Frisco attorney and Baylor University alumnus Paul Davis didn’t enter the U.S. Capitol on January 6, but no one can doubt his devotion to President Trump’s claims of a stolen election, even as Davis remained among thousands outside the Capitol. The posted video of himself amid the unrest not only got him fired as associate general counsel for a Texas insurance firm a day later but also led to collaboration with Granbury attorney and self-described patriot Kellye SoRelle and a number of clients in pressing a lawsuit in the Waco-based federal court of the Western District of Texas. The Jan. 18, 2021 suit argued multiple 2020 elections should be invalidated because of widespread irregularities. Before this collaboration splintered amid disagreements over legal strategy, Davis crafted a suit that, among other things, urged the federal judiciary to recognize not only the illegitimacy of President Biden’s election but also that of all of Congress and a third of the U.S. Senate. Davis also drew ridicule for borrowing from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and its realm of hobbits, elves, wizards and goblins to bolster his ambitious proposal that the federal executive branch be governed by a set of “stewards” charged with preserving Trump administration policies till election irregularities could be resolved by the courts, up to and including new elections. Based on a recommendation by Waco-based Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Manske regarding this pull-out-all-the-stops effort that he characterized as “fantastic and outright nonsensical” and lacking legal standing, hobbled by procedural irregularities and begging for evidence, the suit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Alan Albright on Sept. 21. On Christmas Eve, personable 40-year-old Paul M. Davis — touting himself on Twitter as “the God-fearing deplorable Texas lawyer for patriots,” busy helping clients gain exemptions from vaccine mandates — sat down with retired Waco Tribune-Herald opinion editor Bill Whitaker to discuss the January 6 unrest. Below are excerpts from an 80-minute interview and a 35-minute Dec. 30 follow-up interview. > Read the full interview

Question: By now, many of us have seen videos of what happened inside and around the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and have formed opinions one way or the other. But you were there amidst the unrest, though you reportedly never entered the Capitol or fought with police officers. What is the public and news media possibly missing about that particular day?

Paul Davis: I think a big one is calling it an insurrection. There was a small group of individuals who caused the violence or, rather, participated in the violence, breaking down outer barriers, but other than those individuals I think most people there were more like me. They were people who were very concerned about what was going on with the election and just the failure of public officials and the courts to do a proper audit. People like me feel there was not a proper audit done and that there are a lot of issues with this election. I think most people like myself went there with the intent of just standing outside the Capitol, voicing our opinions. There was no intent to overthrow the government. We were just there making our views known.

Of most of the people who went in [the Capitol], my understanding and from the videos I’ve seen and other people I’ve talked to who were in that situation — there were quite a few from Frisco who went — the police opened the doors for them. And if you walk up to a government building and the authorities open the doors and let you in, I don’t think that’s trespassing. I think it’s egregious that the feds are prosecuting people who just walked in when police opened the doors. You know, in Texas you can go to the Capitol and talk to your representatives, so I don’t know why it would be unreasonable to assume that the same wouldn’t be true for the U.S. Capitol if the police opened the doors so you could enter.

Q: Many of the plea agreements negotiated between January 6 defendants and federal prosecutors find some defendants insisting they became “caught up in the excitement of the moment,” including President Trump’s rousing speech at the Ellipse. Is it fair or unfair to say President Trump incited the protesters, given that he at one point told them he was going to travel to the Capitol with them? Again, this is in many of the defense filings and pleadings I’ve read of the January 6 defendants.

Davis: I think it’s unfair because I watched that speech. In fact, I made it a point to stay. I was extremely cold, I was borderline hypothermic and literally my teeth were chattering, but I wanted to hear what President Trump had to say. Actually, I videoed the entire speech. I’ve seen a lot of Trump’s speeches and I would say this was kind of a milquetoast speech. Compared to his other speeches, the energy in that speech was very low. He kind of recited the facts that people who were following the election integrity movement, the “Stop the Steal” movement, knew pretty well. They were assertions that were well known to the crowd. He just went through the stuff that we basically already knew and at the end he said, ‘So we’re all going to go down to the Capitol and cheer on our Republican congresspeople who need our support.” I mean, that’s not verbatim, but that’s largely how I remember it. I don’t remember him saying anything that would incite a riot.

And, you know, you have to take into account, too, the people who broke those outer barriers [around the Capitol grounds], that happened while President Trump was still speaking. So to conclude that something he said in his speech incited the so-called “riot,” that’s not correct. That happened while he was still speaking, before he made his concluding remarks about going down to the Capitol.

Q: Some such as Matthew Dowd, the former Republican strategist who has left the party over its transformation from standard or conventional conservatism, have recently suggested that the anniversary of January 6 be observed with the same reverence we show for, say, the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 or the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11. Worthy idea or not?

Davis: That’s preposterous. The attack on Pearl Harbor cost thousands and thousands of lives. I don’t know the exact count. I want to say it’s several thousand people from my recollection. [NOTE: 2,403 Americans died in the 1941 Japanese aerial attack.] And then the Twin Towers, I don’t know how many thousands of people were —

Q: About 3,000.

Davis: Yeah, 3,000 — that sounds correct. And on January 6, the only person who died of anything other than natural means was Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by the Capitol police. The others were heart attacks and things of that nature, so I think it’s not a fair comparison. I mean, it’s not even close. The people who went to the Capitol were overwhelmingly unarmed. Obviously there were a few people who had some weapons like staffs and things like that, and they broke a few windows and went into the Capitol — I don’t approve of that, I don’t think people should have been violent on that day, but to compare it to the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Twin Towers, that’s way out of line.

Q: I’m not sure what the point was of breaking into the Capitol unless it was either (1) to pursue Trump’s attempt to stop certification of Electoral College votes from enough states to secure his re-election — a plan highlighted by Federalist Society member John Eastman — or (2) to take revenge on certain political figures, including the vice president of the United States. You didn’t go into the Capitol, I understand that, but am I wrong?

Davis: Yeah, I think you are right. There was a select group of people who did commit violence to break in. [NOTE: More than 725 persons have been charged so far, including Christopher Grider, 40, a veteran and co-owner of Kissing Tree Vineyards in Bruceville-Eddy, who witnessed the shooting death of rioter Ashli Babbitt, and Stacy Wade Hager, 58, of Gatesville, who said he felt “invincible” after he and others reportedly scaled a wall to gain entry into the Capitol. Of the 725 or so, more than 275 individuals have been charged with felonies such as assaulting law enforcement officers, obstructing an official proceeding and destruction or theft of government property.] I think the overwhelming majority of people there were like me. And, actually, breaking into the Capitol would have been counterproductive because we all wanted our congressmen and senators to strenuously object to confirmation of the Electoral College vote on January 6 and to take a look at what really happened before moving ahead with confirmation. Interrupting the proceeding was counterproductive and breaking into the Capitol gave the politicians in favor of confirming the vote on January 6 all the incentive to say, “Oh, this is an insurrection, we need to move forward with this, these Trump people are crazy.”

If you look at the reporting from Revolver News by Darren Beattie, he has gone into great detail to point out that so many of the people who were leaders on that day, inciting people to go into the Capitol — and they have emails and other communications and videos — none of those people have been arrested. So it’s reasonable to conclude they are probably FBI assets. I don’t think that’s completely crazy. I think that needs to be investigated. There’s a lot of people who want to get to the bottom of that. You see a lot of the people who initially breached barriers and broke windows were dressed in black, and there’s speculation they could have been antifa. [NOTE: Darren Beattie is a former Trump speechwriter fired in 2018 for his affiliation with white nationalists. Later Trump appointed him to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, prompting outcry from Jewish groups.] The bottom line of what I’m trying to say is most of us out there, the vast majority of people I know that went to an event like that, people who have the same views as I have, we wanted the January 6 proceeding to go forward. To break into the Capitol to stop it would have been counterproductive.

Q: Since January 6, 2021, many Americans seem to have loosened up regarding what some of us would term an insurrection. A friend of mine who is a Republican, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and in 2020 but definitely does not approve of the unrest at the Capitol, now tells me that I simply need to get past all that and fall into line as a dutiful Republican. Congressman Pete Sessions, whose name figured prominently in your legal filings contesting the election, and Republican politician Condoleezza Rice have made similar rationalizations about January 6 and about this need to get past it. Are they right or wrong?

Davis: I’m not sure what they mean by “getting past it.”

Q: They’re saying we need to move on, there are other things Republicans need to be dealing with, there are other things that lawmakers need to be dealing with.

Davis: OK. Well, I think the idea of “getting past” the questioning of what happened in the 2020 election — I don’t think that’s something we need to “get past” as an issue because there are clear issues with that election. I know the media, when the Arizona audit came out, paraded around the fact that, “Oh, this proves that Biden legitimately won.” What they were pointing to is if you counted all the ballots where the name Biden was checked — yeah, the numbers line up. But the report also found that 60,000 of those ballots had some issue that would have made them illegal under applicable state and federal laws. [NOTE: This is a reference to the months-long hand recount of Maricopa County votes conducted by the Trump friendly Cyber Ninjas, now locked in a dispute over pay and records with the Republican-led Arizona Senate. Election officials in both parties dispute Cyber Ninja claims about some 57,000 “impacted ballots.”] Clearly there are issues that need to be looked into with regard to the 2020 election. We can’t “move on” fully from January 6 until we get to the bottom of this issue because all of the people who went to the Capitol and are being pigeonholed as “crazy insurrectionists” — really, if you look at what happened and you look at all the irregularities, it’s not crazy to conclude that something was wrong with that election and demand that our officials do something about it.

Q: President Trump will be holding a press conference on January 6 to likely express the very same claims he did at the Ellipse and before and since — not about his possible role in the January 6 confusion — and let’s just call it “confusion” at this point — but about a rigged election. What would you advise him to press in his upcoming January 6 comments? [NOTE: Trump this week canceled the January 6 press conference after Republicans and advisers reportedly suggested it might be an unnecessary distraction and lend further attention to the January 6 mob violence pursued in his name.]

Davis: Well, that’s kind of a loaded question. I’m not sure what I would advise President Trump. I guess I could say if it were me speaking about January 6, you know, I would kind of reiterate just what I went through. Here’s the issues with this election, this is still something we need to get to the bottom of. I will say one thing I would advise President Trump to hammer on, and that’s the fact we have close to 50 individuals who went into the Capitol, were let in — I think most of them did not actually break in — and they’re being held in solitary confinement in really awful, unconscionable conditions in D.C. and this is cruel and unusual punishment. They’re being held in solitary confinement against Geneva Conventions, they’re not getting a speedy trial, they’re not allowed to see their attorneys on a regular basis, there’s very little privacy.

Q: Isn’t it a little disingenuous to claim in your lawsuit that many so-called “election irregularities” opened the door to fraud when in fact these were undertaken in the thick of a plague to keep voters safe? Surely that was the point of the election irregularity in Texas that extended early voting by six days. And the Texas Secretary of State’s Office reported no problems afterward.

Davis: I think it’s disingenuous they used the COVID safety issue as an excuse to drastically and dramatically relax election security procedures. I don’t think it’s a good excuse to open our democratic election process for electing public officials to various avenues of fraud. I mean, Anthony Fauci was on TV saying it’s safe to go out and vote. (Laughter.) I mean, he literally said that. [Note: Just for the record, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in-person voting could be done safely only if polling places enforce mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines and voters follow these guidelines.] And then we find out the surface [viral contamination] spread is not really a big concern in how we get it. Remember all the experts who said you can get it by touching things?

Q: Yes, but that was well before the general election.

Davis: Right. But I think the fear and concern for people’s safety with regard to COVID-19 was massively overblown. I think it was purposely overblown, so that the Democrats came in and brought like 400 lawsuits to change all these election rules. And I think that’s how they stole the election.