WASHINGTON — An Associated Press review of records finds that veterans of President Donald Trump’s failed campaign were key players in the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The findings undercut claims that the Jan. 6 event was the brainchild of the president’s grassroots supporters.
A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally.” Paperwork filed to get an event permit from the National Park Service lists more than half a dozen people who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump’s campaign.
Since the siege, several of them have scrambled to distance themselves from the rally.
Women for America First did not respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press.
According to the AP, at least one was working for the Trump campaign this month. Megan Powers was listed as one of two operations managers for the Jan. 6 event, and her LinkedIn profile says she was the Trump campaign’s director of operations into January 2021.
Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser, is named as a “VIP Advisor” on an attachment to the permit that Women for America First provided to the agency. Between mid-March and mid-November, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. paid Wren $20,000 a month, according to Federal Election Commission records. During the campaign, she was a national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee.