix of conspiracy theories and/or extremist ideologies. The FBI has linked at least 40 rioters to having violent or extremist rhetoric on social media and on other forums before the siege, during, and after the riots. In many of those cases, according to the Associated Press, the defendants repeatedly made the same false claims as Trump during his election loss to Joe Biden. Some of the defendants were found to have posted death threats towards Democrats in messages or their social media posts. Others, however, were caught up in conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Trump may have been acquitted by the Senate, he still faces ongoing criminal investigations from a number of authorities. The latest suit to be made against the former president comes from Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, suing Trump for incitement of insurrection. Thompson’s suit is believed to be the first filed by a member of Congress, and also names as defendants Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, and the far-right organizations Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

“All I wanted to do was do my job, and the insurrection that occurred prevented me from doing that,” Thompson said to the press on Tuesday. Thompson filed the lawsuit in a federal court in Washington under a law called the Ku Klux Klan Act.