With his facial tattoos and rocker-style jean jacket, Jason Van Tatenhove stood out among the buttoned-up crowd on Capitol Hill at Tuesday’s committee hearing into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Van Tatenhove spent years as a senior spokesman and close aide to Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes, who faces seditious conspiracy charges in connection with the violence. The former insider was perhaps a risky choice as a witness, as he had left the group around 2018 and apparently had no unique insight into its actions in the run-up to the attack.
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Instead, Van Tatenhove’s role was to lay out the apocalyptic worldview that underpins far-right movements like the Oath Keepers, which he says have been dreaming up and training for the kind of high-profile insurgency that has played out in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency. His grim warnings about the potential for future violence also underscored the House committee’s central theme that Jan. 6 was not a single event but part of an extremist agenda to undermine public trust in democratic institutions and make political violence more palatable.
“I think we were extremely lucky that there wasn’t more bloodshed because the potential was there from the beginning,” Van Tatenhove told lawmakers.
Tuesday’s hearing revealed little new intelligence about the key extremist movements involved in the Capitol attack, but highlighted how Trump’s rhetoric of an immediate “fight” with political opponents on a “wild” day was taken as an order to mobilize. Van Tatenhove spoke alongside another witness, Jan. 6 rioter Steven Ayres, who testified that he and other Trump supporters acted directly in response to the president’s tweets. Committee members described Trump’s posts as a call to action for his millions of followers, even a “call to arms.”
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The opening statement by Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Med.) described extremist organizing as one of three rings of attack that day, along with political maneuvering inside the White House and the “large and angry” crowd gathered outside. The middle ring, Raskin said, is where “members of homegrown extremist groups formed an alliance both online and in person to coordinate a massive effort to storm, invade and occupy the Capitol.”
Sam Jackson, an assistant professor at the University at Albany who wrote a 2020 book about Oath Keepers, called the committee’s presentation was “fascinating,” but said he was eager to hear more details about the planned extremist groups in advance, especially coordination between rival extremist groups and any potential ties to members of the Trump administration.
Bringing Jackson said it is “not a silver bullet that solves the problem of domestic extremism.” Although some abusers may be intimidated by prosecution by the federal government those who participated in the siege of the Capitol, the risk to more unrest remains high because state and local politicians openly repeat far-right talking points and demonize democratic institutions and political opponents, he said.
“We shouldn’t fixate on the Oath Keepers as an organization,” Jackson said. “We need to recognize them as a specific example of a wider phenomenon. So even if Oath Keepers is Stewart Rhodes, and even if Stewart Rhodes is convicted of seditious conspiracy and spends 20 years in prison, there are other actors out there who won’t be deterred by that.”
Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes to remain in jail awaiting trial on seditious conspiracy charge
Van Tatenhove told the commission that he first came into contact with the Oath Keepers during high-profile clashes with the federal government. He spent about three years promoting the group before becoming alarmed when he witnessed the embrace of white nationalists and other “blatant racists.” Van Tattenhove said he finally broke with Rhodes after hearing senior Oath officials deny the Holocaust.
The vilification of the “other side” that is now common in this polarized political environment has been ingrained in the Oath Keepers for a long time, Van Tatenhove said. He testified that he once refused a request from Rhodes to create a deck of playing cards of Democratic enemies like those issued by the Pentagon showing high-value targets in the US-led invasion of Iraq. Rhodes wanted Hillary Clinton to be the Queen of Hearts, Van Tatenhove said.
Van Tattenhove summed up the group as a vanity project for Rhodes, who he said imagined himself as a powerful paramilitary leader, a description that scoffed at other former members who said that for all his bravado, Rhodes commanded few actual forces.
Still, Van Tatenhove stressed, the group should be considered dangerous because of its ability to widely disseminate violent messages and radicalize its followers. And he said thinly veiled tweets like Trump’s were essentially a “nod” to Rhodes and his ilk that it was time to act.
The January 6 Uprising
The House Special Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 riot held a series of high-profile hearings in June. To the commission the next public hearing is scheduled for July 12.
Congressional Hearings: The House Committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol held a series of hearings to share its findings with the US public. The sixth hearing included explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide.
Will there be a fee? The committee could press charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in the attack, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in an interview.
What we know about what Trump did on January 6: New details emerged when Hutchinson testified before the commission and shared what she saw and heard on January 6.
The Rebellion: On January 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. Five people died that day or shortly thereafter, and 140 police officers were attacked.
Inside the siege: During the riot, rioters came dangerously close to breaking into the building’s inner sanctums while lawmakers were still inside, including former Vice President Mike Pence. The Washington Post examined text messages, photos and videos to create a video timeline of what happened on January 6.
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