Members
of Trump campaign behind rally that ignited US Capitol riot, records show
By RICHARD
LARDNER AND MICHELLE R. SMITH
ASSOCIATED
PRESS |
JAN 17, 2021 AT 1:29 PM
WASHINGTON
— Members of President Donald Trump’s failed presidential campaign played key
roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly
assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Associated Press review of
records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president’s
grassroots supporters.
A
pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save
America Rally” on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch
of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service
public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen
people in staff positions for the event who just weeks earlier had been paid
thousands of dollars by Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Other staff scheduled
to be “on site” during the demonstration have close ties to the White House.
Since the
siege, several of them have scrambled to distance themselves from the rally.
The riot
at the Capitol, incited by Trump’s comments before and during his speech at the
Ellipse, has led to a reckoning unprecedented in American history. The
president told the crowd to march to the Capitol and that “you’ll never take
back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be
strong.”
A week
after the rally, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives,
becoming the first U.S. president ever to be impeached twice. But the political
and legal fallout may stretch well beyond Trump, who will exit the White House
on Wednesday before Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office. Trump had
refused for nearly two months to accept his loss in the 2020 election to the
former vice president.
Women for
America First, which applied for and received the Park Service permit, did not
respond to messages seeking comment about how the event was financed and about
the Trump campaign’s involvement. The rally drew tens of thousands of people.
In a
statement, the president’s reelection campaign said it “did not organize,
operate or finance the event.” No campaign staff members were involved in the
organization or operation of the rally, according to the statement. It said
that if any former employees or independent contractors for the campaign took
part, “they did not do so at the direction of the Trump campaign.”
At least
one was working for the Trump campaign this month. Megan Powers was listed as
one of two operations managers for the Jan. 6 event, and her LinkedIn profile
says she was the Trump campaign’s director of operations into January 2021. She
did not respond to a message seeking comment.
The AP’s
review found at least three of the Trump campaign aides named on the permit
rushed to obscure their connections to the demonstration. They deactivated or
locked down their social media profiles and removed tweets that referenced the
rally. Two blocked a reporter who asked questions.
Caroline
Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser, is named as a “VIP Advisor” on an attachment to
the permit that Women for America First provided to the agency. Between
mid-March and mid-November, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. paid Wren
$20,000 a month, according to Federal Election Commission records. During the
campaign, she was a national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a
joint fundraising committee between the president’s reelection campaign and the
Republican National Committee.
Wren was
involved in at least one call before the pro-Trump rally with members of
several groups listed as rally participants to organize credentials for VIP
attendees, according to Kimberly Fletcher, the president of one of those
groups, Moms for America.
Wren
retweeted messages about the event ahead of time, but a cache of her account on
Google shows at least eight of those tweets disappeared from her timeline. She
apparently removed some herself, and others were sent from accounts that
Twitter suspended.
One of
the messages Wren retweeted was from “Stop the Steal,” another group identified
as a rally participant on a website promoting the event. The Jan. 2 message
thanked Republican senators who said they would vote to overturn Biden’s
election victory, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas. She
also retweeted a Jan. 1 message from the president promoting the event, as well
as promotional messages from one of the president’s son, Eric Trump, and
Katrina Pierson, a Tea Party activist and a spokesperson for Trump’s 2016
presidential campaign.
Wren did
not return messages seeking comment, and locked her Twitter account after the
AP reached out to her last Monday to ask her about her involvement in the Trump
rally and the tweets she had removed. Several days later, she blocked the AP
reporter.
Maggie
Mulvaney, a niece of former top Trump aide Mick Mulvaney, is listed on the
permit attachment as the “VIP Lead.” She worked as director of finance
operations for the Trump campaign, according to her LinkedIn profile. FEC
records show Maggie Mulvaney was earning $5,000 every two weeks from Trump’s
reelection campaign, with the most recent payment reported on November 13.
Maggie
Mulvaney had taken down her Twitter account as of last Monday, although it
reappeared after the AP asked her about the account’s removal.
Maggie
Mulvaney retweeted several messages on Jan. 6, including one from the president
that urged support for the Capitol Police. Trump’s Twitter account has been
suspended, but the message could be seen in a cache of her Twitter account
captured by Google. She also retweeted a message from her uncle, urging Trump
to address the nation.
Maggie
Mulvaney did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The
insurrection at the Capitol prompted Mick Mulvaney to quit his position as
Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland. He told CNBC a day after the assault
that remaining in the post would prompt people to say “‘Oh yeah, you work for
the guy who tried to overtake the government.’”
The
leaders of Women for America First aren’t new to politics.
Amy
Kremer, listed as the group’s president on records filed with Virginia’s state
corporation commission, is “one of the founding mothers of the modern day tea
party movement,” according to her website. Her daughter, Kylie Jane Kremer, is
the organization’s treasurer, according to the records.
The IRS
granted Women for America First tax-exempt status as a social welfare
organization a year ago, with the exemption retroactive to February 2019. The
AP requested that the group provide any tax records it may have filed since
then, but received no response.
In a
statement issued the same day rioters attacked the Capitol, Amy Kremer
denounced the assault and said it was instigated after the rally by a “handful
of bad actors,” while seeming to blame Democrats and news organizations for the
riot.
“Unfortunately,
for months the left and the mainstream media told the American people that
violence was an acceptable political tool,” she said. “They were wrong. It is
not.”
The AP
reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public
records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the
Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified
through photographs and videos taken during the melee.
The
review found the crowd was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters,
including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right
militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and
adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a
cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals.
Videos
posted on social media in the days following the Capitol attack shows that
thousands of people stormed the Capitol. A Capitol Police officer died after he
was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher as rioters descended on the
building and many other officers were injured. A woman from California was shot
to death by Capitol Police and three other people died after medical
emergencies during the chaos.
Trump’s
incendiary remarks at the Jan. 6 rally culminated a two-day series of events in
Washington, organized by a coalition of the president’s supporters who echoed
his baseless accusations that the election had been stolen from him. A
website, MarchtoSaveAmerica.com, sprung up to
promote the pro-Trump events and alerted followers, “At 1 PM, we protest at US
Capitol.” The website has been deactivated.
Another
website, TrumpMarch.com shows a fist-raised
Trump pictured on the front of a red, white and blue tour bus emblazoned with
the words, “Powered by Women for America First.” The logo for the bedding
company “My Pillow” is also prominent. Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow, is
an ardent Trump supporter who’s falsely claimed Trump didn’t lose the election
to Biden and will serve another four-year term as president.
“To
demand transparency & protect election integrity,” the web page reads.
Details of the “DC PROTEST” will be coming soon, it adds, and also lists a
series of bus stops between Dec. 27 and Jan. 6 where Trump backers can “Join
the caravan or show your support.”
Kimberly
Fletcher, the Moms for America president, said she wasn’t aware the Trump
campaign had a role in the rally at the Ellipse until around New Year’s Day.
While she didn’t work directly with the campaign, Fletcher did notice a shift
in who was involved in the rally and who would be speaking.
“When I
got there and I saw the size of the stage and everything, I’m like, ‘Wow, we
couldn’t possibly have afforded that,’” she said. “It was a big stage. It was a
very professional stage. I don’t know who was in the background or who put it
together or anything.”
In
addition to the large stage. the rally on the Ellipse featured a sophisticated
sound system and at least three Jumbotron-style screens projecting the
president’s image to the crowd. Videos posted online show Trump and his family
in a nearby private tent watching the rally on several monitors as music blared
in the background.
Moms for
America held a more modest “Save the Republic” rally on Jan. 5 near the U.S.
Capitol, an event that drew about 500 people and cost between $13,000 to
$14,000, according to Fletcher.
Justin
Caporale is listed on the Women for America First paperwork as the event’s
project manager. He’s identified as a partner with Event Strategies Inc., a
management and production company. Caporale, formerly a top aide to first lady
Melania Trump, was on the Trump campaign payroll for most of 2020, according to
the FEC records, and he most recently was being paid $7,500 every two weeks.
Caporale didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Tim Unes,
the founder and president of Event Strategies, was the “stage manager” for the
Jan. 6 rally, according to the permit paperwork. Unes has longstanding ties to
Trump, a connection he highlights on his company’s website. Trump’s
presidential campaign paid Event Strategies $1.3 million in 2020 for “audio
visual services,” according to the campaign finance records. The company declined
to comment for this story.
Another
person with close ties to the Trump administration, Hannah Salem, was the
rally’s “operations manager for logistics and communications,” according to the
permit paperwork. In 2017, she took a hiatus from the consulting firm she
founded and spent three years as senior White House press aide, “executing the
media strategy for President Trump’s most high-profile events,” according to
her company bio and LinkedIn profile.
Last
month, within minutes of an AP reporter sending her a LinkedIn message asking
about her involvement in and understanding of what happened on Jan. 6, Salem
blocked the reporter and did not respond to questions.
Smith
reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
Associated
Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York and Associated Press writer Zeke
Miller contributed to this report.
