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A new study from the Harvard Kennedy School revealed that the main motivation for most protestors who entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was not rooted in a desire to “start a civil war or an armed revolution.”
In fact, according to their findings, 20.6 percent of the protestors were there simply because they supported President Donald Trump, while yet another 20.6 percent indicated that they were there because of concerns regarding election fraud.
An article from The Harvard Crimson cited an interview with one of the authors of the study, Kaylee Fagan, who noted that she was surprised by the dominance of Trump loyalism and concerns about election integrity in the underlying motivations surrounding Jan. 6.
“I don’t think I expected the results to be this stark,” Fagan stated.
Fagan continued in her comments shared on The Harvard Crimson, conceding that “the largest portion of the attackers whose documents we analyzed, were compelled – at least in part – by their desire to support Donald Trump…”
The media-labeled “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol has been the subject of intense speculation, culminating in weeks of partisan hearings before the Jan. 6 Committee this summer.
While critics of the event have claimed that protestors were there to stage an insurrection, these new findings from Harvard indicate that citizens were primarily there to display loyalty to Trump and to voice their concerns over reports of election fraud and irregularities during the 2020 presidential election.
Further, while some have criticized Trump for inciting the storming of the U.S. Capitol, evidence has shown that the 45th president requested the presence of the National Guard in Washington D.C. days before Jan. 6, which Trump said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “turned down.”
An additional memo from the office of the Pentagon’s Inspector General reiterated Trump’s desire for the event to be “safe” for everyone attending, per the document.