LIVE | A Champion, Ohio, man who participated in Jan. 6 Capitol riot testifies in D.C.

A Champion man who pleaded guilty last month to participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot testified today before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

Mahoning Matters will be publishing updates here during the hearing. Watch an Associated Press livestream of the hearing, which is live now:

[UPDATED 3:45 P.M.]

Stephen Ayres of Champion told House committee members that he was a family man and dedicated worker who felt he was misled to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen

“For me, personally, I was pretty hardcore into the social media — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I followed President Trump on all the websites,” he said during his testimony Tuesday.

But the man who pleaded guilty in federal court last month to a non-violent misdemeanor charge for being in the Capitol among a riotous mob of Trump supporters said he no longer supports the former president. He’s since made a clean break from social media, and started independently verifying the information he reads online, he said.

After being charged in the riot, Ayres told the committee he lost his job and faced financial hardship.

When asked by Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, how it makes him feel to see the former president continue to push that “Big Lie,” Ayres said:

“It makes me mad. I was hanging on every word he was saying, everything he was putting out I was following,” he said. “If I was doing it, hundreds of thousands of other people were doing it, or may still be doing it.

“Who knows? When the next election comes out, they could be on the same path we’re on now,” he continued.

“People dive into the politics, and for me, I felt like I had horse blinders on. I was locked in the whole time,” Ayres said. “The biggest thing for me is: Take the blinders off. Make sure you step back and see what’s going on before it’s too late.”

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[UPDATED 2:20 P.M.]

The committee called for a 10-minute recess. Upon returning, two witnesses were present in the hearing room: Jason Van Tatenhove, a former member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, some of whose members have been indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy in the attack; and Stephen Ayres, a 39-year-old man from Champion, Ohio, who was at the Capitol during the riot and pleaded guilty last month to a misdemeanor charge.

Prior to the recess, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin presented evidence suggesting President Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020, Tweet about a “Big protest on Jan. 6 ... Be there, will be wild!” nurtured the radical extremism that echoed across the internet after the 2020 election results were certified.

Right-wing commentators including InfoWars’ Alex Jones latched on to the message. One streamer likened the upcoming rally to the “Red Wedding,” a “pop culture reference for mass slaughter,” Raskin said Tuesday.

On sites like TheDonald.win, users shared plans and violent threats: “Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels,” one wrote. Others encouraged bringing weapons to the rally, according to committee evidence.

On Twitter, President Trump spoke to millions of followers, and referred to the rally in more than a dozen posts in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 rally, Raskin said.

An unidentified Twitter employee who handled content moderation for the social media platform and interviewed with the committee said those tweets tended to draw a violent online discourse in response.

“It felt as if a mob was being organized and they were gathering together their weaponry and their logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight,” the employee is heard saying in a recording.

“What shocked me was the responses to these Tweets,” the employee said, some of which were along the lines of “I’m locked and loaded and ready for Civil War part two.”

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[UPDATED 1:30 P.M.]

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, vice chairwoman of the select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, said today’s Jan. 6 hearing will include testimony from a man who was “induced to come to Washington and join the mob” that breached the Capitol Building — and how his participation “changed his life.”

Evidence presented by the committee today is expected to show how former President Donald Trump’s social media activity drew the mob to the Capitol, members said.

U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy said President Trump’s Tweet calling supporters to a Jan. 6 rally at the Capitol — “Be there. Will be wild!” it read — served as “a call to action and, in some cases, as a call to arms for many of Trump’s most loyal supporters.”

Murphy said the committee intends to show how President Trump “ad-libbed” his speech at the Ellipse that day and “spoke off-script in a way that inflamed and angered the crowd.”

Expected to testify today are Jason Van Tatenhove, a former member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, some of whose members have been indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy in the attack; and Stephen Ayres, a 39-year-old man from Champion, Ohio, who was at the Capitol during the riot and pleaded guilty last month to a misdemeanor charge.

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Read our initial 1 p.m. report:

Stephen M. Ayres, 39, of Champion, originally faced felony and misdemeanor counts for allegedly obstructing Congress’ official certification of the November 2020 elections results and for entering and remaining inside the Capitol building among a horde of former President Donald Trump’s supporters.

In Facebook posts made days before the riot, Ayres referenced his upcoming trip to the Capitol and alleged the mainstream media, the Democratic party, members of the federal legislature and judiciary and others committed treason against President Trump. The post included an image of a poster calling protesters to the Capitol for a Jan. 6, 2021, rally that read “Be there, will be wild.”

In a video posted to YouTube after the riot, Ayres and his codefendant Matthew Perna of Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, blamed the violence on antifa.

Today’s hearing is expected to focus on the role radical extremists played in the attack, according to reports.

As part of Ayres’ plea agreement reached late last month, he pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds. He faces up to one year in prison. He’s set for sentencing on Sept. 13.

Had Ayres been carrying a weapon or harmed others during the riot, that charge would have been upgraded to a felony.

Perna, who also accepted a plea deal, died by suicide on Feb. 25, less than a week before his sentencing date.

This story was originally published July 12, 2022 at 12:55 PM.