Me. Ingraham, who later told Fox News viewers about “antifa sympathizers” during the riot shared on Twitter that the Washington Times article she quoted was unraveled; she did not perform a correction on the air. Mr. Herman, the host of Limbaugh who speculated about antifa, wrote in an email on Saturday: “It is clear that a large group of Trump supporters entered the Capitol and assaulted people.” But he falsely maintained that antifa activists planned to imitate Trump supporters.
Of the 290 people charged in the attack, it is known that at least 27 have ties to extremist groups such as the Eedwagters or the Proud Boys. Others have links to neo-Confederate and white supremacist entities, or are clear supporters of the QAnon conspiracy movement. The vast majority expressed a fervent belief that Trump was the rightful winner of the election.
On January 8, the FBI said there was no evidence that supporters of antifa, known for their aggressive counter-protests of white supremacist protests, participated in the Capitol crowd. And on Jan. 13, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House’s minority leader, spoke during Mr. Trump’s indictment and statement: ‘Some say the riots were caused by antifa. There is absolutely no proof of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so. ‘
But the next day, the arrest of a protester named John Sullivan again led to an increase in the right-wing media over antifa and the riot.
Mr. Sullivan called himself a ‘Utah’ activist and CNN inaccurately portrayed him as a ‘left-wing activist’ when he appeared on the network on January 6. the shooting at Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who died inside the Capitol.) The conspiracy site Gateway Pundit and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, arrested Mr. Sullivan resorted to blaming antifa again in posts that occurred to tens of thousands. and share it on Facebook and Twitter.
According to activists from Seattle, Salt Lake City and Portland, Ore., Mr. Sullivan an attention seeker whose politics swung and apparently shifted based on what protest he was attending at the time. reached out warnings about him months before the Capitol riot.