Jan 6 rioter blames Trump for Capitol attack: ‘We were just following what he said’

Trump supporter details how president’s words had great effects on crowd

Stephen Ayres, left, and Jason Van Tatenhove at Tuesday’s hearing (Getty Images)

A man who earlier this year pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to the Capitol riot testified on Tuesday that he went to the attack at Donald Trump’s direction.

Stephen Ayres told committee members during his testimony that he had never planned to go to the Capitol itself before Donald Trump’s rhetoric during his speech directing his supporters to march to the building and “fight” for his election fraud conspiracies.

“Basically the president, he got everybody riled up, told everybody to head on down, so we basically [were] just following what he said,” Mr Ayres testified.

He added that he remained hopeful throughout the day that Mr Trump and his allies were planning a “big reveal” that would result in his defeat being overturned. That never happened, and eventually rioters dispersed from the Capitol grounds after the president belatedly released a video calling on them to do so.

Of that video, Mr Ayres said: “If he would have [released] that earlier in the day...we wouldn’t be in this bad of a situation.”

The testimony was a powerful reminder of Mr Trump’s responsibility stemming from that day; the president and his supporters have, in the months since the attack, sought to explain away why the former president persisted with efforts to overturn the election and encourage his supporters to riot, as if such a decision was an inevitability and it was merely the resonsibilty of everyone else in Washington to respond to his whims.

The ex-president has swiped at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, blaming her for not having greater prescience and being able to predict that thousands of Trump supporters would attack the Capitol in an unprecedented assault. And he has also sought to question why lawmakers did not take greater actions to spur law enforcement to action, even though it is now clear that Mr Trump was specificly refusing during the attack to do just that.

Much of the criticism aimed at Mr Trump regarding his personal actions on Jan 6 has pointed to his refusal to call off his supporters for hours after the attack began as evidence that he supported the rioters’ aims. New testimony from his aides in recent weeks have backed up that assertion.

It’s also clear that the White House spent hours ignoring desperate pleas from Republican members of Congress for action; many of those same members would later publicly vote against any effort to investigate the attack.

Mr Ayres was one of many ex-Trump supporters to express regret about how Jan 6 played out and on Tuesday testified that his decision to follow the president’s commands and believe his lies about the 2020 election has seriously cost his family; he is set to be sentenced for disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building in September.

Mr Ayres said that since his role in the Capitol riot, he has lost his job and had to sell his home.

On Tuesday he expressed anger at Mr Trump for continuing to spread false claims about the 2020 election and called for the former president and his team to be “held accountable”, blaming their “snake oil” promises for hoodwinking “millions” of voters.