Australian breaks silence on the day he joined US Capitol rioters

James, an Australian Trump supporter who took part in the Capitol riot, blames a ‘fraction’ of protesters for the violence.

Among the sea of Confederate and US flags, a lone Australian flag is waved by a protester outside the Capitol building on January 6 last year. Source: Twitter

For most Americans, January 6, when many hundreds of angry Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building, marks a day that will live in infamy, prompting feelings of shame and anger.

For James, 26, who was perhaps the only Australian in the protest against the 2020 election outcome that day, it elicits bemusement and frustration as the first anniversary of that traumatic day approaches.

“I didn’t think the media would blow it so out of proportion,” he tells The Australian, speaking publicly for the first time about his involvement in events that will polarise Americans for many years to come.

Even describing them is a political act. Four times as many Democrats (80 per cent) say January 6 was an “insurrection”, compared to Republicans, who see it as a riot of protest gone wrong, according to a recent CBS/YouGov poll.

“The idea it was a coup attempt or an insurrection is ludicrous; less than 1000 people went in out of a total of maybe 200,000 on the Mall – there were so many people in every direction,” says James.

“There were people taking selfies with Capitol police – do you seriously think that’s an ­insurrection?”

James, a Trump supporter who worked on the 2020 campaign for the former president, says he was “decently involved”, knowing “a lot” of people in the former administration.

“The notion we were confident enough to plan something like that is crazy. You don’t know how chaotic it was,” he adds. “No one wanted it, and as you can see there was nothing to be gained from it.”

His remarks come as the US, at least the media and political class, is about to mark January 6 with vigils, speeches, surveys, op-eds and highly combative political rhetoric over who the responsible for the events that contributed to up to five deaths.

More than 700 Americans have been charged for various crimes. About 50 remain in jail awaiting trial, and 19 have been sentenced to incarceration, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal last month.

James, a former Young Liberal who came to the US after he graduated in communications and marketing in Western Australia, won’t let me use his real name for fear of reprisal.

“There’s no way I want my name to be searchable on the internet for this stuff,” he says.

“About half” the people, himself included, who gathered on the National Mall outside the Capitol building that afternoon had gone to “see what was happening” after listening to an early speech by Mr Trump on the Ellipses lawn behind the White House.

“I was fifty-fifty about whether I should just go back to my apartment; it was cold and my phone was about to die, but I said I’ll go down really quickly, and oh boy that’s not what any of us expected at all,” he tells The Australian.

In a group of about 10 friends, he saw windows smashed and ­violence between protesters and security. “When people started breaking in, I thought this was ridiculous. I was aware of how bad it looked, the illegality surrounding it,” he adds, arguing, though, that “group mentality” and a “minuscule” fraction of the pro-Trump protesters were to blame.

“The Proud Boys got involved, basically a bunch of idiots who just wanted to get rowdy and do stupid stuff,” he says, rattling off more peaceful groups that were there, such as Stop the Steal and Women for Trump.

Americans remain bitterly divided on the characterisation of and blame for the day’s events, which saw members of congress, as well as then vice- president Mike Pence, whisked away by police to a secret location for their safety on the day they were certifying the results of the November 2020 presidential election.

More than 90 per cent of Democrats believe the former president bears either “a great deal” or “a good amount” of responsibility, while 78 per cent of Republicans say he bears either “just some” or none, according to an ABC/IPSOS poll in late December.

Almost 70 per cent of Americans believe January 6 was a harbinger of increased violence in US politics, according to a separate CBS poll, and, perhaps most remarkably, 71 per cent of Republicans still believe Mr Trump’s false claims that the election, which he lost by 6.5 million votes overall, was stolen.

Donald Trump supporters including member of the QAnon conspiracy group Jake Angeli, aka Yellowstone Wolf, centre, enter the US Capitol on January 6 last year. Picture: AFP

James, who lives in Virginia just outside Washington DC, working in “politics, film and media”, says he left Australia six years ago for the excitement of US politics.

“If you ask people who the Australian PM is, most people won’t be able to answer,” he says.

“It’s less a condemnation of the (American) education system but more showing of Australia’s relative irrelevance.

He bristles at comparisons between the events of January 6 and the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the US in the northern hemisphere summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white US police officer. “I attended these BLM protests, lots of them. I try to go to protests, left and right, and the violence was insane by comparison, targeting random people,” he says.

A congressional committee of nine charged with investigating January 6th, including nine Democrats and two Republicans, is planning to issue an interim report after interviewing hundreds of witnesses and trawling thousands of confidential documents.

Democrats hope it will establish a more concrete link between Mr Trump and the Capitol invasion, which could help the ruling party in the upcoming 2022 congressional mid-term elections, and snuff out the former president’s hopes of running again in 2024.