Who is Ali Alexander? 'Official organizer' of Trump DC rally was charged for vehicle burglary, debit card fraud
Far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander has gone into hiding following the suspension of his Twitter and Facebook accounts in the aftermath of the January 6 riots at Capitol Hill. Pro-Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol in an attack against the United States Congress as they convened to certify the results of the 2020 elections. Alexander had described himself as one of the "official organizers" of the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally that has a death toll of five in addition to a Capitol police officer who died by suicide days after responding to the riots.
Ali Alexander's role in the Capitol Hill riots
Alexander has long been a popular figure in the far-right movement and was once retweeted by outgoing President Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. when Alexander claimed that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was not an "American Black," according to The Daily Beast. Prior to the riots, he spoke at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, using the word "yet" as a code word for "violence."
At the rally, he said, "We’re going to convince them to not certify the vote on January 6 by marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patriots, to sit their butts in D.C. and close that city down, right? And if we have to explore options after that... 'yet'. Yet!" His supporters cheered him on yelling more threats, saying that nothing was "off the table." Alexander also threatened to “1776” the opponents of Trump’s re-election, in a reference to the year the American Revolution began.
Who is Ali Alexander?
According to Conan Daily, Ali Alexander was born Ali Abdul Razaq Akbar and is an African-American man of Arab descent. The publication also cited Alexander's now-suspended Facebook account to note that he had lived in various parts of the country, including Lynchburg, Virginia, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Fort Worth, Texas.
According to Digital Journal, Alexander was an underprivileged kid living in the Fort Worth area. In November 2006, he was arrested for stealing many items from a woman in Fort Worth. A month later, he broke into a van and stole a debit card, attempting to use it. Two years later, in April 2008, he pled guilty for debit card fraud and was sentenced to four years probation and $400 restitution. The publication also reported that Alexander was a student at the University of North Texas in 2005 for four months.
Alexander also became involved in right-wing politics in the early 2000s. In 2007, he became a member of John McCain's campaign against Barack Obama to become the 44th President of the United States – something he has both acknowledged and denied at different times. Alexander was also arrested in Fort Worth and charged with two felony charges the same year – for credit or debit card fraud and the burglary of a vehicle.
According to Bayou Brief, Alexander got involved with the Black Conservatives Fund which was described as being a "proxy for former Louisiana state Sen. Elbert Guillory." In 2015, he worked as the digital director for Republican Jay Dardenne's Louisiana gubernatorial campaign. The following year, he was reportedly involved with a political action committee that received $60,000 from Robert Mercer.
In 2019, he traveled to Minneapolis with other far-right activists Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl, attempting to prove that US Representative Ilhan Omar had married her own brother and committed immigration fraud -- which was reiterated by Trump in October 2020.
Supporting Donald Trump
Conan Daily noted that Alexander was not an outright supporter of Trump initially, having written in a Facebook post, "I think he destroyed my party, and I hate the campaign he’s running. But I’ll gladly choose him over Hillary Clinton and the violent leftist mob.”
On election day in 2020, he tweeted, “God gave me the color orange in December 2019." The tweets, accessed by The Daily Beast also read, “He told me ‘orange would be the color of 2020.’ I've come to learn it means GOD'S POWER.”
However, he has since become a staunch supporter of the outgoing president. The Arizona Republic reported that Alexander said he worked with Arizona Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs worked with him to plan pro-Trump rallies, including the one that ended with an attack on the Capitol.
He began working to organize large protests in Washington DC to oppose the certification of the election results. Among the many election conspiracies he spread through the Stop the Steal campaign was that people had used their maiden names to vote more than once, the theory has since dubbed "Maidengate."
Where is Ali Alexander now?
On Sunday, January 10, Twitter suspended Alexander's account. The Daily Beast reported that before his account was suspended, Alexander had posted a video claiming that he had gone into hiding and tweeted to his followers for donations, saying he needed $2,000 a day to fund his security detail and other expenses. He also bizarrely claimed, "Witches and wiccans are putting hexes and curses on us.”