Substitute while the actions of the article are loading
The House of Representatives Election Commission, which investigated the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, began its recent calendar of two-witness public hearings. One thing was to be predicted: a Capitol police officer that day who was attacked by Donald Trump supporters. The other probably wouldn’t be: a documentary filmmaker named Nick Custed.
He was interrogated there because he witnessed the actions of the extremist group Proud Boys in the days before the uprising and on January 6 itself. The group gave him this access, agreeing to participate in the production of a film about her efforts, despite her propensity for violence and breaking the law. So the committee asked Quested to come and describe what he saw; in private, the committee reviewed footage taken by Quested and his team.
Sign up for How to Read This Chart, a weekly newsletter with Philip Bump
However, as it turns out, having a director follow you and make a film for you is not something that only attracts the vanity of the Proud Boys. On Tuesday, we learned that Trump himself is working with a documentary filmmaker named Alex Holder. In a summons received by Politico, the commission asked Holder to hand over all January 6 footage discussing plans to cancel the election and any interviews with Trump, his family and former Vice President Mike Pence.
In a statement, Holder said he had handed over the required staff to the commission. The project started in September 2020, he wrote, with his team [wanting] to better understand who Trump is and what motivates them to hold on to power so desperately. “It is safe to say that the team was in a good position to investigate this issue.
Robert Costa of CBS News spoke with people who worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign and saw the film’s creators at campaign headquarters. One told Costa that the project was a “family affair” that would help explain why its existence was apparently not widely known. The result is reportedly a three-part series about the former president, which includes footage from Capitol Hill on the day of the uprising.
There was another documentary crew at the Capitol that day that shot another actor who was enthusiastic about the spotlight. Not Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser who worked with his own documentary team; he was not in the Capitol. This third team worked with the notorious misinformation trader Alex Jones.
Director Alex Lee Moyer is expected to release a film called “Alex’s War” next month, focusing on the radio host and conspiracy theorist. Jones was at Trump’s rally in front of the White House on the day of the uprising and walked with Trump supporters to the Capitol, whose footage appears in an early version of the film. At the Capitol, Jones addressed the crowd briefly with a megaphone.
Speaking in a podcast last year, Moyer described being there with Jones.
“The scope of the film is related to Alex’s career. It’s not about his personal life. It’s not like the tabloids, “she said. “It’s against the backdrop of the aftermath of the election.” She complained that she had been identified in the Capitol by the Jezabel website as a potential protester because “she couldn’t tell everyone I was there making this film.” She posted a photo on Instagram that day, noting that this was “the day we almost died, but we had a great time instead.”
Jones himself was summoned by a House committee and testified. (He claims on his show that he invoked his rights under the Fifth Amendment many times when he did so.) There are no known footage of Jones inciting violence on January 6 himself, but investigators were probably more curious about the work. his in previous weeks. He took part in the Stop theft effort after the 2020 election and pushed people in Washington for both the January 6 protest and previous rallies, including one in November 2020. Jones has been identified as the main funding channel for events related to January 6, although he was denied the opportunity to speak during Trump’s rally that morning. Instead, Jones spoke at a minor rally on the evening of January 5, 2021.
Moyer does not appear to have been summoned. (A question asked to the House committee did not receive an answer at the time of publication.) Jones may be far enough away from the main events of the day that not all footage is relevant to the case where the committee is a building.
What makes the work of famous documentary filmmakers useful is not necessarily what they saw on January 6, but what they saw in the previous and next days. The House Committee doesn’t just want Holder’s footage of Capitol Hill; wants to know what Trump and others. said in other points. Quested’s contribution to the investigation included footage of a January 5 meeting between the Proud Boys and right-wing extremist group Oath Keepers. Who knows what Moyer may have been familiar with.
Some of the most useful shots of the day, of course, were taken not by professional documentarians but by amateurs: the rebels themselves. Never before has a criminal event been recorded in such depth. For prominent participants, however, this impetus was simply outsourced. Trump’s team, Proud Boys and Jones wanted a record of what they were doing. They were just outspoken enough that they didn’t have to broadcast live on Facebook. They could get someone else to catch him.
Add Comment