The lead up to the 2020 election was highlighted by the politicization of Covid. Several states used the Covid crisis to change the way ballots were obtained and submitted. There was rampant misinformation regarding COVID’s origins, the effectiveness of lockdowns, mask mandates, and the use of hydroxychloroquine, etc; and there was online censorship of fact-checked “false” reports. It was in this political climate that rumors regarding Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop surfaced to be fact-checked as “false” and censored online by citing a letter signed by 50 former intelligence employees, suggesting that the laptop story was “Russian Disinformation.” This allowed so many to cast their votes ignorant to the likelihood that the Biden family had been corrupted and compromised by foreign powers.

On election night, several swing states suspiciously paused their count in the middle of the night, including Georgia, which stopped counting votes reportedly due to a “burst water pipe” that in reality turned out to be a leaky toilet. That week the election was widely reported to have been “the most secure election in American history,” but as the weeks progressed suspicious statistical anomalies were revealed, and a video surfaced from Georgia (showing the time-period when their vote-counting had paused) of people uncovering suitcases filled with what appeared to be ballots.

Within the week after the election, Steve Pieczenik appeared on Info Wars and claimed that his contacts in military intelligence had granted him permission to go public and report how the 2020 election was “the largest sting operation in history,” involving watermarked ballots with “lock chain encryption” that would be traced to prove fraud and confirm the actual results of Trump’s landslide victory. “Biden will never be President,” assured Pieczenik. A few weeks later a General Flynn tweet publicly called on President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military to rerun the election.

Around the same time, Patrick Byrne went public on alt-media saying that his team of computer experts had “packet captured” real time evidence on election night—“100% forensic proof”—that the election had been digitally hacked by foreign nations.

Patrick Byrne and General Flynn later participated in the now infamous December 18th meeting with President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Sydney Powell. It was only hours after this meeting that Trump tweeted: “Statistically impossible to have lost. Big protest in D.C. January 6th. Be there, will be wild.”

Patrick Byrne later stated that he had mediated communication between Info Wars and the CIA. Info Wars promoted, funded and coordinated the January 6th event, and sold supplements to supporters with proceeds going to fund “the second American Revolution;” and Millie Weaver of Info Wars publicly called on Trump to take strong action by following the advice of General Flynn to invoke the insurrection Act.

The rhetoric of Byrne, Pieczenik, Flynn, Info Wars, as well as Giuliani, Powell and Trump led directly to the violence displayed by factions of Trump supporters on January 6th.

Imagine if Trump would have followed the advice of Flynn and invoked the Insurrection Act. He didn’t go along with the plan, but he did hopefully hedge his bets to see what would happen on January 6th.

It’s important to realize that those who orchestrated the chaos on January 6th did NOT do so for the purpose of stopping the certification or overthrowing the government. The goal was to target President Trump’s ego to destroy his legacy forever; and it seems they did succeed. But MAGA is a movement with clear principles that do not depend upon Donald Trump or any other person. Regardless of how Trump’s legacy is now tarnished, the core principles of MAGA endure, so long as the MAGA movement has the courage to face the facts as to what actually occurred.