According to OpenSecrets, former President Donald Trump’s political fundraising operation reported paying out more than $4.3 million to people and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally since the start of the 2020 election cycle. The ‘stop the steal’ rally ended up with a mob of Trump supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol.
The watchdog group said that questions remain about the full extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement in the ‘stop the steal’ rally on the day of deadly insurrection, but the funding sheds light on the strong push from Trump-backers to deny the election results after Joe Biden defeated the former president in both the electoral and popular vote.
The Jan. 6 Committee committee last week requested a mountain of materials linked to the deadly attack. The committee requested that 35 telecom companies retain phone records involving the Trump White House on January 6th.
“The House subpoena names Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser who received at least $170,000 from the Trump political operation as the campaign’s national finance consultant with the joint fundraising committee,” OpenSecrets reports. “Wren was listed as a “VIP Advisor” on the permit granted by the National Park Service for the Jan. 6 rally.”
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“Megan Powers, one of two operations managers listed on the rally permit, is not listed in the House request but was paid around $300,000 as the Trump campaign’s director of operations,” the report continues. “And Make America Great Again PAC paid around $20,000 more to Powers for “recount administrative consulting” in 2021.”
Some of these names sound familiar.
“The House select committee did request records related to Women for Trump initiative co-chair Gina Loudon, who spoke at the rally. The committee also requested records related to Amy Kremer, who notably co-founded Women for America First, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit “dark money” group that submitted the rally’s permit records to the National Park Service,” the report states.
“The select committee also requested letters related to Dustin Stockton, a co-organizer of the rally. Stockton was also a spokesperson for WeBuildtheWall when former White House strategist Steve Bannon and three others affiliated with the dark money group were charged with fraud related to the online fundraising effort.,” the report continues. “Stockton was not charged and records related to Bannon were requested by the House select committee.”
Recent campaign finance records reviewed by the watchdog group revealed that Trump’s political operation continued to pay Event Strategies Inc., a firm named in a permit for the rally where two of the rally organizers worked. Event Strategies, according to OpenSecrets, received payments from Trump-aligned super PAC Make America Great Again Action as recently as Aug. 13, FEC records filed Aug. 26 show.
“Trump’s political operation paid Event Strategies more than $2.5 million since the start of the 2020 election with around $800,000 of that coming from Trump’s Save America leadership PAC and Make America Great Again Action super PAC in 2021,” the report adds.
OpenSecrets reports that 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.
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy issued a threat on Tuesday to telecom companies that comply with the requests from the committee.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Michael Vadon/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
