January 6 Top Trump Donor-funded rally, with the help of Alex Jones, organizers say

Jones also helped to arrange for Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a prominent Trump campaign donor and heir to the Publix Super Markets Inc. chain, to commit about $ 300,000 through a fundraising officer for the former campaign of 2020. President Donald Trump, according to organizers. His money paid for most of the $ 500,000 rally at Ellipse, where Trump spoke.

Another far-right activist and leader of the Stop the Steal movement, Ali Alexander, helped coordinate the planning with Caroline Wren, a fundraiser who was paid for by the Trump campaign for much of 2020 and who was summoned by Ms. Fancelli to organize and fund an event on her behalf, organizers said. On social media, Mr. Alexander pointed to January 6 as a key date for supporters to gather in Washington to contest the results of the 2020 election certification. In the week of the rally, he tweeted a pamphlet of the event saying: “ DC becomes FORT TRUMP from tomorrow on my orders! ”

The Ellipse rally, in which President Trump urged his supporters to march to the United States Capitol, was legal and not violent. But it served as a starting point for many supporters to go to the Capitol. Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives, accused of inciting a crowd to invade the Capitol with comments urging his supporters to “fight like hell”.

Few details about the financing and organization of the Ellipse event were revealed previously. Mr. Jones said in a video that he paid for part of the event, but did not offer details.

Mr. Jones and Alexander were active in the weeks leading up to the event, calling on their supporters to oppose the election results and go to the United States Capitol on January 6. Alexander, for example, tweeted on December 30 about the scheduled January. 6 count on lawmakers to certify the Electoral College vote on Capitol Hill, writing: “If they do that, everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do with that building.”

A mix of different pro-Trump groups was planning several events on January 6. Several of them, led by pro-Trump Women for America First, helped coordinate the Ellipse event; another group split up to lead a rally the night before, in which Mr. Jones ended up speaking, and the group organized by Mr. Alexander planned a protest outside the Capitol building.

Jones, who has publicized discredited conspiracy theories, welcomed leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two extremist groups prominent in the turmoil, on their popular Internet radio and video programs.

Mr. Jones declined to respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Alexander said Stop the Steal’s motto is “peaceful, but turbulent”, that violence at the Capitol was not planned by his group and said that none of his rhetoric incited violence. Messrs. Alexander and Jones said on Mr Jones’ program that they tried to prevent protesters from entering the Capitol and sought to lessen the revolt. None of them were accused of transgression.

A Trump campaign spokesman said she had no role in financing or organizing the Ellipse event and did not instruct former employees to do so. A Trump spokeswoman declined to comment. At least five former Trump campaign officials, in addition to Wren, helped with the logistics of the January 6 rally, according to the license and records of the Federal Election Commission.

Beginning in mid-December, Alexander began publicizing plans “to peacefully march and occupy DC with #StopTheSteal,” according to organizers and a message saved by Devin Burghart, who heads an organization that tracks extremist groups. On December 19, Trump asked supporters via Twitter to attend the January 6 protests, which he said would be “crazy”.

Mr. Alexander created a website called WildProtest.com, writing: “We, the people, must go to the United States Capitol lawn and take steps and tell Congress #DoNotCertify on # JAN6!” He planned and released a rally that would take place on the Capitol that day. The site was taken down after the uproar.

A Women for America First representative applied for authorization to host a separate rally shortly after the opening in January, but the group rescheduled for January 6 after Trump’s tweet on December 19, organizers said.

The Women for America First license for the Ellipse rally listed several names and positions, including Ms. Wren as a “VIP coordinator”. In the 2020 election cycle, the Trump campaign and a joint Republican Party committee paid Mrs. Wren and her fundraising consulting firm $ 730,000, according to FEC records.

Ms. Wren was hired to handle the funding by Ms. Fancelli, the main donor to the Ellipse event, according to the organizers. Ms. Fancelli, who did not respond to several requests for comment, donated more than $ 980,000 in the 2020 election cycle to a joint account for the Trump campaign and the Republican Party, the records show.

Ms. Fancelli, daughter of the founder of Publix Super Markets, contacted Mr. Jones and offered to contribute to a January 6 event, organizers said. Mr. Jones connected her to an organizer through Ms. Wren, who managed the funding while helping to coordinate the logistics of a rally with Women for America First. A Publix spokeswoman said Fancelli was not involved in the company’s business operations and “does not represent the company in any way”.

The Ellipse setup cost about $ 500,000, with a concert stage, a $ 100,000 grass cover and thousands of feet of security structures.

Ms. Wren played a central role in bringing together the disparate group of activists planning events on January 6. She suggested to Alexander that he reschedule his Capitol rally for 1 pm and put in place a list of about 30 potential speakers, including Messrs. Alexander and Jones, who were listed on websites as associated with the day’s events, according to the organizers.

In a statement, Ms. Wren said her role at the event “was to help many others to provide and organize a professionally produced event at Ellipse”.

The involvement of Messrs. Jones and Alexander generated a debate among the organizers. Amy Kremer, president of Women for America First, said in a statement: “We were concerned that there was an aggressive impulse to have marginal participation in our event.”

In text messages that Ms. Wren sent to another organizer and reviewed by the Journal, Ms. Wren defended Mr. Jones. “I promise he is MUCH better than he looks … I hope [sic] they can become best friends, ”wrote Wren.

Ms. Wren’s spokesperson said the message is “evidence of Ms. Wren helping run an event, while diplomatically placing people with different agendas on the same page”.

Neither group was allowed to march, although Women for America First called the event “March to Save America Rally” and Mr. Alexander Stop the Steal promoted a march to the Capitol online.

The Women for America First Ellipse authorization said the group would not hold a march, but noted, “Some participants may go out to attend rallies at the United States Capitol to hear the results of Congressional certification of the Electoral College count.”

Kylie Kremer, co-founder of Women for America First, said the group did not ask for permission to march because it went against Covid-19 guidelines and a march was not in their plans.

When Trump met on January 4 with former campaign advisor Katrina Pierson, who had started working with demonstration organizers, he said he wanted to join mainly lawmakers who would help in his efforts to block the counting of electoral votes and members of his own family, advisers said.

Instead, Mr. Alexander and Jones spoke at a January 5 rally organized by the Eighty Percent Coalition, a group founded by Cindy Chafian, one of the first organizers of the January 6 event that closed the initial deal with Jones.

She said she was willing to work with Mr. Jones because “it is unreasonable to expect to agree with everything a group or person does”.

Jones’ starting money at the end was used for that January 5 rally, for which he ended up paying about $ 96,000, an organizer said. In his speech at that event, Mr. Jones said, “I don’t know how this is going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe they have one.”

The next day, Mrs. Wren personally escorted Jones and Alexander off Ellipse’s grounds before the two men marched to the United States Capitol, according to organizers. She had provided them and many other VIP passes that morning for Mr. Trump’s speech.

Messrs. Alexander and Jones were at the Capitol together on January 6, and Mr Jones supported the protesters with a megaphone, video programs. He asked them to stay in peace and proceed to the area on the Capitol grounds where Mr. Alexander had secured a demonstration license, according to Mr. Alexander and the footage.

Write to Shalini Ramachandran at [email protected], Alexandra Berzon at [email protected] and Rebecca Ballhaus at [email protected]