Two and a half weeks later, Gosar was repeating baseless claims about stolen ballots and rigged voting machines in a speech to Congress when he was interrupted by chaos in the House floor. Within minutes, lawmakers were being pulled out of the chambers as rioters advanced into the heart of American democracy – spurred on by the same rhetoric that Gosar and some of his Republican colleagues had defended.
The first part of Gosar’s prediction, at least, came true: the Capitol had been conquered.
“We are the four guys who created an event on January 6,” Alexander said in a video in December. “It was to create momentum and pressure and then, the next day, to change the hearts and minds of the people of Congress who were not yet decided or who saw everyone from outside and said: ‘I cannot be on the other side of this mob.’
Brooks, a staunch conservative and one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, was one of the first speakers at the National Mall rally that preceded the uproar, and his fierce language helped set the tone for what came next.
“Today is the day when American patriots start taking names and blasting!” the six-term Republican shouted at the assembled protesters. “Our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives … Are you willing to do the same?”
Hours later, when some of the same people Brooks had spoken to were smashing windows on the United States Capitol, the lawmaker tweeted live as he and his colleagues were evacuated from the City Council.
He later argued in a statement on Tuesday that his comments could not have been the cause of the violence. “Nobody at the rally interpreted my remarks as anything other than what they were: an incentive conversation after the conservatives kicking their asses suffered in the 2020 elections,” Brooks wrote.
“My brother took an oath to defend the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies,” the congressman’s younger brother, Tim Gosar, a private investigator in Fort Collins, Colorado, told CNN this week. “And he blatantly broke that oath.”
Gosar’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
At the Arizona Stop the Steal rally with Gosar, Alexander played a video that he said Biggs, the president of conservative Freedom Caucus, had sent to the crowd.
A Biggs spokesman told CNN that the congressman had recorded the video at the request of Gosar’s team and had never worked with Alexander.
“Congressman Biggs is not aware of having heard of or meeting Alexander at any time – let alone working with him to organize part of a planned protest,” said the spokesman. “He had no contact with protesters or protesters, nor did he encourage or encourage the demonstration or protests.”
Other Republican congressmen also painted their efforts to oppose Biden’s victory in radical historical terms. In the days before the riot, freshman representatives Laura Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called Wednesday’s election certification a “1776 moment.”
And speaking at the same rally as Brooks and Trump, North Carolina deputy Madison Cawthorn, another newly elected member, told the crowd that “Republicans are hiding and not fighting” and “they are trying to silence their voice”.
“I want you to sing with me so loudly that the cowards in Washington DC that I serve with can hear you,” he said.
A spokesman for Cawthorn said the congressman condemned the violence during the riot and criticized Trump for “directing the protesters to the Capitol.”
“Mo Brooks and others like him should resign,” Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, told CNN on Monday. “They should have the decency to resign. They do not belong to this institution. They have shown contempt for democracy and freedom.”
Denver Riggleman, a moderate Republican who lost his primary nomination last year to a more conservative challenger, said he thought Republican leaders needed to have a “come to Jesus” moment and hold the congressmen who ignited the flames of the insurrection. But he said he doubted that the Republican Party base would punish members like Gosar or Brooks when they returned to the polls.
“These elected officials are likely to be re-elected, and that is the problem we have now,” said Riggleman. “I think that’s what scares me the most.”
CNN’s Nelli Black, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Ben Naughton and Bob Ortega contributed to this report.