Ali Alexander, a far right conspiracy theorist and organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, is scheduled to lie to the House Select Committee on Thursday morning.

That he will lie not a presumption. Alexander has already provided his opening statement, in which he claims to have “nothing to do with any violence or lawbreaking that happened on Jan. 6.” He also denies that he had anything to do with the planning or preparation for the insurgency. Instead, says Alexander, he was on the side of the angels. In videos of the events that day, Alexander claims that his group can be seen, “working with police to try to end the violence and lawbreaking” as well as “yelling and screaming at people to stop trying to enter the Capitol.”

Alexander will claim that while there is plenty of evidence of his innocence, the Select Committee is “looking for a boogeyman” and that “as a Black and Arab man, it is common for people who look like me to be blamed for things we didn’t do.” That last statement is certainly true. Unfortunately for Alexander, it may be just about the only truthful moment in his opening statement.

Alexander’s statement points the finger of blame at another group involved in organizing the Stop the Steal rally—the Women for America group that obtained the permit on that day.

But then, neither was Alexander’s group, which included InfoWars hosts Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer. They weren’t sitting back with “their feet up,” they were actively marching on the Capitol, and actively moving the crowd to violence.

As Marcy Wheeler points out, the claims made by Alexander aren’t exactly things the Select Committee will have to investigate, because the DOJ has already investigated the actions of Alexander and his group. Those show Alexander’ and other members of the group aren’t just lying to the Committee today, they even lied to the Trump supporters on Jan. 6.

They actively led a large group to the Capitol, paused for a speech inside the restricted area, then directed the crowd around police barriers, promising them that Trump would be there to speak to them again. As they walked, Shroyer continued to shout at the crowd, using words that are captured in the government’s response to Shroyer’s call for dismissing charges against him.

Alexander’s group then tried to negotiate with the police, promising that they would help to deescalate, if they were given access to the east side of the Capitol building. But rather than going where the police asked them to go, the group circled the building.

Along the way, members of Alexander’s group repeatedly talked with police, promising that if they could get Alex Jones in front of the crowd, he would help to calm things down. It’s undoubtedly these videos that Alexander wants to enter as evidence that they were only trying to help. 

In his call for dismissal, Shroyer claimed that once they reached the east side, the group made a call for protestors to back away, with Jones reportedly telling people “We can’t do this, stand down, don’t go in.” But what videos of the event actually show is Shroyer moving to the top of the stairs to lead chants of “1776!” Which, the DOJ argues, “does not qualify as de-escalation.”

As The Washington Post reported, Shroyer also told the crowd, “We literally own these streets right now.” 

So Alexander, along with Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer, led a large crowd to the Capitol, encouraging them to violence all along the way, then told police they were there to help. Instead, they led that crowd away from the area police instructed them to go, stepped over police barriers, mounted the steps of the Capitol, and led chants to further incite the crowd.

In this statement to the Committee, Alexander also goes on at length about the efforts he’s made to be cooperative, including spending over 100 hours “personally searching through my archives looking for relevant and responsive documentation to this committee’s requests. I’ve probably spent another 100 hours preparing to answer your questions. I have hired attorneys and computer consultants to be as responsive as possible and provide as much as I could find within the short amount of time I had to produce documents.”

Which is funny. Because Alexander already spent months trying to hide and destroy that same documentation.

Alexander’s role in creating the Stop the Steal movement goes well beyond directing actions at a single rally. In addition to creating and funding the Stop the Steal site, and Stop the Steal rallies in several cities, his online efforts included creating the appearance of massive support for Trump through the method of creating dozens of fake “grass root protests,” and setting up a complex network of sites through which to funnel communications. As Daily Dot reported in September, Alexander acquired at least 122 separate web domains, Following Jan. 6, Alexander scrambled to close down all these sites, delete online databases, and hide the digital footprint of his activities, but he was less than perfectly successful.

But a hack of his domain provider by the hacker collective Anonymous spilled the beans.

Both online and in-person, Alexander made absolutely clear his intentions on Jan. 6. In response to Donald Trump’s tweet urging people to come to Washington D.C. to intimidate legislators as the electoral votes were formally registered, Alexander named his gathering that day “the Wild Protest.”

As Daily Beast reported at the time, two weeks before Jan. 6, Alexander’s speech to the crowd at another rally let them know that the time to be violent was coming.

“We’re going to convince them to not certify the vote on January 6 by marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patriots, to sit their butts in D.C. and close that city down, right?”  said Alexander. “And if we have to explore options after that…‘yet.’ Yet!” In response, people at the rally chanted “noose.”