Newly identified payments in recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show people involved in organizing the protests on Jan. 6 received even larger sums from Trump’s 2020 campaign than previously known, reports Open Secrets. $3.5 million in direct payments to be exact.
It is also believed that there might’ve been more payments to the January 6 organizers that did not get filed through the FEC.
“The American public may never know the full extent of the Trump campaign’s payments to organizers involved in the protests. That’s because the campaign used an opaque payment scheme that concealed details of hundreds of millions of dollars in spending by routing payments through shell companies where the ultimate payee is hidden,” writes Open Secrets journalist Anna Massoglia.
According to Truthout, the Trump campaign denied that any staff had helped to organize the rally, but that claim was questionable. The permit is dated January 5, and rally organizer Megan Powers claimed on LinkedIn to have worked for the campaign into January 2021. Other campaign aides linked to the permit quickly hid their social media accounts when AP reached out to them.
As reported by Associated Press (AP), 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. 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.
“It was his duty as commander-in-chief to stop the violence. And he alone had that power — not just because of his unique role as commander-in-chief, but because they believed that they were following his orders. They said so,” said impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colorado).
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