Jan. 6 organizer Ali Alexander, who calls himself the "founder" of former president Donald Trump's "Stop the Steal" movement, announced Saturday that he will comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.
"You may have missed the news that I've been subpoenaed by the Democrats' partisan Jan. 6 committee," Alexander said in a video posted to the right-wing social-media platform Telegram. "This is a midterm issue that they want to run on, and what they want to do is paint me as the Black face for a white supremacy movement that doesn't actually exist."
Speaking in front of a poster of singer Johnny Cash flashing the middle finger, Alexander added that he respects his "fellow patriots" who are defying the committee, but called it "an expensive right" — claiming that it would cost between $250,000 and $500,000 to fight the subpoena.
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"I frankly don't have that money to spend on legal bills, so for this unselect committee, I will actually be privately deposed in December," Alexander said. "I've asked to make it public testimony. They won't cooperate with that request."
"The only reason I'm going is that I don't want to go to jail," he added. "So under the threat of imprisonment and spending tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers, I will be privately deposed before this committee in December, and I will make public whatever I can."
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In a post accompanying the video, Alexander wrote that he plans to submit to the committee "photographic and video evidence of agitators sabotaging his January 6th peaceful protests."
Referring to himself in the third person, Alexander wrote: "He will also present evidence to the Committee that President Trump was betrayed by someone in his inner circle. Someone made the decision to take instructions for patriots out of the Ellipse Rally. Ali says he's not backing down and the Democrat Committee has already threatened to imprison him."
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