WASHINGTON — A proper-wing social media influencer employed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential marketing campaign who beforehand reported Jan. 6 was “Democrat misdirection” seems to have himself been on the limited grounds of the U.S. Capitol during the assault.
NBC Information initially noted that Kennedy’s campaign employed Zach Henry’s company, Total Virality, for “influencer engagement” in March. Henry experienced worked as deputy communications director for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential marketing campaign, as perfectly as for Blake Masters throughout his Senate run in Arizona.
Henry, as NBC News noted, had posted that Jan. 6 was “no MAGA insurrection Just additional Democrat misdirection” and seems to have embraced conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack, which include posting that “antifa” was driving it, which is false.
But pics and movies uncovered by NBC Information and online “sedition hunters,” who have aided the FBI in hundreds of circumstances versus Capitol rioters, appear to display Henry among the the mob outside the house the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, over and above the formerly set up police traces, although it is unclear irrespective of whether any of the barricades and “restricted” indications remained by the time he arrived.
There is no indication that Henry entered the Capitol or that he engaged in assaults on police officers or in destruction of residence. Federal prosecutors have just about totally concentrated their means on Jan. 6 participants who either went inside of the developing or dedicated violence or destruction outside it, so there is minor chance that Henry would be billed the number of nonviolent Jan. 6 defendants who had been charged solely for likely on restricted Capitol grounds had been commonly charged with misdemeanors.
But Henry’s presence on Capitol grounds would be substantial specified his past social media posts about Jan. 6 and his new placement on Kennedy’s campaign as Kennedy operates for president as an independent against former President Donald Trump.
Henry acknowledged in a mobile phone contact that he was in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, but declined to talk about his specific place. “I was in D.C. on January 6, but I’m not going to validate where I was on the day or, you know, how shut I got to the Capitol,” he claimed.
Henry questioned to see photographs of himself outside the Capitol prior to he would remark further, and NBC News offered him with screenshots. He stopped responding to even more messages or cellphone calls.
Kennedy’s marketing campaign also did not reply to a ask for for comment.
Henry was the communications director for the Arizona Republican Occasion from 2019 until late January 2021 and seems to have been at the rear of the party’s formal Twitter account, including when it posted tweets in early December 2020 asking followers regardless of whether they were being all set to give up their life to hold Trump in business, reposting a tweet by “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander. Henry mainly defended those @AZGOP tweets in response to media coverage at the time, declaring in a statement that the occasion “condemns all kinds of violence in the strongest terms” though he did not say who posted them.
Times later on, when yet another Twitter person named the man or woman jogging the @AZGOP account “one of the funniest posters in the point out,” Henry retweeted it from his own account, including: “No remark.”
On Dec. 14, 2020, the @AZGOP account posted a video titled “The Signing,” showcasing then-occasion chairwoman Kelli Ward and other Arizona “fake electors” signing paperwork falsely declaring Trump received Arizona, which was despatched to Congress and the Nationwide Archives. A state grand jury a short while ago indicted Ward and other faux electors, as well as Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, in relation to the alleged scheme. It is unclear whether or not Henry himself posted the movie of the signing party, which took area at Arizona Republican Social gathering headquarters and is mentioned in the indictment.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Henry appeared to be publishing to the @AZGOP accounts, this time from Washington. The account posted an image of Raheem Kassam, a considerably-appropriate influencer who posted misinformation in the aftermath of Trump’s election decline. Kassam was livestreaming at the time the image was taken, and a man whom on the internet sleuths determined as Henry by operating acknowledged photos of Henry from a database of films from Jan. 6 is noticed on Kassam’s livestream conversing about the @AZGOP account. Kassam inspired his followers to follow the account, which he termed “spicy.” The man the sleuths identified as Henry was donning a brown hoodie that matches a person Henry wore in a photograph posted to his individual Facebook account a few a long time previously.
Later, the person identified as Henry was captured in pictures and on video clip on the limited grounds of the Capitol. That night, the @AZGOP account posted movie from the limited grounds of the Capitol and also posted online video that shows the mob using above the inauguration platform and employing law enforcement barricades to climb a staircase foremost to the location wherever the Capitol was very first breached. On line investigators identified a further open up-resource video that shows the man identified as Henry recording the similar minute that was posted to the @AZGOP account.
The video clip posted by the AZGOP account syncs up with the 3rd-occasion video clip of the man who appears to be Henry: To start with he pans slowly but surely to the correct, then abruptly to the still left, and then he does a clockwise 360-diploma spin.
Sleuths also identified Capitol surveillance video, earlier introduced in relationship with a Jan. 6 circumstance, that options the similar man. Other open-resource movies show the gentleman determined as Henry nonetheless donning the brown hoodie and an American flag mask leaving the Capitol grounds.
In the early days of the Jan. 6 investigation, federal prosecutors billed a handful of nonviolent defendants who have been on the grounds of the Capitol but never entered the setting up. That is no more time a emphasis for prosecutors hundreds of persons who entered the developing have still not been charged.
“We have employed our prosecutorial discretion to generally target on individuals who entered the setting up, on those who engaged in violent or corrupt perform on Capitol grounds,” U.S. Lawyer Matthew Graves explained this year. “But if a man or woman knowingly entered a restricted region with no authorization, they experienced presently committed a federal criminal offense. Make no oversight, 1000’s of folks occupied an area that they were not authorized to be existing in in the first area.
Henry posted that he had left the Arizona GOP task on Jan. 23, 2021, just days after Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president, passing through the reduced west tunnel exactly where pro-Trump rioters experienced viciously assaulted officers just times earlier.
In 2022 he posted on his possess account a shortened variation of the online video that was initially posted by @AZGOP. The publish echoed the conspiracy principle that “antifa” was at the rear of the pro-Trump mob’s attack.
