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Newly obtained video shows movement of group suspected of constructing Jan. 6 gallows hours before Capitol siege
The people who erected the infamous gallows and noose on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, began their work in the predawn hours that day, according to newly released videos obtained by CBS News. A report by a GOP-led U.S. House subcommittee said the perpetrators remain unaccounted for by prosecutors.
Surveillance footage shared with CBS News shows the brazenness of the work behind the gallows and noose, which have a history of racist and threatening overtones. On Jan. 6, then-Vice President Mike Pence was presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College count and had been pressured by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally overturn the 2020 election. He refused to do so, while outside the Capitol, protesters and rioters around the gallows and noose chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”
The videos illustrate how a crew of people rolled pieces down major streets in plain sight, in the predawn hours before the Capitol siege.
The video shows several people wheeling large wooden beams near the Capitol during the 6 a.m. ET hour on Jan. 6.
The group can be seen moving its materials across Union Square and near Independence Avenue, two iconic areas near Capitol Hill that would later be overrun by some of the thousands who converged at the Capitol after a speech by former President Trump about 2 miles away, at the Ellipse.
The movement of the pieces occurred early in the morning, when the streets were otherwise empty. The shifting of the wooden beams is clearly shown in recordings collected by some of the hundreds of surveillance cameras on and near Capitol Hill.
According to a report by a Republican-led subcommittee of the House Committee on Administration, between 6:30 a.m. and 7:15 a.m., the group constructed the platform and two main pillars of the gallows, only leaving off the crossbeam.
The report said the crossbeam and a bright orange noose were added during the 1 p.m. hour on Jan. 6, as the rioting and the siege of the Capitol began.
Despite the outrage triggered by the display, the probe into who is responsible appears to be unsolved.
The subcommittee’s review of the movement and construction of the gallows produced several grainy images of the faces of people believed to be near the assembly of the gallows. But a report by the House panel stated, “The individuals who constructed the gallows have never been identified.”
A CBS News review of the charging documents in the approximately 1,300 Jan. 6 federal criminal cases filed by the Justice Department showed no case in which a defendant is accused of playing a role in the gallows construction.
A neon orange rope
Journalist Michael Persson
The gallows was outfitted with a bright orange-colored rope. The color choice was noteworthy, according to Raymond Winbush, a researcher and professor at Morgan State University in Maryland. Winbush said the brightness and distinctiveness of the color was potentially a visual cue to attract attention to the noose.
Winbush told CBS News, “African Americans can’t view the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and not recall the history of lynched Black people in America. The gallows were there; so were the ropes and, most chilling, the screaming faces of white men and women yelling for the blood of Mike Pence.”
The footage obtained by CBS News also shows the parading of a large Confederate flag near the Capitol grounds in the early morning hours of Jan. 6, close to the time when the other group was transporting the suspected gallows beams. Multiple banners and images of the Confederate flag were seen amid the mob on Jan. 6.
After the mob confronted, assaulted and pushed beyond the police lines, the gallows was left unattended, according to journalist Michael Persson, who was covering the Capitol attack and discovered the orange noose had been cut down and tossed to the ground.
Persson said he witnessed a young Black man climb the gallows and cut down the noose. He believes the young man was a good Samaritan outraged by the display.
Persson told CBS News the good Samaritan “threw the noose away and ran away. Nobody seemed to have noticed. The crowd had already dispersed. There were just small groups lingering on the field. But still I thought it was a pretty courageous thing to do.”
Persson recovered the rope and turned it over to the FBI. In late 2021, the FBI acknowledged it had the rope.
Persson said, “The gallows represented the doom of that day.”
A Justice Department spokesman responded to a CBS News inquiry about the status of any investigation into the gallows construction on restricted grounds. The spokesman said, “The Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol is an ongoing investigation; therefore, we cannot discuss anything beyond the public record.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., which prosecutes Jan. 6 offenders, also declined to comment.
The gallows construction
The House subcommittee reviewing the gallows incident said in a February report that Capitol Police guidelines prohibit temporary structures “of any kind” on Capitol grounds, suggesting that gallows would immediately be removed once discovered. But the gallows were left untouched by Capitol Police officers from 6:00 a.m. on Jan. 6 until later that evening.
The subcommittee’s review also noted that the crossbeam and noose weren’t added to the wood base until the 1 p.m. hour — the same hour when the riotous mob began attacking police officers and advancing toward and beyond the police line.
Not far from the gallows, also on the west front of the Capitol, the inaugural platform where President-elect Joe Biden would speak two weeks later, was under construction.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican who chairs the House subcommittee, told CBS News, “Even though the crossbar of the gallows wasn’t placed until about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, the base platform was there (for hours). That — it and of itself — is against Capitol Police policy and rules.”
Loudermilk said, “We’ve reviewed the radio traffic of Capitol Police that day and there is no mention of it.”
House Democrats on the subcommittee said in a statement that the gallows would “never have been built” if Trump hadn’t “summoned and dispatched a mob of armed rioters to raid the Capitol, interrupted the counting of electoral votes, and tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election he lost.”
“We are pleased the Committee is highlighting this as it could assist law enforcement to determine who is responsible. Thanks to our brave officers, the makeshift gallows were never used during the attack,” a Capitol Police spokesman told CBS News.
The subcommittee’s report on the gallows incident provided a granular timeline of the group suspected of building the gallows during the morning of Jan. 6. The report said, “During this time, the apparent group leader along with one other person, left the group and walked down 3rd Street, heading north. They returned a few minutes later with coffee, and the entire group left the scene. Despite the leader’s distinctive clothing — he was wearing a long trench coat, long white scarf, fedora-type hat, and walking with a cane — he has never been identified publicly.”
The subcommittee’s report also said, “At approximately 1:00 p.m., the group of five returned to the scene and the presumed leader, now wearing a baseball cap, installed the final crossbeam and added the noose made of bright orange rope. Shortly after construction was complete, all five men left the grounds.”
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What is Project 2025? What to know about the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration
Washington — Voters in recent weeks have begun to hear the name “Project 2025” invoked more and more by President Biden and Democrats, as they seek to sound the alarm about what could be in store if former President Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House.
Overseen by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the multi-pronged initiative includes a detailed blueprint for the next Republican president to usher in a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch.
Trump and his campaign have worked to distance themselves from Project 2025, with the former president going so far as to call some of the proposals “abysmal.” But Democrats have continued to tie the transition project to Trump, especially as they find themselves mired in their own controversy over whether Mr. Biden should withdraw from the 2024 presidential contest following his startling debate performance last month.
Here is what to know about Project 2025:
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025 is a proposed presidential transition project that is composed of four pillars: a policy guide for the next presidential administration; a LinkedIn-style database of personnel who could serve in the next administration; training for that pool of candidates dubbed the “Presidential Administration Academy;” and a playbook of actions to be taken within the first 180 days in office.
It is led by two former Trump administration officials: Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management and serves as director of the project, and Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to Trump and now the project’s associate director.
Project 2025 is spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, but includes an advisory board consisting of more than 100 conservative groups.
Much of the focus on — and criticism of — Project 2025 involves its first pillar, the nearly 900-page policy book that lays out an overhaul of the federal government. Called “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” the book builds on a “Mandate for Leadership” first published in January 1981, which sought to serve as a roadmap for Ronald Reagan’s incoming administration.
The recommendations outlined in the sprawling plan reach every corner of the executive branch, from the Executive Office of the President to the Department of Homeland Security to the little-known Export-Import Bank.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
The Heritage Foundation also created a “Mandate for Leadership” in 2015 ahead of Trump’s first term. Two years into his presidency, it touted that Trump had instituted 64% of its policy recommendations, ranging from leaving the Paris Climate Accords, increasing military spending, and increasing off-shore drilling and developing federal lands. In July 2020, the Heritage Foundation gave its updated version of the book to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
The authors of many chapters are familiar names from the Trump administration, such as Russ Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget; former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller; and Roger Severino, who was director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Vought is the policy director for the 2024 Republican National Committee’s platform committee, which released its proposed platform on Monday.
John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, is a senior advisor to the Heritage Foundation, and said that the group will “integrate a lot of our work” with the Trump campaign when the official transition efforts are announced in the next few months.
Candidates interested in applying for the Heritage Foundation’s “Presidential Personnel Database” are vetted on a number of political stances, such as whether they agree or disagree with statements like “life has a right to legal protection from conception to natural death,” and “the President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hindrance from unelected federal officials.”
The contributions from ex-Trump administration officials have led its critics to tie Project 2025 to his reelection campaign, though the former president has attempted to distance himself from the initiative.
What’s in the Project 2025 policy agenda?
Some of the policies in the Project 2025 agenda have been discussed by Republicans for years or pushed by Trump himself: less federal intervention in education and more support for school choice; work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults on food stamps; and a secure border with increased enforcement of immigration laws, mass deportations and construction of a border wall.
But others have come under scrutiny in part because of the current political landscape.
Abortion and social issues
In recommendations for the Department of Health and Human Services, the agenda calls for the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its 24-year-old approval of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone. Other proposed actions targeting medication abortion include reinstating more stringent rules for mifepristone’s use, which would permit it to be taken up to seven weeks into a pregnancy, instead of the current 10 weeks, and requiring it to be dispensed in-person instead of through the mail.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that is on the Project 2025 advisory board, was involved in a legal challenge to mifepristone’s 2000 approval and more recent actions from the FDA that made it easier to obtain. But the Supreme Court rejected the case brought by a group of anti-abortion rights doctors and medical associations on procedural grounds.
The policy book also recommends the Justice Department enforce the Comstock Act against providers and distributors of abortion pills. That 1873 law prohibits drugs, medicines or instruments used in abortions from being sent through the mail.
Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the volume states that the Justice Department “in the next conservative administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills.”
The guide recommends the next secretary of Health and Human Services get rid of the Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force established by the Biden administration before Roe’s reversal and create a “pro-life task force to ensure that all of the department’s divisions seek to use their authority to promote the life and health of women and their unborn children.”
In a section titled “The Family Agenda,” the proposal recommends the Health and Human Services chief “proudly state that men and women are biological realities,” and that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
Further, a program within the Health and Human Services Department should “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”
During his first four years in office, Trump banned transgender people from serving in the military. Mr. Biden reversed that policy, but the Project 2025 policy book calls for the ban to be reinstated.
Targeting federal agencies, employees and policies
The agenda takes aim at longstanding federal agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The agency is a component of the Commerce Department and the policy guide calls for it to be downsized.
NOAA’s six offices, including the National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” the guide states.
The Department of Homeland Security, established in 2002, should be dismantled and its agencies either combined with others, or moved under the purview of other departments altogether, the policy book states. For example, immigration-related entities from the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Health and Human Services should form a standalone, Cabinet-level border and immigration agency staffed by more than 100,000 employees, according to the agenda.
Getty Images
If the policy recommendations are implemented, another federal agency that could come under the knife by the next administration, with action from Congress, is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The agenda seeks to bring a push by conservatives to target diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives in higher education to the executive branch by wiping away a slew of DEI-related positions, policies and programs and calling for the elimination of funding for partners that promote DEI practices.
It states that U.S. Agency for International Development staff and grantees that “engage in ideological agitation on behalf of the DEI agenda” should be terminated. At the Treasury Department, the guide says the next administration should “treat the participation in any critical race theory or DEI initiative without objecting on constitutional or moral grounds, as per se grounds for termination of employment.”
The Project 2025 policy book also takes aim at more innocuous functions of government. It calls for the next presidential administration to eliminate or reform the dietary guidelines that have been published by the Department of Agriculture for more than 40 years, which the authors claim have been “infiltrated” by issues like climate change and sustainability.
Immigration
Trump made immigration a cornerstone of his last two presidential runs and has continued to hammer the issue during his 2024 campaign. Project 2025’s agenda not only recommends finishing the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but urges the next administration to “take a creative and aggressive approach” to responding to drug cartels at the border. This approach includes using active-duty military personnel and the National Guard to help with arrest operations along the southern border.
A memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that prohibits enforcement actions from taking place at “sensitive” places like schools, playgrounds and churches should be rolled back, the policy guide states.
When the Homeland Security secretary determines there is an “actual or anticipated mass migration of aliens” that presents “urgent circumstances” warranting a federal response, the agenda says the secretary can make rules and regulations, including through their expulsion, for as long as necessary. These rules, the guide states, aren’t subject to the Administration Procedure Act, which governs the agency rule-making process.
What do Trump and his advisers say about Project 2025?
In a post to his social media platform Friday, Trump wrote, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump’s pushback to the initiative came after Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a podcast interview that the nation is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
But even before Roberts’ comments during “The War Room” podcast — typically hosted by conservative commentator Steve Bannon, who reported to federal prison to begin serving a four-month sentence last week — Trump’s top campaign advisers have stressed that Project 2025 has no official ties to his reelection bid.
Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the Trump campaign, said in a November statement that 2024 policy announcements will be made by Trump or his campaign team.
“Any personnel lists, policy agendas, or government plans published anywhere are merely suggestions,” they said.
While the efforts by outside organizations are “appreciated,” Wiles and LaCivita said, “none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign.”
In response to Trump’s post last week, Project 2025 reiterated that it was separate from the Trump campaign.
“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign. We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy & personnel recommendations for the next conservative president. But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” a statement on the project’s X account said.
What do Democrats say?
Despite their attempts to keep some distance from Project 2025, Democrats continue to connect Trump with the transition effort. The Biden-Harris campaign frequently posts about the project on X, tying it to a second Trump term.
Mr. Biden himself accused his Republican opponent of lying about his connections to the Project 2025 agenda, saying in a statement that the agenda was written for Trump and “should scare every single American.”
Congressional Democrats have also begun pivoting to Project 2025 when asked in interviews about Mr. Biden’s fitness for a second term following his lackluster showing at the June 27 debate, the first in which he went head-to-head with Trump.
“Trump is all about Project 2025,” Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman told CNN on Monday. “I mean, that’s what we really should be voting on right now. It’s like, do we want the kind of president that is all about Project ’25?”
In a statement reiterating her support for Mr. Biden, Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida called Project 2025 “MAGA Republicans’ draconian 920-page plan to end U.S. democracy, give handouts to the wealthy and strip Americans of their freedoms.”
What are Republicans saying about Project 2025?
Two GOP senators under consideration to serve as Trump’s running mate sought to put space between the White House hopeful and Project 2025, casting it as merely the product of a think tank that puts forth ideas.
“It’s the work of a think tank, of a center-right think tank, and that’s what think tanks do,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
He said Trump’s message to voters focuses on “restoring common sense, working-class values, and making our decisions on the basis of that.”
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance raised a similar sentiment in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying organizations will have good ideas and bad ideas.
“It’s a 900-page document,” he said Sunday. “I guarantee there are things that Trump likes and dislikes about that 900-page document. But he is the person who will determine the agenda of the next administration.”
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