By Arizona Republic
The select committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol started laying out its evidence Thursday night that former President Donald Trump helped lead a coordinated effort to sidestep his election loss that culminated in the historic insurrection.
Testimony featured a group of orange hat wearing Proud Boys from Arizona who, according to witnesses, turned a standoff at a group of barricades at the Capitol more dire.
The committee said that future hearings would mention Trump’s efforts to pressure state lawmakers to overturn the election and create alternate slates of electors. Arizona figured prominently in those plans.
Those were some of the many Arizona threads running through an investigation seen by many as a critical warning about American democracy and dismissed as “partisan warfare” by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.
Biggs attended White House planning sessions to keep Trump in office and helped spread the false narrative of a stolen election. He is among GOP congressional members who have refused to cooperate with the probe.
Follow coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings in Congress by Republic and USA TODAY reporters here.
How to watch:Jan. 6 committee hearings
8 p.m.: Orange-clad Proud Boys from Arizona walked to Capitol before Trump speech
A documentary filmmaker who testified before the House Select Committee during its prime-time televised hearings on Thursday described meeting up with a group of Proud Boys, clad in orange armbands and hats, who were from Arizona.
Nick Quested, the filmmaker, said that he had spent time with a different group of Proud Boys on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, and the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, gaining familiarity with them. But, he told the committee, during a 10:30 a.m. walk around the Capitol, that group was joined by a group he hadn’t met from Arizona.
