Several former members of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign were among the main organizers of the rally that turned into a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, reports the Associated Press.
The news agency reviewed records showing that “more than half a dozen people in staff positions” for the rally at the Ellipse, just south of the White House, had been well-paid Trump campaign workers.
The campaign denies any role in organizing or financing the event.
“A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally,” the AP says. But the names of several former Trump campaign staffers were listed on an attachment to the National Park Service permit allowing use of the oval park.
The event, at which Trump encouraged tens of thousands of his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” led directly to the mass invasion that damaged the building and left five people dead, including a police officer — and eventually to the president’s second impeachment by the House of Representatives.
Women for America First refused to speak with the AP, but several people with close ties to the White House have “scrambled to distance themselves from the rally.”
“They deactivated or locked down their social media profiles, removed tweets that referenced the rally and blocked a reporter who asked questions,” the news agency says.
One prominent Republican fundraiser, Caroline Wren, is named as a “VIP Advisor” to Women for America First. Wren was previously “a national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee.”
Federal Election Commission records show that Wren was paid $20,000 by Trump’s re-election campaign between mid-March and mid-November of last year. The AP also found that Wren “deleted several tweets about the rally after the riot.”
Other former Trump campaign staffers listed on official paperwork for the rally include Megan Powers (who apparently was still working for the Trump campaign as recently as this month), Maggie Mulvaney, Justin Caporale, and Tim Unes.
“In a statement, the president’s re-election campaign said it ‘did not organize, operate or finance the event,’” adding 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,’” the AP says.
The news agency 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 were identified in photos and videos taken during the riot.
“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,” the AP says.