The re-election campaign for Donald Trump played a far bigger role than previously disclosed in the organization of the January 6th in Washington, DC than was previously disclosed, information from the Center for Responsive Politics reports.
The Trump campaign paid at least $2.7 million to groups that organized the rally that led to Trump-supporting domestic terrorists to attack the Capitol to undermine the certification of Electoral College votes. Such connections will make it difficult for Trump to claim that he did not understand the audience that was invited to attend the rally, which included white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy groups and violent alt-right factions–and therefore throw into doubt any claim by Trump that the ensuing Capitol attack was unforeseeable.
Maggie Mulvaney, whose LinkedIn profile says her current position is Trump campaign’s director of finance operations and manager of external affairs and who is the niece of former Trump staffer Mick Mulvaney, and Megan Powers, who was the Trump campaign’s director of operations until December, were two of the people who signed off on the rally permit application.
In addition, many people who produced the rally were taking six-figure salaries from Trump’s campaign at least through November. The rally’s stage manager, Tim Unes, received a $117,000 salary from the Trump campaign through November. Justin Caporale, listed as the rally’s production manager, had received $144,000 from the campaign in the twelve months before Election Day.
“Dark money” groups, including America First Policies, funded Women for America First, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that submitted the rally’s permit records to the National Park Service, according to CRP.
American Made Media Consultants, an agency created by Trump aides and campaign staff, helped funnel money to Event Strategies, a long-time contractor who produced Trump campaign rallies and helped with the January 6th pre-coup event. AMMC was formed by Jared Kushner and others, receiving more than $750 million from the campaign to hide spending by the campaign. Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, served as president of the shell company. Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence served as the company’s vice president.
The use of those shell companies and organizations make it difficult to uncover the depth of the Trump team’s involvement in producing and promoting the rally.
“The Trump campaign’s FEC reports really only provide a snapshot of who was paid by the campaign,” Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, told OpenSecrets. “Using FEC reports to identify Trump campaign aides involved in the January 6 riot has its limits, because we don’t fully know who the campaign was paying.”