Well, what do you know? Turns out that a political fundraising group attached to former President Donald Trump paid some $4.3 million during the 2020 election cycle to folks and firms that helped organize the rally prior to the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the government watchdog OpenSecrets.
While no one knows how far down the rabbit-hole the Trump-linked funding for the Jan. 6 rally goes, it shows that the president’s people paid to protest the 2020 election results. But more may be found out soon as the House select committee continues its investigation into the insurrection, which will show who knew what and when.
From HuffPost:
The committee last week demanded a trove of materials linked to the Capitol attack, including social media messages, Republican lawmakers’ phone records, and information from the Trump White House and executive agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI.
GOP fundraiser Caroline Wren is named in one of the House subpoenas for information, per OpenSecrets. She was listed as a “VIP adviser” on the permit granted by the National Park Service for the Jan. 6 rally. Wren was paid at least $170,000 last year as the Trump campaign’s national finance consultant with the joint fundraising committee, called the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, according to records tracked by OpenSecrets.
The House committee also called for records related to Women for Trump Co-chair Gina Loudon, who spoke at the rally. In addition, it requested records linked to Amy Kremer, co-founder of Women for America First, which was funded by the “dark money” group America First Policies and submitted the rally’s permit records to the National Park Service.
Letters related to Dustin Stockton, a co-organizer of the rally, have also been requested by the committee, according to OpenSecrets.
Stockton told ProPublica earlier this year that he’d been concerned about the possible dangers of the hastily planned march to the Capitol at the end of the rally, saying it “felt unsafe.”
Stockton reportedly told Katrina Pierson (you know, the other Candace Owens), the former Trump campaign spokesperson, that he was afraid of what might go down. Stockton claimed that he and Kremer went to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows to notify him of what might occur. Kremer denies this happened and Meadows has not confirmed that this conversation ever took place.
Megan Powers was also listed on the Jan. 6 protest permit as an operations manager. She was reportedly paid some $300,000 as Trump’s campaign director of operations.
Also from HuffPost:
Firms linked to the Jan. 6 rally and paid by Trump’s fundraising network include Event Strategies Inc., which was named in the rally permit and reportedly employed two of the rally organizers. The company has been paid more than $2.5 million since the start of the 2020 election. Around $800,000 of that amount came from Trump’s Save America leadership PAC and Make America Great Again Action, according to OpenSecrets. MAGA Action made a payment to the company as recently as this month, according to Federal Election Commission records filed Aug. 26.
The limited liability company American Made Media Consultants was paid some $222,000 by the Trump joint fundraising committee for text messaging on Jan. 6 alone, OpenSecrets reported. The Trump campaign and Trump MAGA Committee spent more than $771 million through the company during the 2020 election cycle, federal records show.
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed an FEC complaint last year alleging that the network of Trump campaign subcontractors was actually made of “shell” companies used to “launder” payments to secret recipients, including to a Trump family member.
So yeah, they did that shit.