Allen Groat attended two “Million MAGA” marches in Washington, D.C., after the November 2020 election, when hundreds of supporters of then-President Donald Trump descended at the country’s capital to push the “large lie” about fashionable voter fraud. At the second one march, Groat, 36, wore a black baseball cap with a U.S. flag on it and took selfies with a who’s-who of far-right figures who weeks later can be key avid gamers within the Jan. 6, 2021, revolt on the U.S. Capitol.
There was once a selfie with Ali Alexander, primary organizer of the “Forestall the Scouse borrow” demonstration Jan. 6 that became the assault at the Capitol; one with Doug Mastriano, who was once on the middle of the trouble to overturn the 2020 presidential election and who’s now the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania; every other with Enrique Tarrio, chief of the violent neo-fascist gang the Proud Boys; and one with Alex Jones, the infamous Infowars conspiracist. (Groat later claimed to have labored as “impromptu” safety for Jones right through a rally.)
Groat was once a real believer within the purpose, writing in since-deleted tweets that those that “love The us” want to “shield the republic in anyway essential.” Quickly, he wrote, “blood will probably be shed to stop the robbery of our republic.” He shared his “Make The us Nice Once more” brethren’s hated for anti-racist activists, tweeting a picture of a Black Lives Topic mural with the capition, “Fuck BLM!!! Time to uninstall!!!” After which, in early January, he introduced his plans to wait a Jan. 6 demonstration that Trump promised can be “wild!” Groat wrote that he was once “so excited to sign up for the entire #Patriots…to drive congress to the best factor and #DoNotCertify the fraudulent election.” He took Jan. 6 off from paintings ― reportedly telling his employer that he needed to take his spouse to the physician — and went to Washington.
Movies and footage from Jan. 6 display Groat marching towards the Capitol as a part of the Jones-Alexander entourage earlier than breaking off and mountain climbing the northwest stairs of the Capitol, coming into the development at 2:37 p.m. Frame-worn police digicam pictures displays officials asking him and different rioters to go away.
“We like you guys… it’s their fault, no longer ours,” Groat can also be heard telling officials, gesturing towards Congress. He walked during the Rotunda and in the end exited during the central east doorways.
Then, after the mud settled from that historical day — 5 deaths, $30 million in damages, a democracy much more imperiled — Groat returned to his house close to Charlottesville, Virginia, and went again to paintings as an IT analyst for town’s police division, sheriff’s workplace, fireplace division and rescue squad.
Within the weeks that adopted, a lot of Groat’s fellow insurrectionists had been uncovered by means of a small military of on-line researchers, leading to a day by day melodrama, performed out in headlines around the nation — arrests, jobs misplaced, relationships upended — that during some ways reflected what had took place in Charlottesville years previous after every other fatal fascist revolt: Unite the Proper.
However Groat’s Jan. 6 actions went unreported for a yr and a part, till this June, when native anti-fascist activist Molly Conger exposed Groat’s social media posts — which he showed to C-VILLE Weekly had been his — and located pictures of him within the U.S. Capitol.
As Charlottesville marks the 5th anniversary this week of the fatal Unite the Proper rally — the 2017 demonstration through which about 1,000 Trump-emboldened white supremacists invaded town for the most important such collecting in a technology — locals are pressuring town officers to fireside Groat.
Charlottesville must know higher than maximum puts, they are saying, how vital it’s to verify extremists face penalties for his or her movements.
“In some ways, you’ll draw a instantly line from 2017′s Unite the Proper rally right here in Charlottesville to January sixth, 2021 in DC,” Conger tweeted previous this week. “I assume it’s becoming that as we means the five-year anniversary, town management continues to downplay and forget about the hazards that put us on that street.”
Each the mayor and intervening time town supervisor have insisted that town insurance policies preclude them from firing Groat as a result of he has no longer been charged with against the law associated with the Capitol rise up, consistent with a detailed file that the C-VILLE Weekly printed Tuesday.
“The worker in query admits he attended the occasions on the Capitol,” Town Supervisor Michael Rogers mentioned at an Aug. 1 town govt assembly. “He posted his presence on his social media web page, he shared this data with the FBI and he was once no longer arrested.”
“He’s very sorrowful of his actions,” Rogers added. “He’s skilled a substantial amount of private loss. Making an allowance for the totality of cases, together with that it’s been a yr and part with none motion, I conclude that no additional motion or overview is warranted on this case.”
However simply two days later, a message posted from a Fact Social account showing to belong to Groat didn’t sound all that contrite. “Please pray for me as I used to be lately doxxed for my patriotic participation and it’s affecting me in my profession and relationships,” it learn. The message was once deleted after Conger posted a screenshot to Twitter.
Groat didn’t reply to a HuffPost request for remark for this tale.
Rogers additionally claimed on the town assembly that the roughly 900 folks arrested for his or her involvement within the rise up had been charged with “criminality” that incorporated acts of destruction, “no longer simply their presence within the Capitol” — seeming to signify Groat most probably didn’t destroy any regulations on Jan. 6.
However Rogers, who declined to remark for this tale, is mistaken. Most of the arrests stemming from Jan. 6, 2021, contain fees for merely being throughout the Capitol. The ones fees come with “coming into or final in a limited development or grounds” and “parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol development” — which raises the chance that Groat may nonetheless be charged. (The FBI didn’t in an instant reply to a request for remark in this tale about Groat’s case. Groat, consistent with Rogers, has claimed he has given 3 interviews to FBI brokers.)
“5 years in the past our neighborhood raised the alarm with town officers in regards to the white supremacist terror assaults that had been coming and the ones considerations had been woefully not noted,” Rev. Seth Whisperley, the pastor at Charlottesville’s United Church of Christ, instructed HuffPost in a remark this week. “I in finding it alarming that transparent ethical management remains to be missing when the decision is now obviously coming from inside of the home.”
Samuel Corum/Anadolu Company/Getty Pictures
Whisperley helped mobilize counterprotesters forward of the rally on Aug. 12, 2017. The development ended with a neo-Nazi using his automotive right into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring many extra, in what changed into some of the defining episodes of the Trump generation. The then-president infamously answered to the day’s irritating occasions by means of pronouncing there have been “very high-quality folks on each side” of the demonstration.
Within the resulting years main as much as Jan. 6, 2021, Whisperley and others in Charlottesville felt like modern day Cassandras, caution that the broader MAGA motion was once more likely to dedicate worse political violence, to little avail.
“The town of Charlottesville’s persevered toughen of Groat undermines the credibility of town govt and any anti-racist statements they make on paper,” Lisa Woolfork, every other native anti-racist organizer, instructed HuffPost. “It unearths that town, too, nonetheless contains white supremacy and fascism to the detriment of those that are living right here.”
A big connection between Unite the Proper and the assault at the Capitol, Woolfork argued, is apathy amongst govt officers towards the risk posed by means of the a long way correct in The us.
“Apathy claims that white supremacy is simply a contentious viewpoint reasonably than a real follow that harms folks,” she mentioned. “Too many of us instructed activists and organizers to passively settle for white supremacists marching in our streets, simplest to be surprised later by means of the fatal end result in their presence.”
Kathryn Laughon, a College of Virginia professor of nursing and native anti-racist activist, mentioned Groat had “profited from a risk-averse device that privileges establishment over making waves, and thus has saved his task.”
“Charlottesville isn’t distinctive,” Laughon mentioned. “Given the selection of individuals within the Jan. 6 rise up, we all know there should be masses of white supremacists everywhere the rustic who’ve no longer confronted penalties. As a rustic, we need to proceed to struggle again.”