Transcribed Interview of Dustin Stockton/1:24pm
[1:24 p.m.]
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Q We're back on the record for the deposition of Dustin Stockton on December 14th.
Mr. Stockton, after we've sort of covered in a lot of general but then some detail, previously in big-picture sort of perspective, I'd like to kind of go back and drill in on a couple of specific details sort of starting from the beginning of the scope of what we're looking at.
First, it's correct that your involvement with January 6th started with your association with the Kremers. Is that right?
A That is correct.
Q So how did you first come to be associated with Amy and Kylie Kremer?
A I first was associated with Amy Kremer as part of the Tea Party Express in 2009, 2010.
Q Okay. If you flip to exhibit 6 in that binder, this was a text thread that you produced with the title, "M4T Core Team," and the text thread starts in July of 2020. Were you working with the Kremers in July of 2020?
A Yes.
Q So this is all preelection. So what, in your own words, were you doing with the Kremers at that time?
A So, I believe that this text thread was renamed, like we purposed as part of the tour. It wasn't originally M4T Core Team. During this time, I did—I was a consultant for Women for America First doing digital advertising and then just, in general, like coordinating our political activism.
Q So safe to say that the work in the summer of 2020 didn't focus on election integrity issues?
A No, not at all.
Q If you flip to page 7, there's a conversation here about a lawsuit over the Black Lives Matter mural. Could you tell us what that was about?
A So the Kremers, through attorney Mike Yoder and Ron Coleman had filed a lawsuit against Bill DeBlazio and the city of New York for—to be able to place a Women for Trump mural of the same font, size, and lettering that was equal to the Black Lives Matter.
Q And were you trying to help spread the message on that, or what was your connection to that project?
A Helping fundraise for it.
Q And on page 7, you sent a text to this group saying, "I've got to raise money by the end of the month or face some tough choices." What was that in reference to?
A I would—so this was probably in relation to needing to raise money to cover my expense—my fundraising expenses, so my database management, my bulk email service provider. My assumption is it's something to do with that.
Q Okay. So that raises the question for me, what was your financial arrangement with the Kremers during this time period?
A I worked on a commission basis, so I would set up the fundraising apparatus, and use my donor database to raise money for their various projects.
Q Do you remember what kind of commission you were making on the donations.
A It often varied depending on what the project was, but anywhere from, I believe, 10 percent to 50 percent, depending on which project it was.
Q Now, if you flip ahead to page 20 of exhibit 6, in the middle of the page, we can see that there's, on this thread, no communications shown between October 27th and November 4th, which is right—which is the day after the election. So let me start by asking you, what were you doing in a professional capacity around Election Day 2020?
A Almost nothing. So the We Build the Wall raid had made us completely radioactive. We were forced to cancel. We had outfitted our RV into a mobile production studio, and we were planning to travel the country doing events and interviews with candidates that we were supporting. That raid made that untenable. It had also prevented us from doing the normal campaign activity we would do, which would include fundraising and media appearances and just general consulting. So the—leading up to the election, we were just kind of holed up.
Q So the first text you send after the election is on November 4th. You send to the group, "Pete Sessions is in." What is that referring to?
A I can't recall exact—so I have a personal relationship with his chief of staff, Kirk Bell. My guess is it was in regards to speaker lineup around the—I can't remember exactly what we were—what the ask was, but I definitely reached out to Kirk as one of the people I'd reached out to, because we—we thought that a less firebrand member like Pete Sessions would be ideal for, I can't remember exactly what we were doing.
Q So speaker event or a speaker lineup for what in particular?
A I can't remember if it—this was the day after the election, then I—then the November rally on the 14th would be my guess.
Q And is that the same thing, a couple lines down you say, "We have Gosar in on AZ." Is that also in reference to having him as a speaker at a rally in November?
A I assume, yes.
Q Then the very next message, it bridges from page 20 to 21 appears, to be a tweet from Ali Alexander that's encouraging—it says, "If you can be in D.C. tomorrow and want to make a difference, please let me know by replying here. Do not fly in. Only if you're local."
And then it goes on to say, "@EagleEdMartin @KylieJaneKremer @AmyKremer running point on D.C. noon event tomorrow." So that's on November 4th. Do you know what that was in reference to?
A I don't recall exactly. I remember that there had been discussions in the immediate aftermath about putting, like, a large coalition together of activists and influencers that when Amy approached us about participating, that was kind of part of the pitch.
Q So that leads me to probably the most important question for this time period is, what was the ask from Amy Kremer and Women for America First in the—in these immediate days after the election?
A Putting together a rally in D.C. in November—like as soon as we could in November.
Q If we go forward a couple of pages here, on page 23, there's a long block of text that I won't read, but it says, "As one of your constituents, I am writing to you today about a matter of the utmost importance and urgency," and that text bridges on to the next page. What is that text that you have sent to the group?
A That is my draft text of the Rally Congress letter that we were encouraging people to send to the Members of Congress.
Q And you, I think, alluded to this earlier this morning, but could you tell us, you know—
A What it is?
Q Yeah, what is Rally Congress?
A Well, so—well, what it was—unfortunately they decided to shut down right after. This was the last campaign they ever did. It was a software subscription program that connected—so people would put in their ZIP Code and the other relevant information necessary to get through the Capitol messaging system.
So like, for example, some Members require exact addresses and phone numbers, some don't. They would automate the process so that whoever it was would have to fill out those specific forms. And then it would send—there would be a sample letter, which this was the draft of, that they could modify however they wanted, but would then allow them to send a digital message to their specific Member of Congress.
Q And so, is that a piece of software that you developed or you were the owner of? What was the professional—
A They were a vender of mine.
Q Okay. So this text here is a draft of what would have been information that citizens could put in to Rally Congress to notify the applicable members?
A Correct. This would be the sample, quote/unquote, "sample letter" that was provided after they got through the engagement portal, like where they enter in their personal information so we know which Member of Congress to connect them to. This would be the letter that is prepoulated. Ninety percent don't make any modifications.
Q And so, is the text already part of a campaign that people can join Rally Congress, or is it set up so that it's just a blank form, and otherwise you're providing this for people to paste into the software?
A Well, so—no, so it comes prepopulated. So when you—once you get through the engagement portal, it pulls up the sample letter, and I would tailor these campaigns to whatever we were working on. Our most effective one of all time was the Postal Reform Act that we coordinated with Congressman Issa on. We sent nearly 400,000 individual messages on that, and were able to pass—actually used it to push across legislation that streamlined and cut the deficit from, I believe, $15 billion annually down to like $6 billion annually.
Q Okay. Let me point you to exhibit 4. This is a text thread that you produced to us, I believe it's between you and Cindy Chafian. On page one of exhibit 4, the date is November 6th, and you ask Cindy, "What can I do to help you recruit State coordinators?" What is that in reference to?
A I believe, initially, our plan was to do individual groups in each State. And I think Amy had directed me to Cindy as like taking the lead on that, although I think it got dropped. Like I don't think it ever materialized into an actual program.
Q And so when you say individual groups, was that individual groups that were focused on the election?
A My guess is—yes. And my guess is that it was, I believe, I'm not sure, but I think maybe she had set up 50 separate Facebook groups or pages tailored to each State to try to manage all these people who were reaching out to us, and try to organize them.
Q Okay. And to be clear, organizing around issues of election fraud following the presidential election?
A Yes.
Q On page 5 of this exhibit, exhibit 4, I think in here there's a conversation where you are referring to Rally Congress. You write—there's a conversation it seems about Cindy trying to push for State and local leaders, but being concerned about not having enough in total. You end up saying to her regarding Rally Congress data, "Please keep it secure. The only deal I have is with Amy, and I don't trust any of the people attaching themselves." Can you explain what you meant by that?
A Yeah, so in my professional capacity, data is everything. The relationship to donors and activists who will actually take the time to reach out to a Member of Congress is sacrosanct.
At this point in the process, it was the broad coalition that included Ali as kind of, like, the leader of this other group of influencers. And my experience with Ali in the past led me to believe that I did not want him having access to the data that I was collecting.
Q What experiences did you have previously that led you to that concern?
A We've existed in the same space. He used to hold Blog Bash at CPAC every year. He—I would see his activist campaigns, I believe him and—who is the crazy guy and the lawyer that we talked about—
Mr. Nass. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell.
The Witness. No, no, Burk—Burkman. Jacob Wall.
Mr. Nass. Oh, Jacob Wall and Jack Burkman.
The Witness. Right.
Mr. Nass. They actually—they were here with Ali. I know I'm not sworn, but I'm just—last week when he was here.
The Witness. Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Nass. I don't know if you're aware of it.
The Witness. I was not.
Mr. Nass. No. All right.
The Witness. I'm sorry. But I had concerns from the very beginning about working with him just because I knew them not to be honest brokers in all cases.
Okay. So before we move to specifics for November planning, do you have any questions about—
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Q Yeah, just real quick. If we could go back to exhibit 6, which we were just looking at, I just have a couple of questions. If you go to page 20, which we were just at.
Mr. Nass. Yes, we were.
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Q So on November 4, 2020, I believe that's you. You sent a link to Mission.Substack.com. Is that your website?
A Yes, it is.
Q Okay. So my question is just, you know, by the title of this, it says, "Last chance, Americans: Fight on your feet or die on your knees." And, you know, before our lunch break we were talking about rhetoric and, you know, violent rhetoric—
Mr. Nass. Can I just—can we have a break for a few minutes just to go talk?
Can I at least finish my question?
Mr. Nass. Yeah, finish your question, absolutely.
So my question is just how, you know, this article that you sent on November 4th squares with our discussion about rhetoric you agreed with and disagreed with following the election of 2020.
[Discussion off the record.]
The Witness. I'd rather I answer.
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Q I'm just asking for you, you know, you sent an article, a link to your article, and we can see the title of it.
A Sure. It meant—well, I will say that my emotions at that point were also much higher, and i have also found that the rhetoric used is often necessary in order to bring people to avenues that are productive and helpful. Political hyperbole, I think, is a universally used tool. And at this point, my own personal emotions were very high.
And despite this rhetoric, I believe this article, I'd have to double-check, but I know very shortly after this article is starts steering people to making contacts to their Members of Congress and to other productive actions. And, so, I would say that my rhetoric at that point, the emotions were higher. I also didn't have a complete feel for, like, what this would turn into at the time, and would subsequently tone down the rhetoric kind of as we went along.
Q Did you find that you received like more engagement using, like, stronger, more vivid language?
A Yes.
Q Okay. And I'll note, this was the day after the election?
A Correct.
Q November 4th?
A Yep.
Q Another question I just wanted to clarify, I believe you mentioned that this text chain eventually became M4T Core Team. It might not have been originally named that, that name. What does M4T stand for?
A March For Trump.
Q And who was part of that chat to the best of your recollection?
A I could pull it up if—it would be the easiest way to do it.
Q Yeah, if you could just tell us, we—I mean, we can see who actively participated in the chain.
Mr. Nass. Well, he has it and he's happy to provide it.
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Q Yeah, just who was part of it. Maybe not everyone participated.
A Oh, I might actually have to pull it up on my computer.
Q If not, we can always ask your attorney afterward if you wanted to give the names. That's fine as well.
A Yeah, I'd have to pull it for you.
Q That's fine. We can discuss it later, just the names is fine.
Mr. Nass. Happy to provide it to you. There's no objection.
Great. Thank you.
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Q So, what was your role, in particular, in planning the November 14th event at Freedom Plaza?
A Primarily in marketing, fundraising, and organizationally, like, from a leadership standpoint.
Q But the funding was paid directly by Women for America First?
A Yes, so Women for America First was the recipient of the, like, fundraising we were doing, and then both them and Stockton Strategies paid for separate parts of the bills.
Q And what is Stockton Strategies?
A That's my consulting firm.
Q Were there other donors beyond the $40 to $60 mark sort of with, you know, big name, big dollar amount sort of contributions for this time period from Women for America First?
A Not to my knowledge at that point. The first time that, and to my knowledge, to the only one that I was included in, I'm learning things all the time afterwards, but my understanding, the first and really only real large contribution we received was from Mike Lindell. After the November 14th rally, Kylie Kremer and I had a—had several discussions with him where he agreed to spend and contribute $250,000 to cover the first bus tour.
Q And that was subsequent to the November 14th rally?
A That was after the—I believe we first broached it with him the night after or the morning the next day.
Q If you could go back to exhibit 4, which is the text conversation with Cindy Chafian, to page 8. And I want to ask you about security for the November 14th event, which if you look at page 8, it looks like there's a back and forth about where to find security. In your own words, what, if anything, were the security concerns for November 14th?
A Well, so in any instance, right, you need to have security to handle what was coming. We had no idea how many people were coming. The short time period the election to the rally led us to believe that it would not be that big of a turnaround, like we definitely weren't expecting as many people who showed up.
And I think this text thread kind of gets into what would become an ongoing thing between Cindy and I, in that my experiences—when I do rallies and have done rallies around the country, we almost always go to the sheriff's office first to hire off-duty police officers and look for licensed and insured firms to handle security.
And it's—like when you build a house, I'm happy to do all kinds of handiwork, but I won't touch electric, because there's some things that you leave to the professionals, and security is one of those things. And so I—yeah, you can see she offers—so the normal firms and guys I use were all unavailable, so you can see where I say, I'm having trouble with security. All of my guys are already booked. She comes back with, I can ask the volunteer guys, and I say, I'll keep chasing stuff down. Like I kind of pass that off like I don't want volunteer guys, like I want pros.
Q At the very top of this page, you sent her a picture. Do you know what that's a picture of?
A Yeah, so I'm actually really proud of that. So when COVID hit, my dad and I were really concerned about hospitals being overrun. My dad is a career paramedic firefighter, and so, he and I put our heads together and we put together a really high-speed, first-aid kit to hand out to our friends and family in case they couldn't go to the hospital that would cover like 95 percent of the stuff most people would visit the emergency room in case the hospitals were overrun. And we actually—I believe we produced—the first tun that we did was like 4- or 500 of them.
Q So that's just a first-aid kit?
A Correct.
Q It doesn't have anything specifically to do with the November rally?
A No, it's just a really kick-ass first-aid kit.
Q When Cindy Chafian refers to the volunteer group, do you know what group she's talking about?
A I didn't at that point; I now know that she was referring to the 1st Amendment Praetorian.
Q And do you know what her connection to the 1st Amendment Praetorian was?
A I believe it was through her husband, Scott Chafian.
Q On the next page here, at the top of page 9, you know, after you say, I have a licensed firm, will provide us some liability protection. Then you say, I will say with an emoji at the end, I have an armed crew of 3K guys with 2K AR-15s right over the Virginia—PA border if any things got really sticky. What's that comment about?
A So both Jennifer and I worked for Gun Owners of America for a long time, and it was frankly like braggadocios fluff about knowing a bunch of the patriot groups in Virginia in case, you know—especially with Cindy and Jason Funes, there was over the top talk about like, Well, what if they come in and start shooting and stuff. So that was kind of my overly braggadocios like, Oh, I know the people in Virginia we could call over if things got sticky.
Q Right. And I'm just not familiar with some of the shorthand you might be using. When you say 3K guys with 2K AR-15s, is that—what does that mean?
A Like the groups—I mean, the numbers kind of pulled out of thin air, but like Gun Owners of America is headquartered in Virginia. And, so, like I know a bunch of guys with a bunch of guns that we could call if things—right, if as you're worried about like, you know, the Feds are going to start shooting at us.
Q So 3K means 3,000 and 2K means 2,000?
A Correct.
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Q Sorry, real quick. Did you say, was the concern that the Federal government was going to shoot you?
A Correct. Correct. I'm not saying that that was my concern, but I'm saying with some of the other people who were involved, especially surrounding like the 1AP guys, that their frankly paranoias around some of this stuff was often over the top.
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Q Well, I think that raises an interesting question that I'd be interested in getting your perspective on is, the distinction between what you're getting when you have a licensed professional security firm versus a more volunteer, takes on the look of paramilitary, you described this morning, you know, guys keeping their hands on the shoulder. Why would people want the latter instead of the former?
A Well, so the former costs money, right. Those guys are—good security is not cheap. Volunteer security is free, and so that's part of it. Part of it, and I think this also gets to some of the divide, I think there was a desire amongst some of the more hard-core elements, right, to kind of project that kind of military/paramilitary sense that also was from a PR standpoint, not ideal for the optics that we were trying to get across.
Q From your perspective, before we move on, how did the November 14th event turn out?
A It was incredible, like vastly more people than we ever anticipated or frankly were prepared for. I think we got really lucky in a lot of instances that things went as well as they did. An example would be—and this led to—this is one of the—kind of the start of many of the things that would progress—I finished giving my speech from the stage on Freedom Plaza, felt great, like riding high. I was also managing the stage at the Supreme Court.
I had actually just rounded up like off the Freedom Plaza in the morning, something like Vietnamese volunteers and driven by them golf cart to the Supreme Court to kind of like watch over our stage. And they were feverishly texting me, like, Oh, there are lots of people here, like lots and lots of people here.
And so, I got off stage, and Jen and I began walking towards the stage at the Supreme Court. And when we crested where, like the part—is it Constitution or Pennsylvania? I can't remember which street. But as you crest and you can kind of see the Capitol or the Supreme Court, whatever that building is, it was shoulder-to-shoulder people for like a solid mile and a half or so.
And our initial thought was, Oh, my God, how are we going to get to our stage? And so we literally started having to, like, fight our way through the crowd to try to get to the stage, because I didn't have anybody there to manage it.
And on the way there, I ran into one of the lines of guys who like ware hands on the shoulders as they kind of moved around and got actually into a shoving match with this group, because I was like trying to break through their line or whatever. And they started pushing, like, right, we got into a verbal altercation, and it turned out to be like Alex Jones' like group around there.
Eventually I was able to get through and get to the stage. And at that point, it was my volunteers, and we had set it up—the speaker lineup at the Supreme Court was like our highest profile speakers, and the Freedom Plaza was, like, the junior varsity, if you will, like the influencers and different people. But like our top draws we had scheduled to be at the Supreme Court.
There were so many people there that they were struggling to get, just like we were, to get through the crowd to get to the stage, because we hadn't preset up like a path for people to get through. So by the time I got there and Jen got there, the only other high-profile person was Congressman Gohmert, who had managed to work his way through the crowd to get to the stage.
And that same group that I had had a confrontation with before as I was working my way through the crowd actually physically stormed the stage, and Alex Jones was trying to get to the microphone. And I remember them pushing us off the stage, including Congressman Gohmert. And I'll never forget one of them like shoved Louie, and he said, you realize I'm a Member of Congress, like you don't get to put your hands on me, son.
And I made the immediate decision, and like a quick deal with Alex that I would allow him to give his speech if they would immediately leave the stage. And at that point I figured, if I don't allow him to speak here, the crowd might just tear me apart at this point, because on the November rally, we didn't really—so the rules at the Supreme Court, it's not permitted the same way other places are. It's first come-first served, but you're also not allowed to use fencing, right. There's extra rules that made security protocol a little different, that frankly we were not ready for.
So he gets up and kind of gives a speech, and we end up having, like, a very odd program where I ramble on—like I end up speaking for, I think, close to 2 hours total, because—while we were trying to get the rest of the people in.